The chronicles of RaRa

On the front porch, RaRa sits beside his Grandma Dot while taking sips from a double-stuffed Styrofoam cup. This is the same two-story house, in the ‘hood of suburban Decatur, where he moved from a Thomasville Heights housing project as an adolescent with his grandmother, aunt, and a bunch of cousins. It’s the same house where he started experimenting with music in the garage in his early teens, inspired by the likes of Tupac and T.I. And it’s the house where he reluctantly returns for a couch to crash on when he falls on hard times.

But today isn’t one of those days. Today, RaRa’s just visiting.

As a Creative Loafing photographer snaps his portrait, family members look on as if they too have been patiently waiting for his moment in the spotlight. Over the past decade, RaRa, aka Rodriguez Smith, has experienced enough career stalls to make the average MC lay down the mic and exit stage left. But his latest release proves that time was just what he needed to discover the essential ingredient missing from his music: himself.

“I went up to Greg Street and he said it takes 10 years to make a star,” RaRa says, recalling a recent visit with the industry tastemaker and V-103 radio host. “And I said, I hope so ‘cause I been in it 10. I might be ready right now.”

Despite making a minor splash as Young Capone on Jermaine Dupri’s 2005 compilation Young, Fly & Flashy Vol. 1 upon signing to So So Def, his flow lacked the proper context. He held his own lyrically alongside the likes of West Coast legend Daz Dillinger, but he needed a backstory fans could buy into. That wouldn’t come until he changed his moniker to RaRa and returned with the 2012 independent release Higher. It wasn’t a rechristening as much as a reclamation of his roots. He’d gone by the same nickname growing up. But not until his latest independent release, HighEndLowLife, aka H.E.L.L., has the story of his upbringing as a hardheaded have-not taken center stage.

On “Frustrated Young Man” (feat. Killer Mike), RaRa chops up a Cody ChesnuTT sample (“Don’t Wanna Go the Other Way”) full of vocal anguish to draw out the contradictions that came with being “a typical young ghetto kid on Section 8” with “a ounce of hope, trying to make a mil off a ounce of dope,” he raps. When he’s not damning his past in one breath or praying for grace in the next, he’s narrating his merciless paper chase. “My mama called me about that shit,” he says of the pained confessionals and insecurities he bleeds over the mostly self-produced set. “I had to tell her, that’s not like the mode I’m in, in my life right now.”

Though he expresses appreciation for being taken in by his grandmother and aunt, he admits that feeling abandoned by his birth parents led him down a dark path. “You know, Grandma always had all the other kids, too,” he says, “so I think I was just a little bit on the crazy side.” At that, Grandma Dot can’t help but smile. “I guess I didn’t realize it then but I just wanted some attention.”

Today he’s after the attention of an industry he thinks turned a deaf ear on him after he parted ways with Dupri. In the time since, he took some of his grandmother’s advice and expanded his grind beyond rap to include graphic design, a clothing line, a barber’s license, and the independent label Art District through which he and his managers released HighEndLowLife.

“Them situations made me become who I am,” he says of coming full circle. “Now that people have seen me suffer for 10 years ... they can look at that and say I know he’s telling the truth. I think it makes them wanna give me a shot now.”