Friday Flow: "The Booth" by Bradley Russell

posted in: Features • Urban

Every Friday on the OurStage blog, I’ll be featuring a great example of flow and lyricism in hip hop songs pulled from the OurStage ranks. I’ll get the artist’s thoughts on the song, as well as post the lyrics or best verse so fans can follow the flow themselves.

The DC/Virginia/Maryland area offers us this week’s Friday Flow, “The Booth” by Brad Russell. You could call it a comeback of sorts (though this is ill-advised by LL Cool J). It’s more like coming back from a vacation… a three year vacation. In a collabroation with Uncle Dirty Ward of the Trouble Funk Band, he’s looking to do hip hop the old school way (no cuss words, either).

The song “The Booth” was written by myself, Brad Russell. When I wrote this song I wanted it to be a small biopic of my life in music. I went through a time in my life were I had to make critical, life- changing decisions. I’ve been rapping for years, before my life changed my music and writing was dark, because that’s were I was, in a dark hopeless place. I had stopped writting and rapping for 3 years before I met my man Mitch (Ronald Mitchener). We became good friends and eventually started making songs together. He produced my first CD entitled The MC Project. Actually, “The Booth” was produced by an old friend, DJ Machede. So the song is basically about my trials getting back into writing and performing without being in that dark place, which means no cursing, being totally honest and giving reverence were its due: to God. The song was originally titled “Alter Call.” But we didn’t think the lyrics or hook fit with the title. The singer on the track is my man Uncle Dirty Ward. This dude, to me, is the best singer to come from DC. He currently sings with the legendary Trouble Funk Band. If you are a true hip hop head then you know Trouble Funk was the music behind every Kurtis Blow hit. So if Kurtis Blow pioneered hip hop to mainstream radio, so also did Trouble Funk. I tell you no lies my friend. I wrote the hook for Dirty, in fact I recorded it to give him [Uncle Dirty Ward] an idea of how I wanted the harmony to go. He heard it and totally put his own twist on it. He even messed up on some of the lines, but my man still made it tight.