Closed Sessions celebrates underground rap and itself – Chicago Reader

Since its inception as a multimedia project in 2009, local label Closed Sessions has become a shining beacon for Chicago hip-hop and independent rap across the midwest. On Thursday, October 24, hundreds of fans from across the city and beyond gathered for the label’s 15th anniversary at a concert that cofounder Alex Fruchter, aka DJ RTC, had put together at Avondale Music Hall.

“I mean, at the heart of it, it’s still a label, but what a label is has changed so much,” says Fruchter. “It’s an extension of me at this point, of who I am—a DJ, collector, writer. So it encompasses the [live interview and dinner series] Legend Conversations with Dave Jeff and encompasses these events and shows. At the heart of the day, though, it’s making vinyl, putting out music, signing artists, and helping get the world to care about them.”

The house that Closed Sessions built is home to a stacked roster that includes some of the midwest’s most gifted hip-hop artists. Over the years they’ve helped lay groundwork for the likes of Chance the Rapper, Vic Mensa, Jamila Woods, Mick Jenkins, and Femdot.

“No one really was doing this blueprint I was able to put together, where we’re covering the artists, then we’re doing the party,” Fruchter says.

Beginning around summer 2008, he set up the first Chicago shows for online rap phenoms such as Action Bronson, J. Cole, Mac Miller, Danny Brown, and Yelawolf. In June 2009, he began his partnership with Kolar, which turned out to be vital to establishing the Closed Sessions community.

“I was just at Soundscape all the time and asked Mike to master my mixtape, and I went to pay him,” Fruchter recalls. “He was like, ‘So you could pay me now, and you could just pay me for five hours. But how about this? You need a studio. I’ll do anything you want. You can use it whenever you want, but you use just my studio.’ To stay in business as a studio, he needed to advertise. So he got free advertising through Ruby Hornet, because I’m taking pictures. Remember, this is before Instagram. Those parties—people will come to the party, and then the next day they’re going to Ruby Hornet to look at the photos. Those are some of our most popular posts. So it’s creating this community, and I think that’s really how the network built.”

Closed Sessions began as a project of Ruby Hornet where Fruchter and Kolar would invite rappers to record at Soundscape. The name “Closed Sessions” came from their first experiment, a July 2009 visit from New Orleans independent rap legend Curren$y. He came to Chicago for a show, and while he was here, Ruby Hornet had a cameraman film him at the studio. Kolar recalls Curren$y making only a few simple requests: “Yo, all I want is a lot of weed and the lights dimmed and the session closed.”

Kolar says Ruby Hornet’s livestream and mini documentary of Curren$y’s studio session gained a lot of traction online at a time when other national blogs were being hit with takedown notices for sharing major-label content. Ruby Hornet succeeded with original content, and that was the dawn of Closed Sessions.

“It’s like, hey, let’s start bringing in other artists,” Kolar says. “Alex was a DJ, and he had a residency at Lava Lounge, like a monthly thing. So he started bringing out different artists to come and do a set at his monthly residency—and then come to the studio. And for whatever reason, we were like, the Curren$y model is best. Keep all the bullshit out. Close the session and let the artist curate an environment that they like. Just to make a closed, private space for artists to be artists and to let their guard down and let the camera and the readers kind of peek into their creative process.”

By creating and owning their own content, Closed Sessions helped secure a revenue stream. “I think an important lesson was definitely the value of our content,” Fruchter says. “We licensed Closed Sessions Vol. 2, which we released in August 2012 and I think was our best compilation, and it was two years’ worth of monthly sessions.” That summer, Fruchter licensed Closed Sessions’ documentaries to MTV2, which aired them on the Sunday video-countdown show The Week in Jams (a rebranding of Sucker Free).

One thing that’s always helped Fruchter seal the deal is the power of showing gratitude, which his father taught him growing up. “My dad always told me, early on, if you just say thank you to people, you’ll be ahead of the game,” he says. “Because a lot of people don’t even come back to say thank you.” 

Closed Sessions’ unofficial introduction to the rest of the rap world arrived in March 2010 at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. Fruchter rented a mansion and invited rising acts and veteran rappers from Chicago and across the country to come hang out and record music together. Word of mouth quickly turned the house into a hub, and artists Fruchter hadn’t even contacted started showing up: Paul Wall, J. Cole, Killer Mike, and more. A selection of the sessions would become the 2011 compilation Closed Sessions: ATX.

Longtime Closed Sessions producer BoatHouse recalls that momentous occasion. “Bun B, Curtains, DJ Babu, Freddie Gibbs, Fashawn—like, they’re inviting as many people as they can to this mansion to just record. That was the essence right there. We rented this mansion—who knows what could come from this, but producers come to the mansion and hang out, and then you never know who’s gonna roll through and just make music. That was a true forming of that network, a really pivotal forming.”

Many of these artists were Fruchter’s friends and people he genuinely believed in, but he had another major motivation too: he’d made a decision to be mindful of the lyrical slant of the music he was distributing, so that he could stand behind it. This meant a lot at a time when Chicago drill had the nation by the throat.

Another Closed Sessions artist, Cleveland rapper and producer Kipp Stone, appreciates that the label provides supportive infrastructure he’d otherwise have to build himself. “I’ve always looked at it like me having to work a job, like just a nine-to-five job, while pursuing a rap career,” he explains. “I could be doing that, or I could be running the streets, you know. It’s kind of like that same balance, at least as far as time is concerned. And I think they just understand it. And whenever you sign, or when you tap in with them, there is a plan for real. You just got to stick to the plan.”

^{Kipp Stone’s most recent Closed Sessions album}

Recoechi sees Fruchter as having transcended his status as an outsider to the culture. “He’s an example of how hip-hop has no bounds to what color you are,” he says. “A dude like me, who works in the community—and experiences racism all the time—I never thought I’d be working with a white guy this close, where I trust him with my intellectual property. I trust his discernment because I know he respects hip-hop, and he gonna say if this shit booboo or not. Alex real picky with what he like, and I love that about him—he’s really a fan of this shit.”

When I ask Fruchter if he’s “living the dream,” he answers both ways.

“Yes and no,” he says. “In some regards, 100 percent I’ve lived things I only dreamed about. I was on a boat with BoatHouse, Kweku Collins, and Quentin Tarantino. Those are crazy, crazy experiences. Being able to get booked to play in Thailand and then go around the whole country, meeting the people I’ve met, going from wanting to be in the studio to running a label. So yeah, in that case, definitely living the dream. At the same time, it’s incredibly difficult, and it’s a grind. I’m not sitting here, like, ‘Everything is awesome!’ I’m content, you know. I’ve done a lot, but this industry is very much like, ‘What are you doing right now?’ So I almost don’t even have time to sleep.”

Despite the realities Fruchter has to deal with running a multifaceted record company, he’s still a hip-hop lover first—and when I catch up to him at the Closed Sessions celebration, he’s gleefully excited that one of his favorite DJs of all time is performing.

“I’m fucking stoked that DJ Muggs is playing my label’s 15th anniversary, because I wore out the Cypress Hill CDs,” he says. “I wanted to be in Cypress—like, I wanted to be a member of that group. I pretended to be B-Real all the time. So there’s part of me that’s just like, ‘Man, this is awesome,’ and would be happy if no one comes. But then there’s the real part of me that’s an adult, that’s like, it also has to make sense.”

Fruchter’s longtime friend Andrew Barber (they were classmates at Indiana University Bloomington in the early 2000s) founded the Chicago-based rap blog Fake Shore Drive in 2007. “In the beginning, Fake Shore Drive and Ruby Hornet were the only ones that were doing it,” Barber told Reader writer Leor Galil in 2017. “I learned a lot from Ruby Hornet and Alex and what those guys did early on. They worked hard, and they made me better.”

I ask Barber what Closed Sessions means to Chicago hip-hop today, after 15 years. “They always did good work, always put out quality content, thoughtful content, stayed on brand, stayed on message, and really celebrated just hip-hop, not the BS around it,” he says. “Good music. You know, the essence of hip-hop. I think that’s what, to me, Closed Sessions and Alex always represented—the essence of hip-hop and continuing to build on that legacy.”