The story of hip-hop is, at least in part, a story of visuals — of fashion, of graffiti art, of the sight of one person and one microphone.
“It’s all about projecting an identity,” says Mariah Tyler, a photographer who spent two years documenting North Texas’ hip-hop community, from the green room to the stage, the recording booth to the afterparty.
With that in mind, what better way to tell the story of Dallas hip-hop than a photobook?
Tyler is now crowdfunding that book (as of early August, it had raised about $1,300 of its $5,500 goal on Kickstarter) with hopes of publication this fall.
214: A Photobook of Dallas Hip-Hop will consist of 74 pages of color photographs interwoven with text from various interviews, plus an introduction by Rodney Blu. The book will cover 2012 to 2014, when Tyler, then a student at the University of North Texas, was first introduced to the artists, musicians, and promoters creating a vibrant community in Dallas, Fort Worth, and Denton.
But those two years also proved to be a particularly momentous time for Dallas hip-hop. Younger artists were using social media to connect and build followings without the help of the usual gatekeepers. The Brain Gang, a collective whose luminaries include Blue, the Misfit, Killa MC, and JT Mohrle, was at its peak. Local hip-hop had, for years, been defined by the Boogie, but a wave of artists with a more lyrical bent was transforming and diversifying Dallas’ music scene.
“All those worlds started combining around that time,” Tyler says.
There was the A.Dd+ performance at the Dallas Museum of Art, a local collision of hip-hop and high culture. There was the Booty Fade (DJ Sober and Picnictyme) EP release party with Dirty South Rydaz legend Tum Tum, a meeting of the old guard and the new.
Tyler describes it as a renaissance, and for good reason. Those two years helped lay the groundwork for the local hip-hop community of today, when “hipster” backpacker rap coexists with South Dallas dance music, when a local artist like Bobby Sessions can sell out Trees and underground shows draw crowds big enough to give the fire marshal the sweats.
Dallas hip-hop, in some ways, remains in the large shadow cast by nearby Houston, although that is rapidly changing. And being on the come-up has its perks. In New York City, where Tyler now lives and works, the accumulated history of the birthplace of rap and its clamor of a thousand competing voices can almost be overwhelming.
“It’s either underground or totally mainstream (in New York),” Tyler says. “Dallas is so accessible.”
Without the burden of past expectations, Dallas hip-hop is free to be shaped in its own image. As Tyler’s photographs prove, that image looks pretty good.
For more information on 214: A Photobook of Dallas Hip-Hop or to chip in to the project, go here.
