Praverb the Wyse

To some, they signal an oncoming police car, but to hip-hop artist Patrick “Praverb” McNease, the sirens represent a beat he may be able to use when composing his next song.

“I just look at everything as hip-hop,” McNease said. “A police siren, now that’s a music beat. I’m inspired by what I see and hear everyday.”

McNease, a local hip-hop artist, wants to break the negative stereotypes around this music genre, and return to the “old school” hip-hop which delivered positive messages to music listeners.

“The original music was about putting a message out,” McNease said. “But now people do just about anything. People write about a candy bar and relate it to the female body. … Don’t get me wrong, it’s entertainment, but it’s not the message I want to feed to people.”

The 23-year-old Stafford rapper began his quest to change the music’s reputation six years ago when he was able to transform his high school English assignments into lyrics for a song.

“I always liked hip-hop, and at the same time, I had this creative side - writing poetry,” McNease said. “A friend introduced me to putting my poetry to a beat and that’s when this all got started. I thought I would be able to express myself like this.”

Inspired by old school rap and by poets like Edgar Allan Poe, McNease began to write his life experiences and events down on paper and later to music.

“I sing about things like the war in Iraq or about things from my past,” McNease said. “Everyone has had their heart broken, or experienced death in the family. I write about the ups and the downs because emotions really motivate us.”

McNease also brings religion into his music. He picked his stage name “Praverb” because of its similarity to Proverbs, his favorite book of the Bible.

“I’ve always been a spiritual person and my family pushed those morals on me,” McNease said. “I have a message but I don’t like be too preachy because everyone has their own beliefs. I just want people to know you can be cool and still be a Christian.”

With the help of friends and others who share his beliefs about hip-hop, McNease writes and records all his music from his home. His beats come from places like Germany and Spain and he is able to get everything from networking with people on the Internet.

“For his age, I think he is awfully knowledgeable,” said Teresa McNease, his stepmother. “It’s amazing he knows how to rap to what’s pertaining to the world today. I generally don’t care for rap but his religious rap has a nice twist to it. The words and the beats all go together.”

Patrick McNease, a student at Northern Virginia Community College, said he does most of his writing when he is bored in class. Besides being influenced by current events, he said his stepmom, his father and his mother, before she passed away, have all influenced him and helped him get to where he is today.

“My mom was a real big influence and said I needed to get my music out there,” he said. “But I was scared what others would think. But later, my step mom motivated me to pursue it more and get it out some how. She got me to record my music on a tape.”

McNease has recorded a few tapes and has written about 80 songs, he said.

“I wanted him to pursue this so I said to him, ‘Go out there and share your writing with the world,’” Teresa McNease said. “You will always find someone who won’t like it, but there will also be someone to appreciate your word.”

Teresa McNease said her favorite song is, “I Carry the Cross” and that she helps her son with his recordings.

“He would rap and the music would be much louder that his singing,” she said. “So I tell him the music is to accompany what he’s singing. He tones it down and then it sounds good. I’m also trying to get him to do one [song] with me, but I think he figures I’m too old.”

Patrick McNease has performed at the Church on the Rock, Virginia Tech, local high schools and at several bars in Fredericksburg as well as in the Northern Virginia area.

“I really just want the audience to have a good time,” he said. “I like to free-style, chant and talk about hip-hop and its current state. I love the crowd interaction and I just want them to walk away saying, ‘Wow, that was good.’”

McNease has also started a group in Woodbridge called Nova Infinite. The group also sends positive messages in its songs and is out to try and change the way people view hip-hop.“My biggest fear is that the true essence of hip-hop will diminish because people just won’t embrace it anymore,” McNease said. “I’m working to not let the original message die out and I’m trying to get into people’s minds that hip-hop is not bad.”

McNease said he is not sure where his passion for music and poetry will take him, but he will continue to do what he can to get his message across and change the way people view the hip-hop industry.

“I started this as a hobby but I see the effect mainstream music has on youth and I want to make this a career,” McN - Jennifer Buske

Earl McNease may have little chance of changing the music industry, but he hopes to change a few lives here and there.

The 23-year-old North Stafford rapper who goes by the name Praverb, or PVizzle, when he's performing, is sort of the Don Quixote of hip-hop, tilting at a billion-dollar windmill.

He says he wants hip-hop music to strengthen the black community, not sell it out.

He says the "bad boy" corporate version of the music isn't exactly keepin' it real.

Instead of portraying life as it truly is for most blacks in America, McNease maintains, it cynically packages a cartoonishly negative version of black life to fit the tastes of 15-year-old white boys in suburbia.

McNease, a student at Northern Virginia Community College who graduated from Gar-Field High School, said it occurred to him six years ago that the hip-hop he heard on the radio didn't speak to his own experience in life, "and I thought I could deliver the message a lot better.

"I didn't agree with the exploitation of women, the lifestyle they talk about," he said. "I just think some of the music on the radio, most of it out now, is negative."

McNease laughs when he talks about gangsta-type rap.

"It's not my lifestyle. What are they talkin' about?

"I guess a lot of street people can relate to that, but I was raised in the suburbs in a good family and I was taught good morals."

What bothers him the most, he said, is "hearing children singing the [negative rap] lyrics" and believing that's the way a black man thinks.

"It seems like they embrace that," he said about kids.

"They can get caught up in that lifestyle," McNease said.

And, he said, it creates a ridiculous view of the black community for outsiders.

"A lot of people see videos that see these people in overpriced vehicles and women in skanky clothing and that gives them a false view" of the community, he said.

"It skews people's perception," he said.

So he's put out a CD of his own rap, titled "Wisdom Cafe."

He called the music old school. He said it's delivering a positive message.

He said he hopes to help, in a small way, to restore what he believes was the original message of hip-hop:

"You don't have to be a follower. You can have your own angle and still be effective."

One rapper he admires, he said, is Common.

"And Tupac has some nice messages. His music was 50-50 [positive and negative]. He had a lot to say. [But] His lifestyle really marred his music."

McNease appears as Praverb a couple of times a month at The Bourbon Room in Fredericksburg. He said he's had a difficult time setting up shows elsewhere in the area because club managers get scared when told he's a rap act.

"They say, 'Can you come with a rock band?' They're worried about the crowd they think hip-hop draws. I find it very tough locally to get shows. I'm not gonna bring a bad crowd. Just people having fun."

Eric Wesley, a 21-year-old hip-hopper who recently moved to Fredericksburg and calls himself Teflon, said "I feel like hip-hop today has kind of lost its sense of what it once was when it first came out as genre of music. It's all about image now. I think Praverb's bringing it back to where it should be, back to the basics. He's definitely a talented dude."

Vanessa Mohammad, a 20-year-old Germanna Community College student from North Stafford, said, "I think his music is really inspiration compared to a lot of material artists are releasing nowadays."

Mohammad said she doesn't like the materialism and the mindless, "Barbie doll" image of women portrayed by corporate rap.

"Instead of women and cars and all that material stuff, the things he rhymes about have meaning--stuff that actually happens in people's lives." - Michael Zitz