THEOVUN:
You’re from North Carolina, tell us a little bit about what it’s like
RAIN:
It’s cool, I’m from Fayetteville, we got an army base, we got 30strip clubs on 1 block and church on the corner, it’s home.
THEOVUN:
North Carolina seems to be a very special place on the music scene– you got rap acts like Petey Pablo and then you have crews like the Justus League.
RAIN:
Yeah, when it comes to music everybody does different music, it’s weird–We’re in the middle, of the state and kind of in the middle on the coast, so you have 1/2 who are influenced by that Southern rap and 1/2 that are influenced by that New York music. We don’t have really have an identity – really though, it depends on who you ask – my answer is: it’s diverse
THEOVUN:
So tell us about the transition between NC and NYC?
RAIN:
[I] Moved up here [New York] when i was 15, I dropped out of school – I already knew what I wanted to do. I threw all my clothes in a garbage bag and came up on a Greyhound. My father is from the Bronx, and my mother is from Brooklyn, so I already been familiar with the city. I pressed up some CDs and wrote my number on em and just started handing em out.
THEOVUN:
Wooow determination, so speaking of CDs about how many mixtapes have your released?
RAIN:
A lot! you Got obviously American Dreamin’ Part I, Only In America, Another Day Another Dollar, Highly Anticipated and a lot of others.
THEOVUN:
So talkin about this current mixtape – American Dreaming Part II, the stand outs on this tape would have to be “Lady in the Red Dress” and “Buried With a Secret”. It takes a certain caliber of skill to be able to tell a story and it takes even more skill to deliver them as fluid as you did, tell us a little about these tracks.
RAIN:
For, “Buried With a Secret”, I recorded that track for the tape first. Imma be honest I don’t know where that came from. *Laughs* Someone sent me the beat and the name of the beat was “buried with a secret”. I saw that and just ran with it. So it started with a young kid whose father was beating on his mother- it shows how the father winds up killing his mother and then he [the son] winds up getting killed before he can tell anyone the story. As I was writing it, I had to pull myself out from that. It was really hard for me to make it, I started with the tv going and the radio and it fucked it up and so I remember just going back and listening to all of my favorite albums, and everything like Life After Death, It Was Written, and got to I Am and I heard that joint – “Undying Love” [by Nas] with the story – I was thinking – I need to do something like that!!
