Their mission is to go beyond words, labels, terms. They try to see through race, gender and violence, although all of it has colored them. Young as they are, they have struggled. Young as they are, they have lived. Most of all they burn, with the desire to create, and be heard, by their city, their world, themselves. Several months back I met Che Welsh, aka Amyr Appleseed, on a city bus and learned of his group Welshrighz, a collaboration of young New Orleans artists and innovators come together for creative support and promotion. There are about a dozen members, including, Chacora, aka #IyaDarsana, a hidden poet, Leina, aka Chanay, a creative entrepreneur and a handful of people I was able to meet recently, in their own neighborhoods, in their own words, in their own worlds.
Brad, aka LahBrad99, 16-years-old, hip hop artistInstagram: BradondatrackSoundcloud: @LahBrad99
Basically New Orleans has been a horribly violent city ever since Katrina. I moved here when I was six. At 13 I started seeing how the violence can affect my life and other lives. I started rapping and I saw people getting killed and that made me want to put it into a song. Our lives matter, every day.
I've been second lining since after the storm. The slaves were given one day to go out and gather and dance, Sunday. So we go out and dance every Sunday, to honor the slaves. Second lining is basically going back into our history, not just black history, white and black history, it is being thankful for that one day. This area where I live is called L Block, Louisiana and South Claiborne. And this mural is so important. It plays a big part in my life, because I feel like without this, there wouldn't be no New Orleans.
My family has been coming to New Orleans since the 1970s. I have five sisters and three brothers. I was born in Ponchatoula, a small town with animals and crops, strawberries. Out there, there's not much to do. My father played the keyboard. At age 6 I already wanted to be a musician. I used to pull pots out of the cabinet and start beating them. I felt like New Orleans would play a big role in my life. When I moved here I was questioning myself, because of the violence I kept thinking this was a mistake. How I block out the violence is I stay to myself. I stay busy, and I don't stay in the streets. I know this is what has to be done. If you do stuff to keep you occupied there's no way someone can bring you down.
I go to George Washington Carver in the Lower 9th Ward. I'm number two in my school. Basically it starts in school. That comes first. I go to school and do my work, and then the rest of the time I'm making music. After school I drop my bag and it's into the studio. But I know what time I have to get up to go back the next morning to school. In summer I'm in the studio until three of four in the morning. If I'm cooling with a girl and me and a girl spend a day that causes me to want to do an R&B song. If I'm in the hood and I see violence I want to produce a gangster song. I shop a lot, you might think I'm fresh and I'm swag but this is just part of being a rapper. It's about turning up. Right now I fit in with rap and hip hop, but I want to reach out to everybody, every race, because at the end of the day I believe we are one.
Sincity, aka Sydney Vincent, 24-years-old, hip hop artist and clothing shop owner Facebook: Sincity Queen and Syn’s Boutique on Instagram
I was born and raised in New Orleans. Grew up in a Baptist Church family, they were involved in the choir and I wanted to be a gospel singer. When Katrina happened I was in Texas. I felt like a lot of people didn't know New Orleans for what it was actually for. The world was looking at New Orleans and saying these people are all refugees, they dirty, they ghetto. If you know New Orleans, you know we ain't like that. We just going through things. A lot of the other female rappers are trying to be more like the boys, and I'm like, be original, be yourself. I freestyle a lot. I write songs about what I see. One day I was taking the bus through the city, I forget where I was going, but I saw so much going on. Police had these little kids with their hands up, and I'm like okay, they're going to jail now. And I saw all these homeless men hanging around. And drug dealers. So I wrote a song called Dead on Arrival.
Music plays a huge part out here, a huge part. After Katrina, certain people like Lil Wayne were blowing up, so I was like, I need to get back to New Orleans, I need to get in the music scene. They said, we're not looking for gospel singers, we're looking for female rappers. I went home and wrote a rap and my sister liked it. My mom said, stop cursing but keep doing what you're doing, I love it. Everyone I talked to said, keep doing it. And so I did. I did rap battles, in schools and backyards. At first the guys were not receptive. Hey, I rap too, I'd tell them. I look girly girly and so they're like, rap, rap about what? But when I rapped, they loved me. It got to the point where they had these rap battles and everyone was like, Get your girl, get your girl, she can rap!
Now I go by Sincity. Ever since I was young I have been trying to decide who I am, what is my purpose. I felt like I was going to be the girl from New Orleans who actually made it and came back to my city to help it out. That's where the name came from. Welcome to Sin City. It allows me to be the one to bring you out of the darkness. Good can come out of bad. When I tell people I am a rapper and they hear female, I am less likely to get phone calls and more likely to get messed over. So when they hear Sincity, they're expecting a group of guys, and then they see me and they see this girly girl and they're like what's this? And after they hear me, they're all coming up to me asking me for songs, or to do shows. I love being underestimated. I feel like I feed off the energy.
I want to do things here. I want to open up schools, studios, just to keep kids off the streets and help them define their purpose. I have a clothing shop here at 2372 St. Claude Ave that I run with my friend Queen called Queen & Syn's Boutique. And we give entrepreneurship courses, and help youths find jobs. We won an award from the mayor. I just want to let everyone know, that no matter where you come from, you can make it. I just want them to be able to reach me. I come from such a difficult situation it is ridiculous. I have been homeless several times, sleeping on peoples sofas, begging them to give me something to eat. I've been in foster care. I've been around abusive situations. I'm happy now. I'm proud of who I am, the person I'm becoming every day. I tell the kids all the time, the problem with our youth is they don't know who they are. You have to be the person you want to be. I am not this homeless person, I'm a queen. I feel like a star. All my goals I set for myself as a kid I accomplished, except that one goal of getting that music contract. I say, if I die tomorrow, I lived a very good life.
One thing I want to do is save our women, because we are mothers, we are nurses, we are creators. And I also want to tell my mom, look where I've come. I made it.
Booya, aka Volt, 16-years-old, poet and writerBlogspot with some of Booya’s poetry
I love New Orleans, it's my home. I live in Kenner, and I love Kenner. But it really hurts me to see that people of my color and my age are getting shot and killed. It really hurts me to see that. You see people your age and your color go through that and it affects you. A lot of what I write about is on being a teenager. I want to be different. I don't want to be the person other people want me to be, I want to be my own person. I want to be happy. I fell in love with poetry. It is just me trying to write how I feel. It is not influenced by people, it is influenced by me. I used to write about love a lot, and then I got tired of writing about that, it's so overplayed.
The mold I feel society tries to push on teens like me is to be perfect on the outside, but they forget about the inside. I don't want to be perfect, I want to be imperfect. Being imperfect makes you human, because if you don't have any flaws or any imperfections you have no reason to make yourself better. I want to think that I can make mistakes and learn from my mistakes. That's what being a human being is about. You can get all these injections and all these plastic surgeries but why not love yourself as you are and try to fix these things on your own? There are a lot of people in this world who are very beautiful but also very toxic and no one wants to think about the inside. Why not work on the inside. I want to work on the inside, so I can make myself good on the inside. In this world that tries to make you act like everyone else, I want to be different. It's not good to always be trying to impress other people. Be how you are. Be happy. Be yourself.
I started thinking about some of these things after seeing all the police brutality. It just hurts me. I'm a good kid, but even as a good kid I could get stopped by the police and get treated wrong and that worries me. I understand you're a cop, you have a gun, you have a taser, you have so many things to protect you, so why are you so worried about a young black man, or girl? You should be prepared for this. You should not have to use your force. This is not how you can pay off a life. You cannot pay off a life. A life is priceless, and it is beautiful.
In New Orleans right now, you have to know what gentrification is. Gentrification is people with money coming into poor neighborhoods and that raises the price of houses two to three-hundred dollars, and forces people out of that neighborhood because they can't afford it anymore. It might affect us here in Kenner soon, but I don't know, because in this neighborhood there aren't too many new things being built. There's nothing really big. There's no violence, really. I don't like violence. I used to be in a very violent situation, but as I mature I realize violence can't solve everything, you have to learn how to be painful and be calm with things. Yes, it angers me, but I'm not going to use that anger to go out and do something that I regret.
I am coming up on my senior year. I have been thinking that I don't want to stay in this state, but college tuition in this country is so high. You only have so many options about where you can go. I feel like if I go to college I can evolve my writing even more. I don't just want to stick to poetry, I want to write a book too and try to publish it. I want to get my degree in journalism. Writing has so many different doors that you can go through, and I just want to experience as many as possible. They're available to me so why not go through them. I want to travel around the world, just to see how it is. There are a lot of cultures I don't know, and I want to understand, because every culture is great. I want people to hear what I have to say, and understand what's going on in my life, because there is a lot of things that affect not just me, but other people. This is a learning experience. We have to learn how to be an artist.
Che Welsh, aka Amyr Appleseed, 24-years-old, musician and entrepreneurWelshrighz websiteChe’s facebook
I moved to New Orleans at 20, and I found a job at Jazz Daiquiri, on South Claiborne. Right next door is Chicken & Watermelon and I worked there too. The owner was like a father figure. He took me in and taught me about business. Chicken & Watermelon served as a springboard. I do believe New Orleans is a version of America, and it's definitely a version of the American story, because the same people who colonized New Orleans colonized New York. But I think it is its own special case, because it is the south. New Orleans is one of the most authentic versions of what America could be. People in New Orleans do not know about their background. There's been something of a racial war for no good reason. It's all about getting people to not be under certain codes that rob them of their rights as a person. To me, I think it should be all lives matter, because I don't like the word black. It's a culture, it's not a color. And the more I've been digging into my own personal history, the more I realize I didn't understand the depth or fullness of the culture I was exposed to as a child. I am legitimately an example of a half-breed. My father's mom's side is Acadian, but brown. My father's father is from Brazil, but adopted, so there are a lot of questions about that too. Also on my dad's side there is Creek Native American, and there is some Caucasian. My mom's side is Blackfoot and Seminole and African American, but my mother's grandfather is African from Africa. So pretty much at this point it's not an identity crisis, it's where the lines are blurred.
I like connecting the dots, connecting people outside the community. Each artist in Welshrighz comes from a different level, a different perspective. I want to bring stability. How to get around neighborhood divides. You teach people about their roots, and that breaks down the issue of the neighborhoods, but now you have to teach people about being cross-cultural. People think that they're separate, but they're really not at the end of the day. That's how others try to divide you, power by division. If you see a white person, more than likely they're mixed too. It doesn't mean they're your enemy. People are taught all that, to be on one side or the other, it's indoctrination. Everyone is as mixed as everyone else, especially at this time in the world. I'm very pro-everybody. I see people as people. I was never taught to be divisible like that. Race is not the issue people think it is.
The problem with American culture is violence. Go to other places, and people are a lot less violent with each other, because they are more comfortable within themselves. People don't feel like upon meeting someone that they immediately have to prove something. They see people for who they are, they don't try to put them in a box. Our society has been a patriarchy but that is changing. We've been conditioned to think a certain way. I don't think it's so much about gender but energy. It's not so much about cultural roles but about being yourself.
Welshrighz is like a vehicle. You can ride in the car as long as you want but occasionally you're going to have to put in some gas. I am fighting for our generation. You have ideas around right now that aren't relevant anymore. I am trying to reach younger people who are ambitious and want to go somewhere with their ideas. We're stars in the making. Right now we have a podcast, a forum to discuss tense topics, like gender identity and violence. There is also a publication we work with called Flame magazine. And we are doing a web series called Brains&Beauty. I am trying to set up a daycare too. And I have an idea for a new type of homeless shelter, and I am working with JaNeta Thomas, who runs a nonprofit that helps entrepreneurs, to help make it happen. I am trying to talk to someone in the mayor's office about setting up lockers around the city, with a coin system, so you can pay to put your bags in there, so if you have a job interview you don't have to be taking all your belongings with you everywhere. This would reduce the stigma, because when you go to a job interview with all your bags everyone knows that you are homeless. And the lockers would be coin-operated so they would make money for the city. You could have low-cost showers, which would help local businesses because they have to deal with homeless people trying to shower in bathrooms.
I think Katrina was a lot more detrimental than people even think it was. It caused mental problems, and there are severe emotional issues that people haven't really gotten help from.
