How D.C. Rapper Noochie Built a Phenomenon From His Porch

I
f you’ve watched any of D.C. rapper Noochie’s Live From the Front Porch YouTube performance series, you’ve seen his front steps, where stars like the Lox, Chance the Rapper, and Robin Thicke have all performed with live instrumentalists to the tune of more than six million views. But upon visiting his home recently, I quickly learn that the key to his success is a couple yards offscreen on the front lawn, where dozens of crew members are setting up five cameras, enormous speakers, and a giant white tarp before the arrival of Cordae and Anderson .Paak for today’s performance.

Noochie immediately daps me when I walk onto his lawn and invites me into the home, tucked away on a back street featuring similarly detached, single-family properties as far as the eye can see. The home is astir with several people watching the Thicke episode, released earlier that day. Some of the production staff move briskly about the space. I see the signatures of previous performers scrawled on a living room wall, alongside artwork and a photo of James Brown. Later that day .Paak tells the crowd that Brown is his biggest inspiration. I ask Noochie if the image was placed there for .Paak; turns out it’s been there for a while. The scribbled walls and hordes of guests (as well as juicy, flavorful barbecue offerings from DCity Smokehouse) give the front room a green-room vibe — it just happens to double as Noochie’s actual home. 

By the time I walk back outside, about 10 minutes later, the white tarp has disappeared. I later learn that the fierce fall wind bent one of the poles holding it up. The crew is undeterred, quickly finding a workaround. After a year of recording From the Front Porch, they’ve learned how to roll with the punches. And my hour-long discussion with Noochie reveals that it’s a trait he’s been fine-tuning his entire life. 

Along with being the director and executive producer of From the Front Porch, he’s also an unheralded lyricist who deftly chronicles his life and times on projects like 2017’s New Regular and his Sneaky Tape series (he recently released Sneaky Tape 3). The son of currently incarcerated D.C. rap pioneer Roger “Oneway Boobe” Vincent Jr. (of local legends the Oy Boyz), Noochie signed to Atlantic Records in 2017, then left the label two years later. He soon resolved to take things into his own hands, releasing independent projects and promoting them with clips of himself rapping on his front porch. What began as marketing now has him planning what he promises will be a star-studded From the Front Porch live event at the Kennedy Center next spring. 

“It’s going to be a hell of a pillar,” he says of the event being held at one of the country’s prime performing arts venues. “I’m excited about it because a lot of people don’t know what to expect. I don’t even know what to expect because this is uncharted territory.” 

There are many online performance series, such as NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts, On the Radar, and Colors. Live From the Front Porch separates itself from the pack as one of the only series with a recognizable host, and the only one with an unmistakably D.C. vibe. From having guests like go-go royalty Backyard Band to featuring Noochie’s New Balances and Washington Commanders fits, the series is a welcome beacon for a region that’s still not as culturally recognized as it should be. No matter who’s performing, the show’s aesthetic feels like a true-to-home glimpse of the DMV. 

Noochie grew up in southeast D.C. with his parents and five siblings. He says his upbringing was spent closely following his father, Boobe, as he pursued his music career. “It was a lot of [being] in the studio, around a bunch of OGs, around a bunch of street shit,” he remembers, insisting it wasn’t “in a bad way” as he was able to parse the dos and don’ts of living in the DMV. 

Boobe and his music peers initially called themselves Boobe and the Young Farmers, then Oneway Records. Eventually, they decided to use the first and last letter of “Oneway” because the funk band One Way had the name already. The “Oy” term is still associated with Barry Farms, the well-known southeast neighborhood where Boobe’s rap partners are from. Boobe’s Oy Boyz partner Don Choo is on the set for most of the shoot at Noochie’s house, radiating a subtle aura of oversight. I’m also told later that well-known DJ P Cutta (of Street Wars mixtape fame) was briefly on set, though I missed him amongst the crowd of roughly 40 people. Even on an early Wednesday afternoon, the shoot feels like the place to be.

Noochie tells me his focus on community comes from his father. “My dad was always the nucleus of a lot of shit, whether it be musicians, family members that needed shit — he was always like, ‘Whatever,’” he remembers. “Fat Trel, Shy Glizzy…” he adds, naming two of the region’s most popular rappers. “I seen him give them a place to record and be safe away from any negative street shit that’s going on.” 

Boobe was incarcerated in 2018 after pleading to a 15-year sentence in a case Noochie would rather not speak on. Noochie says he talks with his father often, and feels like his own moves in the DMV are a “full circle” reflection of his father’s legacy. Noochie is undoubtedly the nucleus of today’s shoot, alternately coordinating with his production crew, talking with loved ones on the lawn, and occasionally disappearing back into the home to speak with .Paak and Cordae. He’s also the designated PA announcer. 

At one point, he takes the mic to tell the owner of a Black Malibu they’re blocking the driveway, deadpan joking, “That’s disrespectful…and y’all wrong for lettin’ him do it.” Cordae and .Paak, who arrived on set in separate, equally mammoth black SUVs that scream “somebody important is in here,” are in good spirits, briskly heading to the back of the home before coming out in attire reppin’ their regions: Oxnard, California, native Paak is wearing a red flannel, while PG County’s Cordae wears a black, gray, and white hoodie from local brand Solbiato, which is basically DMV high fashion. The two do a brief sound check, entertaining the crowd with wisecracks as they build a rapport with the instrumentalists. 

There’s no dedicated From the Front Porch band; Noochie has a wide network of musicians he works with, and he also lets artists use their own bands if that’s their preference. Today, the band is Jamal Moore on drums, Frank Javois on bass, Sean Miles on the keys, Derek “Pooh” Lyons on congos, and Melmoth Chung on the guitar — he doubles as the show’s musical director. Noochie’s brother Que the Q is the show’s DJ. Miles tells me that the team sometimes finds out about the next From the Front Porch act as little as a day in advance, and have to quickly learn the artist’s music. 

Eventually, the sound check is over and it’s time for the cameramen to record. “No recording, don’t even put your phone up, just be here,” Noochie implores the packed lawn.

Later that day, Noochie tells me the last time he saw .Paak was in a studio in L.A. while the other artist was mixing his 2018 LP Oxnard. This was while Noochie was signed to Atlantic in the industry-crash-course chapter of his career. That phase had begun in 2012, when he dropped his first video, “Gotta Go,” on Worldstar, then headed to Atlanta to further his career (earlier, his father had briefly moved the family to Atlanta for his own music pursuits during Noochie’s middle-school years). It was in the Black entertainment mecca where Noochie met producer Kevin “Shek’spre” Giggs and industry veteran Demetrius “Doe” Henderson. He credits Shek’spre for helping refine his songwriting, while Doe helped him learn how to work a room. During that period, he worked with producer Jazze Pha to craft “One Day,” a single from his 2016 project Product of the DMV. 

The song’s success led producer Om’Mas Keith to sign Noochie to his Atlantic Records imprint, Popular Recordings, in 2017. Noochie quickly wound up in L.A. studio sessions with stars like .Paak, J. Cole, Dr. Dre, and Chad Hugo of the Neptunes. “I’m in Malibu, we at the SoHo house,” he recalls. “I’m just experiencing rich nigga shit. I’m like, ‘OK.’ ” He credits those fly-on-the-wall experiences with teaching him how to take more risks with his music. “You don’t have to be bragging, you don’t have to come up with shit,” he says. “There’s so much stuff you done been through in life that you can talk about.” 

While he was crafting his Atlantic debut, he says, “We identified that Atlantic wasn’t really fuckin’ with Om’Mas like that.” He says the two still have a great relationship, but surmises, “It don’t make sense to be putting out music owned by these people if they not really doing nothing” for his career. He was able to leave the label without much pushback, and headed back to D.C. 

Around the same time, the trucking business his father had started was in peril after his incarceration, and Noochie decided to keep things afloat by driving one of the trucks. Though he was working a day job, he also kept on truckin’ with his music career. He’d spend days on the road, hauling materials across the DMV while listening to beats and writing rhymes. And in between shifts, he’d make quick trips across the country to handle business. 

“Sometimes I’d get off and I had to come in, change, and then go to an event and perform a song, or go to this Grammy mingle or whatever,” he says. “Or I had to go to another city just for this weekend, just for the day. Wasn’t even really no plan. Just whatever makes sense, whatever the goal is right now, that’s what we doing. “

Newly independent, Noochie released Sneaky Tape and Sneaky Tape 2. To promote the latter, he began freestyling on his front porch, rapping over Jaden Smith’s “Icon” in the first video. The positive reception was instant, encouraging him to drop more weekly #FrontPorchFreestyles. The idea to invite others to his porch came from a pretty unlikely place for a kid from Southeast: Daryll Hall from Hall and Oates. Noochie tells me one of his favorite pastimes is watching live performances on YouTube. During one session last summer, he saw an episode of Live from Daryl’s House where Hall was singing with Cee-Lo Green. “It was just like, ‘I ain’t never seen no shit like this before,’ ” he says. “And it’s free.“

He brainstormed how to turn his Front Porch show into an amalgamation of his favorite performance platforms of yesteryear, including The Arsenio Hall Show, Total Request Live, 106 & Park, Unplugged, Rap City: Tha Basement, and many more. He says he’s seeking to channel the energy of those ‘90s and ‘00s favorites for a generation of viewers for whom YouTube is their silver screen. “We in such a phone world,” Noochie says. “People [are] swiping so much. That’s how fast you got to get somebody’s attention. A TV time slot is not really the best thing any more.” 

Last summer Noochie asked singer Raheem DeVaughn and D.C. go-go legends Ms. Kim and Backyard Band to perform for what were then called “special editions” of his video series (Backyard founding member Big G is nationally known for playing Slim Charles on The Wire). Noochie says that the trio of guest acts were the last people that he had to ask to be on the platform — they set off a wave of acts seeking out Noochie to get on the Front Porch. The series now drops on a weekly basis, with Noochie planning to record into the winter as he did last year. 

“We had a fire pit, we had firewood, we had hand warmers, and we’d hurry up and get it on the first take,” he says of last year’s cold-weather shoots. “But now I might get some heaters installed. I feel like it’s a landmark now — people should donate heaters and stuff.” 

During the shoot with .Paak and Cordae, there’s no chill to speak of. Standing on the lawn, production coordinator Reginald “Reggie” Grier notes, “it’s a beautiful day” that gave them the option to finish the shoot and “go about our business.” Paak leaves after performing several songs with Cordae, and now people are waiting for Cordae to change and rest before a solo set. The crowd has trickled out a bit, but there are still plenty of people around. On the lawn, crew members and their friends are talking about boxing and the music industry over barbecue and cold Modelos. Keyboardist Sean Miles is kicking a soccer ball with his son in a corner of the well-manicured grass. 

The easygoing behind-the-scenes atmosphere is key to Noochie’s show. After all, he’s known much of the production crew, comprised solely of Black and Brown men, since before From the Front Porch started. Fasica “Slizz” Berhanu and Choo’s son Jilani Sutton are two of Noochie’s most trusted videographers because they’ve worked with him throughout his career. And Grier is an entertainment industry veteran who helped Noochie learn the ins and outs of video production. Noochie’s time working with Grier on the set of the Kevin Durant-inspired Apple TV+ show Swagger taught him the equipment he’d need to purchase for the From the Front Porch. He tells me that he eventually envisions launching Front Porch Productions so he can contract the crew out to other entities. 

He’s come a long way from the early days of the series, where he recorded himself on a phone and felt sheepish while neighbors walked by. “It felt crazy, but I’m like, ‘Fuck that, 1,000 people might like this.’ ” Now, he has more than 89,000 YouTube subscribers. When I ask how his neighbors feel about the constant filming, he says, “They don’t give a fuck. They see it on YouTube and they know it’s a thing. Nobody complains about it. If anything, people come out and look.”

Though I don’t see any of Noochie’s immediate neighbors emerging during the five-hour shoot I attend, they’ll have more chances to drop by. And maybe some of them will attend the Kennedy Center show, an honor Noochie says he wanted more than any venue in his area because he feels like it will help get his platform “taken seriously.” When I ask who he wants to be taken seriously by, he notes, “Anybody that I walk in the room and have to explain” what he’s doing to. So far, he says, “the quality’s enticed the exact type of artist that we want.” He tells me he has a whiteboard in his home with artists and “the degrees of separation that I could get to them.” Earlier that day, he tells me his dream acts are Stevie Wonder, Snoop Dogg, Kanye West, Jill Scott, and Erykah Badu. (He even shows me a video of a verbal commitment from one of those acts.) But he also mentions that he’d love to have bands like Green Day or Living Colour perform. 

In time, Noochie says he also dreams of a Front Porch festival, and having exclusive coverage on a major visual streaming platform. When I ask how he balances his dreams with keeping the platform’s authenticity, he tells me he’s intent on not straying too far from the porch. 

“I’m very stern on this,” he says. “When it come to where they shot at, they got to be here. This is how it happened. I looked at the Rap City documentary, and they used to be in D.C., but when they changed the host and they thought they were doing bigger things, it went down after that. That was a clear indicator: Don’t go nowhere, stay home.” 

He adds, “D.C. has gotten behind us. Go-go music is what helped propel it. Me coming to rap on the porch, in here, at this house is so iconic and important.”