Fierce Hazard

Earl Hazard graduates from blacktop battles to studio production

Earl Hazard has premonitions.

“I wouldn’t call it a problem, maybe a gift,” he told me. “But sometimes, it is a curse.” 

In 2002, when he heard he’d be moving to Tulsa from Tallulah, Louisiana, the young emcee had visions of buildings he’d never seen and crowds watching him perform. In time, he’s come to find those very buildings and crowds in Tulsa. 

Before he moved, Hazard hit the search engines to study his new city. “I found out all about the racism, and its history, but I also saw that Tulsa was this crossroads for jazz,” he said. “I knew I was moving to the right place.” Hailing from Tallulah, where 44% of the population lives below the poverty line, Hazard saw promise in his move, and wasted no time in delivering upon it.

I met with Hazard at the home studio of Ryan Paquette, the manager of local hip hop label MuGen, which is releasing Hazard’s debut LP, King of Tallulah. Hazard’s characteristic wide-eyed demeanor was in full force as he frantically plucked Newports and brought them to lip and flame. 

When Hazard first came to Tulsa, he quickly made a name for himself as a fierce freestyler. A high-school trombone player, he brought his rapid sense of rhythm from rehearsal rooms to blacktop battlefields. 

Apart from solidifying his lyrical strength, Hazard developed his rep as an unrivaled shit talker. “I was almost killed for a battle rap, bro,” he told me. Freestyling in his apartment complex, Hazard went against a gang member, and insulted his set. “He went to his trunk, pulled out a sawed-off pump, put it to my head, and said ‘say some shit.’ I just looked at him and yelled, ‘man, I’m only seventeen!’” 

Undeterred by threats and the occasional battle lost, Hazard graduated to making mixtapes, and began aligning himself with Tulsa emcees.

When Oilhouse began pulling crowds in 2011, Hazard (then, and occasionally still, going by the stage name Mr. Burns) was often in tow. His on-stage ferocity—matched only by the fast-rapping (though deceptively calm) Mike Dee—lived up to his off-stage reputation as the group’s wild card. Though never an official member of that crew, Hazard calls the Oilhouse boys his brothers. 

As restless in life as his jittery rhymes suggest, Hazard soon found himself multi-tasking various projects, including fronting the Tulsa-by-way-of-L.A. rock group, Freak Juice (which made the Onion A.V. Club’s “Year in Band Names” ).

Between dropping digital EPs and performing with Oilhouse and Freak Juice, he often guests with Verse and the Vapors and continues to do battle with other emcees. He recently joined global hip-hop clique Pragmatic Theory and signed with MuGen. Now, he’s preparing to support King of Tallulah.

“People know me as a battle-rapper, but I don’t think anybody knows I can write songs,” Hazard said between drags on his Newport. 

King of Tallulah, then, is a coming out for Hazard as a songwriter and studio craftsman, the product of half a year’s work, with beats pulled from international producers and a guest appearance by legendary Jamaican-American rapper Canibus. 

For the fledgling MuGen, KoT is its golden goose (I had to sign a waiver just to hear it early), and Paquette and his team make no attempt to hide their love for it. The label is planning a blowout album release party at Nitro Lounge on November 20th. 

Despite taking firm root in Tulsa, Hazard still sees himself as a man of two cities. He cites certain flowers he says can only grow in the two states, and sees himself as one such product of both soils. 

“It’s crazy, man, my connection to Louisiana and Tulsa,” he said. 

As for the premonitions—gift, curse or otherwise—Hazard has none about this album. “It’s all new territory to me, man.” Lucky for us, premonitions aren’t needed, as King of Tallulah spreads out the tea leaves just fine.

"Earl Hazard, King of Tallulah,” are the first lines rapped on Hazard’s debut LP. Self-promotion isn’t unexpected from the battle-rap vet, but having lyrical legend Canibus proclaim this is a big deal. As the album’s 12 tracks run their course, Tulsans will most likely: A) easily concede the throne, and B) ask “Why the hell Tallulah?” 

The Louisiana native came up with the album title when he saw a hip hop thread over his home town’s most celebrated emcees. “All of them were just doing trap, and club raps,” he told me. Hazard wanted to set the record straight. With KOT he sure as hell has.

Hazard’s wild performances have earned him the “loose cannon” label, but his debut nixes any allusions to clumsy artillery. Excising any sense of spray and pray on his bars, like Kill Bill’s Karen Kim, he assures you he’s “a fucking surgeon with this thing.” The world currently praises shock groups like Ho99o9 and pretends MC Ride can rap, but Hazard has true technique on his side. He takes nest in his menthol cloud, sniping through whack emcees and eclectic beats with percussive spitfire.

Globally curated from as far as Spain and Serbia, the album’s beats feature down tempo jazz inflections, old school video game tunes, skate-able future roll-bounce, and even one club banger. Although he borrows the template of those laying claim to his hometown’s throne on the trap-happy “To Da Max,” Hazard never sacrifices lyrics for head nods. “Y’all’d be stupid to cross me/ like robbing Jesus of Nazareth/ in a labyrinth tripping acid with alchemist catalyst,” he spits over skittering hi-hats and timpani booms. 

Aside from clever turns of phrase, the album is marked by politically conscious lyrics. On “Mathematica,” Hazard comes out swinging with number puns, “They say three is a crowd/and deuce to the haters/only one Earl Hazard ain’t enough for you to play with…like add a lot of real/then give me the dividends/don’t die, multiply, subtract it from ignorance…” before reflecting on the divide-and-conquer technique employed by The Powers That Be. “I find myself one with the Earth, mental geology/it’s two ways to go when you here so choose logically/you will never have peace, love, respect, and justice/amongst Mexicans and Blacks, cuz it’s against government policy,” he spits on the song that features Chicano rapper KroMatik. That juxtaposition of the playfully adept and woefully aware is where the battle rapper finds his calling. 

The album’s half-year gestation and attention to detail comes through on the whole. Whether it’s through the beat selection, lyrics, Hazard’s delivery, or the killer emcees featured, nothing comes across as less than whole-assed.  With KOT, Hazard earned the title of his album’s namesake, and has crafted a whetstone upon which his Okie peers can hope to sharpen their swords. 

Earl Hazard - King of Tallulah album release show
with W.I.L.L., Had Enough, Tra G, Surron the 7th, DJ Young Gator
Friday, Nov. 20, 9 p.m., $5
Nitro Lounge, 1336 E 6th St

For more from Mitch, read his reviews of Senior Fellows' Shallow Grave for a Dying God and Paul Benjaman Band's Sneaker.