When the Ocean State Sessions team found out that there was a local Rhode Island hip-hop violinist, we instantly knew we had to get him on the Ocean State Sessions program. Little did I know, however, that Big Lux’s story would be as profound as his music is powerful. After training as a classical violinist from the ages of 7 to 17, Kevin Lowther — who took the stage name of Big Lux — put the violin behind him to pursue a life in the military. It wasn’t until his tour in Baghdad during the Iraq war that he would tentatively start playing again.
Later while posted in Korea, Big Lux began to develop his own sound — one that blended his love of ‘90s hip-hop with his classical skills, and also reflected the last decade of his life spent traveling the world. Once he came home to Rhode Island, he realized that his political consciousness had grown alongside his musical talent, and he ran for election to the Westerly Town Council.
Currently he is pursuing a law degree. In September his local music festival, Next Up, will celebrate its third year. Here we speak about his musical influences, why ‘90s hip-hop was such a revolutionary art form, and what kind of support emerging Rhode Island musicians need.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
LACY: Do you have a memory of when you first heard hip-hop?
BIG LUX: On my dad’s side of the family, we have seven cousins who are all within a few years of each other. We would all get together at my grandfather’s house for any kind of family thing. My granddad lived in Newark, and almost all the rest of my cousins were city kids. So when I hung out with them, that’s when I would get exposed to all of the hip-hop that I wasn’t hearing, like a Tribe Called Quest, the Wu-Tang Clan, and the other grandfathers’ of hip hop, stuff that just wasn’t getting any play in Rhode Island at the time. My cousin Jason, who was basically the same age as me, would come up to Rhode Island in the summers to go to summer camp with us, and he would bring all that music with him — the new tapes and everything. That’s probably the genesis.
LACY: In the history of American pop culture, what do you think makes ‘90s hip-hop, specifically, so unique and so important?
BIG LUX: ‘90s hip-hop was such an organic style of music that was launched, essentially, overnight. They can point to the party, to the literal moment it was birthed and hip hop came around. The fact that it hit so quickly and hit so hard and that it wrapped up an entire culture in its identity—it wasn’t just music: it was clothes, it was art, it was dancing, it was DJing, it was MCing. It was all of these things and that meant you could find the piece of culture you liked the most and you could enjoy that piece of it, or you could live in it completely. So for all those reasons I absolutely love it.
LACY: Tell me about how the name Big Lux is a throwback to ‘90s hip hop.
BIG LUX: Everybody knows the number one big is Biggie Smalls, The Notorious B.I.G. He might be the best ever to do it, but you also have Big L, Big Pun, Fat Joe. Everybody in the ‘90s wanted to be the biggest, which is a significant contrast with today where everybody is either “Young” or “Little.” And so “Big” is a real clear demarcation between the old school hip hop and the new school. When I took the name Big Lux, I wanted to call back to those early times.
LACY: What do you think ‘90s hip-hop was missing that today’s hip-hop has and what do you think today’s hip-hop is missing that ‘90s hip- hop has?
BIG LUX: I think I’ll probably answer the second part of that question first. The one thing about ‘90s hip-hop that gets a lot of criticism, deservedly so, is the misogyny and homophobia found in it. That’s missing from a lot of today’s hip-hop music in a good way. Today’s hip-hop is definitely more inclusive.
But when you talk about raw emotion and truth-telling, there’s nothing like that ‘90s hip-hop sound because they were telling stories from their lives and people who lived through those things really could connect with it. Now, with hip-hop today, with a lot of the things that are commercial, especially with trap music, they’re not telling stories. They’re kind of glorifying a culture of wealth and drugs and other things that makes that rockstar lifestyle, but you can’t really identify with it. That’s not the life that you’re living right now, for most of us anyway. I’m not living that life. So I miss that kind of storytelling and that truth-telling. I wish today’s hip-hop did have more of it.
LACY: Who were your idols growing up and who should we be listening to now?
BIG LUX: I’ll start with the artists that I appreciate today. There’s a couple of different classes. One is violinists because I’m always looking at other string players to see what they’re doing and what I can add to my game. And there have been some trailblazers, especially in the hip hop space like, Black Violin and Nuttin’ But Stringz. They were two of the biggest string groups who played over hip-hop beats and they were real big inspirations in my life. Lindsay Stirling, who is probably the most well-known pop violinist in the world at this point, is absolutely incredible. She doesn’t play the style I play, but I learned a lot about showmanship and how far you can stretch the instrument. She’s doing some amazing things.
Then I got my general music things that I just love to listen to: early Kanye was probably my biggest inspiration as an artist, his creativity and the musicality that he brought to hip-hop was amazing. It was one of those things I really felt in my soul. Then other artists of that era like Jay-Z, were absolutely incredible. I love guys who are figuring out how to put more live instrumentation into their hip hop: OutKast, Super Funky, The Roots, those guys. Then probably just to kind of finish it out, The Fugees are everything about that early hip hop sound — the real drums, the wordplay creativity and the cultural significance of what they represented and what Lauren Hill ended up coming to represent, and what Wyclef John being Haitian and representing the diaspora like that. Yeah, so those are my legends.
LACY: Anything you want to leave us with?
BIG LUX: The key element is that in Rhode Island, people are hungry. All kinds of people are hungry to hear this music. It started as a Black art form in New York, and I am endlessly impressed, and so surprised with the amount of people who identify with it, regardless of their age, their ethnic or racial background or cultural background. So many people love this music, and it starts the party in so many different places and settings, wherever you’re at. And there are so few places where you can hear it live.
We have a problem in Rhode Island, and in Westerly specifically, where it’s really hard for young artists to get traction, to get their first festival booking and start to play for money. So I created a music festival called The Next Up Festival. It’s Sept. 14 in Wilcox Park in downtown Westerly, Rhode Island. I wanted a festival where all of these young artists could come, they could meet each other, build a community, use it to launch their careers and we could all have a fun time doing it. It is a multi-gen festival: we will have rock, we will have hip hop, we will have blues, we will have the Rhode Island National Guard, 88 Army Band, playing funk.
It’s going to be a free festival. We invite everybody to come out there and it’s such a good environment.
