It’s July in Detroit and it’s hot, like hot , hot. Hot enough to make the radiator in your Hellcat overheat and make your Vernors explode in the backseat. But you wouldn’t know it from looking at hip-hop artist Courtney Bell. He’s sitting on his porch in between phone calls about studio time and stage time. He’s dressed lax — a white tank top, black joggers, and there’s not a bead of perspiration anywhere on him on this 90-degree day.
For Bell, 29, the summer of 2024 has been a reemergence from a four-year hiatus. He dropped his mixtape Microdose in May with Detroit all-star Royce da 5’9”, performed at Detroit’s Backwoods and Bonfires festival, and was even in Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” video (and in attendance at the rapper’s huge Juneteenth show).
Lamar is a family friend to Bell, who has been going back and forth to Cali well before he was doing music. He says being a witness to Lamar’s ascent to stardom has been inspiring. “From the artist’s perspective, it’s like, ‘OK God, you got me in the realm with one of the greatest rappers of all time.’ And I can work and be in the same kind of space if I keep working,” Bell says.
Bell grew up on the same Joy Road as Tee Grizzley (they’re actually first cousins), graduated from Cody High School, and describes himself as an intelligent kid who dabbled in street shit.
“I was smart as hell. Everybody knew me,” he says. “My nickname was Dexter [after Dexter’s Laboratory ] because of how good I was with numbers. I also had a flip side to me. I grew up in gang culture. I was book smart but I was outside. I experienced that duality being in high school.”
Bell was also good with rhyming, wrote poetry, and displayed a natural knack for penning words over music. Rapping came naturally as he acquired a love for hip-hop and was inspired by 2Pac, Jay-Z, Nas, and several local greats.
“My favorite artist of all time is Street Lord Juan, hands down,” Bell says adamantly. “And then I’m going to give it to Blade [Icewood] and Big Herc, for his ability to tell stories and articulate himself on a street level.”
As time went by Bell was self-aware enough to know that he had a lot of raw talent he wasn’t nurturing. He saw hip-hop was something he did when he wasn’t hustling. It was shared vocation with street life, but he didn’t embrace it as his calling. Eventually his peers started to nudge him to pour more of himself into his music.
“My big homies pulled me to the side like, ‘Yo you're still active out there and you can really rap,’” he says.
For the first time Bell turned more of his attention to music than the streets, and the result was his first album, 2018’s 10 Commandments (which was actually completed in 2016). The album consisted of 10 melodious songs in which Bell lyrically explored upliftment through spiritually, while acknowledging the pressures of being addicted to the streets.
“ I’ve been drowning in this holy water/ watching all these black kings get slaughtered. Cause Lord knows, for my beliefs I turn into a martyr to save my people from this new world order ,” he raps in “Duality (Commandment II).”
“I wanted my first body [of] work to be my first fruit to God … That’s what got me noticed,” he says, adding that it was inspired by the Hebrew Israelite movement.”
10 Commandments did more than get him noticed — it was an M-80 thrown right in the sphere of a Detroit hip-hop scene that was thriving off of trap narratives. Bell released the album independently and revealed there was no big marketing push or budget and the entire ascension was organic. “The stars just aligned,” he says.
As the streams and attention grew, record labels RCA, Def Jam, and Kevin “Coach K” Lee of Quality Control reached out about signing him to a record deal. Bell was hesitant. He was 21 and anti-corporate. “I didn’t want to sign,” he says. “I was super conscious and in an aware state of being at that time. I had just converted over to being vegan, like I ain’t fuck with the industy … My team talked to me. Like, ‘Let’s see, let’s just fuck with RCA.’”
Bell went along with it and signed a two-album deal with RCA. Less than a year later his second project, Poverty Stricken , was released.
“They say that he dope, but he be preachin’/ How the world don’t accept him?/ He teach without overreachin’/ He can kick it in the hood with the killers and still reach ’em/ And converse with the minds of the conscious, that nigga got it, uh,” he raps in “ GB4 .”
Poverty Stricken was a deviation from the Hebew Israelite themes of 10 Commandments as Bell was even more open about his dealings with street life and his desire to be a better man. The lyrical transparency between both albums earned him a “conscious rapper” title, but Bell has never wanted to be labeled.
“I didn’t want to be attached to being a conscious rapper because at the end of the day I am that,” he says. “You not walking around saying Nas is a conscious rapper, even though he is. He raps about everything, he raps about everybody.”
RCA wanted to release Poverty Stricken as more of a mixtape to use the project as leadoff batter to get Bell on base which would set up the next album to be a homerun. Bell didn’t agree with the strategy. He had already scrapped half of the first version of the album due to sample clearances and felt Poverty Stricken deserved the big-label push. Bell mentally checked out and decided to move on from RCA. He holds no grudges with the label and admits he blames his actions on immaturity.
“I’m fresh off street shit so I’m walking in being a nigga in the building,” he says. “It’s a difference between Courtney the artist and being Courtney the businessman … that was a learning curve for me.”
Bell gravitated back to the streets, a place where he knew how to make money. He also struggled with the loss of his grandmother, his brother, his sister, and his best friend.
“Dealing with all of these deaths in a year or two span, all these people that were very close to me. I gave myself the proper time to grieve. The music is always going to be here,” he says.
Bell sought to connect to himself on a deeper level. He joined the psychedelic community and went on an ayahuasca retreat, an experience that he says was “beautiful” and “life-changing.” He emerged focused and healed. Around the same time, he befriended Detroit emcee Royce da 5’9” and began transitioning himself back into music.
“I didn’t find the point where I could trust God completely until me and Royce got in the studio together in 2022,” he confesses. “We started to lock in and kick it, kick it. I had to take accountability like, “You’re the reason you’re not where you can be musically.’”
Bell released mixtapes Microdose in May followed up by Microdose Darkide on Friday July, 19 under Yahbody LLC and MNRK Records LP. Both projects show the duality that Bell has had to balance most of his life. Microdose shows the more boom-bap and insightful sides of Bell while Microdose Darkside is grittier and more trap-driven (but still has some spiritual undertones). The mixtapes are his first in four years.
On “ Hebrews 13:6 ” off of Microdose Darkside with Skilla Baby, he raps, “I be praying a lot, no need to worry known to keep the peace/ I know Christian niggas that will murk you in a Jesus piece.”
But on “ Word II Conway ” off of Microdose he raps, “Talk to the dealer and the deacon, they the same and they don’t see it/ Every Sunday, preachin’ first and the fifteenth, my niggas eatin’.”
“I always do my best to be authentically myself,” he says. “Right now I’ve already experimented with the consciousness side. I’ve seen what that fanbase looks like and what it could potentially look like if I stay consistent. And on the street side, I know what niggas want to hear. It’s about finding that balance and not losing morality with myself trying to please people and get fans.”
Bell is a creative’s creative. He incorporates various techniques when he’s behind the mic. He doesn’t prefer anyone in the studio when he’s recording and he’s willing to write, punch his bars, or do whatever it takes to make a dope song.
“I still do voice notes,” he says. “If I hear a beat, I’ll come up with a cadence. Outside of that I haven’t been writing. I like that approach [of punching in lyrics] way more because I haven’t been thinking as much. I’m just writing how I feel. It’s different tools you pull out your toolbox.”
Moving forward, Bell is ready to embrace the next wave of his career. He plans to implement the steadiness it takes to be great. Much like Boldy James, Bell has the admiration and respect from both his hip-hop peers in the boom-bap community as well as the trap side. A full-length album is planned for early next year and he wants to be a mainstay on stage.
“I feel like I am going to be something that a lot of people are going to look toward to and want to embody,” he says, adding, “You don’t have somebody in our generation that embodies the spirit of Pac with the ability to weave between both, that’s what I’m seeking to do.”
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