Tag: Cullen “Fellowman Wade

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Arts Culture

PICK: Unforgettable talent

Co-founder and director of Charlottesville’s Nine Pillars Hiphop Cultural Fest, "Fellowman" will perform in a livestream on Saturday for the release of his new album, Death of the Author. Publicity image.

Cullen “Fellowman” Wade (right) didn’t set out to create an album about loss during such a dark time in history. And despite its title, Death of an Author, which has been two years in the making, is rooted in creativity, catharsis, and enlightenment rather than morbidity. With a slew of covers and originals dedicated to lost musical heroes, the project underlines Wade’s vast knowledge of his subjects, with tributes to legends from Sean Price, Jimi Hendrix, and Prince to John Prine, Joe Strummer, and Grant Hart of Hüsker Dü. The rapper and producer implores listeners to allow an artist’s work to have a deeper impact than the individual personality or cult of celebrity. Wade will perform the album in a livestream, with special guests Harli Saxon, Waterloo from Beetnix, Remy St. Clair, Eric Cope, DJ Double U, and DJ Bovay.

Saturday 12/26. 9pm. Simulcast on WTJU 91.1 FM and at facebook.com/TheBridgePAI.

Categories
Arts Culture

PICK: 9 Pillars Hip Hop Music Video Showcase

Stage to screen: For the second year in a row, the Virginia Film Festival is screening works by local hip-hop video directors and rappers during the 9 Pillars Hip Hop Music Video Showcase. Curated by Cullen “Fellowman” Wade, who compiles a wide variety of styles within the genre, the showcase connects some of the most prolific creative work in the community to a broader audience. The lineup of eight music videos includes King Gemini’s “Play Me,” directed by Ty Cooper; J-Wright ft. Scottii’s “Memories,” directed by Kidd Nick; and Damani Harrison’s “One For George,” directed by Harrison and Eric Hurt. A discussion with filmmakers follows the screenings. Virtual access pass required.

Through 10/25, $8-65, content becomes available October 21 at 10am. virginiafilmfestival.org.

Categories
Arts

Ways and means: Inclusive hip-hop makes it to the stage at Nine Pillars festival

Local R&B singer Torele will perform at Rugged Arts x Nine Pillars All-LGBTQ+ Edition on Tuesday. Photo by Eze Amos

Hosting an all-LGBTQ+ hip-hop showcase has been on Remy St. Clair’s mind for a while now.

Over the past few years, while performing at various regional Pride events as rap duo Sons of Ichibei, St. Clair and Cullen “Fellowman” Wade kept hearing similar refrains from artists on these Pride bills:

“We’d love to…but we don’t have the means.”

“I’d love to…but there aren’t enough open artists in my city.”

And, perhaps most devastating, “it’d be great, but this kind of event wouldn’t be welcome in my city.”

It didn’t take long for St. Clair and Wade, who, along with a few other folks in town, book and run the Rugged Arts hip-hop showcase and the annual Nine Pillars Hiphop Cultural Fest (now in its third year), to realize that they have the means, enough open artists, and community support to put on this kind of showcase. On Tuesday night at Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar, Charlottesville’s first-ever all-LGBTQ+ hip-hop showcase will feature performances by Noah Page, Shamika Shardé, Torele, dogfuck, Sadeé, and DJ Angel Flowers.

This is the second year in a row that Nine Pillars and Rugged Arts have combined forces to break new ground in Charlottesville hip-hop: Last year, they hosted the city’s first-ever all-female hip-hop bill at the Music Resource Center. Artists everywhere are denied access to the stage or the recording booth because of their gender identity and sexuality, says St. Clair, “and that’s not fair.” In his opinion, it’s talent, the quality of the music, and the messages contained therein that matters. “We really want to be innovative and give those performers and those artists who are overshadowed,” or flat-out denied, the chance to perform, says St. Clair. “We want every artist to be empowered. And we want the community to take note.”

Rugged Arts has hosted regular hip-hop showcases in Charlottesville for nearly a decade now, and in that time, plenty of openly LGBTQ+ artists—including St. Clair, who hosts the showcase—have performed on the Rugged Arts stage. Torele, a local R&B singer on Tuesday night’s bill, is one of those artists. St. Clair saw Torele (who formerly performed as Not3s) at a Verbs & Vibes open mic a few years back and immediately invited him to the Rugged Arts stage. “It became like an addiction for me,” says Torele of the showcases. “I wanted to do it more and more. As an openly gay R&B artist, it was so nice to feel welcome, to have that space,” he says.

Not everyone is so welcoming. Torele says a few artists won’t work with him because of his sexuality, artists who “hold the stigma that it’s going to harsh their image if they work with someone in the LGBTQ+ community.” He wishes that weren’t the case, but his response is to “wish them the best and continue to do my own thing.” Prejudice against LGBTQ+ folks exist in our society, and so, by default, it exists in hip-hop. Artists like the ones on this bill, along with allies, are working to break it down and do away with it altogether.

Phil Green, a rapper who grew up in Charlottesville, now resides in Richmond, and performs under the moniker dogfuck, cites Richmond’s Ice Cream Social queer dance party as just one example. Ice Cream Social’s been going for about two years now (DJ Angel Flowers is a co-founder), and Green takes it as a sign that local music scenes are becoming more inclusive, even if that growth is incremental. The LGBTQ+ showcase indicates “that the [Charlottesville hip-hop] scene has finally sanctioned queer spaces,” says Green. What’s more, Green adds, it declares to artists and to the entire city, “hey, we want queer artists here. We want them to be seen and heard.” It’s an imperative message to put out there, says Green, who has a little something to add to it: “Respect queer artists, because it turns out, your heroes just might be them.”

Shamika Shardé will make her Rugged Arts debut in this particular showcase. Rapping has been a hobby of hers since she saw the legendary Lauryn Hill perform in Sister Act 2, but she’d never spit rhymes anywhere but her bedroom.

“I knew what I had to say was different from the rest,” says Shardé, and her music reflects that. Because of this, DJ SG and DJ Double U encouraged her to put her music out there, to share her talent and perspective with others. “I was told I have a talent, don’t waste it,” she says. And now that she knows she has a platform, she plans to make the most of it.

Make the most of Nine Pillars

Here’s what not to miss during the Nine Pillars Hiphop Cultural Fest:

Monday, April 22

CVille Freshman Class Youth Rap & Dance Competition

5pm, Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, 233 Fourth St. NW

Tuesday, April 23

Rugged Arts x Nine Pillars
All-LGBTQ+ Edition

8pm, Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar, 414 E. Main St.
Downtown Mall

Wednesday, April 24

Sally’s Kids Vol. 2:
An Oral History of
Charlottesville Hip-hop

Time TBD, WTJU 91.1 FM Studios, 2244 Ivy Rd.

Friday, April 26

Make the Cut DJ Battle

8pm, Music Resource Center, 105 Ridge St.

Saturday, April 27

Wargames Rap Battle

7pm, Champion Brewing Co., 324 Sixth St. SE

Sunday, April 28

Nine Pillars Annual Block Party

3pm, Champion Brewing Co., 324 Sixth St. SE

Categories
Arts

Getting a lift: Nine Pillars’ female showcase is brimming with talent

Organizers are confident that Thursday’s all-female Rugged Arts showcase is the first of its kind in Charlottesville, featuring a female host, a female DJ and five female artists, including Sierra “Juice” Stanton (pictured). “I only write about what I know, what I’ve been through, what I go through, what I’m preparing for,” says Juice. Photo by Eze Amos

Last April, A’nija Johnson walked into the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center auditorium ready to speak her truth at the Nine Pillars Hip Hop Cultural Fest’s freshman class competition. Wearing a floor-length skirt, a Tasmanian Devil “I need coffee” T-shirt and a pair of sunglasses, the local high schooler found herself in a room full of peers ready to take the mic—all of them boys.

“What are you doing in here?” asked one. “You’ll see,” she told him. By the end of the competition, Johnson, who goes by the moniker Legendary Goddess, had impressed the judges enough to nab second place.

The self-described “girly-girl” loves proving that she can rap—and about everything, from broken friendships to sexual violence. Legendary Goddess takes the mic on Thursday at the all-female Rugged Arts hip-hop showcase at the Music Resource Center as part of the weeklong Nine Pillars Hip Hop Cultural Festival.

The Rugged Arts series began in summer 2013, but organizers Cullen “Fellowman” Wade and Remy St. Clair are confident that this showcase is the first of its kind in Charlottesville, featuring five female artists (Legendary Goddess, MrsAmerica, Juice, Littlebird and Bonnie Cash), a female DJ (DJ Tova) and a female host (Destinee Wright).

“Hip-hop has a reputation for its misogyny and its disregard for women’s agency,” says Wright. “This showcase is a sort of reclamation. I’m hoping that this show will inspire a sense of sisterhood for the hip-hop heads in the community who are woman-identifying, and hopefully inspire other women artists to continue their work and participate in events such as this.”

It’s rare to see a woman on stage at a hip-hop show, says Lamicka “MrsAmerica” Adams. She suspects it’s because many women put their music on the backburner as they build a career, raise a family and take care of elderly family members. So, to shine a spotlight on female artists, “I think it’s really dope,” she says.

MrsAmerica was going through a lot when she wrote her 2017 album, Pain and Pageant—she was pregnant with her third child while taking care of her father, who was dying of cancer. MrsAmerica’s husband encouraged her to write, to put her thoughts to music. She thought, “How can I focus on music at a time like this?” But the more she wrote, the better she felt. “It’s music that would lift me up when I was going through” hell, she says, and she hopes it’ll motivate others, too.

Sierra “Juice” Stanton shares many of MrsAmerica’s reasons for making music. “I only write about what I know, what I’ve been through, what I go through, what I’m preparing for,” says Juice.

Her song “Pain” is about an accident in which she was hit by an SUV while crossing the street. Juice didn’t feel the impact; she remembers waking up on the ground, a paramedic telling her not to move while snapping a brace around her neck. She gets chills when she recites the song. “It’s my heart pouring out in the lyrics, over a beat,” she says, adding that as a woman—and especially as a black woman—she’s very aware of the message she puts out into the world.

“Even if we live what [men] have lived and talk about, it’s different, because we are [women],” says Juice, adding that everything from what women say to the way they carry themselves is watched, and often scrutinized closely.

Harrisonburg artist Kaiti “Littlebird” Crittenden is a self-described “100-pound white girl with blonde hair, a tomboy” clad in beat-up Timberland boots and cargo pants, who says she was initially “pretty intimidated” to start performing her rhymes, in part because she’s not what people typically see in their mind’s eye when they think of a rapper.

“Princess Peach on fleek temperamental / Insecurities plaguing my mental / When ya thin as a pencil / Criticism ain’t gentle / Couple that with the fact / Folks been judgmental,” Littlebird spits in one of her songs. She likes to talk about universal experiences such as love and relationships of all kinds, but she’s keen to point out that there’s substance and feeling underneath the surface.

Long before DJ Tova Roth had DJ equipment, she made mixtapes with a tape deck and a radio. As a teenager in California in the early 1990s, she listened religiously to hip-hop and often drove an hour and a half to Los Angeles where well-known DJs sold their mixtapes. She’d listen to them over and over, noting the artists’ moves so that she could mimic them—and rival them—once she got her own gear.

“I want the industry to realize that girls can bring the heat, and that we’re up for any challenge,” says Legendary Goddess, the high schooler who brought down the house at the Jefferson School just a year ago. And a hip-hop showcase spotlighting a group of talented women is a great place to start.

“We’re making history,” says Juice. “This is major.”

Categories
Arts

Listen up: C-ville’s hip-hop scene is on the rise

Louis Hampton and Damani Harrison of The Beetnix perform at the Nine Pillars Cultural Hip-hop Fest. Photo by Ron Paris

It’s a gray Sunday evening, 50-something degrees and drizzling when The Beetnix step onto the outdoor stage at IX Art Park. It’s been raining all day, but a crowd of more than 100 has gathered on the graffiti-painted concrete ground in front of the stage. Many of them hold their phones and tablets in the air, precipitation be damned, ready to capture Charlottesville’s most legendary hip-hop duo on video.

“Come closer,” Damani “Glitch One” Harrison says to the crowd as he picks up a mic. With his arms stretched out wide, Louis “Waterloo” Hampton beckons for everyone to move in closer.

For Harrison, 39, hip-hop has been part of his life since he was a kid. A military brat who grew up in Germany and Philadelphia, he remembers exactly where he was when the music caught him.