| Framek | 7 января 2007 04:47 |
Вот довольно неплохая статья... может кому интересно будет...
R. A. The Rugged Man: White Trash Beautiful.
It could easily be taken ironically, but R. A. The Rugged Man is deadly serious about the title of his legendary single from 1994 “Every record label sucks dick”. According to his world view record labels are evil bloodsuckers, just out to squeeze every last bit from the poor artist and simultaneously destroy their self-esteem. “Nobody wants to have one of the big labels as their pimp,” he spits out in disgust. “Everyone knows now that I was right – all record labels suck dick. Most of those label jerks are uncreative clowns. I’ve always shown them exactly what I think of them.”
Strange then, that despite this attitude the labels were still lining up to sign the rapper from Long Island, New York. But labels ‘Jive’ and ‘Priority’ fired him for what he says are absurd reasons. In one case he allegedly harassed the label’s female employees, and another time he was accused of not fulfilling his contractual obligations. This lead to the single ‘Cunt Renaissance’ being the only one released under the pseudonym ‘Crustified Dibb’s which had Notorious B.I.G. on the B-side. Yet Biggie didn’t have a particularly high opinion on his white colleague, as an interview revealed that recently appeared on the Internet and in which Biggie was asked to rate other rappers. “You’re talking about this white boy I did this jam with?” he asked unbelievingly. “I give him 2, maybe 3 [out of 10]. I made the song because they offered me a lot of money and because the beat was hot.”
Maybe Biggie would have changed his mind if he had had the chance to witness R.A.’s career progress, because the story of the ‘Rugged Man’ is unique in the American rap game. In the late 80s he started to rap and carried his demo tape in a boom box around Manhattan. “R.A. are my initials,” he explains his rap name, “The addition ‘The Rugged Man’ goes back to one of my early songs. Before that I had stupid names like Master Money R.A. or ARE-A for example.” He laughs about the remark that current rap name sounds as whacky as all the others, “Sure, but which rap name ain’t?” Ice Cube? Mos Def? Or P Diddy?” With tracks like “Till My Heart Stops” and “Stanley Kubrick” which were his contributions to the ‘Sound-bombing’ samplers published by Rawkus, R.A. gained a certain status in the world of Northface backpackers and indie-rap nerds. But it was only last year that Nature Sound’s Devin Horwitz managed to convince him to finish his debut album. “Devin arrived here with a nice advance payment he said, ‘If you try to take my money without delivering a record, I’ll sue your ass.’ Coz that’s exactly what I usually do. Nobody can force me to write an album. I’ll take the advance, get me a bunch of hos and than I’m happy again for while. A lot of people in the industry are mad at me because of that.” His next confession also reveals the reason for the title of his debut album ‘Die, Rugged Man, Die’, “There are a whole load of people who want to see me dead. With this title I wanted to say: Look at me, I’m still alive. You can’t kill me.”
Something that initially handicapped R.A.’s rap career was the colour of his skin. Long before a Detroit wonder boy by the name of Marshall Mathers became the world’s most successful rapper, white MCs represented a minority. Because of his German roots (“I’m half German, a Kraut just like you.”) he first had to prove himself to the black dominated New York scene. “that was no pussy shit,” R.A. recalls, “I went into the worst neighbourhoods, where they would have shot me, if I hadn’t been a good rapper. But the only ones who discriminated against me were other whites, who thought that to be a good rapper you have to be black. The blacks knew I was good.”
About fifteen years later the situation has changed. But even if it’s not particularly exceptional now to see white rappers, the career of the 31 year-old is probably not going to take an Eminem-style turn anymore. Even thought “Die, Rugged Man, Die”, despite its undisputed quality, did not manage to reach the dimensions of commercial success in the US, R.A. continues to be optimistic: “I’m a happy man. The essential thing is, my dick’s working and I make a bit of money. And even if ain’t making money, it’s still all right! I’ve already been broke a lot of times. I used to be homeless and lived on the streets.”
По материалу журнала “Rugged” (Issue 6, Winter 2005-2006). | 