Citizen Cope by Joel Peterson

Sound: A Robert Johnson, Gregory Isaacs, Mos Def mash-up
Album: Every Waking Moment
Label: Artista
Show: March 21st and 22nd at the Moore, 8pm door. All Ages.
Why: Reggae, hip-hop and folk never sounded so good together
Website: http://www.citizencope.com

Clarence Greenwood has come along way behind his Citizen Cope moniker. From his beginnings as a DJ for Basehead to his current, wildly popular Every Waking Moment (relased in 2006), the prodigious Cope has seen his star rise sharply. The sound is unique; few artists can produce such a distinctly Brooklyn hip-hop sound while strumming guitar and singing like a pony-tailed Donavon—the singular or Frankenreiter, for that matter. The album’s sales have been boosted by a boon of mainstream media crossover cash-ins ranging from Pontiac ads to Fox’s So You Think You Can Dance. But if dance-show drivel is what it took to catapult Cope into the limelight, count it as one of very few good deeds Rupert Murdoch has done for us lately.

Originally from Memphis, Tennessee, Cope absorbed the sounds from his travels through Texas and Mississippi before getting his jump-start musically in Washington D.C. There, he played and recorded with the conga-heavy, go-go funk outfits. So while Clarence Greenwood began as so many others—a lone teenager with an acoustic guitar—he became inexorably intertwined with the sounds of urban funk, soul and hip-hop. To their joint detriment, mainstream radio networks have had a difficult time pigeonholing the music into a specific genre, but the lack of airplay has done little to slow his mainstream exposure.

Citizen Cope and his band continue to tour nearly continuously in support of Every Waking Moment. They’ll play two shows this month on the 21^st and 22^nd at the Moore Theater. The album is available everywhere on RCA Records.

Discography
Citizen Cope 2000
The Clarence Greenwood Recordings 2004
Every Waking Moment 2006