BUBBLING: Cottontail is finally making waves with her own music in the club-rap scene she helped create. |
Despite her candied look and popstastic nameplate, Oxy Cottontail (a/k/a Roxy) remains an integral part of the club-rap scene that’s fast infiltrating all parts of our planet. Years ago, Oxy was the first to bring the now-legendary sound of the Hollertronix party to New York, jump-starting that danceable, raunchy, break-informed rap sound that’s been such a hit in clubs around the country and around the world. Under her gaze, Diplo, Low B (Low Budget), MC Amanda Blank, and Spank Rock found entry into Gotham’s club circuit. These days, however, she’s focused on making her own music (she shares a bill at the HighLine Ballroom with Ghostface and Spank Rock May 15) while still finding time to promote parties all over NYC. This Friday she’ll be in town to play the Revolution Rock Bar with local DJ Dr. Claw. As always, she’ll be repping the new club-rap sound of the artists she knows and loves.
“It works really well, because hip-hop kind of came out of dance music, disco, electro, and all that,” she explains from her apartment at 28th and Lexington in Manhattan. “More so than rock and hip-hop, to join electro and hip-hop just seems natural. And it makes even more sense because the party and dance element of nightlife has had a resurgence in the last couple of years.”
Oxy credits Diplo and the Hollertronix posse for the resurgence. “They inspired all of us. Crunk music from the South, Baltimore club, ’80s and electro weren’t being blended by any DJs at the time that I knew of. So for us to all be there and get inspired . . . it confronted us all. Naaem, Plastic Little, Amanda Blank, and me, we each set out in our own direction, but they are like family to me.” If it is a family, Oxy admits to being the mom. “Or the stage mom,” she laughs. “I was called the soccer mom because I would travel and rent the van and take a group of people from a party from Philly to New York.”
And there’s much more ready to bubble out of that scene, maybe even out of that very van — particularly raunchy rhymestress Blank. “It makes it more butt-shaking friendly,” Oxy says of the sound she’s helped create. “Hip-hop has had a real influence on nightclub culture. Right now most of the clubs, maybe 70 percent, are playing almost strictly hip-hop. But it makes sense to incorporate other elements of music, especially electro, which everyone can relate to the ’80s.”
Oxy’s own music (available in mixtape form at this column on-line) is off-the-cuff and digestible, with lots of shouts and bumpin’ grooves. Right now she’s riding the wave of enthusiasm over her cover of “Mind Your Own Business” and her “Oxy’s Theme.” “I’m bringing my DJ from New York, DJ Dimple,” she says of her Boston show. “I’ll do a lot of freestyle over new and old beats.”
Oxy is part of the new party business, a splinter of the music industry that doesn’t see the need for record labels. “There’s an album eventually in the works, but I feel like record labels are . . . a little . . . ” She stops. “I don’t know. There’s different ways to do what I do to make money. The way the music business is now — music is basically free. And the live element and party is much more appreciated than it ever has been.”
That didn’t stop her from saying yes to Boston’s lost son Armand Van Helden when he asked her to guest on his Ghettoblaster (Ultra). “He came to a show I did and was like, ‘Yeah, I really want to get you on this album,’ and I was like, ‘For real?’ ” Another laugh. The song, “Playmate,” drops along with the album April 24.
OXY COTTONTAIL + DR. CLAW | Revolution Rock Bar, 200 High St, Boston | April 13 | 617.758.4280
