A mustachioed man paused outside the Hawks & Reed Performing Arts Center, peering in through the glass, pondering over the pomp posted on the window.
On one poster: a man pimped out in pink fur, well-known as the Harlem rapper Cam’ron, who was supposed to be performing inside the building Saturday night. The older man then shifted his attention to the adjacent poster: The Foundation, a list of 25 local rappers, coming to Hawks & Reed on the same day. His eyes seemed to glaze over the second poster, before he carried on his walk down Main Street on the hot summer day in Greenfield.
“I feel like there’s a stigma in Greenfield, and actually in northern western Mass., where when you say you’re a rapper, it’s almost like they take it comical,” Greenfield’s Rafael Justin Garcia said. Garcia, a manager of regional talent who also goes by his stage name “Dr. X,” continued:
“Like, you can’t say you’re a rapper. You can’t just do that. You have to say you’re an artist or a musician. The minute you say ‘I’m a rapper,’ there’s already a stigma associated, like, ‘Oh, you’re probably a loser.’ ‘You don’t have a job.’ You’re this, you’re that. You get bombarded with all of these stereotypes immediately. It’s weird to say you’re a rapper specifically in northern western Mass., so when we have a venue that allows you to give shows, to say, ‘Actually, it’s an occupation; it’s unorthodox, it’s not how most people get through their lives, but yeah, it’s also a serious occupation.’”
While Garcia is not originally from the area, growing up in the Bronx and moving around the country, he landed in an area he sees burgeoning with a rap scene that’s waiting for the community to grab onto it.
That’s where Hawks & Reed comes in. In recent months, the center at the heart of a rap revival in western Mass. has brought in the likes of Ghostface Killah, KRS-One, Bizzare and in September, Talib Kweli.
It was set to host Cam’ron, but he canceled about a week before the show, despite contractual obligations, the venue announced. For many, this was a sad sign to see a superstar not come to the area. Yet, what it has done is place an added emphasis on what was going to be happening in Greenfield that day anyway — a local hip-hop festival in its inaugural season.
There will be two stages, both inside at Hawks & Reed. Concertgoers can purchase beer, and food will be provided by Namaste. There will be a breakdancing class, and a full lineup of artists from across the Pioneer Valley. Tickets are $15 in advance or $18 on the day of the show.
A separate performance by Bizarre of D12 will also kick off the weekend Friday at 10 p.m. in The Wheelhouse. Tickets are $10.
What will not be on display is the critically-acclaimed rapper Cam’ron, who made his name in the late 1990s with the group Dipset and in the early 2000s with records produced by Kanye West, an album that went platinum and a single, “Hey Ma” that peaked at No. 3 on Billboard’s charts.
Instead, in a community that always prides itself on its local products and industry, there will be a couple dozen rappers who are hoping the community can get with the scene that has been maturing in recent years, particularly with Hawks & Reed’s co-managers Ben and Jeremy Goldsher ushering hip-hop to Greenfield since 2016.
“With events like The Foundation happening, it helps reaffirm artists that are out here to still want to be creative, because now they know, ‘Oh yeah, like you know what, there’s a place I could potentially perform at.’ It gives structure for making goals,” Garcia said.
Daniel Delgado-McCormack, or “The Don Gadi,” never had air conditioning in his home, so he’d go outside and kick it with his friends. He’d rap on the porch for fun. Other times, he’d pass time in the lunchroom at Turners Falls High School by winning weekly rap battles; there wasn’t really anyone else he knew that was too serious about the craft in the area.
Delgado-McCormack, 22, who just graduated from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, thought he had to go down to Amherst, to Northampton, to Springfield, to Chicopee to find the rap scene. Plus, by being from Franklin County, he said there was an idea among people, “Who do you think you are, being a rapper? You’re not a gangster.” They’d question what he could rap about.
In his 2014 music video “The Struggle,” which has about 8,300 views on YouTube, Delgado-McCormack can be seen rapping on Poet’s Seat Tower and alongside the Veteran’s Mall, talking about his motivations in life. In his most recent project, “The Dead See,” from 2017, the 10th and final track is titled, “An Open Letter To Heroin,” on which the Turners tongue-twister delivers lines like, “I see my homie last week looking worse than death,/ how’d he get here from blowing a couple of percocets,/ got them off of a parent like a nervous wreck,/ I ain’t saying he a perfect kid,/ but I know he ain’t deserve this s***.”
It can be tough to describe the style of a western Massachusetts rapper. Delgado-McCormack delivers New York-type bars, but he notes everyone is influenced by the regional punk scene. If you’re a rapper and want to get on the bill of a show in Amherst or Northampton, he said it’ll probably be with punk bands, so naturally rappers will add a flare of that genre into their music.
Part of what has made The Foundation festival something that’s such a big deal to local rappers is the fact that it is happening in Greenfield.
“It could’ve been in Springfield. It could’ve been at Iron Horse. It could’ve been at Amherst College, but it’s right here in our little ol’ Greenfield,” Delgado-McCormack said.
The idea for The Foundation festival stemmed from the thinking of Hawks & Reed co-manager Ben Goldsher and the Bernardston rap group Wiki Good.
Goldsher set a date and started inviting acts. From there, the venue started getting requests from rappers they didn’t even know were in the area.
“The foundation behind this is it’s bringing together the people who make the music and like the music, and they’re all from this close proximity,” Goldsher said.
Rap music has been a genre that’s grown in popularity on the pop charts in America, and is consumed by people around the world on music streaming hotbeds, like Soundcloud and Spotify. On the internet, the music knows no boundaries, yet it’s typically associated with certain spaces like New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles and Chicago — not Boston and certainly not western Massachusetts. That might be one reason that local artists say the scene has been isolated in many respects, because the local performers weren’t aware of each other.
At Hawks & Reed though, that’s where the scene has been able to find its space, as what Wiki Good rapper Alejandro Brown, “Dro Brown,” calls the “underground hub to the hip-hop scene.”
Fellow member Ariq “RIQQY” Welch called the Greenfield spot, “home court,” in excitement for showing fellow 413-rappers and Pioneer Valley residents their space.
“When you come and listen to any kind of music, you learn something about yourself,” Brown said. “I don’t care if you like hip-hop, I hope you learn more about yourselves.”
Brown, who grew up in Amherst, said that part of what has contributed to the growing scene in Franklin County is the fact that housing has become less affordable in Hampshire County. So many people, like himself, have moved up here; Wiki Good has its own studio in Brown and Welch’s Bernardston pad.
“Greenfield is the edge of the world, but it’s really dope out here,” Brown said. “I hope that there’s mad people out here so they can see Greenfield is poppin.’”
Welch grew up in Amherst, but went to Frontier Regional School, where he met fellow Wiki Good members. They had been going to house parties, but “I didn’t really recognize it as a scene happening.” When Hawks & Reed rebranded under new ownership and started welcoming hip-hop, that’s when local rappers started to come out of the basement.
Now, on Saturday, it’ll be on display for all of Greenfield to see and hear at the small city’s home court for hip-hop.
Staff reporter Joshua Solomon has worked at the Greenfield Recorder since 2017. His beat includes health, welfare and education. He previously wrote on the local hip-hop scene in Washington, D.C. He can be reached at jsolomon@recorder.com or 413-772-0261, ext. 264.
Hawks & Reed Main Stage:
The Wheelhouse: