Danielle Scruggs

{liberatormagazine.com exclusive feature}

by Danielle Scruggs

“If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. 

This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

How many hip-hop artists kick off their albums with a manifesto from Frederick Douglass? How many hip-hop artists sample Jay-Z, Jeru the Damaja, Todd Rundgren, and John Coltrane all on one album? And how many hip-hop artists cite that legendary jazz musician and Marvin Gaye as two of their chief influences? Anthony Marcus Bottoms, better known by his moniker BlcTxt (pronounced “Black Text”), just may be singular in that regard. 

The Georgia native—-currently based in Atlanta—-has recently released A Smart Black Boy: The Sonic Inception, a deeply personal project that goes beyond the braggadocio and party anthems that have come to define the majority of mainstream hip-hop today. 

Working with several Atlanta-based producers including AmDex, Illastrate, King I Divine and Siraaj Encore, BlcTxt has crafted an album that is akin to reading the pages of someone’s journal. A Smart Black Boytouches on everything from the grief of losing a parent, to battling depression, to the trials of being broke, to the one who got away over a compelling, somewhat unexpected sonic landscape, thanks to work of his eclectic production team. 

BlcTxt was kind enough to grant the Liberator a phone interview about A Smart Black Boy, his creative process, and some of the events as well as people and places that inspired his latest project.

Liberator Magazine:I was reading this other interview with you and you said the concept behind A Smart Black Boy was to give people your head and your heart—-

BlcTxt: Yes, ma’am.

LM: …and I was wondering what was the impetus for that, because a lot of hip-hop, I feel, is defined by that lack of vulnerability. So what made you want to go against the grain in that sense?

BT: Well, thank you for noticing. Basically, I am that type of person. I actually don’t do well going with the tide. I don’t do well at all. I’ve never been that type of guy, that type of artist. I’ve been good at being myself and articulating my experience and that was the entire purpose…When I got my first girlfriend, a close friend of mine said ‘you are the catalyst of your entire life.’ I am the main ingredient so I have to figure out how to mix well with other ingredients. I hope that answers your question. (laughs)

LM: How old were you when you first got that piece of advice?

BT: I was fresh out of high school. I was 18. I spent the whole summer with her then that was pretty much it. She had to go to school, she was a year or two older than me and I got my internship at Aquemini, Outkast’s music label. That was my first taste of the music industry.

LM: Can you talk more about your songwriting process? I know you started out in poetry, so do you find music or do you have a song and then write to the music? Walk me through your process.

BT: I’m a writer from the jump. I’m always writing. When I did spoken word, I had a band. The song was already written; the concept was there…I do a lot of reading when it comes down to music. I’m kind of trifling, I don’t study other things the way I should, but I study music. That’s really my songwriting process.



LM: I did want to get back to the song you did about your mother [“Infinity (for Robin)”]. I wanted to ask you about that because, especially in American culture, grief tends not to be so public. People grieve in private and they don’t tell you how they’re really feeling about things. What made you decide to include that song on the album and have it out there for the world to hear?

BT: The biggest appeal of art is communication. My mother taught me the art of communication, very well. I talk too much. It took me years to shake that off and write a song about that situation. Because you know, I’ve listened to so much music over the years. There’s tributes, there’s self reflection, there’s different types of songs. People make instrumental pieces dedicated to people in their lives. For me, I had an idea to convey the situation and that was the out of body experience. It’s reflection. It’s expression. It’s all those things.

It’s not a problem speaking on the situation. (long pause) 

Honestly, listening to the song helped me and hopefully helped my sister heal as well… that was the main purpose. To get it off my chest. And it felt better but I still deal with certain issues. We have to heal…there was a trial period where I wasn’t doing well at all after Mom passed [in 2005] and maybe that was the reason why that song wasn’t completed until now. I’m okay now I just haven’t fully healed all the way. And that song represents that feeling, if that answers your question.

LM: It does. What happened?

BT: I honestly don’t know what she passed away from. It’s a big mystery. We don’t know. But I do know my mother has had certain issues with her kidney and liver. She had those issues for a while and it trickled down because she hadn’t paid attention to her body over a period of time, almost a year really. She hadn’t taken care of herself for almost a year because she was taking care of her father, our grandfather, and her body shut down. She got sick, and a week after that, she got sicker and died. We didn’t know. The doctors damn sure didn’t know they used a lot of confused terminology but I don’t know—-and we didn’t know.

LM: I ask this of every creative person I know: how do you maintain the work-life balance? How do you ensure you create a space for your art while you’re also working and paying bills?

BT: They go hand and hand. They actually aren’t separated. Some people say they’re built to be a so and so. I am a creative person. I got my creative side from my mother and my mechanical side from my father. 
My father is one of those guys who can’t do simple things like cook but he can take stuff apart and put it back together; he’s that guy. My mother is the intellectual, and creative and spiritually open, and, you know, cultural. My dad is cultural as well. No one in my family has a background in music so I had to adapt to train myself to listening to music on a consistent basis, different forms of music, and things of that nature. So while I’m listening to music, I am at work, I am at school. 

Music, music is like air to me. People say that all the time but music is air…so going back to the first part, them going hand and hand, I have this phrase I say all the time—- “work equals love”, is actually “work is love.“ “Equals” is the mathematical equation for “ is”. Khalil Gibran in The Prophet said that “work is the physical manifestation of love” so the way I look at it is to work towards what you love and ultimately that is all of music: the manifestation of my work and music is the end result, the fruit of all the labor… it’s just a phrase that I now live by. You get out what you put in, so if I’m not putting in no work I’m not going to get where I’m going. 

LM: Who are some of your influences? Not just musical but also personal or artistic or just in general?

BT: Again, my mother definitely, my mother and father. My father gave me a whole lot of knowledge on historic things he and my mother made sure I knew my history as far as being a brown person (laughs).
They birthed a creative person, a kid they obviously couldn’t get out in front of the television; they couldn’t keep from listening to music. That was a huge inspiration, family. In general, definitely for this project in particular, always, always first and foremost John Coltrane. John Coltrane is my guy. A lot of producers—hip-hop producers—they love J Dilla. I love him too. Don’t get it twisted. I love Dilla too. 

But for me, my guy will always be John Coltrane, [based on] his approach to making music before he got to a certain point in his life with drugs and alcohol and the approach after. The approach after was basically him knowing god existed and he needed to bring forth his message and his legacy before he passed. He felt god spoke to him through music so he worked hard.

This is why you don’t see him—-and much respect to Miles Davis—-but you don’t see him like Miles Davis…being cool. Coltrane didn’t care about any of that. He was all about the work. He was all about the work. For me, I know I can never be Trane. There’s only one. But his work ethic is something that I look up to.

Marvin Gaye…I was watching the American Masters on PBS and I knew a lot about Marvin prior, I read a lot of books on him and this guy had sessions, actual recording sessions—-not the music, not the CD—-the tracked out sessions of the I Want You album and what he played were the vocals and there were like nine different harmonies, nine separate parts to a whole and every vocal part was Marvin Gaye. 

He wasn’t a saint. He actually created a lot of drama in his life but listening to that let me know that I have a lot more work to do musically in order to [create] a legacy if I want one while I’m here and after I’m gone. So I listened to heavy amounts of Marvin Gaye for this project. Whatever was going on in his life, it was in his music. 

The music we have now, whether it be hip-hop, whether it be rock, whether it be pop, whether it be R&B on any commercial level or a regularly accessible level, there isn’t much music that is very comparable to the human experience other than celebration. There is a little bit too much celebration going on; there’s not enough reflection on that commercial level. 

I think this is why people enjoy Adele on a huge basis. Adele has the highest selling album this year. All over the world collectively this album has sold 10 million units. 10 million people have latched onto that particular album and it’s hard to show those numbers and get that support nowadays for any artist.

I mean Trane and Marvin, man, their approach to life and music is what I definitely took in on this project. [“god Bless…a Smart Black Boy”] and the song about my mom [“For Robin”], those songs are the most vulnerable that I can possibly be. 
And that’s why I said I put my head and my heart in here because, I can think all day. I can give you my thoughts all day. But I don’t think my thoughts are complete without some sort of feeling…they go together like yin and yang.

LM: I know there is not too much you can give away, but what do you see in the future for yourself? How do you see yourself progressing from this project?

BT: Without letting the cat out of the bag, there’s a lot of stuff, a ton of ideas I’ve always wanted to work with musically. I always have some music somewhere but …everyone needs to hear certain things at the right time and I determine when that right time is. I’m always creating; moving forward. There’s always going to be something fresh.

There are different people I want to work with, different styles I want to work with. I’m still going to be rapping. I’m still going to be doing hip-hop. I just want to incorporate different sounds. It’s coming. It won’t be A Smart Black Boy part 2.
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BlcTxt will be performing at the East Side Lounge in Atlanta on February 8th as part of the BoomBap and Broke tour. A Smart Black Boy is available on Bandcamp. For more information about BlcTxt, check out his website www.contxtclues.com or follow him on Twitter (@blctxt).

Photos by Allison McDaniel