CONCRETE: Where are you from?
Openmic: I'm from Nashville, Tennessee. I've been here my whole life. My family is from Chicago, but I've been here since I was 2 years old.
CONCRETE: Where did you go to high school?
Openmic: Pearl Cohn.
CONCRETE: What brought your family to Nashville?
Openmic: They came here to work. My dad is a musician. He came down here to follow some opportunities. We had nobody here. My whole family is back in Chicago.
CONCRETE: What kind of music does your dad do?
Openmic: He's a jazz musician.
CONCRETE: Your music has a lot of jazz influence. How did growing up with a father who was a professional jazz musician shape you musically?
Openmic: I didn't grow up on hip-hop. We didn't have hip-hop in my house. It was mostly jazz and gospel. There was not a lot of r&b, not a lot of soul music even. Maybe a little if it was classic like Stevie Wonder or Michael Jackson. It was mostly jazz in the house. So when I first started rapping I had to figure out a way to adapt hip-hop to the music I was already hearing. I didn't have beats. I started rapping when I was 13. I just started freestyling over top of stuff that wasn't really meant to be rapped on. It's a major influence now cause I still do the same thing.
CONCRETE: Did your parents ban hip-hop from the house?
Openmic: Well we were young. We couldn't watch certain TV shows and stuff, basic kids' restrictions. It wasn't so much they were anti- hip-hop. Definitely a Christian based household, major religious background. It was more like, 'you're too young to listen to this right now.' Hip-hop had a more negative stigma then to my parents than it does now.
CONCRETE: You started rapping at age 13. When did you start recording your music?
Openmic: I started recording when I was 17. That was in the closet of my sister's close friend's apartment. (laughs) We just started cranking out songs. I started sounding like Rocafella, like Jay-Z or Cam'ron. Those were my biggest influences at the time. But people just respected the fact that I could go of the top of my head. When I started writing things down I didn't know how to do that. So I just adapted it to other people I heard before. But my freestyle is where I really got my own sound from.
CONCRETE: With freestyling, how and where did you showcase that ability? Battles, cyphers?
Openmic: Everything man. In high school I almost got suspended for rapping in the cafeteria. (laughs) The principle came up to our table and was like, "If y'all say one more rap I'm kicking y'all out." When I was 13 I started rapping on the back of the MTA bus. I want to say it was the 3 West End bus. I started rapping there going home and to school. It was battles, kind of. But I was younger than everybody else. So if I said the slightest, half-way decent thing it was way ahead cause I was so young. But then I started getting good at it, and I started battling at school. But it didn't last long because people didn't want to battle me cause it would have been an automatic loss. (laughs) I didn't really stick with it either. That's not my strong suit at all. Nashville's not really a battle rap city. There's really no route for that. (We would) battle, cyphers, making up songs. When we had a substitute teacher, we weren't trying to hear what they trying to say, so we'd sit in the back of the class and rap. Just stuff like that all the way through school.
CONCRETE: What recorded, completed projects have you done to this point?
Openmic: The first one that we actually did and really tried to create a tape with was A Different World. I put that out Freshman year of college, I'm a senior now. After that we put out For The Rebels which was 2011. We just released Molotov last November, and it's done real well. Three under belt now. The fourth is on the way.
FOR THE REBELS MIXTAPE HERE.
CONCRETE: How do you describe your style?
Openmic: It's consciously fresh. If I had to use a term, consciously fresh. It's self inspired. Do you ever talk to yourself when no one is around. Sometimes you even catch yourself talking out loud. My music is the rhythmic form of that. A lot of the things I touch on are just random streams of thought that connect to create an overall feeling rather than something more strategic. It's not the more common place that you find in rap like, four bar - four bar - four bar format. It can go super out-of-space and then come super down-to-earth. Consciously fresh, approaching music with something to say, having a story to tell, an emotion to relay, or just going through a situation and getting those emotions out. At the same time you have your mass appeal music. You may have a catchy punch line, catchy hooks, things that many people can relate to at the same time. I like fashion a lot too, so your going to hear a lot about fashion and the way I dress.
CONCRETE: We loved the song Rock-n-Roll that ripped straight through with no hook. Are people taken back by that or are they feeling that?
Openmic: Now people are starting to get it. With songs that I do like that, you either get it or you don't. Then maybe two years from now you'll get it or may not. It's an acquired taste so to speak. People have been getting more lately, cause I've been doing it so much. People are now saying, "He's dope. He's a new type of thing, another level." They'll really listen and really start to hear it. We did a song just for the internet called "Run and Hide" and it's probably one of my most abstract paintings musically. It's done better than any individual song we've put out on the internet. People are like, "Wow. This is one of the most amazing verses we've heard especially from an underground artist." I think people are really starting to gravitate towards it inside Nashville and outside as well. It's a blessing.
CONCRETE: Last summer you stayed in New York. What did you do up there?
Openmic: I had an internship with 10 Deep. It was crazy. I was out there for an internship, but I was out there for rap as well. I've been in Nashville my whole life. Just being in New York is crazy. Being out there, the whole energy, the way there's no trees and grass unless you go to a park or something. (laughs) It's like a micro-chip. It took my game to a whole other level. It's how the grind works. Everybody in New York is busy. People just walk faster in New York. So that experience within itself was great. Being at 10 Deep really advanced me on an artistic level even though I was there for marketing reasons not design. I don't do fashion design yet. But being out there just gave me so much inspiration. Being able to talk to the owner over lunch. Eating a grilled cheese sandwich and this man is the owner of 10 Deep. Seeing his sketches and ideas and the other designers as well, Kareem and all of them. There designs were really dope. I saw them when they were on little scraps of paper and now I'm wearing them. Just to see that kind of thing happen gives me so much inspiration. It's like seeing a dream come to reality. More than anything I just took away the whole culture of New York and that element of creating what you see in your mind.
CONCRETE: On your project Molotov you worked with Ducko McFli. How did you guys link to put that project together?
Openmic: This wasn't supposed to be. Molotov, originally from that relationship wasn't supposed Molotov. It wasn't supposed to be Mic and Ducko. It was supposed to be me looking for some beats. (laughs) Ducko wouldn't e-mail me any beats. He was like, "Just come to the house. Come to the house." So I was like, "Aight." I was basically being stubborn like, "No you're going to e-mail me beats." And he's say, "Come to the house." That goes on for a minute, and I'm like, "OK we'll get up eventually." Finally I go to his house and listen some beats, and I'm like, "Whoa." It was some of the most off-the-wall beats. Ducko is extremely talented. At that moment he gave me a CD with 8 beats on it. I took those beats home for maybe two days or so, and I had songs ready to go for like 6 of them. I came back to lay them down and did all 6 in like an hour or two. He was like, "Yo, we should do a whole tape." And I was feeling so good about the music at that point I was like "Let's do it." At that moment once we finished the last song, it was like, "OK let's start making some more beats. Let's go ahead and knock it out." Cause I was only going to be there for so many more days. I was fixing to go out of town. The same session I brought him what I had back for those songs, the verses back, that was the day we decided, 'Yeah we're going to do tape.'
CONCRETE: What's the overall feel of Molotov?
Openmic: It's all explosive. Molotov went places I couldn't go on For the Rebels musically. It's because I wasn't in the situation where I was working with any producers at all. For the Rebels has 2 beats from people that I actually know. Everything else I found, random songs. I set it up like this if For the Rebels was the protest so to speak. You have the voice speaking up like, 'Yo we're tired of this.' Molotov is, 'We're taking it past the protest. They're not listening, so we're going to throw a molotov cocktail and blow up the building.'
CONCRETE: Are you working on the next project?
Openmic: Yeah. We're working on For the Rebels 2. For the Rebels 2 is like Molotov is the winning of the war or rebellion. For the Rebels 2 is once you burn down the White House the establishment or system, you start to rebuild it. How do you rebuild it without putting those same things that we hated so much in the beginning, without the ideas growing back when you rebuild the building. It's kind of like from the inside out. We started from the outside. We tore down the inside. Now we're rebuilding the inside. We're trying to make sure we don't become the same thing we hated in the first place.
CONCRETE: You use a lot of rebellion themes in your music, titles, artwork. What's the underlying message behind it? It seems to coincide with whole Occupy protests.
Openmic: I still don't know how I feel about the whole occupy movement as a whole. I feel like it's necessary. I feel like the voice is relevant. I feel like the people need to speak up and say some things. But some of their approaches and the actions behind it I can't really get behind. I feel like it's definitely necessary. But my music has nothing to do with that. And honestly, I know about politics to a certain extent, but I'm not a politician. I don't want to be a Senator. I'm not claiming to be the new voice of the people. I'm not Lupe Fiasco. The only time you can do something that's actually different is when you're completely yourself. The rebellion is about non conformity more than anything. It's about you can be a rebel and look like anybody else. You can be a rebel and have some of the same ideas as other people. But at the end of the day you know within you, deep down, who you are at the core of your existence who you are and you follow that to a fault regardless of what anybody says. No matter what if you know within you for a fact that this is who I am and you embrace that, that's what the rebellion really is. Somewhere when you go from deep down to the surface sometimes we lose what that is. It's a lot of self reflection, being consistent with who you are. Who you are as a man or a woman. That's what my message is.
CONCRETE: What are some of the good things that Molotov has done since you dropped that?
Openmic: People are saying that Molotov is better than For the Rebels. We've been sitting on Molotv for so long that I'm tired of it. Well I can't say I'm tired of hearing it, but it's not new anymore to me. It's not likea new CD that you pop in. We've been had this. But people out here are like, "Yo! This is dope." It's already done more numbers and downloads and views and stuff in one week than For the Rebels did in 5 months. So I'm like, 'Wow. People are really feeling this music.' So it's real positive. More blogs are picking it up, more websites. It's getting more attention around the country rather than just inside Nashville. We're just fortunate.Me and Ducko are going to be doing more work. (laughs) People like it, and we like it, so we're going to keep doing it. I look forward to it.
CONCRETE: Do you think you get the credit you deserve yet for your music?
Openmic: I work really hard. I study music. I study everything from lyricism to time changes to the iconography of like A Tribe Called Quest and what Wu-Tang did for the culture, everything. I really feel like a lot of people in hip-hop period, underground, commercial, whatever, aren't doing the types of things that I'm doing with the people around me. It's not just me. From the videos to the graphic design to the pictures we put out, I don't think people are really in tune with it. Once we find the middle ground the level of exposure is going to be really crazy. Plus, I want to be one of the greatest rappers that ever lived. I'm just going to keep working extremely hard. I encourage everyone that's in the Nashville underground culture we have that's exploding right now to continue to go extremely hard. Cause being in New York, these guys ain't no better than us. I could have brought 3 artists from Nashville with me to New York and just murdered every show that I went to. So everybody man keep going. Keep going crazy (laughs).
CONCRETE: You just dropped your first mixture titled Don't Be S.A.F.E. How did you come up with that title and what exactly does it mean?
Trinidad: Don'r Be Safe. Safe is an acronym for Sensitive as fuck everyday. There's a lot of different ways you can take that, cause it's kind of weird. For me personally, people are sensitive and they let the smallest things in life change their outcome of a day or that year. Things that you can't change anyway. And I feel that life would move a lot smoother if people weren't so sensitive about everything every God damned day.
__________
CONCRETE: Who did you work with on the production for this project?
Trinidad: Actually those beats were all free online. I just found them and started doing music with them. Me and my engineer just put them together.
_________
CONCRETE: Where did you record the album?
Trinidad: At my boy Justin Patrone, ATL. He's a really good engineer here in Atlanta off Ponce De Leon.
____________
CONCRETE: You've talked about the project like it was almost an accident that it happened. Can you talk about the process of making this project?
Trinidad: My cousins "The Summit" they do music. They were rocking with some other guys that I'm really cool with called Them Boys Music. This was last year around November. When I started hanging around them a little more, from time to time I would do some music. When this year came about I kind of split from every body and was just focused on doing my business thing. Then I got in some little trouble or whatever, and I looked back on life and thought, 'I don't have any accomplishments as a man.' I did the music, because when they always told me, "Man you've got the gift." My cousins and friends would always say, "You got the juice. You should do it.' So I took them up on it and did my whole project. That was about 5 months ago. I took about two months, found somewhere to record, started writing, finding the beats and put it together.
CONCRETE: What are some of the good things that have resulted from your buzz?
Trinidad: For a guy like myself who just made the Don't Be S.A.F.E. album for my friends and family, to be in Complex Magazine's web article listed as one of the Top 10 New Artists Out of Atlanta. The Fader presented my mixture when it first dropped. I've been doing shows in other cities like Nashville and New York. I been meeting some really nice people. I did a really great photo shoot with the legendary Jonathan Manyen. Just a lot of cool things. I'm doing A3C this year in Atlanta, getting ready to turn up. I'm doing CMJ in New York.
______________
CONCRETE: Your name Trinidad James, are your folks from there?
Trinidad: I was born there. Me personally, I was born there. I was born in Port Au Spain, Trinidad. At first my name was Nick James, but I saw there was another rapper named Nick James while I was making my tape. He's from Cali if I'm not mistaken. I wanted that guy to have his own lane, cause I know how I feel about doing my thing and not wanting anyone to be like me. So I just let go of the Nick James name. That's a name that I inherited. Not as a rap name, but just as a nick name from the guys I chill with. So I was just like, "Fuck it. I'm going to rep for were I was born." Because my music is really about my life, true, real things that happened. So me just putting my name as Trinidad James just made sense.
CONCRETE: Have you traveled back to Trinidad since coming to America?
Trinidad: Yeah. Actually last year I was blessed enough to go back and chill with my family and have a good time. It was a real blessing.
______________
CONCRETE: Was this before you recorded your project?
Trinidad: Yeah.
______________
CONCRETE: What part of Atlanta are you from?
Trinidad: A little bit of everywhere. I grew up off Collee Road, Zone 3 Atlanta, the Forest Park area, then the South Side, Clayton County, Riverdale, Valley Hill. A little bit of everywhere. I went to school on the West Side right by the West End train station.
_______________
CONCRETE: Can you tell us about your Gold Gang Movement?
Trinidad: That's basically the individuals you will see me hanging around tough. Those are my boys. These are all people who individually, without me doing music, before my music, they were go-getters. The whole Gold Gang Movement is a mentality honestly. It's about you thinking about life, and you wanting to be a winner. Gold is first place. When you wake up in the morning, I want you to have that winning mentality. You want to win. You want to succeed. You don't want to wake up with no purpose in life. I want you to wake up thinking like, "Man shat am I going to do today? What am I going to accomplish?" Besides the little things that you have to do in life. We all have to get up and go to work. It's something new that we're doing to help us get somewhere better in life. Cause we're not comfortable just getting up and working a 9-5 per say.
CONCRETE: Besides the symbolism, what is about gold that you like?
Trinidad: I'm a vintage type of guy. I like old school shit. My fashion is all over the place, but I love vintage. Gold, it just makes sense. I watched my dad wear gold growing up. I watched artists like Slick Rick, Rakim, that whole time when it was gold crazy. That era just stuck in my mind. Platinum is cool and all the diamonds is cool, but gold was just that shit to me.
________________
CONCRETE: What's your approach to being fly and fashionable?
Trinidad: I'll wear whatever the fuck I want. Me personally, I don't have no limitations on what I'll wear for the most part. If I feel comfortable in it or I like it or I want to express a certain look this day, I'm going to put it on and boom, let's go. Whatever you think about me is your opinion. God gave it to you, I respect it. It don't change shit in my life. I'm good. I'm not just caught up in high end brands. I'm not even that big on high end brands. I'm really a street wear master. I fuck with street wear really tough. But I've got my own twist on it, cause I've got vintage looks too. I like old school. You see me perform in old school style Versace shirts and shit like that. But you'll catch me coming up the street in some leopard print pants, leather vest. It's no telling how I feel that day. I've got a really nice kick game that I take pride in. I don't people to think, 'Oh I just started buying shoes' just because I'm an artist now and that's what artists do. I've been collecting shoes. If you do your research, you'll find that I've been collecting shoes. Seriously.
_________________
CONCRETE: What are your all time favorite shoe?
Trinidad: The Air Jordan II, the original one from 1987. It's just cool cause that's the year I was born. That's my all time favorite shoe. That particular one, the one that came in the original box with all the different pictures and colors on it. That one. It was like Italian leather. It was a really good shoe just in general. I'm still trying to get a pair of those. But I'm a really big shoe conessouir. I'm a fan of Jeremy Scott shoes. They're really dope. They kind of express my fashion. They express me as a person, so I really like his shoes. I'm a really huge fan of Versace. Versace Loafers and stuff like that. I'm working my way up to afford those things, cause they're expensive. Nike of course. I'm a Nike head. Jordan is close to the heart. As far as one shoe, the Air Jordan II that came out in '87.
