Despite being born and raised in a small town, C-Hall is making a big splash on Alabama's hip-hop scene. He's one of the few artists in the state who can get radio play even outside of his hometown. He's worked with and toured with many of the top artists in the game, has been nominated for and won many awards, and is currently being courted by three - count'em three - major labels. Now, after years of grinding, he's finally working on his first full-length solo album, I Am What It Is, to be released in early spring of 2010. I recently spoke to C-Hall about his music, his accomplishments and his plans for the future. Read on to find out what he had to say about his career and what motivates him to grind so hard to get his music out to the masses.
LOUISVILLE, ALABAMA IS A small town in Barbour County, Alabama - a very small town. The 2000 census put its size at 2.8 miles and its population at a mere 612 people. By July 2008, that numer had dropped to 565. Nope. This definitely doesn't sound like the type of place you'd expect big things to happen - nor is it the type of place you'd expect big people to come out of. But then you remember: big things sometimes come in small packages. One of those "big things" comes in the form of Carlos Hall who was born and raised in Louisville. Carlos has grown up to become the rapper C-Hall. And C-Hall is definitely about to do some big things - against all the odds.
LOUISVILLE AND BARBOUR COUNTY are not really seen as the land of opportunity. C-Hall describes them as "the kind of place where no one comes to have a better life." In Barbour County, once you finish high school, you either go to the military or to college. Otherwise, you just end up hanging around and doing nothing with your life.
C-Hall knows a lot about that. His father died when when he was about four years old, so his mother had to work two jobs to feed and clothe him and his brother. While his mom was at work, C-Hall was able to do whatever he wanted to do - and kick it with whomever he chose to kick it with - until she came home. Unfortunately, the people he chose to hang around with were those same people who ended up doing nothing with their lives - drug dealers, junkies, drifters, etc - in other words, the types of people you'd normally want nothing to do with.
But kids don’t know any better. They just like to hang around with the grown-ups, and C-Hall was no different. He looked up to these guys. He thought that they were cool. "I'm thinking this is how life really is," he says. "I see the shiny rims, so I'm thinking it's a positive thing." He could easily have gotten sucked into the same lifestyle. And he almost did. When it was determined that he was not going to be playing football at Auburn after high school, he figured he’d just hang around and do nothing like most of the other people he knew.
But Mom's wasn't having it. "My mom wasn't around that much, but when she was around she did discipline me." After high school ended, C-Hall’s mother gave him an ultimatum: go to the military, go to college or get a job. He settled for a job at a meat-packaging plant. It didn't work out. Apparently, blood, guts and gore were not C-Hall’s cup of tea. "That right there, made you get your mind right real quick," he laughs. "I was like, 'Damn that. Let me see what college is about.'" And off he went to Troy State.
EVEN BEFORE HE WENT to college, C-Hall had already begun rapping. He’d gotten into the hip-hop game during his teen years and was very heavily influenced by the late Tupac Shakur. "I loved Tupac," he says. So much so that he began to emulate Pac and even formed a group called Eternal with three of his friends. “We used to always get into these talent shows or whatever we could do to grab a mic,” he tells me. “At the time, it was just fun to me."
C-Hall's favorite rapper and biggest inspiration is the late Tupac Shakur, who died when C-Hall was only 14 years old...
"I loved Tupac. Tupac was our Malcolm X [or] Martin Luther King. If he'd said anything I'da been down with it. Tupac was my religion."
"When Tupac rapped, you could feel it. You know, like them country black churches where the preachers preach and go "ah!" and get into it. I mean, you could just feel it. You would stand up from your seat. Tupac made you feel like you could overcome this. You can be from the streets and still do this."
But as they got older and became more serious about rapping, being in a group became less and less fun for C-Hall. Having three other members in the group limited his ability to express himself. He couldn't always do or say what he wanted to because there were other people to consider.
To make matters worse, once the guys graduated from high school, they had a new challenge: they all had lives, different lives, which took them to different places. "I was at Troy State, dude was at Alabama State, one dude went to the military and the other dude was just hanging out." It was now very difficult to get everyone in the same place at the same time for shows and studio time. After awhile, the combined weights of restricted creativity and lack of unity became too much for C-Hall to bear. In 2004, after having been with the group for about six years, he decided to leave and go solo.
Before he'd left the group, C-Hall and a fellow Troy State Student named Brent Baskin (who C-Hall credits with encouraging him to go solo) had already started a label called Creative Minds Entertainment. One of the first things they did was sign a female artist named Mystic. Unfortunately, her time with CME was short-lived. "One thing you gotta be ready for when you’re working with an artist [is that] you gotta make sure it's something they want, not something you want. [We] found out the hard way, it was just something that we wanted bad…, and she didn't, so we had to part ways."
With two very important lessons learned, C-Hall decided not to worry about any artists other than himself for awhile. He's currently the only artist on Creative Minds, and that's exactly the way he wants it. "I don't want to take the chance of pushing another artist until I get myself established," he explains. "I want to make sure things [are] right before I just go haywire with it."
"I'm gon' grind to make sure
that these people don't doubt me anymore"
BEING FROM A PLACE where nothing big is expected of you, C-Hall has had his fair share of nay-sayers and non-believers. The thought that has kept him going all these years is his “Grind Over Doubt” mantra. “So many people had doubts about me,” he explains. From the elementary school teacher who told him he wouldn’t amount to much, to all the people who didn’t believe he could have a successful rap career, he had a lot going against him. He could have given up, but he didn’t. He kept it moving. “I was like, I’m gon grind to make sure that these people don’t doubt me anymore.”
Grinding is exactly what C-Hall has been doing over the five years that have passed since he went solo. In 2007, he moved to Montgomery and began really pushing his music. He would press up CD’s every weekend, take them to the most popular club in whatever city he was in, and leave them on people’s cars. Then he’d go into the clubs, and court the DJ’s, making sure to leave his CD’s with them. “I [wouldn’t] even tell him to play it while we [were] in the club. I’d let him listen to it on his own time.”
This tactic had the desired effect. People all over the state were starting to check for C-Hall’s music. “They probably didn’t know how I looked, but they heard of C-Hall,” he says. “Come 2008, it was such a buzz going on, that by the time I took it up to radio, [they] were like, ‘Okay. So you’re C-Hall. Everybody’s heard of you. So now we get to meet you.’ They started messing with the record and everything…and that was how I got on.”
HERO
"I released a mixtape called Hero on January 20th, 2009. I did that because that was the inauguration of President Obama taking office. I wanted that day to be like, 'I remember when I did that - my first ever mixtape.'"
THINK OUTSIDE THE BOOTH
C-Hall has done several radio commercials for Taco Bell. So how'd that come about?
"The Taco Bell commercials was one of those good luck type of things. The rep from Taco Bell just happened to be in the radio station buying commercial time, and my song was playing on the radio. For some reason (and I thank this lady to this day), [she] expressed an interest in me. They told her who I was and asked one of the DJ's to get in contact with me to ask me to think about doing a Taco Bell spot. I'm up for anything for marketing and promoting myself. It turned out a good deal. I've lost count, but I've probably done over 13 Taco Bell commercials."
Since then, C-Hall has continued his grind. He's done over 50 features with artists from all over the country. He’s released a 6-track maxi-single, and in January of this year, he released his first mixtape, Hero. Now, he's working on a full-length album titled I Am What it Is which is scheduled to be released in early spring of 2010.
All that grinding has paid off big-time for C-Hall. His music gets radio play not just in Montgomery, but all over the southeast. He's performed all over the country and has opened for numerous mainstream artists, including TI, Gucci Mane, Young Dro, BG and Young Jeezy. He even toured with Yung Joc when Joc was promoting his first album, New Joc City.
In addition, C-Hall has been honored with several award nominations. The Southeastern Awards (SEA) has previously nominated him for Artist of the Year and Grinder of the Year. Ozone Magazine has nominated him for Who Got Next in Alabama. He just recently won Impact Artist of the Year at the Dead Serious Awards. And he’s been nominated again for SEA Artist of the Year. But the biggest prize? He’s in negotiations with not one, not two, but three major labels: Def Jam, Universal and Jive.
C-HALL SAYS HIS MUSIC is “straight up, raw, street and goes straight over you. I give it to you just how it is,” he says, likening himself to a running back that doesn’t hesitate to bowl his opponents over. “Some running backs will go ziz-zag and try to fake you out,” he explains, “[but] my music’s like a running back that’ll run straight over you.” His musical style, he says, is “crunk but lyrical. It’s like combining Lil’ John’s crunkness with the lyrical ability of Jay-Z.”
Quality is a big thing with C-Hall. In fact, his quality over quantity philosophy is one of the things that has made him so successful. He knows that regardless of who you are, radio stations and clubs decide whether or not to play your music based on how it stacks up to all the other music they play - including big name acts. So presenting a radio station or DJ with a low-budget project just won’t cut it. “If you aren’t going to take yourself seriously, other people aren’t going to take you serious. It’s gon’ take money to make money, so you always gotta focus on the quality of the music.”
He usually lets the beats dictate what the lyrics and hooks on his songs will be. “Soon as I hear a beat, I’ll have a hook in my head.” And while he’s impressed by the ability of some to write rhymes in their heads, he prefers to put his lyrics on paper. “I actually like to write and process my thoughts…I’d rather put it on paper, so I can look at it - in case I wanna say a line even harder than the line I spit the first time.”
C-Hall has worked with numerous producers, most notably, Chason Dreamz. “Chason Dreamz is a white boy that I first, started my solo career with,” he tells me. “He helped me out a lot. It’s almost like I was in boot camp or something.” Uncle Charles is another producer who’s had a big impact on C-Hall’s career, having produced several of his biggest hits, including his first two radio releases, “So Much Money” and “Start It Up”.
He’s also worked with Beat Champ and Da Grindaz (who did TI’s “Watch What You Say to Me” featuring Jay-Z), and to a lesser extent, Khao and Drumma Boy. “It’s good to get recognized,” he says, telling me he gets a lot of producers sending him beats free of charge just because they enjoy his music. “It’s a good thing to be putting out quality music ‘cause people look at you with that type of respect.”
C-HALL HAS RELEASED SEVERAL songs over the past year or two. His first release was “So Much Money” which he describes as a party anthem. “I was like, ‘okay…I’ve done a lotta grinding in the streets, now it’s time for me to come out,’ and “So Much Money” just came right on time when it was time to party.” His second release, “Start It Up” was an anthem of a different sort, more of a down-south anthem, “so it was embraced by not only Alabama, but it moved out into Mississippi, moved out to Arkansas, moved out to Georgia, like a big movement.”
Coming soon is the R&B-inspired, “She Likes the Way” which is geared towards the ladies because, as C-Hall puts it, “I can’t kick it with the niggas in the street all the time.” He’s also planning to release the Chason Dreamz produced, “Ask About Me”, which has a Jay-Z sample on the hook and is currently posted on his MySpace page. “You know, a lotta people gon’ think that’s my best rhymes coming out yet,” he says.
But not so fast folks. He’s got a couple more in the chamber: “Gon’ Take the Wind Out of Em”, which is scheduled for a September release, and “I Get Money” which he says is going to be a huge hit. While he doesn’t tell me too much about either song, he seems super-excited about both of them. Apparently, these two are going to make people realize that C-Hall has a lot more up his sleeve than they ever thought possible.
"I think I'm one of the best,
and I have no problem proving it."
ALL OF THE WORK that C-Hall has done recently is a build-up to the release of his new album, I Am What It Is. “I am what it is” is a very matter of fact, very in your face and (by C-Hall’s own admission) very cocky statement. While he says he’s always very humble in person, he knows that when it’s game time, you have to put your game face on. “Like I said, my music is raw. It’ll straight run over you,” he says. “People got to recognize who I am and what I stand for. So I was like, 'as far as this rap music right now, I am what it is. [I’m] the total package.'”
Whoa! That humbleness he spoke of earlier must have temporarily left the building. He continues, “I think I’m one of the best, and I have no problem proving it. A lot of people say, ‘Yeah. I’m hot’,” he says, “But me, I get out there and prove it. And the statement, ‘I am what it is’, proves that I am what it is. And this music is gon’ back that statement up.”
Although it’s almost finished, I Am What It Is will not be released until early next spring. Why? Well, as I previously mentioned, Def Jam, Universal and Jive are all interested in C-Hall. So he wants to wait to see “what the business is” before he releases the album. “I wanna try to make sure that I don’t just rush nothing out when I could’ve [gotten] a bigger deal for this project before I put it out.” If he releases the music now, he says, the labels may decide to offer him lesser deals because all his hot material is already out there. “So the more I hold back, the more I got leverage on it.”
LEVERAGE IS SOMETHING THAT C-Hall definitely has. His willingness to work hard and his commitment to quality music have given him quite a bit of buzz and respect. He gets regular radio play and has the BDS scans to prove it. He also has a sizeable fan-base (At last count he had 160,778 profile views and 7,850 friends on his MySpace profile). This means that he can bring out a crowd, whether it’s to his own shows or to one of the numerous acts that he’s opened for.
In addition, he’s been featured on over 50 songs and has garnered numerous award nominations and wins. He’s also done over 13 Taco Bell radio commercials. He’s even been asked to speak at several schools - which means that he has the respect of, not only the hip-hop community, but the community as a whole.
All those achievements add up to one thing: leverage. Because he’s been as successful as he has, C-Hall knows that he can command a lot more than the average artist, so he’s very particular about what type of deal he’s willing to accept. “$25,000 is something that I have under my mattress. I just spent like $5,000 pushing “Start It Up”,” he tells me. “I’d rather keep grinding and get the big money instead of getting a contract for a little amount of money, when I can make that money on my own…just from the song on the radio, [being] out in the street and doing shows,” he says.
IT MAKES SENSE THAT C-Hall prefers to do his own thing. Doing things on his own has been a way of life for him since he was a kid fending for himself while his mother worked. As a result, he's become very strong-minded and independent - two qualities that have bled over into his music career.
And that's a good thing because according to C-Hall, in order to pursue a career in hip-hop, you have to have three things: initiative, determination and willpower. And you don’t have to look far to find them. “Those are things that you can instill in yourself,” he says. “You gotta put that in yourself – that you’re determined, that you need to take this initiative, [and] that you have that willpower.” And you have to be able to keep going in the face of set-backs and rejection. So don’t let the word “no” hold you back. “A lot of things are gonna test you…You just gotta keep going…and persevere.”
C-Hall has definitely done his share of persevering. Over the course of his career, he's worked his ass off, put out good quality music and represented Alabama to the fullest. And that has paid off and continues to pay off in abundance: a buzz around his name, respect from the industry, record labels lining up. Yep. C-Hall is definitely about to come up. With his unstoppable grind, he's erasing all the doubt that people have about him and is proving that big things do come in small packages - even small packages like Louisville, Alabama, population 565, where no one is expected to do anything big.
