LargeUp Interview: Paebak on Island Rap + ‘Rock City’

Words by Jesse Serwer, Photos by Justin Pallack—

We hear a great deal of hip-hop from the Caribbean here at LargeUp HQ, and the reality is very little of it holds any appeal for listeners beyond the region, or even on the next island. Hailing from St. Thomas, USVI, Paebak is definitely the exception. We were immediately drawn to his style and swagger on “VI OGs,” an upbeat homage to Rock City’s hustling heritage, and he kept our attention with the rest of the tracks on his History mixtape.

Balancing the personal with the political (and the party), Paebak makes music that speaks to the VI massive, and the world, in equal measure. For this reason and more, we selected him as one of just two rappers on our 2014 Artists to Watch list featuring up-and-coming artists from across the Caribbean.

We invited Paebak to our radio program The LargeUp Sessions during a stay in New York City in November and spent some time chopping it up with him at our Brooklyn office. Here’s what he had to say.

LargeUp:  “VI OGs” was the first song we heard by you and right away, we saw here’s a guy who has his own sound, and a story to tell. Tell us a little about that record…

Paebak: We really, really put a lot of work into that record, making sure it was the right record to put out first, to represent the VI. That’s where we’re from, and what we represent. There’s a lot of rappers in New York, there’s a lot of rappers on the West Coast, in the South, but there’s only a few of us in the Virgin Islands, or in the islands period, that make substantial hip-hop music. To just make hip-hop music isn’t enough—to represent what you are, and where you come from, and the people in that place that you come from, to represent their story and not just your story — that’s the mission.

A lot of people in the world didn’t know about Brooklyn until they started listening to Jay Z, Biggie Smalls. We wouldn’t know anything about Compton if it wasn’t for Eazy-E [and] Ice Cube telling you what they had to deal with everyday, from the good to the bad. That’s pretty much my homework right now, and the homework of the whole team—we’re just trying to tell our story, and let people know that this American island has a story that hasn’t been told, and needs to be told.

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LU: You mention NWA. What kind of exposure did you have, growing up in St. Thomas, to hip-hop?

P: When I grew up, the only thing that played on the radio was the hit records. We had one hip-hop station. We didn’t get to hear all the underground rappers—it was Jay Z, Ja Rule, DMX, the top hitters. We only heard people who were getting radio spins nationwide—that was the only way it would trickle down to the Virgin Islands. In the early 2000s, you just had a lot of conscious rappers hitting the scene—Nas was doing his thing—and that’s really when I fell in love with the craft. Like, this is something I can do. I know how to rap too, and be poetic with it, and witty with it.

Over the years, I learned you’re either going to do business with it, or you’re just going to have it be your hobby, and get a side job to survive. Especially in the Virgin Islands, where people are more moved by reggae, calypso, soca. People were like, “Yeah, you’re doing your hip-hop thing, but if you want to represent the VI, why don’t you just make reggae?” The fact that pretty much the whole city is behind it right now, and it’s still hip-hop, it’s still what I believed in, what I didn’t give up on, makes all the difference right now, and we’re trying to keep it going.

LU: A listener might not know that you’re from the islands unless you’re listening to the lyrics where you’re talking about where you’re from. Stylistically, it’s just hip-hop. What are the challenges in getting your island on the map, so hip-hop can recognize you as a part of “it”?

P: The dynamic of that is what my whole brand is about, that’s what the whole team is about. We’re coming from this tiny island that’s got about 100,000 people, and only about 20,000 of them like hip-hop, so it’s kind of like a “why are you guys even doing it” kind of factor there. On the flip side of it, we’re good.

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LU: Being good helps.

P: The challenge is introducing the culture and the city to the world slowly. It’s kind of like a chef who’s got some crazy casserole concoction he wants people to try. In order to get people to try it, you’ve got to serve it up with something that they know–some rice or potatoes, things that are normal in the world you’re in. That’s how I’m looking at my music, like I’ll give you a little bit of where I’m from. [Before NWA] if someone were to tell you “Straight Outta Compton,” you might not know where Compton was. So I might say Savan, my neighborhood in my city… if I say it enough, if we do enough videos, we put it on the map, and before you know it it’s common knowledge that Savan is a place in St. Thomas. It’s like homework, but constant homework —I’m building not just a brand for myself, but a lane for any other hip-hop artists that can make substantial music for the market to ride through.

LU: Anytime there’s money, vacations and sunshine, there’s always another side to it. One of the things you did with your mixtape was showing the two different sides to St. Thomas. Tell us about the significance of the title.

P: The mixtape is called History: Story of a Young Boss in America’s Paradise. Small Island, Big Dreams is going to be [the name of] my official EP. History is about what we’re doing, like putting a video shot in St. Thomas on MTV Jams. No one’s ever done that. Me putting a video on MTV and making sure that kids and people from almost every neighborhood in that island got to be in it, and got to see themselves on TV… That’s going to change a lot of those people’s lives, just for the simple fact that they now know that they can be on TV, and they don’t have to win the lotto to do it.

Back home, I know probably 10-30% of the population of St. Thomas. [I used to] come to New York and tell certain cats that I was an artist from the Virgin Islands, and they’d be like “Alright man, come to the studio,” then when I get to the studio, they’re like “I really want a reggae hook for this song right here,” and I’m like, “Well, I’m not a reggae artist.” I understand why they would think so. It’s You’re from the islands, you said you were an artist, it has to be reggae. I’m trying to lift those little stereotypes off of the Virgin Islands, because we’re really unlike any other island. We’re an American island, we have every culture, like New York. It’s kind of a melting pot in the Caribbean. I’m calling it the last frontier.