In November, the music-and-tech-focused Moogfest brought its traveling Dial-Tones event to N.C. State’s Hunt Library. Attendees toyed with Moog Werkstatt synthesizers and attended workshops about audio production, coding, and circuitry. After all the brainy stuff was over, everyone was invited to a free after-party and performance featuring several notable Triangle electronic beat musicians, each of them integrating the Werkstatt into their signature sounds.
One of those producers, Rodney Finchbetter known as Oak City Slumsspent the entirety of 2016 on a rapid musical tear, organically rising to local acclaim without big-name co-signs, label backing, or even high numbers of SoundCloud plays. The Welcome EP, an unexpected, untamed bass-music masterpiece released earlier this year, set the stage for Finch to blow up CAM Raleigh with his rude, rousing bass lines during a festival-stealing set at Hopscotch in September.
“Hopscotch wasn’t a surprise to me,” Finch recalls. “It was a surprise to everyone else. In the back room, I told everyone that I was about to go out there and crush it. I didn’t care if there were ten or three thousand people in there. I saw it coming.”
It was the critical moment in Finch’s ascent. With one set, he became the chief conductor of the Triangle’s shifting beat-driven movement. Before Finch, Raleigh’s now-defunct Discovery dance party series had been maximized to extinction, while both the Durham and Chapel Hill hip-hop scenes had puttered into uncertain states. But as these scenes petered out, Finch was picking up steam, transforming from a hip-hop beat-battle champion into a bass-music messiah. Sonically, he was already ahead of some of the waves that newer collectives, like the Durham-based experimental beat crew Raund Haus, were introducing to the area’s music scene. In the months before and after his Hopscotch debut, Finch was integral in bringing a similar taste for beats to Raleigh, increasing his number of appearances there and booking his own shows with his own lineup of artists.
“It’s a responsibility that I chose to take and was necessary in Raleigh, because everyone is kind of hands-off with everything,” he says. “Nobody was willing to say, ‘Hey, I’ll take the responsibility to make sure that this thing keeps rolling.’ My whole career as a producer and DJ has been about saying, ‘Well, nobody else is doing it so I’ll do it.’ It’s uncomfortable but I don’t really mind it.”
What he did mind, however, was a sharp critique from one of his musical peers about whom he was booking. On Facebook in October, Durham’s DJ PlayPlay accused Finch of not including women in his shows’ lineups, including the Dial-Tones event. (The entire thread has since been deleted.) Finch responded with a series of vehement rebuttals, taking offense to PlayPlay “slamming me, a black man, the only black promoter in the area doing what I’m doing.”
“You’re trying to promote women’s rights, but you’re slamming a black man who is trying to do something positive not only for women but for black boys and people with different sexual identities?” he asks.
Finch says that, shortly after the argument, the two settled their differences in a private conversation. But he still felt insulted, comparing the situation to a pillow fightwhen feathers start flying everywhere, as comments in social media forums do, it’s impossible to gather up each one. Finch says he often pays women more than their male counterparts and puts them in headlining slots, as he did with JIL at Neptunes in August. But he downplays the notion that sexism and underrepresentation are significant factors that hinder women’s careers.
“It’s not because they’re women, it’s because you’re too busy talking about women’s rights instead of going into the studio and doing what you need to be doing,” he says. “Step your game up.”
Finch’s perspective is problematic, given the many other barriers of entry that women face in the music industry. But his view may have been shaped by what he witnessed firsthand from another one of this year’s best, breakout stars: Raleigh’s party-girl rapper, fashionista, and Youthful Records label head Zenaida “ZenSoFly” Reyes.
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Affectionately nicknamed “the Mayor” of Raleigh’s cool-kid music scene, Reyes amassed a sizeable fan base in 2016, largely from curating the monthly #FreeLunchNC music showcase, being the co-owner and face of Youthful Records, and advertising her open-door policy as the owner and in-house engineer of a recording studio, The Studi0, which has served as a free-expression refuge for young musicians.
The Capital Boulevard building that The Studi0 once called home is scheduled for demolition, but in October Reyes opened up a GoFundMe to raise $6,200 to build a new studio in Boylan Heights*. In September, Reyes released an EP of her own music, a six-song joyride titled Little Miss Perfect.
“I’m such a perfectionist,” she says. “I was so scared to put out the EP. I had so many songs, but that was just my little kick-start to loosen myself up. I’m over being overly critical of myself.”
Reyes’s lifestyle is built on transcending trends and exploiting loopholes of what’s hip. On Raleigh and Durham sidewalks, she may seem out of placean ambitious, talented, and eye-catching person, perpetually perfectly styled. Her pop potential is obvious, but she often seems to be aloof about it rather than urgent.
“I’m becoming a household name around here, but I want to expand so that when I do come back I can be more celebrated,” she says.
She’s already on her way. In 2012, while living in Atlanta, Reyes was approached by members of the then-popular trap-step trio Watch the Duck, who told her, “You look like our music” and then recruited her to be their tour DJ. After that eighteen-month stint, Reyes moved back to Raleigh, where she decided to build her own recording studio, teach herself engineering through YouTube tutorials, and, as the saying goes, let the people come. They came, and now Reyes is trying to nurture Youthful Records into an experience as big as her Atlanta run was.
“A lot of people feel like we don’t have a scene here. We do, but it’s just very underground. I have to keep cultivating that and growing it,” she says. “We just have to support each other, grassroots-wise. I’ve always been a doer. I’m not really much about the approval thing. I’ll throw my own show and have my own lineup.”
But how can there be room for two hot-shot Raleigh musicians to thrive in overlapping circles, without petty infighting or self-destruction?
“If anyone gets too much shine, Raleigh has a tendency to turn its back on people,” Finch says.
Over the past year, Finch and Reyes have both been working to dig their scene out of those tendencies, in the hope of getting everyone to think about the greater Triangle. And they were successful at blurring those lines, amassing stage time in Durham as if it were their hometown.
Regardless of what stage they’re on, it’s space where Reyes can coexist with Finch. It’s going to take more than plaudits at local music festivals to propel their reputations outside of a music scene that hasn’t been big on championing its top contenders. Maybe this time the pair’s North Carolina rhythm nation-building will be contagious.
This article appeared in print with the headline “Twin Engines”
*The article originally indicated that Reyes had already reached her fundraising goal, but she has not. The GoFundMe page can be found here.
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