The Birth Of Trance-hop

Photo by Bryan Meltz
 

I remember reading a Lil Jon interview a few years ago where he was talking about how ecstasy was seeping into the Dirty South hip-hop scene, mainly through strip clubs. What happened was club owners would give girls pills to keep them dancing all night. Then, eventually the guys started doing them as well. The idea of big macho rappers chewing their faces off and bouncing around a nightclub is kind of cracked out, but these days you have pill monsters like Fabo from D4L running around saying shit like, “I make gyk music, if you don’t get high, fuck you” and dropping rambling, psychedelic verses about seeing spaceships. Seventeen-year old B.O.B from Decatur, Georgia doesn’t do E, but his tranced-up breakthrough single with Wes Fif, “Haterz” is just MADE to be listened to on pills.

Vice: “Haterz” sounds like a Paul Oakenfold tune. Where does the trance influence come from?

B.O.B: It comes more from white high school teens. Like, at raves and shit they play it. We’re trying to fuse the two, know what I’m saying? We got a little trance-hop movement started.

Wow. Over here, people who like trance are mostly fat girls with pink hair and 30 piercings wearing fairy wings.

I dunno, E is big out here. Everybody’s poppin’ Es.

Rappers too?

Yeah, I dunno when rappers started it man, but that’s the trend now: poppin’ Es. Me, I’m smoking all day. Nothin’ less than dro, man. Sometimes I’ll smoke mids when I’m trying to take it easy, like when I’m trying to function.

So are you guys going to start wearing skin tight T-shirts with in-built flashing LED displays across the chest?

Nah, everybody’s rocking this rock and roll shit—skulls, chains hangin’, with the rock star shades, spiked bracelets, wallet chains, big belt buckles. Everything’s like fusing right now. That’s what the whole hip-hop game is going through.

You mentioned in the past that you “suffered relentless schoolyard taunts.” What kind of stuff did you get made fun of for?

They used to call me, like, a little nappy-headed, snot-nosed, chapped lip, dirty shoes… Man, I felt like I didn’t know what was going on. But now I’m straight.

You’re a pretty skinny dude compared to a lot of other rappers in Georgia. I mean, Yung Joc pretty much looks like a giant hamster. Are you sure you’re getting enough to eat?

Nah man, I’m still hungry! My image represents my motivation. What separates what you eat down here is how much money you got. If you ain’t got a lot of money you got to settle for fast-food. Y’know, McDonald’s, Burger King, all that bad shit. If you got money you can go sit down at a nice restaurant, maybe Applebee’s, maybe Chili’s, maybe TGI Friday’s. And if you super, super ballin’, you go Pappadeaux, which is like a fancy Cajun seafood restaurant.

I like the last option the best.

Yeah, me too. So you live in the UK, right? Is it common in Europe to speak more than two languages and shit?

Yeah, a lot of people do.

In America it’s common to be lazy and play Xbox all day. I’m trying to expand, dog. Everybody’s trying to stick to America over here, man. Fuck that.

EASYCHORD
B.O.B & Bigga Rankin’s new mixtape, The Future, is out now.