Entertainment

HIP-HOP MUSIC: Local rapper Dura Hale has the talent and the team in place to break out

06:59 PM CDT on Monday, May 8, 2006

By HUNTER HAUK / The Dallas Morning News

It's Friday afternoon at a small East Dallas recording studio called the Kitchen, but nothing's cooking just yet. Representatives of a local upstart record label, a music producer and several others are waiting for Dura Hale to show up for a photo shoot and interview.

Mr. Hale, 25, is a Dallas rapper whose year-old debut CD is finally getting the promotional push it deserves. He's running late, someone says, "because he just got a new car that's a standard, and he doesn't know how to drive a stick yet. He's probably stalling somewhere."

Nathan Hunsinger / DMN

Dura Hale

"Or he's just being a diva," someone else jokes.

Minutes later, the artist walks in and greets everyone in the room with playful insults and intricate handshakes. It becomes apparent that the people gathered for Mr. Hale aren't there because they have to be – they're all good friends committed to nurturing his music career. Many would say a team like this is all an artist needs to succeed. But lucky for Mr. Hale, his music's as impressive as his crew.

In "Ova Load," the first track on The Adventures of Dura Hale, Mr. Hale bursts into the forefront with a manic rap vocal that incorporates the styles of many seminal MCs. A minute into the song, soulful singers break in to testify: "He's electric, he's fire / burnin' inside ya." It's all set to a bouncy, electro-funk-tinged backing track. Timbaland would be proud.

But "Ova Load" is only the beginning. Throughout the album, Mr. Hale moves from cocky defiance ("Rock Star") to subtle social commentary ("Move Back") to the joy of creation (first single "In the Kitchen"). If Mr. Hale somehow broke nationally, he'd be the perfect artist to represent Dallas' diverse, unsung hip-hop scene.

Mr. Hale moved to Dallas in 1989 with his mother, Brenda Hale, from St. Petersburg, Fla. His father, also named Dura, lived in Milwaukee and was never a daily part of his son's life, although he did provide some musical inspiration, having played with several R&B groups, including fronting a couple of his own.

"I didn't grow up with him, but I did visit occasionally," Mr. Hale says. "I would hang around his house, and there would be song lyrics written on pieces of paper everywhere."

Mr. Hale watched his dad's career from afar while developing his own love of music in a church choir: "I just loved the soul of it."

After attending several different schools in the area, Mr. Hale ended up at Kimball High School, where he spent his class time mostly daydreaming. "I would zone out in class, just writing raps and not paying attention to the teachers. Sometimes I wrote two or three pages of stuff in class," he says.

His older brother, Gary, was also into writing rap lyrics, and the two enjoyed friendly competition. They made countless tapes on a two-deck karaoke machine. "We'd get in the mode, just bouncing ideas off each other."

Mr. Hale says he lost some of his musical momentum temporarily when he got out of school and faced the realities of supporting himself. He also got more involved in the church.

"I thought that I needed to give up my loyalty to music and focus on God again," he says. "But it didn't take long before people were asking me to do gospel raps in church. I later decided to just really go with my own ideas about the music I wanted to make."

Mr. Hale began paying to record rap tracks at the Kitchen. That's where he met Chris Billick, who produced The Adventures of Dura Hale with Josh Loudermilk.

"When Dura first came in to record a track, he was dressed like he was going to church, so I didn't know what to think. But then he got in the booth and started spittin', and I knew he had something," Mr. Billick says.

Mr. Billick and Mr. Loudermilk, then a producing duo called the Elements, agreed to work on Dura's full-length album at the Kitchen. They saw in Dura a versatile rapper who refused to stick to one style, a skill they encouraged.

"I try not to do the same rhyme schemes on different songs. I'll hear the beat, and I'll experiment with ways to approach the beat. Josh and Chris were always telling me to switch it up more," Mr. Hale says.

In 2004, Dallas rap label Wreck tha Mic signed Mr. Hale and agreed to release The Adventures. The CD is just now ready for a release and a full-press promotional campaign. It comes with a companion DVD that chronicles Mr. Hale's efforts to pursue his rap dream. There are interviews with his producers, managers and even his mother.

Mr. Hale no longer has a day job. Wreck tha Mic supports him so he can have freedom to record, make appearances and perform live. He says he is living in "three different places." (Mr. Billick butts in: "That's what's called a player.")

"To get noticed, you can make a big buzz with sales and radio, or you can go against the grain with a new style," Mr. Hale says. "I'm trying to do a little of both."

Mr. Hale says his career role model is the group OutKast, because they have achieved mainstream success while being artistically adventurous.

"They are always growing artistically, always trying to go somewhere else," he says.

The OutKast influence is apparent in Mr. Hale's music. He throws in quite a few out-there verses that could have come straight from the lyric sheets of Andre 3000 and Big Boi. When told that, Mr. Hale says he considers it both a compliment and a curse.

"If you can hear my influences in my music ... I haven't come into myself as an artist yet."

A few days after the meeting at the Kitchen, most of the rapper's crew have shown up to see him perform at Denton's Texas Jive. There are other supporters there, too, including new manager Tommy Quon, a Dallas institution best known for overseeing the career of Vanilla Ice. Mr. Quon tells those nearby that Mr. Hale is "an original, and you'll love him."

Later, Mr. Hale takes the stage alone and moves through three or four songs for a small crowd. It's his last local appearance before going out on a short stint opening for hip-hop artist Pretty Ricky.

"I really want to get out there and make things happen now," Mr. Hale says. With an eclectic offering like The Adventures and his group of die-hard supporters, he should feel good about his chances.

E-mail hhauk@quickdfw.com

Dura Hale's CD can be purchased at www.CDbaby.com. For more information, visit www.myspace.com/durahale or www.wreckthamic.com.