In the early morning hours of Tuesday, June 21, the normally "reserved and nonchalant" Jason "PyInfamous" Thompson was concerned and nervous. The Jackson MC had just put the last 10 days of his life into relentlessly pursuing a specific goal with only one desired outcome: winning the Coors Light "Search for the Coldest MC" contest. Thompson, 29, had previously won the South region with his song "Bliss (Cooler Than This)," a collaboration with Kerry Thomas, and was up against three other regional winners from Seattle, Brooklyn and Chicago.
His concern went away when he got the call: The votes were in, and PyInfamous stood at the top as the nation's coldest MC. The title he will hold for a year comes with some nice perks: a set at the Essence Music Festival in New Orleans on July 2 and $10,000 worth of studio time.
"I felt a peak of excitement when they called," says Thompson, who never stops looking ahead. "I immediately thought, 'How do we continue to use this to improve the perspective of not just the music, but of life in general. How do we continue to rep hip-hop and our city?'"
Py, when speaking about the contest, rarely refers only to the "I," but to the "we." The "we" in this case is the movement that came together quite organically once the contest was within reach. Winning the award was never solely about the individual honor for PyInfamous. Instead, he wanted to use the process as a way to rally a movement around not only his song, but also the city, the love of hip-hop culture, and, most important to Py, Mississippi's creative arts scene.
"The most amazing thing was the way people rallied behind the thing and the ownership that diverse pockets of people took in it," Thompson says.
He expected the support of the hip-hop community, he says, but was happily surprised by the groundswell of excitement from other communities such as religious groups, local news media, and people from other music scenes who "gravitated towards it and carried it as
a banner." Whether they were supporting just the song or the city or the state or just good music in general, everyone involved had a stake in the contest and put their energy and passion behind PyInfamous.
As Thompson looked around at the people gathered for his celebration party at Suite 106, he is already plotting the next movement: Take Back Our Radios.
"We want to take what we learned from this experience and find ways to return ownership of what we hear on the radio back to the people," he says. The radio is supposed to be for the people, but it's been hijacked."
But this is all just part of the greater scheme that Thompson has cooked up. With unmistakable conviction, he says, "We can win a national contest, we can take our radios back, then we can take our schools back and then take our communities back."
As the Coldest MC, PyInfamous won an opportunity to perform at the Essence Festival July 2 in New Orleans. Go to http://www.essencemusicfestival.com for the full schedule.
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