Rappa Alpha
FEATURE: Everything you ever wanted to know (and didn’t want to know) about frat rap but were too cool to ask
By Chris Faraone
Originally published in the Boston Phoenix (November 2011)
Despite whatever hip-hop’s perceived “intended audience,” it’s never been a secret that rap music has long been adored by the Caucasian crowd — since long before “Michael Bolton” spit Scarface’s “No Tears” in his car over the opening credits of Office Space, and certainly as long ago as the Beasties Boys fought for their right to party.
But campus hip-hop has become a thing apart in recent years. The college party scene has always been blessed by white boys who can freestyle. But for a few years now — since around the time of keg rap pioneer Asher Roth’s breakout smash “I Love College” in 2008 — bro bashes have spawned their own heroes. Hit an end-of-semester blowout at any school from UMass to USC, and you’ll likely hear as many songs by so-called frat rappers like Sammy Adams as you will by proud dropout Kanye West. That’s especially true in New England, which has produced more frat-tastic headliners than any other region in the country.
Everybody knows that honkeys have always adored boom-bap; what’s more, despite popular yet misinformed narratives, hip-hop has for years been saturated with white icons other than Eminem — from Cage and Evidence to, before them, Everlast and 3rd Bass. On this vague four-year anniversary of frat rap (roughly from the release of Asher Roth’s “I Love College”), what’s interesting is how much this specific niche has grown as it’s become part of a brave new commercial world.
Proud hip-hop purists have almost unanimously panned frat rappers for their super-synthesized backdrops, obvious samples, and typically trite and oversexed lyrics — despite comparable trends in underground and mainstream varieties. In addition to those jabs, however, critics also have an unease with privileged kids bragging about how hard they fornicate, and which designer drugs the girls who gang-blow them like to abuse. It’s an understandable contempt.
But love it or loathe it, frat rap — or however haters wish to brand it — isn’t just here to crash on hip-hop’s couch overnight. They might not grab XXL headlines, but cats like Newton- and Wellesley-bred MC Cam Meekins are among rap’s up-and-coming dynamos, with the numbers to prove it. Last month, Wayland chill-hop duo Aer’s self-released What You Need EP debuted atop the iTunes Hip-Hop/Rap albums chart, ahead of Lil Wayne, J. Cole, and the Throne. Rounding out the top five was fellow post-adolescent rhymer Mac Miller, who plays the House of Blues December 3. The last time Miller came to Boston, more than 50,000 fans showed up to see him rock Government Center, causing some of the most raucous public pandemonium in recent Boston history.
Less than a year ago, popular rap-snob sentiment guessed that non-conformist players like Odd Future would out-shock and bulldoze the frat-rap scene — much in the way Wu-Tang Clan clobbered early-’90s lightweights like the Fresh Prince and P.M. Dawn. But that’s not what’s happening — despite Spin featuring none of the frat rappers in their new “Changing Face of Hip-Hop” issue. Instead, brew-happy dudes and party-rat co-eds are flocking to see these acts, and they’re doing something that average rap fans stopped doing a long time ago — buying music.
Mind you, this is not like the phenomenon of black gangsta rap — with its subversive crime-spree appeal and ghetto exoticism — that early on grabbed the attention of white kids. Instead, it’s party music brewed from the point of view of the people who consume it.
Though, as Chad Boy of fratrap.tumblr.com points out, “This subgenre is more about the audience reached than the rappers themselves.” The Allston-based Tumblr site has become an oft-referenced leading online resource for rush-week anthems. “You don’t have to be part of a college fraternity to be considered frat rap,” says Chad Boy, “and you don’t have to be white either. You just have to make party music that suburban college kids relate to — music that teens around the country will push hard around the Internet. Forget about dismissing the idea of frat rap — as some of these guys like to do. The successful ones embrace the fan base, and they’re taking it further than anyone ever imagined.”
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
It’s Halloween at the House of Blues in Boston and Sammy Adams is headlining. The place is swimming with slutty cops and cats and guys draped in togas. By the stage-right bar, an Amish Thor buys his Pocahontas a cocktail, but for the moment they’re the only ones imbibing. Since most people here aren’t of legal drinking age, they already got nice and nasty back in their college dorm rooms. Unable to reload at the House of Blues, the horde stays on the dance floor from start to finish, bopping hands in brilliant unison as if they’re starring in a hop-hop-themed Pepsi commercial.
A gallery of parents stand off to the side and scope the crowd, making sure their vixen daughters don’t get tongued by some drunken nimrod, or worse — wind up backstage with Sammy’s posse. Before the Cambridge native arrives, DJ JayCeeOh — a veteran of Boston’s underground rap scene who now opens shows for Adams — warms up the crowd with a smorgasbord of new Auto-Tune bangers and party poppers that, had they dropped 15 years ago, could have fit on any Jock Jams compilation.
Near the sound booth, a gaggle of older guys — college juniors and seniors — look slightly embarrassed that they’re here. But after a round of PBRs and kamikaze shots they loosen up and begin rapping along to Lil Wayne and Drake songs. Before long JayCeeOh steps off, Sammy’s set DJ mounts the decks dressed like the Karate Kid, and the energy begins to really percolate. The promise of Adams — teased by dimmed lights all around — is enough to summon howls, which only grow louder as he emerges in a hoodie, jeans, and an overcoat — a get-up more characteristic of a suburban dad fetching the newspaper in a snowstorm than of a typical rap star.
And then he rips the hoodie off, causing a number of young women to scream and cry, and inspiring some meatheads to flash their own six-packs. To cool things down, some dope launches a cup of ice cubes off the balcony, but no one on the floor seems to notice — not even a sexy and bedazzled Minnie Mouse who gets pelted right between her ears. Sammy spits some rhymes about hangovers, and about being “major without a major,” says hi to his parents in the balcony, and then finally launches into “I Hate College” — the interpolation of Roth’s “I Love College” that earned Adams his initial fan base two years ago.
This is the third time that Sammy’s rocked the House of Blues since last year. It’s a tremendous feat by any standard — no other Boston rapper comes close to selling out such mega venues, whether they’re longtime scene veterans or subterranean-flow phenoms. Hub rap promoter Edu Leedz booked Sammy’s first club show at the Western Front in late 2009, and, to his surprise, it sold out. Leedz thought the turnout was a freak occurrence — the result of Adams being a mondo jock with scores of friends from Wayland High School and Trinity College in Connecticut, where he was captain of the soccer team at the time.
“At first I just thought he was a popular kid,” says Leedz. “Then his album, Boston’s Boy, came out, and it was obviously bigger than that. The whole thing introduced me to a world of rap fans I’d never seen before, and I kept asking myself a big question: who are these people, and where do they come from? As it turned out, they’re more suburban than crowds I usually deal with, they’re from colleges and outside of the city, and they were starting to accumulate. As for a common denominator — they’re really, really young. I’m not seeing a lot of 21-plus people at these shows besides the parents.”
GENERATIONS
Though no one ever called it frat rap before the wrath of Roth, college-minded hip-hop has existed for some time. Early white campus rhyme progenitors such as former USC-based MC Hot Karl was not unlike acts Adams and more recent native-Mass rappers Aer and Cam Meekins. Karl, who caught the ears of record execs by battling on the Los Angeles station Power 106, was smart and witty, full of snappy raps and light-hearted self-deprecation. But most of all, Karl’s unique angle was an embrace of his upper-middle class background.
Despite landing five and six figure contracts with EMI and Interscope, Karl barely made a dent beyond his initial splash in 2003. It wasn’t really his fault; after the incredible success of Eminem in 1999, labels had begun to re-think their white-boy formulas, which they started to believe did not include upwardly mobile 90210 cast doubles. Instead, more roughneck Caucasians like hick-hopper Bubba Sparxxx were thrust into the spotlight — guys who wouldn’t be caught dead in a Lacoste V-neck.
But around Boston, an Andover High School grad named Mic Stylz made a convincing case that there was room for outer-borough hip-hop. Starting as early as 1996, the microphone-thin redheaded rapper began laying tracks about stuff white people love, like mall chicks. “Even though I came from Andover,” he says, “one thing that I picked up right away was to be real and true to who you are. It wasn’t real for me to rap about street life. I represented Andover because it was where I was from, and there was a level of pride there because no one else was doing it.” Suburban kids always liked rap music, but now they were making it.
Stylz isn’t bitter about the new generation of suburban rappers and the exposure that they’ve gotten. Acts like him and the keg-cracking North Shore crew the Camp rocked their share of ragers and bagged enough fine young party animals for several lifetimes. They’re also still recording — Stylz just dropped his comeback disc, It’s About Time, and the Camp’s Excetera stays booze-rapping with his new Henny Rich Project. “I was out of the scene when Asher Roth hit,” says Stylz, “and I won’t lie — I saw him and Sammy as getting shine doing a lot of the things that I was doing. But the truth is that hip-hop is always moving in new directions, and maybe it’s because of them that I still have a place to fit in.”
That sentiment is also shared by other players who pre-date frat rap as America now knows it. “I think it’s just going to get bigger and evolve,” says Boston-bred LA producer Matty Trump, who’s worked closely with both Adams and Meekins from the start of their careers, and before that laid crucial beats for Boston bigs like Slaine and Jake the Snake. “America is being taken over by dance music right now,” Trump says, “and hip-hop is a big part of that. I know people will hate me for saying this, but in a way, what a lot of these guys are doing is bringing hip-hop back to where it started, when it was about partying. . . . As for the whole frat-rap label — it just sounds stupid to me. These guys are the new generation of hip-hop, and they don’t care how people classify them.”
WHAT’S NEW?
One thing frat rap shares with the original progenitors of hip-hop — aside from the party-hardy vibe — is that both forms were written off as fads. With the notable exceptions of Roth and Miller — both of whom have gained acceptance in the greater rap establishment on the strength of their rhyme skills and deference to the culture — few of these emerging acts get love from top outlets like HipHopDX and The Source. But as was also the case with boom-bap at the beginning, it’s foolish for anyone to discount frat rap as a passing fancy. The sales numbers speak volumes — even newbies like Providence native and former Duke All-American baseball player Mike Stud have been dominating digital charts.
“I had zero intentions of doing this for a living,” says Stud, who got his first major exposure on collegehumor.com. “But after I got a lot of love from all these Web sites, I decided to run with it — even though it was kind of a long shot. . . . I’ve always been a hip-hop fan, but honestly I didn’t know about this whole frat-rap thing until I was part of it. Guys like Mac Miller and Asher Roth didn’t necessarily inspire me, but it’s clear that they paved the way. I called myself ‘the new face of frat rap’ in one song, and all these blogs picked up on it. And I’m okay with it — that’s kind of where I see myself.”
The big question is: which babies of the bunch will prevail? In the immediate wake of Sam’s success, comparable players like Maine toke hound Spose and Connecticut force Chris Webby wracked up millions of YouTube views and were paid hefty label advances. And since then, a countless crop of next-ups have also jumped on the potentially lucrative bandwagon, from Ferris Bueller look-alike Hoodie Allen — one of the most lyrically gifted of the pack — to UMass-Amherst undergrad Paul Markham, whose new video for the song “Far Away” shows him talking trash in a Catcher in the Rye T-shirt.
What’s for sure is that the acts who ride this out have pedigrees unlike the rap stars who preceded them — whether it’s Stud, who began recording after an injury curbed his Major League Baseball prospects, or Meekins, who committed to hip-hop after a life-threatening jet ski accident when he was 15 years old. Even black kids are getting theirs in this overwhelmingly pale fringe movement; bi-racial duos Chiddy Bang and OCD are already riding high, while Moufy — who is from Roxbury but attended high school at Buckingham Browne & Nichols in Cambridge — is the toast of suburbia since his smash “Miss Newton” blew up nationally. To make things more interesting, some frat rappers even come from celeb family trees — a path not so accepted in traditional rap circles, but that’s seemingly okay in this corner. Just consider Tommy Hilfiger’s son and recent Warner signee Rich Hil, Bob Dylan’s grandson Pablo (who’s down with Lil Wayne’s Young Money clique), and Chet Haze, who, no joke, is the offspring of Tom Hanks.
“I don’t like calling it frat rap,” says Meekins, who just signed a major label deal. “We’re all really different; in my case, I didn’t go to college, I was never in a fraternity, and I definitely never played football or anything like that — plus with my newer music I’m talking about much more than partying. . . . It’s true that everyone who wants to be a rapper now can be a rapper, and that’s not a good thing. But if you can break through the whole mess on the Internet, you can find a lot of talent, and a lot of artists who are really making new lanes. That’s what I’m here to do — call it whatever you want, but I call it the new hip-hop.”
