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Peach Jam Podcast: Cantrell
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The Deep South moves at a slower pace. It's not necessarily dumb or backward....just slower. Hailing from Albany, GA, Cantrell discusses life in the Southwest corner of the state, hip-hop as a culture, and passing up college football for his career in music.
Peach Jam Podcast features stories and songs recorded live in our GPB studios from a variety of incredibly talented and diverse bands and artists who call the Peach State home.
Cantrell: I was born in Sylvester, Georgia, and I was raised in Albany, Georgia, a small town right outside of the smaller town. Sylvester. It is like 3 hours south of Atlanta. Hour and a half from Alabama. Hour and a half from Florida in a little corner of southwest Georgia.
Jeremy Powell: And what's it like down there? What's life like down there?
Cantrell: It's slow, you know, And we're behind on a lot. You know what I mean? We whatever was the popular music in whatever year pick a year, we're like three years behind, essentially, you know. And I think that speaks to how slow the life is. Not in the bad way, though. It's like relaxing slow, you know, and it's not....I mean it's the South. So we have fields. You have farms. but it's not a version of country that people like to stick on us. Is country as in it's slow and relaxed but not country like you'd be walking down a main highway and pig will run across the road. Like, that's come on. You know what I mean? But it's slow it's relaxing, very small. Everybody knows everybody, you know. And that can be a good thing. It can be a bad thing sometimes, but. It's home, you know, and it's sweet.
Jeremy Powell: It can be a bad thing because when when you do something wrong, somebody is going to tell your momma before you got home.
Cantrell: That's it. That's the one.
Jeremy Powell: And now you played college ball. Tell me about that.
Cantrell: What part? What do you want to know?
Jeremy Powell: Well, start from the beginning.
Cantrell: Yeah. So. Ah, So I'll be how I got there, right? Speaking of being slow paced and doing things our own way at our own time. I didn't take my SATs on time, so I missed the entire summer camp and I attended Georgia Southern and I played football for Georgia Southern University. And I was recruited and everything and but I still had to redshirt. I missed the whole summer camp. You know, so I redshirted for like a day. First day of practice. They're like, Oh, no, let's go. We got to put him, put him in a rotation, get him learning the offense. It was a good time, but I just felt like when some of the things I had to choose between, it wasn't worth what I saw for myself in the future. Being a creative and doing music and being an artist. So I stopped the first year. But it was a good time though.
Jeremy Powell: So you had talent on the field?
Cantrell: Yeah, for sure.
Jeremy Powell: But your brain was somewhere else.
Cantrell: For sure. For certain. And so much so that they wanted to bulk me up. The weight guy... I don't know what they call them these days.
Jeremy Powell: Strength and conditioning.
Cantrell: Strength and conditioning coach, he's like, He's my height, but he's like, jacked. Know what I'm saying? And he's like making jokes here. Before you graduate, you gonna be looking like me. And in my mind, because my brain is somewhere else. I'm like, So how am I going to dance? And what I look like holding the mic is like this, you know what I mean? I'm thinking about that. I'm thinking about the optics. But that's because my brain was somewhere else for sure.
Jeremy Powell: You made a passing reference to it in one of the songs we heard today about how black folk don't like to look at their past.
Cantrell: Yeah. Yeah, that's and I guess that's what it would be, because we've always been creative people. We always make something out of nothing and not just black people, but I'm black, so I can't speak for any friends that I have of other races, ethnicities, religions, creeds and sexual orientations. But I know for me and what I represent and what I try to study is knowing that. It's like a just do. With also the creativity, you know, it's just and speaking just to hip hop. Also, not just the South is just something that has inspired the world for so long, a culture that moves. It's the electricity of all other cultures, I feel, you know? Just hip hop as a culture is just just do, you know, and it's beautiful that hip hop gets to be the driving force for a lot of people and inspire people because hip hop is an amazing thing for non hip hop, like you said, lovers or people that may just not know about it. Hip hop brings a lot of different people together, and so it's just beautiful that something like that is a driving force these days and the most popular genre, the most influential culture at this moment, because it may be another culture genre in 40 years, you know, it's just a circle. But I'm glad we are here in this moment that we're in.
The Peach Jam podcast from GPB features songs and stories from a variety of the incredibly talented and diverse bands and artists who call the Peach State home.
Recorded live in our GPB studios, you get a front row seat for the intimate musical performances and free-flowing conversation from a truly eclectic variety of Georgia musicians. You can find more at GPB.org/PeachJamPodcast — please download and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform as well.
And check out GPB's YouTube channel for exclusive live performances from all the feature artists.
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