by Jake Espinoza
Opinions about Cool Nutz are like pairs of Jordans, every rapper in Portland has at least one and some of them are ugly.
Cool Nutz puts in a lot of work for his city. He received the Pioneer Award at the 2011 Portland Music Awards, hosts the Northwest Breakout Show (which helps give artists from the area radio play), he’s organized POH-HOP for over a decade (a weekend event that has featured just about every artist in Portland as well as headliners such as Zion I and Mistah Fab) and has helped Portland artists get involved with national and international tours.
But not everyone sees him as a positive influence on the city. Some refer to him as an artist past his prime looking to stay relevant by keeping up-and-coming artists in his pocket. Others have gone as far as to say that having him as a manager is an act of career suicide.
The facts are: you would be hard to find a person in the northwest hip hop community more connected in the music industry than Cool Nutz, very few people work as hard as Cool Nutz, and nobody has done more for hip hop in Portland than Cool Nutz.
In 1997, he watched a deal with Atlantic Records slip through his fingers and has been in his I-N-D-E-P-E-N-D-E-N-T Shit (*Macklemore Voice*) ever since.
Outside of being an artist, he established himself as someone who is able to organize, plan ahead, and lead a group early on in his career. Being capable of taking on multiple different tasks has put him in the position to work with artists such as E-40, Tech N9ne, Too Short, and (most recently) Kreayshawn as a tour manager. He has unfortunately never had that one song that put him in the spotlight, but being respected and trustworthy has been important in the longevity of his career—both behind the scenes and behind the microphone.
“Through a lot of hard work, I just became known as a person who can get things done,” he said. “And in the music industry, you have a lot of the same people dealing with a lot of different artists.”
For lack of a better term, Cool Nutz is the Boss of Portland Hip Hop. Not being in the family means missing out on just about everything going on in the city. Portland rappers who can’t get on big shows, aren’t included in POH HOP, and aren’t hearing your tracks on Northwest Breakout Show, tend to blame the common link.
Cool Nutz does make an effort to include as many people as possible, but somebody is always going to be left out (life is cruel that way).
I’ve had a working relationship with Cool Nutz for the past five years and have nothing but respect for him. I also know how unreasonable certain members of the hip hop community can be. I once received and e-mail from an artist who told me Cool Nutz was “hating” on him and that he would never work with him. I asked the artist what happened and he told me that Nutz refused to give him E-40’s contact information.
It would seem to me that not handing out someone’s personal information is common courtesy–regardless of the person’s stature. (Why would someone ever give a friend or co-worker’s contact information to a complete stranger?) But this is the type of dumb shit that he has to deal with.
Cool Nutz has supported himself and his family by working in the music business for the last decade plus. This is something you can’t do by hating on people. He lost his generally cool demeanor for just a bit when I asked him how he felt about artists who say he holds the city back.
“I’ve taken people on tour with me before, and all they have to do was roll with us, but then they get mad because we ask them to pass out flyers before a show… The problem is that people don’t want to play their role. How is it going to look for me to be on the road working as Kreayshawn’s tour manager and to get mad because she asks me to get her some water?” he said. “Fatboy is one of the hardest working people I know. He’s been all over the world as a DJ, he’s been on tour as E-40’s DJ, but he doesn’t get mad because I ask him to stop by Phoenix Media and pick up flyers or ask him to pass out flyers or put posters up.”
Fatboy has nothing but positive things to say about having Nutz as his manager for the last four years.
“My first solo gig he got me was as a DJ for the Too Short show at the Roseland. I went from the basement to a sold out Roseland show and made a two week paycheck in two hours.” said DJ Fatboy. “The next day he’s like, ‘you did good tonight, tomorrow we are opening for Nas at the McDonald in Eugene.’”
Cool Nutz breaks down a lot of his experiences working with local artists with the “Disneyland Theory”.
“So let’s say I stop by your house and pick you up and tell you that we’re going to Disneyland. You don’t have to pitch on gas or anything. I’m just picking you up and we’re going to Disneyland. So at first you are excited, but as we’re on our way you start to get mad because you aren’t driving. So every time we pull over to get gas you pour sugar in the tank. Eventually the car breaks down, and so now neither of us can go to Disneyland because you were mad you couldn’t drive.”
#OutHerePDX