Senior Bailey Scott says he has been signed to Average Joes Entertainment in June after the record label’s CEO watched Scott’s YouTube video “City Lights.” The Nashville-based record label is home to well-known acts, such as Colt Ford. Scott, who is a digital film making major, said his debut album should be released in 2014. | PHOTO BY JARED HOLT
For seven years, senior Bailey Scott, 22, tried to make his dream of becoming a rap artist a reality. But it wasn’t until a YouTube video Scott uploaded in December that a record company executive took notice and signed Scott to his label.
In June, Scott signed a recording contract with Nashville-based, country label Average Joes Entertainment, home to well-known country artists including Colt Ford, Montgomery Gentry and the LoCash Cowboys.
The record label’s CEO and co-founder Shannon Houchins contacted Scott in May after he saw Scott’s YouTube video, “City Lights,” an original country rap song Scott had collaborated on with a friend from Texas.
Scott visited Houchins in Nashville in June, and three days after their meeting, Scott signed a contract that was faxed over to his parents’ office in Hot Springs.
“It’s been like a dream,” Scott said. “I’ve been doing this rap-type stuff since I was like probably in 11th grade, and I was about to give up on the whole entire thing.”
Scott, who also goes by ‘Cap Bailey’, said he believes Houchins was able to find his YouTube video because news about upcoming country rap artists travels fast for that specific genre.
“Country rap is fairly new and kind of like a close-knit thing where — if you put out a pretty sweet country rap song and you get enough people listening to it — it’ll get around pretty quick,” he said.
The record label immediately put Scott to work.
The same month he signed his contract, Scott traveled back to Nashville and stayed for two weeks in a hotel. He wrote 17 songs for his debut album and collaborated with artists, such as Ford.
“It’s all about real experiences,” Scott said about his song’s lyrics. “It’s not about that gangster stuff talking about selling drugs on the corner — that’s not what I’m about.”
For his debut album, which is set to release in 2014, Scott said he is waiting for the mastered versions of his songs so he can pick a single.
To write a song, Scott said it takes him about 45 minutes to develop the chorus and verses to accompany the music tracks his record label sends him.
He said he listens to those instrumental tracks about four to five times to “freestyle some stuff” in his mind. After developing a chorus and several verses, Scott said he reviews his lyrics and rewrites them in his room.
“[When I first starting rapping,] I started out just kind of trying to blend in with the mainstream rap music, and I kind of got in with the wrong crowd,” he said. “I actually got robbed at gunpoint up here at a house that a buddy had in Conway. It kind of put me in perspective that I needed to stop acting like somebody that I wasn’t.”
Scott said the robbery happened during his sophomore year in college. No one was injured during the incident, but Scott said that experience made him reflect about the past few years.
“I felt like I wasn’t a kid any more,” he said. “It was time to figure out what I was going to do with my life.”
For now, Scott said he is preparing for his single’s music video that he says is “definitely going to be some redneck stuff.”
He said, “I don’t have full-blown details yet, but there’s going to be some country sticks-type stuff.”
Scott said he is grateful for his time at UCA — especially for the film and theatre program — because they taught him about performing and producing music videos, which he adds got him discovered in the first place.
“More times than not, if you put a random kid in front of a camera and give them a song to [sing], it’s going to be awkward,” he said. “I really appreciate everything the UCA film and theatre department taught me.”
