Does North Carolina Have a Sound?

I would hope it’s clear by now to any regular reader that Super Empty, while owing much of its existence to the literal sounds of hip-hop, is about a lot more than that.

In considering music not only on its technical merits (whatever you take those to be) but also within the context of the place it’s from, a fount of other considerations naturally spring up — about regionalism, about community, about identity, character, local culture and more. About serious, weighty matters like the reverberating impacts of community leaders gone too soon, and totally frivolous ones, like a state’s “Official Hip-Hop Song,” and what it should be.

Given this, one could imagine my delight a few weeks back upon hearing about Nigel Malone’s Carolina Noise, a new short film that might as well have been commissioned by Super Empty the way it seeks to tackle those exact issues — not just anywhere, but specifically against the backdrop of North Carolina.

The product of more than two dozen taped conversations across 2023 and 2024, Carolina Noise is technically a directorial debut for Malone, but it’s just the latest extension of the distinctly analog-flavored, archival practice he’s developed over the years, snapping photos and grabbing interviews in between studio sessions while working as a producer and recording engineer in Charlotte. With that combination of unique access and an enterprising journalistic streak, Malone has quietly (and somewhat quickly, having just returned to his hometown Charlotte from Atlanta five years ago) become one of the leading documentarians of the city’s simmering hip-hop scene.

“Everybody that I work with, I look at them like the biggest people in the world, even though to the world they might not be,” he told Tyler Bunzey in a recent profile for Queen City Nerve. “I’m taking a picture of them because they’re superstars to me. And I want the world to also see that and appreciate them as that, too.”

Last summer, on a reporting trip to Charlotte that never turned into a story (yet), my interest was piqued by a thick, glossy-paged book at The Archive CLT full of brief dispatches and fly-on-the-wall photos from studio sessions, concerts, parties and more across the city. It seemed like nearly any Charlotte artist of recent renown was in there: veterans like Elevator Jay and Lute, younger emerging acts like MAVI, Reuben Vincent, Ahmir. Like a moth hopelessly drawn to a flame, I flipped admiringly through this photo journal that felt exactly like the sort of thing we need more of in our communities — a robust, authentic, considered entry into the cultural and historical record, one that only could be made by someone who truly cares. I was told the book I was holding, Colorful Noise, was made by someone I didn’t know at the time, an engineer and photographer named Nigel Malone.

Fast forward a little less than a year and not only do I know Nigel, we’re hosting him and his film at Yours Durham on Thursday, June 12th from 7-9 PM (RSVP here — 17 spots left) to continue the conversation about the state’s hip-hop, about his filmmaking and creative process, and what he found along the way. While the showing itself will be followed by a Q&A with Nigel (hosted by myself and Saleem Reshamwala, of the quarterly doc meetup series Look Different), I figured a few questions in the Sunday email wouldn’t hurt, just to set the stage. So with that said, here’s a snippet of a conversation from a few weeks ago with Nigel, one that I hope you’ll join us for when we pick it back up at Yours in a week and a half’s time.

SE: You mention at the beginning of the film how you're well-positioned to be thinking about this topic and how the influences around you would make you curious about it. That explains the idea, but as far as going from idea to getting off a couch and making a documentary, what provoked that? What got you to finally make it?

NM: Well, I had the idea in my mind to shoot it but I just needed a camera, so I was looking for a VHS camera to shoot it with, and I spoke to my aunt or my family members just to see if they might have one laying around and my aunt had the VHS camera just in her closet. Once I finally got that, you know, the documentary is not like me calling an artist and saying, ‘Hey, can we meet, this day at this time?’ I'm a Producer/Engineer, so I would have a session with them and then after the session, pull out my VHS camera and ask them the question. Or I may be at an event that I'm participating in and they're there and I would ask them then.