Whenever the conversation revolves around hip-hop, the three primary cities always ensure to make their space – Atlanta, L.A., and New York. However, the city which people usually fail to give enough recognition that it deserves is the city of Chicago, which has given rise to some of the most stupendous wordsmiths like Kanye West, Twista, Common, Da Brat, Lupe Fiasco, Gil Scott-Heron, and more recently Chance The Rapper.
Joseph Davis, commonly known as Joey Purp on stage, is one name full of aspirations and talent who wishes his name to be included in the list of eminent rappers brought to the world by Chicago. He is one of the founding members of Savemoney, of which both Vic Mensa and Chance The Rapper are members.
The story behind Joey meeting – Chance The Rapper is quite the one which talks about a common friends circle. While Joey was good friends with Reese, one of his classmates, Reese was in great terms with Chance The rapper, who in turn was the cause behind these members of Savemoney meeting.
“We just happened to be in the same group of friends.”
While Joey’s rapping is in itself an inspiration for many, he still draws stimulus and influences from southern-side rappers like Memphis, Project Pat, Three-6-Mafia and Gangsta Boo. As Joey grew up tuning to all of these inspirations, he fell for their style and till date feels motivated by them.
Having been performed in America, as well as 3-4 times in Europe, Joey has been able to distinguish between the crowd as well as overall show structure in both the places, of which Joey ended up liking Europe more due to its lit up audience.
Joey believes that this noticeable difference amongst the audience of America and Europe is due to their distinctive perspectives that address new musicians. As per Joey, people in America would not want a newbie to the industry to act cooler than them, neither would they be keen enough to listen to you or welcome you until you are an established and popular musician. However, when it comes to Europe, the people out there believe in having a good time while enjoying and cheering for every musician, no matter how new or old in the industry.
“I think out here in Europe, no matter what you do you still want to have fun. Even if you’re a kid in the crowd who makes music you still wanna have fun and I relate to that because that’s how I was.”
The video of Joey’s song “Girls @” received much appreciation by the public while exhibiting how much fun it would have been making that particular music video. On being asked whether he takes pride doing such music video or not, Joey replied that he is very passionate about making music videos which is why he doesn’t do them very often, hence taking things slowly yet wholeheartedly. His approach towards making music videos is treating them just like how he treats a music album, i.e. with full attention, detail, and precision.
“I don’t care how long it takes or how far away from the song it is, I’m working on the music video like it’s a full project. We want to take it to the next level. We want to do everything that people at the next level do.”
In his song “Cornerstone”, Joey has dedicated a line towards the acknowledgment of the problems faced by the white kids. His mother being a white, Joey understands the hassles that she has faced early in her life. But not only that, Joey realizes that there are rampant problems faced by the black as well, merely on the basis of racial differences which actually hold no relevance in a human’s life.
“I know that not even from just being a rapper, even before I was rapping, being light-skinned and being half-white there are privileges that I have in the world so I take my voice and I speak for us.”
While Joey Purp is already soaring high in the rapping industry by personifying his inbuilt exorbitant capabilities of playing with words, he still wants to thrive and flourish at greater heights by making his music as popular as possible by providing it with ample global recognition as well as cultural significance.
“I want to be a voice and a beacon for where I’m from and to be able to broadcast my perspective and our perspective to as many places as possible.”
