B. Stille of Nappy Roots in conversation
I once met the Hip Hop act Nappy Roots by accident when I randomly stopped by a record store they were randomly visiting. Being a both a fan and a music journalist, I had written a concert preview article about their show in town and I was fortunate enough to find a copy of our local weekly alt-newspaper so they could see. It made their day and I was able to score a photo shoot along with a couple of tickets courtesy of the band consisting of B. Stille, Fish Scales, Skinny DeVille, and Ron Clutch.
Nappy Roots first caught my ear with its commercial debut studio album “Watermelon, Chicken & Gritz” a Kentucky fried experience of rapid-fire rhymes and robust content. Like fellow Bluegrass state native Muhammad Ali, it floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee reaching Platinum status.
The band followed it up with albums such as “Wooden Leather” and others including “The Humdinger.” Today, Nappy Roots can be heard virtually everywhere. The group of friends who met up as students at Western Kentucky University has found a way to reach nearly everyone – soundtracks, play lists, radio stations, promotional videos, and so on.
Our correspondent, Roman Jones rang up B. Stille at his home in Atlanta to discuss a few questions. An edited transcript of that conversation follows.
WG: This year marks the 20th anniversary of “Watermelon, Chicken & Gritz.” What does this album mean for you?
B. Stille: As far as the album, what it means to me, it means everything. This was like our introduction to the world. I had dropped out of college and I didn’t know how it was going to go. Right out of the gate, it went gold in six weeks and a few months later we went platinum. I love that album. It’s one of my favorites. The experience of making that album, it was epic.
When you were working on the album did the band believe it would be a hit?
We were broke college students, some of us just had our first child, it was like do or die. We had to do it or else so that was the mentality. You can probably hear it on every song, that hunger and that passion to make something happen. So no we didn’t know it was going to be a hit, but we felt like we made hit type of caliber of music that we would hope the rest of the world felt like Kentucky felt about it.
What is at the core of Nappy Roots?
Being natural, being yourself, not having to put on, having fun, loving life, loving your family and being able to appreciate the simple things in life. That’s what Nappy Roots is about.
Your latest album “40RTY” was released in 2020. What was it like releasing an album during the pandemic?
That’s all we could do. We couldn’t tour all we could do is record music. It’s a double-edged sword because “yeah we were more isolated” but people were listening to music more than ever. It was a gift and a curse being able to stay home for that long but we were able to take a step back and focus on recording. During the pandemic was such a racial divide as well. A lot of police brutality came out with the death of George Floyd, the Breonna Taylor case and Ahmaud Arbery. Nappy Roots addressed a lot of those things going on in society at that time. It kind of gave us a chance to give our perspective on what was happening in the world. We did a deluxe album called “40RTY+” in 2021 and added 6 songs. That project is pretty powerful.
You mentioned the racial tensions that were going on in 2020. I have to say that I sympathize with Black Lives Matter. I’m Ukrainian and there’s a war going on in Ukraine. Another country is trying to erase the culture of my people. When you see one group trying to dominate another group it makes you very sensitive to situations and groups like Black Lives Matter.
I think the messaging may have thrown people off. Here in America it’s like “yeah black lives matter” but it kind of came across as “only black lives matter” and a lot of people were like blue lives matter, white lives matter, and all lives matter. That’s true but what the statement really means is no lives matter until all lives matter and obviously black lives don’t matter to the degree of other lives. That’s an injustice that this country and the world will have to deal with eventually because it’s not going away and ultimately we’re all human beings and want to be treated fairly just like the people of Ukraine right now.
On a lighter note, Nappy Roots opened up a brewery (Atlantucky) this year. How’s that going?
Amazing. Thanks to the city of Atlanta and a lot of the breweries that got together and vouched for us and helped usher us through this door of owning our own brewery and being one of the first black-owned breweries in the state of Georgia. We want to compare our beers to everyone else’s. Don’t just think because we’re rappers, you’ll give us a pass because we make decent beer. We make great music and we want to make great beer as well. Come and check us out at Atlantucky Brewing, 170 Northside Drive in Atlanta, Georgia.
This reminds me of an interview I heard with Gene Simmons of Kiss many years ago when he said Kiss is not a band, it’s a brand. Nappy Roots has name recognition so why not take it off to other places?
It’s always been more than music for us. Nappy Roots started out in college but it was damn near a fraternity and a sorority. We had the coolest people on campus and we all met up and kicked it. We just happened to the rappers in Nappy Roots. Nappy Roots was like 35, 40, 50 people deep at all times. Nappy Roots was a huge family of nothing but the coolest. Not having to front, being yourself, being leaders in your community and in your peer group that’s what Nappy Roots’ brand is. We pioneered a lot of things in Kentucky as far as banding together with our residual checks before school, investing in record stores, studio equipment and just having a bunch of people down with us who wanted to see Nappy Roots succeed, The culture was way bigger than just the art. The brand of Nappy Roots is bigger than music.
Where is the most interesting place a Nappy Roots song has been played?
President Obama put out play lists when he had his summer vacations. Our song “Good Day” made his one of play lists.
What song should everyone hear?
I want everyone to hear “Backroads.” That was one of the first songs we released from the “40RTY” project. It’s a hell of a video; we got to go to Fish Scales’ hometown of Milledgeville, Georgia. It’s the first video that we ever shot there. It was a homecoming; a bunch of his family was in the video. I love the track and I love the cinematography. Mullah Mugzie put together the video. It’s really dope,
What will they be saying about Nappy Roots In 100 years?
I would say that the world really slept of one of the best Hip Hop bands of all time. And that they would appreciate our music more100 years from now then the people of this generation do now. Even though there are a lot who do, I believe there should be way more.
