Five projects in as Social Club, rappers Marty and FERN desired to express their personal perspectives more than they were able to as a group, which typically limited each of them to one verse per song.
“You have to give them the pink spoon [when you’re in a group] — not the full sundae,” Marty said. “I wanted to give them the full sundae.”
Marty released his full sundae on Friday, a six-track EP titled Marty for President. He initially named it Songs I Don’t Care If You Like to inform fans that it would sound different than Social Club, but he changed his mind.
“It sounds funny, and it sounds like something I’d do,” Marty said, “but what’s the message? Doing whatever you want to do? I don’t want to communicate that.”
Instead, Marty chose to communicate a deeper message, one to listeners about their calling.
“You ask any little kid, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ and they’re so innocent, they’ll be like, ‘I want to be an astronaut, the president or a professional football player,’” Marty said. “And then when you start to grow up, those dreams become just dreams. Whatever you said when you were a little kid, it almost dissolves somehow. By the time you get into college, you’re like, ‘What am I doing with my life? Where do I belong? Where am I supposed to be?’
“Marty for President is basically just a reminder that God’s put something great in you, and, a lot of times, it doesn’t look like what we thought it was going to look like.”
Marty never thought he would become a professional rapper. He wanted to be a pastor. When that door temporarily closed, though, he saw his music impact people, and his heart changed.
Now he has contract offers in his email inbox from record labels and distribution companies that want to sign his rap group, which charted at No. 103 on the Billboard 200 with its last album, US.
I probably should’ve died in ’02 /
Labels saying that we killing things, I’m like oh shoot!
Marty made multiple references to labels in the first two tracks of Marty for President, “The One about the Misfit” and “The One with the Villain,” and the timing may be perfect for Social Club to court them. Joseph Prielozny, a Grammy Award-winning producer who had worked years for Reach Records, recently accepted an A&R position at Word Records, which is under the umbrella of Warner Music Group.
“I love Word. I love Joseph. They’re really good people, and uh … you know,” Marty said. “We’ll see what happens.”
Marty credited Butta P, Reflection Music Group CEO Doc Watson, Andy Mineo and a friend who works for a mainstream songwriting company for offering advice over the years that kept Social Club from signing a bad contract.
If Social Club signs a good contract, Marty said its next group release will be on the label. FERN plans to release his full sundae independently by the end of the year.
“We have a big vision,” Marty said, “and we need someone to help facilitate that vision. At the end of the day, we make music for misfits, and I want to reach as many people as possible with the message of Jesus Christ. It’s packaged differently, but this is the message that God put in our hearts for people.
“So I want to reach as many people as I can, while at the same time not compromising the brand, the vision of the brand or the way we tour. A label has to come in and they say, ‘We see what you’re doing, let us help you.’”
Rapzilla: So, will you actually run for president?
Marty: I will never do that.
RZ: Aw, c’mon. If a 15-year-old can run as Deez Nuts…
Marty: You actually have to be 35 to run.
RZ: How old are you?
Marty: I just turned 28.
RZ: Ah, you won’t even be able to compete with Kanye West in 2020…
Marty: Yeah, Kanye’s like 38. … I think it’s all a political ploy. It’s already a joke. It’s not real. But what’s happening is that we have government that’s been this way for so long that we have people like Donald Trump coming in, and they’re disrupting the way that normal government is run, and that’s fun for people.
That’s why you have someone like Deez Nuts coming in because politics are almost a joke. They’re becoming a joke. You have politicians that don’t get in trouble for doing terrible things. You have Hillary Clinton, who has a private server and could’ve had real important stuff on there, and she deleted it. And they go, “Did you wipe your server?” and she goes, “What, like with a cloth?”
What are you talking about with a cloth? You know what I’m talking about. Don’t play stupid. Politics have gotten to the point where it’s becoming a joke, so the response to that is somebody like Deez Nuts or somebody like Kanye West saying, “I want to be president because, at this point, I can do a better job,” and it’s crazy.
Buy Marty For President on iTunes or Amazon.
Follow @deathbymartymar and @SocialxClub on Twitter.
READ MORE: How Marty of Social Club impacted a member of the youth group he once pastored
