SOLILOQUIES FROM THE SOUTH: Fred E.T.

The funny thing about me is that I didn’t start rappin’ until I got to college. Other than that, it was nothin’ but basketball, football, and school. I consider myself being in a bit of a culture shock ’cause I ain’t know too many black kids back in Wisconsin, you literally could count them on one hand. So basketball helped me first get accommodated with my peers a bit faster than anything else. I’m still adjusting to stuff, one thing that always stuck though, was music, of course.

I ain’t have the usual Wayne, Jay Z, Kanye upbringing off the bat. During my time in Wisconsin, it was a lot of backpack and Midwest stuff (The Cool Kids, Cudi, Pac Div, Lupe). So when I got down here, I don’t know why but I had a lot of old school hip-hop hits on my iPod Nano along with my other music, until I switched up quick with the newer music. One of the greatest things I love ’til this day that happened to me was during summer of 2010, I was playing football for the school and after summer workouts I wanna say, my homie DeJuan had put me onto Wiz Khalifa’s Kush & Orange Juice. THAT. TAPE. THERE. changed EVERYTHING. That’s when the mixtape circuit was boomin’ (shouts to DatPiff and the iTunes library). What’s also funny was I had a homie back in Wisconsin, Evan, that tried to put me onto Wiz but he ain’t play the songs that would lure me in enough to go look him up. I had this happen again down here in Georgia during AAU when The Warm Up was out. Homie played me some J Cole tracks, but they didn’t catch my ear like that either, so fast forward back to the year of the Kush & OJ tape, THAT led to HELLA downloads, one of them towards the end of the year being Friday Night Lights, Cole’s greatest project ever in my opinion. That was how I got onto Cole. I was on Blu, Asher Roth, Wale and them ’cause I kept up with the XXL freshman classes, too. My homie Mac also did that with Kendrick, BUT it was through a feature with Curt@!n$ and I ain’t bite. It’s funny too, I remember having XV’s Zero Heroes tape that had Kenny on there, but it didn’t stick. [I’m] not saying it was bad, it just didn’t make me go after HIS music like that.

So to bring basketball back into the equation, after I got done with a week-long hoop camp down by Emory, one of the homies there hit me on Facebook, and sent a link like “Bruh. listen to this.” It was “Hol’ Up” by Kendrick. AYO! One listen and right after I got the whole Section.80 asap. This would carry into my senior year in high school. Got on the rest of TDE, found out about MF DOOM, Jay Elect, a ton of people. But yea, I guess I can get to talking about how I got into rap now (lmao). So freshman year at Clayton State, I met the homies Cam who helped me start writing, and Xavier. Through them I met Shaq who put me on to not only music but like a lot more knowledge of things in regards to yourself, i.e. Spirit Science, and of course hip-hop, and he had this talk of starting a pure hip-hop movement, and I wanted to be a part and make things happen. So from there, I just took it seriously.

So it’s this book I downloaded on my iPod Touch (yea, had to upgrade) and the ebook was called How to Rap: The Art & Science of the Hip-Hop MC. Now, mind you, I had a glimpse of natural talent when I wrote some raps with Cam, I just studied the history and mechanics to get me right and keep improving. The weird thing with this is, EVERY video on YouTube I would watch at the time, somebody would post a comment talking about that book, it was the same copied and paste comment — at the top, too. To me it was like a sign, so I went, got it, read it front to back, sharpened the sword, and I’m glad I did when it kept popping up in the comments, because ’til this day since I downloaded it, I have not seen that comment [again].

But yea that’s my background and a bit of my upbringing. It’s certain artists that I listen to a lot, shoutout to Y’ALL, you guys hit two of the many influences of mine on the nail with Kenny and ‘Kast in the first write-up. I put a ton of work and thought in my approach to music and how to move it. How to present myself for example — changing my name from [one] that was a derivative of one of my favorite artists to just using my name, but still stylized. It can’t get any more original than Fred E.T. ’cause it’s really just my initials.

So fast forward finally to now. I have my first project out, God Got a Funny Way of Showin’ It!, which dropped last Friday. I’ve been carefully crafting this and a number of projects. I’m glad it took this long, not GLAD glad, but enough because even though I’m still rough around the edges, I coulda dropped a year or so back and REALLY been rough. I learned a lot though — life and music, how to make music, and how to move it as well. I’m just trying to make a name for myself, become a stamp on hip-hop for all the great reasons. I wanna start with Henry County, then Atlanta, the rest of the States, and branch out overseas. So I’m just working damn near every day to make sure I can achieve that goal I set out. Nothing is out of reach, but you gotta be savvy about it, too.

Henry County got a bunch of sounds and so does ATL contrary to what stigma it gets because of what the rest of the world sees and hears. Like, Gambino AND Migos are simultaneously poppin’ right now! So as far as where I fit, I don’t care because I know I’ll always have an audience, based on the different influences that I mold my style from. I’m just try to get better every day in any way I can, man, and soak up as much as Atlanta has to offer. Everything is about what you go looking for and I’m just now starting to scratch surfaces.