Although Seattle is known as the house of Grunge music, native writer/rapper Bingx is smoothing out those rough edges with his own brand of Hip-Pop via his upcoming 3rd independent studio release through AVJ Records titled, “My E.G.O.” due out August 18th. He can currently be seen on a 43 city tour opening for Jarren Bennet on the Mink Coat Killa Tour. The emcee puts his pride to the side as his emotions enthrall the 15 tracks of “My E.G.O.”
When did you start rapping and what started you rapping?
When I was about 16, my friend James let me hear a Tech 9 song and I was infatuated with his lyricism and his cadence and his rhyme scheme. I started imitating Tech 9 songs and that’s how I started rapping.
How would you describe your style?
My style is just very vibey. I rap about what I go through on a daily basis whether it is the smallest portion of a conversation that I have with somebody or the deepest feelings that I have what I think about somebody or something that happened to me. I catch the vibe I try to capture the emotion that I’m feeling in the song so when I rap about it it’s like an outlet for me, that way when people listen to it they capture an emotion that vibes. That’s all my music is, I create vibes.
You mentioned copying Tech 9’s style, how did you learn to create your own style.
Well, I took the timing and precision of Tech 9, and then I learned heart like passion, raw & rugged emotion from the Game and Immortal Technique; then I learned how to break words apart and rhyme like individual letters and syllables and break a four syllable word down into two smaller two syllable words and rhyme all four syllables like Eminem because he does that a lot. Finally, I learned a lot of my creative from Big L because he was very gangster, but he was very creative and he had a kind of arrogance about him, a certain type of swagger and I learned that from him. In addition being from Seattle, I was also influenced by a lot of rock and grunge growing up I was raised on Red Hot Chili Peppers Sublime cake Third Eye Blind so I learned how to sing with fewer words from rock music. With rapping, I might take 500 words to get my point across but with singing I can say 50 words and say so much more sometimes.
How did your label situation come about?
I did a song with this weed company and Kurupt from the Dogg Pound and we were rapping that song live in the booth and the video got posted on Worldstar after one of the Cannabis Cups back in 2013. DJ Kao who worked hand-in-hand with Stevie J at Five Star Records was surfing the web on a Sunday and saw my video and he really like the stuff I was doing so he reached out to my management and said I want to work with this guy, so over the course of like 3 to 6 months we went back and forth creating. For about seven days we did about two songs a day and then two weeks later we did the same thing and after the second week Kao, had showed my work two to Shannon over at AVJ records and he brought me in with Michael Doyle who is still my manager to this day, and said they wanted to take over our management. We started off with the management contract and me and Doyle really love the way that they do things over there and how much they believed in us, they’re really straight shooters and we all worked really hard and focused on building and the relationship which is one of mutual respect and it works.
What other artists have you worked with?
I ‘ve worked with Kurupt, Redman, Bone Thugs & Harmony, Jarred Benton a bunch of local Seattle artist like Whitney Kate and she is amazing Unpopular Demand out of Nashville, they’re also amazing. Stevie Stone from Strange Music and Jake Hender who’s an engineer specialist that works with Dr. Dre.
What advice would you give to other up-and-coming artists?
I would say get your mind right your mind is your number one tool, the number one resource. If your mind isn’t right then you aren’t going to be in the right place, so you need to figure out who you are and the way you work, what makes your gear turn. My first thing in life was to get sober. You don’t want to get sucked up in the game because the game will suck the life out of you if you get sucked up into living the life of the rap game. You will become something you’re not so instead of losing your life to the game, give your life to it; give it everything you are to the game and see where it takes you just get your mind right first.
– Octavia Bostick
