1 of 5
photo by Olaf Growald
Lou CharLe$
2 of 5
photo by Rene Martinez
Lou CharLe$ at Lola’s Trailer Park
3 of 5
provided by Key Latrice
Key Latrice
4 of 5
Renizance
5 of 5
Smoothvega
On the northside of Fort Worth, between boxy warehouses and darkly lit roads upon which trains and big rigs rumble along, an inconspicuous storefront houses the most unlikely of tenants — a recording studio, where budding rap, R&B, and hip-hop artists hope to make some magic. It’s about 7:30 p.m. at Music in Focus Studio. Rapper Lou CharLe$ is in the booth, spitting lyrics into a microphone while mix engineer Jose “Chico” Santiago listens from the other side of the window. They’re making finishing touches on “Check,” an unreleased single.
Music in Focus isn’t very big. There’s no massive mixer one typically imagines in a professional recording space. Just one small room with speakers, a keyboard, some audio equipment, and an adjacent booth with a microphone. Still, despite its humble size, the space has played host to all sorts of talent — even a guy named Leon Bridges.
Outside the recording booth, lounging on a couch where Bridges himself has sat, CharLe$ says he’s not looking to achieve the same level of success as Fort Worth’s Grammy-winning, hometown hero. Don’t get him wrong — of course CharLe$ wants his music to reach the world. But he also doesn’t see the need to leave home to do so.
“I don’t want to be a Fort Worth artist,” CharLe$ says. “I want to be an international artist that’s based in Fort Worth.”
Fort Worth, for the most part, still carries the stereotype of being a country music hub. It’s called “Cowtown” after all, home to legends like Pat Green and Sonny Burgess; and for years, Billy Bob’s Texas — “the world’s largest honky-tonk” — has reigned as one of Fort Worth’s top music venues.
But the city’s musical landscape has begun to change in recent years. In 2017, Fortress Festival launched in the Cultural District, its lineup placing particular emphasis on pop and hip-hop artists. Last year, the newly opened Dickies Arena — designed to be the new home of the Fort Worth Stock Show & Rodeo — welcomed more than 12,000 fans at its first big concert. The act? Rap-rock duo Twenty One Pilots.
To help local artists, Hear Fort Worth — the music arm of Visit Fort Worth — launched in 2016, offering resources like recording opportunities and grants to go on tour. But the organization is also making conscious efforts to spotlight rap and hip-hop.
And CharLe$ is a big reason why.
Scene and Heard
CharLe$ remembers his first encounter with Hear Fort Worth. It was 2017, during a town hall event meant to bring together local musicians to bounce off ideas on how the city can better serve its artists. Wild Acre Brewing Company was the venue, and, naturally, singer-songwriter types in beards and fedoras dominated the crowd.
“I’m looking around, and I don’t see anybody that looks like me,” CharLe$ recalls. So, he raised his hand and said, “Hey, I see you’re doing all this cool stuff for music, but are y’all doing anything for rap or hip-hop?”
The statement went off like a lightbulb for Tom Martens, Visit Fort Worth’s creative director and one of the spearheads behind the Hear Fort Worth initiative.
“It’s not that we didn’t want to,” Martens says. “We don’t know what we don’t know, so bringing that to our attention — who some of the players were on the scene and how we can help the problems and issues — [CharLe$] helped us identify them.”
CharLe$ and Martens would continue to meet about how the city could push forward its rap and hip-hop scene, and from there, the genre began to move toward the forefront of Hear Fort Worth’s efforts. CharLe$ found himself performing at the Fort Worth house at South by Southwest in 2018 and again in 2019, when he hosted a Hip-Hop Happy Hour and shared the stage with friends Smoothvega and Solar Slim (as well as Chico Santiago, who’s also CharLe$’s DJ). Back home, Music in Focus Studio would serve as a venue for a Hear Fort Worth artist mixer, attracting rap and hip-hop artists in a more comfortable environment.
But no slight to the traditional guitar-wielding, fedora-wearing musicians of Fort Worth. CharLe$ found friends among them — he once performed an intimate set at an open house for 6th Ave Homes, the real estate company run by Green River Ordinance guitarist Jamey Ice; and he calls Grady Spencer a pal.
“It’s cool when I get in front of these different audiences,” CharLe$ says. “A lot of times, we’re like, ‘Hey, man, we’re just gonna do what we do, and whatever happens, happens.’”
Martens also advocated for CharLe$ to perform at one of the city’s largest events, the MAIN ST. Fort Worth Arts Festival. Had it not been spoiled by rain, 2019 would have marked the first year a hip-hop artist made the music lineup. According to Martens, however, CharLe$ will be back this year to take the main stage.
“One of the top things [visitors] ask about is nightlife and local music,” Martens says. “It’s also a talent attractor for the Chamber of Commerce — because one of the biggest things people ask when they’re moving a business is, ‘What’s the nightlife/entertainment/fun look like in the city?’ The more things we can have to showcase, the better we can sell the city from a visitor, chamber, and entertainment perspective.”
The Veterans
While newfound initiatives are helping promote the genre, hip-hop isn’t by any means a new concept in Fort Worth.
Renizance, for example, is a veteran on the scene. Before breaking out as a solo artist in 2015, he was a founding member of rap group Immortal Soldierz, which began in 1997. Back then, there was no Hear Fort Worth. No Facebook or Instagram. No metric to count how many fans an artist had. Renizance remembers doing all marketing himself, handing out CDs at flea markets and car shows.
“That was pretty much the way to do it back then,” he says. “If you want to get out there, you really have to work.”
Smoothvega, too, has been a staple of Fort Worth’s hip-hop community. Like Renizance, his journey to success wasn’t a straight shot. One challenge during the early part of his career was simply booking shows — a struggle that eventually gave rise to his live entertainment company, Premier Live. Now, alongside promoting his own music, he works to route tours and gets local up-and-comers to open for national acts.
That’s another thing — ask Smoothvega to name five talented artists under the radar, and he has difficulty pinpointing exactly whom. “The scene as a whole is under the radar,” he says.
Despite the city’s efforts, artists like Lou CharLe$, Renizance, and Smoothvega still say that hip-hop hasn’t quite had its big break in Fort Worth for various reasons. For one, there’s what Smoothvega calls the “scene within the scene” — Fort Worth’s sound is incredibly varied, and different sounds come from different regions.
CharLe$, for example, comes from the college scene — the area around TCU where “backpack rap” (an East Coast-influenced style that’s based on lyricism and wordplay) is prominent. Smoothvega and Renizance come from the North Side, where rap has a Latin influence. Then there’s Fort Worth’s East Side, where trap rap is popular among urban and African-American audiences.
“There’s different pockets,” Smoothvega says. “It’s very rare that you have everybody come together.”
Rap culture is also inherently competitive, so artists don’t often interact with each other in friendly ways, Renizance says.
“One particular artist I’ve seen, he started bubbling up; and as soon as he started bubbling up, I started seeing other artists doing diss songs on him. It’s a competitive thing,” he says. “The artists, I feel, are the ones who are competitive. But I feel like the citizens, the actual people that ain’t rappers, they’re quick to support us.”
Cowtown, a Hip-Hop Town?
That competitive nature may be swaying the opposite direction, though, in small ways. When it comes to new talent, Smoothvega and Renizance are quick to name-drop Key Latrice — a 25-year-old rapper who, at press time, was recording her debut EP with Music in Focus, set to release early 2020.
Latrice started taking music seriously around age 18, writing candidly about her personal life. Her song “Pain,” released last year on Spotify, speaks to a past lover who abandoned her and her young son.
“[With] hip-hop, there’s a lot of good messages, a lot of medicine in the music,” Latrice says. “In my music, I believe in having messages, speaking knowledge ... I want people to focus on what’s going on in my mind. Not too many women speak enough about it. I want to be that person.”
Her music career is looking hopeful, she says, as she sits in a crowded downtown Starbucks bouncing her months-old son, appropriately named Rhythm. She’s particularly grateful for the support from fellow artists like Smoothvega and producers like Chico, who even lets her bring Rhythm to the studio during recording sessions.
“I get a lot of respect from almost all the Fort Worth artists that I know,” she says. “They treat me like I’m Lauryn Hill.”
So, could Fort Worth — the city of cowboys and country music, hipsters and folk singers — become a hip-hop town one day? Lou CharLe$, Smoothvega, Renizance, Key Latrice — they all think so. But when it comes to being a hip-hop-friendly city, there’s still room for growth. A lot more growth.
For one, Fort Worth needs more venues that not only play hip-hop but understand the unique nuances of the genre, CharLe$ says.
“A rap show’s just run differently from a rock, blues, or country show,” he says. “Rap shows are more personal. At least speaking for my shows, I’m really in tune with the audience. I can’t zone out and just kill you with this 30-second guitar solo, but what I am doing is giving you my energy. We’re feeding off the energy.”
And, frankly, Fort Worth just needs someone to go big, CharLe$ says. Someone who’ll become the Leon Bridges for the rap scene — who’ll put Fort Worth on the map and solidify its identity in the genre.
CharLe$ believes that artist is already here.
“We do have the talent to have a breakout national artist in the way that Leon broke out, representing the city,” he says. “I do believe we have that, but it’s all about trying to cultivate that talent.”
