Chuuwee is one of the hip-hop underground's quickest rising emcees, known for his swift lyricism, and various 90s styles in his music. His album Wild Style released today, May 29, through Amalgam Digital.
Q: In the press release, you said with Wild Style you weren’t remaking the 90s, but that the album was simply a 90s album. A lot of artists claim to be reviving the Golden Era sound, though most of them only tackle lyrical themes rather than the actual sound. Do you feel that any artists out there are truly in the movement of reviving the 90s hip-hop sound?
Chuuwee: There’s a handful, and the most important factor of people not knowing about it is that a lot of the artists doing it are up and coming like myself. I have a cool fanbase, but there’s a lot of people that don’t have as big of a fanbase, so they’re doing what is actually considered the 90s. There’s what people believe is the 90s the same as what people believed was the 80s last summer—there’s all kinds of different aspects from the 90s.
Nobody’s really doing the hip-hop aspect of the 90s like that. I do know a couple of artists. The one headlining it or campaigning it as hard as me would probably be Joey Badass. He’s the only person that I’ve heard that I can say ‘Yo, this cat sounds like he’s from ’94.’ Everyone else, they have the elements, or they have something from the 90s here and there, but other than a few artists that I’ve stumbled upon on Youtube or people that I work with or know, nobody’s really doing it like that.
Q: You also said that Wild Style will eradicate “weak rap.” What do you think the elements are that constitute “weak rap?”
Chuuwee: In general, my opinion is my opinion. What weak rap would be to me is probably not the same thing that weak rap would be to somebody else. I personally just feel like weak rap—I don’t know how to explain it in a way that you would get exactly what I’m trying to say because it’s kind of something that’s been resonating in me all my life. For some reason, when I hear some people’s music, it just sounds like this is what they did it for.
You hear people doing similar rhyme patterns in songs they already have out, or people have that same beat production, not a consistent production, but a production that sounds like every single beat on the album. People who who write songs about the exact same thing, but it’s just rapped differently. Stuff like that, to me, is weak rap. I know that people like it. It’s consistent to the fanbase that likes it, but to me, sometimes you can hear that cats are writing that verse just to get that check, or they’re just writing that verse to get that radioplay. They’re just doing this so they can hurry up and put the album out.
Weak rap to me would be when you drop a mixtape, and then a week later you drop an album and they’ve got the same push, sound exactly the same. That’s week rap. Your stuff sounds exactly the same. It’s not consistent. It’s monotone. Stuff like that. Not saying anything. I’m just as interested as the next person. I love women, I love cars, I love money. I would hope to have one chain one day. I’m into that stuff too, but I prefer to relate to everyday life because I hustle more than I splurge. I prefer to hear stuff that can relate to my life, and a lot of the stuff out now, I can’t relate to that. I’ve never seen a Maybach before, and as much as I like Rick Ross, some of Rick Ross is weak to me because I can’t do anything to that. I don’t know anything about that stuff. I sold weed, but never really dabbled into cocaine like that, so I can’t relate to that either, so that would be weak to me because I can’t really understand what you’re talking about. I’ve never done it before, and you talk about it all the time. Every one of your songs is exactly like this. Rick Ross is dope, though, so he isn’t weak rap. Just some of it [laughs].
Q: Maybach Music Group does come to mind when you think of redundant rap.
Chuuwee: I’ll say that the other people on Maybach are weak rap. Meek Mill is starting to grow on me though. Meek Mill isn’t weak. He’s not an artist. He should just keep making mixtape tracks, because his music isn’t artistry to me. It just sounds like him rapping, and it’s not bad, but it just sounds like him rapping.
Q: You’ve got a heavy endeavor ahead of you, because these are the kinds of artists that are favored by fans. When you look at the duration of their careers and see the stability of their success in this sound, how do you maintain optimism over if your methodology will eventually pay off?
Chuuwee: To be honest, I probably don’t have the correct mind state that I need for this type of industry. I’m not really concerned about radio hits because my idea of a radio single and what they should play on the radio is extremely different than everybody else’s. Just being in that mind state, everybody that I’ve ever talked to, I think it’s just me thinking the way I do that keeps my optimism.
I’m trying to explain to people that hip-hop and rap aren’t really that different, but hip-hop, back in the day, people used to do stuff differently. They talked about the exact same stuff, but they made it super-creative, or they made it so no one could understand what they were talking about right away. Nowadays it’s just straight blatant.
I don’t like being straight blatant to the point of where it’s boring or it’s cliché. People get straight to the point now that it’s so overwhelming. It’s like ‘He got straight to the point too, but you guys have the exact same point.’ My point is going to be this way, and if it works, it works. I don’t care. I always had the mentality that if there’s one person that liked it, [it’s good].
Q: A lot of people are creating music that lacks the capacity to be contemplated.
Chuuwee: Not even that. There isn’t music that makes you think anymore. I personally think that when music was first created, it made people think because it related to people’s emotions, and it made people think of times they made it through, or it helped them get through times they were going through. There’s no more emotional intertwinement in music. It’s just everybody wanting to be like these guys because thye’re making a lot of money. It’s not even about you anymore. It’s just about getting your money.
Q: You’re 21-years-old, so you literally came up as the music you create was evolving. Are there any specific moments that you recall where you saw things were starting to turn for the worse?
Chuuwee: I didn’t realize stuff was getting really bad musically until I was leaving 8th grade and going to 9th, so when I got to high school was when I started realizing. I just found maybe six or seven years ago that Bad Boy and stuff like that—even Jay-Z—a lot of haters didn’t like that stuff. Those guys were people like what Big Sean is like for me today. That’s what Hov what Biggie were for people back then who were super into the underground. I just like everything. If it was underground, it was dope. As long as it was dope, it was dope, so when I got into high school and started hearing Ying Yang Twins and Bobby Valentino, I was like ‘This is mad corny. R&B and club songs weren’t like this before.’
I’ve never been into club music, but in the 90s, I had no problem with it. “Peaches & Cream” was one of my favorite 112 songs, and I was like eleven, so I really didn’t start noticing stuff that musically was not inclined to me until I got old enough to understand what I really liked in music. When I was young, I either didn’t listen to stuff, or I hadn’t heard it before. I just liked whatever it was that my parents were play, I either liked it or I didn’t, and if I didn’t, I just tuned it completely out. Once I started getting into music and really paid attention, it was like ‘Man, this stuff sounds really really not cool compared to the stuff I listen to.’ By that time, I was also heavy into the Gorillaz and all kinds of different alternative rock and punk rock. The Misfits are one of my favorite groups of all time. I’ve always been into other music, so to be honest, I wasn’t even paying attention to rap for a couple of years.
By all means, I respect everybody’s hustle, because people forget when you talk about somebody’s negatives you’re not talking about them as a person. I don’t know Big Sean. I met him once at one of his shows, but his music is bad to me. It sucks. Him as a person and him getting his money, that’s fabulous. I never hate on anybody who’s able to become a multimillionaire off of using their words. That’s dope. Those words just aren’t dope to me.
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