You may know Cooley the Curator as one of the spearheads of the burgeoning hip hop scene in Dayton. Now he's starting a new venture into the funky side of things with a new trio called 'The Funkgi.'
"It's me and two other guys, two of my favorite MCs from around here. They have been my favorites for a long time- Picket Fence and Saint Steve. We've been making music together for a long time, the three of us, and it just kind of made sense. We were always the ones in the studio. I was working with Steve or working with Pickett separately, and we're all really into funk. So it was just like, let's do something to express that love for the funk with what we do." said Cooley.
To kick off the new trio they will be hosting a EP release party at their new event space at 800 Huffman Ave on Saturday, June 19 from 7PM-10PM. The party will feature DJ Prime and Mxntis, both who make appearances on the EP, as well as a DJ set from DJ Airsign to start off the night.
The hip hop scene in Dayton is on fire right now, and Cooley gave us his perspective on why this could be.
"You know, hip hop kind of at the at the center of it, there's ego, right? You see that translate in battles and stuff like that. But I think that the emcees, at least for what we're doing, I think we a lot of us that have been doing it for a while have been able to put our ego aside finally. We're just more open to collaboration- that has a lot to do with it. There's also like this crop of younger guys that's coming in that revere the culture the same way that we do, and they're just doing incredible music. So we're like,'OK, we got to help make the path easier for these younger guys because we already know all the struggles we had to go through.' You know what I mean? So everyone's just a lot more open to to sharing with each other and just helping each other out as opposed to feeling like they're competing with each other." said Cooley.
Stream or purchase the new Funkgi EP on bandcamp.
