The summer of 2018 will undoubtedly be remembered as one within which people of all sorts mounted complex mobile video projects, risking life and limb to vault from the passenger side of their vehicles, dance-strutting while creating doubled handed, heart-shaped communications of interest in whether or not they had secured Kiki’s love. Yes, the #inmyfeelingschallenge swept social media, catapulting the song to the top of the charts and its melodic hook into digital ubiquity.
Folded into the phenomenon, is a gritty set of female, vocal samples that convey what could be deemed the captivatingly rougher side of romance. They also inject the song with a distinctly “Nola” vibe, linking it to Louisiana’s vibrant bounce music culture.
These punctuations sampled from the track “Smoking Gun” come courtesy of female MC, Magnolia Shorty (nee Renetta Lowe) who was tragically killed in 2010 along with a companion whose gang affiliations rendered the two targets.
We hopped on the phone with Nawlin’s born-and-bred DJ RQ Away to learn about Drake sampling a sample within a sample, Shorty’s enduring legacy, and the fascinating politics of bounce music’s cultural migration.
So DJ RQ Away, you come highly recommended; we heard from some pretty notable people that you were THE person to speak to about bounce.
I grew up here in New Orleans in the 6th Ward, and I’ve been DJing throughout the city for about twelve years now. It all started when I was studying at the University of New Orleans.
Do you spin mostly bounce music?
Bounce at home is like Gogo is to DC or Base is to Miami. Here at home, bounce is appreciated in different ways by different sets of people. Personally, for me, it’s really cool to hear how creative cats can be with music that begins in one of two essential beats.
That’s deep! Tell us about that. What are the origins of bounce music’s signature beats?
There are two core beats, the Trigger Man (sampled from The Showboys "Triggaman") and the Brown Beat (sampled from Cameron Paul's "Brown Beats" which was also a reprogrammed sample).
When bounce started, it was rap. but it was different cause it wasn’t over the usual hard-slapping hip hop beat. It still was traditional hip hop in that it was primarily straight male dominated though. Then, there was a time when women and the Queer community got more central in bounce. This is the south and there was some backlash to that, and well that sucks but…(laughing) sadly, that’s part of being American.
Yeah, totally. responses to art can really get to the heart of what’s going on in our culture and communities. Even communities outside of our own…
Yeah, just about any Saturday you can drive around the “hood” (if you will) and hear somebody playing bounce. But these days you’ll also find bounce nights at clubs frequented almost exclusively by young white people. Which is probably the side effect of any popularized form of black music.
So Drake is “feeling” bounce big-time these days. Some people are side-eyeing that. What do you think?
I first I heard “In My Feelings” when I started seeing the dance challenge videos on social media. No wait, I actually had listened to the song before at home and immediately knew it was a dope song. This is not too long after “Nice for What” caused some controversy. You know, some people accused him of appropriation of bounce culture. I mean, musical artists have “appropriated” other peoples’ culture all the time; I think with Drake, personally I’m not trippin’ cause he—because of his affiliations with Lil Wayne, Young Money, and Cash Money—has been attached to very important pieces of New Orleans culture for at least 10 years.
Now that you mention it. Maybe Drake has been exposed to bounce for longer than we might assume. It could explain him sampling “Smoking Gun” by Magnolia Shorty.
“Smoking Gun” is absolutely a bounce classic. It’s something that I’ve been asked to play throughout the entirety of my career. At one point I spun at Dillard University college parties. When you’re working that kinda job, you better play a bounce set, and that’s gonna include “Smoking Gun”. It’s a standard. It’s the sort of song that as soon as the first notes play, you hear somebody say, “Heyyyyyyyyyy!”.
It’s crazy cause on the hook of Magnolia Shorty’s “Smoking Gun” there’s a vocal sample of Jazmine Sullivan’s performance on a Jadakiss track of the same name. Do bounce heads know all this?
I’m not sure, cause I haven’t heard that many people mention the Jadakiss sample. Maybe DJs do.
Everybody in the New Orleans Bounce community knew about Magnolia Shorty and her companion’s tragic passing in 2010 though. Right?
Sadly people get killed here too often. But when the reports of these particular deaths came out, I really saw how many people had been really touched by Magnolia Shorty during her life. People really REALLY loved and cared about her. Right around the time that she was killed, when you played “Smoking Gun” it wasn’t as happy. You’ll still hear a DJ or MC say “R.I.P. Shorty” often when it’s played. She was very well respected.
Do your Louisiana peeps expect you to honor her by mixing back to “Smoking Gun” when you play “In My Feelings”?
I got a message from a regular at the Friday spot where I spin. She definitely said, “Next time you don’t drop back to that Shorty after you play ‘In My Feelings’, we gon fight!”. So…(laughs)
They like seeing that homage paid?
Yeah…
And you are spinning “In My Feelings” a ton right now I bet.
It might get played out soon but that’s not the song’s fault, that’s just how popular music works these days.
Late in the game, it became the song of summer. It’s everywhe re!
Yeah, it’s really different these days; when I was a kid, I had to wait to hear my favorite new song. I had to wait for it to come on the radio, or I had to wait for somebody to request it on The Box. Now songs, videos, and artists are basically “in rotation” on IG, Twitter, and Snapchat on top of the traditional outlets.
Do you think that Drake knew that “In My Feelings” would perform so well?
That’s a really good question. I think that he or somebody within his team did. I don’t know who. I very much believe that when artists of that level make decisions there are a lot of people around who make up their “thinking tank”.
If you're in New Orleans, you should make time to check out DJ RQ Away’s beats (Bounce among them) at his regularly curated events.
