Philly rapper Freeway on faith, Freddie Gray and finding the next level
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
"I think my new music, my new attitude, will be a breath of fresh air — unlike anything you've ever heard from me. It will inspire people."
Photo courtesy of Neal Santos Freeway Free Will 8/20/2015 on Instagram
Neal Santos
Photos by Neal Santos
Philadelphia rapper Freeway is 37 years old and at the top of his game.
“I’m the best I’ve been in my life,” says the man with the craggy voice and hip-hop’s most luxurious beard, calling from his house in Montgomery County. “The stuff I am creating, the man that I am — and I am not boastful.”
Leslie Pridgen, aka Freeway, is coming off a 12-month stretch in which he expanded his audience and his horizons, inside and outside the music scene. And the next 12 months should be even bigger, with a new album ready to drop and a reunion with his old pal Beanie Sigel in the works. “I’m open to it all,” he says.
That next record, Free Will — finished and ready for a surprise release on the Babygrande label sometime soon — will signal a sea change for Freeway.
“There’s so much more to me now and I’m finally open to it; the travels I have undertaken and the things that I have been through. There’s elevation and motivation in all of that which I hope that I can show. I think my new music, my new attitude, will be a breath of fresh air — unlike anything you’ve ever heard from me. It will inspire people.”
Freeway’s rhyming mettle was forged in the halls of Kensington High School and during freestyle rap battles at clubs in North Philly. That’s where he met and impressed Beanie Sigel, leading to the formation of the short-lived but much-respected group State Property with Peedi Crakk, Young Gunz and several other rappers and singers.
State Property released two records for Jay-Z’s Roc-A-Fella label, both of which went to number one on the Billboard r&b/hip-hop charts.
Already splintering, the group officially broke up in 2004 around the time Sigel went to jail for the first time. Since then, Freeway’s been best known as a solo artist, with four records including Free at Last from 2007 and Diamond In the Ruff from 2012.
“I do my dirt all by my lonely and I got the heart to fight/ So please refrain from hatin’ on me, before I turn out ya lights.” So goes the chorus of “Turn Out the Lights,” produced by Kanye West for 2002’s Philadelphia Freeway.
Free’s music has always expressed a certain duality. On the one hand, he’s a streets-is-hard rapper with a little bit of jail time in his past (gun and drug charges). On the other hand, he’s a devout Muslim — something that comes out in many of his songs, like “When They Remember,” which nods to his hot “Islamic style” and “the brother Muhammad.” His outspokenness about his faith is part of what separates him from his hip-hop peers.
“Which is good,” Freeway says softly. “Maybe these things separate me from the pack, but as long as what I’m saying is the truth and [I write lyrics] from the heart, I’m OK with it.”
He is who he is.
“Free stays in his lane in every way, personally and professionally,” says co-manager and friend Gary Parker. “I think that’s what first comes across when you see him.”
Last year, Parker and Freeway went into business selling Best Beard Cream with its co-creator and partner Jason Herzog and will soon expand into other grooming/health-care products. Freeway jokes that he is “the beard of hip-hop,” so he needs to represent. Before the year ends, he and Parker plan to launch a clothing line as well. It’s all about providing for his two kids and growing the Freeway brand.
“He is a brand,” says Parker. “So many people support and love him.”
Says Freeway, who’s proud of his entrepreneurial side, “I have that spirit. We can do anything we want. So can you, you know.”
Some of what’s different about Freeway’s sound can be traced to his collaboration with Pittsburgh DJ/producer Girl Talk, aka Gregg Gillis. Last year, the pair released the Broken Ankles EP, in which the rapper’s incendiary rapping style was recontextualized in a dreamy collage of angular rhythms and layered, sample-heavy sequences.
“What I do is very close to hip-hop production,” says Gillis. “[I] wanted to work with someone whose work is consistently definitive yet different and interesting, whose voice and lyrics I liked and whose flow could work with my stuff and sounds good on a variety of different beats.”
The only name on his short list was Freeway.
He was surprised by the rapper’s willingness to experiment. “I think he wanted to open up,” says Gillis. “He’s always evolving yet you never hear of him jumping on any trend or sound. … While certain rappers sound good on one beat, he sounds good with everything: soul samples, cold synth stuff. Since my projects are diverse, he was the man for me.”
Broken Ankles led to fun videos, for “Lived It” and “Tolerated” and live gigs like a spot at the Coachella music festival. This opened Freeway up to fans outside the rap world.
“Look, I didn’t know much about Girl Talk, but like [with] the beard cream, once I started my research, I liked what I found and had to get near it.”
And suddenly the side project was influencing the main gig. “That was a mad sound,” Freeway says of Girl Talk’s spooky aesthetic. “Free Will certainly sounds different than my other work because of Girl Talk.”
There’s the track “Pressure” with guest star and snarly old friend Lil Wayne. “That cut is bananas,” says Free about that tune’s cut-and-paste feel. There’s a song with OG Philly rapper Schoolly D that Free insists will shock hip-hop fans, old school and new. There’s a bell-bonging, sand dancing “Monster Freestyle” with Freeway protégé Scholito.
The singles that have dropped in advance of Free Will — such as the rollicking “B Real Freestyle,” video shot outside City Hall — seem to demonstrate a new stateliness in delivery and tone. “I think that I am getting older, more mature,” says Freeway. “I mean, we still turn up, but doing it calmly has its merits too. I think it’s a mood thing.”
Perhaps the most eye-opening track is the jazzy, spacey “Illuminate,” an inspirational cut dedicated to the spirit of Black activism. Freeway’s been vocal in his support of the Black Lives Matter movement. “It’s important for me to be heard,” he says. “People are looking to me to say something.”
In May, Freeway drove to Baltimore with the Justice League NYC and the National Stop the Killing Committee behind him. The occasion was a conversation with the community, family and friends, around the late Freddie Gray, a Black man who died after suffering a spinal-cord injury while in police custody; just as so many other Black men have been killed by police within the last 24 months.
“I know what they’re going through,” says Free, who put his handprint on a memorial mural for Gray and took part in a three-mile Peace Walk. “My cousin died at the hands of police in Philly.”
Raheem Pridgen was 27 when he was shot and killed by Philadelphia Police officers in 2007. “Police said he had a gun and that they shot him for that, but no gun was ever found,” Free says quietly. “Nothing happened with the case. Cops never got indicted and I’m sure they’re back on the job and working again. The police went on with their lives and that was that. My family was left to pick up the pieces, affected by it as they were — everyone lives another day. I wanted to relay my feelings about my situation to the Grays, that all is not lost.”
That said, Freeway does not have problems with the police.
“I’m a respectful member of the community who pays his taxes and minds his own business who just wants to raise his family and live a life. I have a friend that I grew up with who is a police officer who I love dearly. We all have a job to do. I only have problems with people who are corrupt, who are not doing the right thing. That’s anybody.”
Free’s early music featured a series of hard-luck-life soliloquies and dramatic streetscapes filled with hustlers, hos and crime. There were also deep reverent references to his Muslim roots, a faith bolstered by trips to Mecca and Medina for umrah.
“It’s all about balance in whatever you do,” says the rapper. “The streets are important. My faith is important.” Mention to him the possibility of religious beliefs being a problem to those who may not adhere to his Muslim faith (or any faith at all) and he doesn’t seem to care. “Because it is true, truth, my truth. If you like me or want to like me, there it is. I write what I feel always.”
Right now, Freeway is everywhere.
Last March, Free popped up onstage at the Wells Fargo Center during Meek Mill’s return-from-jail gig, and wrapped an arm around his old, young pal. The two will pair up for a record soon, he says.
In May, Free met up with his old label boss Jay-Z at the B-SIDES concert in Brooklyn with a reunited Roc-A-Fella family, including Memphis Bleek, Young Gunz and his old friend and State Property brother, Beanie Sigel.
In June, Free jumped up on the TLA stage to rap at Beans’ welcome home show after a long hospitalization. “We’re gonna do more stuff, me and Beans, us with State Property,” says Freeway. They’ve got tour dates in September and October with possible recordings next year. “Beans and I have taken different journeys in our life, but I’m proud to say he’s healthier than ever and ready to go.”
And there’s talk of more tracks with Girl Talk, too. And why not? It introduced him to new sounds and new fans.
“I slapped a lot of hands at Coachella. That was fun. I never believed that was an audience that I could touch,” says Freeway. “There were audiences out there for me that I never knew existed.”
