Finding his sole calling

Local rap artist Cameron McClure is hoping to hit it big in hip hop

By Joshua D. Scroggin

Cameron McClure saw a red dot dancing around on the front of his shirt, and it changed his life.

McClure and a friend were getting into a car after a night of revelry on New Year’s Eve 2003 when he looked down and saw it.

It was the laser sight of a Glock 9mm pistol, and the man brandishing it was walking toward the car.

“ One of the guys I was with had some problems, some issues, some beef,” McClure said. “And the guy was coming out to really lay into something.”

Instead, McClure and his friend laid into the gas pedal.

“ We sped off, and I was like, ‘OK, I don’t get down like that,” McClure said.

That was when McClure said he decided to distance himself from the criminal activity that seemed to be finding him and give more concentration to his “calling”—music.

“ I wasn’t raised like that, but I was around [crime] a lot,” McClure said.

“ I was going through a lot of stuff, and the only way to keep my sanity was through music.”

McClure has endured a family illness, a bout with anxiety and a couple of false callings to come to the conclusion that making music that appeals to a mass audience is what he was meant to do.

Almost a year after the gun incident, McClure, whose stage name is Sole Profit, is mixing it up in making it big in hip hop.

But the D’AByss Entertainment artist and Fresno State student won’t let himself forget the hardships he went through before he decided to get serious about his music.

“ I embrace [my past] and talk about it ’cause it was there,” McClure said. “It really shaped me as an emcee.”

Part of McClure’s emcee-shaping experience was his mother’s four bouts with cancer in 1996. McClure, who was 16 at the time, was prescribed anti-depressants to deal with the anxiety he experienced worrying about his mother’s health.

“ [The situation] kind of took me over the edge,” McClure said. “I just had to calm that down.”

The 23-year-old McClure said he’s better able to cope with his angst now that he’s older and more experienced.

“ Real hardships teach you how to cope with things,” McClure said.

It was this process of learning how to cope with his hardships that McClure said turned him into an ardent pessimist, but he’s confident the album he’s working on now—a follow up to his first album, Soul Searching—will earn him the mass appeal few Fresno emcees have been able to achieve.

“ Fresno hasn’t produced a plethora of great emcees,” McClure said. “Very few emcees have come out of here very hot.”

Despite his pessimism, McClure intends to exit Fresno with some heat, and made the assurance that a poor-performing Sole Profit album would never hit the shelves.

“ I wouldn’t come out if I thought people weren’t gonna feel [my music],” McClure said. “I wouldn’t even come out as an artist.”

McClure said he didn’t want to jinx his future rise to hip-hop stardom by estimating a timetable for his ascent from the depths of the local rap scene, but he said there is a sense of urgency when contemplating his potential period of productivity.

“ If you want to be a marketable commodity, there’s an age limit,” McClure said. “You can’t be on stage at 42, spittin’ the same old rhymes, but you can always make good music.”

And good music is the biggest part of McClure’s plot to appeal to the masses.

“ I like to have mass appeal,” McClure said. “That doesn’t mean commercial; it means mass appeal. It means something that’s nice and crispy about a song, something you can listen to and say, ‘I like that. That’s good.’”

But pleasing the masses is only a part of the reason McClure has dedicated so much time and money to making music. His inspiration is more meaningful to him than the struggles he goes through to achieve his goals.

McClure said he has put about $10,000 into recording his albums.

“ I don’t have a car; I’m on my bike, but I’m OK with that. I’m alright with that because I did what I want to do, and I’m still doing it.”

But what inspires someone to enhance the already cash-strapped lifestyle of a full-time student working on the side to pay the bills?

“ I think life inspires it,” McClure said. “Life inspires me, and I know my calling. I know I was here to make great music.”

McClure makes this statement because he’s already sorted through two false callings after the Visalia native arrived at Fresno State on a track scholarship in 1998.

Injuries and eligibilty troubles surrounding the number of classes he was taking forced McClure to leave the track team.

He then joined the campus ROTC, which he might have had a future in at some point.

“ I was good at it,” McClure said. “It was easy. All you have to do is follow directions.”

But because he was still following his doctor’s directions and taking his anti-anxiety medication, McClure was forced to leave the ROTC, which would not allow him to participate as long as he was on constant medication.

McClure said now that he has found his true calling, life is a lot easier.

“ I wake up and it just feels right,” McClure said. “(Making music) is a part of my day. It’s my routine. I don’t have to get motivated to do it.”

But he said it doesn’t really matter to him what people get out of listening to his music.

“ They can take what they want from it,” McClure said. “It’s my story.”