You will still hear echoes of Shame Gutta’s hypnotic yet hard-edged track, “Summertime,” ricocheting around in your head long after the last note has spilled out of the speakers. The song automatically induces visions of pushing your whip through the hood with the top peeled back, one arm around your girl and the other hanging out the window while you drive with your knees.
That’s when you know you have a hit on your hands.
“Summertime” signals Shame Gutta’s bold and boisterous entrance into hip-hop celebrity, the way a trumpet announces the entrance of the half-time band. The Houston-born, San Antonio-bred artist is primed to emblazon a legacy in the game the way several of those other Texas titans did — like Scarface, ESG, Chamillionaire, Paul Wall and Fat Pat.
But don’t let the lazy, laid-back vocals on “Summertime” get you all twisted on who this dude is.
You can almost see the intensity shooting out of Shame Gutta’s dark gaze. Even though he’s looking at you, his eyes seem to burn right through you, revealing some of the volatile upbringing that has inspired this cocky rapper’s fast-rising career. The events from his childhood stirred up a funnel cloud of motivation in Shame Gutta that saw him produce 100 mixtapes in just a two-year period.
“Life for me was hard in some senses and cool in others,” Gutta explains. “I lived with my mom until I was 10 and she really didn’t have s***. When I lived with my mom, I looked up to my father’s brother a lot. My pops had a little bread, but I didn’t see him too much.”
Born Joseph Zacharie, the Lone Star State native had a maverick mentality early on that had him detouring away from his mother’s wishes. Even his father had difficulty time trying to lasso in this cowboy from the alluring temptations of the streets that reached out to him like tentacles.
“I had to straighten up because he was more strict about s***. But in my heart I was always hood, and that’s why I always stayed in some kind of trouble.”
Thankfully, rap was the one thing he could channel from his hood tendencies. And once his uncle Marcuz Elbo, a local rapper and producer at the time, introduced the art form to him at age 11, Joseph became like Chris Rock’s Pooky in “New Jack City”: he was addicted for life. Joseph began to consume anything and everything about rap, including Tupac, Too Short, the Gheto Boys and Snoop. Ultimately, Shame Gutta was born.
It took 12 long years from Uncle Marcus to bequeath his blessings onto the rising star, but all that grinding was like training camp to Shame, who had moved to Houston with this father by this time. His first outing into the game let him know that he needed to marinate on the figurative practice squad and watch the games like a backup while he got his weight up.
“I went to the studio and froze up,” recalls Shame. “I don’t believe I was ready then. I was like 16 years old and had a case of stage fright. But after that, I made a demo with my brother J Way when I was like 20. I let Live hear it and he was like, ‘you gonna blow up.’ He and Trey K, the CEO of HTP, put me down and it’s been on ever since.”
Now that he’s been called into the game for real, Shame is ready to blow across the goal line of destiny, stiff-arming the haters and competitors along with the way with “Summertime” and his CD Ain’t No Half Step’n.
“I want my place in this rap game,” Shame Gutta says. “And this debut LP is gonna make it happen for me, because I am giving the fans exactly what they want from a classic album — good music, tight hooks and hot lyrics. They’re gonna love it and me.”
Here he comes. Better clear a lane. –terry shropshire
