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By Wes Woods II White Noise The Grouch’s latest single “Artsy” — off his latest full-length Show You the World — fits in with his personality because it’s a laidback song that pokes fun at everyone, including himself. “It’s sarcastic. It’s not like I really am mad at people who think they’re artsy or whatever,” says The Grouch. “I’m just kind of poking fun at a situation that I think everybody can feel a little bit. I mean there’s always people who get into a certain diet or certain art movement or certain fashion trend and then they want to take it to the fullest extent. ‘Well, I’m at the top of this fashion trend’ or ‘I’m the healthiest eater you know and anything below me is not cool.’ And I just kind of wanted to joke about that. I’m not dissing anybody personally.” A line toward the end of “Artsy,” where he rhymes, “You ain’t artsier than me/Cuz you’re a sixteenth Mexican, you ain’t ethnic,” has caused some controversy over what he means. “That one gets misinterpreted a lot,” The Grouch admits. “That’s a joke on the hip-hop scene [where] a lot of people are, I don’t know, sometimes they measure how cool they are or how ethnic they are — and they might not even be that ethnic. What I’m really trying to say is… I’m a white rapper and there’s a lot of white people in the hip-hop industry, and it seems like one of those things where they want to act like they’re cooler than you. One of the ways they judge that is [by saying,]‘I’m a quarter Mexican so I’m not even white.’ “A lot of people don’t want to claim their whiteness in hip-hop is basically what I’m saying, is what I’m joking at,” The Grouch continues. “So they’ll say something like, ‘My dad was one-quarter black and my mom is one-fifth Mexican.’ I’m not saying that doesn’t count, I’m just kind of joking at it. Mostly you’ll look at a kid and you’ll see a white kid for all intents and purposes but you know his great-grandmother might have been one-eighth Cherokee Indian and that’s what they’re trying to claim, like they’re super exotic. But it’s just a joke. Everybody can claim what’s in their blood, it’s just a joke I had.” The Grouch (real name: Corey Scoffern) might be best known for being a member of the L.A.-based hip-hop group Living Legends. The Grouch also released an album with Zion I in ’06 called Heroes in the City of Dope. He also produced Felt’s first record, Felt: A Tribute to Christina Ricci, back in 2002. The Grouch’s influences include such diverse Bay Area hip-hop acts such as Hieroglyphics’ Del the Funky Homosapien and Souls of Mischief, to the more explicit content of Too $hort and E-40. An East Coast flavor is also evident such as pioneers LL Cool J, Run-DMC, Big Daddy Kane, A Tribe Called Quest, KRS-ONE and West Coast lyricists Freestyle Fellowship, Aceyalone and Abstract Rude. The Grouch says he remembers when hip-hop was a much smaller scene and he and other rappers knew just about every topic that had been written about. All the new records, back in the day, could be memorized so writing about a topic someone else had was frowned on. But things changed. “Nowadays, for one, it’s probably impossible to do that just because people have probably done the same stuff,” The Grouch says. “And there’s so much music out there I can’t possibly listen to it all. I don’t have the time.” He says the album title Show You The World is self-explanatory. “I don’t like to limit it to show you my world, I’d rather show you the world,” The Grouch says. “I don’t think I know everything about the world and it’s not like, look, I got so much I can teach you, but I have done a lot of living life. And I have something I can offer to everybody.” On the web: therealgrouch.com |
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Copyright © 2002 Mean Street Magazine, LLC |
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