ROD LEE - Morphius Records

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Rod Lee — Vol. 5: The Official
Rating: 7.9
Tom Breihan, June 27, 2005
ROD LEE
Vol. 5: The Official
DFM-U-071
In Baltimore City, Rod Lee is a hitmaker on the level of the Neptunes or Lil Jon—
his productions have helped turn artists such as rapper Bossman and R&B
singer Paula Campbell into local stars. But he’s better known as the king of
Baltimore club music, a cheap, hard, frantic, fiercely regional strain of black
house music that exists only within Baltimore. Baltimore club’s closest sonic
cousin is probably baile funk— both rely heavily on unlicensed samples and
relentless, virtually amelodic beats. But baile funk is a distant descendent of the
frisky, infectious party chants of Miami bass, whereas club comes from the insistent, twitchy minimalism of Detroit and Chicago house. As a result, Baltimore
club has a bleak, paranoid edge that baile funk lacks, and the intensely sexual
lyrics are in English, not Portuguese, so you can’t pretend they aren’t nasty.
Club music has ruled dancefloors and radio in Baltimore for 15 years, but it
remains virtually unheard outside the city— partly because club producers proudly ignore copyright laws and partly because the music is too damn weird and
hard to be considered pop. But blogs like Government Names and tastemaking
out-of-town DJs like Diplo and DJ/rupture have given the music a strong internet
buzz, and now Lee’s label Club Kingz has a distribution deal with Morphius
Records, which may well bring Lee’s mix CD Vol. 5: The Official to an indie
record store near you.
The Official is a turgid, overlong, and repetitive mix, with precious few hooks to
make the ferocious, concussive breakbeats go down more easily. And yet it also
makes a pretty good case that Baltimore club is one of the rawest, most exciting
forms of dance music on the planet. A track like DJ Technics’ “The PJ Chant”
starts with a skeletal stomp-clap drum machine and an anthemic horn riff
chopped up to sound like a siren, brings in sampled female moans and skittery
beatboxing before dropping everything out for a climactic two-note foghorn tuba
riff, then builds everything back up into dense, pulsing swirl— all within two minutes. Lee’s own “Watch My Ass” lays a shuffling, rattling drum break under Lady
Margetta’s cold, unemotional X-rated vocal (“Watch my ass as I’m grindin’ on ya
dick, daddy”), then multitracks and layers Margetta’s vocal until it becomes a part
of the beat itself. KW-Griff’s “The Problem” speeds up the eerie horror-movie
pianos from Lil Scrappy’s “No Problem” to cartoonish velocities, adding goofy
whizzing sound effects and an uproarious sampled burp to the mix.
Exclusively Distributed by
Morphius Records, Inc.
PO Box 13474, Baltimore, MD 21203
Press contact: Simeon Walunas
410.662.0112, fax 410.662.0116
[email protected]
www.morphius.com
It all adds up into a bruising, mind-warping monolith. But every once in a while,
something painfully human jumps out of the stew. Lee’s “Luvin’ You” supports a
crushingly sad vocal from the R&B group Status with an uncharacteristically
twerky, infectious Green Velvet-ish old-school house track. Nigga Say What’s
“Horn Theme” combines an obliteratingly huge horn riff with an epic, apocalyptic choir to stunning effect. And on “Dance My Pain Away”, Lee’s unpolished,
atonal vocals tell a tale of financial stress (“Listen to my story/ Bill collectors on
me/ Have to file bankruptcy”) before building to triumphant chorus: “I’m gonna
dance my pain away.” It’s not only a great track; it’s an explanation of how a furious, urgent, unforgiving mutation of house music captured a poor, dangerous
city.
FADER MAGAZINE
Issue 29 APRIL 2005
Eric Ducker
“B’More Stand UP!”
ROD LEE
Vol. 5: The Official
DFM-U-071
Escape from New York late on a Friday and take the turnpike down I-95 South
and Hot 97 will carry you all the way to the Delaware Water Gap. After that
you’ll have to head up the dial to Philadelphia’s Power 99 FM where you’ll get
the same songs you just heard from TI, Fat Joe and the Game, plus ads for
clubs where it’s “18 to get busy, 21 to get dizzy.” Around the Maryland state line
the static will return and you’ll have to endure it for about 15 minutes until you’re
in range of Baltimore’s 92Q. By that point in the evening they’ll have switched
over to a live broadcast from Hammerjack’s for 5 Dollar Friday, where K-Swift is
on the decks and Porkchop is yelling on the mic for the ladies to throw their
hands in the air if they’re not on their period. Past midnight K-Swift will switch
over to the hyperblast of Baltimore club music, but before that you might catch
a patch of 90’s dancehall or a hip-hop set where you’ll get those same songs
from TI, Fat Joe and the Game. But snuck in between you might catch this unfamiliar refrain: “This is the land and the home of the…Oh! This is the city where
they rock them…Oh! If you’re reppin’ your city scream…Oh! Eastside…Oh!
Westside…Oh!” You’ve now entered Charm city.
Before I made that three hour, 190 mile drive this January I had never been to
Baltimore. Everything I knew about the city I learned from John Waters and The
Wire, which is to say, I didn’t know anything at all. But last summer a friend
who’d moved there sent me a copy of “Oh”. He explained that it was by a
Baltimore rapper named Bossman, produced by Rod Lee and was presently
incinerating the city. While references to Hasim Rahman and Monument Ave
identify “Oh” as a distinctly Baltimore product, what is even more telling is the
beat. Guided by jangling drums, the deep rumble of synthesized horns herald
the coming of an anthem—or maybe a movement—while Bossman’s lyrics of
hometown pride give the Ravens and the high murder rate equal credit for shaping Baltimore’s identity. Though the BPMs have been virtually chopped in half,
its processed guts echo elements of Baltimore club—the raw, distinctly regional music that has been the soundtrack to the city’s dancefloor grind sessions
for over a decade.
Exclusively Distributed by
Morphius Records, Inc.
PO Box 13474, Baltimore, MD 21203
Press contact: Simeon Walunas
410.662.0112, fax 410.662.0116
[email protected]
www.morphius.com
Back in the late 80’s, Baltimore DJs played Chicago house music. But when
these same DJs started making their own tracks they sandblasted any polish off
the beats and turned them more aggressive. Then on top they laid raunchy
chants or samples about bustin’ a nut or hitting it doggystyle. “It was called
hardhead music,” explains DJ and producer Rod Lee. “The Chicago music was
more pleasant. We just EQed it different. Their bass kick is like `doooom.
doooom,’ ours is like `DESSSH! DESSSH! DESSSSH!’” Eventually hardhead
became known simply as Baltimore club. As the name suggests it is a parochial
sound with no aspirations or avenues to become anything other than what its
tag implies.
For the past six years Rod Lee has dominated the club scene with his singles and mixes. Lee’s rep is so big and his product
is in such demand from other DJs that he can inflate prices to seemingly ridiculous levels. A CD-R of ten new tracks goes for
at least $250, and if a song becomes popular enough to get pressed on vinyl it will regularly retain for $9.99. “A lot of the
price jacking we do, we just do it for the money, to get a couple of dollars real fast,” Lee explains. “To do that anywhere else
they’ll just kick you in the ass basically.”
While club music is an easy hustle for Lee—and one he could keep doing—over the past few years he has started embracing
hip-hop as a broader, more lucrative moneymaker. He gutted his Club Kingz record store and is turning it into the home of his
hip-hop label Approach Records. Lee says he was initially pestered into doing his first rap track back in 2001 by a guy named
Manny who was trying to get a rapper named Tim Trees put on. To get Manny off his back, Lee eventually agreed and his collaboration with Trees became the song “Bank Roll”. With a simple clap track and a frightening bass drop, “Bankroll” became
a regional hit, as did its follow-up “Be A Friend”—a sparse R&B jam by Davon that featured a guest verse from Trees. In the
following years Lee produced other Baltimore favorites including “Shake It Shorty” from Nature’s Problem and “How Does It
Feel” by R&B singer Paula Campbell. But the phenomenon of Lee and Bossman’s “Oh” coincided with a shift happening at
92Q. The new program director of the city’s only urban station was more willing to play local talent, adding seven songs by
Baltimore artists to the rotation in 2004—an unusually large number of non-market tested cuts in this era of fiercely programmed playlists. “Can’t nobody in Baltimore say there ain’t a chance for them now,” say radio host and rapper Porkchop.
“We ain’t going to hit you with half an hour of Baltimore, but we try to support.”
Though some artists like C Miller and Huli Shallone get airplay with a more southern sound, the easiest route to get on the
radio is with a beat from Lee. “[Rod Lee] knows how to use that downbeat more than anybody,” says rapper Mullyman, who
had Lee produce his single “Got It”. “He’s the king of club music, so who else could apply that to hip-hop? To Baltimore? As
soon as the beat comes on in the club, it’s a sound we already identify with.” Though Lee’s tracks are classified as “club” hiphop, they are far from slick. As rapper Q, who broke on to 92Q’s rotation with the Lee-produced “No”, explains, “The main
thing in Baltimore is the bass. If you have a strong bass line, a 808 drum, that kick, it’s going to just give you that frown face.
That’s what a lot of people look for when they go in the club looking all pretty.”
It’s been said that Baltimore is the southernest city of the north and the northernest city of the south, and this geographical
non-specificity has contributed to its lack of identity in hip-hop. The only Baltimore Rapper to previously make any impact was
B-Rich with 2002’s semi-hit “Whoa Now”. The Jeffersons theme-sampling track produced by Dukeyman was huge enough in
Baltimore to get him signed to Atlantic, but his full-length 80 Dimes flopped. Though B-Rich continues to put out singles in
Baltimore, he mainly serves asan example of what can go wrong with moving to a major label. “If you come into it being a yes
man, you’re coming in fucking up,” says Lee of the B-Rich situation. “You got a major label basically telling you, `Don’t bop,
shake your ass.’ But you don’t shake your ass, you bop. So why would you come out there and shake your ass when you’re
at home you bop?”
More recently, Baltimore rapper Comp Signed to Def Jam. He added the third verse to Ghostface Killah’s “Run” (though he
was cut from the album version of the song) and even appears as a character of the Def Jam Vendetta video game. But after
two low profile 12-inches and corporate restructuring, he was cut from the label’s roster. In the past few years, more US cities
than just New York, Los Angeles and Atlanta have become viable centers for mainstream hip-hop talent, with St. Louis and
Houston emerging most recently. Baltimore hopes that they can be the next hotspot, and, with this club-influence, they have
something that clearly differentiates them for the first time. “When Rod Lee first made ‘Bank Roll’, I embraced it,” says DJ
Debonair Samir, another veteran DJ/producer who has been doing similar club-influenced tracks. “Some people in Baltimore
didn’t like it. Baltimore rappers considered it commercial. I was telling them that it’s original and it will make you stand out.”
It’s also a sound that the rest of the world may be more familiar with than they think. “Gridin” is a Bmore beat. The way it
sounds, the thickness of the beat, the way it’s tracked—that’s a Bmore track,” says Samir. “At the time [the Neptunes] were
very interested in Baltimore stuff. ‘Milkshake’ is supposed to be a Baltimore club beat. They just did their interpretation.” Still,
some of the rappers who stand to benefit, or have benefited, from the club sound, remain hesitant to fully embrace it. “At first
I really didn’t want to do a Rod Lee beat,” Bossman says. “I went to check it out and made a street anthem out of it. To me, to
be honest—and it’s not a knock—but it was too much of a local sound. It wasn’t like real hip-hop to me.” On ossman’s independently released album Law And Order, only “Oh” and the Samir-produced “Last Dance Part II” bear the club imprint.
On the other hand, rapper Q understands the potentially greater benefits of being associated with the sound. He’s been working almost exclusively with club produces Lee, Smair and Dukeyman. “My goal is to incorporate myself with the right people
and just construct things to a broad audience,” says Q. “Don’t keep it so much street, or so much hood, or just make it for
people in my neighborhood.”
Taking a more outsider route is the promising Mullyman, who despite lacking a radio hit, has been retired as 92Q’s Cipher
freestyle champ three times. Mullyman is first in the region to get guest appearances from signed artists, with “Got It” featuring Clipse and Fam-lay, and “From The Heart”, featuring Freeway. Though most of the Baltimore hip-hop community says they
are trying to support each other so they can all eventually make it, Mullyman may be the most realistic about the limited opportunities available and has dissed both Bossman and 92Q on a record to further isolate himself. “It’s stiff competition,” he says.
“You’ve got Comp that was signed to Def Jam, you’ve got Bossman who’s hot, and you’ve got myself, the three time 92Q
Cipher champion AKA the people’s champion. And all of us respectively saying, in our own way, ‘I am the one.’”
In 2002 Martin O’Malley, the mayor of Baltimore, initiated the Believe program. The quasi-spiritual movement started as a way
to combat the city’s rampant drug problem, but it has been extended to cover gun violence, STDs, litter and other symptoms
of urban blight. Though the program contains practical elements like toll-free support lines and extra trash cans, at the center
is the theory that if the residents start believing in Baltimore itself, the city will change. The one-word campaign has spread,
hanging as banners on government buildings and stitched into uniform sleeves at local diners. This optimism has extended to
the city’s hip-hop community as well. When asked when they think the major label money will come, many predict it will be a
matter a months, if not weeks.
Though hip-hop may be a genre supposedly built on realism, no one expects its practitioners to be particularly realistic. As
much as the players talk about the inevitability of Baltimore being the next city to blow up, most of the artists currently remain
several key steps away from that happening. It is Rod Lee, perhaps the person who stands to benefit the most from a Baltimore
breakthrough, who actually admits the possibility that nothing larger may come to fruition. “If this don’t work, I’m going to go
and get mea regular job and call it a day,” he says. “This is my last hustle.
SEATTLE WEEKLY
ROD LEE — Vol. 5: Rod Lee—The Official
DJ LIL JAY — Operation: Playtime
Scott Seward, July 13 - 19, 2005
ROD LEE
Vol. 5: The Official
DFM-U-071
Beat lovers outside the Baltimore/D.C./Philly axis of evil have been given a gift.
For the first time ever, Baltimore club tracks are readily available to any Tom,
Dieter, or Harumi blessed with a cool-ass record store beyond the mid-Atlantic
region. The Morphius Urban imprint (Morphius Records is home to such OG
rap crews as Da Homosexuals and Pere Ubu) and Club Kingz Records have
released for worldwide distribution two cracking new mix CDs by Rod Lee, one
of the progenitors and star makers of the style known as Baltimore club music,
and by Rod’s 14-year-old protégé, DJ Lil Jay.
The Baltimore club sound, a northern cousin to Miami bass that’s heavy on kick
drums, ancient breakbeats, and mind-alteringly repetitive vocal samples, and
cross- pollinated with bounce, crunk, R&B, and anything else that will move a
crowd, has always been localism incarnate—local clubs, labels, shops—for two
reasons: One, if you sample the Dixie Cups and old Motown 45s in the forest,
will anyone sue you? And two, what, exactly, is wrong with hangin’ in Baltimore?
On the Morphius mixes, most of the rampant sampling has been scrubbed,
making a frequently minimal music even more bare-bones. Lil Jon is everywhere
on both discs, though. Mickey Mouse will probably be enslaved in a Florida
swamp for generations, but Jon’s exhortations have already passed into the
public domain.
Exclusively Distributed by
Morphius Records, Inc.
PO Box 13474, Baltimore, MD 21203
Press contact: Simeon Walunas
410.662.0112, fax 410.662.0116
[email protected]
www.morphius.com
No offense to Rod Lee, who co-engineered the Baltimore club sound with DJ
Technics and a handful of others, and whose Vol. 5 (featuring 30 tracks, 20 of
them his own) is fierce, funny, and crushing and should push the sonic development of the Baltimore style up a notch. (In this case, that means everything
old is new again—love the squelchy 303 acid sounds on K.W. Griff’s “Your
Hood.”) But it’s his teenage cohort Lil Jay—an infant when Frank Ski and the late
Tony Boston (aka Ms. Tony) transformed deep house into their own raunchy and
doo-doo-riffic hip-house B-More blend courtesy of cuts like “Whores in This
House” and “Pull Ya Gunz Out”—who brings home the bacon with a near-perfect mix. Rod can be single-minded in his pursuit of the ultimate body slam, so
Jay’s mix does a better job of expressing the depth and breadth of the club
sound at its best. Tracks like Samir’s “Club Africa” and DJ Manny’s “Down the
Hill” (featuring Jay on vocals) are hypnotic, propulsive, addictive, and eerily
beautiful in the least expected places. Jackhammer beats, Eamon homages,
dusty breaks (man, Baltimore cats are in some kind of love with the drum break
from Lyn Collins’ “Think [About It]”—it would bring a tear to Rob Base’s eye),
block politics, and synth-horn stabs played in the key of dance your ass off.
Hats off to Morphius for spreading the word that you don’t have to import your
rumptastic noize from Brazil. It’s been right here all along.
WASHINGTON POST
ROD LEE — Vol.5: The Official
Todd Inue, July 2005
ROD LEE
Vol. 5: The Official
DFM-U-071
Baltimore’s indigenous club music could be the next dance-floor madness to
bubble up from the underground. Baltimore Club, or B-More — an up-tempo
hybrid of hip-hop and house with kickdrums, chants, handclaps and bizarre
synth effects set to accelerated tempos — has pushed blood pressure limits in
the 410 area code over the past 15 years. With the release this year of Rod
Lee’s “Vol. 5: the Official,” the first B-More CD with national distribution, the
genre now has a public face and the potential for a pop music takeover.
Like Washington’s go-go, Baltimore Club exists as a regional sound relatively
unknown outside the mid-Atlantic. The music blends the repetitive boom of
house or techno with hip-hop’s aggressive posturing and full-frontal frankness
(one of the most popular B-More singles is DJ Booman’s “Watch Out for the
Big Girl”). What B-More lacks in subtlety it overpowers with shouted hooks,
uncleared samples and chest-rattling bass patterns that induce dance-floor
euphoria. Baltimore Club allows hip-hop heads to get their rave on.
With the rise of file-sharing and audio blogs, the sound is leaking outside the
nightspots in a way that Brazilian “baile funk” and Puerto Rican reggaeton have
enjoyed. B-More is receiving international attention thanks to tastemaker blogs
such as Government Names and Catchdubs. Hollertronix DJ Lowbudget
recently cut a promotional B-More single based on sound clips from the HBO
series “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” Spankrock just released a B-More record for
Money Studies, the label division of popular dance-music site Turntablelab.com.
For Rod Lee, it’s good timing. Lee is the original don of Baltimore Club. From
his Monument Street studio he has released coveted 12-inch singles and four
mix CDs independently. A new agreement between Lee’s Club Kingz label and
Baltimore’s Morphius distribution company ensures that Lee’s latest record will
be available in major record stores or to anyone with an Internet connection
and/or decent credit.
Organized in a mix format, Lee’s songs do the nasty with one another, blowing
up the standard grimy B-More sound to Imax proportions. He uses blasting
caps as beats, cutting in sampled gunfire on “Safe.” “Ain’t none of y’all safe . . .
from the bass!” he yells before shots ring out in time with a pounding kickdrum.
Lil Jon’s sampled voice instigates tear-the-club-up fervor on “What They Gone
Do” and “Break It Down.” A linguistics lesson by Bernie Mac is given the BMore treatment on “Bernie Mac Theme.”
Exclusively Distributed by
Morphius Records, Inc.
PO Box 13474, Baltimore, MD 21203
Press contact: Simeon Walunas
410.662.0112, fax 410.662.0116
[email protected]
www.morphius.com
But with all the chest pounding and potty mouth, there is a vein of social commentary. Whether inspiring regional pride on “Your Hood” or promoting
escapism on “Dance My Pain Away,” Lee showcases B-More’s major appeal: It
makes you forget about your problems and drop it like it’s hot.
Lee gets assists from local Baltimore celebrities Blaq Star, Lady Margetta, K.W.
Grif, DJ Technics and 14-year-old protege DJ Lil’ Jay. With Lee’s album out and
buzz spreading via DSL lines, the bandwagon for B-More club music is reaching capacity. Madonna, the line starts back there.
BALTIMORE SUN
Rod Lee — Vol. 5: The Official
Rob Hiaasen, August 2005
ROD LEE
Vol. 5: The Official
DFM-U-071
“Open it up
Open it up
Open it up
You Wanna see me?
On the Dance Floor?
I don’t think so,
You do?
Let’s go…”
No, Baltimore club music just doesn’t sing on paper. Better to go to
Hammerjacks, Club Choices or the Paradox to hear Baltimore’s indigenous
urban sound known as B-More. Or you could just listen to 92Q (WERQ-FM)
and DJ “Club Queen” K-Swift and DJ Rod Lee, whose lyrics kicked off this story.
Baltimore club isn’t new, of course. But after more than 15 years of provincial
popularity, the B-More sound might be busting out of the inner city and the
Middle Atlantic with a little help from its friends and producers.
“B-More is a buzzword for what is hot right now,” says David Andler, the president and founder of Baltimore-based Morphius Records, which recently
released two B-More records.
A hybrid of rap, hip-hop, Chicago house, New York freestyle and Miami Latin
bass, B-More is pure dance music, a pit bull of rhythm, anger and profanitywhich is a nice word for all the words we can’t say in a newspaper. “Crazy,
knucklehead music,” as Rod Lee calls it. A contrast to slower Washington GoGo, B-More is driven by a fast drum continuously beating under a looped hook
or sample.
“It’s really the fastest thing you can hear on a hip-hop station now,” says Victor
Starr, program director at WERQ. “Baltimore club keeps you on your feet for
hours.”
The singing is irrelevant; sentiment and repetition rule. The hooks are often sexual chants (old schoolers call B-More “booty music”), anthems and shout-outs
to Baltimore neighborhoods east and west. The DJs might have to shout louder and faster: club mixmasters in New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Philadelphia and
San Francisco are incorporating B-More into their sets.
Exclusively Distributed by
Morphius Records, Inc.
PO Box 13474, Baltimore, MD 21203
Press contact: Simeon Walunas
410.662.0112, fax 410.662.0116
[email protected]
www.morphius.com
“2005 could be the year that Baltimore’s club music breaks from its underground status,” heralded California’s Sacramento Bee newspaper this year.
“I brought it up here,” says Aaron Lacrate, a 29-year-old DJ in New York. “BMore has become very fashionable here on the artsy scene. Hip-hop has gone
corporate, but B-More is raw and can never be bastardized.”
A Highlandtown-native, Lacrate experienced the beginning of the B-More sound in 1988, when he heard Scooty B, one of the
first Baltimore DJs to produce the new urban sound. Lacrate says he was that “little white kid” listening to club music in predominantly black nightclubs. “I was fascinated by the music.” As a teenager, he raided record stores on Howard Street for
Baltimore club records. One famous store for B-More music, Music Liberated on Saratoga Street, closed after its owner Bernie
Rabinowitz, died in 2003.
The music lived on through DJs such as Lacrate, who traveled to London this month to debut his own club mix, B-More Gutter
Music,” off his Milkcrate label.
“It’s a first for London,” Lacrate says. No doubt.
K-Swift, who DJs at Hammerjacks and the Paradox, also takes the B-More sound to New York when she performs DJ sets
there. The style has become popular with the rave crowd, she says. “Oh my god, they’re loving it.”
B-More cuts have found there way onto HBO’s novelistic drama The Wire. And B-More has featured sound clips from another HBO series, Larry David’s comedy, Curb Your Enthusiasm. A Philadelphia DJ named Spank Rock has released a B-More
record for a dance music site. It’s not bad exposure for music once found only in a handful of Baltimore record stores and distributors mainly as 12-inch, homemade vinyls on the mix tape trade circuit- a hustling cash business.
Having dropped some of its legally dicey sampling, a stripped-down Baltimore club sound has a mainstream distributor in
Morphius, a label that features Baltimore native Rod Lee- a Lake Clifton High School graduate who became the ordained
“Godfather of Baltimore Club.”
“I take reality and put it in a melody,” says Rod Lee. “My music is just about day to day living.”
His fifth Baltimore club record, Rod Lee Vol 5: The Official, was released in May. Lee’s Club Kingz studio on Monument Street
produced the 30-track CD, which features mixes from Baltimore Club notables DJ Technics, K.W. Grif and Lee’s protégé, 14year-old DJ Lil’ Jay, whose CD, Operation: Playtime, was produced by Lee’s Kingz Records and also released by Morphius
this year.
Both records have gone bi-coastal.
“Beat lovers outside the Baltimore/D.C./Philly axis of evil have been give a gift,” noted a Seattle Weekly review of the records.
“Man, Baltimore cats are in some kind of love with the drum break.”
The driving force of B-More is the drum break, bass kick and handclap. Tracks usually gun at 120 beats per minute; it’s like
hip-hop on speed. And Lee, who has been a DJ club legend for a dozen years, is widely considered the sound’s name brand.
He’s locally known for his 4-bar vocal hooks or what he calls “the meaning of a song.”
In a traditional music sense, he’s a tastemaker,” says Adler at Morphius. “He’s like the Frank Sinatra of his culture.”
For the first time, Lee’s music has been distributed worldwide. Rather than release his own 12-inch records on he street, Lee’s
deal with Morphius makes his CD available online and in such local record stores as Record & Tape Traders, the Sound
Garden in Fells Point and the Best Buy in Timonium.
In a coming-out party of sorts, Lee appeared in New York in June to perform with Lacrate and other DJs at a Manhattan dance
club. “It was great. He’s the biggest name in Baltimore club music,” says Lacrate. “Rod is carrying the torch.”
Although this is the fifth club mix record, The Official opens with Lee introducing himself- as if he has to:
Testing one-two …ahhh yeah… It’s good to be back…
Yours truly, DJ Rod Lee…
What you forgot?
My Name?
I said my name the first time…
You didn’t hear me?
Rod Lee!
Throughout the record, Lee’s repeating chants can sound like turntable’s stylus stuck in a record groove. But if it’s two a.m.
Saturday at the Paradox, then it’s not a bad groove to be stuck in . Lee’s sound is obviously danceable and intentionally rough.
“If it’s too slick, it just wouldn’t sound right.” Says Stephen Janis, who signed Lee to the Morphius label. “Rod brings a texture
to the sound. I don’t think anyone really matches him.”
On “Dance My Pain Away,” lee shows himself as a songwriter and not just a hook-maker. The singing, again is beside the point:
Now listen to my story
Bill collectors on me
Have to file bankruptcy
Need some help from somebody
Doctor bills are stacking up
I’m desperate to make a buck
I played the lottery today
Won’t you please wish me luck
I’m going to dance my pain awayyy…
“I made that song for a mature crowd,” says Lee. Young people don’t know anything about bill collectors or filling for bankruptcy, he says. Oh, he knows how to get young people to dance any kind of dance, but it’s nice to see he occasionally throws
in a song for old-timers-people over 30.
Rod Lee is 32.
He has some hair. At 6-foot-3, and in the neighborhood of 280 pounds, Lee is a formidable man. Press-shy, he can be a hard
man to track down for an interview. Whether attending a CD-release party, a meet-and-greet, a private DJ gig or producing
another DJ’s record, Lee has a busy business schedule.
“You’d never find me on the street,” he said in an interview this month from the Baltimore County Detention Center.
In Baltimore County District Court, Lee was convicted July 28 of second-degree assault stemming from a New Year’s incident. He was given a three-year jail sentence- suspended except for six months. He’s been ordered to avoid contact with the
female victim, abstain from alcohol or drug use, submit to alcohol and drug testing, and attend anger management. Lee was
jailed August 3.
“It’s unfortunate, and I feel badly for him,” says Stephen Janis at Morphius. “We’re still working his music.”
With time on his hands, Lee has been thinking about the direction of his music. He’s been thinking about serving his time, then
getting back to producing music.
He’s been thinking about his three children.
“My family is my top priority,” he says. “I feel my music is at a standstill.”
Although he has a label distributing his latest CD, Lee isn’t satisfied with making the same kind of music. Just as B-More is
gaining national exposure, Lee seems angered to move on. He’s planning another record (tentatively called The Producer) that
will produce another Baltimore sound of his own making.
“I’m going to make it harder,” he says. “I’m going to change the game.”
He wants to produce more and DJ less. Where it was once a rush to make 1,200 people dance to his music, Lee wants to
concentrate on producing other artist’s music.” That’s my rush now.” After his expected release from jail in January, he plans
to reopen his record store, Club Kingz outlet on Monument Street, and begin his own clothing line.
We might have seen the last of DJ Rod Lee-and the first of Rod Lee.
“I don’t think Baltimore is ready for it yet,” he says.
BALTIMORE SUN
Rod Lee — Vol. 5: The Official
Rashod D. Ollison, August 2005
ROD LEE
“What is this?” I wanted to know. I was at a friend’s studio apartment in
Philadelphia and he had slipped on a mix tape of some of the most urgent music
I’d ever heard. It was repetitive, the layered, cheaply produced beats booming
with angry energy.
Vol. 5: The Official
“That’s from B-More,” he said. “This is what they play in the clubds down there.”
DFM-U-071
I frowned. “Not feeling it. What else you got?”
Five years later, I move to Charm City and go out to a dingy little downtown joint
with another club-music-loving friend. All night long, this ferocious, sound-ofwar-like music rips through the speakers. A looped sample of the Marvelettes’
“Please Mr. Postman” chugs through the noisy, dense mix of kick drums. The
music is relentless, frenetic and charges the sweaty dancers packing the floor.
I stand back from it all. But it’s hard to stay still. Baltimore club music pushes
you to move something. If you’re not dancing to it, then the sound will rattle your
nerves enough to make you twitch.
It’s a sub-genre that has been indigenous to Baltimore for about 15 years now.
In that time, it has hardly ventured out of the area. Part of the reason is that the
music’s producers ignore copyright laws regarding the use of samples, so the
mixes are played mostly in nightspots. But beyond that, Baltimore Club isn’t
easy to digest. The national release of Volume 5: The Official by Rod Lee, one
of the sound’s originators, has lately generated a little buzz in national press.
But does Baltimore Club have potential for going mainstream? Will the tense,
sometimes strangely hypnotic barrage of beats make it on Clear Channel
owned radio stations and Billboard’s Hot 100?
Those questions are hard to answer, as pop audiences are notoriously fickle
and seldom warm to raw, unruly music. To cross over, Baltimore Club has to be
streamlined a bit. It’s not a friendly, approachable sound. There’s nothing subtle about it. It’s unabashedly grimy and in your face, which appeals to some critics and dogged underground lovers who prefer their sounds unpolished.
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However, it’s not entirely unlikely that Baltimore club music could trickle in to
the mainstream. Other sounds incubated in dank little nightspots eventually
exploded. Remember disco? Before pop folks embraced the campy theatrics
and dramatic tempo changes in the music of Gloria Gaynor and Donna
Summer, these artists’ records were mainstays in black, Latin and gay clubs
along the East Coast. But unlike the hard, loaded feel of Baltimore club music,
disco was more pliable. Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, architects of the celebrated “Philly Soul sounds,” added lush strings and swinging horn charts to the
4/4 beat. Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte, Summer’s famed European production team, embellished disco with odd robotic synth drums, tooting whistles
and rock guitars.
In the early ‘90s, elements of Chicago’s house music- an electronic, bass-thick offshoot of disco- appeared in Billboard’s top
10 thanks to acts like Crystal Waters and CeCe Peniston. But as it is, Baltimore club music, with its frantic tempo, aggressive posturing and frank, not fit-for-print lyrics, is too inaccessible to pop audiences. There’s no catchy hook, no melody whatsoever.
But it’s turgid sound has already influenced more adventurous major-label artists like Sri Lankan rapper-singer M.I.A. Her
acclaimed debut album, Arulr, released by Interscope Records in March, features glints of Baltimore club music. The kinetic
track “U.R.A.Q.T.” bristles with a spliced piece of the Sanford and Son theme, reminiscent of the repetitive sampling style
heard in B-More club music. (Of course, M.I.A. got permission to use the sample).
After 15 years of not making much noise outside of the region, Baltimore club music finally gets a chance to catch ears with
the national distribution of Rod Lee’s overlong CD. The cuts, some blistering with explicit lyrics, are concussive with rattling,
unrelenting breakbeats. The music makes no apologies. In a way, its nastiness is exciting. And that may be much too much for
pop audiences right now.
SPIN
Rod Lee — “Vol 5: The Official”
Jon Caramanica, November 2005
ROD LEE
Vol. 5: The Official
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A coming-out party for Baltimore’s sleazy club jams
Hip-hop is such a global juggernaut that it’s easy to forget there are still regional black sounds, too. Detroit has its techno and, more recently, its ghetto tech.
Chicago has created to house-heads and steppers for decades. Miami’s bass
music still thrives in obscurity, as did Atlanta’s for many years before crunk; and
Washington, D.C. go-go remains content not to cross the Maryland line.
Just across the border, Baltimore has “club” (or house, or breaks, depending on
who you ask), a refreshingly lewd, jubilant, and pneumatic style. DJ/producer
Rod Lee is the biggest name of the sound’s third, maybe fourth wave since it’s
late- 80s inception, and he hews tightly to the party line on Vol.5, the first Bmore mix with national distribution (thanks, presumably, to the sound’s sudden
cachet with baile funk and grime loving hipsters out for a new fix). Baltimore
club is ass music, pure and simple, all whimsical samples and aerobics-worthy
momentum. Some songs forego sex, but most don’t hide their panting or their
periodically troubling gender politics: “Nobody got me pussy-whipped,” etc.
(Sometimes art and life are too close: Lee, who produced or co produced all
the songs here, was convicted of second-degree assault of a woman.) Most of
these tracks are stubbornly straightforward- a few shouted chants over a drum
machine stuck on repeat-but the results, like the vindictive “You Keep Fuckin
Around” and the hypnotic “Watch My Ass,” can be glorious, even if Lee hasn’t
updated his palette of drum breaks since Rob Base’s “It Takes Two.”
AS with most of the aforementioned regional black subcultures, this is a sound
in constant dialogue with its bullying older brother: The minor-key piano from Lil
Scrappy’s “No Problem” pops up, accompanied by a chorus of woofs, on KW
Griff’s excellent “The Problem.”
But what sets B-more club apart is its willingness to engage everything else,
too: Recent popular tracks sample the theme of SpongeBob SquarePants and
Dora the Explorer. Here we get Bernie Mac and “Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow
Polka Dot Bikini” reinterpreted as a call to frantic lust. It’s the tip of the iceberg
for a scene that grinningly welcome all corners, before gratuitously turning them
out.
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SPIN
Dance the Pain Away
— S.H. Fernando, Jr.
ROD LEE
Vol. 5: The Official
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As the murder rate rises and the heroin scourge continues, so does the
indomitable sound of Baltimore club music. After giving stressed-out locals an
ass-wigglin’ boost for more than 15 years, the secretive scene finally may be
ready for the outside world.
“Hey, ball-i-more!” shouts Club Queen K-Swift, a mane of shiny black ringlets
cascading over her face. Chants of “Hey, hey, hey,” from Blaq Starr’s “Hey,
Motherfucker (Clean Version),” punctuate a wall of kick drums and bass as the
tension rises. In a voice like a drill instructor, K-Swift commands, “We bangin’
the club music real sir-ious.” Her French-manicured fingers flip the fader as she
delivers the payoff—handclaps crashing over shuffling percussion—and studio
monitors rattle and bounce. It’s 9:34 P.M. on a Monday, and K-Swift (real name:
Khia Edgerton), 27, is making her job of the last four years—hosting the Off the
Hook mix show on 92Q Jams, Baltimore’s 92.3 FM (WERG)—look easy. From
6 to 9:30, Monday to Friday night, the show is standards hip-hop and R&B. But
the last half hour (more on Fridays) is dedicated to the raucous sound called
Baltimore club.
For the 650,000 or so residents of the predominantly black, working-class town
known variably as “Bodymore, Murderland,” or just plain “B-more,” this is their
homegrown soundtrack. K-Swift quickly segues to another record, on which her
friend and scene godfather Rod Lee sings with a surprising earnestness, given
the music’s often lewd subject matter:
“Now listen to my story
Bill collectors on me
Have to file bankruptcy
Need some help from somebody
Doctor bills are stacking up
I’m desperate to make a buck
! played the lottery today
Won’t you please wish me luck
I’m going to dance my pain away.”
When the steady boom kicks back in, one of the speakers is left shredded. KSwift calmly changes the blown fuse. Evidently, she’s had to do this before.
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Ever since 50 Cent’s The Massacre blew up the spot, millions know about the
city’s brutal romance with heroin (see Fiddy’s A Baltimore Love Thing”). But
that’s not the only problem. Baltimore is second in the country in murders per
capita (tied with Detroit), trailing only New Orleans. they don’t film the gritty
HBO series The Wire here for nothing. But when B-more residents want to
escape the grind, they know how to get down and dirty. Baltimore club is raw
party music that crosses the incessant thud of house with hyperspeed hip-hop
breaks and sampled sound bites (often X-rated and repeated ad infinitum). Its
aggression reflects the city’s harsh urban landscape, but there’s also a reckless, playful quality that mirrors a drive to transcend the blight. Similar to other
regional mutations of rhythm—crunk from the Dirty South, grime for East
London, or baile funk of Brazil—B-more club is staunchly local and has developed out of the spotlight for years. these days, though, it’s bubbling across the
city’s beltway and beyond. rod Lee recently released the first widely available
B-more club music album, his Vol. 5: The Official, on local label Morphius, tapping into its global distribution network. Meanwhile, DJs like K-Swift, technics,
and Scottie B spin to packed rooms in Philadelphia and New York. Blogs have
been buzzing about the sound being the next big thing, but its roots run deep.
ROD LEE
Vol. 5: The Official
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Rewind to the mid-’80s, when Chicago house music was transforming the
world of beats. Atlanta radio personality Frank Ski, who was then DJ’ing at baltimore’s urban powerhouse V-103, started playing just the break, or the most
climactic part of house records, in the same wa that Kool DJ Herc and Afrika
Bambaataa created hip-hop out of snippets of old funk, soul, rock, and jazz.
Until then, house had been a mostly gay scene that was shunned by the macho
rap crowd. “[Frank} made it cool to be into house,” says Scottie B, a.k.a. Scott
Rice, 37, a Baltimore DJ who also worked in a local record store. Inspired by
artists like the U.K.’s Blapps Posse and Dynamic Guvnors, as well as the
Chicago sound of DJ Fast Eddie, Tyree, and Farley Jackmaster Funk, Scottie B
and his friend DJ Shawn “Ceez” Caesar, 34, began to dabble with their own
tracks. they spun the results—Caesar’s “Yo Yo Where Tha Hoes At” (1991) and
Scottie B’s “I Got Rhythm” (1991), in particular—at clubs like Paradox and
Godfreys.
Then, in the summer of ‘92, Frank Ski, using the alias 2 Hyped Brothers and a
Dog, unleashed the breakout hit “Doo Doo Brown,” which was simply a two-bar
loop from “C’mon Babe” by Miami rappers 2 Live Crew with the repetitively
chanted title as the hook. ‘When Frank dropped that, it pretty much set the tone
for what was gonna be goin’ on as far as club music,” says Grant Burley III, 33,
better known in the B-more scene as producer Booman. Even today, many Bmore club tracks use the break on Lyn Collins’ “Think (About It)” featured in
“Doo Doo Brown.”
Around the same time, Scottie B and Caesar were recruited by independent
entrepreneur Ronald Mills, then a manager at Paradox, to make a track with
Miss Tony, whom he describes as a “six-foot, 300-pound Biggie Smalls lookalike drag queen.” (Tony passed away in 2003.) This became the local hit
“Whatz Up? Whatz Up?/How You Wanna Carry It,” which Mills released as a
12-inch single on his Sinical imprint in 1993. At the song’s conclusion, Miss
Tony chants, “Unruly, unruly, unruly,” a rallying cry that became so closely associated with the producers of the record that it helped popularize their soon-tobe influential label Unruly Records.
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Between 1993 and ‘97, Unruly released more than 40 12-inch singles by artists
such as KW Griff, Jimmy Jones, Karizma, Big Red, DJ Technics, and DJ Class.
“We spit ‘em out like we had problems, because we wanted to brand ourselves
with the music,” says Caesar, who is now a music buyer for the Downtown
Locker Room sporting goods chain but still runs the label with Scottie B. And
it worked—Unruly cornered the Baltimore club market. Because its stable of
producers moonlighted as club and radio DJs, it could promote the music
directly to the people, nurturing a strong demand.
When Unruly’s output quieted in the late ‘90s, Rod Lee began to dominate the
scene with his Club Kingz label. Lee’s product was so hot that DJs were willing
to pay up to $19.99 for his latest 12-inch, sold exclusively at the now defunct
store Music Liberated, before Lee opened his own Club Kingz outlet in 2003.
Though he claims to have been contacted by various major labels over the years
(he won’t name names), Lee, in true baltimore character, seems comfortable to
reign as the biggest artist on the local scene.
ROD LEE
Vol. 5: The Official
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It’s “Super Sunday” night at Hammerjacks, a converted warehouse near
Interstate 83 (the highway that runs through downtown Baltimore), and the
queue winds around the building. The 17-and-over crowd is dressed in typical
hip-hop attire—long white T-shirts and baseball caps for the guys, skin-tight
jeans and stiletto heels for the girls. After plunking down $10 and getting
frisked, you’re met by a deafening barrage of thumping bass and ferocious
polyrhythms as a crowd of about 1,800 kids, 99 percent black, gets busy. Not
a soul is holding up the walls, and it feels like the joint is about to come tumbling down. Jenny Craig junkies would be envious of the workout these kids are
getting. Some execute fluid break-dance moves to the sped-up tempos, other
give a veritable Kama Sutra demonstration. A chant of “Watch my ass as I’m
grinding on your dick” reverberates through the speakers like a porn version of
Simon says. The music is all about the buildup and the release, and K-Swift is
one of the finest at controlling the flow. But as the only female DJ in a largely
male scene, she’s encountered some jealousy from peers who wonder why producers are giving “this girl” exclusive CD-Rs of the hottest new songs.
Regardless, her following continues to grow.
K-Swift recently discovered a fan base she never knew she had, when she was
invited to play a private gig thrown by promoter and record-store owner Jason
Urick. “I got a phone call about a party in a loft, right here on Mulberry and
Franklin Street,” she relates from the lounge at 92Q Jams following her radio
shift. “My manager booked it and we go there. I walk in and the building looks
like the scariest thing I’ve ever seen in my life, graffiti everywhere, punk-rock
kids, all this crazy weird stuff. Like, what kind of party is this? I had no idea.”
Wide-eyed, she continues: “I thought it was a rock'n'roll party, but I get in there
and everyone is dancing to Baltimore club. And when I walked in, they treated
my like I was a queen, for real. ‘Oh my gosh, she’s here!’ ‘Can you sign an autograph?’ Everyone was coming up to me to take pictures. I had some of my
friends with me, and they started taking pictures with their camera phones
because they couldn’t believe these people were dancing to Baltimore club
music. The best crowd I’ve ever DJ’d for in my life!”
According to Urick, about 350 people, mostly white, attended the party last
summer, including fans who came all the way from Connecticut and
Philadelphia just to see K-Swift. Explaining Baltimore club’s attraction and sudden appeal outside its core urban audience, Urick says, “It’s just raw and heavy,
and I wouldn’t say primitive, but it kinda is. When you hear that beat, it’s hard
not to dance to.”
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The sound has already infiltrated the mix shows on Philly’s Power 99, as well as
the clubs of New Jersey, and it is finding a welcoming audience among
Manhattan’s primarily white downtown scene. Gary Hun, 26, who promotes
nights called Keep It on Safety and Flight Club, recently brought Scottie B up
to spin at Happy Ending in Chinatown and K-Swift to play at Crime Scene Bar
& Lounge, across the street from CBGB on the Bowery. “When these DJs
come up, they kill it every time, and mad people come out for it,” says Hunt, who
plans to have B-more DJs back on a regular basis. “[The music] makes anyone
want to party.”
“We have seen a lot of distributors and stores that just sell punk or indie rock
come in and buy it,” says Stephen Janis, chief operations officer at Morphius.
“And they’ve sold it, not in great quantities, but enough to say that this is some
sort of phenomenon.”
“What makes [B-more club] resonate is its component of reality; people are
looking for something real,” he elaborates.“ The white DJs pick up on it because
they’ve never conceived of anything like this. They wouldn’t put music together
like that. It’s a world they don’t even know.” In fact, Hollertronix DJ Diplo, who
discovered Baltimore club through the Internet when he was teaching inner city
youth in Philadelphia, admits to feeling like “a fed” when he first went to
Baltimore in search of the hard-to-find music. “Why don’t these people just be
a little more out there, wanting to promote the music?” he asks. “It’s almost like
they want to stay in baltimore and keep it Baltimore.”
ROD LEE
Vol. 5: The Official
DFM-U-071
To a certain extent, he’s not wrong. Glenn Brand, 34, who produces club tracks
as DJ Technics explains: “What we’re doing, other people are interested in, but
we’re not interested in what they have to offer for it, because once again it will
become their product and not ours. Major labels are only interested in making
quick cash. They want you to modify, make changes, water it down, so the general public can understand it. But that’s not what this is. It’s rude, obnoxious, Xrated, and it’s street, and just because it can be presented on a more commercial basis doesn’t necessarily mea it should be.” still, Diplo has done a baltimore
club remix of Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl” and has incorporated a Baltimore
club track (KW Griff’s “You Big Dummy”) into the song “U.R.A.Q.T.” by British
rapper M.I.A.
But it’s all good to Unruly’s caesar, who is in the midst of relaunching his label’s
back catalog and now manages most of the DJs and producers in the scene,
including K-Swift. “The big thing we’re gearing up for now is Club Classics Vol.
3,” says Caesar about the double-disc package, which will be releases by year’s
end. “That’s gonna tell our story. That’s going to have a ton of information with
respect to where club music came from.” Caesar plays me a new cut by Blaq
Starr, which sounds like a hybrid of B-more club and its Dirty South cousin,
bounce. “We’re pushing the envelope with the sound,” he says. “We want it to
have a national appeal without compromising the integrity of the music.”
K-Swift, who recently released the sixth volume of her Club Queen mix-CD
series, is awaiting her next release on Unruly. She says, “Now I’m starting to get
calls from Miami and California. I’m starting to get calls from people who do
these parties and want to expand this music. Whatever I can do to help it get t
another level, I’m with it.”
And of course there’s Rod Lee, who despite some personal setbacks (he was
convicted in August for second-degree assault), is already preparing for the
year ahead. “The Club Kingz back catalog is about to reissued, and can’t
nobody get it until then,” he says via phone from Baltimore County Detention
Center. “I got so much shit coming it’s crazy—2006 is gonna be like a monster.”
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