KC rappers remember impact of historic record store on local underground rap scene

Editor's Note: This interview is part of an ongoing Star series highlighting Kansas Citians from historically under-represented communities and their impact on our region. The series builds on The Star's efforts to improve coverage of local communities. Do you know someone we should interview? Share ideas with our reporter J.M. Banks.

For the past 50 years 7 ^th Heaven, at 7621 Troost Ave. has been an institution for musicians in Kansas City’s underground hip-hop scene. With the store now shutting down, some of those artists who relied on the place to sell their sound, remember how it helped give them a start.

Originally opening as a record store selling a variety of music genres, the business flourished in the late 1990s and early 2000s by capitalizing on the talent of Kansas City hip-hop artists whose music was underrepresented at other music stores around the city.

Many local rappers wanted to break into the industry without the backing of a major record label, but that meant they had few options for getting their music out. That’s where 7th Heaven came in.

Kansas City Hip-hop veteran and entrepreneur Walter Edwin, known to fans as The Popper, credits 7 ^th Heaven with helping to establish the KC hip-hop scene and its culture.

“It is one of those things you tell the younger generation. You just had to be there to understand,” said Edwin. “This was before the internet when you actually had to go out and search for music. There is a lifetime of memories in that place that I will never forget. It was like family.”

For many local rappers, including Tech N9ne and Rich The Factor, 7 ^th Heaven was the only avenue for promoting their music and getting their names out. For Edwin, 50, the location was more than a place to sell his music, it was exactly where the persona of The Popper was born.

“I would always come in and ask what’s popping? One day Icy Rock (a local producer) was up there and he was imitating me and asked me what’s popping and called me ‘The Popper’ and I was like that is it,” Edwin said.

Edwin’s first solo album, “Turning Point,” released in 1998, was sold at 7th Heaven along with every release since.

Because of his long history with the music store and its founder and owner Jan Fichman, Edwin is saddened by the closing but thankful for the years of support he received from the establishment.

He believes that 7 ^th Heaven was ahead of the curve in many respects and that was one of the main reasons for its longevity. The record shop was a place that not only sold hard-to-find local music, it also shipped in music by underground artists from all over the country. Because of this, music enthusiast from surrounding states would travel to the Kansas City store for the chance to discover new hip-hop artists they otherwise might never come in contact with.

“When I tell you people used to travel from Nebraska and Oklahoma to pick up CDs,” said Mitchell Irving, a Kansas City, Kansas artist who performs under the name Irv Da Phenom. “It became a lot bigger than local artists. People would come from all over because they knew 7 ^th Heaven would have all the independent releases. So it became this big part of the independent music world for a lot of places.”

In a time before online music streaming many consumers’ musical tastes were limited to what they heard playing on the radio. Irving, used to travel from his native KCK to Troost just to find out what was new in the underground music world. For him the location was like a library for people who loved music and wanted to be ahead of the musical trends of the time.

“It was instrumental for the come up of a lot of artists from the city,” Irving said. “The fact they dealt in mixtapes was big for us. A lot of music places wouldn’t carry mixtapes, but 7 ^th Heaven had all the DJ mixes and it really had the streets in there because they were on the ground level of whatever was on the way out.”

Both artists see the closing as an end of an era for KC rap music. Though sales of physical music — vinyl and CDs — has been down over the years due to online streaming, 7 ^th Heaven over the years has diversified to serve other markets to bring in revenue.

In more recent years it’s become more known as one of the area’s top head shops and stocked arguably the largest inventory of smoking accessories in the city. The upstairs section of the store serves as an adult toy store and the smoke shop.

Over the last decade the store also had some success with the reemergence in popularity of vinyl record collecting.

Irving is disappointed that his newest release “Big Lover,” which is now being printed on vinyl, will not grace the walls of the shop, but he is thankful to have been apart of the experience that was 7 ^th Heaven.

“It was homegrown,” said Irving. “They had a genuine passion for music and brought together those other music heads in the city that shared that passion.”