Finishing off a two-liter of Hawaiian Punch, 23-year-old Charlotte rapper Deniro Farrar places the empty bottle down amidst the debris of a typical late night — fast-food cups, coffee stains and cigarette butts. He finds a seat in the small basement studio as his manager, Konstantin Kazmierski, sits at the computer console and scrolls through promotional flyers for a handful announcing Farrar's 12 upcoming South By Southwest Music Conference performances this week in Austin, Texas. Farrar can't hide his excitement.
Although the rapper has opened shows for countless big names — from Nas and Damian Marley to Young Jeezy and Big K.R.I.T. — SXSW is Farrar's chance to finally meet a lot of the people he's collaborated with during the past year, including rapper Shady Blaze of Oakland, Calif., and Canadian producer Ryan Hemsworth, who worked on four songs for Farrar's latest mixtape, Destiny. altered.
As Kazmierski plays various beats and asks if I've ever heard of the producers, Farrar nods his head to almost every track that flows from the speakers. He raps along to the ones for which he's already written lyrics. There's plenty of beats to choose from. Ambitious producers have sent Kazmierski and Farrar inspiration from all over the world. The beats are organized with "aaa" or "1" at the beginning, so Farrar and Kazmierski don't have to scroll far to find the ones they love.
In the Internet era, artists can make a name for themselves outside the towns they live in while maintaining relative anonymity at home. Farrar built a big fan base online and performs more frequently outside of Charlotte than he does at local venues. Whenever someone tweets about him, Farrar finds out where the tweeter is from. People who play his music on underground mix shows as far away as London and New Zealand have contacted the rapper about performing.
Farrar, who bounced among West Charlotte, Waddell and Garinger high schools while growing up, now focuses his education on studying the music industry on the fly. By keeping tabs on local artists as well as trying to expand his scope, he's learned a lot.
Farrar started rapping seriously while making his 2010 debut mixtape, Feel This. He began writing and crafting lyrics instead of just freestyling. "I had never written structured rap songs until Feel This," Farrar says. "With Destiny. altered, I found my lane. I found my niche. I found me as a rapper. I found where I want to be, where I want to go, the people I want to cater to, and I ran with that shit."
The music got more personal and Farrar's motive changed from rapping to make money to rapping to make history. He also benefited from getting quality stage time opening big-name shows around Charlotte over the past year. Early on, he was paired with more established artists on the locally owned label he records for, Black Flag Records — artists such as A. Moss and Define Jones (formerly Dow Jones).
Whenever Farrar felt he hadn't earned his space on the stage, Black Flag owner David Luddy would offer this advice: "You deserve to be on that stage, just like anyone else and don't let anybody tell you no different. When you get out there, you own that bitch. When you leave, you want people asking, 'Who was that dude?'"
That approach worked, but Farrar admits that he began to get arrogant, going off on Twitter rants and talking trash to anyone reading. "Listen up you fuckers, that's not rain that's me pissing from my private jet in the sky," he wrote last May. He's matured in the past 10 months.
"It ain't even what I've figured out, I just found my niche with the music and the beats," Farrar says. "It's what [Kazmierski] has been able to do. The moves he's has been able to make. The people he's been able to get in contact with. The collabs I've been able to get. The producers who've reached out to me. That's key."
Watching the Black Flag indie camp grow has been interesting. Not long ago, the artists' beats and videos sounded and looked different. That was before any of them could afford better equipment; it before they knew what they were doing. The artists helped to build the label from the ground up and they learned as they went — at a rapid pace.
"Everything is different in a short time, meaning months," Farrar says of his and the label's whirlwind. "It didn't even take three, four or five mixtapes to do it. One mixtape project, then [Destiny. altered]. After that, ain't no telling what the fuck is going to come out."
Farrar says his sound is closer to the harder-edged hip-hop of the '90s than today's more pop-based sounds. "It's beats, the content, the lyrics," he says. "It's the same shit that I grew up on. It's that 2Pac, that Scarface, that real, in-the-ghetto [music]. This ain't that bubblegum, Soulja Boy, I-do-the-Superman, nowaday hip-hop music."
[-page]
Farrar explains: "It's always been shit I wanted to do and say on beats, I just didn't know how to do it. So, I discovered that these beats really bring out that pain" — he cranks up a few ominous beats to illustrate — "because of the samples that are being used — this real, dark, 'I pour my life out' shit.
"It's so powerful," he continues, "because the message I put in this music is real." The music he's playing for me vibrates against the walls of his Wesley Heights home. "I ain't glorifying no street life. I ain't glorifying growing up in the ghetto. I'm just shedding some light on it."
In "Prayer Before Suicide," the track that introduces Destiny, Farrar spits, "I know I'm living wrong, shit, I'm trying to make it right. Hoping that my mama don't relapse and go back to that white." A couple of lines later, he raps about his little brother making moves, but admits he's worried about him half of the time.
Starting out, Farrar went by his first name only while releasing singles online. However, the similarities to other Deniro-like names became a liability. His music got buried in Google searches under actor Robert Deniro, DJ Deniro and misspelled Spanish currency. So, Black Flag owner Luddy started adding Farrar's last name to the tracks. At first, the rapper didn't like it. "I said to myself, 'I wish he'd stop doing that shit.' People used to always pick on my name in school like, 'Oh, what's up Ferrari?'"
When Farrar searched for his full name soon thereafter, the results changed his tune. Instead of having to scroll through pages of results to find any mentions of himself, Farrar has found that references to his work now take up the first 60 pages.
Farrar says coming to see the world as bigger than just Charlotte has helped change his sound. Feel This had the sound of an album you'd sell out of the trunk of a car while Farrar focused on local recognition and trying to get his music on WorldStarHipHop.com. Destiny was a complete shift. As he sidelined the "money, hoes and clothes" raps in favor of getting more personal with his words, Farrar became more content with work.
Our discussion veers to YouTube, where Farrar unknowingly offers the best glimpse into who he is and what influences his music. After watching some Charles Manson interview clips, Farrar says, "Let me show you something real." He slides up to his keyboard, and we watch a few interviews with Texas rapper Pimp C shortly before his death. The rapper is talking about how to shake up the music industry, suggesting unions.
Farrar admires the intelligence behind Pimp C's Southern drawl — intelligence born out of street knowledge. Farrar also seems to admire Manson's demeanor and self-control as the notorious mass murderer weathers Geraldo Rivera's face-to-face questions. Farrar points out that Rivera's tough talk in the interview was only because the TV reporter had a roomful of cops and security with him.
Being smart is a double-edged sword, Farrar says. People who are too smart, the rapper says, attempt to rise above their circumstances and get taken out by a society unwilling to change.
These days, some might see Farrar as one of the smart ones. In just two projects, he's managed to find his voice while many of his peers and influences needed a decade's worth of material to scratch the surface of an identity. It all comes back to his childhood aspirations.
"I always knew I wanted to be a somebody," Farrar says. "I figured out rap is for me and this is going to be my ticket out of the situation."
He is laser-focused on blowing up, excited by the idea of getting airplay in different countries and eventually doing shows abroad. But what point is Deniro Farrar trying to prove?
He suggests the point is to grow and change without giving up one's identity. "This [new] music I'm making, I don't feel like I'm on a local level at all," Farrar says. "A lot of people I grew up with, I cut loose because they're still doing the same shit. But people that progressed in life and wanted to do something different, I still fuck with. Change is hard work. They worked hard to change just like I did, but they ain't forget where they came from. They know they came from a certain situation and they rose above it, and that's what I'm doing. You gotta be yourself. That's what makes the legend in music."