In 1984, b-boy Monstalung and a group of friends wanted to see the movie Purple Rain, but didn’t have enough cash. Monstalung laid out a piece of cardboard on the sidewalk, put out a hat for passers-by, and started breakdancing. In an hour, the group had enough money to get them all into the movie.
This didn’t happen in New York, but in Morgantown, WV, and it’s just one of the many stories West Virginia hip-hop legend Monstalung has to share. A new compilation album, No Options, celebrates the combination of Appalachian storytelling with the oral tradition of hip-hop culture. Hip-hop serves as a sort of urban folktale system — people-focused storytelling that passes on shared values, tall tales of heroism and cautionary reminders of the dangers of hubris.
The title No Options comes from the opening track “I Will Not Lose,” featuring Monstalung, Jumbo Green and Back Yonder Funk. It speaks to what an uphill battle it is to be a hip-hop artist in Appalachia. There often are literally no options for where to perform, how to get your record out or who to find support from.
“We had to perform in biker bars, at the VFW, at raves, at house parties,” said Monstalung, who grew up in Ansted, WV. He described Ansted as “holler living,” a town where there were no stop signs.
“Growing up, we didn’t really have something to call our own. At that time, you asked somebody who their favorite athlete or artist is, it’ll always be someone from out of state.” He and his contemporaries started the rap group 304 Recons, named after the area code where he grew up. “We made a conscious effort to talk about how we grew up, in these hollers, in these trailer parks. By 2009, 2010, we started seeing kids with 304 Recon tattoos. I’ve seen it on the back, the chest, the arms. I’ve seen kids cry in front of me,” he recounted. “It was bigger than the music. It was self-pride we were pushing. In a place that doesn’t have it, people drink it like water.”
In the years since his breakdancing days, Monstalung focused on making beats and producing. But when the proposal for No Options came around from eastern Kentucky’s June Appal Records, it was an opportunity for him to try his hand at vocals and songwriting. While his stage name began as a nod to his skills at smoking out of a bong, it now extends to his vocal talents. The album’s genesis was an academic grant that Dr. William H. Turner and Dr. Ted Olson received to make an Appalachian musical compilation. Instead of going with the expected bluegrass or folk, Turner and Olson decided on hip-hop.
Most hip-hop albums don’t come out of academia, but Dr. Turner had a connection to the scene. His son, Jomo ‘JK’ Turner, is the album’s executive producer and a hip-hop artist in his own right. JK joked that he was born just one day before hip-hop: August 10, 1973. DJ Kool Herc’s back-to-school party in the Bronx credited with starting the hip-hop movement was August 11. JK entered the world, and so did hip-hop.
“What you find in the tracks on No Options is the singularity of the ideas and storytelling. The subject matter that people from the mountains even talk about is way different from what you talk about in other areas,” eastern Kentuckian JK said. “Even though there’s shared existence across Black people and across all Americans, through the music and writing you get another sound, another feel… that only can come from Appalachia and that mountaintop lifestyle.” The album features a stacked lineup of twenty-four tracks and artists from almost every state in the Appalachian region.
“I think No Options is one of the best albums to come out this year,” Monstalung said. “I listen to a lot of music, but the way this was put together, the diversity of music, of genre — this is special,” he said. He’s right that it doesn’t just span a wide geographic region, but also a variety of styles of music. For example, “LOVE” by Sista Zock draws from jazz and swing, where Joshua Ousley’s “Virginia is for Lovers” weaves together an 808 drum beat and a folksy banjo.
The album even features music from an incarcerated artist with the track “Show Up,” recorded through screened penitentiary phone conversations. “Imma show up, and that’s on everything,” the song’s refrain proclaims. It straddles toughness and vulnerability, and its relatively high production value even through the correctional phone system shows off artist Stunna T’s ingenuity.
Another moment of vibrancy in No Options is Charleston, West Virginia-based Gardenn’s “Sun-flower.” Her bubbly, crisp vocals and upbeat lyrics make it hard not to dance. (I flailed around to this in my living room more than once.) Monstalung pointed to her and Duck City Music as two of the biggest voices in West Virginia’s hip-hop scene. Duck City Music inspired him to get back into the game and be active in the hip-hop world again after focusing on raising his son. In its entirety, the album features Monstalung, Deep Jackson, Kareem Ledell, 400, geonovah, Black Atticus, Kellie Jolly, Poetic Peth, Stoned Dreams, Larry Rivers, JetPack John$on, Gardenn, Cedrick Weldon, Shelem, Joshua Ousley, QUIe, Ishmael Nehemiah, Sista Zock and Stunna T, spanning the entire Appalachian region.
JK and Monstalung hope to put together a second volume of No Options and to share it with more people across the region through a tour. But one of the most rewarding parts of putting this first iteration together was working with the featured artists. “The artists themselves put so much time and trust into me to put the album together. Hearing that they like it and are happy to be included has been the best part of it for me,” JK said.
“The first thing people don’t know about Appalachia is that there’s Black people there,” Monstalung added. “We love our folk and our bluegrass, but there’s all kinds of music. The kids from the punk scene got the same treatment I did, look at this weirdo. But there’s a lot of culture here. A lot of stories.”
No Options comes 50 years after the house party that started it all in the Bronx, but proves that hip-hop is part of a long-lasting and wide-reaching folk and oral storytelling tradition. In “I Will Not Lose,” Monstalung’s refrain “sounds f*cked up, but it’s real” hits on a contradiction in writing about Appalachia: How do you write about real struggle without veering into hackneyed negative clichés about poverty and strife? No Options infuses that struggle with joy and pride and encourages listeners not to look away from suffering, but instead to make banger works of art out of it. The album shows that when it seems there are no options, creativity is always an answer. The album can be found on June Appal Recordings’s Bandcamp to listen to free of charge, with a CD edition, poster, and other merch also available.
