By Matt Sonzala
I thought a lot about my time at Murder Dog and the great times that I had traveling, meeting a lot of artists throughout the underground in different cities and different places all over the country, and one of my favorite places to go was Gary, Indiana. Gary, Indiana in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, which was the era that I was around the most, was just this dynamic music scene that didn’t sound like anywhere else. It didn’t sound like the south side of Chicago, it had similarities to Chicago and was definitely a Midwest thing, but the raw realness of Gary was just so incredible. The amount of music that was coming out of a small city like that was just insane. And so I wanted to talk to you, Finger RoLL as you were one of the main people I met back then and I know you were in the studio with a lot of the people I want to talk about. You were one of the men making that sound that I found so dynamic. Your first group that I remember was called Outside but can you tell me about your beginnings and what influenced you to start producing in Gary?
First I started off as a DJ, Djing all the local house parties, little events at high schools, you know stuff like that. I started putting together instrumentals on the turntables and that’s how I got interested in the music and producing. That’s actually how I got my name because I was scratching and some guys from the hood they were like “Hey man, you be rolling your fingers on them turntables.” And they named me Finger RoLL from scratching on the turntables. I turned that into producing instrumentals for the guys in my neighborhood. You know they would come over to my basement and I would throw them some instrumentals, cuz I had the equipment, and that’s what made me see that this would work. From there I went straight into Solid Gold Records, the record shop on Broadway, and I went straight into there and they had a studio in the back and their engineer had just quit on them. So I asked if I learned the equipment, could I come start working out of here? And he told me to go for it. So I went down there and learned the equipment, I was fresh out of high school and I would come there every morning at 8am and stayed there until they closed. That’s kind of what birthed me into the whole music industry, going down to 45th and Broadway and working out of Solid Gold Studios/Record Shop. The studio was in the basement and record shop was in the front. Fred Barnett was the owner. I had a fresh new sound and was a fresh new engineer so I started telling people to come record with me. I started telling all the Gary artists that they now had a place to record. Everyone was coming in there and I was producing and recording, I was fresh out of high school and I had all these artists to work with. I learned the game at an early age.
For me the earliest artists I remember were like CCA and the MCGz and I know there’s a lot more but was this around the time of them coming out? Before? After?
This was around that time, because at that time I had my group Outside, MCGz were there, they had Hitler and Dash and they had Nookie G and then they had Low. So we grew up around that era. We were all doing music. Then later you started to get to CCA and all the other artists from Gary starting to come up. Around that time, music was popping and I was recording all the Gary guys that was in Gary cuz the studio was like, that was the studio to come through and do some new music.
Who were the main influences of that time? What I miss the most in music is the regionality and I feel like the south “took over” so much in hip hop but that Midwest sound of the 90’s and early 2000’s was nothing to be played with. That was some of the most unique music I had ever heard. It was experimental and different vocally and musically. Where do you think that came from for the Gary sound?
Now around that time, Gary was not the safest place, we were the murder capital and all that was going on. So most of our music we rapped about what we saw. Our music was dark because we saw dark type stuff, we saw domestic violence, we saw a lot of shooting and the drugs was popping then. Drugs was heavy. That’s kind of what we rapped about. We wasn’t looking to the south, we wasn’t looking to the west coast or the east coast, even though we soaked that up, we developed our own sound. The only influence that was next to us was the Chicago market, so we were looking at Crucial Conflict, Psychodrama, Do or Die, Twista and those were our motivations. Those artists were on the radio, we didn’t have a radio station.
But in Gary you could hear Chicago radio right?
Yeah we could hear Chicago radio so that was mainly my influence and I would look to them and then hear them on the radio, so we were in the shadow of that Chicago sound and that got us motivated, but we trickled off and did our own sound. Our sound was a dark, grimy and gritty type of sound.
Was that the type of music that was being sold at Solid Gold?
Yeah that type of music was being sold and of course a lot of mainstream artists. You could buy any of the Chicago artists at that time and they were selling all the Gary artists. By that time we got the idea to press up our CDs and tapes, whatever we got we learned how to do it ourselves and sell it locally in Gary. That gave us our own little market. We didn’t have radio but we had the local CD shops like Mic Check and Solid Gold, those were our outlets.
How much influence did mixtapes have on getting the sound out there? Some of my favorite mixtapes from that era were the Straight Up Gangsta Shit tapes and then the Midwest Mobstaz series came out and that was always my gauge of what was going on. Gary seemed to be included right alongside Chicago and other areas on those tapes.
Oh yeah the mixtape scene was great. Actually the For Your Ride mixtapes with DJ Track Don were hot, that’s what we was trying to get on. Then the Straight Up Gangsta Shit was the hardcore tapes and everyone would try to get on those mixtapes. Mixtapes was the kick because that was another avenue for us to get heard. If you were a local artist and you got on one of those mixtapes then you are on there right next to artists who are known and poppin’ so that was a big outlet for us.
In my travels with this music I have gone to a lot of cities and talked to a lot of underground artists and no matter where you go you have people complaining that they are isolated from the industry, or that their city doesn’t support enough. Back then in Gary did you feel isolated?
Um, I kind of did, because we didn’t have a lot of resources but what I did is I started moving around outside of Gary like going to Fort Wayne and other surrounding cities and other cities in the Midwest like St. Louis and Chicago. I took the initiative to go to the Chicago market more and more and networked with the Chicago artists and got in with them and started working together with some. Gary is a small city and we didn’t really have a big market to expand our music. It was hard to come up out of Gary or get noticed in Gary, you had to really put some footwork in.
Back in those days, you mentioned Broadway and I remember driving up and down Broadway and seeing so many buildings closed down. I would tell people about Gary and say “Man it was even hard to find a McDonald’s in Gary,” at the time. The place was so out there but a lot of times that sort of environment cultivates the greatest art. To me some of that music was so unique to Gary. Would you say that Gary still has a unique sound? Because so many places have lost their signature sound. You had a major success with Freddie Gibbs coming out, so I would hope he had a strong influence on the artists there. Would you say Gary has retained it’s unique sound, or what have you seen change over the course of time?
Gary still has its unique sound, of course it has evolved and all that crime and drugs went away to an extent. And when I started traveling outside the Midwest I realized that we kind of had to pick up the tempo a little bit and not be so dark, and other artists caught on to it and you could hear the hooks change up a bit. But a lot of artists stayed right there with that dark, Gary sound. It evolved but maybe we had to switch it up a little bit to get more in the mainstream.
What are your first memories of Freddie Gibbs?
My first memory of Freddie Gibbs is when he came to my studio. He was brought by another artist I was recording, Lil Rod. He brought him into my studio and I just threw on some tracks and I said “OK let me hear you.” And what he did when I played some of my tracks I was like “OK this kid got something right here.” It was a whole different sound from the Gary sound, he was more uptempo, he had a lot of drive and he had the bars. So when I first heard him I didn’t show him that I was digging it but I told him to come back Tuesday so I could see if he was dedicated, it was like a test and sure enough Tuesday came and he was there at the studio and it was on from then on. He was young at the time and I saw it in him. He had that sound that was gonna be new and something different. It was more fire to me because I’m a producer and we want to produce our artists and take something to the next level, that’s what I feed on, that’s how I get my high, by creating.
My wife was going through some boxes of CDs and I am very unorganized so she was pulling out a bunch of dope stuff, including that first Lil Rod CD. I didn’t know that was Freddie’s first recordings. To hear him then even, he was incredible.
Yeah! He had that unique sound. I was very excited to be able to work and produce with him. It was fun working on all the music we worked on, that music was great and something new.
What I noticed about Freddie at first, I mean a lot of people didn’t even know that early on he was signed to Shady Records. He was reaching out to me directly, we were talking all the time at a certain point in time before he blew up or really even came out nationally. I know a lot of artists from big names to the total underground, and Freddie Gibbs was working hard and putting himself out there from day one from what I could see.
He definitely was. We got the calls you know, and it happened kind of quick. But a lot of that was due to the internet. Around that time the internet was coming, there was some different blog sites and blogs kind of pushed us because that was a whole new way of marketing. And like I say, Gary didn’t have a market. So like the internet, and SXSW, the websites, a lot of the stuff that we started pushing started to get around cuz we figured out how to use that internet stuff. It was getting us to places that we hadn’t seen. I had a computer, the dial up, we was on AOL.
Yeah man we all used to chat on AIM. I could reach you right away on there.
So that really kind of helped break the music that we was doing with Freddie and getting it out there.
Well we would be very remiss to talk about the internet and not talk about GaryRap.com and the work that Militant put in to that. Before blogs and before all this other stuff, GaryRap.com was way ahead of the game in getting underground music out.
Yes it was, big time!
If you weren’t in Gary or you weren’t going to The Tip or someplace like that in Chicago, that’s where you got the music. That’s how you found out about everything. GaryRap.com was a crazy site.
And yeah The Tip and EC Illa, and Militant and GaryRap.com that was the spot. If you was on there you was in the spotlight, that was so dope at that time. Seeing that coming up just being a witness to all that coming into play was amazing.
Well you started out in a studio in a record store and that is such a testament to what a community builder record stores were and I think are getting back to today. There’s a lot of record stores that have popped back up and I love the vinyl and tape resurgence. You look back at places like George’s Music Room in Chicago, these are places that are revered as places that developed this culture.
Oh yeah, definitely George’s Music Room and the distributor Barney’s from Chicago, those were the keys. If you could get your music to those spots, those were key distribution for artists in the Midwest. We would take our CDs, like 500 CDs to Barney’s and they was doing consignment back then and that was our outlet, that’s how we were able to get our music out there to everybody. Consignment was great, drop off CDs and get paid later. Now once you started getting some motion, we was able to go to like The Tip or Reubens or The Bomb Records or Mic Check and they might buy them CDs off you straight up. And we would take that money and put it back into promotions, buying posters, getting a van, traveling, you know, that was our hustle.
I loved going to record stores in different cities and seeing a totally different rack of tapes. I loved going to Memphis and finding Memphis tapes, the West side of Chicago was different from the South side, Brooklyn and Harlem were different, it was so amazing and you learned so much about these places through the music.
The main thing I learned around those times is that if you were in it, those people that you came across they became family. You was all into doing one thing, being in the hip hop culture, you became family with everybody that you crossed. You have traveled and met so many people and met so many underground artists, they are like your family. You knew those guys after you interviewed them, and you watched their progress and I know it feels good to you to see some of the artists make it. That’s the feeling I have because I’ve worked with so many of these artists before they blew up.
Yeah I mean to me blowing up doesn’t have to be platinum. If you can make a living at all off this music and maintain and sustain somehow making your art that’s the most incredible thing in the world to me. And talking to you 20+ years later about this history with just a quick phone call, I love it. I love the relationships we built throughout that time. We had some ups and downs musically in the last 20+ years but like I say with the vinyl and cassette resurgence I am also seeing a resurgence of lyricism and street music and it’s coming full circle. You are in Atlanta these days right?
Yeah I am in Atlanta and it is definitely coming back. Being out here in Atlanta, the sound when I came out here was a different sound, they were more about hooks and as long as that beat dropped it wasn’t so much the lyrics it was more of that catchiness. So being out here I learned that but it also takes me back from my days when I started doing music, it was about what we were saying that drew in those fans and when I listen to a record I gotta hear something that make me say “Oh dang I wish I was there!” Or “That is crazy what they just said.” I was always amazed by the lyrics, painting that visual with words. Lyrics always got my attention over the catchiness.
Well I mean Atlanta has produced no shortage of some of the greatest MCs though, from Outkast, I mean the whole Dungeon Family. Rest in Peace Rico Wade, that’s a tremendous loss. I can’t even imagine the collective energy in Atlanta right now because that is such a huge loss. The Dungeon Family brought out the best of the best. To see the resurgence of Killer Mike and what he became as a cultural icon in addition to what I have told him his whole life, that he is one of the greatest MCs. To see what he has become in that way, it’s incredible.
I was a big Killer Mike fan forever. I was a big Outkast fan, even my group we picked our name Outside from Outkast because around that time I was a big fan of Outkast and I wanted some type of slick name that had something with Out in it but I wanted to come from a whole different side of what they were doing so I called the group Outside.
Are you still producing?
I am still producing, I have a studio out here in Atlanta and been producing. I been doing a lot of things out here in Atlanta but music is my #1 priority. Making beats and working with the local artists out here and I am actually producing my son. He is a teen and his name is Jaylin FLight Boy. I want everyone to look out and put him on their radar because I’ve got this kid going and he is about to have some smoke real soon. He definitely has it in him and I have got him in the right direction and pretty soon everybody is gonna know who he is.
I love to see that. Bun B just toured in Japan and took one of Pimp C’s sons with him. So the legacy is continuing.
Yeah I actually know the promoter out there that got him out there.
I’m sure you do, I bet Shu of 2Tight Music cleared out your closet.
Oh he definitely did. He is always calling me asking me for all the music from Gary and he called me up one day and I am here in Atlanta and he was in Gary and asked me to get a hold of some of the old Outside CD’s and other things, and I gave him my parents address and I had a box full of CD’s and he went there and copped those CDs man and he told me that people out in Japan love the music from Gary and he is taking those CDs back out there.
Are there any other artists you have been working with lately that we need to be on the lookout for?
Yeah man I have actually been working with Crime Mob. They been coming to the studio and making some amazing stuff. They are working on a new album, since their song “Knuck if you Buck” was everywhere, I think they will be coming out hard. I took a trip down to Memphis a while back and did some music with Crunchy Black and shot a video with him as well. I been to Memphis a few times and worked with Project Pat and some others. And I can tell you this but I am also working on some new music with Kool Moe Dee! I’m a hip hop fan so I’m like man if you still there I might come after you and say let’s do some records. Kool Moe Dee has been working out of my studio for the past year and we have some great music that we are about to release. You will hear something soon.
@fingerroll1
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