“I represent those who have been counted out”

From prison bars to country melodies: Country singer and songwriter F1 of FMG speaks about urban country, music as a way of re-inventing yourself, and how cool it is to smile.

By Katharina Moser

Eight years is a hell of a long time, enough time to break you, or to make you. And what of the two it is, is a matter of character and power of will – for that, the noteworthy recording artist F1 of FMG is living proof. As a country singer and songwriter with a unique voice and touching lyrics, he´s been steadily climbing up charts and moving hearts in the US. A growth both as an artist and as a person, considering he has spent eight years in prison on charges for drug trafficking.

But that´s the past. Now his latest album “Urban Cowboy” is captivating audiences on all platforms and its extraordinary blend of country influences has drawn attention by executives high up in the music industry. “I used to be a rap person through and through. But in 2018 a friend of mine died of an overdose, and at the same time I had a son on the way.” This inspired the singer to write the song “Kitchen”, which is now the second song on the album. “It´s the first song that really started to change my trajectory from rap heading towards country style. When I wrote that record, it was therapy for me. The death of a brother and the birth of a son – so  is life”, he says. “Choosing a more melodic approach to my music just clicked something in me. I never thought I would be doing country music. Ever. But over the last few years it´s been a transition, slowly but surely making my way over to country.”

Moving from hard hip hop bars over to the softer melodies of country, he is sure, also mirrors his own personal development and the way he has learned to settle. As he recalls, his mother used to play the guitar and folk music for him and his sister when he was little. “But then as I got older, I was a little knucklehead. I started listening to rap music, I was gangbanging and thinking that this was the way of life. This whole trajectory was so negative”, he explains. “I´m not talking down on rap: music is music, and if you allow it to dictate what you do with your life, that’s on you. But I chose to do exactly that. My role models and everybody I looked up to were negative. The negative influence of music – it was all about selling drugs, about going to prison, being tough, getting all the girls. And this is what I did”, F1 describes. “I realized this in prison: I´m everything I ever wanted to be. Now I just want to be free.”

With his music, he now wants to send people in a positive direction, and let them know that there is hope and that one can make it through hard times. “Doing that with country music is easier than with the negative vibes that are in hip hop right now. I don’t want to put down any genres or anything, but much of hip hop nowadays is negative. For my part, I just want to get away from anything that would cause me to return to my old ways”, F1 has decided. “My homeboys always thought it was crazy that I was doing country, they said it is not me. But it is me. Because country music is about God, family and country.” F1 recalls that growing up, him and his people thought that country was racist. “But it´s not about racism or any of that. I am multiracial. My family is mixed all the way. I got so many different things in my blood I could never be racist. So moving to this genre is refreshing to me. I feel like I can be myself and help others. I have turned so many people into country fans recently its crazy. I love it”, he says with enthusiasm and laughs. “I think the majority of people think just like us: they want to live a good life, and have love and peace.”

Peace, however, is something F1 did not treat himself with for a long time. The most recent eight years in prison were only the peak of the iceberg in a life of hustling – but surely the ones that shaped him most. How do you get through eight excruciatingly long years behind bars? “Music”, says F1 without hesitation, and smiles. “And my family and my mother. I have a crazy support system. My mother was always there. I´m her baby. She doesn’t care where I´m at or what I do, she´ll always be there for me just like I´m always there for her. So that time period could have made me negative, it could have made me bitter.” Bitter, especially for the fact that one of his family members ended up testifying to the grand jury that F1 as a middleman had supplied him with drugs, as he explains. “He got in trouble and he chose to give me up for it. So I could have been bitter, really bitter. And I was for a while, but not too long. Because you can´t hold on to all this negativity. I learned to let go of things that I can´t control and embrace the things that I can – and what I could do was to master my craft, learn to play more instruments. I could make things happen – and I did.”

F1 used his contacts in prison to smuggle in various studio equipment to make and record music. “They kept moving me to different prisons because I was doing things that I wasn’t supposed to do. Not selling drugs, but I had people from prison staff working for me, bringing in a work station, and a condenser microphone, because they all loved my music. As a human being, I´m not a terrible person. I have morals, and I stand on certain things. I could have asked them to bring drugs in there. But I rather asked to bring me in stuff to make music.” He had a few other of the guys join him, called them “Felonation” – now the name of his own record label – and made music. “And we got it out: I had a guy who would take our music we recorded in prison and put it out on itunes. We got in trouble for that so many times, but they couldn’t stop us, because they couldn’t figure out how we were doing it”, F1 recalls with a laugh. “I used prison as a tool to get better, to understand music.”

Those eight years, F1 is sure, also changed his mindset and focus. “Jay-Z used to say, the rap game is like the dope game, if you can be successful in the dope game, you can be successful in the rap game. And the rap game is the music game. So it´s all the same for me: if you work hard, you hustle. It´s about having a product, getting your product out to the people, and if you have the best product, it sells. So I had to become the best musician that I could.” While his dedication and focus may not surprise those that know him, the kind of music he makes is still good for surprises: “I´m all tatted up, so from the outside I look like I´m about to start rapping. To see the faces once I start singing, and they embrace me – there is no negative vibes. I think I owe a lot of that to Jelly Roll for paving the way. But I do it in a totally different way, I just really try to stand apart from anything.”

“I don’t write the music, it just comes through me. Like a vessel”

F1 of FMG

With his bright smile and eyes full of laughter, F1 comes across as a good-natured, cheery guy. Yet, many of his songs are sad to the bone, and touch on deep emotions of grief and longing. “I make music by listening to a beat, and then writing down whatever comes to me. And I will immediately know if the beat is the one or not. I always say that I don’t write the music, it just comes through me. Like a vessel”, F1 ponders. “And it tends to be whatever I´m dealing with at that moment. I don’t plan it – I never know what the song is gonna be about, it writes itself. And whatever I´m going through at the time is coming out. I put my life into the music. My belief is that we´re all living the same life, we´re just living it in different ways.” This way he hopes, other people will be able to relate to his music and find strength in it. “I hope they will make it through whatever hard times they are in, because they know I made it through the hard times I was in.”

F1 is glad to get this feedback from his friends and fans, who let him know how his music helps them. “I find this a lot in the messages I get. There is a lot of people who are going through really hard times. And right now, my music is helping them.” The rapper holds on for a moment. “It is crazy and you don’t realize it when you write it.” His voice breaks and a tear glistens in the eyes of the muscled-up giant with face tattoos and gold chains. “You don’t realize how many people you are helping. I think if I put my life in it – just staying true to myself is the best way possible. Sometimes I listen to songs and I can´t believe I wrote them.”

Isn’t he ever afraid of making himself vulnerable by opening up about his inner feelings and personal experiences in his songs? “I love that. I love people. I think the greatest thing you can do in life is being an inspiration to others. I don’t mind being vulnerable. I´m a tough-ass dude, I am really tough. I´m not afraid of being pushed around, I´m not afraid to die, I´m not afraid of anything but God himself. I don’t have to run around and be all protective because that is not what life is about”, he states with conviction. “I want to enjoy the music and help others. That’s the most gratifying thing to do: helping others with my music, without being afraid to be myself.” F1 has also made a point of smiling in photos with his guys, instead of the hard, cold gangsta look that is so typical for anybody in the rap industry. “Everybody else be mean-mugging, and I´m smiling. I´m smiling because I´m happy. Instead of this negative mean-mugging face of people who are so cold because they are afraid of being vulnerable, with so many people taking advantage of you nowadays, I´ll make it cool to smile again.”

But to arrive at this attitude, F1 has come a long way. He had a very religious, spiritual upbringing, which, he says, enabled him to have empathy for others, and understand where we are in the world. Apart from this however, things were all but easy for F1 as a kid. “We moved a lot and did not stay at one place more than a year or two. My father was a bad alcoholic and he used to black out, it was an abusive household. I had a stepdad for a few years when I was five, and he was abusive to me and my mom, but mainly to me, because I would take it for my mom”, F1 reveals. “This really shaped who I am, because I cannot stand bullies. Every time I got to a new school, I came in and beat up the bully. It was just in me because it came from frustrations that I had taken up at home. And then the bullies became my friends and stopped being bullies”, he recalls. “It was great having those kinds of friends, but it meant that I felt I had to protect them. If people had trouble with someone, they would come get me, and I was always fighting other people´s fights. It took a long time for me to learn that if you can´t fight for yourself, I can´t fight for you either. You got to be able to fight for yourself and I´ll stand with you”, as F1 realized later. “I got myself in a lot of trouble as a kid, doing that type of stuff. But it shaped me, into being a loyal friend. This kind of experiences – it really made me.”

“I want to make history. And I believe we will.”

F1 of FMG

Prison, of course, also taught him a lot of things. Those eight years were not the first time that F1 was behind bars. “I´ve been in and out of prison. At the age of 15 I got my first case. But it took those last eight years for me to truly mature. I had been stuck on stupid for a while. But this last time – seeing what it did to my mom, I couldn’t do it anymore. If you love people, you don’t hurt them. And you can´t be so selfish as to think if you go to prison it´s just you. It´s everybody that is involved, my sister, my mom, my dad, my kids. I had to stop being selfish and grow up, and I did.” With that decision, F1 is a perfect example that one can change one´s life around in a 180-degree turn – with nothing but the power of will. “I´m not perfect, but what I can teach others is to have respect for yourself, to believe in yourself, not let others dictate what you can and can´t do. If you put your mind to it, you can achieve it. So many people counted me out when I went to prison. They said that its over for me and I´ll never make it. But it wasn’t, and here I am.”

For that, the singer stands in with his name: F1 is reminiscent of his Class 1 felony charge of drug trafficking he received in 2008, the FMG a shorthand of “Felonation Music Group”, the name he gave his own music label inspired by his prison crew. “People ask me why I keep that name, and tell me to get a real artist name – but no man. This is where I come from. It´s to remind me every day where I come from and of the people I represent. I represent those who have been counted out, and believe enough to make their life better, that it´s not over with. Just because you’ve been to prison or have made a mistake, it doesn’t mean you should pay for the rest of your life.” This is what makes his country music special: “My stories are just stories of life. And I tell them in a way that not just people who listen to country regularly can relate, but everybody, especially the guys in the streets.”

With all the people he wants to inspire, he has, however, never lost track of who it truly is that he is making all this effort for: “At the end of the day it´s all for my kids. I want to leave them something, so that they don’t have to do what I did”, F1 says. “I want to change my family´s life. My family comes from nothing. I want to change that. I don’t want them to struggle.” And, of course, one other thing: “I want the platinum on the wall. I want to make history”, F1 declares, and smiles widely. “And I believe we will. I´m not cocky, but I´m confident. I´m a pioneer of this new genre of urban country. And together we´re gonna set records.”