One-man show The Glow is rapper's autobiography

Little Rock rapper Epiphany "Big Piph" Morrow is taking a different approach with his latest project The Glow: The Hopes & Ambitions of a Rhymer.

Yes, there will be a mic. Yes, he will be onstage. There will even be music. But this is a multimedia one-man show, with the veteran emcee telling stories as well as rapping.

"I say it's like [storytelling podcast] The Moth meets a hip-hop concert with an old-school Spike Lee narrative," Morrow explains.

The Glow was inspired by comedian Hasan Minhaj, whose Netflix special, Homecoming King, opened up a whole new avenue of possibilities for Morrow.

"About 20-25 minutes into it, I started sweating. I was imagining what my version of that would be," says Morrow, who has an engineering degree from Stanford University. "I didn't know that one-man shows could be like that. It was him telling his story, and he had humor in there and he also had visuals. I realized, 'Oh, I can do that.'"

He talked about his vision for his own multimedia one-man show with longtime musical collaborator Corey Harris: "I wanted to see if he had seen the special and, knowing me, if he would get it."

Harris did, and is The Glow's musical director.

Explaining his concept, the 38-year old Morrow says, "It's a mixture of stuff that I do now -- performing, hosting, storytelling and crowd interaction. It developed into this story of a hip-hop artist who uses music to [affect] the world."

Morrow, who grew up in Pine Bluff, is no stranger to using music as a tool for positive change. He is the coordinator for Global Kids-Arkansas, a nonprofit that works with urban youth, and has performed as a hip-hop ambassador in Gambia, Thailand and Morocco, among other places.

A few days before this interview he was in Toronto, where he took part in a series of workshops with young performers and the group Beats2Borders.

"I was with some of the cats I worked with in Myanmar [Burma] and Cambodia," he says. "Music is part of it, but we also teach a lot about entrepreneurship and how to make that sustainable in your community."

Along with rapping as a solo artist on albums like Celebrate, Such Is Life and The Calm, Morrow leads Big Piph and Tomorrow Maybe, his high energy rap, jazz, funk and soul-infused band. Music, he says, is an important part of The Glow.

"There's a lot of music in it that I've done before, but it fits the story and it has been restructured to push the story forward," he says.

And that story is?

"It's autobiographical, but there is also social commentary," he says. "When I make an album, I'm trying to capture myself in a moment. This is more like I'm capturing myself over a decade or two. It touches on things like family, my overseas travels, race relations, romantic relationships. It's all in there."

It's also another artistic path for Morrow to wander.

"This is the most fun I've had on a project," he says. "I think it's the most complete thing I've done. Corey and I are excited about doing it and we're also excited about people seeing it. I think it's going to surprise people in a good way."

Weekend on 09/20/2018