In Orange Mound, a Tower Rises

How Unapologetic and Tone are empowering Memphis arts through ownership.

by

IMAKEMADBEATS, the founder of the Memphis-based record label Unapologetic, was known as James Dukes when he was growing up in Orange Mound. “I can’t show you the building I grew up in,” he says. “It’s gone. It’s now a grass field. I can tell all the stories, but nothing sustains a story like the physical and geographical — like a flag. Our communities need that, but we’re robbed of that because of lack of ownership.”

Orange Mound was founded in 1890 with the goal of creating affordable housing to help Black people become homeowners. For decades, it was held up as an example of what a thriving African-American middle-class looked like, often cited as America’s second largest Black neighborhood after Harlem. But the urban decline of the 1970s hit the neighborhood particularly hard, and once the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s arrived, Orange Mound became notorious for crime and violence. That was the world James Dukes was born into.

“My dad worked two, three jobs,” he says. “I remember for at least five years, one of the closest times we spent with my dad was while he was working. He would take us to work to go clean office buildings at the edge of Whitehaven. … I grew up with rats and roaches. It wasn’t like an infestation — that was where you lived. We went a long time where we didn’t think anybody was fighting for us, or fighting for change. Nobody cared. We were just the selected ones, the 6 percent to 8 percent that’s got to go through poverty. That’s you, James. Good luck ….”

“A lot of the people that I went to school with, their experience was just more set up for them to succeed. And so that’s why I had to make myself a war machine. That was the only way out I could see. I gotta fight all of this. I gotta be ready. I have to be uniquely focused, uniquely equipped, uniquely smart, aware, and resourceful.” — IMAKEMADBEATS

It wasn’t until he attended White Station High School that Dukes realized the extremity of his family’s condition. “I’m around kids who would never drive down the street I lived on,” he says. “I’m going to class with these kids, and their problems are just so different. Their problems ain’t problems to me.”

At White Station, he saw firsthand the institutional advantages his more privileged classmates enjoyed. “I had to go to school every day and compete with them,” he says. “Grades were grades. It wasn’t an A, because you’re from a different set of circumstances. A score was a score. They went home, got a good night’s sleep, and had a great breakfast. I woke up before the crack of dawn every morning, ran to the bus stop before the sunlight was out to stand on the corner, to spend the first hour and a half to two hours of my day just getting to school. And that was every morning. A lot of the people that I went to school with, their experience was just more set up for them to succeed. And so that’s why I had to make myself a war machine. That was the only way out I could see. I gotta fight all of this. I gotta be ready. I have to be uniquely focused, uniquely equipped, uniquely smart, aware, and resourceful.”

Dukes’ self-imposed discipline got him out of high school and into college at SUNY. He threw himself into his biggest obsession, music, and worked his way into the burgeoning New York City studio scene of the aughts, where other musicians recognized his talents. There, he adopted IMAKEMADBEATS as his moniker.

Upon returning to Memphis in 2010, he rediscovered a city brimming with musical talent, but lacking the industry infrastructure he had seen in New York. “The biggest hole here in the city is music marketing,” he says. “If I was in New York, or L.A. or Atlanta, I would at least know, here’s an organization that, if I had the money, I could roll up on them, present them a product, and they could see if they wanted to represent me. …That doesn’t exist here, so you have these directionless people whose only answer to getting their music out is to go somewhere else. One of the things I’ve realized is that Memphis is such a unique space with such a unique story, that when you hire people from other spaces to tell that story, they lack the context. It doesn’t do it justice.”

He built a studio in his Raleigh home, which soon became a gathering place for creatives. “If you lived the ethos of forward, bold, daring music, you just found yourself at my house,” he says, “and it wasn’t even necessarily to do music! People were there drawing, writing poems, setting up art easels. I would be in the studio making a beat and then Kid Maestro and CMajor would be in studio B, my other bedroom, recording a song. Aaron, James would be out there playing guitar, and then PreauXX would be out in the front yard doing something crazy on Instagram.”

His wife, Marie, urged him to take it to the next level. “I think I was complaining about having all of these ideas for the city and for what was possible here, and nobody was listening to me. She was like, ‘You’ve got all these people who come over here every day. Whatever you’re trying to do, I’m sure that they would help you figure it out.’”

IMAKEMADBEATS’ group of misfit friends became Unapologetic — at once a record label, fashion design house, video production company, and platform for community empowerment. They have been responsible for the most creative music to come from Memphis in a generation.

“I think we’ve broken down some barriers as to what’s possible in the city,” says IMAKEMADBEATS. “I want to create another lane: the musician who stayed here and was successful and didn’t have to resort to another mechanism like teaching to maintain financial stability.”

“We have been thinking since we started for real about what it means to sustain. What does it mean to hand this baton off to the next generation of artists? For us, that came with property.” — Victoria Jones

Unapologetic was outgrowing its home studio roots. They struck up an alliance with another Black arts organization across town. The CLTV, now known as Tone, had created an art gallery space in Orange Mound. Founder Victoria Jones, a veteran of Crosstown Arts, had recognized the importance of providing Black creatives a space to be themselves. “It became really important to us to dig in somewhere, create a home, and build a foundation, so that artists have this touch point consistently,” she says.

The gallery on Lamar became a focal point for art and music, but the partners had a nagging feeling that it was only temporary. “We have been thinking since we started for real about what it means to sustain,” says Jones. “What does it mean to hand this baton off to the next generation of artists? For us, that came with property.”

Ownership of an arts facility — just like Ballet Memphis or Playhouse on the Square — was necessary, and the founders knew their headquarters needed to be in the historically Black neighborhood of Orange Mound. “Even though hip hop has been the number-one export out of this city for the last two decades, there is no location, geographically, for people to go,” says IMAKEMADBEATS. “We’re always renters.”

For three years, the partnership plotted. Originally, the idea was to buy the strip mall where the Tone gallery was located. It was an attractive idea that came with a built-in income-generating mechanism. But after years of work, the deal fell apart at the last minute. “Somebody bought it from underneath us, and we were pretty sad about that,” says IMAKEMADBEATS. “The second-tier idea was the United Equipment Building at 2205 Lamar. I would say two weeks after we lost the shopping center, we realized it should have been number one. We had been messing around.”

The sprawling United Equipment facility dates from the 1950s. The centerpiece is a concrete tower, originally built as an animal feed factory, visible from all over Orange Mound. Like Crosstown Concourse, this would be a creative re-use project that transformed a former industrial site into a mixed-use development, centered on the arts. Plans include both residential and office space, as well as art galleries, a massive performance venue, and an incubator space that artists and entrepreneurs of all types can use to kickstart their careers. Unapologetic will occupy a three-story office and recording studio complex.

With the help of Anasa Troutman, executive director of the Clayborn Temple, Unapologetic and Tone secured a matching grant from the Kataly Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to helping Black grassroots organizations all over the country. That convinced local funders to come on-board and help close the deal. The unveiling of the ambitious project was accompanied by a Juneteenth celebration which drew thousands to the site of Orange Mound Tower this summer.

Lots of music producers have plans to get famous and rich. IMAKEMADBEATS has a theory of change.

“That’s what this tower is, and that’s what we’re doing,” he says. “It’s all the gray areas that we’ve lacked over the years, being a grassroots organization, building literally from the ground up. But now, it’s bigger. It’s always been about Memphis. It’s always been about our culture, but it’s time to rev up and defy the odds. … I’ve seen enough hints to know that what I’m doing is my purpose. I found a lot of purpose in this.”