Noisey Atlanta' dances with the Devil in episode 4

? If you've been following along with the weekly roll-outs of Noisey's ten-part documentary on Atlanta trap rap, you already know the latest ep dropped yesterday. It begins with host and narrator Thomas Morton catching up with the infamous ATL Twins as they discuss all things Gucci Mane. But the real key to this episode is a character who gets little on-screen time despite playing a significant role in where things go from there.
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? Introduced by Morton as "the guy lurking in the corner" about five minutes into episode four, the man who goes by the name the Devil was born Derek Schklar. In a sense, Schklar has been lurking behind the scenes of Atlanta trap rap for years. Before becoming an artist of his own he managed other Atlanta rap talent such as Pill and Trouble, whom he introduces Noisey cameras to later in the episode upon taking them to Duct Tape's Edgewood turf. The highlight comes near the end when Morton, after taking one pull too many from Trouble's weed, feels a state of hood paranoia coming on.
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? embed-1Schklar played a similar role in introducing audiences to the gritty, somewhat sensationalist, realism that largely defined such videos as "Trap Goin Ham" (2009) and "World Goes Round" (2011) by Pill and Trouble, respectively. You might say Schklar has been taking voyeurs to the trappier side of Atlanta rap for the better part of a decade. "I come from a school of rap where if you ain't pissing anybody off, you ain't telling the motherfuckin' truth," Schklar told me back in 2012 while I was working on a cover story about rap's indie-driven video director movement.  
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? Since then, Schklar has parlayed his hood pass into his own creative production as an independent filmmaker (the Derek Schklar side) and rap artist (the Devil side). He dropped his second mixtape/album VIOLENCE last April and is currently working on several other music projects as well as a feature-length narrative. You can find most of his work, including VIOLENCE and the short film Article 90 on his website One Thousand Thieves. 
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? As for the Noisey Atlanta documentary, I had an extensive conversation last week with host/narrator Morton. A local native raised in Marietta, he told me he saw parts of Atlanta while working on this documentary that he never knew existed while growing up here. I'll have more from our convo — including his reaction to criticism of the documentary and whether or not he really didn't know who Big Meech was in episode one — in the weeks to come.