For someone as soft-spoken as Dante Cope, there is a lot going on behind the eyes. He is a local hiphopster at present, hailing from Jackson, originally, and though he does not have a local release to his name, most people in the local hip hop community have seen him, know him, and respect him as part of the new school sweeping through Grand Rapids. This is due to his efforts to bring energy to every show, whether that be in the city or the suburbs, and also owes much to his involvement in the website for artists on the cutting edge, called the Couture Tape Co-operative.  The CTC, which goes by the Twitter handle @ctc616, is a group of musicians, visual artists, poets and the like who want to get organized to bring more quality to the area, and to give a coordinated voice beyond what has been traditionally a venue-driven affair. Their unofficial home is the Division Avenue Arts Collective but most of their efforts go in to keeping the new but already established website updated enough with new material to make it an up-and-coming destination for those with their ears to the street.

In an interview with Cope, he spoke about what's on most local MC and producer's minds: how to grow local hip hop, how to make relevant music, and how Grand Rapids can change the game as it is. His music combines rapping over electric beats, mixed with new age sounds, which gives it something a little different than the street hustle of someone like Suport, and something less catchy than the club tunes of the SEVENth.  Suport appears on Cope's CD. He has also worked with the SEVENth. It seems that collaboration between the dozen or so hiphop acts in Grand Rapids is a question of when not if.  Those who truly dive into local hip hop from Rick Chyme to Flying Without Wingz to DJ Super Dre to Ed Niño and Nixon, and way, way beyond, may come to the conclusion that something special is percolating toward the surface. Dante Cope compliments this group.

Cope is working on a project with a fellow Jackson native. They call their group "Grandson," as a play on the two cities' names. He thought they would be making their first album under this moniker over the next year and probably release it early 2011. He said Jimi Hendrix personifies the artfulness that he intends to bring to Grandson's style of hiphop and Cope's perfectionist attitude takes anything less than a polished album out of the question.

Cope does more than rhyme and rap. He's been seen playing the saxophone before shows and he plays an assortment of vintage keyboards collected over the years. He said he was trying to bring music back to hip hop; not just beats but rhythm, and not just flow but style. He could possibly have been an influential jazz musician but incorporates the styles of early hiphop pioneers in his craft. 

Cope is building a brand through the CTC where any artist that wants to run their own image, contribute their own time and interact with fans with more off-beat tastes can branch out of the mainstream. And the DAAC is enough for what the CTC is trying to accomplish. The mission of the CTC is to provide a forum for artists to produce quality work outside of the pressures of filling a venue, getting a cut at the door or portraying an image that doesn't keep with their own music or art.  For those familiar with the history of the DAAC, the CTC fits right in with the small area around the artists compounds of Division Avenue, where so many up-and-comers live and work.

Cope is yet another example of what happens when the struggle for income gets replaced by love of doing what you are good at, and just making a break for it.  And the CTC helps as a forum to innovate, some day beyond the DAAC, into the venues that serve hip hop on a regular basis, like Billy's and the Intersection, to give the fan base a broader view into what is going on below the surface of the mainstream. A year is a long time to wait for an album, but if the CTC delivers a platform for more artists and gets established as a collective that can help unite the local hip hop community, by the time Grandson releases their album next year they will already have a base to build from. Building a base first and then releasing music hasn't been attempted in this city yet, but it might just be Dante Cope who delivers a new model for other artists to follow.

Cope will be performing May 27 at Billy's Lounge.