I went to Best Buy to buy three copies of the album. Cole’s “Revenge of the Dreamers II” compilation album, and he put my song “Still Slummin’” on the record. And it blew my mind at the time.įast-forward years later with J. Cole on Twitter, and he followed me right back and told me he was at The Fillmore in Charlotte for the CIAA tournament, and he invited me out.

I thought my friend was joking, because I’m at work, and I almost got fired the day before. Cole contacted a friend of ours, and that friend contacted me.

To this day, I still don’t know how it happened. Sometimes I go back to songs to see where I was in that place and in that space. Songwriting is like a journal for me, and my verses are journal entries. I can freestyle here and there, and I like to do it for Instagram now and again, but writing is therapeutic for me. I know a lot of people go into the booth and freestyle and let it go, but I’m not that kind of guy. I don’t have the most orthodox way of writing music. The reason why I chose a rendition of the NAS album cover for my mixtape cover was to show everybody that this was my 'hood’s “Illmatic” fueled by 1996-style music. It was basically me trying to show the world what living on the West Side of Charlotte was like. The more music that I heard, the more tapped in I became and wanting to make my own music. Music played a really important role in my life. And my other brother put me on to playing a piano. My other brother was more into hip-hop, and he put me onto Goodie Mob, OutKast and A Tribe Called Quest. He really showed me a lot of different music. He has no barriers, so he listens to everything, including country. I have one brother where genres aren’t a thing. I’ll never forget that.Īround that time in the '90s and early 2000s, my brothers were putting me on to all types of music. He pushed it to the window, and everybody was standing outside on his porch to watch the news. One of my neighbors had a big-screen, floor-model television. I remember when Jay Z came to the neighborhood record store called Willie’s, and everyone was hopping in their car and running to Willie’s to see him. The West Side of Charlotte was full of culture when I was growing up. – Lute, Grammy-nominated Charlotte rapper signed to Dreamville Records

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