Music Style Rap

Musical Influences Dr Dre, 2Pac, Eminem

Artist History An unlikely background for rap, Flash grew up in the rolling hills of Central Pennsylvania, a brick's throw away from Penn State's Beaver Stadium. He was a true child of the 80's. "My musical tastes were a bit different back then- Bon Jovi, the Eagles, shit like that," he says. "I'd heard of the Beastie Boys, Run DMC and those types of guys, but when you're 8 years old, 'Brass Monkey' doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense" He was the consummate church boy. "I was a F.U.C.K" he explains. "Fine Upstanding Church Kid. Every Sunday, that was me all decked out in my shirt and tie, listening to every word my Sunday School teacher said" He laughs. "Not exactly what you'd expect, is it?" But church did provide him with his first real chance to perform in front of an audience. "My parents picked me up a tape called "Mormon Rap" when I was little, and I used to listen to that thing all the time. I must've worn the tape out three or four times. Anyways, my parents thought it would be great for me to sing that song at a church talent show" And sing the song he did. A couple years later, he performed that same number at another church function. "People kept asking me about it, asking me how it felt to be out there all alone, rapping to an audience that really hated rap to begin with. I loved it! These church people would be tapping their feet and getting into it, and by the time I was done, they cheered" It would be years before he'd ever rap in front of an audience again. "I'm no different than anyone else. You hit those teenage years and you start to question everything you were taught growing up. For me, it wasn’t about questioning, you know, whether or not God existed. But somehow, I had a little problem imagining that a fair and just God would send me to hell for dropping a few F-bombs" He also had a little help along the way. "Yeah, Asshole. You heard about him? My brother, the best friend I'd ever known up till then. We met at church right after his family moved to town, and we hated each other instantly. But Mom and Dad took pity on him, so I was the new designated friend. Shit, his parents basically paid me to hang out with him, buying gas, snacks, movie tickets, whatever" But that obligation turned into a real friendship. Both of them questioned the foundations of what they’d been programmed into becoming since day 1. Both slowly slid away from the F.U.C.K. background and began to find their own paths in life. "I did it by writing, exploring, hell, even scramble-vision. He did it with The Slut" The Slut. "Yeah, The Slut. Capital T, Capital S. Like about 10,000 other guys, I made the mistake of thinking she gave a fuck. And I got burned. The worst part about it is that not only did I get burned, but the guy who'd been my best friend for years was the one who lit the flame. That's not the kind of thing you can just forget" "People ask me if I just used these two for song inspiration. They tell me that nobody's really that bad, that I’ve gotta be exaggerating how much she fucks or what a prick he is. Trust me, she's that bad, guys. And yeah, she provided some inspiration for songs. But every guy out there has been torched by a female. They know I'm not making this shit up. And that makes it real" Around this time, Flash 'discovered' a new kind of music; gangsta rap. "Look, I'll be straight with you. I hated rap as a teenager... or at least, I thought I did. To me, rap was either wannabes like Vanilla Ice or cop killers like Ice T. I was still pretty uptight and white back then. Hell, I made Pat Buchanan look like a centrist" He laughs. "So one of my friends sat me down and MADE me listen to the 2Pac song 'Wonder Why They Call U'. I was fuckin' HOOKED. So I asked him to play another song. He hit 'California Love', 'Only God Can Judge Me', 'All Bout U', and host of other tracks off of 2Pac's 'All Eyez On Me' album. "And while those songs may not have been written about my life, trust me, I could feel it. I could feel the raw emotion that 2Pac rapped with and I sure as hell could identify from time to time" Flash takes a breath. "So while I'd written lyrics for years that purged me of sadness and down times, I'd never before found an outlet for anger. That night, listening to an album recorded several years before by an artist who was now dead, I finally found it" He looks up and smiles. "There was just one problem. I was white. And rap hadn’t exactly been kind to the white guys. This was before Eminem, before anyone white had ever really been taken seriously. But I still wrote. Everywhere I went, I took a notepad, jotting down song ideas and lyrics. Sometimes, I'd just sit and write for hours. Other times, it'd just be a few words that I thought sounded pretty cool. And when the Slim Shady LP took off, it was like, damn, maybe I can do this" Flash's idea was a simple one. "Have you ever been in a trailer park at night? Ever been downtown in some backwater hole like Bellefonte [Pennsylvania] on a Friday night and listened to the cars bumping down the road? These people love bass, love the fast moving dance tracks. But the words behind it often ain't written for them. For some people, it's hard to identify with ghetto stories because the only black person they've seen in their life was on a football field or basketball court. But what if someone came out there mixing those beats with lyrics that they personally could relate to?" "And it's more than just that. I could relate to 2Pac even though I was a white suburban kid. He may have written his songs for one audience but he wrote them in such a way that a much wider group could understand and relate to what he was saying. What if a white guy did that?" The idea was gold. But unfortunately, he sat on it. "Look, I won't pretend that I did everything I could back then to make it work. I knew I had talent and knew that I could rap. But with all the other shit that was going on in my life, it just wasn't a high priority. Getting the car to run, making enough money to keep the credit card companies at bay, hell, even getting a piece from time to time. Those were far more important than rapping. I wanted to do it but somehow, I just never had the time. Then I heard Bubba Sparxxx's album" A dark day indeed. "I listened to that shit, and while I'm not a big Timbaland fan, what I heard was basically my idea, my lyrics, my dreams, stolen by somebody else. Hell, Bubba's even a big guy like me. It was his mug splashed all over MTV and his words that everyone praised as a breath of fresh air. To say I was pissed would be to call 9/11 a minor disturbance. I went home from work that night and started working. I looked for new beats, tightened the old rhymes I had and went to work on all new ones" "It's not that I have something personally against Bubba," Flash says. "But I had the idea first. And I'll be damned if I'm gonna let some Southern Redneck steal it. It's my turn. It's my time. And I'm gonna make the most of it" After a few false starts and technical problems, Flash is indeed well on his way toward doing so. From the humor of 'X is on the Internet' to the cold-blooded 'Ain’t Murder (If U Deserve 2 Die', Flash has done exactly what he set out to do. "I like a lot of things being done in rap today. But my main problem with the genre is that most rappers don't seem to have anything to say. It's all blunts, 40's, and bitches. And while I like all three, there's more to life than just that. "White or black, a rapper should have something to say, a story to tell that people will want to listen to. Eminem may be a phenomenon partially because he's white, but if you listen to his music, you find a message. He's got something to say that you can't help but listen to. And more than anything else, that's what I love most about my own music. I've got a story to tell. And white or black, I think it's one that's worth telling"

Group Members Lead vocalist- Flash 3:16 Contributing Artist- 3-D member 1 1/2 B

Location State College, PA - USA

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