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Eric Mikulak, also known as Click-Clack, is a 21 year old self produced hip-hop and r&b vocalist. Growing up in Austin, Texas, Eric was exposed to and submerged in all different styles of music from an early age. As years passed listening became an obsession and eventually was no longer satisfactory. At the age of 12 he began experimenting with beat production and vocal sampling. Soon after, the age of Macintosh arose, and garage band swiftly became the apple of his eye. As producing beats and recording ate in to his study time, it quickly transitioned from a hobby into an infatuation. At 17, Click-Clack attended Mediatech Institute of Recording Arts and began working with professional producing/recording tools. Presently, he uses a combination of Reason, Recycle and Protools and is entirely self sufficient is his creation process. Eric's driving beats provide the canvas for his emotional, opinionated lyrics. As the front man for several local bands, he has performed at many of Austin's most renown venues, including Stubb’s, The Mohawk, and The Parish. Now hitting the stage solo, his energy and stage presence combine to create a intense experience for viewers and listeners. GET YOU SUM.
Recommended by The Austin Chronicle here: http://www.austinchronicle.com/music/2012-03-09/sxsw-2012-tuesday-showcases/.
From Austin Powell, The Austin Chronicle:
Recalling when Kanye West was still just a college dropout, 20-year-old Kydd possesses a sharp wit, smooth flow, and a strong visual appeal – a trifecta that's resulted in a string of successful YouTube videos. Overdue mixtape The Sounds in My Head II should be his breakout moment, featuring lead single, "Hall Pass," a Dirty South banger with an ace assist from Yelawolf.
From Kevin Curtin, The Austin Chronicle:
"Muthafuckin' is like a scuzzbucket word you're not supposed to say. Esquire is a word that means prestige. I'm in the middle of that, I'm intelligent, but I'm hood." So says this Brooklyn-based rapper who collaborates with Das Racist, Danny Brown, and El-P. That's evident by mentioning J.D. Salinger and a seriously disturbing oral sex reference in the same breath.
From Chase Hoffberger, The Austin Chronicle:
On last January's The One ... Cohesive, G-Side preached Southern-fried street gospel in a dreamy haze best typified by "How Far," a track on which rappers Clova and ST sampled Beach House and brought dream pop to hip-hop. Island, December's welcome follow-up, bangs harder from the tip with verbal assaults "Cinematic" and "Atmosphere," but there's still a sense that the Huntsville, Ala., duo has its heads in the clouds. Or maybe that's just the work of in-house production crew Block Beattaz, which cut beats that fan out like the exhaust on Andre 3000's Cadillac.
From Luke Winkie, The Austin Chronicle:
Essentially the second-in-command of Kendrick Lamar's rising Black Hippy rap collective, the German-born, L.A.-based MC ScHoolboy Q has an exquisite ear for beats. Woozy, tethered drums and smoke-damaged synths mix together in a pitch-black blur. The smoothness of breakout second album Habits & Contradictions is undeniable
From Chase Hoffberger, The Austin Chronicle:
Queens native Homeboy Sandman toiled in conscious rap purgatory for four years before 2010's The Good Sun caught wind and the Ivy League graduate got the invite from Peanut Butter Wolf to record for Stones Throw. First up, January's Subject: Matter EP, a six-song sampling of the happy marriage between Sandman's complex schemes – "Sweet Emotion (Orchard Beach)," "Soap" – and Stones Throw's retro-soul sheen.
From the Austin Chronicle:
In a world where bands teem like bacteria, how does anyone tap into the real goods? You look to digital musicologists. They're behind a large portion of the music content on the Web. Suggestions you see on music sites ("If you like Van Halen, here are five other bands you may enjoy") aren't just computer-code magic. That's actually the work of music writers.
"Music is something that is used socially," says Chuck Eddy, celebrated music critic, new Austinite as of last year, and current musicologist for Rhapsody. "Humans have a much wider scope of knowledge than computers, and digital musicologists are providing a service. I find it kind of exciting that if I plug in albums, the next day someone clicks on something I put in there and discovers new music."
The job entails a lot of different content creation, explains Eddy, "general metadata." Metadata?
"Metadata is hard to define, but in this context, it includes band bios, album reviews, popular tracks, and similar artists. When I write, 'This band is similar to these other 10 bands,' the similarities might be artists they influence or related projects, some form of overlap," says Eddy. "Again, the idea of a digital musicologist is that people benefit from having an actual human being guide them to music they might like. This isn't some mathematical algorithm. You have to put bands in a context. Another part of metadata is placing artists in subgenres and even sub-subgenres. It takes human beings to do that."
How does this affect the climate of music writing?
"The definition of what I do as a freelance music critic has expanded in so many directions," muses Eddy. "Until a couple years ago, I was just a writer or an editor. Sometimes I miss writing 4,000-word reviews, but I have the short pieces down to an art form. It's almost like writing a haiku. How much information and opinion can you pack into 600 characters? I like figuring things out – like where does country rap come from? Making connections is always what I've done."
From the Austin Chronicle:
From his uncle's office in Massachusetts, 18-year-old college dropout Shawn Fanning created Napster in 1998. A martyr and hacker, the unassuming programmer spurred a vicious sea change in the digital era.
"There were all sorts of fundamental reasons why Napster was the right answer," maintains Fanning from his apartment in San Francisco. "It was important that music was freed up in terms of the limitations around the access to the content, the control of distribution, the kind of stranglehold and manipulation of promotional news – the ability to share and try stuff before purchasing it.
Napster was court-ordered into oblivion in 2001, but it blew the top off the genie bottle. The service inspired not only obvious successors like iTunes and Spotify, but also provided the fundamental platforms for YouTube, WikiLeaks and, to a lesser extent, the passive sharing that occurs on Facebook.
"In the end, it provided an opportunity for people to share this breadth of work that went well beyond top-sellers," says Fanning. "It created this real diverse, interesting, colorful jukebox in the sky – this collective music collection – and that diversity hasn't quite yet been achieved since."
Fanning doesn't wax nostalgic about Napster. Those three years lasted a lifetime, he says at one point. But lately, he's been re-examining that period for Downloaded, a feature-length look at digital music being produced for VH1 Rock Docs by South by Southwest panel host Alex Winter (Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure).
Fanning's also reunited with Napster co-founder Sean Parker, now on Spotify's board of directors, for a new project called Airtime. While details are scarce, Fanning says he was inspired by the success of Chatroulette, a voyeuristic site that randomly placed users in various video chat rooms.
"We're really just making it up as we go," Fanning deadpans. "We don't really have much of a plan. We just figured we'd raise as much money as possible and just figure it out later."
Imagine Kanye West being born and raised in Meridian, Mississippi. Now imagine him being produced by Organized Noize. That imagery would create music almost identical to the Crooked Letter state’s next hip-hop heavyweight, Big K.R.IT (King remembered in time). The 24-year-old rapper slash producer defied the odds of both his personal life and hip-hop’s current landscape to be the most in-demand and respected rookie on the Cinematic Music Group/Def Jam Records roster.
Rapping since twelve-years-old and producing from age 14, KRIT personifies the term Student of the Game. Being a product of one of the smallest cities below the Mason Dixon line the young MC didn’t have the financial means required to purchase tracks and studio time. So K.R.I.T took a much more economical approach and began mastering the MTV Music Generator on his Playstation. Wanting to elevate his sonic craft he then studied local friends who were a bit more advanced in certain areas of production, or sit for hours and watch an engineer homie mix a song.
On the lyrical side, Big K.R.I.T kept an ear bent to the cadence and profound pronunciation of great orators like the Notorious B.I.G, Tupac and Pimp C. The Mississippi eagle also bathed in the classic compositions of legendary teams like OutKast and 8ball and MJG. “These guys influenced me because they rapped about what they knew about and they kept it 100,” says K.R.I.T. “Even like an Organized Noize––they stayed true to what they did and branded a sound. So they influenced me to stay true to myself and rap about what I know about.”
Instead of making the mistake many a young artist in search of an identity commit–– becoming a Xerox copy of their influences–– K.R.I.T developed his own sound. That he was raised on his parents’ soul music (Bobby Womack, Willie Hutch) explains why his production comes rich with rolling percussion, smooth yet potent baselines and keys that are sugar cane sweet. It’s homemade molasses in stereo.
With a perfect self-produced score as the backdrop, K.R.I.T uses a fluid and personable flow to captivatingly give his own Merridian, Mississippi narrative, complete with entertaining quips, steely confidence and food for thought. During a time when southern MCs succeed by hanging their hat on their drug dealing history or street lord affiliation, whether authentic or fictitious, K.R.I.T.’s true-to-self approach is a courageous one. “People wanna hear relatable music––something not so far from their every day,” he says, before adding. “A lot of times people get caught up in making a hit and it isn’t timeless because it doesn’t serve a purpose. If I have a voice and the opportunity to speak to millions of people I at least have to say something important.”
The Big K.R.I.T. formula was not only pure it was undeniable. His underground ascendance began in 2005 when an Atlanta DJ placed his song “We Gon’ Hate” on their mixtape without request. Feeling validated K.R.I.T decided to put 100% into upgrading his music dreams to reality. The next year he would drop out of Meridian Community College and move to Atlanta. In the peach state, K.R.I.T. would get a crash course in industry biz. Whether it was selling discounted beats to local artists, engineering their sessions and/or mixing their songs–––being that he was talented at more than just beat making––K.R.I.T did it to make ends meet.
After a few years of releasing underground music K.R.I.T.’s music started to catch peoples attention, allowing him to entertain the countless music execs and managers who expressed interest in him throughout his years in Atlanta’s underground. One of those interested was Jon “Shipes” Shapiro, head of Cinematic Music Group (Sean Kingston, Nipsey Hussle). The two agreed on a deal in January 2010 and set forth to turn B.K into the next hip-hop superstar. According to Shipes K.R.I.T.’s palpability makes his market potential a no-brainer: “In real life he’s just a kid from a small town whose music is phenomenal.”
K.R.I.T. then went to work on his Cinematic Music Group debut, the street album K.R.I.T. Wuz Here. The underground opus that birthed gems like the trunk rattler “Country Shit,” poignant “Children of The World” and irresistible Devin The Dude assisted “Moon & Stars” snatched the attention of many hip-hop heads; none more important than former 50 Cent manager and G-Unit Records President Sha Money XL. Upon receiving an early preview of K.R.I.T. Wuz Here, Sha was “blown away.” So once the veteran exec landed a position at Def Jam as Senior VP of A&R last April he made sure his first signee was K.R.I.T. Though at the time the Mississippi gem’s John Hancock was also being sought aggressively by other labels, K.R.I.T. chose the exec with the most enthusiasm for his music. “Sha just kept saying ‘I love this! I believe in it,’” tells K.R.I.T. “He was just so adamant about it.”
Now, the rap game has received a breath of country fresh air: an artist that insists on remaining an individual and feeding his growing audience with feel-good rhythms and “rhymes with morals.” Big K.R.I.T. is in fact The Truth. Within a month of acquiring his deal he was not only critically acclaimed and courted for interviews by media giants like XXL, The Source, Rapradar.com and MTV.com, he gained fans in his own peer group–– from buzzing newbies (Wiz Khalifa, Currensy and Smoke Dza) to living legends (Ludacris, Bun B). Today whether its hip-hop lovers in the skyscraping offices of Def Jam or those in the small town of Meridian, MS, they’re all feeling the synergy being churned by the birth of rap’s next royalty. So until Mr. King Remembered In Time releases his 2011 Def Jam debut all hip-hop can do is witness a reign on the rise.
