What Ever Happened To Charles Hamilton? (Article)
What up one & all. Sky Bento here on the check-in once again. Big Bento Energy is most definitely in full effect. Hope you & yours are doing good & well. Drinking water, protecting your mental health, knowing the vibes & all.
Today, we’re going to talk about Charles Hamilton. Who? Not Mike Jones. Charles Hamilton. Charles Eddie Lee Hamilton Jr., “but since that b**** a** n**** that calls himself a pops, ain’t a pops, it’s Charles Hamilton”. A one of a kind artist. An early internet-era MC from an era when clout-chasing antics weren’t the standard because using the internet wasn’t the standard. In those days, talent still truly reigned supreme in terms of building a career online. Charles had it in spades. Today is November 10th, his birthday, and also one of my favorite songs from the man. From about 2008-2013, this was a holiday for me. There was a time when it felt like everybody had heard of Charles Hamilton, and now it feels like I’m the only person who remembers. They got amnesia, word to French. But in y’all defense, 10 years is a long time in real life, never mind in internet time. And this was one of the first rappers to really make his career online. So if you’re not familiar, get your YouTube search open and prepare to take this trip down memory lane with me.
It was the end of the 2000’s. iPods still had click wheels. Lil Wayne was the best rapper alive. Thanks to his “A Milli” freestyle, Bronx’ Cory Gunz (who deserves his own “Where Are They Now?”-styled article) also ranked pretty high for 13 year old me. Rounding out my top 3 another New York MC whose knack for freestyling had him buzzing. Of course, that is Charles Hamilton. I first caught wind of him when his single “Brooklyn Girls” aired on MTV Jams in the Summer of ‘08. New York wasn’t “back” yet, it was still struggling to find itself a new sound thanks to most artists either rehashing the sounds of its heyday or imitating the South. There were a few standout records from new blood here and there (Maino’s “Hi Hater” comes to mind) but when it came to exciting new MCs from the big apple in the Soulja Boy-era, most tended to stand in the shadow of greats like Nas, JAY Z, and of course Biggie. But in the aftermath of 50 Cent (& the aforementioned Weezy) freestyles and mixtapes were where New York artists still managed to really shine. This is how Charles managed to make his name.
Some time after I caught “Brooklyn Girls”, I decided to just search his name on YouTube with a friend of mine to see what came up. I think this was actually the first time I’d ever done that. I was not disappointed. The DJ Green Lantern freestyle. PART TWO of the DJ Green Lantern freestyle. Videos of him rapping with big names like Joe Budden (also a multi-parter since I don’t YouTube think did long videos back then), The Game & Kanye West and eventually even a young Compton MC by the name of K-Dot. Songs like “Loser” with it’s emo-jazz hybrid, “Starchasers” and it’s sample of everyone’s favorite Lykke Li song & “Windows Media Player” with it’s sample of stock Windows sound effects soon flooded out my iPod nano. Charles’ inventive sampling was what hooked me first, but his introspective yet cocky lyrics and unpredictable sometimes smooth sometimes random flow made me a fan. The crown jewel of my music library was a record called “November 10th” named after his birthday, and built around a sample of the Marble Zone music from Sonic the Hedgehog which he produced himself.
If mixtapes and freestyles were Charles’ bread and butter, Sonic the Hedgehog was whatever you make bread and butter with. As a lifelong gamer myself this was what really set him apart from other rappers for me. He never shied away from the things he loved. I remember once watching a video of him with his signature pink headphones explaining his belief in God as a woman, the meaning behind the color pink, and his so-called “Super Sonic Philosophy” and his connection to Sonic. I can’t find the actual video anywhere, but I promise you it existed. It felt like the chill, 2009 YouTube version of a Kanye West rant about how society would advance if we all just believed in him as the God-appointed leader, without the part about him being a God-appointed leader. He was cocky yes, he’s a New York MC, but he also was extremely down to earth despite his out-of-this-world thought process. He got high, cracked jokes, and played video games. He really was the type of MC that could’ve only blown up with the advent of the internet age. Without it, he probably would’ve been laughed off the streets of Harlem for being a weirdo. Instead, he was one of the first artists to use his nerdiness to his advantage. He built his fanbase off of his near constant references to video games, anime and rock bands. He called Incubus one of his greatest influences way before artists like Lil Uzi Vert began making Paramore songs for the soundcloud era, never mind all of the glitchy, gamer aesthetics. Add that to the fact he was incredibly prolific and produced the majority of his own stuff and he seemed destined for greatness.
Charles Hamilton was always an outsider, however. Despite making it onto the 2009 XXL Freshmen cover, he never fit in, nor did he care to. He did do a few collaborations (notably “Change Gonna Come” with fellow ‘09 Freshmen BoB & Asher Roth & “Neh Neh Neh” where he went bar for bar with Cory Gunz) but he mostly kept to himself, musically. I don’t even think I ever heard him produce for another artist. So when he got punched in the face by his girlfriend on camera, he became a punchline. Whether or not he deserved it aside (he did rap about her abortion to her face) this did irreparable damage to the perception of him. Not his brand, him as a man. Nobody cared about the hundreds of mixtapes or thousands of freestyles. I must’ve seen the meme of Sonic rings being hit out of him a million times. His ascent slowed a bit but his core fanbase was still there, even if it didn’t grow any larger. His last big hurrah came when he popped up as a member of Lupe Fiasco’s All City Chess Club group on the remix to his 2011 single “I’m Beaming”.
Throughout the early 2010’s his mental health got rocky and even his core fanbase slowly stopped caring about the music. There was so much of it coming out so quickly and it was so unpolished. It was almost like if you took the work ethic of Lil Wayne, the unpolished rebellious attitude of XXXtentacion, the loneliness of Kid Cudi and mixed them all up. There’s really a magic to how raw it is but it wasn’t going to return him to the buzz he had in his early days. Music was clearly his true love, and more importantly it appeared to be all he had. Charles appeared lonely, angry, and most of all, the confidence of a Harlem MC appeared all but gone. Confidence didn’t appear to matter as much as ventilation did and expressing his worldview and innermost thoughts became his core focus artistically. The musicianship may have remained to some degree but mentally he was facing way tougher battles than living up to the early reports of him being “the next Kanye West”. It’s been a very rocky road for Mr. Hamilton. He was dropped by his label, dissed J. Cole, checked into a mental health institution, transferred to another one, found love there, was released, and faced some trouble with the law. Things were looking good when he popped back up a few years ago and got scooped up by Roc Nation and dropped more music, even appearing on Empire and interviewing with Hot 97 and Sway in the Morning. But that was short lived, the buzz was not recaptured and he’s since faced more legal troubles, being in jail at the time of me writing this article.
So with this being Men’s Mental Health Month and today specifically being November 10th, I want to give the man his flowers. Though the buzz of those early mixtapes like The Pink Lavalamp (classic, should’ve went triple), It’s Charles Hamilton, Well Isn’t This Awkward, and Outside Looking has evaded him, those projects still exist on the internet for your listening pleasure. He’s released a lot of quality work and really encapsulated that turning point in rap where the internet was starting to take over. This was pre-social media, Charles was only on MySpace. So if you’re interested in New York rap’s awkward adolescent years, check out Charles Hamilton. If you’re interested at all in video games and rap, check out Charles Hamilton. If you’re unfamiliar at all, check out Charles Hamilton. But most importantly, I want to stress that mental health is not to be taken lightly, especially those whose art we enjoy. They are people too and more often than not they are dealing with things that just so happen to push them to create greatness. If there’s anything I’ve learned from Charles Hamilton, it’s that without keeping our mental health in check, we may never reach our own greatness, our own full potential. So please take care of yourself, and be yourself.
