Fans of hip-hop and rap at NC State need only visit the cypher held every Monday night at the Free Expression Tunnel to celebrate their love of the genre, but it didn’t always used to be this easy. In the early 2000s, celebrating hip-hop on campus, and even across Raleigh, was somewhat unheard of. In 2004, however, the hip-hop group Kooley High changed that.
Consisting of five members, Charlie Smarts (Alexander Thompson), Tab-One (Taylor Burgess), Sinopsis (Dennis McCarter), Foolery (Thomas Kevin) and DJ Ill Digitz (James Meyer), Kooley High’s music features references to both Raleigh and NC State, mentioning locations like Hillsborough Street, the Bell Tower and Cup-A-Joe in its song, “Dear Raleigh,” with the city featured in most of its music videos. All of the group’s members are NC State alumni.
“I, like all the other members of Kooley High, showed up to college expecting there to be a lot of hip-hop events,” said Foolery, one of the group’s music producers. “It became pretty clear to us that nothing was going on, so in 2004, we started forming a network that became the campus organization H2O. The charter was to bring hip-hop events to the student body.”
Foolery said the group threw concerts and events in Wolf Plaza, the Brickyard and the Bragaw lounge. Events ranged from freestyle rap battles, to beat battles, to hip-hop concerts. The success of the H2O events and a mixtape project put on through the organization, led to the formation of Kooley High.
Kooley High’s first release was an EP called “The Summer Sessions” in 2008. Produced by rapper 9th Wonder, another North Carolina-born musician, the EP contained nine songs and featured local rappers Halo, Lazurus and EA Floe. The group has since released two albums: “Eastern Standard Time” and “Kooley High Presents…David Thompson,” named after the basketball star who took NC State to its first NCAA Championship win. Throughout the group’s history, it has never signed with a label.
“We’re not signed to a label; we’re signed to ourselves,” Smarts said. “We don’t even have any cosigns to speak of other than ourselves. We think we sound good, and we have the crowd, our fans both locally and internationally, who mesh with us, our fuel that keep us going.”
Kooley said the group has its biggest following in the Raleigh area and that they want to be true to their fans at home. Smarts said he thinks the Raleigh hip-hop scene is growing, citing the success of artists like 9th Wonder and female rapper Rapsody, a former member of Kooley High. Both artists played at NC State’s Packapalooza in August. 9th Wonder has collaborated with and produced for artists and groups like Little Brother, Jay-Z and Kendrick Lamar. Rapsody also collaborated with Kendrick Lamar in his song “Complexion,” found in his Grammy-nominated album, “To Pimp a Butterfly.”
After the release of “Eastern Standard Time,” several members of the group moved to New York, where they began production on “David Thompson.” While in New York, the group shared a one-bedroom railroad apartment, styled similarly to a shotgun house with no hallways to speak of and every room connected.
“The feeling behind ‘David Thompson’ was being away from home and missing North Carolina and wanting to still represent where we were from and what we loved,” Foolery said. “It was the idea of really playing at the highest level and doing things that people didn’t think were possible. They called him the Skywalker, a mythic North Carolina figure that we took inspiration from.”
Despite the group being geographically split, Kooley High is still producing new material. The group has just released its new EP, “Heights,” featuring nine songs and collaborations with musicians Add-2 and Sandra Gell.
“There was a big dry spell between ‘David Thompson’ and now, but we’ve been working on music for a number of years, so we have a lot in reserve that we have plans for,” Thompson said. “We’re going to continue what we do, making music for the sake of making music.”
“Heights” is getting a vinyl release Friday and will be available at retail stores as well as the local record shop, Schoolkids Records. The EP is also available on the group’s online website, kooleyhigh.com and through iTunes. Several members of Kooley High will be meeting with fans and promoting the record at Schoolkids Friday; the full group will be performing in celebration of the vinyl’s release at Kings Barcade in downtown Raleigh on Feb. 19. Tickets are available on Kings’ website.
Foolery said that, while he and the rest of Kooley High are not currently producing music full time, they would almost certainly quit their day jobs to produce if they could.
“Trying to make a living off of music is no small feat,” Foolery said. “I think I can speak for the rest of us when I say we’d love to be spending more time each day in the studio. We’ll see how this album sells.”
