Rage of the Age
Local rapper
making name for self on Internet
By Fawn
Porter
Mustang News
Thursday,
May 25, 2006
It’s quite
alright if you call him elderly because that’s his rap. Literally.
Mustang’s “El
D’Rage” is 60 years old, but he’s not about to let that slow him down from his
side career – creating and performing rap music.
Rich Smith
said he’s on a mission to create rap music that transcends generations and that
all people can listen to – without being offended.
“I was always
interested in music and listened to rap and was turned off,” he said. “I
thought I could do a lot better than that and I started doing it.”
A Minnesota
native, El D’Rage said his music is about three things: a celebration of baby
boomers and their parents, unwrapping the rappers and sharing life experiences
accumulated through the years.
"Picking Cans"
“First, it’s
a celebration of two proud generations – the aptly named ‘Greatest Generation’
and their notoriously funky kids, the Baby Boomers,” he said. “These two
generations have experienced it all – the Great Depression, wars, peace,
poverty, riches … and El D’Rage’s rap puts lyrics to their lives.”
Secondly, El
D’Rage said his music is about “unwrapping the rappers” – a phrase meant to
abandon certain aspects of modern rap music.
He said rap
music originated as an “insightful drama of life in American ghettos,” but
quickly became nothing more than violent, racist music geared toward making the
artist money.
“It’s everything
America shouldn’t stand for,” he said. “(Rap music) had denigrated into a foul-mouthed
expression of all that is wrong with America. Much of it is racist, sexist,
obscene, hateful and just plain wrong for our kids.
”
El D’Rage
said rap’s modern take propagates the wrong message – crime pays, disrespect
pays, being offensive pays and doing one’s worst will “reap the rewards of a
nation growing too fat, too dumb and lazy to give a hoot.”
His call is
for parents to stand up and “do your job.”
Finally,
through his raps, El D’Rage said he wants to take the life lessons of those
over age 60, teaching future generations with them.
“Elder Rap is
about teaching the three T’s – tent, twenties and thirties – about the values
and experiences of their parents’ and grandparents’ generations,” he said. “I
want to entertain them with things they like … but many (songs) have adult
themes like life, death, loss, fun … you name it.”
"Wake Up!"
One of El D’Rage’s
raps, “Sunday Morning,” compares spending a Sunday morning with a loved one to
feeling the pain of loss. He said his inspiration came when he and his wife
Cath – whose rapper name is Puppy Luv – were living in Puerto Rico. Having gone
to Starbucks for coffee and spending the morning at the piers, El D’Rage said
he saw a man at a nearby table whose eyes held the hollowness of having been
with someone his entire life and recently found himself without that person.
“The look in
his eyes … you could tell he’d never been alone like this before,” El D’Rage
said. “I put those two concepts together … and if you listen to it there’s a
bit of a twist.”
The rapper
describes his music as, “what you’d like your grandfather to sound like … but
not necessarily when you’re with him!”
“There are
lots of messages, lots of moralizing and lots of reliving the good old days,”
he said.
He also coins
his rap as “Geritol for mature ears.”
