Field hollers

It doesn’t take a master of “country grammar”or a product of the Deep & Dirty South to appreciate the humor and messages found on 613: Ashy to Classy, the debut album by Georgia rap duo Field Mob. But a quick course in slang-sprinkled, drawl-drenched Southern-speak wouldn’t hurt. These guys are from way far down in the country. And they couldn’t sound more countrified if they tried.
Born and bred in Albany, Ga., Darion “Boondox Blax” Crawford and his rhyme partner Shawn “Kalage” Johnson put up no fronts about who they are: country boys who know what it means to be po’. They offer no excuses for where they’re from: a small, south Georgia city best known for being the murder capital of the nation in 1983. And they don’t have any intention of curbing their Southern-fried dialect.
“You come to my hometown and listen to our language and the way we talk — we still got that slave language,” says Blax. “Slaves started out where we from in Georgia before they migrated to New York or wherever they went. Slaves talked this way.”
Kalage chimes in: “If I say I luhv-ded you, you’ll laugh but you know exactly what I’m talkin’ about.”
Indeed, through all the down-home pronunciations, Field Mob’s unadorned, uninhibited rhymes come through on 613: Ashy to Classy. And chances are you’ll know what they’re talking about, too.
For instance, “Project Dreamz,” the album’s first single already getting major airplay on local hip-hop station HOT 97.5, is an upbeat party anthem with lyrics that break from rap’s typical party themes (money, cars, women). “That song is about being po’,” says Blax. “When a person do a song about bein’ po’, it’s not gonna have a fast tempo. But we took a sad song and made it seem like we po’ folks, but happy folks.”
The hook — “If you ever been broke, put yo’ hands up” — is a party chant and testimonial rolled up in one, and something certainly a lot more hip-hop fans can relate to than, say, “throw your guns up.” For those unsure if they meet po’ folks criteria, Blax and Kalage spell it out: “Put yo’ hands up if yo’ broke folks wasn’t able/Ya ate free lunch and ya never had cable/Put yo’ hands up if ya feel my hurt/Have ya ever bathed with soap the size of a Cert?”
As a whole, though, 613: Ashy to Classy offers more than poverty tales. With the opener, “Can’t Stop Us,” Blax and Kalage send a densely-rhymed announcement of their arrival. On “Channel 613, Part 1,” the rappers take us on a fantastical madcap journey through TV land, and share the disillusionment of love gone astray on “My Main Roni.”
Kalage says Field Mob’s aim is to simultaneously entertain, enlighten and tell it like it is. “A lotta people get sidetracked with the skills but it’s all about perfecting the art of telling how you feel. If you telling how you feel, you’ll win. You have to find out how to make a song that you can learn from and at the same time ride to ... but at the same time be true to yourself.”
Blax and Kalage were rapping rivals in high school before they decided to join forces. “My mom kicked me outta the house when I was like 14,” Blax recalls. “I was real bad. I left town and I came back to this high school called Monroe High.”
Kalage, meanwhile, was holding court on the Monroe school grounds each day after lunch, “bustin’ songs” and taking all comers in freestyle contests. “He was defeating everybody, he was the champion,” Blax says. “I used to rap to myself in the mirror and when I heard him freestylin’, I was like, ‘I do that in the mirror to myself, let me try this.’ So I [challenged] him one day and I won.”
Blax’s reign, however, would be short-lived. The next day Kalage reclaimed the throne. From there, he and Blax faced off each day, “challenging each other, beating each other.” Finally, Kalage offered a truce.
Friends and schoolmates were initially surprised by the pairing. “We was from two different worlds,” says Kalage. “When I was in school, I was quiet. I didn’t hang with a lotta folks. He played football, everybody knew him. So you would never figure that we would hook up.”
For Kalage, though, rap was one thing that he could do well. “That was what I had over everybody — you might not like me but I could out-rap you.” Still, he knew he could be better. “I wanted to get with somebody else to make me stronger, to help me. I had went through a lotta people that took it more serious than [Blax] did, but when I got with him he just got on it real quick and was able to do it. He showed me a whole other side of the game, so I was like, ‘Man, we gotta do this.’”
What the duo now aim to do is put the rough, poor side of Albany where the duo grew up — affectionately known as The Field — on the musical map. And they’re doing it by being country and proud.
“We not from the South,” says Kalage adamantly. “We from the country. We are country. People in Atlanta, which is the South, look at us like we country. They laugh at us. You can laugh, but at the end of the day I been me that whole day. The average person, they go through changes for everybody they come in contact with. I’ma represent country everywhere I go. Everywhere I go.”
Field Mob’s 613: Ashy to Classy is released Dec. 12 on MCA Records.

rhonda.baraka@creativeloafing.com