David Norris, the local rapper who records and performs as Vigatron, took 18 years to complete last year’s Whorer Stories, an album that he calls his magnum opus. As a follow-up to the ambitious concept record about “sex, love, dating and relationships,” he’ll release More Whore on May 26. The companion version will include two bonus songs, one extended version, a handful of radio edits and one original version. There will be extra video footage as well.
“The original premise was about how the pleasure of the moment will kill you,” he says in a recent phone interview when asked about the initial inspiration for the album. “Eventually, it turned into an album on which I was going to be the ‘whore’ for the ‘consumer’ but as I started working through that, I had technical issues and certain things just didn’t work, and I took a lot of those songs off and put them on other projects. As I went through everything still there, I realized it had everything to do with my relationships and weird stories and things dealing with sex. I decided to make it more focused and just let some things out. I spoke about the breakup of my major relationship in my life and the frustration I felt seeing the attitudes of people on social media with regard to what makes a real man. With all of that put together, it made it feel so much better and smoother and enabled me to get all this stuff off my chest.”
Along with Whorer Stories, Norris has released several music videos. The video for “The New Virginity (pt. 1),” a woozy hip-hop number that has a whimsical swagger to it that recalls A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul, finds Norris donning a fake beard and various costumes. It shows off his wildly creative impulses.
“It’s the crown jewel of everything I’ve ever written,” he says of “The New Virginity.” “I’m proud of every line in that song. I feel like it was concise and funny. I wanted to do something that was a play on Mad TV’s ‘Lowered Expectations.’ It’s five years of me looking at social media. I wanted to put something out there so that if I had a dating video from the ’90s you would see where I’m coming from.”
In “Body Count,” he delivers an R&B sendup while performing outside of Playhouse Square.
“Men and women are very obsessed about what someone has done before them,” he says. “It’s not that important because it should be more about what you’ve done right now. When I was doing the video, I was inspired by Dennis Edwards of the Temptations, who has a song called ‘Don’t Look Any Further.’ I wanted to do something cheesy in the vein of ’80s R&B singers. A lot of them might have been doing cocaine and not in their right states of mind. When doing the video, I got all the guys in the song to come out and pretend to be an R&B band, so we could perform the song in that old school vibe. I’ve been doing videos for some years now because I like to get my acting side out there and do something silly. I don’t like the straightforward videos that say, ‘I’m a rapper and rapping the song for you.’ I want something that people can watch and laugh at.”
The rowdy “Had Her Like” features local rappers Arrogant and BKA Watts.
“We recorded the song back in the summer of 2014,” Norris says. “I called Arrogant, who gave me the beat, which he wasn’t using. The best thing I could do was put him on it. I wanted to something more overtly sexual. It was brought on by meme culture. There was a meme going around with captions that said ‘had her like.’ I thought it was funny.”
More Whore will be available at vigatron.com and on all streaming platforms.
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