Melissa Traynor / Editor-in-Chief

After several setbacks, the university radio station and their Urban Director have recently strung together local acts from around the state for Thursday’s lineup – just over a week before the scheduled date of the show.

“It’s going to be called The Future of Entertainment,” said WFCS’s Urban Director Earle Nelson, who has just completed the legwork for putting on the concert last week. “I can’t just classify it as the future of hip-hop – not just that.” 

Arranging for friends to perform, and reaching out to distant connections has worked for Nelson and the Programming Director Wayne DeRoy, but scrambling for a date, pleading for a time and space around the student center and negotiating payments and promotion have posed a few difficulties.

Finally assembling the show for Thursday, April 23 at 11 p.m., free and open to the public, in Alumni Hall in the student center, the pair has pulled together a show at the last-minute with expected headliner and Hartford rapper Milo Sheff.

Sheff, who is preparing to release his new album Table of Contents on the Blue Neon Media Group label, will be headlining Thursday night’s show.

Sheff’s representative said that he is excited to be performing and has been making appearances at colleges in anticipation of the album release.

Kamaal Lowen, or Kamoflauge, a rapper from Colchester, Conn. will also perform at “The Future of Entertainment”, along with Windsor, Conn.’s Kwame Dankwa, New Britain’s “P-loot”, Grown Tone, QP and Jaymelodius.

Most are just looking to make a name for themselves, Nelson said. For Kamoflauge, a 20-year-old who attends Manchester Community College, he’s just beginning to make radio appearances, such as one a month ago on Nelson’s show “The Mix-Up”.

Lowen appeared with a small entourage on a rainy Friday night to for an interview on the show to provide a preview of his freestyle habits.

Over the course of a half-hour, in two- or three-minute songs, Lowen proved his pop-culture knowledge as he spilled out references from Tom Clancy novels and well-known musicians.

“Kamoflauge – he’s strictly hip-hop, but I could see him doin’ movies and whatnot,” Nelson said.

“He’s still got some more learning to do, but he’s got a high volume of talent,” he added.

Nelson said that the station thought about booking other local acts with bigger names in the underground rap scene in Hartford, but had to consider their spending first.

He said that Kwame offered to perform for a small cost, an expense that Nelson was happy to meet. Nelson called him a “jack of all trades” and referred to Dankwa’s abilities as a rapper, a producer, a radio personality and an entertainer overall.

“I think maybe three or four years ago, he was on point – I mean, you could throw his name out there,” Nelson said of Dankwa, who DJs to a the 98.3 WILI radio station in Willimantic, Conn. “… Not much else has been said about him.”

He expects that all of the acts will have something different to bring to the table, whether it’s their ability to make people laugh or deliver politically-driven lyrics.

“With Kwame, you’re going to laugh your ass off – he could make you think about something serious, but then bring in something funny as hell,” Nelson said.

New Britain’s male and female-duo Grown Tone and QP are also scheduled to perform, along with Jaymelodius the Janitor. Self-described musicians in the “feel-good” type of music, the trio said they draw on soul, gospel and jazz music as influences.

“Just the feel good stuff – things that will take you through the whole day and don’t require too much. Just enough to do the job,” Grown Tone said of his inspirations and influences.

QP cited a mix of musical influences she was exposed to as a child. 

“I’m into everything from jazz – Art Blakey – to old school Fugees and anything – anything except country,” she said.

“Grown Tone and QP – they could, you know – they got huge potential to be good rappers and you could say mainstream if they’re put in the hands of the right people,” Nelson said.

Nelson himself will be spinning in between acts to keep the crowd’s energy going and will be throwing out free stuff, giveaways.

“Right now me and Wayne are going to be on the ones and twos. We’re going to tag-team this whole DJing thing, mixing,” he said. “We’re going to try to get another act in there, but if we’re only working with two hours, we got to just work with what we got right there,” he added.

An extra act is also in the making – Nelson said that they hope to secure some more time in the auditorium for another local rapper named Decypher.

Martine Bernadel of NAACP will host Thursday’s concert.

There is currently a Facebook group titled “Underground Hip-Hop Show” and the guest list is growing.