'We Are Our Own Place'
An e-mail conversation with
Matt Sonzala
Who are you and what do you do?

My name is Matt Sonzala and I am a freelance writer/photographer. I'm a
contributing editor at Murder Dog Magazine and I contribute to whatever magazines or newspapers want to pay me, or are actually cool and make me want to be a part of what they are doing. I also do a radio show on community station KPFT here in Houston that you can hear on www.kpft.org every week. I promote parties now and again and help SXSW book their hip hop shows.

Texas has a history of developing its own hybrids and takes on musical currents (e.g. Texas swing, Texas blues, the whole Willie/Townes literate country outlaw thing), so how has that translated into hip-hop? I guess what I mean is, as it has evolved over the past few decades, what marks Houston hip-hop as Houston hip-hop (as opposed to East Coast or West Coast, etc.)?

Texas needs to secede from the fuckin' union, fuck it. We are our own place. We're the most fucked up state in the union in many ways (executions, etc.) but we're also the cheapest, most comfy and entertaining place you could ever lay your head. Sort of.

Houston hip hop is what it is because Houston is what it is. It's a blues town where people can make a lot of money and not have it taken from them by the tax man like in so many other states. We don't have income tax here. Anyway, there's also like, Mexico right down the street and the drug trade of course is huge. So much shit comes through this town via the roads, rails and our huge port of Houston, that it's just ridiculous. So a lot of people have a lot of cash and that shows in the music.

Musically it's a bluesy base, whereas the East coast is so jazzy (most Texans do NOT know jazz), and the west coast is funky (which we know a bit about). Most of the rap cats down here came up on old soul and blues and bluesy soul and the like. That music was being made and played in their backyards pretty much. The hardcore "gangsta" element or whatever, came about cuz it's straight up raw out here in Houston.

We're slower than a lot of the country, more laid back, organic maybe. We can make something out of nothing easier than folks in a lot of places.

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