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As an employee of Da Great Golden Arches I felt the need to express myself via rappin' about my appreciation of McDonald's
Copyright © 2004 Noblesville Daily Times Front Page News
Far from the Mo'
Noblesville rap artist documents life change in song
By Scott W.L. Daravanis | Daily Times
Posted: 12/16/04 - 11:25:13 am EST
Carlos Loco works on new material for an upcoming album at MMC Studio on 8th Street in Noblesville. Loco sang his debut rap hit "Noblesville" at the Good Samaritan telethon on Dec. 4.
Carlos Loco doesn't have to worry about Noblesville Mayor John Ditslear taking over his job someday. Ditslear did his best to dance to Loco's debut rap hit "Noblesville" near the end of the Good Samaritan telethon Dec. 4 on HomeTown Television.
"Me in my blue suit and red tie n I wasn't dressed up to be a rapper," Ditslear said humorously. "Dancing to Carlos' song was one of those fun things I get to do."
If Ditslear and most of HomeTown Television's viewers had understood the words, they would have heard the story of how Noblesville has changed the life of a "gang-banger from the ghetto."
Loco, whose real name is Carlos Thomas, has 12 brothers and sisters n eight from his mother and four from his father, each of whom struggle with drug and alcohol abuse. He was abused verbally and physically, created his own battle with booze, sold marijuana and stole things to financially support himself. And that all happened before he got out of elementary school. Thomas bounced back and forth between his mother's home and foster homes. He was arrested for chasing a classmate with a knife when he was in the second grade. He attended 30 different schools and didn't graduate from any of them.
"It was the life I had come to know," the Detroit, Mich., native said. "I never knew how to survive by working. It was always hustling, dealing drugs and scamming the welfare system."
Deep inside that "street kid" exterior was the belief that he could live a better life. Thomas said he remembers sitting in drug houses selling in Detroit while simultaneously reading books so he wouldn't get too far behind in his school work. He took some of that knowledge to night-school programs and earned a General Education Degree (GED), which he used to enroll in Saginaw Valley State University in Saginaw, Mich.
His college career lasted only a semester because while at a Halloween party, he touched a pumpkin. When police investigated a reported burglary at that address, officers used that fingerprint to associate Thomas with the crime. A year and a half later, the charges were dropped, but by then he was back with his mother in Detroit.
"I went back to the hood and got stuck hustling drugs," he said.
And now for something completely different
A cousin in Anderson, Ind., convinced Thomas to move in with him "for a change of environment," he said.
Talk about a culture shock.
"Detroit is 90 percent black. It never occurred to me that the rest of America wasn't black," he said. "I had a hard time reshaping my attitudes and characteristics from when I was in Detroit."
Thomas' cousin got him a job at Noblesville's Warner Body, but after a while, he came to realize that because of his cousin's own addiction problems, he couldn't rely on his cousin to get him to work on time. Thomas didn't have enough money to buy his own car, so he moved to Noblesville to be within walking distance of his job.
Once again, Thomas, a black man without money, was a fish out of water as he tried to find an apartment in one of Indiana's most affluent communities.
"A lady told me âI don't rent to your kind,'" he said. "I knew all the people of Noblesville couldn't be like that. My friends at Warner Body were not like that. They showed me love, so that lady didn't discourage me. Eventually I got an apartment and now I call this my second home."
One day, Thomas took two CD players to work at Warner Body. One player had an instrumental version of a top rap song; on the second player Thomas had recorded his own rap lyrics set to the beat of the music on the other player. The response was favorable.
"My co-workers validated that I had the talent," he said. "That got the ball rolling."
Failed opportunities
1999 turned out to be a career-building year for the young rapper; too bad he didn't... Copyright © 2004 Noblesville Daily Times
