Big Tex

Big Tex makes Memphis hip-hop the way it sounds when it drifts up the Tennessee River and settles in the little towns nobody puts on a map. He raps and he produces, builds the whole thing himself out of a back room with a heater that does not work and a board that does. Six tracks so far, and they hold down the afternoon on Dust and Diesel between the blues and the back roads. Tex says the best beats come to him on the drive between Memphis and home, late, when the radio between stations starts playing something that is not a station. He records what he can remember of it. He says it is never quite the same in the morning, but it is always close enough to keep.