Blackland

Today we’d like to introduce you to Drank Anthony and Ma’Lik.

Drank Anthony and Ma’Lik, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
Ma’Lik and I (Drank Anthony) were born in Palestine, TX. A small East Texas town with a population under 20,000 people. Growing up in the South End part of town, we say our fair share of good and bad things but one thing that always kept us engaged and entertained was music. Our mom and pops had a very wide range of music. From my dad showing up RUN DMC, Frankie Beverly and Maze, Gil Scott Heron, Roy Ayres and Elton John. To my mom’s love of Mary J. Blige, Lauryn Hill, Nate Dogg and her all-time favorite Snoop Dogg. With all this music around, we fall in love with it. Our biggest influence came when my cousin showed me No Limit and DJ Screw. After that, I wanted to be Master P and Fat Pat lol. We started doing little Raps in our room and had our cousins John, Joseph and Boo doing the same. We started taking Music seriously around 2014, that’s when we moved to Laredo. It was our practice grounds. We learned how to perform for a crowd and also how to make actually mixtapes. In 2018 we moved to Austin and things started moved faster.. we met our Manager Zack(The Birdhouse) at a show we did before we officially moved to Austin. He liked what he saw and thought we would be cool to record. He said he would be in touch and sure enough about a week later, he DM us and we was on the way to The Birdhouse. From there, we started knocking out shows from Houston, San Marcos, Corpus Christi and most all festivals. SXSW last year was a big look for us.

Has it been a smooth road?
Some of the biggest struggles and challenges happened when we left our hometown for Laredo in 2014. We both had good jobs and was making a nice living there, but when we moved to Laredo it was a whole different story. The jobs didn’t pay half of what we made in Palestine. Drank went from $19.00/hr to $8.75/hr. And I (Ma’Lik) went from fast food to fast-food chain working two or more at a time just to make rent. It was days where we had nothing to eat… And I mean nothing! No bread, no eggs, no noodles… Nothing! It was 4 (Drank, TNS Ray, Jono and myself) of us in a three bed one bath appt. Well, really it was two bedrooms and a glorified closet lol. We only survived cause of our neighbors Maggie and Vinny and Drank’s GF Jackie. They all feed us when we only had money for rent and gas. That plus a music scene that wasn’t really for rap made it hard to really get attention down there, but we did.

Please tell us about BlackLand.
BlackLand!

So BlackLand is made up of Ma’Lik and myself (Drank Anthony). We have gone through many name changes from P.Y.S, T.E.E.N.S, LOUD and finally to BlackLand. Our dad gave us that name back when we were kids. I didn’t like it at first cause it wasn’t flashy enough lol but after I really found my identity, it was the perfect fit. If you know about our music we are all about the advancement of our people. One of our bigger tracks is KEMET. Which translates to the Ancient land of the blacks, BlackLand.

Our proudest moment have been opening up for Bone thugs back in 2016. We jammed them coming up also so that was a good look!

What sets us apart from other? I’d say talent. Not saying that to sound cocky but just how we feel. Anybody can make music and make words rhyme but to have a message behind it and not sound corny or preachy, not everyone can do that.

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
Within the next five years, we would like to see our brand and message get out there more. We are working with a few artist and helping mold them for the industry. We have our little cousin (Lil Damo) getting ready to drop another project he’s only 15 and did he first project in one studio session, amazing! And also, you will see more of our vision put out there. Drank has directed the last four videos of ours and has been the driving force behind Lil Damo projects. Plus, I (Ma’Lik) is currently working on my stand-alone project. So where do we see ourselves in 5-10 years? It’s No Limit to the possibility - Voyage Houston

Austin has and has always had a rich culture of a Black artists enriching the city's culture in a multitude of ways.


As we continue our initiatives to engage and support the Black community that Austin owes so much of its success to, we offer up this running list of some of the Black Artists that are putting in work in our community. Queue up a playlist, throw some money towards Venmos, buy some visual art, and keep checking out all the ways you can create change in Austin with this Resource Guide.



Also check out Black Art Matters ATX: a partnership between Austin Justice Coalition and Austin Creative Alliance, lifting Black artistic voices. Because BLACK ART MATTERS, they are now accepting proposals for visual, musical, performance, literary and cinematic art by Black artists living in Austin, Texas. Proposals will be reviewed by a curatorial panel. Funding will be based on funds availability. Chosen proposals will be reviewed for artistic content and relevance to what is happening today. There is no deadline - proposals will be reviewed and funded on a rolling basis indefinitely - Do512