By Donna Tam & Photos by Constance Cavellas
Feb 13, 2007 - 2:16 PM
BOAC’s a man that’s got spunk. He spews energy and he just can’t stop cheesing for the camera. As we talk, there’s a video camera in the background, shooting footage for a music video off his latest album, Plot Will Twist. The camera focuses on the charismatic rapper, dressed in a dark blue track jacket, jeans and white socks, lounging on his lazy boy. Inside his small in-house studio, surrounded by his equipment and record collection, BOAC is lord, and pretty darn comfortable.
The producer and emcee who’s been writing raps since he was 12 years old doesn’t know the meaning of giving up.
“I don’t know, I just have to do it,” he says about making his music. “This is not something I can control. It’s something I got to do.”
Though he keeps his age discreet, he’s grown a lot since rapping over video game music (specifically, the original Zelda flute theme), as he did on “The Nineteen Ninety Now Theme Transmission” from his debut album Modern Originalus, BOAC, an acronym for Banging Out All Classics, is as hungry as he’s ever been. He recently co-founded Machete Vox Records with producer DNAE Beats, who’s composed tracks for artists such as Gift of Gab, MF Grimm, and Pigeon John. They already have several projects in the works to be released later this year.
To think, he almost gave it all up in high school.
“In the 80’s, being a white guy and making rap music was not accepted,” he says with a thoughtful look in his piercing blue eyes, and the big-ass grin still plastered on his face.
A friend accused BOAC of trying to break into the black man’s world because he couldn’t make it in the white man’s world, and it got BOAC thinking.
“I’m a fucking short white Jewish guy in the late 80’s, maybe I shouldn’t be doing it,” he said to himself. But every time he tried to do his homework, a rap would pop into his head. He realized he couldn’t just stop.
Now, with an EP, a mixtape and two full-lengths in his discography, he doesn’t question his place in the hip hop world any more.
“I don’t think ‘why?’,” he says, showing that now he’s resolved. “I think ‘I got to do it.’”
In the webtalk below, he kicks off his shoes, puts up his feet, and lets OH DANG! into the mind of the man who knows where he’s at and where he wants to go.
Just click play.
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Donna Tam is the managing editor of OH DANG! She mainly operates behind the scenes but sometimes comes out to play.
Constance Cavallas is a freelance photographer.
