Nick Broadway’s debut is a record about relationships, the 30-year-old hip-hop artist says. Hence, the album’s title: The Ships. “The Ships is short for relationships,” he says a week before the album’s mid-December release. “When you listen to the album … every song is about some type of personal interaction. Even if it is an interaction with the self.”
Sometimes that personal interaction involves speaking with the good Lord, as on the track “Where the Church @,” where Broadway eloquently raps over a gospellike groove: “I’m talking to the Lord to atone for all my actions. Working on a better me, that’s called a Christian walk. I blame it on the world, but I gladly accept my faults.” At other times, such as on the piano and jazz-drum beat of “Sea Shells,” the connections involve nameless individuals who are the target of fiery rhymes such as, “So continue to read your script and just do you. Old dogs don’t learn new tricks so I could give two sh*ts about what you think I just do.”
The 17 tracks, from the stuttering drums of “Go” to the sleek R&B flavor of “White Water,” were produced by a collection of local producers, including Kwestion and Ferocious, and feature guest spots from artists such as Asylum, Osyrus Bolly, Ferocious, Tiko Brooks and others, including a “house load of LabRatz,” the central Arkansas hip-hop collective Broadway belongs to. Epiphany, 607 and Arkansas Bo — three of the bigger names in Arkansas hip-hop — also pop up on the album.
“I kind of have a list in my head of all the guys that I really admire what they do,” Broadway says, “and how they go about their craft. Those guys are on there.”
But although the album contains a number of producers and fellow hip-hop artists across its 17 tracks, The Ships is Broadway’s album. The Parkview High School alumnus — born and raised in Little Rock — released a handful of mixtapes in the past few years, including 2011’s We in the House, but The Ships is his first proper album. “I hope it’s relatable and once you listen to it you know the guy,” Broadway says. “You know me, because I’m the artist, but you’re able to relate. I hope there’s one song where you are like, ‘Oh, I really get this.’ But also, ‘If he is really like this then he is an OK guy.’”
Broadway didn’t start rapping until his late teens but grew up surrounded by music and artists. “I’ve been singing my whole life,” he says. “I was a singer first. I was kind of a natural talent. My dad is a musician and singer. I kind of wanted to be like him. My mom’s a poet.”
But when Broadway decided it was time to express his artistic side, he didn’t follow his father or mother. He turned to rapping. “I kind of took both [of what my parents did] and life experiences,” he says. “The stories that I wanted to tell were more compelling through rap for me. I didn’t think I could get some of the points across that really show who I am as a singer. I always just pulled a rap.
“Like early Tupac records. Early Outkast records. Just certain stuff about it. Not necessarily I-want-to-kill-people aspect of hip-hop. Or the glitz and glamour aspect. But it was the real. Like I really understand where this guy is coming from. That rapping really set me up to do what I do now.”
A tour in the military (Broadway is a member of the National Guard and works at Camp Robinson now) means Broadway got a later start than most on his hip-hop career, but the cousin of local R&B singer SeanFresh met Kwestion about six years ago and steadily forged his own hip-hop path. The Ships, recorded at home studios around town and by Turnpike at Arkansas Baptist College’s Unified Studios, was five years in the making. Broadway says he “let [The Ships] take shape before putting a time limit on it.”
The record’s unhurried creation delivers an album full of surprises. There are banging club numbers such as “Gravity” and “Thru the City” with Arkansas Bo laying down some guest bars. And there are other numbers that stretch out, including the eight and a half minutes of “Star Cluster.” “I’m kind of different but none of the songs really stick to common song structure,” Broadway says of The Ships. “‘Star Cluster’ is eight minutes long. I wanted to have so many artists on it that it didn’t matter how long it was. I wanted them to give their best effort. I told them to rap until you don’t want to rap anymore, and we’ll adjust from there.”
While The Ships took its time reaching its completion, Broadway is a quick but studious writer of rhymes once he finds a beat that talks to him and sets a mood.
“I’m a constant-thought writer,” he says. “I’ll start and get done. There’s been times when I will scrap the whole verse. I’m not a go-back-and-tape-from-here kind of guy. It’s a constant thought. I might have a complete verse and listen to it and think I can do better and start over.
“My most successful tactic is when the beat turns on. Normally, what I do is say, ‘Let me get a few [beats].’ I’ll go through those and the ones that start or take off, we’ll go with those. The other ones I bring back.”
GET THE MUSIC
Nick Broadway’s The Ships is available though iTunes, Google Play and other digital music outlets. Follow him on Twitter (@nickbroadway) or visit him on Facebook (facebook.com/NickBroadway501).
For more on music in central Arkansas, check out Shea Stewart’s blog, Facing The Music, at music.syncweekly.com.