Gucci Mane Music Producers Sound Off To The New York Times

photo courtesy of Erik S. Lesser / New York Times

On Tuesday, the day Gucci Mane released his second studio album, “The State vs. Radric Davis,” he woke up and went to sleep in the Fulton County Jail, in the northwest part of Atlanta, where he’s resided since last month.

It was a not altogether unusual predicament for this rapper, born Radric Davis, one of the most vigorous and exciting in recent memory. This is the second time he’s had his probation from a 2005 aggravated assault conviction revoked, and the second time it’s happened at the moment where his career appeared to be on the verge of exploding.

Still, in spite of these impediments, Gucci Mane, 29, has been the most prolific rapper in Atlanta over the last two years, the most hotly discussed, and also the most improved. In the last few months he’s had the swiftest ascent to hip-hop ubiquity since Lil Wayne.

He didn’t do it alone. Gucci Mane’s rise has occurred in large part thanks to a handful of producers — Zaytoven, Drumma Boy, Shawty Redd and Fatboi, most prominently — whose work over the past four years has come to exemplify the modern Atlanta sound: triumphant but moody, synth-heavy with sharp snares, all sprinkled with almost gothic overtones. Collectively these four been responsible for much of Gucci Mane’s great recent material as well as most of the best songs on “The State vs. Radric Davis” (So Icey/Asylum/Warner Brothers). Their work on this album, Gucci Mane said in a phone interview from jail, “made me feel like, damn, I was smart for working with them for all these years.”

Read the full article here:
New York Times - Gucci Mane, No Holds Barred

NY Times Examines The Jerking Dance Craze Movement

(photo courtesy of Stephanie Diani for The New York Times)

Julian Goins, the 15-year-old leader of the Ranger$, a five-member jerking crew, hops onto the tips of his sneakers — the Tippy Toe — and then swivels his body ground-ward, legs crossed at the ankle. He pops up like a jack-in-the-box, spins and bounces, gliding backward in the Reject, a move that resembles nothing so much as the Running Man, an ’80s dance-floor step but in reverse.

The other kids in the schoolyard pay scant attention to the star in their midst. Until his Ranger$ schedule exploded and his mother decided to home-school him, Julian was just another student.

Goofy, gentle, nimbly amateurish, jerking was little known outside certain precincts of this sprawling city until a year ago. But in the last nine months or so, jerking began an unexpected run as an Internet phenomenon.

When the New Boyz — two teenagers who had been playing high school auditoriums — released “You’re a Jerk,” the song raced up the Billboard ladder, sold 750,000 copies on iTunes and another 400,000 ring tones, provided the duo with a base for a national tour and, of course, gave rise to untold copycats.

“Jerking started off in L.A. as just a little inner-city dance,” said one of the New Boyz, Earl Benjamin, 18, known as Ben J. “We used to search for it on YouTube and we noticed it had potential to be bigger than it was. It was like when you first saw break dancing: it has so many different parts, and when you get the dance down pat, you wanted to do it all the time. It reminded you of how fun hip-hop used to be.”

Warner Brothers/Asylum and Interscope were among those that quickly signed jerking crews — the Bangz, the Cold Flamez, the Rej3ctz and Audio Push. In late spring, Shariff Hasan, 30, a filmmaker, began filming a feature, “Jerkin’,” simultaneously developing a documentary and a jerking reality show for MTV.

Read the full article here:
NY Times - Hip-Hop’s New Steps