In numerology, the number five signifies coming to life, invention, vitality, enjoyment, play, and creativity. The Grammy nominated Kentucky rap quintet Nappy Roots is the literal personification of all that the number 5 represents. From a 2003 appearance in Iraq, Kuwait and Qatar as one of the few Hip Hop acts (and one of the most requested!)  to participate in a USO tour, to artistic collaborations with everyone from Kanye West to The Dave Mathews Band, Nappy Roots has come a long way from throwing house parties as undergrads at western Kentucky State University. True entrepreneurs, Nappy Roots have been steady grinding, releasing mixtapes and touring, staying in touch with fans and creating music that has been a southern stew of blues, rap, politics, alcohol, weed, sex, soul and fun. After taking the industry by storm with 2002’s platinum selling Watermelon, Chicken & Gritz, and following that up Wooden Leather a year later, Nappy Roots earned themselves a plethora of accolades and fans across the globe. They are the epitome of grown ass men, unapologetic and true to themselves with their word as their bond.

Those words have kept them bonded to diehard fans as they navigated the often tumultuous music industry. An exit from Atlantic Records and down a member (R. Prophet left to pursue a solo career), five years later, official Kentucky Colonel’s Skinny Deville, B. Stille, Ron Clutch, Scales and Big V have spent the last 5 years grinding hard and with the August 5 release of their 5th CD looming, and a new deal with Fontana/Universal, Nappy Roots is poised to establish themselves once again as a force to be reckoned with.

I recently had the opportunity to have a very candid conversation with Skinny Deville about where Nappy Roots has been, why the fuck the rap biz is all sorts of fucked up and what’s on the horizon for one of rap music’s most creative groups.

GE: You have undergone a lot of changes since you first dropped Watermelon, Chicken & Gritz,  both as group with Prophet’s exit, and leaving Atlantic, but you seem stronger than ever now.

SD: I’m glad someone sees the moves that we are making. Because as minuscule that they may seem, to us, on a major label level, um, it’s still hard to operate and make it look like a major label is behind us. Us taking the opportunity to that we had and run with it to get off Atlantic and restructure ourselves to be an independent company and release projects independently, it was a hard decision for us to make, to wean ourselves from a major label, big spoon, to a smaller spoon, it ends up being very very beneficial and in our best interests.

GE: Despite all the changes, to the delight of fans, Nappy Roots has stuck with it and kept grinding, from Scales’ Da Sticks mixtape, to the Innerstate mixtape and Cookout Music, did you just never allow yourselves to give up?

SD: That’s it, pretty much. When we got off Atlantic, in 2005, we were still able to make music, and that was what Atlantic didn’t really know about us. We had to basically play dead for a year and half, two years for them to say “you know what lets go ahead and lets these guys go because they want to be out”. We was mad you know, they dropped the ball on the second album, we put a lot into that project and we felt they didn’t work it like they should have. And for that reason we were very very upset at the process of how our major label situation was working. It didn’t work for us. When they were only concerned about one song and creatively we didn’t see eye to eye. It didn’t work for us. So we pretty much had to play dead, in a sense for a year and half for them to say “okay you guys made us millions of dollars then, but you’re not going to make us millions of dollars anymore, were going to let you people go”, meanwhile we were looking how to structure ourselves. We got out of our contract, saw a window of opportunity we took it, we went for it and because of that we had to pretty much change how we looked at doing business. Downsize to an independent. That was difficult for us, because you get used to making money one way, and then you don’t make money for several years the way you used to make it, then you got to figure out other ways to make money.

But we were always trying to do something for the fans, about every summer, to let them know we’re not gone, that we didn’t fall off the face off the earth and we were still exercising and working out creatively at as Nappy Roots.

GE: Nappy Roots has a history of doing for self and making it happen, from the Everything Tight record shop & studio, to the clothing line to the new deal with Universal/ Fontana.  You seem to really embody the entrepreneurial spirit.

SD: Absolutely, we started up doing exactly the same thing we are doing now, recording our project ourselves, art design, graphic design, finding where to duplicate it, getting it to the stores; that’s how we started back in 1995. We signed to Atlantic in 1998, and our first album came out on 2002, but from 98-02 we released two independent projects, one was Country Fried Cess, the other was No Comb, No Brush, No Fade, No Perm and both of those projects were released independently. We went ourselves into the Mom and Pop stores, we either consigned them or sold them flat out, that way the store could make their money; we’d keep our product on the rack and we’d go in every month and collect what we sold. So we always had the entrepreneurial mind frame, but when we got to Atlantic, we couldn’t do that, because we were talking about 1.2 million records, we couldn’t consign 1.2 million records and stay on top of everything, so we put what we knew to the back burner and let another label control our destiny, and with that comes the good with the bad.

GE: How does the new situation with Fontana differ from other deals? Can you tell me about it?

SD: Of course, our label is NREG (Nappy Roots Entertainment Group), we have a distribution deal with Fontana/Universal, and were also doing business with Greg Street over at Interscope with the single Good Day. So we pretty much have the best of both worlds, not putting all the eggs in the basket.

GE: How do you see the internet, blogs, downloading, all this new technology and media platforms affecting the industry, and how are you using them to your advantage?

SD: I mean, I’ll tell you this, truthfully, when Watermelon, Chicken & Gritz came out in 2002, iTunes was just starting to get established. I got the first iPod, one of the big brick looking iPod like dope dealer cell phone back in the day; I got it from Atlantic records. Then the iStore came about and that kinda changed everybody from kinda illegally downloading music on napster to digital downloads. We came into the game post Napster, but we can see how the whole digital download thing leveled out. By the time Wooden Leather came out, iPods was crackin’, and digital downloads too.

Now, there are so many ways you can get a record, and if you are savvy enough you can get it for free, but if you respect the game and respect the artists enough, you’ll pay a little bit towards what the artists has done, and spend a little money on it. And if the artist’s music is good enough for you to buy, than you buy it and if it not than you can just pick the song you like and keep it moving, and that’s kind of changed the game to the point where singles don’t sell in the stores anymore, but you can buy a .99 cent single, off ITunes and you can still give that artist appreciation.

At the same time, if the artists only puts out two or three singles that are hot off the album, and the rest of the album is not worth anything, then the album is picked apart and the record doesn’t sell. Thats how you get the sluggish sales that are going on in the music industry today, and records labels are closing by the day, because the acts that they are putting out that don’t have quality music.

GE: The south dominance in rap has come about in the past few years, despite the long history that cats like Bun B, Face and 8ball and MJG have. As southern Hip Hop artists, what has your experience been in a genre that was historically an East Coast thing or a West Coast thing?

The South has been doing what we doing because the south is sticking together. In the east, that’s where Hip Hop came from, and on the West, they put their style on it and I love it all. Man if you hot you hot and if you wack you wack, there’s wack in the south just as much as there is in the east and the west. And the only reason people are wack is because they are not being original.

There was a point when originality was in, with Nice-n-Smooth, Big Daddy Kane, Eric B and Rakim, hell Nas, Biggie, Jay Z, Wu Tang, these acts have been original, they’ve created a sound all their own. And the East coast, when they were the best, was when they didn’t care about nothing, they just rapped, didn’t care if it made sense or not they just rapped it and it was hot and the beat was gritty and grimey. You know, to me, when the east started losing it, and the only reason they started losing it was because, shit, everyone has their time to shine, it’s not going to be in the east forever, it’s not going to be in the west forever nor is it going to be in the south forever.

But when you have record labels signing acts just because the last cat was successful, and not putting the creativity in the forefront, not letting quality acts come out, that’s when you see shit simple. It’s not the east coast fault that the east isn’t hot right now, they’re always going to be hot, it’s the record labels fault. It’s the labels that are putting out these acts that are putting out bullshit, and that’s when you see creativity go out, it’s not out in the East or the West but it out all over, it’s in the south right now.

There’s a lot of bullshit going on right now in the south that’s got me like man, where’s the quality control? The acts and the artists themselves need to start taking responsibility for themselves, if he says he ain’t putting out no bullshit, don’t put out no bullshit, if the record label wants you to put out a snap record and you know you aren’t a snap artist, then don’t put out no snap shit. If you are a snap artists and going to put out snap shit, then put it out, if you’re a hardcore street artist and you’re going to put out a hardcore street record put it out, don’t go candy of you ain’t candy and don’t go hardcore if you ain’t hardcore, do you, make music for your fans, make music that you know that you can stand behind and that you can go to bed every night knowing, I gave my all, and I guarantee that your act, your artists, the artist you are putting out will be way more successful than if you are trying to do and be something you’re not.

GE: Amen, I feel like applauding, you don’t hear this kind of honesty often.

SD: I think everybody thinks it, but some people are scared to say it. I ain’t got shit to lose, man. Some people think we’ve been dead and gone for three years, and we just now coming back, and let them think that, because of you are not involved in our fan base and our movement, then that’s cool. But there are a lot of people that know that Nappy Roots is about to come back with this Humdinger, we’ve been grinding for 2-3 years and its coming, but at this time in my life and my career, we are in a great situation, but I have nothing to lose and I have nothing to hide and have no problem with me being open about where I feel the game is going, if we are don’t say it as a community and stick together, then it’s going to go back to country, or its going to go back to rock or pop, or it’ll go back to boy bands it’ll go somewhere else.

Everything has its time and place in life and what goes around comes around, and if you don’t take advantage of it and stand for something now, and just go the way the wind blows… man, then you’ll be all over the place, and that what I don’t want to happen to Hip Hop.

GE: September 16 is the official Nappy Roots day in the state of Kentucky, how do you celebrate your very own day? 

SD: Man we do it big, but before we do anything, we go to the schools in the state of Kentucky, we go to high schools and middle schools, we just talk to the kids about staying in school, and go to college, because if we hadn’t gone to college you wouldn’t have this good music were putting out. We tell ‘em to take advantage of your books now because they’re free, when you go to college you got to pay for them, you know, just do your best in school, try to go to college, it’s an experience that rivals no other, you can go to trade school, you can go to the military, you can do whatever you want to do in life, have fun doing it, follow your dreams, pursue ‘em and stop at nothing to get them is the main thing we try to share through Nappy Roots Day, that evening we always throw a free concert in the city everyone who can’t afford to see a Nappy Roots show throughout the year, September 16, we have a free show, we have the cotton candy out there the corn dogs, it’s getting bigger and bigger ever year.

We also have our Nappy Roots Day Foundation, we been working on that for awhile, and proceeds of our album are going to go to homelessness, education and and the civil right movement you know what I saying. We’re taking some of the money were going to be making in the future and we’re putting a generous portion of our money to those entities. Because those things are important, there’s no reason we have this much homelessness, there’s no reason why our teachers aren’t being paid enough to teach these kids, there’s no reason why there are children left behind, you know what I’m saying, that we as African Americans, or minorities in general, we don’t know what our history is. You know? There’s no reason for that, especially when we have so much of a voice right now. We may see an African American president in our lifetime and most people never thought that would happen in their lifetime you know. It’s happening, change is coming, and if you think positively and you make great decisions, and if you think about the words that come out your mouth before you say thing, you think about your actions and you are responsible for your actions , man, life will be so much better, and not just in Hip Hop but in life in general, the world will be so much better.

GE: Nappy Roots boasts a more eclectic history of collaborations and sounds than most artists can even dream of, from the POD remix, the Mark Ronson Blue Grass Stain’d joint and Skinny, your collabo with Dave Mathews Band, even the tours you have been part of have been very diverse musically speaking. How has that impacted your sound and who Nappy is?

SD: Man, I never thought about it like that but, we done records with Groove Armada, of course Marc from P.O.D., of course we can’t forget Anthony Hamilton, we collaborated with a lot of people in the game that just said [they] want to do a record; we smoke weed with ‘em, or do 20 shots of Patron with ‘em, and they’ll say we gotta do a record tomorrow and well say let’s do it. And we’ll jump in the studio, do it and it’ll come out a couple of months down the line.

We’ve always been amazed at the collabos we’ve done, we’ve always known that there are a lot of thing we want to do in life and a lot of people we want to work with and to work with the ones that we have thus far, we’re very fortunate for them to respect our music, and for us to get together and make a great song. It’s the best thing man, you can’t beat making a great record, knowing that today you could have done anything, but today you made a great record. Someone’s life may have been changed because of the music that you just made. And artists, I don’t know if they take responsibility for their work like they used to, but artists used to really influence how people lived there lives. Like you’d wake up to a certain song, you go to bed to a certain song, when you’re stressed out you play a certain song, when you think about suicide you think about this song, when you think about religion, you play this song, you know what I’m saying? Now, you don’t get too many songs that keep people from doing whatever they don’t want to do.

I don’t know man, to me, it’s getting kinda stagnant, and it’s getting kind of: “ok, I’m going to make this simple beat, I’m going to rap this simple verse. He did it and got away with it, I’m going to do it too.” No one’s being creative enough. We are lacking creativity in the music business as a whole, not just in Hip Hop, but in the music business as a whole. People are mad because the records aren’t selling, only digital singles are selling, so were only getting the one record. We aren’t fixing the problem, that’s only adding to the problem, if you are only making one record that’s hot and you got a whole album, 12-15 songs and only 1 song is hot? Come on man! You’re shorting the fans; you’re shorting the people that love music and turning them into people that hate music.

The people that hate music, they’re always going to be there, they hate everything they hate themselves in life, they aren’t our problem as artists. My problem is, I’m trying to get my music to people who love life and love my music, and you know, that’s why we are in a different deal with Universal/Fontana, we are able to do a deal with Greg Street at Interscope still able to put out music with The Humdinger, that’ll be in stores August 5th, because we as a group, we know there is good music that needs to be heard, we know that music changes the world man.

Music can influence a lot of people to do a lot of good things in life, money sometimes it corrupts you, and sometimes it takes money, the paper chase, that takes the creativity away from the music because you’re chasing the money. If you chase the creativity and take the high that you get when you make money, I guarantee you there will be so so many more great products in the world for people to listen to.

If you don’t make good music where you know what you’re talking about and that people can relate too, than you lose the fans. I can’t relate to you talking foolishly about shit you don’t know anything about. Because if you knew anything about life, it takes money to make money and you gotta pay your bills, and if you got kids, you have to make sure your kids are straight first, you’re not making it rain in the club and your daughter ain’t got no diaper. I ain’t got a $50,000 watch on if I can’t make it to my job, and I ain’t making it rain in the club when I’m spending $4-5 a gallon for gas. Before you make it rain send your momma some flowers, thank your momma who raised you by herself or with your daddy before you run around in the clubs. I ain’t saying there anything wrong with it, if you have money, do it, but if you ain’t got no money don’t try to do something just because you saw someone else do it.

What’s real is taking care of yourself and your family, making sure you go out and vote this year because the economy is messed up because of the president, those things are more important, motherfucker there’s a war that’s unnecessary there’s gas that’s way too high, there’s a real estate crash in our economy that everybody is losing their ass, foreclosures are at an all time high, diseases and HIV are at an all time high, but you don’t hear about none of that shit going on in music. And I’m not trying to be preachy preachy or that music should be, I’m just saying that people need to hear music they can relate to , and some of the things artists are saying, they cannot relate to, and therefore you get this big gap in music, between shit that I think people need to hear and shit that I want to say. And the shit that you want to say should be what the people want to and need to hear.

When we get to that point in Hip Hop and as a generation, when we start to take responsibility for the next generation of kids, I promise you, the economy and the world and those generations that we can raise in hip hop, will be so much better. It won’t be today and it won’t be tomorrow. We as a generation have the right and responsibility to the fans to make a difference and if we don’t, if you call yourself an artist, you aren’t really an artist, you’re just a motherfucker who can put a word together over a beat that might be simple, I don’t know what it is, but you don’t sell records that way.

GE: What can we expect to hear on The Humdinger?  Does it follow along with what Nappy sounds fans first heard on Watermelon, Chicken & Gritz and Wooden Leather?

SD: Ah man, it’s phenomenal. The humdinger basically means an extraordinary thing or event, and um, we worked on this project, The Humdinger, for the last three years, and we put just as much effort into it as we did Watermelon, Chicken & Gritz, and I want to say it’s our best work to date. It has features from Anthony Hamilton; Greg Nice from Nice-n-Smooth is on it. It’s just phenomenal, 16 nonstop bangers, we have production from Sol Messiah, Groove Chambers who produced “Aw Naw” from Watermelon, Chicken & Gritz we hooked back up with him and he gave us two bangers for the album.

We got production from all across the board, we’ve got music that’ll pertain to all walks of life, if you are an everyday bill paying IRS tax paying citizen of the United States of America, you can relate; if you have kids, you can relate, if you have a car that broke down on the side of the road you can relate, if you want to wake up and have a good day you can relate; if you are feeling bad and your life sucks there’s a song for that on there. There are songs for all walks of life and we made sure, with this album, we are representing everybody that’s in our fan base and then some.

 

The Humdinger is available for pre-order on Amazon.com now and will be in stores on August 5.

You can also catch Nappy Roots in your town on their Pursuit Of Nappyness Tour throughout the summer and fall. For tour dates and Nappy Roots updates, be sure to visit http://www.myspace.com/nappyrootsmusic and add them as a friend. Be sure to stay tuned to their MySpace and YouTube pages for behind the scenes footage of Nappy Roots on tour and sneak previews if their upcoming behind the scenes DVD, a follow up to the Grammy nominated World According to Nappy DVD.