The Library, a college hangout nestled within the AMC theatre plaza in the wholesome town of Amherst, is where we meet. I spot Ryan “Arehouse” Howze walking towards the bar, so I follow behind him. I make my way through a bunch of heavy metal hooligans sporting pink hair and acid-washed jeans and biker bros with mohawks scattered about outside. There seems to be some sort of punk rock show going on next door at The Forvm. I get to the entrance of the bar. “I probably should have just waited in there instead of scoping you out like a creep,” I blurt out. Doh. Why did I just say that? But he’s as much of a nerd as I, so my awkward comment rolls off him as he shrugs. We make our way to the back of the bar to a cozy nook with shelves of novels. The lighting is dim and there’s nobody around.

We settle in and get to it. When Ryan begins speaking about what he loves, you can’t really stop him. It’s all esoteric-sounding to me as he throws out terms about syncopation and rhythm, and I just nod like I know what he’s talking about. I let him continue to talk while I gaze at his stunning visage, bathe in his pensiveness, and get lost in his deep-brown eyes as rose petals fall from the sky and tiny bubbles float in a sea of mist. I wet my pants. Seal’s “Kiss from a Rose” plays and I’m mesmerized. Wait, DJs are totally full of themselves. Snap out of it. Okay so that didn't really happen, but I've had my heart broken by a few musicians. What girl hasn't? Oh yeah, smart girls. But anyway, I digress. Ryan's one of Buffalo's more likeable DJ types. He's not the guido-esque Chip Strip DJ that people are probably use to. He's a music nerd, and an actual nerd. Not the social butterfly you'd expect someone working within the Buffalo bar scene to be. Ryan's modest about his craft, always keeping in mind that there's someone ten steps ahead of him. He immerses himself fully in music, holding down a job at Guitar Center where he “doesn‘t make shit" but he gets to fiddle with instruments all day, so it's cool. He claims he‘s not fashionable, although he did show up to our interview in a very clean cut-looking varsity sweater jacket from JC Penney (tag still on, by the way. Totally nerdy. Also, wearing clothes your mom gets you from JC Penney. Totally nerdy.) I'm done ragging. Really though, Ryan's got his shit together. And I was honored to chat with him about his latest moves.

Jessica Brant: I want to know how you got into the DJ thing. Do you come from a musical family? Did that influence you?
Ryan Howze: Well I always played instruments. I played in bands and stuff when I was in high school. My brother was a DJ at the time (DJ Greg "Twist".) So he introduced me to DJing and showed me how to DJ. But I never had any equipment or anything like that. So a few years later, when I graduated high school, like my first year in college, I met a couple guys at the radio station (at Buffalo State College, 91.3 WBNY), and they were all DJs, and I wanted to get into production. I really didn’t want to start out DJing. I didn’t like it. But I want to produce music, and once I started producing music I wanted to find a way to perform my music. So I figured I’ll just do it because it’ll be easier. And that’s how I fell into it. I just met different people and started playing out.

JB: Were you a theatre geek in high school?
RH: Yeah, I was a band geek and a drama nerd.

JB: What was your favorite play?
RH: I mean we didn’t really do anything that I particularly liked. We did “Bye Bye Birdie.” I was Hugo Peabody. I was a nerdy, self-loathing character. I had to play him and it was really interesting.

JB: So it wasn’t a departure for you?
RH: (Laughs) yeah, yeah…

JB: Do you remember your first set? What was that like?
RH: My first performance was at Merlins (now Blue Monk). I played a local showcase with Frosty Tone. They were guys that did Dubstep and drum and bass shows and I got forty minutes to play. And I was so excited and so nervous at the same time. And…I played my little short set and everybody liked it. I played some of my own music and music that I liked. It was really cool to see people react to what I was playing and people were dancing and having a good time and I was the one that was doing it.

JB: How do you describe your sound? I didn’t think you were really big on Dubstep. At the time, was it the thing to be into?
RH: When I first started playing…Dubstep was not the thing to be into. There was a select group of people who really knew what it was…there was only really one or two parties who played Dubstep, but people didn’t like it…but I fell into a group of people who loved it, Mario Bee and the Frosty Tone crew. I got to see a lot of different UK acts come in and different acts around the country come in and come to buffalo and play and dubstep started to get bigger and bigger. I would even challenge different parties. I played the Communist Party, which was all electro house. I would consider myself, to answer your question, a multi-genre DJ…I like to play all kinds of different genres of music. That’s just how I am. But I did start off only exclusively playing Dubstep…I remember playing with DJ Medison at Tigersapien. We opened for them at Pure Nightclub. Medison and I were going back to back and…we played Dubstep that night and it was kind of a bigger deal that we did it for such a long time and nobody thought it was going to go over well but we didn’t care at that point and it actually went over pretty well.

JB: What the Faaaaaaaaa…Sorry my recorder turned off I think…
Potty Break. Okay back to it…

JB: Who are some of your favorite Buffalo DJs?
RH: Mario Bee, Medison, Brotherbear, of course, Buzz Trillington, Criminal Sounds, who helps me a lot with some of my productions. Universally, Heartbreak and Munchi, those guys really help me out with my Moombahton stuff, my slower stuff.

JB: What’s up with Queen City Cartel (Production company he was a partner in)? Are you still a part of that?
RH: They disbanded. We all just sort of went our own separate ways…it was a fun ride. There’s no hard feelings…

JB: What did you do there?
RH: We would book acts and bring them to buffalo, arrange parties. We had a monthly party that did really well called FRICTION. It was at DBGBs. Honestly, We owe them a ton for what they helped us out with when we were first getting started.

JB: Nice, nice. ::gives weird stare:: You still have the tag on your jacket…
RH: Where?
JB: It’s underneath your armpit.
RH: Aw sick ::Blushes and looks at armpit::

JB: So how do I know when I’m at an Arehouse show? What is unique to you?
RH: I always liked higher energy music, even when I played Dubstep…I love syncopation and polyrhythms and a lot of percussive music, that‘s why I‘m a music nerd. A lot of tribal, kind of ethnic sounds, Latin-influenced stuff.

JB: Okay so tell me more about the Halloween costume idea.
RH: Well since I cut my hair (He rocks a frohawk, fro + mohawk)), there's been this joke that I'm going to be the DJ Green Velvet for Halloween and I think I'm actually going to do it. Green Velvet is this DJ that has a neon green mohawk. Black guy with a mohawk and he wears glasses. He's been to Buffalo twice within the past few years.

JB: Sounds like a male stripper name
RH: People have male stripper names. Basha? That's a male stripper name. (laughs)

JB: What are you working on right now?
RH: There’s a night my brother and I started called “Music Love” and that’s going to be at The Bend (on Allen) every Sat night. People have been asking us for years to play together, and we’ve never played together at the exact same time, back to back or anything, mostly because we use different formats. He plays on CDs or records and I always used a computer…but now we’ve kind of found a secret weapon, a way to mix together, and it works out well. I also host an open mic at the Gypsy Parlor on Grant Street every Tuesday night. I’ve always been a songwriter, try to be a singer…I just kind of wanted to add to what Buffalo already has as far as giving people a place where you can go and just walk in with a guitar and just go play. I just want to help out the music scene and help build that up.

And as the night wrapped up, we said our goodbyes, had a few laughs, and I whipped out his headshot. I wanted him to sign it, so and seal it with a kiss, so I would forever remember this day.

NOTE: This series of posts has been renamed from its original title, “Rap on the Radar for 2013.” Buffalo Hip Hop Speaks will feature candid interviews with local emcees and hip hop collectives regarding their projects, progress, reflections on the past and aspirations for the future.

“I Make My Own Music So I Make My Own Life” (from The Man Who Sold the World)
At the ripe age of three, Kevin Delgado, aka Frigid Giant, was walking up and down the street rapping along to LL Cool J’s sexy and tender “Around the Way Girl” when other kids his age were still learning how to pronounce the names of colors. Needless to say, growing up an ‘80s baby, the young Delgado couldn’t escape the influence of his older sisters’ musical palates. That’s usually how the story begins for most emcees and musicians; they get swept away by the musical zeitgeist of the times and let it take them where it may. The spirit and love he had for the game as a 3-year-old followed Delgado throughout middle school, and high school, where he started making demos in his basement. He eventually grew into his own sound, a genre he likes to call soul rap. “My music’s not gangster. You wouldn’t call it emo. You wouldn’t call it club. You wouldn’t call it trap. It’s emotional but it’s not cry baby. It’s relatable,” he said confidently. If you take a listen to his 2012 release, The Man Who Sold the World, you’ll hear an introspective album filled with conscious lyrics and a concise flow. There’s a mellow quality in his voice that breaks through some of the aggression and makes him a compelling storyteller. He uses emotion like brush strokes and thinly coats his sound with a layer of vulnerability that neither weakens nor wears down his words, but gives them dimension.

Many of the uncensored emcee’s tracks have political undertones. Take “The Means,” which is included on his November release, The River Tam EP. It’s a song he wrote while reflecting on a trip back from the South by Southwest music festival in Austin last year in which he plans to return to this year. It’s a deeply insightful track that addresses societal problems that often go ignored in mainstream hip hop, such as famine, greed and war. Delgado uses music as a vehicle for change. In “The Means,” he became a hip hop delegate for those in the trenches of adversity. “When you see the country from different perspectives, you see good and bad. I was in this awesome city, and then I was coming back to the plight of buffalo,” he said. “I’m at this city where everything is top-notch and people are nice, and it’s really cool, and then I come back home and it’s cold and dismal. There was a fire in me. If you’re going to be a voice for someone, you got to teach. I had to teach in that song.”

“We Lack the Unity We Once Had”
Upon returning back to Buffalo, Delgado also observed that the same problems remained within the city’s underground hip hop scene. It was clearly divided, and emcees were becoming more selective when it came to who they worked and performed with. “When I started, it (the Buffalo hip hop scene) was very unified between all acts. There was no animosity really, and then certain people started cliquing with each other, and you kind of had like a group here, a group there…and before we all use to do shows together,” he said. Delgado spoke fondly of the memories he had while performing with his former group Narrow-Minded Youth on Thursday nights at the now closed Merlin’s on Elmwood. He shared the stage with fellow artists such as Type Relevant and Mad Dukez and reveled in the camaraderie. “Everyone that rapped in the city came through and rapped,” he said with a glint of nostalgia in his eyes. “Everyone just kind of seemed to split apart.” By continuing to team up with his label Bird Caged Records in creating gallery showcases and open mic nights accessible to all, Delgado, who also paints and draws in his free time, hopes to promote a more peaceful, cultural renaissance within the city.

“How Many Times You Gonna Wake Up and Say, This the Day That I Do Something Great?” (from The Man Who Sold the World)
When the amiable emcee and freelance graphic designer quit his job at a local car dealership to focus purely on his music, he knew he was wading in perilous waters, but had to take the leap of faith anyway. What compels an individual to risk it all in pursuit of a dream? “Look, I’m 26, I’m unemployed…you have to be dumb, crazy, smart, everything…you have to be prepared to drive four hours away to some town or city you’ve never even heard of, playing in front of people that don’t know your music, and walking out with a hamburger and twenty bucks for gas,” he said.

But if you’re born to do something, it will happen.

That’s the attitude that keeps Delgado afloat in life; plant a few seeds and watch them grow. He’s a strategist, a chess player if you will, and his plan for the next year is already in motion. On Valentine’s Day he will premiere the latest music video for his track titled “Orion’s Belt.” In tribute to loved ones he’s lost over the years, his mixtape, Not Dead Yet, is set to be released in early March on Bird Cage Records and will feature local emcee Mic Mechanic. He’s also scheduled to go on a cross-country tour with New Jersey rapper Dinz in April. “You just got to keep that stream constant,” he said regarding his upcoming projects. “This is the most exciting time of my life right now. I have a management deal, I have a variety of artists that I’m established with, I’m going on tour and after that I’m going on tour again.” As for the next few years, he’s not looking that far ahead; he’s just enjoying where he is now and counting his blessings. “I don’t want to limit myself. I’m kind of living in the moment, but I’m always thinking ten steps ahead,” he said with a shrewd smile.