These days it seems like hip-hop and its subsidiary clothing, film and auto accessory industries must represent at least 50 percent of U.S. Gross Domestic Product. At any rate the biz is flooded with so much cash that even novelty acts like Atlanta’s “Ying Yang Twins” are almost guaranteed never to run out of jewel encrusted chalices. In times like these one might wonder why a rapper like Portland’s “Brzowski” would have his financial sights set low.
“I don’t really look at it as a source of income even though at some times in my life it has been. When I sell 500 CD-Rs it feels like going platinum,” says the 24-year-old Maine College of Art grad, given name Jay Cornell.
In the earliest days of Portland’s hip-hip scene selling a few hundred CDs may have been about as close to success as anyone here could expect to get. That was before Portland’s “Poverty” signed a record deal with a Los Angeles based label a couple years back and earned some real national attention. But if Poverty was a trailblazer for Maine hip-hop artists, it’s not a path Brzowski plans to walk.
“He’s good at what he does, but it’s not the kind of hip hop I want to do. A lot of the stuff he says I honestly couldn’t say and look at myself in the mirror,” says Brzowski
Brzowski’s quick to deny any “beef” with Poverty, who he says has always been “real nice” to him. He says it’s more a matter of estrangement from the mainstream hip-hop community as a whole and its bitches, gats and cash motif.
“I can’t relate to it, I feel almost no kinship to it at all. I feel bad telling people I do hip hop sometimes,” says Brzowski.
That might sound strange to some people who have been to a Brzowski show at the Ale House or Free Street Taverna. The rapper admits to a few songs that feature “Ultra-simple rhyme schemes, simplistic punch line lyrics”. He says he thinks of “get up” songs like “Action Figure”, “Road of Kings” and “Dodge Ball” as mainly comedic. So is the crowd in on the Joke?
“The average person who’s not invested in hip hop culture probably thinks I’m serious, but people who are invested know I’m full of shit,” says Brzowski.
Brzowski says when he’s not clowning on a track he usually talks about “introspection and personal truth”. He calls what he does “New England Gothic Hip Hop”, which he says is influenced by long winters and is “kind of Kafkaesque”. That might sound like a recipe for obscurity, but Brzowski isn’t going quietly. He says one of his songs got air time on a commercial radio station a few weeks ago thanks to Portland’s “D.J. John” (We’re thinking that was “WRED Hot 95”. Brzowski doesn’t remember).
“I heard about it after the fact,” says Brzowski. “I lost my shit. I couldn’t believe it. I never pictured myself in that arena.”
Brzowski says he’ll probably keep rapping for another 10 years, but says he thinks he’ll know when to throw in the towel.
“I have no interest in being Mick Jagger, 65-years-old with no shirt on being like ‘hey baby’,” says Brzowski.