By Khalid J. Strickland
(a.k.a. Dirty Angel)
With his intimidating vocals and bullying bars, Freddie Foxxx a.k.a Bumpy Knuckles has held down a well-earned position in the Rap game over the course of a lengthy career. Never one to bite his tongue, Foxxx has commanded respect by pulling cards and lambasting the evils of a shady music industry, facing confrontation head-on. There aren’t many artists with the stature of Bumpy Knuckles, a man revered in both the rap game and on the streets alike.
After blessing the masses with acclaimed albums such as the take-no-prisoners “Industry Shakedown” and collaborating with hip-hop legends such as Kool G. Rap, Gang Starr, M.O.P. and DJ Premiere, Freddie Foxxx is meticulously crafting his new tour de force. Speaking via phone from the studio where he’d been working hard on his upcoming album, “Amerikkan Black Man” (due for worldwide release in Fall 2006 by Foxxx’s own label), Bumpy Knuckles articulated current his stance on the music business to Insomniac Magazine.
“The days of me jumping in the frontline are over,” explained Bumpy. “When I did ‘Industry Shakedown’ (in 2000) I had no support from none of these rap dudes. They were crying like girls. Like, ‘Aw, Bumpy, why you dissin’ corporate America, dog? They gonna hate us’. You should’ve seen the way guys were folding on me, man. Now in 2006, when I see those same dudes, they’re like, ‘Industry Shakedown is a classic. It’s still spinnin’ in my deck. I want to make an Industry Shakedown-type album’. It’s just such a fake game, y’know? So I would never frontline for none of these cowards ‘cause these dudes ain’t built for that. They left me hanging once and they’ll never do it again.”
Asked what listeners can expect to hear on “Amerikkan Black Man”, Bumpy replied, “On this record I tried to find a medium between putting my message across and keeping my same raw approach. This album is not preachy. One or two songs let you know my opinion on some things, but it’s still raw, hard New York Hip-Hop. I’m not trying to do nothing I don’t normally do. I’m not into doing Dirty South stuff and all that. I like to hear the Dirty South stuff, but that’s theirs.”
Backed by top-shelf beats from longtime co-conspirator DJ Premiere, Alchemist, Clark Kent and DJ Scratch, Freddie Foxxx provides the fire. On the rock-hard banger “Art Work”, Foxxx issues a warning those foolish enough to provoke conflict with him:
“I’m in the hood with the ratchet on me, one in the cockpit / It’s ten minutes after nine and you’ve got a hot minute / ’Smack’ TV talk, it don’t impress me / I’ll swell both your jaws like Dizzy Gillespie / I go hard at any n***a that’s tryin’ to test me / Even major label n****s, they gotta respect me / David Banner told me n****s scared to whisper my name / then I shook that n****’s hand and welcomed him to the game”
In an age where de-clawed and de-fanged artists routinely sell their souls for fame, the man known as Bumpy Knuckles has no problem delivering real talk. While speaking on the music industry’s use of conflicts and “beef” between rappers as a marketing tool, bypassing creativity and skills, Freddie Foxx stated: “Any time corporate America rewards people for being less talented and more dangerous to each other, it’s definitely a sign of not only disrespect for the game, but it’s bad for hip-hop music. You never see the corporate dudes in beef. You never see them in the (newspaper) articles. It’s always the rapper that they can (use) to be the crash test dummy for them. It’s unfortunate. Everybody knows that there are different things that we deal with as Black men in this country. But some of the things we do to hang ourselves is our own fault. We’re tightening the noose around our own (necks). Not to say everything that we do is wrong but there are a lot of things we do to assist in destroying us as a people. We’re all guilty of it.”
Asked if he’d rather be feared, loved or respected (inside and outside of the music biz), Bumpy Knuckles didn’t hesitate with his reply.
“Respected,” Foxxx answered immediately. “People who fear me respect the fact that I can do them damage if they cross me. People who love me respect me because they know me well enough. Regardless of what they love me for, there’s gonna be some kind of respect. The only problem with the (sic) ‘love respect’ is that you don’t know how real it is. People may love you because you’re getting money, or love because they’ve known you since you were in first grade, na’mean? People can love you for a lot of reasons. A lot of people fear me and don’t know why they fear me. They’re scared of me because they heard a story that someone else told them. Everybody says that I’m intimidating and I scare them or whatever. The ultimate result of both of those is that people respect me some kind of way. So I’d rather just be respected, regardless of why, because I’ve earned it.”
For more information on Freddie Foxxx a.k.a. Bumpy Knuckles and “Amerikkan Black Man”, check out www.myspace.com/freddiefoxxx
For more stories and work by Khalid Strickland a.k.a. Dirty Angel visit www.supremearsenal.com and www.myspace.com/blackpacino
