Gauxstman Represents Charlotte’s Southside on New Album ‘28217’

Charlotte rapper Gauxstman comes from a long and mostly venerable tradition of shit talking.

Rappers like Too $hort, Suga Free and even Snoop Dogg circulated narratives of salacity and sagacity, playing off of their predecessors like Red Foxx, Moms Mabley and Richard Pryor.

These comics built off an earlier tradition of toasting and playing the dozens (think “your mama” jokes) that can be traced through the diaspora back to West Africa itself. These pimp (non)fictions fashioned some of the most iconic figures in hip-hop history, transfiguring the ugly realities of America’s malevolent urban neglect into tragicomic folktales.

From 8Ball to UGK: Gauxstman’s early influences

Since dropping his debut projects Extra Game and Southside Get the Money in 2017, Gauxstman has followed in the footsteps of predecessors like this. He was first introduced to this tradition through Southern hip-hop, picking up influences as a kid flipping through CDs at Manifest Disc near Archdale Drive from artists like 8Ball and MJG, Botany Boyz, Dirty South Rydaz and the canonical Houston duo UGK.

Through these influences, he built a music career rapping about the triumphs and tribulations of hustling out a life in Charlotte’s south side. In a long tradition that includes figures like the first gangster rappers Ice T and Schoolly D, Gauxst was inspired by the 1967 Black pulp classic, Pimp: The Story of My Life, adopting the alias Archdale Slim after that novel’s author, Iceberg Slim.

His newest release, 28217, which dropped in April, transposes this tradition into a different key.

Certainly, Gauxstman’s signature shit-talking bawdiness is far from absent from this one. As Gauxst puts it in “From E4 with Love” off 28217, “It ain’t what you say, it’s how you say it/ It’s all in your voice…”

While the jazz and soul samples somewhat soften lines like, “Bitch, get your mouth wider for the legendary Southsider,” the first four tracks of the album maintain the tone and tenor of much of Gausxt’s hustle-focused rhymes that composed his previous projects.

While these themes remain, 28217 is a more settled and personal portrait of the Charlotte rapper, reflecting Gauxst’s challenges as he has become a father.

Growth, fatherhood and the evolution of a rapper

“I’m a lifestyle artist. I literally can only pull from what I’m going through,” he told Queen City Nerve. “I realized I’m getting older, so it’s important if you’re building an audience, you’ve got to grow with your audience.”

This shift began with 2024’s Palm Trees for the Win, which he composed after moving to South Florida. The nine-month period away from Charlotte, brought on by familial fractures, was sobering for Gauxst.

After deep reflection, he moved back to the Queen City in October 2024 to be near his kids and family again.

Moving away from the frenetic intensity of the streets, he began to change the way he rapped as he worked through his relationship to fatherhood.

This tone shift culminates on “Ice on 77,” a doleful reflection on the moment when a fast life outruns you. Gauxst intones on the hook: “Lately I’ve been feeling like I ain’t living right/ Nothing that I’m doing ain’t sitting right/ I’m just trying to come alive, every night…”

Dreamville rapper Lute provides a poignant guest verse that meditates on the pressures that artists experience while trying to stay true to community.

Lute’s feature meant a lot to Gauxstman, who deeply considered whom he should include on this project.

“Man, he always shows up for me and everybody else in this city,” Gauxst said of his fellow Charlotte rapper. “He doesn’t ask for a damn thing in return.”

Read more: Lute Talks ‘Gold Mouf,’ Anxiety and Dreamville Before First Local Headlining Gig (2024)

He also included features from longtime friend DJ Wonder (“From E4 with Love”), up-and-coming northside rapper Yaboysmoke (“Findin My Way”), and childhood friend Slutlord (“Archdale University”).

Slutlord’s brazenly ribald guest verses were particularly significant to Gauxst since this is the first officially released collaboration between the two Archdale artists.

Zooming out, the range of features from across the city are emblematic of Gauxstman’s broader commitment to representing Charlotte as a whole. The album’s title is the South Charlotte zip code that contains Archdale and Nations Ford roads, known as the Southside. It’s an area that’s always been a part of Gausxt’s persona; he performed as Southside Gauxst in the earlier parts of his career.

Track titles on the new project reference spots across the city like “Archdale University” and “Ice on 77.” Each song is lyrically peppered with Charlotte references like “I’m from Nation’s Ford, can you say that?” (“Big Tymers (Interlude)”) and Lute’s “West side in my heart, that shit made me a star…” (“Ice on 77”).

Gauxst’s Instagram promo for the album was shot across the city in spots like the Archdale Blue Line station, E.E. Waddell High School’s old stadium and even the upscale Elizabeth restaurant Fig Tree for the project’s eponymous single.

As he put it on an interlude for the new release, “I was made in this city/ I could never leave…”

Gauxstman’s mission: Putting Charlotte on the map

For Gauxstman, being all-city is more than just a show of unity.

“I kind of want to be obnoxious until I get my point across, until I get where I’m going,” he reflected. “I need the world to really understand. I want you to land in Charlotte and be like, ‘Wait, I need to go to Nation’s Ford. I need to go to Big Apple Deli.’”

This kind of commitment to raising up Charlotte across genre, style and geographical boundaries is of particular importance to a city that perpetually struggles to articulate basic aspects of its own identity. The contradictions that Gauxst explores in 28217 are the contradictions that mark our city — the energy of youth and reflection of age, the poignancy of lyrical substance and power of pimp-inflected style, and the plastic lustrousness of Uptown with the predetermined grit of the neighborhoods surrounding it.

In 2024, Nigel Malone created a documentary that posed a simple question: Does North Carolina hip-hop have a sound? The question generated myriad answers without a simple consensus.

If Charlotte hip-hop had a sound, however, it would sound a little bit like 28217. With elements that can be found across the diaspora articulated through hyperlocal specificities, Gauxst sounds the city every chance that he gets on the project. His contradictions embody our own.

Gauxst crafted a project that intentionally cut across city boundaries with tracks that are equally at home in a low-lit open mic poetry night at NoDa’s Evening Muse, South End’s Broken Promises, or a joyride through the Nation’s Ford corridor.

28217 is the sound of our weird little city. As Gauxst puts it in the project’s ultimate track: “Represent this city, bitch. You better know it.”