Rapper Chingy joins Phil Vassar’s “Songs from the Cellar” podcast and performs an acoustic rendition of his chart-topping 2003 hit “Right Thurr,” talks about his childhood influences, the beauty of genre-crossing and the opportunities that independent artists have today with social media.
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Chingy also brings along the musical duo Meg & Tyler for a performance of the song “The Woah Down” and at the end of the episode Vassar performs alongside guitarist Jeff Smith on a song from his most recent album titled Takes Me Back Again.
Being a veteran of the music industry with a diverse set of musical influences, Chingy is adamant about the beauty of genre-crossing and the ways in which trying to define all music is detrimental to the creative process.
“You don’t hear painters saying ‘Oh, this is my genre of painting,’ right? They just be creative and be artistic and they paint,” he says in the podcast. “Because sound is creation, music is creation, I think it should be just like that in music. You know what I mean? You don’t have to be this clashing of pop, hip-hop, country or whatever. Let’s just make some beautiful music and touch some beautiful people and live.”
Chingy has been able to reap the benefits of genre-crossing with his own hit song because it flowed between different radio stations and “Right Thurr” was able to rise to the top between urban, pop, etc., as he explains to Vassar in the episode.
Nevertheless, becoming big on the charts wasn’t an easy feat as an independent artist back in the early 2000s. Chingy shares how much of the work he did has been facilitated by social media these days for independent artists.
“With social media out there anything’s possible. I remember in my days when I was coming up doing my music, you had to run around the city posting up posters if you wanted to be heard,” he says. “You had to go out of town. Sometimes, I had to go to California, Atlanta, just to meet people to send them a message that way. Right now, you can go on the social platforms and just DM somebody or just post a song or a video, it’s so accessible right now. They’re just getting out there.”
Throughout the episode, Vassar also chats with Meg & Tyler while Chingy shares more of his experiences in the industry as well as the wild success of “Right Thurr.”
