“To be honest, I’m a team player,”Coppafeel says. “I’ve always felt more comfortable working within groups.That’s the dynamic I feel stronger in.”
Coppafeel currently does double duty intwo of Milwaukee’s more visible rap groups, KingHellBastard and the House of M,but his roots in the city’s rap scene go way back to the mid-’90s, when heco-founded the city’s flagship hip-hop group The Rusty Ps, then called TheRusty Pelicans. When Coppafeel briefly lived in Madison, he started a group there, too, TheIntel Agents. Even his new solo debut, Coppa’sWelfare Foods, he views as something of a group effort. It’s loaded withguest spots from Coppafeel’s band mates past and present, and was compiled withextensive input from his peers.
“The whole process of making the albumwas collaborative,” Coppafeel says. “I think that’s why the title Welfare Foods was fitting, because allthese other people chipped in.”
WelfareFoods leans heavily on the sounds of golden-era hip-hop,particularly the smooth, easy loops that preponderated around ’94 and ’95,around the time Coppafeel was in high school and beginning to take rappingseriously.
“A lot of what draws me to that time isit was when you would really anticipate new music,” Coppafeel says. “You’d readarticles and interviews about this new music, then have to wait to hear the newNas album. Nowadays, though, you don’t have to wait to hear anything; you justlog in and it’s there. That anticipation is gone.”
That isn’t to say that things werebetter back then. In the early days of The Rusty Pelicans, Coppafeel recalls,there wasn’t much of a support system for rap music.
“There were only one or two venuesbooking hip-hop, so if you wanted to perform you had to pay to play,” he says.“There weren’t any producers making beats either, so that’s why we were makingout our beats. Recording was hard, too. It wasn’t like now, where all you needis a computer and a mic, and you can record at your homie’s house and hang out.You had to pay to be in the studio, so you were always watching the clock.”
Though Coppafeel sometimes describeshimself like an old veteran, WelfareFoods is decidedly youthful. On record Coppafeel is a permanent adolescent,rapping in his daffy, boyish voice about matters of girls and partying. He fitsright in with the 20-somethings that now dominate Milwaukee’s hip-hop scene, and he’s enjoyingthe scene’s recent renaissance with them, even if he doesn’t always share theirconquer-the-world optimism.
“This is the first time in Milwaukee there’s been ahuge uproar around hip-hop, with so many rappers really taking it seriously anda lot of hungry talent,” he says. “A lot of them talk big about puttingMilwaukee on the map and how they’re going to blow and they want to seize theiropportunity, but at the end of the day, I think you’re still in Milwaukee andthere’s no industry here.
“If you’re making music just with hopesof making it big, then your music is going to miss the mark,” he continues.“That’s why I treat making music like playing a video gameit ain’t going to doanything for anybody except me. If you don’t have that type of mind frame,you’re setting yourself up for disappointment.”
DanaCoppafeel plays a CD release show at The Highbury Pub on Saturday, March 13.The album is streaming online at danacoppafeel.bandcamp.com.
