Here's what the Davenport-based rapper Kuz and his manager want you to know:
His single "Boss Status" is presently number seven on Billboard's Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles Sales chart - one slot ahead of Beyoncé, and one behind J. Holiday - and peaked at number three. The song reached 15 on Hot Singles Sales, and topped out at 80 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop chart. As of Monday, it topped Jamster's hip-hop ringtones chart.
Kuz appeared as himself in the 2007 horror movie April Fools (an I Know What You Did Last Summer knock-off, he said) alongside Emmy nominee Obba Babatundé and hip-hop artist Lil' Flip. "I didn't get killed," he said of his character.
And Kuz has done all that without the exposure of a major label. Chester Wilkins, Kuz's manager and business partner, said that the story is that a rap artist from the Quad Cities is competing with stars such as TI and 50 Cent without the corporate backing: "We're small," said Wilkins, who goes by the name DJ Massive. "But we're making big headlines like them."
You're likely to hear a lot more about Kuz in the coming months. He's scheduled to perform on a bill with T-Pain and Soulja Boy at the i wireless Center on December 2 - his biggest gig yet. His next album, 24/7: Every Day All Day, is being mixed and mastered for a May release. Clothing, shoe, and fragrance lines are in the works through Avenue Entertainment, the joint venture between Massive and Kuz. When we met last week, Kuz was wearing a red sweatshirt with an "AVE" logo - part of the apparel he and Massive will be putting out.
The challenge in dealing with this pair is that they're beyond coy when it comes to Kuz's personal history, and they're beyond confident about what they perceive to be the inevitability of Kuz's rise in the marketplace. Skeptics will seize on this and decide that Kuz's camp is full of big talkers.
And yet they have undeniable goods: a distribution relationship with EMI Records and Los Angeles-based Forster Bros. Entertainment, and most importantly that charting single.
"Seeing is believing," Kuz said.
Don't Ask, Don't Tell
Here's what the Davenport-based rapper Kuz and his manager would rather you didn't know:
How old he is. His past as it relates to criminal activity, prison, and urban violence.
"When you put your age out there ... the kids don't tend to listen to their elders," Kuz said. Furthermore, the music business is highly age-conscious, and doors can close for performers who don't fit the industry's definition of youth.
They say his real name is Antoine Ollie. Kuz said he spent two years in prison, on the charge of "wrong place wrong time." He said he got out in 1994 and moved to the Quad Cities in 1995. Kuz and Massive have told other interviewers that the rapper has lived in the area for roughly nine years, and that he's in his late 20s.
They are aggressively bad with dates.
Here's what I can tell you about Kuz with confidence:
He has a dazzling, warm smile and a dollar-sign tattoo on his left hand between his thumb and forefinger. (The tattoo is homemade, he said.) He called me "sir" several times. Massive does most of the boasting, steering, and protecting, and Kuz comes off as modest, affable, and vague.
"Boss Status" is indeed on the Billboard and Jamster charts.
Jonnie Forster, one of the principals of Forster Bros. Entertainment, confirmed a relationship with Kuz for mobile-content distribution, as well as physical distribution and marketing. Forster said that Kuz is indeed on the same playing field as TI, and lauded both "Boss Status" and its follow-up, "I Need Mine." "The tracks that they've delivered are just very competitive," he said.
And while I'm no hip-hop aficionado, Kuz's MC skills are evident. In casual or intense styles, his rhythm, phrasing, rhymes, and tone are engaging. It's easy to imagine success beyond the hip-hop realm; his sensibilities and style seem well-suited to pop music. He's less convincing in street mode, when he's rapping about gangsters and violence, but that could have something to do with the disconnect between the content and that smile.
You'll have to take Massive and Kuz at their word on just about everything else.
The Car Battery
Massive is adamant that the pair's evasiveness about Kuz's history stems from trying to keep his personal life personal.
The broad outlines suggest a good story. Kuz grew up on Chicago's South Side, followed in his father's footsteps in gangs, got into trouble with the law, did time, and moved to Iowa, where he had family.
Talking about street credibility - gunshot wounds, prison - Kuz said, "I've been through all that."
But he only hesitantly shows me a scar on his left ankle, and entry and exit wounds higher on the same leg. The first wound, he said, dates from 1993.
Kuz gives a good justification for not wanting to detail his past: He thinks it sends the wrong message.
"Guys that really have the credibility, and that have really lived it, they glorify it," he said. "I don't glorify prison. They glorify it instead of sending a message saying that 'Yeah, I did this, and what I did was wrong.'"
But that line of reasoning rings a little hollow when you read his publicity materials: "The son of a Chicago O.G., Kuz describes himself as an 'everyday son of poverty.' ... Probation, prison, and gunshot wounds were all part of his days on Chicago's Artesian Avenue." When that's what you're selling, people are going to want details and evidence.
What's happening here is an obvious tension between the message and the marketing. Kuz is being promoted with the hard expressions and poses of the street, while the music often does offer positive messages. "Please Forgive Me," over a Latin American piano hook, earnestly makes good on the promise of its title, for example.
The track starts with general apologies but as it progresses becomes more specific, detailing personal failings but also looking to give forgiveness without forgetting past sins: "Dad, you doin' Mom wrong / You packed up and left us all / Everything that I saw / I embraced it all / But still I forgave y'all."
The message of "Boss Status," Kuz said, is that the material things "come when you reach the success of being the boss. So what I'm trying to make the kids see is: Instead of glorifying what you see this person with, find out how they could get it."
Musically, Kuz's settings - crafted with Avenue's in-house producer - are effective if rudimentary. Slightly worn strings and horns soften the aggressive rap of "Bolin' Point," but mostly the songs employ synthesizer backgrounds that sound made to be ringtones. The vocals dominate, as they should. (Live, the rapper performs to a backing track.)
To make sure his music appeals to a younger generation, Kuz said, he gets the feedback of his nine-year-old son. "I actually do a screening process of my music through my son," Kuz said. The child liked "Boss Status." Smart kid.
"Everybody doin' it the negativity way," Kuz said. "When you're different, you stand out."
But you can't just be a positive rapper, he added: "The kids don't want to listen to that. They're only listening to the negative things. ...
"I can rap about the streets because I come from the streets. ... In my music, basically, I give them a negative and a positive. It's just like a battery in a car. ... You've got to have the negative. ...
"When you want to touch the kids, you've got to come into their world. ... You've got to mix it up."
That duality applies to being from Iowa, too. On his 2005 CD Da Moment of Glory: From Da Streets to Da Industry - recorded at Kuz's home and mixed in Waterloo - the back cover prominently showcases a Scott County license plate. The front cover screams Chicago, with a White Sox cap and a baseball bat bearing the city's name.
Kuz presents that dichotomy literally: "Chicago got my front; Iowa got my back," he said. The song "2 Good 2 Be True" name-drops both "Chi-town" and "QC."
While Chicago takes precedence, Kuz said he also wants to promote his current home state. "Even though I'm from Chicago, I claim Iowa, too," he said. "It's a lot of talent here. ... People just tend to look over the smaller cities. ... When you're in the big city, you've got a lot of players. How could you really, really shine? If you go and you start something somewhere, the focus is on you."
Of course, claiming Iowa has its drawbacks: "I have to explain Iowa more than I have to explain Chicago," Kuz said.
He said he "came down here looking for a different lifestyle." Prior to his arrival, he said, his primary reference for the state was the Iowa Test of Basic Skills that he took in school.
He said he got serious about hip hop a decade ago, and in the meantime worked in temp jobs and at IBP in the Quad Cities. "I used to butcher the meat," he said of his year at the company.
Now he's following in the musical footsteps of his great uncle, blues singer Willie Clayton. Kuz said he grew up with blues and jazz.
He said he only considered pursuing hip hop when he began performing for his peers. "When I was writing poetry," he said, "I used to always ... read it to my grandma, read it to my cousins, and they like, 'It's all right.' Then when I started getting around other guys that were involved with hip-hop, they were like, 'Man, that's hot.' They gave me the courage and the motivation to stay focused and do this."
"You Did All the Work"
What "this" has become is Avenue Entertainment, in which Massive and Kuz are partners. They have eight employees, they said.
And if what Massive says is true, Avenue could break big. Kuz has a pressing-and-distribution deal with EMI that allows Kuz to get a larger portion of sales than with a traditional label-artist relationship.
In a recent meeting, Massive said, he and Kuz were being courted by representatives from three labels: Universal, Interscope, and Warner Bros.
"Everybody was fighting for him," Massive said.
What Massive and the rapper realized was that Kuz was far along on the artist-development curve - with the hit single and the recordings already on his résumé. Friends told them: "You did all the work a label would do for their artists."
So they went to Forster Bros. and got the EMI deal. The downside is that Avenue had to foot the bill for recording 24/7 and will have to pay for its promotion. The upside is potentially huge.
From Massive's perspective, all the groundwork has been laid. "Cut a check," he said. "Boss Status" equals awareness equals pre-orders of the new record from stores equals money in his and Kuz's and the company's pockets.
"We've got to do the marketing and promotion," Kuz said. "It's all about putting the face out there with the product."
Massive said that in the next six months Avenue will spend $1.5 million on marketing to ensure that 24/7 is a hit.
"We're not in the position of me signing as an artist to a [major] label," Kuz said. "We want to sign the label to another label - like investors. They're investing in what we have."
That's on a national level. Massive and Kuz said they built their audience by touring in college markets. Again, the goal is differentiation.
That's why Kuz doesn't shy away from Iowa. A song on the new record, Kuz said, is called "From the CHI to the IA," and Massive said, "We're going to put Iowa on the map." Kuz added: "We call it an untouched market."
Avenue presently has three artists on its roster: a Chicago rapper, a St. Ambrose student from Garland, Texas, and a Davenport native.
"I'm one person, and one person can never get the job done," Kuz said. "I crack the door open, but I need everybody to help me push it all the way open."
But Kuz doesn't think he's reached his peak yet: "I'm not there yet. I've still got a long way to go. I'm still shooting for the stars."
Kuz will perform on a bill with T-Pain and Soulja Boy on Sunday, December 2, at the
i wireless Center in Moline. The show starts at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $35.
