Watch the Nappy Roots interview and performance
Country boys is on the rise," says Skinny DeVille of the hip-hop sextet Nappy Roots. DeVille is perhaps the fastest-talking man in the South; words spill out of him uncontrollably. "We been working, grinding it out. Now we can show that Kentucky has something to offer the music. This tree is coming out of the ground, but it has big roots."
There's a lot of tree-huggers out there. Nappy Roots' major-label debut, Watermelon, Chicken and Gritz, went gold seven weeks after its release. But don't confuse that with overnight success: Most of the group have been plugging away for seven years or more.
The six rappers met as students at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green (except Big V, who went to Eastern Kentucky). At parties, they'd always be the ones hanging out in a corner, rapping over the music. Then, in 1995, DeVille and Big V moved off-campus to a house at 1234 Kentucky Street -- really -- and started throwing the parties themselves. "We shared a parking lot with a church," DeVille says. "I don't think they ever knew -- church don't be jumping on no Friday night."
They ran a record store a block off campus, ET's Music, which had a production studio in the back. Nappy Roots existed on T-shirts before there was a group: They printed up their logo in fraternity and sorority colors and sold shirts to the Greeks. When they started making music, they enlisted fellow students who knew about recording equipment, graphic design and shooting videos. "School's a whole world," says DeVille. "If you work college, you'll come out on top nine times out of ten."
Nappy Roots released two indie records, Country Fried Cess and no comb, no brush, no fade, no perm . . . before Atlantic signed them in 1998. But the label didn't release an album until this year, a frustrating wait for the band. Big V's theory: "The world was on more of a money situation - the money, the furs -- and we didn't have none of that."
Nappy Roots take their name seriously. To them, nappiness means not just letting hair be authentic but putting themselves into their music. The album is filled with hard times and down-home life; a typical rhyme is "Front porch, chillin' broke, country folk" (on "Po' Folks"). On their hit single, "Awnaw," they rap about the "country boys on the rise" in a fancy Cadillac, though the Nappy Roots are really the ones who "Spent my last cent on the rent/Left with pocket lints." But their sound is always an up-to-date Southern groove, reminiscent of OutKast, and their voices are filled with victory.
Lately, the Nappys have spent a lot of time traveling outside the South to promote their record. "We just talk, smoke, roll rhymes, freestyle a lot and sleep," DeVille says. And only recently were they able to upgrade to an RV -- complete with a PlayStation. Before that, "we had a fifteen-passenger van for fifty cities," DeVille says. "We even had a label rep with us -- we made him ride the bitch seat in the middle and hold stuff. In the van, if you get tired of somebody, you got no choice but to work it out -- you're going to have to keep looking at the back of his head."
GAVIN EDWARDS
(May 17, 2002)