Fubar: October 11th, 2013......something new on the horizon

I started off doing rap shows in St. Louis around 2002. There was actually a decent hip hop scene in this town back in those days. There was The Science Hip-Hop Spin at Blueberry Hill every Friday. There was also (of course) Monday Nights at the Hi-Pointe. There used to be shows booked at Cicero's, The Red Sea, etc. The Loop Underground opened up the doors for local rap artists at Blueberry Hill and The Pageant. I've been in and out of the scene over the last several years due to family issues. God and family will always come first in my life. There have been times when I've had to sacrifice music in order to make sure my priorities were straight. After my daughter Chloe started to get a little older it became a bit easier to do music again. When I officially started looking to get booked on shows I found that the scene was not poppin' like it used to be. Fubar was the only place that would book me. I played there several times earlier this year and for the most part I had a blast. The only challenge there is selling tickets. For the ten plus years I've lived in St. Louis the people in this town have not supported local hip hop. It is damn hard to get people to consistently come out to shows. In these days and times who can blame people for not wanting to spend money to go see you perform? We all have bills. Many of us also have families to provide for. I know I can't justify the money and the time away from my family to go see other people perform. I want to be clear on this. I love St. Louis. I'm just a country boy who dreamed of being able to rap. Where I grew up there was no chance that would happen. This city has allowed me to hone my craft. It seems everyone wants to boil everything down to money. I do this music because I love it. It's a part of me. It's like an extra limb. When it's cut off it hurts me deeply. The last show I played at Fubar was with my old friend DJ Urban One. Urban and I reconnected when he started DJing for the 12 to 6 Movement live band, which I play drums in. Urban agreed to come out and DJ for me at Fubar and he saw what I saw when I played there in the past. This venue has some serious potential. He also saw how much older we were then all the other performers. LOL! It really tickled me. These young rappers were coming up to me and talking to me as if I was a respected member of the rap community. One kid told me I reminded him of his Dad. :) I reflected on the night and I realized that I should really have a talk with the owner of Fubar. I need to see if he was receptive to me getting involved in running a local hip hop show at Fubar. I can't thank Robert enough for the CHANCE to build something at Fubar. At this point in my life it's just about the music. I want to give young up and coming rappers a chance to perform somewhere. I met a group called the S.W.E.D. Poet Society at the 12 to 6 Movement show this past Saturday. They gave me props after we performed and gave me a CD of their group. They reminded me of myself at that age. I booked them on this show at Fubar because someone gave me a break once too. I'm very excited to see these young men perform. To all my friends and hip hop colleagues that were in the scene when The Science was going down, when Monday Night at the Hi Pointe was going down, Fletch is trying to bring the scene back. I need your support. If you LOVE RAP and the hip hop culture please come out to this show. This isn't about politics people. This isn't about ego and who's the best. This is about love. God Bless and I love all of you, Big Fletch

Top of the charts

What's up friends, family, and beloved Fletch fans from around the world? It's been way to long since I've blogged. It seems I start every one of my blog entries by saying it's been to long. I need to work on that!' So let's start it this way. I'm back baby! Has everyone checked out the Reverbnation charts for Rap in St. Louis? If you haven't you need to! www.reverbnation.com/bigfletch We're number 1 ya'll! I just can't thank you all enough. I've never been listed on any charts of any kind at all. To have the honor of being #1 means a lot to me. So what does it mean? It means that thanks to all my peoples going to my reverbnation page and listening to songs, the followers on twitter, and the likes on Facebook have made a difference. Big Fletch is now starting to have a respectable online presence. The amount of effort and work that my label, Luped Up Records,and I have put in has of course helped as well. Thank you all! Well what's on deck for 2013 you ask? Luppy and I are about to team up with the well known and well respected DJ Pome (@djpome932)for live shows.

We're meeting to discuss every aspect of what we'll be doing. We'll talk about goals, live performance issues, etc. Hopefully we'll be letting you all know where you can catch us live soon. The shows are of course to promote my new album on Luped Up Records and also to gain recognition for the label and Big Fletch. I'm on a serious grind right now ya'll and I'm not letting up, I'm ramping up. Not only am I working on the Luped Up album, I am also working on The Rhyme Commmission's 3rd album 3113, Fletch Dylan, and Incandescent with producer Linus Stubbs (@LinusStubbs). I'll be dropping rough mixes of songs for all of these projects on www.reverbnation.com/bigfletch. You'll be able to stream the songs for free there. I'm very excited about this year. 2013 is the year of "The Fletch"! Much love!

My First Record Deal

It seems like forever ago since the NBA was interesting. Back in the days we saw true basketball Legends like Larry Byrd, Magic Johnson, Pipen, and of course Jordan. Nowadays people try to tell you a guy like Kobe Bryant is every bit as good as Mike. While I think Kobe is a wonderful future hall of fame player I wouldn't compare him to Jordan. The one player that should be winning title after title is LeBron James. So when LeBron was getting closer and closer to winning that elusive NBA Championship the NBA became interesting again didn't it? When asked what he thought about he and The Heat winning the title his response was "It's about damn time." 22 years is a long, long time. That's how long I've been in the rap game. I started doing shows in churches in my hometown of Mason City at around 12 years old. I have nothing but fond memories of my formative musical years. My best friend Pat and I both played drums, baseball, played Nintendo, etc. We also found out we both loved Christian Rap. Pat's Mom and Step-dad were both musicians so they had a little studio setup in their bedroom. They used to let us make music whenever they weren't in there. So Pat hooked it up! He learned how to make beats on the HR-16 and in Cakewalk. We started making songs. Pat's parents were members at a fairly open minded church that was cool with us doing our little "Christian raps". So we did that. After High School it was onto new friends, new projects, and new music. So Jay Money aka Po Safe Beats and I go way, way back. It was 1997. Money was a Sophmore and I was a Freshman. He was making this little "ABC" rap for his Mom's Sunday School class. He asked me to rap on it. And that was that. We linked up with Roach and Dalexand to form Mergence and were off and running with a Christian Rap group. After Damien split to Canada to play basketball from some college, Roach started producing Howie T and Money and I were working on my solo album. Howie and Roach were getting all kinds of love. I did a couple songs with them that we performed at Agape. I also performed with them when they opened up for the LP Outsiders at Mississippi Nights. That was my first show in St. Louis. After college I first moved back close to home. I grew up in Mason City but had a bunch of friends in Lincoln, IL. One of those friends hooked me up with a job as an Adult Resident Assistant at Lincoln College. It was really the perfect deal for someone fresh out of college. I got a room for free and got paid a little. I was able to work days at Bonanaza. I didn't have a car note yet. I had a used car my parents gave me. Money and I finished up my first solo record Erase the Hate. I also started making beats on my old Compaq computer in Pro Tools free. I did a few that I really wanted to use for the next project with Money which turned out to be the beginning of the Rhyme Commission. I had to get to St. Louis. There was an underground rap scene there that I just had to be a part of. In my small town mind this scene was the shit! I knew it was always poppin' at the Science Hip-Hop Spin at Blueberry hill on Friday nights. My homie Fink already had a place in Maryland Heights. He said hey man. Come on and crash on my couch until you can get a job and get yer own place. That was in the summer of 2002. Been in St. Louis ever since. Fletch was on the grind. I started going to every local rap show I could. I was at Blueberry Hill for the Scinece every Friday night for years. I was freestyling when DJ Crucial and Agile-One were spinning at the Red Sea. I was hanging at the Hi-Pointe cafe on Monday nights. Money I started getting some shows at The Rhyme Commission. Once Money moved out here it was really on. We finished the studio sessions for Cerebral Poetry back in 2002. We didn't get it released until 2005. In the meantime I needed to get us some street buzz. I did the Broken EP before the Rhyme Co album came out. I started slanging those like crazy. We were off and rolling. We put out Cerebral Poetry and did a mixtape called the Frank Castle mixtape vol. I. Money was DJing gigs. We started working on my rap opera Conversations. Even though I thought Conversations was going to be one of my best albums I knew peole wouldn't react to it all that well in the Lou. People didn't get my "weird" flows on the first Rhyme Co album. So I decided to do a project that had that old school rap feel. And it had to be tight from the Beats 2 The Rhymes so no one could say shit. That's how Urban-One and I did it. I had been doing shows with Forty Til Five and was haning out with Lesson and Urban a lot. The album was recorded and almost finished in 2006. Then I made a mistake I married the wrong woman. I'm not going to get into this a whole lot. Let's just say it stole years of my life I can never get back. Music took a back seat to trying to make something work that was just not meant to be. Once I was able to remove the craziness I could work again. I reconnected with some people at shows. I started being in the scene again. I started doing some shows again. Beats 2 The Rhymes was released in 2009. It received the reaction I knew it would. Roach, Jay Money and I also did the first Mergence album in 10 years. Just when I thought I was back in I got pulled out again. This time it was a welcome departure from the scene. My daughter Chloe Eliah

Fletcher was born and it was time to focus on family. There were also some loose ends to tie up. No more shows for a minute but I could finish up the Rhyme Commission joints that were collecting dust. I finished up Conversations and put it out around the same time Chloe was born, late 2010. Poetry in Motion was next. Money and I spent quite a bit of time on this album. We recorded more new songs for the project then what we had sitting around for 7 years. We of course put PIM out this year. I had come with a concept years ago that I was ready jump on. After getting and MPK25 from my bestie Gail I was ready to start making beats again. The rap singer/songwriter project was dubbed Fletch Dylan. This would be my next solo album. Money and I had a deeper concept with the next Rhyme Co joint. We decided to do a concept that is loosely based on Rush's classic 2112 album called 3113. I am currently writing songs for both. And then there's Luped Up Records...... Remember waaaaay back when I opened with Roach and Howie T for the LP Outsiders? Well two of the dudes from that group have started a record label. Luppy and Joe Joe Keys approached me about becoming the first artist besides the two of them to sign with Luped Up Records. So after 22 years of making music I could sign onto a label that was created by two friends from college. We could make music together and not have to worry about anything shady happening. I could maybe get some exposure and make a little money to supplement my income. I could provide a little more for my family. I could get paid a little to do what I love. I could release songs on itunes. Corey Fletcher on the line. Contract signed. Big Fletch of The Rhyme Commission

My Baby Girl digs through records at Euclid Records in St. Louis

Today was a great day. I worked a few hours to get some work done as I am going to be on vacation Monday-Friday. That makes four days off in a row! WOO-HOO! I got to spend some much needed time with my baby girl Chloe! We took on a little adventure and went to Euclid Records. We both had fun digging through the dollar record bins. Chloe picked out an Isley Brothers LP. We then ran through McDonald's for a happy meal. Next it was on to Target where Chloe got an Elmo coloring book and a pink microphone bubble wand. That's what's up. When we got home she rode her princess bike in our parking lot while I blew her some bubbles. That's right. Fletch blows bubbles for his daughter. Great day.

From Dlyan to 3113....to Thinking....

What's up ya'll? Your boy Big Fletch has been on his grind for a while now. I've been putting in overtime on ish! At work that is....at yeah. That counter top place. I've been trying to squeeze in some music work when I can. It's easier to make beats with little time then it is to write songs. I've got the beats I need for first Fletch Dylan album: Ready 2 Live. I may have a couple things recorded for that. Scratch versions of an intro and the title track for those wondering. 3113 is the next Rhyme Commission project. It is a project too. My own idea is kinda intimidating from a writing standpoint. Being the huge Rush fan that I am I found myself very inspired by their album 2112. I thought to myself "why not do a rap version?" And that's how 3113 was born. It started as a tribute to 2112 and then the concept just evolved into it's own thing. You'll have to buy the album to hear what I mean. Jay Money aka Po Safe Beats and I got together last week to put together a beat list for 3113. We drank a few Fletchweisers and came up with a nice list of beats that were perfect for this project. I have the basic "chapters" of the story in my head and a rough outline down but I haven't started writing the songs. I hope to take a few days off of work soon to work on some writing. I have the perfect spot.......minus the giant spiders. We have a storage room in the basement/laundry room of our apartment with just enough room for a tiny man cave area. Armed with a neon Stag sign, some Punisher action figures, The Watchmen stuff, and a super sweet little GE Tape/AM FM radio your boy is ready to write! Already bought some blank cassette tapes from Walgreen's. That's right. They still have them. And I promptly made a 3113 beat tape for the Fletch Cave! I've also been able to enjoy my homie Dawhud's Dub Styles: Walkman Redemption mixtape, and an old cassette mixtape by DJ Crucial. Aww.....hip-hop. How I love thee. Oh and that's not to mention the record deal. Luped Up records wants to sign me as their first artist. So the name of that project is Thinking.....(outside the box). Only one confirmed release date on all these projects. 3113 on 3-1-13.

Timeless

To me, good music is timeless. I can listen to The Beatles and sing each and every word....and love it. Jimi Hendrix, Elvis, etc. These artists recorded songs long before I was born and yet somehow people who are younger than me love their music to this day.

If you look at the history of music you'll see that almost all forms or genres of music were offspring of a previous style. Jazz birthed blues. Blues birthed Rock. Rock birthed Heavy Metal, Alternative, etc. Where did rap come from? Well, that's an interesting thing to think about isn't it? You can point to rap's earliest recordings and say that it probably came out of 60's and 70's R&B and soul music. Yet rap can be traced back further than simply the earliest recognized "rap" recordings.

Many point to Blondie's Rapture as rap's first major hit. This came out in 1981. However, Sugar Hill Gang's Rapper's Delight hit the top 40 in 1979. But many have claimed that rap existed for years or maybe even decades before it first appeared on a popular record. Look no further then Jimi Hendrix http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoakPJ2Rmyg
If you haven't heard Lightnin' Rod check out the youtube address.

So rap's history includes many different styles being used as it's core sound for any given song. In today's music world I fear we have lost the concept of making timeless music.

Has anyone else noticed how the term production is used to reference who made the music for a song? Granted, that person who produced a track may not have played every instrument but they laid the groundwork that the song was built on. There's a definate formula to how a song is made. Rarely does this formula include a concept first with music to follow. Nor does most rap being made today include samples. Yet samples are what can make rap timeless all by themselves because they are taking music that was made years ago and then turn them into something completely new for today. That's why rap sounds like any other pop song these days. Samples are the essence of rap. Without samples people are just making pop or some other form of music. Just because you have someone rap over a beat doesn't make it a rap song. Rappers have dropped rhymes over many different styles of music. They've done verses on heavy metal songs, pop, R&B, etc.

This is just my take but I don't hear rap being played on the radio these days. I just hear pop music. I am not saying that it's impossible to make a rap song without samples on the beat. Some cats can do an amazing job of making beats by just using a keyboard. I guess they're able to tap into a soulful style that gives the track that edge that samples do. I'm a hip-hop purist. Keep this shit in the elements. Rap music was birthed by DJ's who would spin the "breaks" in a song. Let's keep rap timeless. Samples ya'll. Don't leave home without 'em. Or you're just leaving rap behind. Word.

Big Fletch

Music Update

I'm super excited about the different projects I got goin' on right now. Currently Jay Money aka Posafebeats and I are trying to finish up Poetry in Motion, the 2nd Rhyme Commission album. I'm also sending all kinds of beats to my friend Joe Liedtke and his wife Sara. I'm also slowing putting together beats for my next solo project, Fletch Dylan.

The Rhyme Commission album is of course the same one we've had sitting around for about 5 or 6 years. We first started recording songs for Poetry In Motion around the same time as I was doing Beats 2 The Rhymes. During the last year we've been slowing doing new songs. With our busy scheadules it is pretty hard to get together to do new material. But we're almost done. I'm thinking about 3-4 new songs and maybe some interludes of some sort and it'll be done.

The stuff with Joe and Sara is very exciting because I've done any calloborations like this before. I'm basicly sending Joe beats and he's chopping them up and making them his own. He and his wife are both very talented so I feel very blessed to have the opportunity to work with them.

The Fletch Dylan project will be my next solo effort. I'm not really even sure when this project will be finished. I'm guessing next year sometime. I'll be posting updates for ya'll to listen to on my soundcloud page, http://soundcloud.com/big-fletch

God Bless,

Big Fletch