Trap Music – Memphis Flyer

“That’s the day my life and his life changed forever,” says DJ Squeeky on looking at the photo above. It was taken when “100 Shots,” the track he produced for fellow Memphian Young Dolph, went gold. “It took everybody to new heights. It showed everybody that you can do it as an independent. People didn’t believe that you could do that.”

DJ Squeeky is speaking with me about the murder of Young Dolph, aka Adolph Robert Thornton Jr., age 36, last Wednesday while he was visiting Makeda’s Cookies. Like Drake, Megan Thee Stallion, Gucci Mane, Rick Ross, Quavo, and others, the city of Memphis is still trying to process the sudden loss of a hometown hero.

“It’s heartbreaking,” says DJ Squeeky, aka Hayward Ivy. “It shouldn’t be like that. I promise you, it shouldn’t be like that. As humans, we’ve gotta fight back against the devil, cause the devil’s got his hands in everything right now. He’s passing out these guns to all the young folks. He’s got their minds different.”

Like so many Memphians, the producer relies on his faith when confronting such loss. He still has deep roots in the church he grew up attending, First Baptist on Beale. Indeed, that’s where he learned to play drums. “My mama still goes there every Sunday,” he says. “I still go there from time to time. And I know Dolph’s family was affiliated with a church.”

It may sound incongruous in the context of the harsh world evoked by trap music. But DJ Squeeky knew Dolph the man, not just the icon, and he’s quick to point out the principles behind Dolph’s artistry. “Look at it this way: Dolph didn’t even have guns and violence in his music. He didn’t pay any attention to that. He wasn’t talking about killing anyone in his songs. That’s the thing nobody paid any attention to. He didn’t kill anybody in his songs.”

Indeed, Doph’s attitude conveyed nothing so much as the triumph of the wit. As Harold Bingo, writing in Complex, puts it, “The Memphis rapper’s braggadocio was underscored by a gift for introspection and a willingness to make sure that everyone went along for the ride with him. Fans who heard his booming bravado and hilarious deadpan punchlines got to feel like they were riding shotgun through South Memphis in his fleet of luxury cars.”

And though tracks like “100 Shots” evoked a world of violence, and his survival against all odds, Dolph’s actions in life belied a generous, compassionate soul who was committed to staying true to his roots. “He ought to be remembered as a person who looked out for his family, who was kindhearted, who was a giving person,” says DJ Squeeky.

And he would know, having worked with Dolph arguably longer than any other producer. “I’ve been knowing him since the beginning. Since 2008 or 2009,” he says. “All the time I was with him, I didn’t know him to do anything — I never saw him do wrong. Or even heard about him doing wrong.”

Instead, the rapper was committed to doing right. Reflecting on Dolph’s famous acts of charity, such as donating to his former high school, or handing out Thanksgiving turkeys, DJ Squeeky notes, “You know, if you’ve been broke all your life, that’s what you want to do. You know how it feels to have nothing. Literally nothing. So you want to give back. That’s what I do. You just want to help people. And he walked the walk, he talked the talk. That’s why I believed in him, man. I believed in everything he did. Nobody told him to do it. He did it out of the kindness of his heart.”

With tragic irony, Dolph was scheduled to hand out this year’s batch of turkeys, typically running in the hundreds, on the very day he was killed. “He had a good, kind heart,” says DJ Squeeky. “People don’t like that. They don’t like it if you’ve got a good kind heart. They want the devil to win. They want everybody to be evil. It’s just crazy. Someone just didn’t like the man. I’m just hoping they bring in whoever did it. They’ll go on and get them on in there and let the process begin. Everybody needs that. It ain’t gonna be right until then. That ain’t gonna bring him back, but you can’t let it be senseless.”

Like many Memphians, DJ Squeeky is leaning on his faith heavily now, and reflecting on the family values that Dolph himself embodied in the way he lived. “Your mom’s teaching is the key,” he explains. “Moms and dads have already faced it. They’ve already lived their lives, they already know how it’s supposed to go. They can’t do anything but tell their children to be safe out here. Stay away from certain people that don’t mean you no good. Sometimes your parents can peep out the people that’s good and bad in your life, even though you accept them for who they are. ‘Your friend ain’t right.’”

Beyond that, DJ Squeeky blames the prevalence of guns as the core problem. “One thing’s for sure: We didn’t bring those guns over here. We had no access to all the new kinds of guns on the streets right now. You’ve got to think about it: 10, 15 years ago, there was no such thing as these guns that are on the street right now. It’s a whole new thing going on right now. Everything’s different. That’s what people have got to look at, more than anything: How did we gain access to them? We never had these guns before. So that tells you one thing: It’s about the money.

“They’re trying to turn us into something like what they’ve got going on overseas. America’s got to be strong, and not be dumb like that. They’re trying to force us into a situation. But not everybody wants to live like Rambo. Killing people at the age of 13, 14 years old.”

In contrast, DJ Squeeky sees Dolph as presenting an alternative way of life, breaking free of such social trends. As Squeeky sees it, it all grew out of Dolph’s faith in his own vision. “He was definitely one of a kind. There ain’t gonna be no more like him. Dolph was something different. He was the definition of independence. When they need an example of independence, just put his face right there. That’s what it looks like when you do your own thing.”

Travis Whiteside

Moneybagg Yo

There wasn’t a group prayer, but the anticipatory energy, the pop and rumble from the crowd, and the obligatory smoke (fog and otherwise), called for one. Someone in the hallway backstage at Minglewood Hall Friday night obliged. “You done turnt up on the city, mane,” the voice said. “The city f*ck with you.” Shouts of affirmation went up in succession and crescendo, rolling through the hallway. Then the crowd of some four dozen folks, more church family than rap posse or crew, climbed the steps up to the stage to bask in that fact and prophecy. Before the sold-out crowd and with Moneybagg Yo at the front, Yo Gotti’s Collective Music Group continued its award tour on the home court.

The three dollar pop-up show, announced the same week, quickly sold out, a testament to Moneybagg Yo’s particular appeal, CMG’s enduring and broadening popularity, and the evolution of live music consumption in the city. Ostensibly, the show was a celebration of the release of Moneybagg Yo’s Federal 3x, the debut album follow-up to mixtapes Heartless (2017) and 2 Federal (2016). The release of February’s Heartless was accompanied by a show at The New Daisy, now familiar (if contentious) turf for hip-hop artists of all varieties. But Minglewood has become a marker of a rising hip-hop star’s ascent and a corollary to FedEx Forum. The call and response between Yo and Gotti, first deployed on the collaborative mixtape 2 Federal, was manifested here: If Yo Gotti’s birthday bash at FedEx Forum in June was an apex, Moneybagg Yo’s Minglewood show was a signal of what is to come from CMG. Friday’s show kicked off a run for the artist that includes stops in Atlanta, New Orleans, and Philadelphia.

Travis Whiteside

Moneybagg Yo

Moneybagg Yo, like CMG compatriot Blac Youngsta, is part of a second generation of the label’s trap artists, men chronicling loss, trauma, gun violence, and intimacy live from the underground drug economy. Yo, however, pushes the mechanics and intricacies of the trap to the background, marshaling a heavy but nimble flow to ruminate on relationships, friends lost to incarceration and murder, and the specific perils of success and fortune. Across 2 Federal favorites, including “Doin’ Too Much,” “Pull Up,” “Lil Baby,” and “Reflection,” and adding new tracks from Federal 3x like “Doin’ It” and “Insecure,” the performance barreled forward with the undeniable rhythms of trap and Moneybagg Yo’s deft cadences.

There were no flourishes or live show transitions. Show openers, including M-Squad Entertainment’s Heroin Young and BlocBoy JB, were community favorites, and there wasn’t a set list per se. But the crowds, on the stage and on the ground, were there for a collective celebration of trap Memphis, trap music, and the ascension of yet another CMG artist to the global stage. The crowd all but expected Yo Gotti, such that when he arrived towards the end of the set and performed “Rake It Up,” the celebration reached a simultaneous fever pitch and relief.

Trap music is a kind of hip-hop blues structure, of which Memphis artists have long been inheritors and architects. Though Moneybagg Yo has not yet found a consistent footing in that trap-as-blues space, the path there is evident. Blues tropes of women, trouble, and heartbreak now find themselves in discussions of infidelities outed on blogs and Twitter timelines; more importantly, the crowds, a diversity of black Memphians not unlike that on the I-40 bridge last July, know. All kinds of church services happen across the city every day of the week, but Friday night was a kind of revival, a recommitment to the next generation of trap in Memphis.

As whispers and shouts about the “new” Memphis music scene reverberate throughout the city’s arts administration elite, Friday’s pop up show served as a notice that the city will only continue to discount black music, black artists, and black consumers at its own peril. Moneybagg Yo, signed to CMG last year with much fanfare, has a distribution deal with Interscope records for Federal 3x via his independent label, N-Less Entertainment, a coup for an artist working in any genre. He has thus far easily topped the iTunes charts, and next week’s sales will likely indicate similar successes across industry metrics.

CMG, like Hypnotize Minds before it, has created its own pocket in Memphis music and in the global music industry, with little support from a city that sells music like FedEx moves packages. The pop-up show alone reflected a robust wrap-around industry of jookers, photographers, videographers, deejays, and journalists, many of whom appeared to be the age of those “disconnected youth” about which there has been much handwringing over the past two years. The artists, performers, and crowds on Friday were about survival and revival, and Moneybagg Yo proved himself to be amongst trap’s preachers. A good portion of Memphis’s 65% black population already knew that. The rest of the city, like the rest of the world, would do well to take notice.