[USA TODAY] H-town hip-hop goes national

More love for Houston rappers

http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2005-10-23-houston_x.htm

Houston grows its own stars

By Steve Jones, USA TODAY
Houston's long-thriving hip-hop community has generally skirted the mainstream spotlight while other regions, particularly in the South, have taken turns challenging New York and Los Angeles for supremacy.

But in the city where the rappers extol a laid-back lifestyle with candy-paint cars, exotic rims and diamond-encrusted teeth, determination and self-reliance are starting to pay off. Set far away from the music industry's coastal power centers, Houston grew its own record labels and distribution networks, and is now fertile with breakout stars.

"Texas is one of the biggest states, and if you can just sell units here, you don't have to worry about going outside of Texas to eat real good," says Mike "5000" Watts, owner of Swisha House Records, whose motto is "Major Without a Major Deal."

Now the city's fiercely independent scene is getting a big push in the music industry's mainstream. Three long-established Houston mixtape stars have landed in the top 5 of the Billboard album chart this year with their major-label debuts.

Mike Jones' Who Is Mike Jones? was No. 3 and sold 181,000 copies in its first week in April. In July, Slim Thug's Already Platinum was No. 2 and sold 129,000 copies its first week. Paul Wall's The People's Champion replaced Kanye West's chart-topping Late Registration in September, selling 176,000 copies in its inaugural week. All three got an MTV/BET-fueled boost from their collaboration on Jones' first single, Still Tippin'. (Related story: Houston's 'chopped and 'screwed' sound)

"It's just a matter of timing and patience," Wall says. "The sound hasn't changed all that much over the past 15 years. It's time that the world is ready to hear what Houston has to say."

Says Jones: "It's new to the mainstream, but we've been holding it down for a long time with the cars, the dialect. The world is finally getting in tune with H-town. We live the American Dream down here."

More music is on the way. Veteran Bun B of locally legendary duo UGK released his highly anticipated solo debut, Trill, last week. Lil' Flip's third major-label release, I Need Mine, is out Dec. 6, and Chamillionaire, aka The Mixtape Messiah, makes his debut with The Sound of Revenge Nov. 22. He just released a World Series remix of Turn It Up Astros, a song he created for the National League champs.

Bun B says the spate of major-label interest is money-driven. "Major labels deal with crunching numbers," he says. "And when you see a Slim Thug on Boss Hogg Outlawz Records moving 40,000 units outside the system, they figure they could put a push behind that and sell five or 10 times as much."

With such goals in mind, Asylum, Warner Music Group's year-old "incubator" label, which links with promising independent labels, signed marketing and distribution deals with local powerhouses Rap-a-Lot and Swisha House, homes to many of the city's top artists.

"We are looking for strong brands that have a local following we think we can take national," Asylum president Todd Moscowitz says. "Houston has one of the most vibrant music scenes, and it's been around for 20 years. A lot of people are looking at Houston like it is to rap what Seattle was to rock.

"But you still have to find the stars within that music scene. Anybody who just rushes in to sign just any Houston artist will find themselves breathing the fumes as the car pulls away."

Chuck "Jigsaw" Creekmur, co-founder of AllHipHop.com, says the isolation from industry power centers helped Houston artists and executives.

"They didn't have the opportunity to sit in front of Def Jam," he says. "They had to rely on themselves rather than looking for a handout."

Nearly 20 years ago, James Prince founded Rap-a-Lot Records. The Geto Boys' 1991 We Can't Be Stopped album, with its infamous cover of member Bushwick Bill on a gurney being rushed into the emergency room just after being shot in the eye by a girlfriend, sparked outrage with its violent subject matter. At the same time, it gave the trio, which also includes Willie D. and solo star Scarface, a hit with the classic Mind Playing Tricks on Me. Scarface, whose 2002 masterpiece The Fix featured the hit My Block, now heads Def Jam South.

UGK (the Underground Kingz), featuring Pimp C (Chad Butler) and Bun B (Bernard Freeman), was another pioneering act. Like the Geto Boys, they never sustained mainstream success, but they were prominently featured on Jay-Z's 2000 hit Big Pimpin'.

Bun B, who has become a guest artist of choice for a number of rap stars, says he intends to keep the UGK name alive until Pimp C's prison sentence for aggravated assault is up, probably in December. They co-own Trill Entertainment and will release a Middle Fingerz album early next year.

Swisha House was started 10 years ago by Watts as a mixtape production company and was a launching pad for Jones, Wall, Slim Thug and Chamillionaire. It became a record label in 1999; Slim Thug later left to form his Boss Hogg Outlawz label.

Lil' Flip (Wesley Weston), a protégé of DJ Screw (see sidebar), helped spark the current interest in Houston music. His 2002 album, Undaground Legend, sold more than 700,000 copies, and he followed it up with 2004's million-selling U Gotta Feel Me. He scored with the hit singles GameOver (Flip) and Sunshine.

Diversified new breed

Flip's success helped pave the way for the newest crop of artists, all of whom say they are grateful for the major-label push, but remain uncompromising when it comes to their music and other entrepreneurial pursuits.

• The 6-foot-6 Slim Thug (Stayve Thomas), who owns three record stores and has partnered his Boss Hogg Outlawz label with The Neptunes' Star Trak label through Interscope, says he's more into the hustle of the business than the art of it. It wasn't an idle boast when he named his album Already Platinum, but a reflection of the wealth he'd built on his own.

"It was always more a business in my mind," he says. "Anybody who knows me knows being in the limelight is out of my personality."

• Jones, who is taking acting lessons, has a clothing line and owns Ice Age Entertainment, says that even though he has gone mainstream, he's going to continue to keep the street percolating with his mixtapes.

"On the radio, people hear the same old stuff all the time," he says. "People want to hear some new stuff. That's why we still drop stuff on the underground."

• Wall (Paul Slayton), who works extensively as a DJ, remixer and promoter and has his own show on XM radio, is also one of the leading providers of bejeweled fronts — which he says can run from $50 to $50,000 — through his TV Jewelry. Kanye West, Nelly, Bun B, Jones, Brooke Valentine, Lil' Jon, David Banner, Chingy and Master P are among those who sport sparkly teeth courtesy of Wall.

"The designs are real intricate, and all the diamonds are hand-set," Wall says. "We have top-quality diamonds. You've got to shine, baby."

Chamillionaire (Hakeem Seriki) says he resisted signing with a major for a long time because the offers seemed paltry compared with what he already was achieving. Universal, he says, was the first label to understand who he was and offer a worthwhile partnership.

"If you are already selling 100,000 units at $8 apiece and a major offers you less than that," he says, "what would be the benefit of giving up everything that you control for nothing?"

But, he adds, "you don't want to be a regional superstar forever. You may have bigger goals, and that's why people started taking that bigger jump."

From the ground up

In addition to his own album, he has rapper Rasaq and DJ/producer O.G. Ron C on his Chamilitary Entertainment label. Chamillionaire and Wall started out together passing out fliers and learning the business from the ground floor at Swisha House, and got their feet wet freestyling on mixtapes. In 2002, they released Get Ya Mind Correct as the Color Changin' Clique on the local Paid in Full label and sold 100,000 copies.

They eventually went their separate ways. Wall returned to Swisha House while Chamillionaire started his label, then signed with Universal. There were hard feelings after the split, but both say they've moved on.

"I'm on a positive note," Wall says. "Anybody who is bringing any negativity to me, I'm dodging that."

"I've had my problems with people," says Chamillionaire, who has also had publicized differences with Jones. "But I feel I make good music, and I'm just chilling and focusing on my career. I called my album The Sound of Revenge because success is the best revenge that you can have on anybody that doubted you. It's not hinting at any beef, and I'm not dissing anybody. It's about success."