In the States, Ohioans are renowned for their love of sports, serene humility and a fierce pride over their mid-western roots. Lazy stereotypes for the country’s seventh most populous state and yet on this unseasonably warm London afternoon, thirty-two year old Stalley is proving a snug fit.
Tall and gangly, Stalley has deep set, black eyes and a soft, unwrinkled face anchored by shaggy sideburns and a fuzzy beard that is edging inch by inch away from his chin. He’s a Muslim and the beard is an ode to his spiritual growth. Similar manifestations are found on his hands: the words ‘KNOW’ and ‘MORE’ scrubbed in heavy black ink across the base of his eight fingers, denote a continual pursuit of knowledge.
Wearing a black fitted hat and a thin gold chain he’s posted on the fifth floor of Warner Records, in an empty side-room with a scarlet sofa and a window wall. Stalley has been in the capital for over a week and hasn't seen the sights yet; instead spending his days doing press, headlining shows (like Saturday’s with Hot 97’s Peter Rosenberg) and hitting the studio.
“Just working with some producers and artists,” he begins. “It’s dope, especially on the production side. There’s so much talent out here.”
Born Kyle Myricks, Stalley grew up in the small town of Massillon – what many term a rust belt town. The local economy, once sustained by steel and rail road factories, has all but vanished with the globalisation of the manufacturing industry and has left swaths of residents devoid of long-term job opportunities. Many that could afford to leave, could and the population now numbers just thirty thousand with most; until Stalley began rapping, lacking a platform to shed light on the dysfunctions that form part of now everyday life.
He sighs, withdrawn. “I’ve had friends tell me that you might have tried to rob somebody but in the moment you end up killing them or doing something you didn’t want to do.”
“But at the same time you’re still hungry: ‘I still need to take his jewellery and his money because that’s why I came here.’ And then when you leave, you’re like ‘man that’s somebodies son, that’s somebody’s father, that’s somebody’s brother.’ It’s crazy what we have to go through just to survive.”
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In spite of woeful tales like this, he is keen to shy away from the storied rags to riches journey that can often pigeonholes a rappers career. If Ohio is on the agenda, Stalley would rather it be for the state’s understated contribution to the wider hip hop landscape; he takes things back to the 70s when small working class Ohio towns like Dayton became the impromptu fulcrum of funk music.
Bands like Zapp & Rodgers, Faze-O and The Ohio Players grabbed their horns, tuned their fenders and sat at their keys, producing grooves so rhythmic their impact still resonates today. “It’s cool to see how big it got and how it influenced culture,” he says with a hint of that mid-western pride. “They were the first using the auto tunes sounds and things like that.”
The most evident influence was on G-Funk. Birthed in the late eighties it was the West Coast's gaudy rap derivative; the product of sine wave synths and strings tightly wound around funk samples borrowed from the same artists Stalley’s mother had familiarised him with as a toddler. G-Funk shared the originals appreciation of keys and instruments, the separation arriving with G-Funk’s raw illustration of the gang culture that had gripped LA’s most deprived neighbourhoods. It was new territory in rap and although ingeniously crafted in California, Stalley remains adamant that its origins are firmly rooted in the Midwest.
“You hear Zapp & Rodgers and The Isley Brothers throughout the house growing up and then you hear [DJ] Quik, you hear Dr Dre, Ice Cube and Scarface and just these other artists sampling this music,” he says. “It's dope for them to take those sounds, jazz it up a little bit and create their own lane.”
Stalley has a drawn physique that naturally lent to a career in sports. He utilised every inch of his six foot two frame until injury put a definitive end to his hoop dreams. Opting against a move back home he remained in New York, working full time jobs in clothing boutiques and record stores before reluctantly stumbling into a rap career after a friend coaxed him into the studio one night.
A string of mixtapes followed and in 2011 he signed with Atlantic via Rick Ross’s Maybach Music Group and continued cultivating a brand of rap he had termed ‘Intelligent Trunk Music,’ inspired in part by his college background and which saw production almost exclusively handled by Rashad Thomas.
“He’s from Ohio, like me,” Stalley begins, “He’s somebody who listens to all music but is very knowledgeable about the music birthed out of Ohio, so it was easy for me to be like ‘Yo let’s flip this, let’s flip that,’ because his parents played the same things my parents did, he grew up how I grew up.”
“To have a like-minded individual from the same area makes it easier when you have those stories or those feelings that you want to come across in the music. It’s easy for him to relay that because he gets it.”
The pair met over seven years ago and have been working on music since 2010, with Rashad first hoping on board for the well-received Lincoln Way Nights mixtape. Then in 2013, when Stalley’s attentions turned towards his debut album ‘Ohio,’ Rashad was again called on and after exhausting recording sessions in New York, LA and Ohio, the pair barricaded themselves inside Rick Ross’s Atlanta home/studio to apply the final frills.
The result was a cohesive body of work that filtered Stalley’s ability to story tell through heavy drums, homages to G-Funk and a catalogue of samples from Ohio’s golden age of Funk. “It was an introduction to who I am and what I represent,” he says explaining the album. “The fabrics of Ohio in a sense, bringing back that funk and that soul in the music and what I was brought up on, the morals and the sensibilities. I wanted to reintroduce that to the world.”
“We haven’t really had a solid representation of that when it comes to Hip Hop and I just wanted to let my debut album be that introduction. Not only to myself but to the state I was brought up in.”
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Stalley’s rap tenure has been lynch pined by his modest attitude and a low profile Despite his unassuming character potentially putting him at odds with some of his more outspoken label mates; it’s a principle he intends to stick with. “I want to be known as someone who put something great and positive into the world,” he says, “So people are like ‘not only did he leave us great music but he also left us with a positive message of being yourself and carrying yourself in a certain way.’”
Unfortunately for Stalley, in 2015 a rappers standing is no longer judged on just an ability to string words together. Daring pieces of music are now more often than not accompanied by ego driven monologues and outbursts on social media. ‘Ohio’ – which brought forward a renewed watermark for rap's Mid-Western imprint – was daring but given his reluctance to partake in the boasting, there is the worry that his and Rashad’s hard work will be overlooked.
“Sometimes I want to scream and pull my beard out. I haven’t got any hair,” he says pulling his hat back and laughing. “But it’s about being persistent and staying true to who you are. It’s just a slower grind to get there.”
“At the end of the day I want to leave a respectable impression on the world and I want people to look back like ‘he carried himself gracefully, he was always humble, polite, appreciative.’”
If Stalley and his ‘Intelligent trunk music,’ endure unappreciated, it won’t be for a want of trying: “I could be fifteen years gone before people realise my talent. Hopefully it doesn’t happen like that because you want to smell your flowers whilst you’re still here.” He shrugs, “Life’s beautiful but to get to that diamond you’ve got to dig through coal sometimes.”
Words: Aniefiok Ekpoudom
Catch Neef on Twitter.
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'Ohio' is out now.
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