Rapper with Madison ties delivers some truth between the rhymes

Katjusa Cisar

When rapper F. Stokes was in middle school in Madison, he found a word in the dictionary he liked so much that he decided to use it as his first rapper pseudonym: Elysium, the underworld in Greek mythology.

"But I had to make it cool, so I put a 'g' in it to make it gangsta -- 'Elygium,' " he said, laughing. "I was 13 years old!"

Now, at 25, he's witnessed firsthand the unglamorous facade behind the gangsta life. But finding a way to balance a truth-baring message with the easy sell of gangsta cool remains an awkward struggle, said Stokes, a.k.a. Rodney Lucas ("the most unrapper name ever!")

Stokes will perform an 18-and-up show at the Annex, 1206 Regent St., at 9 p.m. Friday, July 25. There's a $7 cover.

On a recent tour in Australia, he saw how literally hip-hop fans there take the stories in the rhymes.

"In America, a kid could hear a rapper on the radio and say, 'Yo, that's cool, but it's probably not reality.' Over there, if you say you're shooting people, they believe the raps and they live the raps," he said.

He was shocked when groups of Aussie kids would yell out the n-word in cheers of support at shows without a notion of the word's history. Still, he hasn't stopped using the word in his own raps, because it has a connotation of "brotherhood" in a different context.

"It taught me that it's really important what we say. If you give them a positive message to run with, they're going to latch onto it," he said.

But Stokes' own life story reflects some of the negative aspects of gangsta life, glamorized or not: drugs, poverty and violence. He moved to the south side of Madison from the south side of Chicago when he was around 11 years old, part of the "huge migration from Chicago in the early '80s."

At West High School, he befriended wealthy UW professors' kids, but lived a dual life to which they couldn't relate. His father is serving a lifelong prison sentence for murder, his friends have dealt crack, been shot and served time behind bars.

"I think about my father, my best friend who was murdered, and another friend who was shot 17 times," he said. "That's the reality I rap about. But at the same time, I'm trying to talk about that without sensationalizing it."

Often, he feels like he's "too uncool for the black kids and too gangsta for the white backpacker kids." Yet he doesn't want to fall too far into either category: "I don't want to come across like I'm holding a sermon. It's something I deal with every time I write, every time I go into the studio."

Stokes learned a lot about the tough realities of the hip-hop industry when he moved to New York City shortly after high school with just $50 in his pocket. Once he got there, he struggled to make ends meet -- lived on the streets, survived on Twinkies, sold crack.

In New York City, Stokes got a job handing out towels in the men's bathroom of a cigar bar in upper Manhattan. There, in the bathroom, he got the kind of chance that usually only presents itself in movies. Faisel Durrani of Def Jam Records handed him his business card, wrapped in a tip.

"I call the next day and got an internship at Def Jam. That never happens unless you go to NYU or Columbia or know someone," he said.

After working on promotions for Jay Z's "Black Album" and other projects, he eventually landed a job at the now-defunct RED Distribution subsidiary Grandstand Entertainment, where he was assigned first to do marketing for singer/songwriter Carly Simon, then as a personal assistant to rapper Skinny Pimp.

"That was probably the most important experience out there because that showed me that the s--- isn't all glitz and glamor," he said.

Skinny Pimp had developed an image at 18 that reflected the tough life he was living in Memphis, but as he got older, he couldn't risk losing fans by evolving that image. Audiences and record executives "just want songs that pacify and feed this fantasy. He became a victim of that. I had to help him sell that product, this death wish image."

When Grandstand Entertainment folded, Stokes moved back to Chicago and started recording and distributing his music on his own terms by selling mix tapes in his childhood neighborhood.

Stokes has sold more than 10,000 mix tapes this way and believes the future of the music industry depends on such grassroots efforts.

"You have to put your own money behind your own records and literally sell them out of the trunk of your car. That's more so the reality than some record executive coming to Madison, Wisconsin, and signing you to a deal."

Coming back to Madison for a show this Friday night at the Annex is a meaningful homecoming, he said, because it gives hope to the people he grew up alongside. "I was on the corner with 'em. I sold crack with 'em."

But Madison has a "extremely divided" hip-hop scene, he said, compared to places like Minneapolis ("the jewel" for hip-hop in the Midwest), where he's working on a forthcoming album with producer Lazerbeak.

At its core, Stokes said success comes down to understanding your own self-worth: "The way black people carry themselves in Chicago, Wisconsin and Indiana is the old way of thinking. It's still the system of working for somebody else. A lot of people out here don't understand their self-worth. We have to change how we see each other and do things."