glbl wrmng Shows the Value of Community at Jazz Fest

glbl wrmng’s ODD the Artist, $leazy EZ, Alfred Banks and Kr3wcial, by Greg Miles

The New Orleans indie hip-hop collective finds a lot of value in the association; good music is only the start.

At its simplest level, glbl wrmng solves a problem. New Orleans has a lot of indie hip-hop artists; which ones should you see? Presenting them as a crew that also includes Pell and Alfred Banks implies that if you like those two, you’ll like the others who share aesthetics with them. It’s not a new strategy for hip-hop, indie music, or even New Orleans, where Media Darlings including DJ Quickie Mart occupied a similar space in the early 2000s.

But it’s still a good strategy, and it seems to be working. Jazz Fest has historically moved gingerly around hip-hop since 2001 when the size of the audience for Mystikal, added to the audience for Dave Matthews Band, swamped the Fair Grounds. Since then, rap bookings have come in small doses, often too late on artists in a genre that moves at a dizzying pace. They largely got it right with Big Freedia, but Freedia crosses genre lines and is received at Jazz Fest like a rock star.

When glbl wrmng plays Friday at 12:20 p.m. on the Congo Square Stage, it will be one of the rare occasions when the festival’s on the right rappers at the right time.

As 2021’s Vol. 1 shows, glbl wrmng isn’t just emcees, which is part of its appeal. Their website lists 29 artists, producers, visual artists, and business people who create an infrastructure, support system, and community for each other.

When Pell performed at the recent Red Bull Terminal Takeover Afterparty, he was joined onstage by Kr3wcial and $leazy EZ, who each provided something useful. Kr3wcial added emphasis and a loose vibe to Pell’s disciplined presence. $leazy EZ largely rocked around the back of the stage half-masked, but when called upon, their more staccato delivery doubled the energy so that when Pell stepped back in, his more melodic lines sounded like a hit song ready to happen.

Recently, $leazy EZ, Kr3wcial, Alfred Banks and ODD the Artist met to discuss what the glbl wrmnng community has meant to them. When you read it, imagine friends having fun because there was a lot of riffing and a lot of laughter, matched with a sense of purpose because it’s very clear that they feel like they’re on to something.

$leazy EZ

This is coming from somebody coming up as a female in a male-dominated industry, I can directly attest to feeling lonely.

When I met the homeys, I was just doing things totally solo dolo, 100 percent. When you’re an artist and you don’t operate too heavily inside your ego, you’re usually a big fan of other artists, but you don’t have the chance and safety of being a fan and being a supporter without this combative thing that sometimes goes on in a small town like New Orleans.

glbl wrmng allows us to safely do that with our brothers and sisters, and be better about not just collaboration and getting on songs, but watching other people execute other things and be their best selves. You see opportunities come to them and know that it’s possible for you. It does the same thing that being in any community would do, except it affects us directly.

Alfred Banks

I think that idea of supporting people and being comfortable doing it is very important. A lot of people just don’t. There’s 26 of us and we’re all doing something ill, so when I see somebody do something, I say, I’m genuinely proud of you because I know how hard it is to do anything, particularly in a city that doesn’t support it as much.

This community helped me learn to publicly praise people. Personally, I didn’t know how to be social. Being around them for an extended period of time taught me some things I needed to know.

Kr3wcial

I think it’s the love. You’re showing love to other people; you’re showing love to yourself. You put that energy out and it gets reciprocated off of artists you admire because they’re working their asses off and making some crazy shit. It’s got to be love.

For a while, rap was extremely competitive, and when I get on shit, I’m not there to play. I want to shine, but it’s not like I’m against the people I’m on it with. We’re here to shine together. A galaxy of stars and it’s growing. Everybody has their own planets that they’re on. Alfred’s been all across the world and did a Volkswagen commercial in Germany, $leaze is in a different realm of existence …

$leazy EZ

Literally non-binary. I dropped gender like a bad habit.

Kr3wcial

You’re like a new understanding of what people can be. ODD is probably one of the versatile people I know in the group they’re in because she’s the youngest.

ODD

Me being young, I tend to get overlooked some times, but in glbl wrmng with each person being different within the collective, it gives me the opportunity to shine and be different with different things.

Kr3wcial

You’re multifaceted. You’re a DJ, an artist, and you’re engineering things too. I think that’s what it takes to exist here.

$leazy EZ

They put you in a box with rap. glbl wrmng has helped me discover that I’m not this thing in this box. I can be an artist. I’m not just an industry figure. I’m not just a social media figure. What I do means something because it has facilitated an environment where I can receive that feedback to know that I’ve done something and that what I do matters. I don’t have to be one thing but I don’t have to be all things. It’s very complex.   

ODD

I just started working with artists around New Orleans because I was solely on my own just doing my own thing. Being with glbl wrmng, I realize that everybody’s different so I can work with this person and have a different outcome on my music. It expands everything.

$leazy EZ

It’s natural to come together and create things. I can do a bunch of shit by myself that will be legendary, but for me to feed into something that’s beyond me, somebody else is going to have to come into the play and bring all their DNA into what it is.

I’ll make music on Discord now. You can see the session being streamed. I’ll record my stuff and this guy’s in New Jersey somewhere. He gets my whole session file, and I can watch him make a beat. Watch him mix my music. It’s crazy what you can do these days.

Alfred Banks

There’s a path I want for my career, and then I meet someone like Kr3wcial and what he’s doing is specific to him, but maybe I can cherrypick a little info from that and apply it to my thing. If I say something, he can cherrypick it, and so on and so forth.

Sometimes I get lost in the idea that I could be very wealthy off of music, so much so that my head’s down [working]. Then I’ve got to look up and say, Am I insane that I spent the last six months with my head down? Then you meet somebody with their head down for the last eight months. Oh, I’m not insane.

Kr3wcial

I heard someone say if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. We’re trying to do stuff that lasts.

$leazy EZ

We already were gigging people. Imagine you do shit with your homeys and your gigging doubles. Not only does that double but they expose you to larger opportunities which in turn pours back into you individually. And when you individually go up, we all individually go up at the same time, which makes our collective go up again. It doesn’t make any sense and it makes all the sense in the world if you know the music business.

We also learned a lot about how shit actually works. Placements and booking agents and the difference between booking agents and talent buyers. It taught us a lot.

ODD

It definitely puts me in a different category. I never really got paid for doing gigs coming straight out of high school and jumping into college and straight into my career, I didn’t waste no time doing it.

$leazy EZ

Now you can break it down for when you book yourself. Now you know how you’re supposed to get paid and what you get paid for and how you put asses in seats. You can do your thing.

Kr3wcial

I’ve done a lot of shows where I’m the only rapper in the room. glbl wrmng has become a collective that introduces hip-hop on a platform that wouldn’t normally do hip-hop. When you get us as the first example of hip-hop, you get us, then you see, Oh, there’s 12, 13 of them. Let’s book them solo and see what’s up there. Let’s book people who rock with them. We’re breaking down doors that should have been broken down 50 years ago.

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