E-town shutout
If you’re a hip-hop head living in Elizabethtown, and think finding a show that fits your taste is near impossible, you’d be right — and wrong.
You’d be right, says Jeff Borders, the hype man for Hardin County’s hip-hop group Bread Boy Beats that has had zero luck landing a gig in E-town.
“No,” Border says when asked if E-town’s shown love. “So far around here, nothing.”
“Around here in our community, the bars want cover bands to play; they’re not down to hear anything original,” says Borders, who’s earned the nickname “The Caucasion Persuasion” from Hav-Nots MCs due to his knack for public relations. “It works for me.”
You’d be wrong, though, too. Hav-Nots — aka Calvin Crenshaw, Damien “Texx” Woodard and Jovan “Pops” Perry — has landed shows at two Bardstown, Ky., clubs, Still Bill’s and Broken T, and the Elizabethtown News-Enterprise put them on the cover of its weekly entertainment section, Pulse, last month.
But so far, the hometown’s mum on booking the act.
To Borders, the freeze-out results from stereotyping. “They associate hip-hop and rap with violence, and that’s kind of what people think,” Borders says. “I guess they’re afraid of shootings and drive-bys, but we’re not about that.”
The Hav-Nots’ luck in Louisville has been mixed.
An open-mic slot at Club Stages on Dixie Highway fizzled when the club, generally open until 3 or 4 a.m., closed before Bread Boy could perform, but they did show off at Club Villa Fontana’s open-mic night last Friday.
Hear for yourself at myspace.com/havnots.
Mat Herron, LEO’s Music Editor, is a have-not himself. Contact him at mherron@leoweekly.com
This article appears in February 12, 2008.