Beatking knows how to make strippers move. He’s the pied piper of posteriors, a self-proclaimed “Club God” mandating booty action with a commanding baritone and instructional lyrics. Most of Beatking’s best hooks leave no room for debate: when the Club God says “hold up bitch, throw dat ahh” you say “how far.”
Houston strip clubs have inspired decades of legendary music. Beatking holds the torch in a new era. His tracks swang and bang; sometimes they do other stuff. Last December he released “5 Years” with electro don/American rap enthusiast Brodinski, who rebuilt Houston’s dark, rolling energy within a French club framework. Beatking’s spoken-word chorus commands hedonism in a doomed world: “These mollies will kill you in five years. But it’s not five years right now, so mix that shit with the codeine, and turn up.”
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His latest single “Keisha” is equally adventurous. Classic Dirty South gothic synth textures accentuate verses stained with melodic Autotune. It’s trendy, with a sense of the past. It could only have been made right now, in Houston, by an artist who’s been there for a long time.
Beatking isn’t just in strip clubs to catch boners. He’s interested in social dynamics. Case in point, his side hustle as an Instagram meme correspondent. Every time a new meme takes over social media Beatking drops a freestyle, often within hours. Sharkeisha, Mimi’s sextape and Kermit the Snitch have all come under the gun. I’m expecting Daquan bars by the end of the week. It’s easy to separate the strip club and meme aspects of Beatking’s career, but I think they come from the same place: he’s exploring the places and subjects that create community. In an industry of individualists Beatking is a man of the people.
Noisey: When did you first go to a strip club?
Beatking:The first time I went to the strip club I was 17. It was somebody’s bachelor party. I remember I was sitting there and they’re playing this Ying Yang Twins song over and over again, a song I had never heard before. When I left the club the song was still in my head, and it’s still in my head. It hit me that day that if your song is being played in that place, people will remember it. I had this ridiculous thick bitch named Rain dancing on me, you know what I’m saying. Anything associated with naked girls, you’re gonna remember that.
When you’re making a song for the strip club what elements do you emphasize?
A lot of bass, real important. The bitches gotta hear the words clearly over the bass. You gotta have a hook, when it’s geared toward female dancers. This is my formula man, you get a beat that a drunk girl likes and put it with a hook that a drunk girls like, straight up. It can’t be kiddie, it can’t be twerk music, it has to be on a more serious level of telling a female exactly what you want her to do. It has to sound more adult. That’s the biggest misconception that people have, that a strip club needs to have twerk music. It’s not twerk music, which is geared toward kids, you know what I’m saying?
Then the other thing is trap music. When dope dealers come to the strip club they wanna feel good. They’re throwing money at naked bitches. They wanna hear dope boy music. The mixtape I just dropped—Gangsta Stripper Music—it’s a different style. You can ride around to it but it’s also strip club music that females can dance to, it’s just different.
You’ve had a lot to say about how artists often forget that the strip club is one of the most important places to break new music.
It’s one of the biggest. When you make club music, your music spreads faster. It’s a faster way for a large amount of people to hear your music at the same time. With a lyrical artist, you have to put a lot of time and money into your songs and make sure it gets shipped to everybody. But you could drop a club song and everybody wants to party at the end of the weekend, and it just gets popping faster. I try to figure out a way to include both. I can rap my ass off, but I realize that bitches don’t want to learn trigonometry in the club. I put a little wordplay, but the song will begin with instruments so bitches won’t stop dancing when my verse starts.
Do you feel like Vine is the new ‘strip club’?
Vine breaks singles. Vine broke my single last year, “Throw Dat Ahh.” It had females hopping out their cars, twerking in the middle of intersections on Vine. What’s crazy about that is everybody got their phones out. The biggest strip club in Houston right now is V Live. Houston is a strip club city, we have a lot of strip clubs up here man. At V live they say turn your phones off, because Bieber been there before, Rihanna, Drake was there every day last weekend.
Is that the one where Bieber licked a stripper’s nipple?
Yes sir. It goes down out here.
What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever in a strip club?
The craziest thing I’ve ever seen in a strip club was in Dallas. I was performing and girls just started eating each other out on stage, finger fucking and shit. I was like, “Oh man, that’s funky as fuck.”
Your latest mixtape has a wide variety of Houston artists, from OGs like Lil Keke to up-and-comers. It seems like Houston is one of the few regional scenes where OGs are involved on an equal creative level with new artists.
Houston is really one of those special cities that actually has OGs. Dallas, they don’t really have OGs. We got OGs, people like Slim Thug. If he sees you working, he’s really gonna reach out to you. I wouldn’t consider myself new but I’m one of the newer guys. I came out in the Kirko Bangz, Propain era, we all came out around 2009. Now you got a whole new scene, I call it baby Houston, and they’re after us. We got OGs who look out for us like how we’re supposed to do for the next generation.
When I look at your career, from the strip club music to the meme freestyles, I see someone who is very conscious of branding their own image in a way that’s consistent with how information spreads.
I turned 30-years-old this year. I’m not really young. Things started happening to me these past five years. I’ve been preparing my whole life for this. When I first heard my own song on the radio in 2010, I was like, “I don’t ever want to lose your attention. I don’t ever want to fade away.” So I always record, I’m always dropping something. If I’m in between singles or if I’m promoting a single, I look at it like, “I’m going to rap about anything in social media that’s going on.” I have a big file of freestyles about everything that happens, like the Sharkeisha fight. I never want to lose people’s attention. You could look at it as branding. I just look at it as trying to keep moving.
If you could design the perfect strip club, what would it look like?
It would be a regular strip club environment like V Live but it would also have a Wing Stop, and a day care. Around the corner it would have a computer room with poles and wifi.
Specifically for Vine?
For Vine, and this way you can tip a bitch and be on Twitter. The whole wifi room. Like a computer lab and some shit.
You’re the strip club Steve Jobs.
The Wing Stop is important, though. That’s really the only reason I go to strip clubs, to be real. I don’t be tripping with these bitches, I don’t be throwing money in the club. If I’m there, I’m there for the food. I’m not in there just making it rain, that’s stupid.
It really adds up.
Man, if you throwing money in strip clubs you really just throwing money for your own ego. A lot earlier in my career I had to do stuff like that because I was new on the scene Now, I be chilling.
What are the biggest faux pas you see people make in strip clubs are?
When you go in there you gotta know what’s going on, man. I look at these guys, they really think these girls are into them. She’s rubbing your shoulder but it’s all an illusion. It’s about having your mind right and knowing what you’re there for.
Not falling in love?
Yeah, you see me in a strip club it’s because I’m pushing a new song or I’m hungry at 3 am. At 3 am that’s the only place where you can get chicken in the middle of the night. I want some wings, I go to the strip club and get some wings real quick at 3AM.
Ezra Marcus turns the house party into a strip club. He’s on Twitter – @ezra_marc
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