#u-a

Bbymutha, "Gun Kontrol" 2024

Special Artist Spotlight: In Conversation with Bbymutha (Part 1/2)

For this first Special Artist Spotlight, I had the pleasure to sit down with Chattanooga, TN’s very own Bbymutha to discuss the evolution of her sound, the industry, and the future of hip hop. 

“So,” I begin, “Who is Bbymutha?”

The rapper giggles, “hmm, I don’t know…I guess I’m a rapper, and a mother, and a artist in general-” 

“and a girlfriend too” her boyfriend and fellow artist Fly Anakin chimes in from somewhere off camera. 

I ask Mutha how they would define their music as an artist, and what the driving forces behind it may be. From a sonic standpoint, the rapper states that whatever beats “tickle her brain” and get stuck in her head are the ones that make the cut. Emotionally, Mutha says that she has always used music as a way to vent, and take out her frustration, stating that if she wasn’t rapping, she would be doing things like journaling instead. 

The rapper also mentions the concept of vanity as a driving force behind her music. Though she is not so sure about this particular word choice, I feel like I understand exactly what she means - that “braggadocious” quality for which hip hop is adored as much as it is disparaged. I particularly connect with this point, and mention that that has been one of the overarching themes of the Underground Archives project; the idea of affirmation and manifestation as part of the vast appeal of rap music, even to audiences - especially those outside “the culture” - who may not relate to the circumstances the rappers describe, but relate to the feelings being communicated (which speaks to the power of music, but also makes cultural appropriation/extraction an ever looming threat).

It is no secret that Mutha has deep roots in the South, with Southern hip hop deeply influencing her own music. I ask her opinion on people’s tendency to homogenize the South when it comes to rap music, and if she has an issue with being defined in that way. She responds:

“Of course I’m a Southern rapper but what bothers me is when they try to box you in and say “oh you [only] make trap music”

I thought this was valid, noting that there is a certain stigma that comes with that label - “trap” music - in general. As if her catalogue would be somehow less worthy if it was all “just” trap, though the genre has been so commercialized and oversaturated, that you can understand the tendency to underwrite it.

I decide to pivot and ask the spooky rapper to tell us about some of her influences on her sound and aesthetic as an artist. She names horror movies and game soundtracks as a major inspiration, as well as horror manga like Junji Ito’s. She also adds that her kids are, of course, a major inspiration, and that they keep her “in the loop” with what’s in these days.

Mutha also names fashion as a major source of inspiration, and a key component of her identity as an artist.

“My fashion reflects my music, my music reflects my fashion” 

Anyone who has seen the rapper’s music videos or social media profiles can attest to that, as the rapper is always sporting a look - a mixture of dark and boldly colored; edgy and whimsical - a lot like the rapper’s music. Mutha briefly mentions how she has picked up crocheting in recent years, and has crocheted a number of her own looks, especially for her Sleep Paralysis tour last year. She even has an online storefront for her crochet items (https://freakbastard.bigcartel.com/), though she does lament the pressure to monetize every hobby or creative pursuit she has.

“Im the person that people want around cause I make everybody feel good about theyself but nobody listens to what I have to say”

To describe the influences on the content of her music, Mutha reminisces about her childhood, and what drew her to making music in the first place. She recalls how she would always write poetry, or write in her diary, so making music felt like a natural progression of that expression - simply another outlet. Now, the seasoned rapper’s music has effectively become her diary, but there are new challenges and limitations to that mode of expression due to how public it is.

I tell her I have to bring this up even though it will make her groan

We have to take it back to (almost) where it all began - Rules (Glow Kit, 2016). Mutha’s first big hit. A mega cult classic and fan favorite. And, coincidentally, the song the rapper wishes she could just lay to rest. 

Sure, the rapper was talking her shit. The iconic refrain “you can’t give your pussy to a  nigga who not used to getting pussy ‘cause that pussy gon’ be everybody’s business” is still quoted by fans to this day.

Yet Mutha hates it - and for a few reasons. She is tired of being requested to perform the song, which is nearly a decade old, when she has released so much music (two full length albums and a number of EPs) since. She also describes how the song is not even close to one of her best- in fact, she personally sees it as one of her worst, “the song was literally just a rant with a hook on it.” Most of all, she resents the idea of basically being asked to “turn up to [her] trauma”

I suggest that maybe people love the song so much because it’s such a relatable message, and that listeners may reclaim their power by thinking “oh, Bbymutha went through this too, maybe I’ma be alright” to which she laughs and responds: “don’t do that because you don’t even know if I’m alright for real!”

“If you still want me to be that same bitch then you dont know whats best for me”

There is definitely much to be said about the commodification of the artist and their experiences, as well as the audience’s inability to move on. Mutha certainly agrees that a lot of fans are stuck on her older stuff, like “Rules,” and laments the tendency for fans to try and box her in where she wants to grow. She also notes that she is through talking about men and their drama in her music. 

“I’m tired of talking about men, it's never nothing good to talk about them for” she giggles. Now, Mutha is much more interested in expressing vulnerability on her own terms, and choosing which songs she wants us to turn up to.

Mutha wants to continue along this trajectory, about the commodification and inevitable dehumanization of artists. She is disturbed by the idea of audiences wanting to “vibe” to artists’ real pain (TikTok trends like the dance to Kendrick Lamar’s “Money Trees” is another example that comes to mind). She describes this obsession with stuff like “sad girl music” as a type of emotion harvesting, which unfortunately comes with the expectation that the artist only makes that type of music. But where is the room for growth?

Mutha also believes stan culture and social media is partially to blame for this phenomenon, describing a sort of pressure - from the fans, but also from the labels - to have a viral moment and keep chasing or trying to recreate that moment. 

So, I ask the rapper how she keeps herself grounded while dealing with all this, and how we can open up space to have this conversation with those who are willing to listen.

She laughs as she reminisces about how she used to cuss people out online when they stepped out of line, but admits that she has scaled it back to protect her peace. The rapper keeps her X (formerly Twitter) account “on lockdown” by making her account private, but Instagram is more difficult to navigate because she does not want to make that page private.

One thing that has particularly grinded the rappers gears dealing with social media is the overfamiliarity, especially pertaining to a certain B-word (“Where’s the album BITCH??!?”). She acknowledges that people like this probably just get a little too excited, but she has definitely cussed a fan or two out for it in the past.

I ask her how we can find the balance between humanizing artists but not idolizing them, to which she responds “I would love to know.”

Mutha believes she has put in her 100 hours with all the cussing people out she used to do, and at this point in her career, just prefers to focus on the love and getting to know the people who love the music instead of feeding into the hate and drama. 

“I get it because I’ve done it but it aint really worth it…the fans be feeling important when you go back and forth with  them, when you could just talk to me normal and feel just as important going back and forth with a regular conversation. But they know if they say some negative shit to you that that’s going to get your attention faster”

So, Mutha is much more focused on engaging with the love and choosing what’s really worth responding to. Otherwise, she will just block you and go about her day (though, she will still cuss a b*tch out if need be. Be warned!)

I expell most troublesome students. However sometimes I see potential in these students only for them to choose a troubling path in life.

As many years as ive been teaching Ive had a few students go rogue. Luckily I havent had to confront one myself yet.

Bbymutha via Instagram

Special Artist Spotlight: In Conversation with Bbymutha (Part 2/2)

Where we last left off, the Chattanooga-born rapper discussed some of the difficulties of being in the industry, like being boxed in by fans and dealing with all the nonsense that comes with social media.

Continuing down this train of thought, I ask Bbymutha to tell us what it was like for her during “the come up,” and whether things have changed.

The rapper says she started rapping “for fake” (her words) during the blog era - a sweet spot in the early digital era before the big labels were able to swoop in and claim authority. For a moment in time, what was “in” was dictated by ordinary people on the internet. Some big names got their renown from this era - think A$AP Rocky, Gucci Mane, Joey Bada$$, even Drake. This era took place before the time period covered on Underground-Archives, but it definitely deserves mentioning as a precursor to the modern internet era of music.

Mutha details the struggles of coming up as a female rapper at that time, reminiscing how producers wouldn’t want to give you a beat because you were a girl. However, she looks back on this era fondly too, because at the time, it was cool to be different. It seemed like that was the “thing” - everybody was trying to be different. Now, she feels female rap has become oversaturated and more “cookie cutter” since those days.

She is concerned that too many people get famous too quickly, and artists are looked at like trend cycles. It is dehumanizing and unsustainable.

“This person might not wanna be a rapper in 10 years” she states, to which I respond “they might not even wanna be a rapper now,” thinking about all the examples of people catapulted into accidental stardom through memes and viral moments.

“Right,” the rapper agrees, “they just wanna get some bread or get famous, or like…I don’t know.” 

Mutha also notes how the standards for female rappers specifically have increased since the days of her early career. She says it's refreshing to see artists like Doechii and Doja Cat giving it their all, stating that “When I was coming up the rap bitches was not giving RnB, Beyonce 8 counts and shit. The playing field has leveled up but at the same time the shit has also been watered down.” She notes that she gives it 100%, “but I’m not about to get up there and do choreography though” she laughs.

Somehow we have circled back to the idea of that perpetual obsession with chasing a moment. The rapper criticizes how readily listeners, who she astutely describes as “consumers,” dispose of artists once they outgrow that moment.

“They don’t even outgrow you as a artist, they just outgrow that moment”

“You outgrew that one thirty second snippet now you don’t like the s- now I’m washed up,” she continues. She admits that this model of consuming music is daunting to her, and that she’s not always sure of where she’s supposed to be “because everything’s on 10 now.” 

She states that she is too “lazy” to compete, and tries to be satisfied with where she is now, but it’s hard not to internalize other people’s ideas of where she should be in her career or the idea that her time has passed.

“The internet and the ‘microwaveization’ of hip hop rn makes you feel like you're missing out on so much and like the world is moving so fast around you...” 

She states that when she was coming up, yeah, people were getting famous - but not every other week! It is intimidating and overstimulating enough, and then she’ll have family in her ear saying things like “oh, you should put your songs on TikTok!” It’s not hard to imagine the toll this can take on artists. If this anxiety reaches even a seasoned artist like Bbymutha, who has over a decade in the game and has certainly earned her stripes by now, it must be madness for the new up and coming artists of today.

But Mutha admits that the pressure she feels is mostly external. She may feel like she’s not doing enough, but then she will go on tour and remember she’s exactly where she needs to be.

“Its fucked up to watch people build people up so fast and then tear them down…y'all don't know these people!” 

“It’s an icky time to put yourself out there” Mutha says, “especially as a woman.” She describes the trade off artists are forced to face - gaining that unhealthy level of fame and visibility in order to survive off their art (would you choose to stay at that 9-5 if you had the chance?) - as selling your soul. A person becomes a moment, a trend, an idol even, until they are forgotten about or discarded. Where can we find the balance? Is fame the only option for musicians? Mutha admits that she doesn’t know what the answer is, but she does know that her dream is “not to be harassed by strangers!”

I pivot the conversation back to “Rules,” since we’ve circled back to that topic of fans placing artists into their own box. I ask Mutha if there is a song she would choose to take its place, and she audibly groans (LOL). Let’s be clear - Mutha doesn’t want any song to become what “Rules” has for her fanbase, and dreads the possibility of having to perform yet another song over and over again like that. So we decide to compromise on a song to replace “Rules” for a year. The rapper takes a second to think, and settles on “Ghostface” off her Sleep Paralysis album (2024).

The song is so simple - the rapper says she got the beat, and got it done in “like five minutes” - but so Mutha. The beat’s drums are minimal on this one, very Plugg; the haunting melody taking center stage to provide the type of hype required for Mutha’s rage-adelic lyrics. If you close your eyes, you can almost picture yourself in one of her iconic twerk-pits (the rapper’s take on a mosh pit) while she raps the hook: 

Bitches want my life

Come and get it

Bring a knife! 

But the rapper also wants to shout out some other underrated tracks, stating that her more straight-rap, non hook having songs don’t necessarily get as much love at her shows, so she tends to keep those on the shelf in favor of ones she knows will get the crowd hype. The honorable mentions in question are “Dragon” (listen here), in which the rapper spits two minutes of straight verse over a more experimental, dance inspired type of beat featuring elements from hard techno and ambient music; and “Urban Legend” (listen here ), a track specifically tagged “#storytelling” on Soundcloud with a more traditional trap beat that, combined with Mutha’s braggadocious lyrics, feels like something a boxer would listen to as they step into the ring. That’s one of the things Mutha seems to do best - hype. Confidence. Swagger! 

It’s almost time for the interview to come to a close (sadly), and I only have one last question for Bbymutha. 

What are the seasoned rapper’s thoughts on the future of alternative hip-hop? 

She clarifies that she doesn’t want to come off as shady, but she admits that she is skeptical. Having witnessed the ways in which the industry chews artists up and spits them out, as well as that “microwave-ization” she spoke of earlier, the rapper has her doubts.

“You take these people from TikTok and chew ‘em up and spit em out…”

The oversaturation - and also, let’s be real - the co-optation of the “underground” is daunting. She recalls a time she saw some post about “the underground iceberg” that featured about a million names she did not recognize, and lo and behold, she went to look some of these names up, and about half of them were “little white boys.”

The rapper doesn’t want to be totally pessimistic, but she is definitely unsure - “it’s all up in the air” to her.

Introduction: What is Underground-Archives?

Underground-Archives is a not for profit, senior capstone project taking the form of an archival music blog that aims to explore and tell the story of alternative hip hop subgenres/cultures from the mid 2010s-present by highlighting emerging genres, artists, and projects that were either pivotal for, or reflective of these particular moments in "the culture."

The author of this blog (me) is a 24 year old African-American Drexel University senior from Silver Spring, Maryland who wishes to remain anonymous under their producer/DJ alias "SagestBans" (stylized "S✩GESTBANS").

The blog will be organized into four main types of posts:

Artist/Producer Spotlights

Track Spotlights

Project Spotlights (for albums, EPs, and mixtapes)

Special Artist Spotlights (interview features "In Conversation With" artists relevant to the project)

Now, when you say the word underground, there is a particular association with that word that is a direct consequence of the streaming model - an artist may be considered “underground,” but have 500k listeners on Spotify. Additionally, the present moment seems to conceive of “underground” as primarily pertaining to rage style rappers, or (to a lesser extent), a handful of artists making PluggnB, that were popularized via that notorious video sharing platform we all know and may or may not love: TikTok. Let’s call this type of stuff the “mainstream underground,” so as to draw a distinction between that usage of the term “underground” and the way I use it on Underground-Archives. 

The “underground” in U-A simply refers to anything non-mainstream in hip-hop, especially within the context of the internet and social media as the new vehicle for the consumption and distribution of music, and how that internet-based nature has influenced the music itself. I also use the term “alternative” because not every hip-hop artist that deviates from the mainstream is underground (think Rico Nasty or Bktherula). 

I hope to analyze, explore, document, and contextualize all the incredible ways in which these artists have pushed the boundaries of hip hop as a genre, and hopefully, some of the broader socio-cultural implications of that as well. 

Ultimately, my goal with this project is to document and tell these stories for us to look back on, and also place them  into the context of the broader music industry, which is known to extract from these more organic and culturally specific moments in music to the point of erasure - while many of these unsung pioneers never got to reap the benefits of their legacy, or worse slip through the cracks. I believe it is of the utmost importance to humanize and empower artists while still engaging with their work thoughtfully and critically. I also believe it is of utmost importance to define and reclaim the narrative in the face  of erasure, because music is always more than just music.

Hip hop as a genre is so significant to and reflective of our culture as Black people in America (and the broader diaspora), and music period is such a powerful vehicle for culture and memory. While "culture vultures" and outsiders attempt to define sampling as lazy or uninspired, for example, we as insiders acknowledge the significance of hip-hop as a genre that sampled and reworked a multitude of significant cultural works - perhaps most notably the soul classics of the 70s - giving them a new life and introducing them to generations beyond. After all, reinvention is in our blood.  

As a DJ and (bedroom) producer, I believe part of our job is also to be a historian - to ensure that we keep telling these stories and acknowledging where we came from, as part of maintaining that memory and sense of identity as a people (especially as a people so constantly accused of “lacking” in culture, when the reality is there isn’t a corner of the globe our culture hasn’t touched). It is for this reason that, though this project is for my senior capstone requirement, I intend to continue contributing to Underground-Archives after I graduate, so stay tuned for more!

(Best believe there are already a number of new posts "in the chamber," so to speak)

-S✩GESTBANS

Niontay via Soundcloud

Artist Spotlight: Niontay

Niontay (also known by the alias Sexafterchurch) is a Brooklyn-based rapper and producer from Florida who started making waves in 2021 with his EP “Blood Diamond,” prod. SUIQE. Since then, he has increasingly become a figure of interest in the alternative rap game, especially due to his 2023 album Dontay’s Inferno, which featured heavy hitting lyrical tracks such as “THANK ALLAH,” and catchy jams like “WHEREDEYAT?” ft. MIKE.

Niontay’s music is incredibly soul-driven, and seems to constantly draw from Southern Black American roots (particularly the sounds of the church) - sonically and thematically - but he is known to experiment with all types of sounds. His music can be fun, but at it's core, it feels highly spiritual and emotional, with many references to God and church, addiction and depression, as well as reverence for his grandmother ("grandma, I'm gon' get it right"). His rap style is witty and refreshing, and he is known to lean into storytelling, a once-definitive element of hip-hop that is not as commonplace in the genre today. 

Much of Niontay’s work is self-produced (as Sexafterchurch), and his production has a distinct appeal. “Da City of a Hunnid Plays” is a track that really highlights this ability, utilizing soulful samples and a melodic, yet heavy-hitting, kick driven groove. He also experiments with a variety of sounds in his production that can be traced back to specific, often regional, influences, such as Jerk music breakdowns in "Vice City," or the DMV trap style of his song "100 Cylinders" with Northeast DC's very own El Cousteau.

Niontay’s music is lyrically intelligent, witty, and reflective; and sonically, multifaceted and intriguing. With two full length projects under his belt, he has certainly begun to make a name for himself, but it somehow feels like Niontay is just getting started.

Track Spotlight: Get It - Tay-K ft. Wa$tee prod. DjPhattt (2017)

“Get It” is a hard-hitting yet melodic, short-but-sweet track by Tay-K and Wa$tee with an addictive repeating lyrical motif that reads as a manifestation: “Once I once I once I once I once I once I get it!”  Producer DjPhattt utilizes a high-pitched, ambient synth melody in a four bar loop, as well as percussive elements like shakers to establish the ambiance for this track. Punchy kicks are all that’s needed to make the beat hit, and TayK and Wa$tee flow effortlessly over it and utilize repetition to support the melody and themes of the song.