Catt Daddy Transitions from Hip-Hop to Southern Soul

When Maurel Nichols enters the Embassy Suites hotel in downtown Raleigh, he steps into the spotlight — metaphorically speaking, anyway.

His entrance marks the opening shot of the video that accompanies “Love My Southern Soul,” the February 21 release by Nichols, the singer-songwriter who performs as Catt Daddy.

Catt is a rising star in the Southern soul genre, a danceable vocal-driven blend of gospel, blues, R&B and funk. One sign that Catt has arrived on the scene is the man striding beside him in the hotel shot: singer-songwriter Jeter Jones, a giant of the genre.

In the video, Catt and Jones hang and dance with friends to ringing bluesy guitars, bouncing beats and assertive busts of brass. With a confident easy swing and call-and-response gospel vocals, the tune is catchy, but Catt’s vocals put it over.

The vocalist’s voice is a river — rich, rolling and gravelly at the bottom with a hint of a bluesman’s rasp. The lyrics are a tribute to Southern soul music, its roots and traditions, its present and future, containing shoutouts to blues, R&B and gospel greats like Johnnie Taylor, Z.Z. Hill and B.B. King.

“I like a little bit of country/ I like rock ‘n roll/ I like a little bit of rap/ But I love my Southern soul…”

Southern soul music is growing fast. Multi-act bills are booking venues like the 6,800-seat Craig Ranch Regional Park Amphitheatre in Las Vegas.

Breakout Southern soul artist 803 Fresh premiered his viral debut single “Boots On The Ground” on BET Soul before it shot to No. 3 on the R&B US radio chart. Since debuting on YouTube in February, Catt’s “Love My Southern Soul” has earned over 144,000 views.

After teaming with Charlotte’s CrownTown Records, Catt’s ascent in the scene has been swift. His official debut single “2 Wrongs,” produced by CrownTown Records CEO and founder Duane Dyer, dropped on Valentine’s Day 2024. The tune shot to the top of the Southern soul blues charts, reaching No. 4 on the Urban Influencer Southern Soul chart.

With Dyer as his producer, manager and videographer/editor, Catt signed to Urban Influencer Music Group in March, making him the marketing and promotion firm’s first Southern soul artist.

“[Urban Influencer] helps us reach places we would be struggling to reach or would probably take five to 10 years to reach,” Dyer says. “They have that network in place; it’s something that we are able to tap into now.”

In a statement, Catt calls joining Urban Influencer a game-changer.

“With their powerhouse team, I’m ready to take Southern soul to the next level,” Catt says.

His newest single, “Well Run Dry,” drops May 30. Then on June 13, he headlines the Queen City Soul and R&B Block Party at Victoria Yards in Uptown Charlotte.

A storytelling rapper turns to Southern soul

Born into a military family, Catt moved around before settling down in York, South Carolina. He got into music at an early age, singing in church and playing keyboards for a gospel group, but Catt’s first love was rap. Initially introduced to the genre by the music of Nas and Tupac Shakur, Catt dug further into rap’s past to discover Run-DMC and The Fat Boys.

“Every song had a storyline,” says Catt about the influential 1980s icons.

Now 45, Catt started performing at rap and hip-hop shows in Charlotte and Gastonia when he was in his early 30s. Soon he was gigging further afield, playing shows in Virginia, New York, and Alabama, performing alongside artists like Lil Scrappy, Ace Hood and Rick Ross.

Having been told by several colleagues and fans that his voice resembled Dana Dane’s, he checked out the Brooklyn rapper only to draw further inspiration from Dane’s autobiographical tracks like “Cinderfella Dana Dane.”

“[Dane] made me see that it wasn’t about trying to be a [great] lyricist; it was about writing a story you can relate to it,” Catt says. “That’s what made me fall in love with rap.”

Over time, however, Catt grew disenchanted with the genre. He says audiences began to prefer explicit lyrics and subject matter that include murder and drug use.

“I didn’t want to be that,” Catt maintains. “I wanted to be a rapper that influenced the younger generation [positively].”

Recalling that people had often complimented his singing voice, Catt started looking into Southern soul and realized that he was a songwriter at heart.

“I love writing songs,” Catt says. “I always have.”

Encouraged by music industry friends like Tony Lelo, former member of Charlotte R&B legend Anthony Hamilton’s backup vocal group The Hamiltones, Catt wrote, sang and recorded a song called “Carolina My Home.”

The stage was set for Catt to find his closest collaborator, a Charlotte-based producer, engineer and independent record label founder from the Caribbean islands.

Duane Dyer got into music at the age 12 while attending Presentation College San Fernando, a Roman Catholic secondary school in the Caribbean island nation of Trinidad and Tobago where he was born and raised. After a school assembly, he discovered a drum kit that was left backstage.

“I tried it and realized I had the coordination to play a kit,” Dyer recalls.

He learned from older drummers and progressed to playing school assemblies, Christmas shows and steel pan competitions. At age 19, Dyer started gigging with restaurant bands and doing DJ gigs.

In 1990, Dyer left his home country after earning a soccer scholarship to Davis and Elkins College in West Virginia. At school, Dyer took an audio recording class that introduced him to the rudiments of the mixing board.

After graduating with a degree in graphic design, Dyer moved to New Jersey, where he resumed his DJ career and honed his expertise with recording and production gear. He drummed briefly for local reggae band Random Test before switching to running live sound for the group.

When Random Test went to Shorefire Recording Studio to cut a CD, Dyer befriended studio owner Joe DeMaio, whose clientele includes Bruce Springsteen and Blondie. Though he has no formal music production/recording training, Dyer went through intensive, hands-on recording and engineering sessions with his mentor DeMaio.

Dyer’s experience as a musician and sound tech, as well as his informal training with DeMaio, proved invaluable when Dyer moved to Charlotte in 2004 and launched his home studio and production company the following year.

“I realized I could put out music under my own brand,” Dyer says. “Because I was in Charlotte, the Queen City, I came up with Crowntown Records.”

An independent music production studio and company based in Dyer’s home, Crowntown has produced, mixed and mastered music, commercials and podcasts for clients both local and as far afield as Nigeria. He has distributed music online and in brick-and-mortar outlets.

After 15 years in Charlotte, Dyer moved his home and business to Lake Wylie, South Carolina.

In early 2019, Catt and Dyer met through a mutual friend, jazz saxophonist Gregory Currance. Dyer looked at some songs Catt had posted on YouTube and “Carolina My Home,” a rap-and-soul ode to Charlotte and its surrounding region, piqued his interest. The pair decided to rerecord and rebuild the track with Dyer as producer.

Released in 2020, the video for the reworked iteration of “Carolina My Home” features Catt in well-known Charlotte locations such as Spectrum Center and Bank of America Stadium.

Along with Catt’s follow-up single and video, a collaboration with R&B artist Horace Brown called “Keep Doing It,” “Carolina My Home,” catches Catt in transition from rapper to Southern soul man. Both tunes are hybrids, balanced between the two genres.

“Keep Doing It,” interlaces layered samples from Brown’s melodic 1996 R&B tune “One for the Money” with Catt’s supple, syncopated rapping. The video, which dropped in August 2021, features Catt and Brown boating with two women, hanging out and hitting the beach at Lake Wylie.

It’s a chill, good-looking video, but Catt’s subsequent release “2 Wrongs” is his milestone. Here, artist Catt and producer Dyer fully commit to Southern soul. Except for some judicious hip-hop beats and a spoken-word opening, the song leaves rap behind.

Starting with “2 Wrongs,” Catt says he’s had to adjust his lyrics and vocals from a rap flow to soulful singing. It meant he needed fewer words to express a thought or emotion. It was like reducing a sonnet to a stanza in order to allow Catt’s mellifluous yet weathered voice to tell the full tale.

Catt says the inspiration for the tune, his first official release as a Southern soul artist, came from life experiences with friendships and other relationships.

“When you fall out with somebody, [often] both of y’all are wrong. Somebody’s got to be the bigger person,” he says, adding, “Every song that I write comes from experience, either from me, or something I have heard from somebody else.”

For his day job, Catt drives a bus for the Clover School District, noting that sometimes snatches of lyrics come to him while he works.

“God gives it to me,” Catt maintains.

Dyer became Catt’s manager before “2 Wrongs” was recorded. In that role, Dyer says he draws on his experiences as a producer and band member. He deals with promoters and negotiates for Catt in financial deals.

With the “2 Wrongs” video, Dyer also took over production for Catt’s videos, shooting on his iPhone and editing the footage at CrownTown. The resulting videos have a more homegrown, accessible feel.

Not usually one to take on so many different jobs for one act, Dyer said he took the hybrid role of producer and manager because Catt has prodigious talent and a great attitude.

“He’s willing to learn and doesn’t sit around waiting for something to happen,” Dyer says.

Helping Southern soul take hold

The release of “2 Wrongs,” both song and video, makes Catt and Dyer’s shift to soul seem effortless, but the genre presented a learning curve for the longtime producer. With Southern soul not yet receiving airplay, he wasn’t familiar with the sound.

Catt showed Dyer videos of South Carolina native King George, one of the artists who convinced Catt to tackle the genre. With hits like “Keep On Rollin’,” King George is noted for his smooth blend of sing-along soul and classic R&B.

“[King George] put a twist to Southern soul that made the younger generation want to get into it,” Catt says.

Dyer soon learned that Southern soul is more than a music genre; it’s also a lifestyle, with accompanying clothing, dances and attitudes.

Concert halls aside, venues tend to be rustic, Dyer says, off the beaten path and peppered with picnic tables and log cabins. (One such venue appears in the video for Catt’s single “Faces.”) The food includes soul staples like greens, corn bread and barbecue. Fans dress in cowboy hats, boots and Daisy Dukes shorts.

“Dance troupes wear distinct colors and branded apparel,” Dyer adds. “Bikers roll in with the most decorated and lit-up bikes, wearing their club affiliate gear.”

Dancers eschew individual moves for country-style line dances. Shows are often accompanied with “trail rides” where fans ride horses and four-wheelers and off-road vehicles side by side before the set begins.

Despite the bucolic scene, Catt says public and media focus on Southern soul seems to be following a trajectory similar to classic 1990s rap. Like rap, the first stars of Southern soul were the DJs spinning the songs, then focus shifted to the footwork — breakdancers for rap and line dancers for Southern soul.

The time has finally come, Catt says, where eyes and ears will turn to the main event: the artists like himself that are writing and performing the tunes.

Catt and Dyer have been working steadily to stake Catt’s claim in the spotlight, releasing a string of soulful singles accompanied by down-to-earth and relatable videos. Dyer says the videos are essential for appealing to prospective fans because they offer a full and immersive sound and vision package. To that end, the manager and artist also post videos of the recording process to Facebook Live.

“It’s so fans can see Catt in the studio and listen to the [song] idea coming to life,” Dyer says.
In addition to accompanying Catt’s songs, the music videos document the organic, homegrown Southern soul scene.

The video for “Faces,” the follow-up to “2 Wrongs,” was shot at a wooded outdoors Southern soul gig. It’s a bouncy, syncopated yet cautionary tale about folks with hidden agendas.

The limpid, soaring “Dangerous Love,” a duet with R&B artist Jalesa McRae, generously spotlights McRae’s gospel-inflected vocals. It manages to be sexy and conflicted yet still feels like a warm hug.

The swaying, call-and-response tune “Shakey Ground” dropped in August 2024. It is the only one of Catt’s Southern soul singles released without an accompanying video.

The video for Catt’s jaunty good-time romp “Party,” released in tandem with the single in December 2024, features a glimpse of Southern soul style bikers in their colors and neon-lit bikes. It was followed by the single/video for the scene’s unofficial manifesto, “Love My Southern Soul.”

“Because Jeter Jones is on [‘Love My Southern Soul,’] people are going to be pushing it much more,” Catt says.

He’s reaped an even bigger benefit, however, from getting Jones on board for the song and video. A few months after “Love My Southern Soul” debuted, Jones signed on as vice president of southern soul & blues at Urban Influencer, the same marketing and promotion firm that now reps Catt Daddy.

Read more: Howard McNair’s Improvisational Jazz Has Roots in Gospel (2024)

Dyer thinks the timing is no coincidence. He suspects Catt’s collaboration with Jones was a kind of audition for both Jones and Urban Influencer.

“We were on our best behavior, and we didn’t even know it,” Dyer says.

Moving forward, Catt wants to continue telling stories based on his experiences.

“I take every song personally,” he says “I try to put a message in it.”

Southern soul is growing in popularity because it hits a sweet spot where listening to music becomes much more than consuming a product. Hearing an evocative tune is often a communal experience to be shared, but a truly impactful, relatable song can also connect with a listener on a one-on-one basis.

That is the secret sauce to Catt Daddy’s deep storytelling Southern soul — an artist having a heart-to-heart with individual listeners everywhere, a soul reaching out to other souls.