OH SNAP!!

By Lauren LaRocca
News-Post Staff



DJ and music producer Mickey Fortune will be DJ-ing at the Ottobar in Baltimore on March 12.




OH SNAP!! is "everything that is right -- and wrong -- with society," according to the MySpace bio.
It's true. OH SNAP!!, aka rapper Mickey FORTUNE, is a walking contradiction.

The 30-year-old practicing Buddhist wears new Reebok pumps (with purple laces) and raps at parties all night without drinking. The thug-turned-Deadhead lives with his wife and their two mastiffs in Mount Airy, where he practices his DJ skills on their basement air hockey table. Fortune (which really is his last name, though people have asked to see his ID to verify) is an environmentalist but drives an SUV because of the dogs (one of them would never fit in a Prius -- let alone two) -- and because it's paid for.

Though his music style and lifestyle has drastically changed over the years, he's always been this walking contradiction. When he was 14 and in high school, where everyone listened to Phish and the Grateful Dead, Fortune protested by freestyling his gangsta rap at the lunchroom table, or wherever he was. Though successful at the record promotion business her began, he lost all his clients when he graduated and left for college in Minnesota. He grew up in Columbia and Ellicott City -- not much thug life -- but wasn't completely BS-ing his way through.

Back in those days, he recorded in Baltimore, which he described as "abandoned building, abandoned building, recording studio, crack house, abandoned building. Then I'd come home to Ellicott City."

His song "No" aired on public radio throughout the country, but, frankly, producers in New York City didn't know how to market an average-looking white kid from a yuppie neighborhood.

And Fortune, at the age of 22, was considered old in the rap community.

"(The record producers) were like, 'The music is great, but then we meet you, and you're kind of an aging white guy. The thug tip -- it's just not believable.' If it was like the 'Wizard of Oz' and I was the man behind the curtain... but..."

In retrospect, he thinks he was trying too hard.

He met with Def Jam Records, then kind of gave up. But in late 2007, he began rapping again, for the fun of it, and "more things are happening," he said, maybe because of his carefree approach.

"I feel much more artistic freedom," he said. "I wanted an outlet, and music happened to be the best. OH SNAP!! started as a joke."

He bought some used equipment and started practicing.

Now he's on a mission to make people happy.

Seriously.

During a 1 1/2-hour interview, he joked and smiled nearly the entire time. An almost-serious face could be seen only while being asked a question, and his signature pose is him smiling with not one but two thumbs up.

Still, he hasn't completely gone off the happy deep end. He recognizes the atrocities going on in the world, which is precisely why his mission is to relieve people of their daily stresses, through his music.

"I don't know if I can be Mother Teresa or Gandhi to make people happy, but if I can get them to stop thinking about their bills, or even if can make them laugh for five minutes ..."

Fortune spends each Sunday morning at the Tibetan Meditation Center in Gambrill State Park, though most of the lamas don't know he DJs at all-night parties. However, he once heard the ringtone of Justin Timerlake's "Sexy Back" and looked around to see where it was coming from. "And the guy goes into his robe and pulls out his phone," he said. Apparently monks like dance music, too.

"The stuff I do is funny," he said. Lighthearted songs, like "I'm Too Fat to be a Hipster."

"All you big-boned brothers, do you know what I mean?" he raps.

It's true, he said. It's a fact of life. He couldn't get into the hipster jeans if he wanted to. After writing a rap about it, he found that others share the same dilemma.

"You'd have to buy baggy jeans and get them tailored, if you wanted to be a hipster," he explained. "I rap about what I know."

The song appears on Fortune's first EP, "New SNAP!! City," along with six other original tracks. (He asked the mayor of Mount Airy to change the town's name to New SNAP!! City for a day for his CD release on Tuesday, Feb. 26, but was denied, he said, laughing.)

Another song begins, "Ladies sweat my sweater," with a "I wear Bill Cosby sweaters and Reebok pumps" chorus.

The EP thumps out catchy dance beats with some rap overtop. Nearly all of the voices, high and low, are Fortune.

For remixes, Fortune typically strips a song until it is pure a cappella, then adds his own beats. He's sampled Zeppelin, Arcade Fire and Snap, to name a few.

He wrote anoher rap about his live sets being done from a laptop. During them, Fortune DJs and raps simultaneously.

January was his first gig ever as the DJ rapper OH SNAP!!, when he played with John Neilson, a singer-songwriter Fortun - Frederick News Post