pepper boy

Littlerock,Arkansas

In his music, you'll hear him say it in every album he drops. And every few turns in conversation, he's going to say the phrase "the super hard way" seemingly without ever really noticing how often he says it. It's a convenient catchall to describe the long and profoundly thorny road that he's been on since 1993. But if anyone's earned the right to talk about the super hard way, it's Pepperboy.

Now in his mid-30s, things are finally looking up for the long-overlooked cult rapper's career, with a single that's slowly growing viral on YouTube, a few still-fresh endorsements from Spin and The Fader and a rising reputation as the unlikely elder statesman of the emerging "cloud rap" genre.

By some testament to rehabilitation or ambition or sheer dumb luck or something in between all of those, he's alive to see all of this happening.

"Like, I lost my first homeboy, he was 13. Fucked me up, man. You're young, all you think about is revenge and shit. I mean, you a kid and you see your homeboy get killed. Streets just kinda took me, man."

Pepperboy — born Jerry Davie — spent the entirety of his teen-age years doing his share to raise Little Rock's "Bangin' in the Rock"-era crime rate. It wasn't until he went to prison — serving 30 months of a 10-year sentence in the Varner Unit for, he says, "possession with intent and a firearm: just protection" — that he had the idea of turning his stories from the street into music.

After his release from SuperMax, he dropped his first album, "Str8 Off tha Block, Pt. 1," in 2002, with more mixtapes following at a steady tack. With each new release, Pepperboy moved further away from boilerplate, D.I.Y. gangster rap trappings, gradually evolving into a unique voice from Little Rock's south side.

Although he was carrying a lot of respect in the streets following his prison time, Pepperboy's gritty, sonically unfamiliar take on rap music wasn't exactly setting Little Rock on fire. But the folks who got it, got it.

"It all started with 'Blame tha Block.' At first it was a bit funny to me," said 607, one of Pepperboy's most vocal champions. "It wasn't the traditional beat selection or nothing, so people were trying to get their ears adjusted. Some people felt it, some people didn't. He has this crazy voice and the message was there and people who have been [in the streets] recognize that. It's a real genuine message that he's putting across."

In between the r