Tall Black Guy
When Tall Black Guy stopped by, the producer was only halfway through a month-long tour that would see him visit far-flung locales like Wellington, Sydney, Singapore, Tokyo, Dubai and Jordan. It was just another day in the life of the artist.
Tall Black Guy, the moniker of Detroit beatmaker Terrel Wallace, has become adored throughout the past 20-odd years for his signature blend of dreamlike hip-hop, jazz, funk and whatever else he is feeling now. His mellow, sample-laden sounds have won him the adulation of Gilles Peterson, Lefto, Jazzy Jeff, Questlove – and, not to mention, hordes of audiophiles across the globe.
Though he’s now based in the UK, Tall Black Guy’s story begins in Detroit and Chicago, where music thread its way through his life from an early age. His parents, who separated when he was young, had a formative influence on his musical tastes. His mother filled their home with the sounds of Luther Vandross, Teena Marie, and Cameo. Tall Black Guy’s father, a mortician, introduced him to jazz greats Herbie Hancock and George Duke, as well as hip-hop mainstays like Rakim and A Tribe Called Quest.
But it was Tall Black Guy’s cousin, who would “kill all the guys” beatboxing around her high school, that pushed him into the realm of beatmaking. He was entranced by the beats of his favourite rappers. Scanning the liner notes of their albums, he saw the heavy-hitters: Dr. Dre, DJ Premier and other iconic producers. Soon after finishing high school near the turn of the century, Tall Black Guy purchased Sonic Foundry’s ACID Music 2.0 beatmaking program – “my parents wasn’t going to buy me an MPC [drum machine and sampler] – and began experimenting with loops, samples and drum sequencing.
He became obsessed with the music-making process. “I would sit in front of the computer for, like, basically 18-20 hours,” he said, “just sitting, sitting like this with your back hunched over, just messing around and stuff like that. I did that for a long time. And my father was always like, ‘Man, what are you doing?’ You know, ‘cause my pops is a businessman, so obviously, he wanted the best for me.”
In the mid-to-late-2000’s, Tall Black Guy found himself entering beat battles – competitions where fledgling producers took to the stage to compare their beatmaking prowess – around the Chicago area. The crowds responded positively to his music: “I did 11 [beat battles] and I won 7,” he says.
After stints in two amateur hip-hop groups in the late 2000’s, Tall Black Guy made his first foray into solo production, posting his tracks online for the world to see. His , so Tall Black Guy considered turning his hobby into a career. “Me and my wife was like, ‘Why don’t we just give this thing a try?’ So I gave it a trial period of, like, three months or something like that.” A string of collaborations with other budding artists led Tall Black Guy to get noticed by First Word Records, who put out his first full-length album, 2013’s 8 Miles to Moenart, which featured guest spots from Ozay Moore, Diggs Duke, Malice Sweet and Mario Sweet.
Nearly two decades after tinkering with his first beats, Tall Black Guy’s homegrown ethos has barely changed. “My setup is very limited,” he explains. “I have a MIDI control and a laptop, that’s all I got. And I got two monitors I just got maybe three years ago. So I’ve been working on literally earphones and my computer for a long time.
He says that his music has evolved in recent years, as he is incorporating more live instrumentation into his DJ sets. But despite a more professional approach to music nowadays, Tall Black Guy says that the sounds of his youth still creep into his life.
“Stuff that I listen to now is more soul music and jazz,” he says. “That’s what I listen to probably 95%, 98% of the time, is that. And you might have a few hip hop [artists] here and there, but even that is still just all jazz, a lot of soul music.”
Conscious of music’s possible deleterious effects, Tall Black Guy has been careful to distance himself from the profanity-laden mass market music entering the ears of impressionable listeners: “I just had an epiphany,” he says, “I was like, ‘Man, I don’t want to be one of those guys where somebody listens to my track and then [does] something crazy.’
“I know what I want to offer,” he adds. “If you listen to my catalogue, you know pretty much everything that I’ve been affiliated with has no profanity in it. It’s just feel good, where it can be played at any setting – in front of your mother, your kid, your grandma.”
His latest album, Let’s Take a Trip, is not likely to incite anyone to violence. The record – released in November and packed with features from eclectic artists like Kenny Keys, Moonchild and Yusef Rumperfield – is nearly an hour of good vibes and introspection.
Speaking about “Is there more to life?”, a syncopated, horn-filled tune featuring singer and composer Diggs Duke, Tall Black Guy says the track stemmed from a particularly uninspiring time in his life.
“Basically, that track was ‘I hate my damn job,’” he says. “Because I was working as a cook, but I hated it. I wanted to express myself in that way. So, the rebuttal question to that, or the answer, was ‘I will never know’, [the album’s following track].
With tracks like Things Deeper Than My Skin and Don’t Box Me In, the record looks both within and without, covering issues like racism in the US – he mentions the shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, by a white police officer.
There is a lot to digest for the listener in Let’s Take a Trip. But not even five months after the release of Let’s Take a Trip, Tall Black Guy is already setting his sights on the next record.
“I might take maybe that month off [after the tour],” he says. “Maybe I might have a few gigs when I get back. But I need to really start figuring out what I want to do with this next album. Cause I want to make, like, a jazz album… I know it’s going to take a while, ‘cause I’m not the best player, but I’m going to play the stuff and then have musicians come and replay it for me.”
—