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Podcast FeedInflowential: Flowing With the Breeze
One fan a day, one party at a time. Cover photo and interior photos Stan Chambers. Story by Nicolas J. Stephenson. Cover design by Heather Dance.
Raleigh - We enter through the back door after convincing the guy up front everything was cool. Once through an alley thin enough to force a football linebacker to crabwalk, we pull open a dark, heavy, wooden door. The muffled bass beats we heard from the street become a sonic tsunami. The smell of stale beer washes over us.
A rod iron staircase behind us leads to a second story entrance. A few more young faces are laughing their way down the alley, past the smokers. We step over the threshold and find asses. A few faces look familiar, maybe from another party, but who can be sure?
People are having fun. Guys grab drinks for girls they just met and work to make conversation over the music. Near the front of the room, a band plays. “Make some noise!” the emcee screams, and the most dedicated oblige. A few wallflowers sit on the benches pushed up against the postered and stickered brick walls. Hands cut through the air, and girls dance with abandon with any guy who doesn’t seem too creepy. After a few PBRs, not many seem creepy.
It’s a house party. It’s every college frat party you’ve ever been to. It’s a Saturday night with Raleigh hip-hop band Inflowential at the Pour House Music Hall on Blount St.
The six-piece, NC State educated group has held down parties across campus and the Triangle for eight years. Before taking the stage last month, Charlie Smarts, Bender, and Adid brought Magazine33 into the club’s green room to discuss the Raleigh hip-hop scene, the importance of chemistry, and Wolfpack basketball.
“Yo, yo, yo. It’s Charlie Smarts right now,” the enigmatic and energetic co-frontman raps into a three-inch digital recorder. Adid laughs and then introduces himself similarly. It’s clear from the start that these men have the gift of gab. They bounce the conversation back and forth a la Stockton to Malone. One lives in Brooklyn now, the other in Philadelphia, but that hasn’t slowed them down.
Charlie Smarts: This is what we do. You don’t need much practice to do what you do. It’s like, do I have to practice eatin’ spaghetti after I make it? No. I just eat that shit, you know what I’m saying?
Adid: The chemistry is just there.
CS: We’re a talented family, you know what I’m saying.
On stage they behave like a jam band. The lines between planned spontaneity and improvisation are blurry. Smarts admitted he’s more of a planner, while co-emcee Tab-One is prone to freestyle. Adid is in charge of vocal percussion, Bender is on bass, and Kyle is on guitar. Songs run together with a gracious amount of hype in between and during. The instrumentation sounds like the sound track to a blaxploitation film, but the lyrics – much like the audience – are diverse. Some touch on social issues, others just boast about how proud they are to be from North Carolina
“City to city, state to state, seeing 'First in Flight' on the license plate,” the crowd chants along with Tab-One and Smarts at one point.
CS: Let’s say I get too drunk tonight - which that’s a possible goal - if that shit happens you’re going to see several times where we mess up, and then we turn that shit into magic. If I forget the words, it’s got new words and whatever words I say that’s the words at the time.
Smart, along with Tab-One and DJ Ill Digitz, works with Kooley High, another hip-hop band formed at NC State. He also has a solo career. Despite being separated until performance night, Inflowential has no plans to leave Raleigh.
“I don’t know if Raleigh is the place to get big, but it’s not that type of party,” Smarts said, meaning that it’s not their goal.
Adid: It’s worked so far for us. Not like to blow up, but I mean we’ve got a following here.
CS: Inflow is not the type of band that wants to blow up exactly. We’re a grassroots band that gets a fan a day, and maybe ten fans a day. We’re going the slow and steady route.
About 15 percent of the show is improvised. On this night, rapper HaLo joins them on stage for a few songs (Ill Digitz couldn’t make the show), seeming to come and go as he pleases. The music, like their career, steadily builds throughout the set. There aren’t peaks and valleys, and one imagines they could lose the interest of audience members who aren’t paying attention to their lyrics. The crowd thinned out considerably by the time the clock hits 1:30, but to be fair to Inflow, there was a lot of Schlitz being consumed.
Smarts draws a hard line between his various projects, if not stylistically, then functionally. “If I was makin’ music that could change the world, I would make it with Inflowential,” Smarts said. “With Charlie Smarts music I’m trying to make money, and with Kooley High music I’m trying to make everybody think that I’m that dude.”
Adid seems to be more invested in the day to day business activities of the band at one point, seeming a little frustrated to have to explain why the band has an iPhone app but no dedicated website. Inflowential.com takes one to a page on ReverbNation. In more ways than one, he’s the steady rhythm section that, along with Kyle and Bender, provides a framework for the talented Charlie Smarts and Tab-One to work within. 
Inevitably, a conversation with NC State fans is going to turn to current coach Sydney Lowe. Smart emphatically proclaims Lowe should get to keep his job.
CS: He needs a better assistant coach. I think personally, Monte Towe should be fired, and he should be allowed to get an assistant coach that is thorough in the X’s and O’s.
He goes on to break the team down like Billy Packer, and Adid responds that a more perfect answer couldn’t be found. Outside the cozy green room, the music stops and all three look up. The time for chatting has ended, and the three join their bandmates to set up the stage.
