Patiently Waiting
T
o most Carolinians, when Lil Brod’s single “Do U Mind” started getting played by every DJ in South Carolina, the Columbia, SC rapper seemingly came out of nowhere. But contrary to popular belief, Brod was laying his groundwork years before “Do U Mind” became a regional hit. He began recording and releasing his music on a street level at 13. At 15, he hooked up the local rapper Jay Pacino, who had already built his buzz in the city and featured Brod on a song called “We Gon Be G’s.” The song received a few radio spins, but it was enough to peak the young rapper’s interested in the music business. “I was on the radio at 15, going to school,” he remembers. “Ever since that day, once I saw how fast everything could happen, I told myself I’ma do this all the way to the T. This is what I love to do, and I see you can get money from something
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you love to do, so I just went all the way in.” He went on to release an independent project called Vicissitude, featuring the single “Sometimes I” that caught the street’s attention. “When I dropped that song, they didn’t know I could come like that,” he boasts. “Once everybody got on it, that was a street bumper right there.” Despite his modest street buzz, Brod’s name was still a relative unknown to the vast majority in his city, but that would soon change. After hearing a beat that would later become “Do U Mind,” he took the track to SC producer 9 Million (Lil Ru’s “Nasty Song”), who immediately saw the potential in the record. “I let 9 Mill hear it, and he said, ‘We can take this track, we can redo it way better than it is,’” Brod says, recalling their conversation. “At first I thought it wasn’t going to work cause I was on some street [music]. But [we] gave it a try and it took off.”
From there, “Do U Mind” became a regional hit, and Lil Brod signed an independent deal with 9 Million’s Head Hunter Records through his own No Sleep imprint. As they wait on the right major label situation, his music, including his latest single “Babygirl” featuring R&B singer Sammie, continues to be a mainstay in the streets and on radio, while he finishes up a mixtape entitled Key 2 The City, hosted by DJ B-Lord. “In a six month period [my] whole life changed from not knowing what was going to go on one day to the next day [knowing] I’m good,” he says. “Patiently Waiting, that’s the perfect title for everything. The streets been on me, it was just [about getting] the corporate people on me. And I guess it worked.” Words by Randy Roper Photo by Clevis Harrison