Planting Seeds - The expanding landscape of hip-hop

Pat Jamieson’s dorm room at Hofstra University is littered with posters of comic book heroes and basketball superstars. As Jamieson kicks back and plays NBA 2K11 on his Xbox 360, the last thing on his mind seems to be the remaining week and a half of classes.

Jamieson, a marketing major at Hofstra, is thinking beyond finals week. As an aspiring white suburban hip-hop artist, Jamieson – aka SoLo – has been racking up thousands of hits on his YouTube channel. His recent mixtape entitled “Electric Playground” was featured on hip-hop site Datpiff.com. Though his worries about getting in trouble by his parents might be growing, his buzz in the hip-hop world are, and much more so.

Jamieson is part of a rising sub sect of the genre called “frat rap”, and more broadly, part of an overall growth of hip-hop artistry that is unlike anything seen before.
“Frat rap was kind of started in the last year and really became popular with the emerging artist Sam Adams out of Boston,” says Jamieson.

“You don’t necessarily need to be in a frat. It’s just like this term that categorizes all the kids who are not poor from the streets. We’re all from nice families, but we can handle bars too. You don’t need to live a hard life to spit good raps.”





Kasual Kas, another Long Island rapper, sees Jamieson’s recent success as a part of a change in hip-hop that expands beyond “frat rap”.

“Hip hop is really evolving because everyone’s doing it and everyone’s good at it,” says Kas. “You don’t have to live in a certain agriculture to make it move. You don’t have to be from the ghetto to be good at hip-hop. You can be from the suburbs. You can be a girl. Anybody. It’s about the craft.”

The craft that Kas speaks of has undoubtedly been subject to much generalization and stereotyping – mainly relating to urban life, violence, drugs and sex. Yet, as artists like Jamieson thrive, these stereotypes seem to be crumbling.

“I think a hip-hop artist is basically just an expression of what they go through,” says Ike Infamous, host of the Stony Brook late-night radio show called StreetFM. “What everybody goes through in their own. Somebody who’s from the projects is only gonna talk about what they know in the projects and somebody from the suburbs is only gonna talk about what they know from the suburbs. It’s just about how you live. It’s about how you do, you know what I mean? So every hip-hop artist you would hope has a different story from the next.”

Infamous’ show features a slew of different types of hip-hop. But artists that are being spun around the nation, like Asher Roth or Mac Miller, are thriving off of the same party-esque mantra that Jamieson puts forward in his music.

"I keep in mind the people that who told me that I couldn't do it," says Jamieson. Though Jamieson draws inspiration from those who doubted his ability as a musician, he says that he doesn't forget those who support him either.

“I’m one of those kids who every single time someone Facebook IM’s me or inboxes me – as long as it’s not some bullshit – I answer them,” says Jamieson. “I may be short but I’m still answering kids who are 14 or 15 like ‘I just wanna be like you.’”

“Keep in mind the people who support you and the people who said you couldn’t do it because at the end of the day they’re both gonna be in awe.”