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Fist City: Rockwell Knuckles aims to punch through St. Louis hip-hop's glass ceiling

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"The fact that I was able to write about it on a national level was just kind of falling into his lap," Marshall says by phone from Chicago. "If he got it into the hands of the right person, they could be saying, 'This is somebody we could take a chance on.' He needs to be doing that. Whether he can do that from St. Louis it's hard to say. It sucks, you know, it's kind of where art and salesmanship coincide. Being popular in hip-hop today is a strange phenomenon. Just because you're popular doesn't mean you're talented."

Knuckles explains that some things, such as his inability to supply physical copies to record stores, stem from the simple fact that he doesn't have much money. He supports himself and his girlfriend by working the graveyard shift as a security guard at a grocery store. But he admits that he's reluctant to jump back into the music-industry grind after the failure of Pangea.

"I could have a lot more help than I have at the moment, but things like that make me nervous," he says. "I really don't want anybody involved in my music that doesn't have my best interests at heart."

Several songs on the album reflect this anxiety. "Worried for the future/Knew they'd tempt me with an offer I couldn't refuse/Then they'd send me to a place where nobody could hear me at all/'Cept the people listenin' on the other side of the wall," Knuckles raps on the title track.

Other times, his humility keeps him from pursuing opportunities. His friend Vandalyzm, with whom he has collaborated, is involved with the influential underground hip-hop collective the Justus League, but Knuckles says he won't pursue an in with the nationally recognized crew.

"It's great I know someone who is a part of that, but I don't want to sniff up under that. People respect you less," he says.

Meanwhile, he says with a straight face that he wants to be the next Notorious B.I.G. or Tupac. The paradox borders on absurd, and Rockwell knows it.

"If I sit around waiting to work with good, honest people I'm going to be waiting a long time," he says. "My grandkids be like, 'Granddad, that CD out yet?' 'Nope, still waiting for those good, honest people.'"

At the Loft, the last performer in the semifinal of the Koch Madness competition has just exited to half-hearted applause. Boogie D, Hot 104.1's operations manager, a massive man clad in a Washington Redskins jersey, makes his way to the stage. Before announcing who will advance to the next round, he launches into a canned speech about the music industry.

"The one thing record labels look for is making money. You are a commodity. You are a product," he says. "The music business is sales. It's a job, just like a car salesman."

"That's my problem," Knuckles says later. "I don't want to play that punk-ass game. I just want to make my music, put my music out and perform my music."

Other talented rappers have shared Knuckles' dilemma and coped with the reality of their situations.

"You have to first define your own success," says rapper Big Pooh of the popular underground North Carolina hip-hop duo Little Brother. "You can't let TV or what other people deem success determine what success is to you. I live comfortable, have my own town home, cars, can take a trip somewhere if I want. I'm comfortable. I'm not flying [Gulfstream] G-IVs around the globe or pulling up in Maybachs on 24s, but I'm still successful."

When the Seattle underground hip-hop duo Blue Scholars couldn't find any takers for their debut album, they created their own label, Mass Line Records, and released it themselves. DJ Sabzi, the group's beat maker and producer, says a by-any-means-necessary mentality is essential.

"We know what we want to do and we're going to do it. If somebody helps along the way, great, but they didn't so here we are," says Sabzi. "The plans I have don't depend on anybody doing anything for me. I'll do it anyway. If an opportunity opens up along the way, like a record deal or a beat battle, sure I'll go for it. But I'm not going to be sitting around in my garage mailing out demo tapes waiting for somebody to do something for me."

Nite Owl, who narrowly defeated Knuckles in this past weekend's Koch semifinal round, agrees.

A seasoned performer and businessman, Nite Owl is a perfect foil to Rockwell Knuckles. After graduating from Ladue's Horton Watkins High School and Central Missouri State University (since renamed the University of Central Missouri), he moved to Atlanta and later to Augusta, Georgia, where he worked as a radio DJ. He's had record deals and has toured extensively throughout the region. He employs a live backing band, a DJ, a street team, a personal assistant and a stylist. On stage after his victory, he hyped a show later in the evening at the Old Rock House, as well as the upcoming release of his new album.

"It's cool they're giving away $1,000 and a single, but none of that amounts to the amount of promotion I'm going to get for my new album out of this," Nite Owl says. "I had a plan, a strategy to win and then promote my new album. I played college football, and athletics are not that different from music. It takes a team and a game plan to be successful."

For the time being, anyway, Knuckles is confident his talent will see him through.

"Everybody has their own tricks of the trade and common sense about how it should work," he says. "And not everybody's music is built for this method of getting the shit poppin' or that method of getting shit poppin'. I've got people that I can rely on, like, when it's time, but I'm pretty much just doing me right now. People look down on me and say I'm foolish, I'm not playing the game, but the bottom line is you can't rap as good as me." Correction published 2/28/08: In the original version of this story, we incorrectly transcribed a comment from DJ Trackstar. Trackstar said Pangea's album was “head and shoulders above any project from St. Louis,” not “anybody from St. Louis.” The above version reflects this correction.

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