ACH Spotlight: The Tulsa King Takes L.A.
The Tulsa King Takes L.A.
Written by: Elizabeth Wenger
Photography: Iasiah G Pickens III
Steph Simon takes the name “Tulsa King” for good reason.
He’s been around the music scene for over twenty years. He founded Dreamland Festival (FKA World Culture Music Festival), an annual event that’s going into its ninth year. He was a key player in Fire in Little Africa, the multimedia project that commemorated the centennial of the Tulsa Race Massacre. He’s got several albums under his belt. He’s always throwing shows and down to mentor others.
While his ideas may start as plans in his notebook, Steph is not a man to leave his schemes between the covers of a journal. He makes things happen. His imagination and seemingly boundless drive have made Steph a big figure in the local music scene.
The Tulsa King started making music back in 2004, when he was still in high school. “My first time recording was in the studio in my friend’s house,” Steph said. “And since then, I just kind of fell in love with it.”
He had an older cousin who was a rapper, performing under the name Reverse Universe. That early family idol got Steph into the local music scene. “I was very much into listening to local music, and I wanted to put my mark on it,” Steph said. As he got older, he started spending more time downtown, throwing shows. It’s been about twenty years since Steph got his start by recording in a friend’s house, and there is no doubt that in that time, he has left his mark on the Tulsa scene.
I spoke to Simon about a month after he returned from LA, where he’d been given a residency through a collaboration between A Creative House and Tulsa Creative Engine. Steph spent forty days in the Golden State, making connections and making music. “I was just riding my bike, riding the bus, riding the train, and walking around and just writing as I played music in my head, then I would record it.”
The time in La La Land left the already ambitious rapper aspiring for more. Tulsa may have made Steph, and Steph definitely put his time and love into Tulsa, but now he has been reflecting on the limits of the Oklahoma music scene.
Making music in a mid-sized city like Tulsa is a bit of a double-edged sword; the community is tight-knit and supportive, but the resources are limited. “Compared to major cities in the music industry, we have less than half of all the resources just because we are a smaller city,” Steph said.
When I asked him why he stayed in Tulsa all this time, knowing that there are bigger cities where he might have grown his career, he answered simply: community. “That’s my ‘why.’”
He learned what community meant from Tulsa, his family, and from studying the history of Black Wall Street. “I’m very big on my music being centered around the history of Black Wall Street,” Steph explained. “I grew up in Tulsa, where my mom knew everyone, and my grandma knew everyone... There was always that sense growing up that everyone knew everyone. And at my grandma’s funeral, it felt like the whole city was there. There were so many people, and I always wanted that for me…As far as the history goes, that’s just what North Tulsa was about: community, sharing, ‘each one, teach one,’ helping each other. People raising people’s things up.”
His interest in the past of Black Wall Street and his desire to reinvest in that community are part of what led Steph to take the moniker “Dicky Ro”—short for Dick Rowland, whose central role in the Tulsa Race Massacre is well known to many Tulsans.
“When you look up Dick Rowland, it’s always the same first sentence, like ‘he was the catalyst for the Tulsa Race Riot,’ — that’s what he’s remembered as,” Steph explained. “And I would always read that when I try to educate myself on history, and I am like, I want to be the catalyst for the rise of the community. So I took that name and put a lot of energy into being the catalyst.”
That passion for people and for his city is part of what has gotten Steph so far. But now he’s reflecting on what’s next.
“I can’t do everything, but I feel like I completed the tasks I had for myself here, and that will allow for the next generation of artists to build on it and take it to the next level, and I think that’s what is happening,” Steph said.
The question now is, who is the Tulsa King outside of Tulsa? What is any artist outside of the city that built them? The residency in LA allowed Steph to explore these questions.
“Recording in LA and making music in LA, and just going out there for those 40 days, I’m seeing how — I don’t want to say easy — but how the infrastructure lets you level up if you take the right steps and do the right things.”
Steph saw how open mics lead to bigger shows or record deals. “And those shows lead to bigger festivals or bigger labels — it's really an infrastructure you can move up in.”
He’s not leaving Tulsa permanently anytime soon, not while he’s heavily invested in the community and in a class he teaches on the history of hip hop at McLain High School. “I’m forever going to be here during the school year doing that,” Steph said.
But in the summer? Steph wondered aloud about spending his summers on the coasts, where the siren call of the music industry still rings in his ears.
The residency marks a new epoch for Steph’s career. “I’m going into a different era of music,” Steph said. “I’m trying to speak to a wider audience — make it feel like Tulsa music still, but make it so like if you are just in LA and living day-to-day, and you want to listen to a rapper from Tulsa, I’ll give you a good reason.”
Over his long and ambitious career, there is no question that Steph built a name for himself in Tulsa. Now, in his new era, Steph is moving outside the geographical bounds of the Oklahoma scene. The Tulsa King is expanding his rule, stepping into new domains. It’s time we all watch and listen to see what he does next.