Vinyl Record: Grip Plyaz, Fuck Dat Hipster Shit

The towering talent known as Grip Plyaz (yes, grip pliers) is easily the most significant anomaly within Atlanta’s rap scene. He prides himself on being “more ’hood than hipster,” but the tag barely hints at the Old Fourth Ward-bred MC’s duality. Reared on 808 bass and skateboards, Grip evades easy categorization. Since his days as one half of the late-’90s duo the Nobodies, he’s laid his swaggering baritone down over everything from synthed-out, ghetto-tech beats produced by Rob Wonder to trunk-rattling street anthems more suitable for BET’s “106 & Park.” Somewhere in between, he’s creating a niche that could refashion the Southern hip-hop archetype for the better.
— Rodney Carmichael

Basically, I grew up right there on the corner of Parkway and Ponce de Leon in the apartments that sit right across the street from the Taco Bell. So I grew up around the whole dope game. And I pretty much learned from my brother’s lessons to stay away from that — from the trials and tribulations he went through getting caught up in the dope game, doing time and stuff like that. I learned that wasn’t the way to go growing up. I had to come up with a better plan.

What turned me toward music was one of the members of this rap group called Y’all So Stupid. He stayed upstairs above me and he kinda enlightened me on some shit ’cause he was skateboarding. He was doing all that shit Pharrell was doing back in the day. Another member from that rap group was H2O, so they kinda opened my eyes up to a whole different level of the game than just gutter, D-boy stuff. I appreciated it, just being different. Just cause you’re in the ’hood doesn’t mean you got to keep it ’hood. It’s more stuff in the ’hood than you think.

People try to categorize us and put us in a box sometimes because we’re different and above the norm. We don’t do crunk music, our jeans are slim, but just because we skateboard that don’t mean I’m a fucking hipster. How the fuck you gonna call me a hipster? Just because you can’t define what we got going on? Just because we look hip, we hipsters? I just got tired of being categorized with that shit, so I just came up with the song “Fuck Dat Hipster Shit.”

Pretty much, I was sitting around at the crib getting blowed one day and my manager just gave me a CD with a bunch of instrumentals on it. I listened to it and it just started talking to me. I came up with the hook for it, and I just ran with it from there.

By me being a born and bred ATLien, I’m trying to broaden the world’s vision and let them know it’s more than what you think down South — more than the shit you hear on the radio or the shit you see on the videos. I’m trying to get to the level where I don’t have to go back to making pizzas no more. But that also keeps me humble and let’s me know you still gotta do what you gotta do in the meantime. I gotta provide for my son some kind of way, and until I get that deal, you’ll see me walking right down the street from the MARTA train station, going to Edgewood Pizza.