Interview: Dawgy Baggz of Paper Route Gangstaz

Dawgy Baggz

If you haven’t heard of Paper Route Gangstaz yet, you obviously have been ignoring the independent music press as well as the content on [cardboard living] over the last eight months. As a collection of four guys from the streets of Huntsville, Alabama, Paper Route Gangstaz are emphatic about the deep-south lifestyle that they lead, which is one reliant (if not dependent) on money, drugs, alcohol, women and whips. Seeing that Atlanta, Georgia is currently the hip-hop capital of the country, it’s easy to understand how PRGz have flown under the radar for over eight years now.

The flight path changed once Diplo and Benzi, two producers that the music industry have become acquainted with through their work on M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes”, decided to remix original PRGz tracks in 2008 for a mixtape called Fear and Loathing in Huntsvegas. The mixtape received critical attention from Pitchfork in addition to other music publications, both physical and digital. So, when I sat down at home to call Dawgy Baggz, the de facto leader of the Paper Route clan, I could hardly stop the questions concerning the formation and direction of the group from rolling off my tongue.

Amp Dawkins has gone by Dawgy Baggz ever since he can remember. As is what usually occurs, Dawkins can’t remember where the nickname came from but what he can remember is that it is a street name. Huntsville is a city most notable for a notoriously high crime rate, strings of fast food establishments and a horizon that features rocket launches on almost a bi-weekly basis. Those who live in Huntsville are aware that the city has a culture unto itself, one not notable for its musical identity. Thus, one must wonder how Baggz ended up generating enough buzz for his label and his group to be featured onPitchfork, a site that caters to the ears of thousands of ‘indie kids’. Dawgy’s explanation of the group’s name made the answer clear:

Its something that I earned the right to do. Paper Route is just like that paper route that the paper boy take every morning, throwing out them newspapers to come back and collect his money. I took that exact same route throwing out my inventory to collect my money. Gangsta is just a lifestyle…its fighting for what you believe in and never…Never…backing down. Its willing to take those life altering chances in order to support you and yours and always making your own way in any…Any…situation. I earned my right to be called a Paper Route Gangsta.

As for the Diplo and Benzi collaboration, Dawgy insists that luck had more to do with that collaboration than anything. However, talent knows no boundaries and the Major Lazer team certainly holds that concept close to heart. Baggz insists that Diplo is a “genius in the studio” and that opinion shines through as truthful in the Huntsvegas mixtape as Diplo samples George Michael on “Bama Gettin Money”, Underworld on “Stuntastic” and Weezer for “Grind Baby”. Dawgy just wishes “they weren’t so damn expensive”. However, the Diplo ‘collabos’ caught the ears of both rap fanatics and hipsters across the country as they saw the genius behind mixing ‘country boy’ hip-hop with highly intelligent production.

 

Clockwise from top left: Mata, Gunt, Dawgy Baggz, Jhi-Ali

The mixtape features all four members of the group: Mata, Jhi-Ali, Gunt and Dawgy Baggz himself as well as associates of the group X.O., Mali Boi (the main producer for PRGz), Amp G, Wale, Blaqstarr and Jackie Chain (an Asian dude who has served time for drug trafficking and a fantastic lyricist). Most of those featured on Fear and Loathing in Huntsvegas are from Huntsvegas and have known either Dawgy or one of the other PRGz members for quite some time, a factor that gives the mixtape Southern legitimacy that will attract fans drawn to Southern hip-hop.

PRGz have untainted street credibility that should help them attract a loyal Southern fan base that will include fans of harder hip-hop from the region. Dawgy mentioned to me that at the start of Paper Route Recordz a couple of the members caught murder and drug cases and were sentenced to fifteen years to life sentences, amounting to a series of setbacks in the development of the brand.

The upcoming EP Rocket Fuel will be released on iTunes soon, a deal helped along by the addition of PRGz to the Elite Taste roster, a small agency that also reps Mike Posner and Wale. “Keyshia Cole“, the lead-off single, is a song about ganja, called “‘Keyshia Cole’ because you don’t wanna be talkin’ reckless on the phone”, according to Dawgy. We’re sure to hear much, much more about PRGz in the coming months, make sure to check [cl] if that interests you.

Notables:

Bama Gettin Money (Dipo Remix)

9.2/10. This Diplo remix is the best on the mixtape as we find PRGz at their best.

Soul Glo (The Knocks Remix)

7.5/10. Another indie-oriented remix that features a sample from a hair-care product and a looping violin riff. One of the more genius samples that we’ve heard in a while.

Alabama

7.4/10. A PRGz original track (one of the few on the mixtape) that features the incredible point that “Alabama” backwards sounds like “I’m-A-Balla”.

Rollin’ (Diplo Remix)

8.8/10. A very druggy remix of a song that is even more hallucinogenic.

Grind Baby

7.2/10. “Grind Baby” features a sample of Weezer’s “Say It Ain’t So.” More Diplo genius.

Stuntastic

9.0/10. The truest Southern anthem on the PRGz’s CV.

Lewis Corson

Interview: Mike Posner

Mike Posner wants everyone to know that he will not be pigeonholed, cannot be categorized and refuses to fit any existing archetype. By the end of my interview, I came to realize that Posner is who Posner is. He’s a white college kid entering his senior year at Duke that has recorded songs with up-and-coming (and established) rappers KiD CuDi, Big Sean, and Wale, has covered and remixed songs from Electric Light Orchestra, The Fray and Beyoncé and has already been featured on Kanye West’s blog.  Did I mention that he has a record deal? Not too shabby for a guy who claims to be your average twenty-one year old college kid.

Just the opposite is certain for Mike Posner – he is not your average college kid. While he told me that “[he has] a job but he balance[s] fun” into his life when I asked him what he likes to do for fun at Duke, he said, in the same breath, that “people are gonna cry when they hear” his 2010 LP. Benny Blanco, the twenty-one year-old producer behind Katy Perry’s “I Kissed A Girl” and Britney Spears’s “Circus”, is working on the currently untitled 2010 LP with Posner at Downtown studios in New York City, where the album should be close to completion before the Blue Devil has to go back to Durham, North Carolina for his diploma.

Posner has become a sensation at Duke since he began performing there last year. His performances have become recurring events on campus with his revolving backing band, The Brain Trust, playing behind him. The shows have occasionally featured guests such as G.O.O.D. music protégé Big Sean and mutual friend Pat Piff, two up-and-comers that Posner has known since he interned at an urban radio station in Detroit a few years ago. The audiences for his first campus shows were built on word of mouth hype from his close friends on campus through social networking sites and after no time at all, it started to permeate throughout the music business resulting in a record deal with J Records, a Sony/BMG record label with a solid roster of both urban and pop artists.

Even though Posner had only been singing for a year and a half by the time he was signed, Posner says that he was “blessed with the opportunity to be the position to choose a label” and chose Sony because the label “understands who [he is] and where [he’s coming from] and that [he does] appeal to a few different crowds and is gonna have [his] hand in all those cookie jars at the same time.” He believes that his music has the ability to connect with everyone from the older white housewife to hardcore hip-hop producers, as it already has with legendary Atlanta producer Don Cannon, who presents the A Matter of Time mixtape with DJ Benzi.

Posner’s future mass appeal will have something to do with his diversified taste. Growing up, his father and mother had him listening to The Grateful Dead and balanced it out with Luther Vandross, Marvin Gaye while Motown was “ubiquitous” around the Detroit area as he was growing up. High exposure to singers and songwriters is the reason why Posner calls himself a singer and not a rapper, why he prefers to produce his own beats instead of handing them off to rappers and the reason behind the crossover sensation that he will become.

Mike Posner on A Matter of Time:

[cardboard living]: You mentioned that your mixtape A Matter of Time has a story behind it from the opening “Tick” to the last song “Tock.” What do you think the motif is behind it?

Mike Posner: There’s a few meanings to it… one of them is “it’s a matter of time before you’re gonna have to deal with me” but I first came up with that name from the song “A Matter of Time”, which has more of a darker meaning and I was writing that song at a time where, for the first time in my life, people were bombarding me, asking me for beats, asking me to get on the hook with them and stuff like that. I remember just thinking, “Most of these people are just not gonna make it and not be what they think they’re gonna be and it’s only a matter of time before reality is gonna set in for them. And for the people who do make it, it’s only a matter of time before everybody forgets who you are, so there is kind of a double meaning between those two things. That song was special to me because at the time that I wrote it, I was one of those people as well.

A Matter of Time

8.5/10. The title track for the mixtape A Matter of Time is also one of its best. The haunting keys and bongo percussion echo underneath Posner’s raspy notes.

Evil Woman

9.3/10. The catchiest song on the mixtape features a sample from Electric Light Orchestra’s “Evil Woman.” The track showcases Posner’s versatile sound that traverses through disco, dance and hip-hop.

Lewis Corson

CuDi’s Mixtape Bests

By now KiD CuDi and his off the radar success is old news. However, with a mixtape being released every other week, Cudi could probably put together a Greatest Mixtape Hits album by now. These are the ten best tracks off the beaten path:

1 ) Man on the Moon (The Anthem)

9.2/10. Showcases CuDi’s reach as he talks about how he’s “so different” from everyone else in the game.

2 ) Rollin’ (Remix) feat. Jackie Chain

8.9/10. My favorite Mad Decent artist, Paper Route Gangstaz, do the original “Rollin’” and it was one of my favorite tracks of ’08. CuDi spits his usual stoner rhetoric on this trippy banger.

3 ) She Came Along feat. Sharam

8.8/10. This sounds like a Marlena Shaw sample (she sings “California Soul,” the song that was used in the Dockers commercial a bit ago). Such a catchy track.

4 ) ’09 Freestyle

8.5/10. The Kid can’t stop talking about picking up blunts in this excellent freestyle.

5 ) CuDi Get

8.2/10. Not a favorite on first listen but it will become one. All I want to know is, where’d DJ E-V get this obscure sample?

6 ) Ask About Me feat. Chip Tha Ripper

7.8/10. With the addition of Chip Tha Rip, this track is Cudi’s hardest track by a long shot.

7 ) Maui Wowie

7.5/10. Stoner anthem.

8 ) Daps & Pounds

7.5/10. A perpetually stoned CuDi somehow makes stoner lyrics sound hard. 

9 ) Down & Out

7.0/10. “Lookin’ for a substance to drown in..”

10 ) Heaven at Nite

6.5/10. Even though a video has been made for this and it looks to be the next single off of his upcoming LP, I’m not in love. Frankly, it’s boring.

Lewis Corson