“I’m a competitive dude.”
Southeast Denton’s AV the Great makes no excuses and he doesn’t mess with apologies. But the man he feels driven to beat is himself. The artist doesn’t acknowledge laurels to rest on, just footholds to keep climbing
The artist — who is known on a wider stage as Chris Cole on “K104” KKDA-FM (104.5), the chief hip-hop and R&B station in Dallas-Fort Worth — just dropped his second solo record, Man N Da City II. It’s a big, beefy record by an artist who commands respect among Denton’s punk rockers, alt-country cats and indie-folk acts.
The record fulfills the intensity and commitment AV promised in his debut, Live From the Struggle. The artist said this record was a long time coming.
“I mean, it’s really my eighth record if you want to know the truth,” AV said. “My first project was in 2008? I didn’t start getting noticed like that until Live From the Struggle. Which makes sense, because it was a good-ass record. Everything before that was subpar.”
An EP, Poetry, followed Live, but AV said he considers the new record a freestyle mixtape.
“With this record, I wanted to show all these different things I can do. Versatility, you know?” he said.
Man N Da City II is a record that only AV could make. And he made it after losing two external disc drives that crashed, flinging about 200 songs into nothingness.
“I would have had this project out a lot earlier,” he said. “You know what I mean? I just lost a lot of songs. I really got depressed for a while. I was doing a lot of shows. I couldn’t get any motivation to do anything and one day it just hit me and I went on a tear, and it was like, ‘Man, this is it. This is it right here.’”
Much of the album — the best of it, really — was written with Denton producer Izzy the Kidd. AV worked with Caseo Beats, A-Jack, Piano Soulos and a few others, but his music is at its most native when Izzy the Kidd is leavening AV’s fire with something a little cooler.
“We just have this connection, me and him,” AV said.
They do. The tracks written between the two feel organic. Izzy is a match for AV’s flow almost flawlessly on “Bout That Life,” and “Keep It Trill” shows how Izzy teases out AV’s wordplay with that signature AV the Great momentum.
A lesser beat-maker might reflexively bury the background vocals, calls to action like “let’s ride!” and “’s go!” But Izzy’s touch is lighter. He plays it bass-and-trappy on “Keep It Trill,” coaxing AV to ride it out instead of lead-footing it, as is AV’s instinct. It’s an artistic marriage of opposites, in a way, and their tensions lend the album needed cohesion.
“I knew what I was trying to get across, what I was feeling,” AV said. “I worked with a lot of people on this. I brought a team in of people that I met over the years and … just developed an album that I wanted.”
The album he wanted needs to live up to his expectations before he’ll declare it a success. He looked around the downtown coffeehouse where this interview was taking place, and said he was itching to get the record into the hands of every patron there.
“I wanted it to be a classic,” AV said. “I wanted to have the best album of the year, not the best local album. I wanted it to be one of the greatest Texas albums that you’ve ever heard. You know? [Underground Kingz’s] Ridin’ Dirty is a classic. Mr. Pookie, Tha Rippla. That’s a classic. You know? Scarface.
“This is Texas rap and I just want to be in that mix. So that was my focus.”
The Southern influences the artist refers to are part of a mix of influences — including Texas artists Bun B and UGK and East Coast players like Jay Z — and the ideas and noise AV’s absorbed throughout his life. That goes for the ache of missing your addicted parents, the overwhelming love of his grandmother, and the joyful noise of the praise music he heard from the front row of St. Andrew Church of God in Christ. The soul and jazz of church music, and the years of soaking in James Brown and Led Zeppelin, are characters in Man N Da City II just as much as the marijuana strains he name-checks in “W.Y.S.” (That’s a question: “What you smoke?”) The song tips a drowsy, slurred hat to syrup king DJ Screw.
And an important spice in that Southern sound is Denton, AV said.
“When you’re in a city like this, if you don’t take advantage of the things around you, I don’t know what’s wrong with you,” he said. “I just really don’t know. If you want to do music, I just don’t get it. You got to take advantage of what’s around you.”
Man N Da City II pops with some merciless bangers. “Ball4eva” and “Need a Raise” hit so hard they’re sure to bloody noses when he performs the tracks live. It settles in with some intensely personal and socially conscious rap. “God Body” is a love letter to AV’s hero, Tupac. And it’s a litany of grievances the rapper has with systemic injustices that still conspire to shuffle young black men into prison or relegate them to raise families with small-time drug dealing between legit jobs.
In a track introduction called “Looking for a Way Out,” AV revisits his Southeast Denton childhood — where he and his friends were literally surrounded by a cemetery, a courthouse, a county jail, a city jail and an alternative school. (“That’s what you saw every day when you went to school. It’s like those were your options,” he’s said in interviews.) He also reveals that record executives have reached out, but not with the kind of certainty that ends up in getting signed.
“Thrill of Life” is AV’s roll call. The players in his life are flesh and blood: his children, his absent mom and dad, his dedicated granny, the mother of his children and his compatriots in the DIY music business.
The rapper said he feels like he has to do more than show up. He has to do better, do more, even if he risks failing. He’s not worried about burnout, and he knows how to cope with writer’s block (“If you can’t get your ideas out, you’re probably doing too much, going too hard”).
A record deal would set the stage to steal some national limelight for Denton music, he said. But one executive said his content was “too raw,” which AV said refers to his honesty about small-time dope dealing and the injustices that have yet to follow Jim Crow into that good night.
Record deal or not, the artist said he’ll keep hustling.
“Some people play Madden, you know? Some people play video games. Some people buy shoes,” AV said. “I make music. I will always make music.”
TRACK BY TRACK
AV the Great, Man N Da City II
“Illest Verse of the Century” — A shining example of AV the Great’s intuitive read on beat, flow and that special something that oozes out of the artist any time and every time he performs. “Illest Verse” is an audio play in two acts inspired by Kanye West’s “Power.” He’s an earthbound son in Act I. The song opens to a chilled-out, sped-up voice singing “oooh-oh.” AV takes stock of his place in the game. The burn starts, slow and steady, and as he reaches the final verse of the first half — honoring a loved one diagnosed with a grinding, chronic illness and ticking off a list of deferred dreams he wants to cash in — he’s fully involved, as firefighters say. His voice rasps through the flames, and bursts into the lyrical phoenix that takes off for the stratosphere. The artist is on vapor trails, heading for the sun. And true to form, AV never blinks.
“Ball4eva” — Ripe for radio, this fist-pumping banger features AV’s fevered flow set against a deep, tribal beat by Myke Milyan. Milyan is in the same league as Denton’s Ritchy Flo in terms of an ear for tone and trap. AV’s anthem urges the listener to live the high life, live fully awake — even if you have to do it on a beer budget. Big beats punch and the rapper shouts at his audience to love with all of your heart, party like you mean it and, for the love of God, commit.
“Thrill of Life” — The track is one of two an executive would cut from Man N Da City II. It feels too slow, too retro to fit in with the bangers and chillaxers. Set to Billie Holiday’s “You’re My Thrill,” with its sweeping, MGM movie-esque winds and strings, AV dives deeply into his own history. The artist doesn’t spare any of the vulnerabilities that make Man N Da City II a soulful body of work, something that transcends the genre’s more mindless stuff. He goes all stream-of-consciousness: “From my first breath/to my daughter’s breath/from my first fall/to her first steps.” He recalls being afraid of love, having to learn how to hold someone close. He recalls his first night in jail, the first time he was beaten like Rodney King. The song is a tribute, not really to life, but to that mysterious presence that animates it, and his art. “I’m so addicted to it,” he says. “And I don’t want to lose.”
