Big Lou Tailgating

Lou Rip likes to say things with a straight face. Outlandish, crazy shit, with a perfectly flat expression. But then his stern mouth, way up at the tippy-top of his 6-foot-7-inch frame, cracks into a toothy grin, and it turns out that Lou’s totally fucking with you.

So when he says he’s left his three-man hip-hop group, Ukuepto, to become the newest member of the Soul Servers, it takes a minute to figure out that he’s not joking.

But it makes perfect sense. Lou Rip (real name: Jevon Fisher) had already been writing tracks with one member of the Soul Servers, Deuce Fontane, for a side project that the two call the Bluez Brothers. He was making guest appearances onstage during Soul Servers songs with the subject of the Servers’ logo — the spork — tucked into his bandana. And he could always be found on Sundays at the Peanut’s Hip-Hop and Hot Wings, standing in the vicinity of the Soul Servers — Smoov Confusion, PL and Deuce — holding a tall glass of rum and Coke and wearing his signature attire: a polo shirt, color-coordinated kicks and plastic wristbands. The Soul Servers and Lou are a match that everyone should have already seen coming.

Besides, no one could spell Ukuepto.

“United Kings with Unending Evolution Piecing Tunes Organized,” Lou Rip says robotically, reciting his former group’s anagram. “It’s simple! Who can’t remember that?” He laughs. “I didn’t come up with the word. I was just like, Yeah. That’s it. Ukuepto. I’m gonna look that up in the — oh, it’s not in the dictionary? OK. Let’s roll with it.”

The group’s break-up was friendly, he says. It was just time to grab the spork.

When Lou Rip walks down the sidewalk, people give him a wide berth. His face, when relaxed, falls into a stone-cold expression. But underneath that badass exterior is a 31-year-old dude who sucks at basketball, considers himself a dork and rolls around KCK listening to Ace of Base. The Soul Servers are simply a better fit.

“The Soul Servers, they’re talking about having a good time, kickin’ it,” he says. “Ukuepto’s talking about raising funds to fix the chip on the Statue of Liberty. We were real serious. We made the beats in a manner that were, like, party, kick it, but the message was in your face, hardcore. And it wasn’t really true to my persona. I’m not a serious person all the time. I kind of wanted to get away from that. If I want to talk about peanut butter, fine, we can talk about peanut butter. The Soul Servers and Bluez Brothers kind of provide that freedom for me.”

Lou Rip writes his rhymes on a busted T-Mobile Sidekick that lacks service, and he works at Sprint. If it weren’t for cell phones, his alliance with the Soul Servers might never have happened.

“Me and Deuce exchanged numbers, and the very next day, he was text-messaging the shit out of me,” Lou says. “I was like, I’m not used to people text messaging me like this. But the stuff he was saying was funny, so we started text messaging each other back and forth, back and forth, and started hanging out more. We realized we had so much in common, and we’d been talking about doing an album together for a long time.”

Lou Rip performed with the Soul Servers during their breakthrough gig of the year. It was December 9 at the Brooksider, the sports bar usually thought of as a hangout for golfers and women with Tiffany’s hearts dangling from their wrists. Lou had never been there before.

“Didn’t even know the place existed,” he says. “Well, at least that section of Brookside. I’ve been down there before, getting harassed and whatnot. But never been down there to hang out. That was really huge for Kansas City hip-hop, to be able to go down there and not only actually have permission to do a show, but to go down there and just blow everything away.”

The crowd was tentative at first, Lou says, but by the second song, the Brooksider was wall-to-wall with newly converted Soul Servers fans.

“We weren’t up there talkin’ about rims and all this other bullshit. We was talking about some real shit. Some cool shit. The very second song we did was a song me and Deuce did called, ‘Papa, Please Forgive Them.’ It’s a pretty deep joint. Basically, Deuce is talking about all the wrongdoers on the religious side, people who claim that they’re all about God or whatever, but they’re doing things behind closed doors…. You know, everyone in the crew has some kind of lyrical content to their rhymes, and I think people could really appreciate that.”

Now that the Soul Servers are a foursome, 2007 is going to be full of new challenges. PL and Lou are working on solo albums, and PL hopes to start a record label, all under the umbrella of the Soul Servers. And they hope to tour.

“Dude, I will go to Iraq,” Lou says. “I will perform in the middle of the battlefield, for real. Like, seriously, in front of the troops. Get world peace crackin’. For real, all we gotta do is sing “Hey, Lady” and everyone will be on some Kumbaya-type shit … 2007 is going to be about moving to the next phase.”

Lou smiles. “We’re putting ourselves in the position, not only to help the hip-hop scene here but also so we can say, ‘Sprint! Faaaack youuuu!'”

Then his face drops back to stony seriousness. “But in a nice, politically correct manner.”

Lou Rip and Deuce Fontane (the Bluez Brothers). Sunday, January 7, at the Peanut Downtown. Also this month: the Soul Servers. Tuesday, January 16, at the Hangout.