Transcript, Let the World Listen Right
My name is Jerome Williams. Pretty much I want you all to know me as TOP: TopNotch the Villain and I'm 27 years old, straight from Clarksdale, Mississippi: better known as the Delta.
TopNotch: The way of life, you know, far as Clarksdale or just in the Delta period, you know what I'm sayin', was brought up on, you know, gospel and blues or what have you. A good time, you know what I'm sayin', was on the weekend everybody sittin' outside drinkin beer, playin' spades and dominoes and listenin' to the blues. And then verses Sunday they all go to church to get their religion on.
TopNotch: OK now. Of course, we a wave of generation where, you know, rap and hip-hop was like some pretty good sounds in our ear.
TopNotch: Pretty much what you see outside of me is what I call home. This is Clarks Vegas. You might know it as Clarksdale. But it's our little Clarks Vegas, you know.
TopNotch: It could be a city up on the rise, but however you know, we doin' some things now that we're pretty much hittin' just us up in our own foot.
TopNotch: What they say, pretty much, what most raps are sayin' is that this is what they see and, you know, we actually in a sense if you listen to it, we actually tellin' that we are tired of this.
TopNotch: And it's all good
And I keep it to the game
And it's all hood
And if you still want the same
I can change good
Cause if I gave it to the bad
I'm still Top Notch man, I'm still kickin' grass, man,
I'm all in this thing
I'm all in the game
I'm all in the hood never changin' up a thang
I help you feel good but I'm still bringin' pain
I show it to the streets cause the streets will never change
I'm rockin me on raw beats
Knowin' that it's all me
Matter of fact I got a t-shirt to go and copy
Matter of fact I drop beat
If you wanna drop me,
I'm a give it all to the streets
I be about my issue (fades under)
TopNotch: I just took one whole song or one instrumental beat by itself and I rap through the whole thing personally by myself. All if that's, you know, unscripted, you know, all of that was freestyle. Everything that you heard was straight off the dome.
TopNotch: I feel like my talent with words and how the way I can use my words, is like, is what just electrifies some of the people, or just motivates the people or what have you, you know what I'm sayin'?
TopNotch: (fades in) ?real, homie, and it's all on the good.
I told you this is my neck of the woods, Clarks Vegas!
Neighbors: Dirty South, Dirty South!
Neighbor Woman #1: This is what we do!
Neighbor Man: Yeah!
Neighbor woman: Clarks Vegas baby, Clarks Vegas Baby!
Neighbor girl: Now somebody scream!
TopNotch: It's not all about my worlds being serious, you know. Mines can be in the form of a joke, you know what I'm sayin'. I love to see people smile, to see people laugh see people have a good time and all that, you know?
Kevon Jurden: Now I be in my Grandma's house thinkin' 'bout good things
and I be up in the kitchen tryin' to cook me some pork and beans
I'm a rhyme
Listen if you don't like it you can go look from behind
And I'm a make my cash and you can look from the past
Like a blast from the past I'm gonna last.
TopNotch: And outlast the criminals
and outlast the snakes
keep your hearts in the real
and just don't deal with the fake
Grass for the lawn, baby,
Ain't gotta deal with the snakes
Just do whatever it takes just to make no mistakes.
Set 'em free.
Kevon Jurden: I'm a set 'em free and let 'em know what I came for
And if you don't like it you can go in the house door?[fades out]
TopNotch: I been rappin' for quite some time now. About five years old. So that's a lot of years down there.
TopNotch: This God-given talent, may be the case or what have you, your parents just wanna show you off-"Oh, he looks so cute, Oh, he's so cute. Won't you do this for me, baby?" And you didn't really want to do it, you know what I'm sayin', but you can't tell you momma "no" or she gonna whoop you or something, you know what I'm sayin'.
Jeweline Williams: He could say all the commercials at a certain age. I remember he just be up in there doin' somethin' and he put it together and then he start sayin' his ABCs backward.
TopNotch: Pretty much they say I had a good memory.
Jeweline Wiliams: Just like, he didn't know how to read and go in there, sit on the commode and put the book up like this here, bottom side up, I swear he readin'. And I'm like, come in there and ask him what in the world he doin', he'd say, "I'm readin'." Ask him what in the world it was: "Oh, I'm through now." He'd close the book and get down all nice and beautiful
TopNotch: And plus, I used to love reading all the time.
Jeweline Williams: The grades were good-it just was the hair. The hair. He didn't like combin' his hair.
TopNotch: (laughing) Movin' right along.
TopNotch: Agriculture. (laughs) Agriculture a type of way of being. And you know, that was our way of life, you know what I'm sayin'? If you know about Mississippi, if you want to know about Mississippi, then I'm just sayin', read about cotton. You know what I'm sayin'? You'll get pretty much all your answers about Mississippi.
Damien Jurden: I like almost everything. Only thing I don't like about Clarksdale is all this killin'. Killin' our family members. All this sensitive stuff goin' on all around here, we can't never do nothin'. If people keep killin', won't nobody never have no fun.
Kevon Jurden: I like mostly everything about Clarksdale. The food tastes good, the people down here know how to cook, and just to tell the truth, I can't picture none of my family members in no casket.
Terry "Big T" Williams": I'm Big T, Terry Big T Williams, I'm from Clarksdale, Mississippi. This town grew with the blues, or the blues greit up, one. I don't know how it happened. But now this town has became a tourist attraction year-round. And the music draws the attraction. If you come to Clarksdale looking for anything other than what we have to add or offer, you came to the wrong place.
Big T: When I was a kid growing up, blues was pagan. Parents say, "Oh, stop playin' that devil-worshippin' music in there, boy. Later that night, they left church and went to the juke joint, and they was dancin' to the same kind of music they told me to stop playin'.
Big T: I was raised on this kind of music, and I also heard in the background John Lee Hooker, Robert Johnson, Son House, Sonny Boy. You know, I can go on and on with the great guys, but when I met Frank Frost, Sam Carr and Big Jack, these guys showd me a whole different thing. They showed me love, they showed me understanding. They showed me...they gave me a piece of mind that I could always lean on.
Big T: I tell a lot of guys that I meet that the music has never been about us anyway. It's all about what the music can do for us. It can make us feel one way, it can make us feel another way. It can calm us down when we need to be calmed down. So music is-this is what these old guys taught me.
Big T: People say that the blues is dyin' down here. Well, every time they say that, every time it comes out of their mouth, it means the blues is still goin' on It actually doesn't change. It's still the same. What they do is modify it. They take it to another level. Just like the rap. Rap cane from one industry. It came from being clean rap to hardcore rap, to dirty rap to low-down, shootin' guns, or whatever, you know. Okay, blues did the same thing. You had a happy blues, you got a good-feeling blues, you got a back-in-the-alley, cutthroat kinda blues.
TopNotch: How the way I'm doin' with my words is how the way he's doin' with his guitar. I mean, I feel like my words and how the way I'm placing 'em to where, you know, not only can they sound good, but just actually to make sense, you know, through logic is how the way he uses his guitar. It's the soul of a man, you know what I'm sayin', by just his finger and some strings, you know what I'm sayin'.
TopNotch: Loyalty and respect is everything up in the field
Hustlin' and grindin' just to-uh make a meal
Took five kids out the life of reality
And hopin' that we can live life out our fantasy
Bills gotta be paid, clothes gotta be on our back,
Hustle gotta be made?
TopNotch: I just received word that, um, my rap group, F.A.M., we on the front page of our local paper down here in Mississippi, the Clarksdale Press-Register. Now, to us, that's a very big thing. A very big thing. And you know what, I'm a do you all a favor. I'm a do you all a favor, I'm a show you a little clip right there. This is us right there. That's us right there. Can you see that? Can you see that? That's us right there. My man Small, K'Deezy. Yata, that's me Top Notch the Villain, and my boy Buggs Diego. Man, that's us right there. That's us right there. "Bridgin' the Gap from Blues to Rap," baby, that's it. Famous right there, that's all right. I told you, we keepin' the game T.O.P., baby.
TopNotch: (To Yata) We on the front page too, pimpin', we there too. "Rappin' for peace, baby. Hey, and that's?
Yata Dear: My name is Kimyata Dear, I'm 17 years of age and I'm from Clarskdale, Mississippi.
Yata Dear: Jerome, Jerome, basically, I basically grew up with Jerome. He basically lived with us for a minute. I know him ever since I was young, so he like a brother.
Yata Dear: I started off listenin' to him so I'm like, I can rap.
Yata Dear: They say life is too short to live the same day twice.
So the money I made yesterday I gotta make it thrice.
Gotta do what I gotta do in certain situations of life.
"Cause [] has been defined as the joys of life.
But I have been through the fire and still I survive,
It's the pride that's inside that makes me rise.
Small Tyme: If you a red panther, put your hands up, put your hands up.
Back then, you wasn't even TOP.
It was in the makin', you was just Jerome to me.
Back then, it was just little Tim, it wasn't Small Tyme, but that's new to them.
TopNotch: I remember we was in first period?
Small Tyme: My name is Timothy Williams, aka Small Tyme. I started rappin, well, I say entertaining, my second grade classroom, was my first time, me and TOP did a rhyme, freestyle, we wrote a rhyme our second grade.
Keithan "K-Deezy" Dear: My name is Kethan Dear, K'Deezy.
K-Deezy: My brother Small Tyme and T.O,P., they been doin' their thing for a minute. They been doin' their thing for a long time, rhymin', I remember they used to get stuff together in school, and they used to put it together and have stuff to do in front of 'em, poems, they used to rhyme it out, they always been into it. And TOP, he really been on it since the beginning, since I can remember.
K-Deezy: My thought makin' beats, I don't try to make one particular type beat, if it's a different type, beat, I try to make it broad, I try to make different type of beats, all beats, you know, I wouldn't be stickin' to one page, when I say, K-Deezy do that, K-Deezy can do that. I can make any kind of beat, rock rap, all that. And I'm a computer freak, that's why I do all that type of stuff, anything I can do on the computer, I'm gonna try.
Anthony DeWayne "Buggs" Diego: When I hear one of K-Deezy's beats, I get the energy of, you know, whether I should sing this or whether I should rap this, you know, but, as far as the spiritual energy goes, um, I feel sort of that same thing. When one of those beats is hot, I get the ebergy to say, ok, let me see what I can bring to it. My name is Buggs Diego. Well, real name is Anthony DeWayne Buggs. Sometimes I get the feeling that I need to sing a hook, or just straight up rap it. But I have a little singing influence in me, and so that comes from the church.
Buggs Diego: Clarks Vegas is the place
It's the place that we from,
Group Members: Clarks Vegas is.
Buggs Diego: And no matter what we do,
It's the place that we from.
Yata Dear: What's the hard thing about growing up in Clarklsdale, really is tryin' to do something, tryin' to get jobs and stuff. Clarksdale is small. And the town is so little, every little store around here full, staff's full, you know, so it's really kinda hard gettin' a job in Clarksdale.
Yata Dear: I can take a scene in Clarksdale that was like maybe a bad scene maybe a lot of stuff happened, maybe somebody got shot or whatever. And I can put that in a song to get people to, like you know, lower the crime rate or whatever. So that's how I use that.
TopNotch: We a foster child, but we are all we got
Clarks Vegas is our spot, baby, it be hot.
Small Tyme: I always speakin' the truth about what we feel and how we feel things are goin' on. Especially with the economics in this town. I mean, we need jobs, we need?we don't even have a YMCA in this town here, that's why so much crime goes on in this town here. I think a lot of outsiders don't get it. Don't listen to how the music sounds, listen to what we sayin'.
Small Tyme: From the blues, it was all good news,
I went to see Big Jack Johnson?
TopNotch: You know, you can't change the whole place, you know what I'm sayin'. That's almost like sayin' things ludachrous. However, you know, pretty much get the people that's willing to listen, you know People that just want to have some type of changes in life or whatnot. And then, you know, you work with that. And maybe then you go out and you get the people that you can reach and could be the people they can reach. And you know, it's a transforming experience. It's, you know, a domino effect thataway. So, pretty much, it all starts from that one person just having the drive, have the idea, have the motivation to get something done, but just need just the manpower or the tools or the right essentials just to get that task completed.
Da F.A.M.: Clarks Vegas is the place
It's the place where we from
And no matter what you do,
It's the place that we from (yeah)
Clarksdale is the place
It's the place that we from
And no matter what you do,
It's the place that we from (yeah)
K-Deezy: It's like a lot of covered-up racist stuff goin' on right now, not a lot of in-your-face type racist things.
K-Deezy: It's a small town
With big city problems, lotta shit goin' down
Police can't solve them
Man, it's real bad
Shit really gully
And if you want to talk about it, shit real ugly
K-Deezy: But at the same time, we take that Clarks Vegas name and we just we make it as a fun place for us to get away from all that and everybody know everybody around here pretty much, so. At nighttime, it's a different town, it's Mississippi, but we got clubs we got bars, everybody got cars where they ride and have a little showcase, just like any other place.
