NiGE HOOD & The Folk Rap Band

Nige Hood & the Folk Rap Band brought an element to the room that blended hip-hop with ’60s funk and jam-band sounds, but with a frontman whose stage presence calls to mind Lenny Kravitz mixed with James Brown.

Nige Hood, a self-dubbed “folk rap genius,” hails from Charlotte. Having performed for a few years as a solo act, Hood has recently brought a four-piece band into his live shows, culminating in a style that blends more mainstream hip-hop traditions with funk and folk sounds from the Peace & Love Generation. The charismatic frontman belted out smooth melodies with a flare of funk and eloquent, tightly-spouted verses with a Nas-like flow. - TRIAD CITY BEAT

In the past year, Nige Hood has released This is Folk Rap and put together a band to back his signature mix of rock, R&B and rap that bubbles with golden-age hip-hop stylee. On September 7, Hood will bring this concoction to Petra's on a bill with the atmospheric indie-pop of the Virginia band Mammoth Indigo. Two days later, Hood will be off to Raleigh to perform at a Hopscotch Festival day party called The Art of Sound, along with Charlotte rapper Black Linen and several regional acts including experimental ambient-noise artists blursome, from Raleigh, and Kendall Cahan, from Boone.

Then next month, on October 21, Hood will be among numerous Charlotte acts performing at LeAnna Eden's big Bla/Alt Music Festival at Camp North End, a local version of the Afropunk fest in New York City. That event will surely drive home Hood's ideas about folk music.

"I see folk music as the pulse of people," Hood says. "That's why I feel like it was so strong in the '60s, and it's why in the '60s folk was so heavily laden with protest. People were at a consensus on that stuff back then; it was what was on everybody's minds. - CREATIVE LOAFING CHARLOTTE