Andrew Belle is the kind of musician that makes other musicians sick to their stomachs. For many aspiring artists, it’s a lifelong goal to hit the big time in the music business. They might spend their entire lives from childhood well beyond middle age trying to get a record deal. They fight and scratch and starve and suffer waiting for that big break.

Belle didn’t really have to go through all that.

Instead, he graduated with a business degree from a four-year university and, on a whim, decided he’d give songwriting a shot instead of pursuing a normal 9-to-5. One year later, he was touring the country, receiving accolades from all directions, and recording a successful album.

“It was kind of a serious thing to just jump out of college when all of your friends are getting jobs with insurance policies and retirement plans,” Belle says. “It’s a little scary to not have that, so I always kind of had a plan in the back of my head, a sort of What If thing.”

His way of viewing his music career wouldn’t stay so conservative, however.

“As I was getting into things a little bit more,” he adds, “I was chatting with one of my songwriter friends, and he told me to never have a plan B. If you have a plan B, you’re never going to make it. Might as well save your breath and don’t waste your time. That really influenced me, and from that moment on I decided not to have a plan B and that I was in it for the long haul.”

The long haul has only been a couple years, but in that time Belle has come quite a long way as an artist. Growing up in a religious family, he wasn’t even allowed to listen to secular music or, obviously, watch a lot of music videos. He hopped into the music thing, he found himself relatively unprepared and extremely inexperienced. Learning on the job, he says, wasn’t always easy.

“Learning how to perform was a lot like how I learned how to song write—I just watch the artists I admire and emulate them, at least to a degree because there’s a point where you have to make it your own,” Belle says.

“I’ve been doing it for a couple years now and I’ve played way more shows than I ever thought I would, and every show I learn something new—strategies and techniques of singing, stuff like that. It’s not something I think I’ve conquered by any stretch, but I’m learning things here and there and definitely enjoying the fact that I’m getting better as I tour more.”

To think that a young man as talented as Andrew Belle is still really only learning the trade is more than a little mind-boggling. Already he’s been added to the Ten Out of Tenn tour and named “Best New Artist, Chicago” by MTV, and he’s only been doing this for a few years.

Still, Belle is trying to keep his burgeoning career in perspective. “Typically, long-term and music business don’t go hand in hand,” Belle jokes, “But it is something that I think about. We’ve had a lot of success relatively early, and part of me just wants to continue that success.

“I just think about keeping it to the basics—do what I do best, which is songwriting, and try not to let the success that we’ve had intimidate me into thinking that now I have to do better or sell twice as many records. I just want to do what I do best—writing thoughtful, interesting music and keeping that the focal point. Hopefully if I do that, things will continue to happen for us.”

Considering the fact that he’s still so new at this and already is so good and so distinctive and so humble and so hard-working and so grounded, it seems inevitable that he’s at least got a few more albums in him. If he continues to grow the way he’s grown since leaving Taylor University for the music business just a few short years ago, more success is inevitable.

We’re looking forward to it, and if we had to venture guess, those spiteful, sick-to-their-stomach veteran musicians are likely looking forward to it, too. Listen to “The Ladder” and tell me I’m wrong.

“None of this was planned, really,” Belle admits incredulously. “It all just kind of happened, but I’m glad for the way that it happened.”

Grab “The Ladder” at Amazon or iTunes by clicking the links below!

I had the privilege of interviewing this young blues legend at his recent show at the House of Blues in Chicago, IL.  With his recent success at Eric Clapton’s 2010 Crossroads Festival (his second appearance in said festival) it was no wonder he played to a packed house.  Even though I’ve followed all of his albums and read numerous articles on his musical accomplishments, I was still not prepared to meet Jonny Lang.

Anyone who is familiar with his music knows that this guy has soul – not only in his guitar playing but his deep down, guttural blues voice.  If you were to take a listen to one of his albums knowing nothing about the guy, you would imagine him being some old bearded guy with tattered clothes and a worn Fender Stratocaster that maybe wasn’t new in the 70’s.  But upon closer inspection you’ll realize that this is a guy that started his career at age 13 and has been rocking ever since  is only at the ripe age of 29.  I know, it blew my mind too.  Check out the interview:

Buy Live at the Ryman:

An overwhelming majority of the hip-hop music that we at Fresh Scouts will recommend is of the same ilk. For one, it has to be music with a message—emotional music that does something other than get people to shake their booties. And secondly, it has to have soul.

Chicago artist Rhymefest does both, and that’s why you’ve seen him on site here twice in the last week. The first was to review his first album in four years, “El Che,” and this time it’s to sit down and chat about the new record and how a man like Rhymefest crafts his art.

Critical reception for “El Che” has been good, but for Fest this record was about pushing boundaries and giving fans something lyrically that they haven’t heard before.

“I don’t think fans know what they want to hear,” Rhymefest said. “We don’t know, and I even say this as a fan of music. There were a lot of songs that I dissed where today I hear it and say, man this song is pretty good.”

Surprisingly, that includes one of the greatest rappers of all time, who Fest confesses wasn’t always his favorite.

“I didn’t appreciate Tupac until recently,” he admitted, chuckling, “but now that I listen to it in a context of the whole history, I can appreciate a lot of Tupac’s songs. I understand where he was coming from and I feel it more. I realized that at the time, I was immature. I wasn’t able to grasp it.”

“El Che” strives to give all listeners that same sort of experience—where fans of all ages can get something out of it, and then something else out of it when they come back to it years later.

“You have to make music that’s kind of like the Bible. Every time you read the Bible, you get something new out of it, and when you read the Bible at 12 and read the Bible at 22, it’s a whole different experience. My music has to be the gospel.”

That gospel, as Rhymefest put it, started in Chicago, where rap has seen increasing success in the last decade. From Common to Kanye West to Lupe Fiasco, a certain brand of hip-hop has taken shape in the Midwest, and Fest has found himself right in the center of the movement.

“New York is the Mecca of hip-hop, the South is the rhythm of hip-hop, but Chicago is very special because Chicago—and the Midwest in general—is the conscience of hip-hop,” Rhymefest explained. “We remind hip-hop listeners about what hip-hop is supposed to be about, the essence of it.

“This is the number one place where you can hear spirit and soul bleeding on a track and really feel it,” he continued. “When people listen to Chicago artists, they can aspire and remember what they should’ve been putting in their music. The thing that’s really special about this city is that every artist has a passion that seems to be born here.”

And what that passion births next is Rhymefest’s Chicago-based group Blaxploitation, which includes himself, Juice, Mikkey, and Twone Gabz. They’ve got plans to release an album within six months. Then, Fest says, comes another full single LP from him.

In other words, it won’t be four more years before hear from this guy again. “Blue Collar” came out in 2006 and was a quiet classic. Rhymefest hopes “El Che” will be too, but admitted it’s too early to tell how it will be received over time.

“There have been times that, when an album came out, people were like, this is a classic. This album is a classic. But what’s very interesting is that a year later, nobody ever even mentions it.”

He added, “There’s something about music and history where history has to decide if the fans got what they needed out of it. I think with “El Che,” people like it now that they have it, but it has to take time in order to seep into your experience and life. That’s when you’ll find out how it’s affected the fans.”

So far, it’s affected them very well, and with plenty more music to look forward to for Rhymefest in the coming year, he’ll continue to affect those fans in a positive way. We wouldn’t be giving this guy so much pub if we didn’t think he could it.

Trust us—he can do it.

Check out the aptly named “Chicago” from the new record:

And, more importantly, pick up the full album:

So you’re never going to guess who we got to interview.  No seriously, guess.  You’re never going to get it.  Oh, you read the title?  The one right above?  Damn.  Then I guess you know that we interviewed The Blanks.  But who are The Blanks you ask?  Oh, just a little band from the hit comedy “Scrubs”.  That’s right, the awkwardly hilarious lawyer Ted from the show has an acapella group that sings more than occasionally on the show.  But what most of you may not know is that the band actually tours across the county singing songs from the show and beyond.

We were recently able to catch up with them in Boston to see what they are now up to and see where they are headed now that “Scrubs” has seen its final episode.  If you are an avid “Scrubs” fan like myself, you would know that these guys are hilarious.  The show has kick-started their touring career and allowed them to take their music to a level they never imagined before the hit comedy made its way into the hearts of the American people.  If you get the chance, make sure you check these guys out in person.  It’s a whole different kind of comedy show and they are the nicest guys you’ll ever meet.  It’s also awesome to meet Ted in person after seeing him in hundreds of episodes. It was almost as awesome as the time I met Joey Gladstone.  Almost.

I think I’ve read the word “nerdcore” in association with MC Paul Barman’s style of hip-hop like six or seven times while reading up about the guy.

And I get it. He’s a white rapper with curly, floppy locks and glasses. His delivery isn’t urban at all; unlike someone like Eminem or Bubba Sparxxx, when you listen to MCPB it’s pretty clear you’re listening to a white guy. The guy attended an Ivy League school, so he doesn’t even pretend to be a thug.

In short (if it’s not already too late for that), he’s not what you’d call a typical hip-hop artist.

If we’re going with “nerdcore,” though, I think it’s necessary to point out that nerds are characteristically very smart, and as a result, Barman is lyrically one of the best there is.

“That stuff is supposed to be totally, totally fun,” Barman said in a recent interview with Fresh Scouts. “It’s supposed to work on its first listen, and I also try to make every line quotable. It’s not supposed to be so complicated that you can’t quote it. On the contrary, something I strive for is to make every line inevitably to follow the previous, and simultaneously be applicable to everyday things out of context.”

If you listened to some of his songs, you’d know exactly what he means. He’s the king of the multi-syllabic rhyme, and we’re not just talking about two-syllable words here. I’ve heard this guy do six or seven at a time on more than one occasion. For example:

“Smirkin’ jocks with hacky sacks
“In Birkenstocks and khaki slacks.
“I’m the hypist lyricist
“While they’re like, ‘What type of beer is this?’”

See what I’m sayin’?

That particular song, “Get MTV Off the Air, Part 2,” is ten years old, and while it still holds up after all this time, a lot has changed since then.

“I toured a lot and then I didn’t tour anymore,” Barman said about his seven-year hiatus between 2002’s “Paullelujah” and 2009’s “Thought Balloon Mushroom Cloud,” which has been very critically acclaimed.

“I recorded in Cincinnati and then all over the place,” he continued. “I became a dad twice. New York fell apart, the music industry fell apart, and then the world fell apart.”

But Barman’s music never did. Despite having to take a break from hip-hop for a few years to raise his sons, he found himself back in the game a few years ago after meeting up with DJ Memory Man, who helped get the ball rolling again.

“He started working with me on this one 12-inch—a brilliant 12-inch called ‘Live from Death Row,’” Barman explained. “I started just by doing a verse for him, then I helped him conceptualize a song. Then, we started talking about how the B Side should reflect the A Side, and then we kept working together. Then, he demanded to hear everything that I’d been working on, and then he helped me put it all together and make some new songs.”

Nine of those new songs appear on the new album, in which DJ Memory Man played a huge role. Barman also brought back his old pal Prince Paul, who discovered Barman sometime around the Turn of the Century, to produce a couple tracks as well. Even the great ?uestlove of The Roots helped lay down a beat for the record.

In fact, Barman hinted that more work could be in the hopper soon with hip-hop’s favorite afroed drummer, and it comes in the form of what MCPB calls “creative biographies,” or bio-rhymes. Inspired by Nas’s “Unauthorized Biography of Rakim,” he put together two similar tracks of his own for Wu-Tang’s RZA and, of all people, Weird Al Yankovic.

“What’s so revolutionary about Nas’s song is that it’s an homage to someone still alive, which doesn’t happen in any genre in history nearly enough,” Barman explained. “I’m giving props to a living artist… it’s about a person, which people relate to and are interested and entertained by.

“The challenge is not so much really rhyming about information, which I’ve trained myself to do over these many years, as much as telling biographies differently from one another,” he continued. “I can’t just start with birth and end with death, partly because so many of these guys are still living. Structurally, it might get boring in a linear chronology, and that might not be the best way to present someone’s biography anyway.”

And that’s what comes next for Barman—taking this intriguing new idea and running with it. On deck are bio-rhymes for Little Richard, Chuck D, and a host of others Barman has been thinking about. But at the heart of it all, there will be a commitment to lyrical creativity, to poetry, to hip-hop.

Call him “nerdcore” if you must, but the stuff he writes is funny and intelligent and thoughtful. How many rappers currently on Top 40 radio stations right now can have the same said about them?

“In the song that Ludacris sampled from Rakim, where he says, ‘Emceeing to me means move the crowd,’ I was listening to that song and suddenly I realized, as obvious as it might seem, you can move a crowd physically, spiritually, emotionally, and mentally,” Barman said.

“There have been times where I can and do move crowds physically, but I’m trying to go all the way until I break through, and go further.”

He’s been breaking through for over a decade now, and “Thought Balloon Mushroom Cloud” could be the vehicle that drives him straight into the hearts of the masses. The problem is that some record executive somewhere doesn’t think the world is ready for MC Paul Barman yet. I’m saying that you are read, and Barman would like to tell you, too.

Check out “Thought Balloon Mushroom Cloud” in full at MC Paul Barman’s website, or buy the album at his store.

Check out “Get MTV Off the Air, Part 2″:

And one of my favorite tracks from the new album, “Allahu Akbar”: