Don't be surprised if Tito Lopez screams out "Mississippi in the house!" at some point during Friday's Big K.R.I.T.'s "Live From the Underground" tour stop at Rialto Theatre.
"We're still trying to find our identity," said the Mississippi native, who is on his first national tour as an opener for fellow Mississippian Big K.R.I.T. "There hasn't been enough artists from the state to come out and make a clear sound. Down there everybody is trying different things."
The end result is that Lopez doesn't sound like Big K.R.I.T. or any other Mississippi-born-and-bred rap artist.
"We're making it real diverse," Lopez said during a phone call from one of the tour's first stops last month. "I think it would be dope if Mississippi never had one clear-cut sound."
Given his out-of-the-box success with his debut single "Mama Proud," the nation is starting to define the Mississippi rap sound as one built on honest revelations, strong hooks and a Southern sense of place.
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The video for "Mama Proud" has already gotten more than half a million views on Vevo, setting Lopez up for what some critics are calling a quick rise to the top.
But Lopez, 24, is not an overnight success. His rise has been years in the making, nurtured since he wrote his first raps at age 5, growing up in a house with young parents who had rap on in the house and the car.
"It was ingrained into my brain," he said. "I'm just somebody who went for the dream, and it's starting to happen."
"I know it's not an overnight thing," he added. "Sometimes when it happens too fast it can be overwhelming and scary. But it's not happening too fast because I've been doing it a long time. ... I'm not scared at all. I'm ready."
Last summer, Lopez had an impromptu audition with rap's elite producer Dr. Dre, who took Lopez under his wing and is producing his debut album. The album is tentatively titled "The King's Speech" as a nod to the movie of the same name, and follows Lopez's successful mixtape "The Hunger Game."
"I like movies. I saw ('The Hunger Games') and I took the 's' off. I call my mixtape that because those kids have to fight to the death," he explained. "In the movie, I feel like that's competition. You got to fight to be No.1. ... I call the album 'The King's Speech.' ... I don't have a speech impediment, but I feel like an underground rapper trying to get his message out."
His message doesn't revolve around rap's bling-bling, or getting the girl or driving the fancy car into a blaze of gang violence. In "Mama Proud," he preaches the virtues of the straight and narrow: "Watts told me to keep the energy flowin' I listened / Mississippi power really my only competition / I see you fishin' for greatness in the wrong water / Ain't caught a part of a starter for your team, play it smarter."
"It's not really a mama song. ... That's just a way of saying I don't care what nobody thinks about me. I just want my mama to be proud; that's the only opinion that I care about," he said. "As long as she's proud of me, the rest of this is gravy.
"I'm true to myself, honest," he added. "... Most new artists talk about material things and what you got and what you don't have but you just saying that you got it. For me, I'm just coming from the spirit of Outkast and Tupac and Biggie (Smalls, also known as Notorious B.I.G.), legends who talk about their life and still make it entertaining. I think that what sets me apart is being true to who I am because people are scared to do that. I'm really not."
And just who is Tito Lopez?
"Antonio Lopez Mouring. I'm just somebody from Gulfport, Miss., who never had another dream or agenda except to be a rapper," he said. "It's the greatest thing in the world for me. ... I never tried nothing except to be a rapper."
If you go
• What: Big K.R.I.T. in concert with Tito Lopez, Casey Veggies, Big Sant.
• When: 8 p.m. Friday.
• Where: Rialto Theatre, 318 E. Congress St.
• Tickets: $19 through www.rialtotheatre.com
