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Blue Collar MC
Hot off the release of his biggest album yet, Approach plans an epic new year.
By
N ata l ie G a l l a Ghe r
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OpeN 3pM-3AM chriStMAS DAY cAriOglYphS rAp bAND eric • filthy 13 the luckY band 13 • chasing fire green river kings • attic light
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OlD SAlt uNiON
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lizzY cruz (full band)
THU| 01.09 8PM | $5 FRI| 01.10 lOOSe pArke (former members of dorris henson/string and return/soft reeds) 9PM|$7
the cAveS
SAT| 01.11 no coast radio benefit protestors 9PM|Donationsplug uglies • biff tannens • kctheives
24
the pitch
S
ean Hunt looks relaxed. On a recent chilly midafternoon, he sits at a window booth in Lawrence’s Replay Lounge and flips through a newspaper. Known to most as the rapper Approach, he wears a black crewneck sweatshirt emblazoned w it h t he e r Mo logo for Maryland rapper Logic. Hunt speaks with an t a ine Onl .com easiness about him. His pitch warm brown eyes make his unfaltering gaze appear soft and friendly. Dimples and a silver nose ring give him a look of youthfulness that’s less than his 35 years. Age is on Hunt’s mind a lot these days. The hip-hop world, he says, is not particularly generous when it comes to older artists. “Rock-and-roll musicians are allowed to have careers until they’re 80 or 90,” Hunt says. “But in hip-hop, if you’re not in the 16-to-25 age range, it’s like you should be the electronic stuff I’d discovered,” Hunt done with it. But this music is only 36 years says. “I had to go through a couple years of old or so. I feel like when you write words knocking my influences out of my head and or play music, the older you get, the better discover my own sound. The influences are you should be at it.” there — I’m paying homage to them — but In October, Hunt released Make-Out with it’s still me presenting me, giving the nod Violence, his most ambitious full-length to the music that I loved.” album to date. The 16-track beast of a project Hunt adds that Violence is far more honest runs more than an hour in length. Of the than anything he did before. last nine albums Hunt has made, Violence is “I’m kind of known as a high-energy guy the first on which he has created all of the and a party groover,” he says. “But I really music on his own. wanted to tackle some more personal issues “My last eight albums have been me and here: some of the experiences I’d had, some another producer — someone handling the of the relationships I was putting to rest music, me handling the vocal work, so I when I moved [back from San Francisco], could focus on the song and the structure,” and some relationships I was finding again Hunt says. “But I wanted to start engineerwhen I returned.” ing and recording my own material, which Hunt pauses and laughs a little: “It took gives you more control. I wanted to do it all me about four years for me the way through, and I feel to get comfortable with the like I owe it to the people New Year’s Tease idea of what I was actually that have stuck with me Approach, with the Lawrence doing.” to become a more wellBurlesque Collective Violence hasn’t been out rounded artist.” Tuesday, December 31, two months, and Hunt is Hunt spent nearly five at Liberty Hall already piecing together years working on Violence, an elaborate and aggresstarting in 2008, when he sive plan for 2014 — a big to-do list filled was living in San Francisco, and continuwith boxes for self-improvement and more ing when he relocated back to Lawrence in releases. 2011. It took a homecoming for Hunt to find “For the next year, we’re going to be his groove. The result is stunning. Violence working this record,” Hunt says. “There are is markedly different from any of Hunt’s nine videos that are going to drop. This sumprevious releases, blending electronic beats mer, we’ll have a documentary that shows that evoke mid-1990s trends (listen for the the tours and the stuff that comes after the electric organ on “Parade”) with smooth, release, because I think a lot of the time we undeniable R&B hooks. miss that part in music. “The music on there is a lot more soul“I wanted to do a couple projects to show ful, and I still wanted to play with some of
M us i c
December 26, 2013 -January 1, 2014
pitch.com
Approach: “I really want to show people how to do this for themselves.” that I am my own label, and this is what it takes,” he continues. “I’m showing people the day-to-day, from a blue-collar perspective, what it is to subsist. I want to show the many levels of how it works. Making music and being a superstar is like going to the NBA: Only a select few make it there, and it takes a lot of different things for that to happen. But there’s a lot of room to do something you love and be able to do it for a long time and make money at it and still live a good life.” Since the release of his first mixtape in 1999, Hunt has put out an overwhelming amount of material and founded Lawrence music label Datura Records with his sister, Rolanda Suter. (The label celebrated 10 years in 2012.) If stardom came knocking, he says he probably wouldn’t say no. But that has never been a priority for him. His desires run deeper than fame and fortune. “My ultimate goal is, in the next five or six years is, to start nurturing new talent,” Hunt says. “I really want to show people how to do this for themselves, if that’s what they really want. I want to give some insight into what it really takes — what you think you want to do when you’re 18 and then what it looks like when you’re 35. That’s why it was important for me to step back in to making the music, because that provided a new hunger for me.”
E-mail natalie.gallagher@pitch.com