Joe Coscarelli has been covering music for years, perhaps most famously because the face of the Diary of a Song series for The Recent York Times. But his first book, Rap Capital: An Atlanta Story, finally allowed him to dive deep into certainly one of America’s most vibrant rap scenes.
Within the book, Coscarelli charts Atlanta’s contribution to hip-hop, from Freaknik within the late Eighties to artists comparable to OutKast, T.I. and Gucci Mane to the rise of young stars comparable to Lil Baby, Migos, and Lil Reek.
Andscape recently caught up with him to speak about riding with Lil Baby, what makes Atlanta certainly one of rap’s most vital cities, and where you would possibly find the next hip-hop hub.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You were capable of wind up a lot of the reporting for the book before the pandemic hit. How did that affect your process?
Yeah, the timing really worked out perfectly because I attempted to bring something to the book that I wish to bring to all of my work, and it really allowed me to double down on this principle that, to me, one of the best journalism and one of the best music journalism comes from immersion. Whether it’s a star I’m interviewing, like Kendrick Lamar, or a tiny band in Brooklyn or a viral star, I just need to spend as much time with them as possible. It’s not even about one-on-one interview time, necessarily — in fact, I at all times need to have that point to speak. But I also need to be there as a fly on the wall observing something that they’d be doing whether I used to be there or not. I need to only see how they move through the world. See how they live. I need to see what their life is like on a fairly regular day, because I feel quite a lot of people don’t see that side of a musician. You see the output, and also you see what they need you to see on social media, but you don’t really get the kind of mundane idea of the day-to-day. So I like that, and I need more of that in arts journalism specifically.
The opposite a part of it was the concept of watching a journey. I knew I didn’t want this book to be like a history book. It’s not a comprehensive history of Atlanta rap, however it’s following people in real time. The North Star for this project is Hoop Dreams. There’s also a documentary called Dig! that follows these two bands, The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols, over a span of many, a few years to see where their careers go. It was very influential for me. I knew that I desired to get in there with people in the beginning of something and see where it went.
It’s often hard to get that access, especially with famous people. Does working with artists just coming up make that access more possible?
Definitely. One other thing that I’ve learned in my job at The Recent York Times is that you simply’re at all times gonna get more from the guy behind the guy than you’re from the guy. I spotted that pretty early on. Justin Bieber had a latest album coming out and I said, ‘Hey, there’s this dude named Poo Bear hidden within the credits for each Justin Bieber song who’s never given an interview before.’ So I discovered Poo Bear. I desired to hear what Poo Bear needed to say. He’s probably had a crazier life, in some ways, than the wealthy teen child star that he works for. So there’s a few of that philosophy on this book as well. Like, in case you’re interviewing producers, managers, DJs, those individuals are, I feel, at all times going to be less guarded.
The opposite aspect of it’s catching people in the beginning of something. So even Lil Baby — who became an enormous star in the midst of me reporting this book — I did certainly one of his first interviews. I used to be writing about his label, they usually were like, ‘Here’s our next artist.’ And he was like, ‘Why am I doing an interview? I don’t need to be here.’ He was very much not committed to being a star at that time [in 2017], but I used to be there and I met him and we developed some rapport. And each time I’d see him, he would get greater and greater, but he would still know that I used to be that guy that he talked to on the very starting and who engaged with him and was excited by him and his journey. And other people don’t forget that.
What was probably the most difficult a part of being in so deep with the people on this book?
You actually come to feel for people. You see the struggles of every day life in poor neighborhoods, with individuals who felt like they’ve never really had a likelihood in life unless they will do that very rare, almost unattainable thing like being a musician. It’s like winning the lottery. I feel quite a lot of the vitality of the music comes from this, the struggle and the need, but there’s also some desperation. A whole lot of these young men that I frolicked around felt like they didn’t have any options. And you desire to be there for them, insofar as I can be dishonest to say they didn’t see me as some kind of option to help, or a vector of success. You’ve got interest from the media, meaning you’re onto something, right?
So, balancing that is hard. That intimacy that forms with certain sources that you simply’re spending quite a lot of time with, but at the identical time, having to stay, if not objective, at the least removed. I’m not your manager. I’m only a journalist and a chronicler of your life. So, it’s like being near someone in physical activity and seeing how they think and what they undergo, but then not participating in it. It’s a wierd divide.
We’ve had all these hip-hop hubs: Recent York City and its boroughs, California, Detroit, Atlanta. What do you think that the following one is?
What’s been so crazy and funky about covering rap within the streaming era, and I write about this within the book, is that each city has a scene now that could make it to a national or international consciousness. After I grew up between Florida and Georgia, there have been no rappers coming out of where I went to highschool in Orlando. I literally had never heard a rapper from Orlando in my teenage years there. But due to YouTube, SoundCloud, and more of those platforms that allow people to distribute their music, all of those very specific regional scenes have been capable of bubble up.
How has TikTok modified the landscape?
The TikTok thing is interesting because I’m wondering if it’s pushing songs or constructing careers. I feel there’s a giant gap between the 2. People can luck right into a TikTok hit, but I don’t know if that at all times translates to a gradual output or profession. I feel it’s really hard right to begin up that way when your song explodes and has hundreds of thousands and hundreds of thousands of plays, but you’ve never played a concert before. Or perhaps you’ve never even been to a concert before. I’m hearing stories from the labels recently of children who began making music over the pandemic and at the moment are being fought over by the key labels for million-dollar deals who’ve never been to a show before.
Before the pandemic, they were 13 and hadn’t gone to a concert on their very own. So that you’re really asking quite a lot of a teen to show a TikTok hit right into a legacy profession.
What exactly makes Atlanta a “rap capital”?
I feel what makes Atlanta special is its ability to regenerate. The music scene has an actual small-town feel to it. Everybody overlaps. Everybody comes from anyone else. You take a look at someone like Kevin ‘Coach K’ Lee, right? He’s had a hand within the careers of Pastor Troy, Young Jeezy, Gucci Mane, Migos, and Lil Yachty. You’ll be able to trace a lot of Atlanta rap history through this one guy and there are such a lot of people like him. Whether it’s a producer like Zaytoven or someone like Gucci Mane, who brought all these artists up under him. They’re really just constructing on top of one another, but doing something just latest enough each time. I just think Atlanta has at all times pushed it forward, and that’s resulted in these micro-generations of innovators.
There’s a hustle there that isn’t necessarily found in every single place.
Yeah, there’s a chip on their shoulder, which has at all times helped. And I feel that comes from at all times being unfairly looked down upon in rap and usually within the South. Just not being Recent York or LA, there’s an inferiority complex as a city and as a music place. I feel that’s fruitful creatively.
As we approach the fiftieth anniversary of hip-hop, what’s your favorite moment from the culture?
I can only speak to my era, but I feel back to the stuff that blew my mind just like the Lil Wayne mixtape run from The Dedication to around 2007. Just the quantity of music coming out when people realized that they will use the web to flood the world with music. That actually sticks in my mind as each impactful from an industry and an inventive perspective. I feel we’re still seeing the long tail of what he achieved in that run, but in addition personally I just felt like I had a lot music to pour over. I loved it a lot.
Where do you think that Atlanta’s rap scene can be in the following five to 10 years?
I feel it’s a very interesting moment. The more I look back on the era that I cover within the book, the more it looks like that era is over. I’m considering of it as principally the rise of Atlanta through the rise of streaming. But Atlanta has at all times been so good at incorporating trends after which coming up with their very own version, so I’m curious to see how they swerve as we move through the 2020s. I’m excited to see where it goes.