DOPE Fort Worth Weekly Story On Rappers Six2, Smooth Vega, Dru B Shinin & Rkade

Though he was still a teenager, Six2 had already experienced how high life could take him and how quickly it could try to erase him. As he stood on a Hemphill Street corner looking to peddle a pocketful of crack one day in 1996, he reflected on all that had happened in the previous month. In a 30-day period, the tall, quiet rapper had been arrested for possession with intent to deliver crack cocaine, had escaped a gun pointed at his forehead, and was relatively homeless, bouncing from one unwelcoming house to another.

Six2 and another rapper, El Dog, were performing as the duo Gena Cide and had seen their Dirty South anthem, “Da Citi,” receive major airplay on K-104 (KKDA/104-FM), the broadcast epicenter of North Texas rap. Six2 was a junior when he dropped out of high school, believing he was on his way to great wealth and fame, but the streets had other plans for him.

Six2 recorded the song “Deeply Thinkin” out of frustration at feeling forced to be a gangsta. The song reached the ears of rap icon Dr. Dre, who invited Six2 out to Dre’s homebase of Los Angeles to lay down some tracks on a Dre album in progress. Six2 thought he would be a success story out of his Stop Six neighborhood, one of the poorest in North Texas, but he mainly ended up seeing the ugly side of the business. He has been used, ripped off, lied to, and left to wither on the side of the fast lane to success.

But he’s not done yet. You could even argue that he’s never been better.

As Six2 was fleeing Texas to join forces with the who’s who of hip-hop back in ’96, 13-year-old Lorenzo Zenteno received his first computer, a gift from his mother. The teenager had been fiddling around with hip-hop rhymes in his Northside barrio but didn’t have much of a musical product to promote. Undeterred, he started building the Smoothvega brand, even shaving his new alias into his head. Now, after years of relentless self-promotion, he has taken over as one of the main faces of Fort Worth hip-hop.

To date, Smoothvega has organized 15 hip-hop events, each under the banner of Total Pandemonium. He uses the opportunity to showcase not only his talent but also that of other local hip-hop artists, national hip-hop artists, and teenage dance teams. He has broken attendance records for Fort Worth music events by appealing to younger audiences, for whom he wants to serve as a role model.

These days, Smoothvega may have some competition. Andrew McCollough, who goes by Dru B Shinin’, left his career as a stockbroker to pursue music full time. He and his two bandmates, EyeJay and The Shark, recently released Dirty Money Painting, which may be the new benchmark for what is possible (and expected) in local hip-hop.

Big and musical, the album appeals to fans of many genres. Over EyeJay’s fat beats and swelling atmospherics, Dru raps about the totality of his experience. For a TCU-educated son of a minister, he has walked down some dark alleys. Though he released two albums in 2010, Dru is only beginning to make a dent in the big plans that he has for both his career and the Fort Worth rap scene that he is helping build.

All the trails that have been blazed are a boon for the newest crop of Fort Worth hip-hop artists. Someone like Ron Brown, who goes by Rkade, can focus solely on the message in his music while others worry about a business model.

After years of struggle and hard lessons learned, 817 hip-hop artists have finally broken free of the need to be part of some larger machine or some materialistic thug image. Rap acquired a bad reputation thanks to gangsters who associated violence, misogyny, and expensive car collections with hip-hop music — lyrical and promotional motifs that are largely absent in Fort Worth hip-hop.

Fort Worth hip-hop artists are vastly different people coming from a variety of backgrounds, but they are unified by one musical element: They portray life as it really is. Here there are no fictional personae or invented rifts between rival artists.

Rap, unlike loud, distorted rock ’n’ roll, offers no place to hide. The truth is right there, front and center, constantly adapting as the beats beneath it bounce and push. Lyrical authenticity is a hard thing to fake, but, opposed to a catchy style or sound, it may be what defines Fort Worth rap music.

When Six2 was a kid in the ’80s, he would sneak into his brother’s car to listen to gangsta rap’s pioneers. N.W.A.’s “Gangsta Gangsta” inspired him to write songs of his own. He’d count out a meter for the verses and invent a catchy chorus. The talent to create a hook, and his heady mathematic cadences, set Six2 apart from the other early local rappers.

At first, he did it to be like the older guys who would rap and breakdance outside of the dollar movie theater in the ’hood. By the ninth grade, he and a few friends had a gangster rap group they called HHAN (Hard Headed Ass Niggaz). “We were the teenagers that went against the grain: smokin’ weed, getting drunk, skipping school, shootouts,” he said about the inspiration for the group’s material.

By 1994, Six2 and El Dog had splintered off into Gena Cide and released an album, Waste Uva Color. After K-104 started spinning “Da Citi,” Six2 and El Dog felt they had found their calling and had no need to keep attending Eastern Hills High School. “I thought we were going to be rich,” Six2 said.

In addition to Six2 and El Dog, local rapper Twisted Black was concurrently putting Fort Worth on the map. In 1995, the now-incarcerated 34-year-old sold 10,000 copies of his album One Gud Cide: Look What the Streets Made in 30 days.

In 1996, Six2 befriended Dallas rapper/producer Erotic D, who was working in Los Angeles with the D.O.C., a man partially responsible for the early success of icons Eazy E and N.W.A. Erotic D gave a copy of “Deeply Thinkin” to the D.O.C., who, in turn, gave it to industry pioneer Dr. Dre, who paid the D.O.C. to travel to Fort Worth and find the kid responsible for the powerful lyrics. “Nowadays, I ain’t happy to see the sun rise,” Six2 raps in a mellow, smoked-out cadence. “Where do ghetto children go when they close they eyes? I done seen so many lost souls, it’s hard to stomach / It’s like a jungle out there / Makes you wonder how I keep from going under,” referencing one of rap’s earliest hits, Grandmaster Flash’s “The Message.”

At first, Six2 didn’t believe his luck had changed so quickly. He laughed off a friend’s initial report that the D.O.C. was in town looking for him. When Erotic D met Six2 at the downtown Dickies factory with a contract containing the signatures of both Dr. Dre and the D.O.C., the young upstart turned into a believer.

Although he wasn’t supposed to leave the state because of pending felony charges, Six2 couldn’t say no to a veritable hip-hop apotheosis. So he signed and immediately left for Los Angeles.

Over the next few years, Six2 developed his solo album while writing material for Dr. Dre, who was working on a follow-up to his 1992 groundbreaking triple-platinum hit album, The Chronic. Six2 had much better quality of life in L.A., hobnobbing with famous rap artists and generally enjoying high times, but he had yet to find any personal riches.

In 2000, Six2 hit the road for the Up in Smoke tour with Ice Cube, Eminem, Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, Kurupt, and others who now sit in the pantheon of hip-hop. Six2’s album was finished, but his associates kept pushing back the release date because “It wasn’t the right time,” he said.

After the tour, Six2 surrendered back in Texas to settle the old possession-with-intent charge from his street life days. He didn’t want the police to storm the stage while he was performing. After his six-month incarceration, he expected to pick up where he’d left off. He had penned two songs, “Xxplosive” and “Bitch Niggaz,” on Dr. Dre’s newest multiplatinum hit album, The Chronic 2001, and his debut solo album was ready and waiting to hit stereos around the world. “When I got out of jail, I thought a helicopter was going to pick me up,” he said.

Instead, shortly after his release, he discovered that the D.O.C. had CLICK HERE to read the rest of this story

and when you're done come back & peep this rare underground video by Six2 & El Dorado from they old group Genacide Da Citi

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