LYNN — It takes just listening to the first line of C Wells’ song “Where I’m From” to know the 26-year-old loves his home city.
“Technically I’m good with the English, it’s how I make these Classics.”
Christopher Williams, 26, has been rapping about Lynn since age 16, going by the name C Wells. Williams has found success in a career that started humbly, but while his circumstances have changed, his musical goal hasn’t.
He wants people to know, the city he loves is more than a city of sin.
“I don’t even know what city people are talking about sometimes,” Williams said. “People say Lynn, Lynn, city of sin, but it’s more than that… It has so much diversity.”
Standing at a corner of Central Square Friday, Williams was in his element. Wearing his own clothing line, and excited for the release of his forthcoming mixtape and headline show, he was easily recognizable. It only took walking a short distance down the street before people began to call out to him.
“Ey, C Wells, C Wells,” a man calls out. “Better drop that mixtape, this is our city.”
Williams smiled. He used to be told a successful hip-hop artist would never come out of Lynn.
“I want people to know where I’m from,” he said. “And when people think of this city, I want them to think of me.”
Williams started as a Lynn Vocational Technical Institute student experimenting with hip-hop music at an after-school program at the Gregg House on Broad Street. His friends were more interested in sports, but Williams wanted to “stand out” and do something more individualistic.
Having grown up listening to rappers such as Jay-Z, Drake, and Lil’ Wayne, Williams decided to try writing his own music, and quickly found it was a cathartic experience that helped him with struggles like breakups and nearby shootings.
“We all have problems, and sometimes you can’t just answer them yourself,” Williams said. “But you start writing about stuff, and sometimes it helps you figure it out.
“You just don’t care about it after you finish the song.”
Choosing a rap name was easy for Williams. “C Wells” was given to him organically as a child, when people began calling him that in fifth grade to distinguish him from the numerous other Christophers.
He also had support from his parents, with whom he enjoyed long car rides listening to music as a child — although his mother didn’t know he was a rapper until she saw his face on the front page of The Daily Item in November of 2010.
A decade after he started, Williams has become a full-fledged independent artist who’s toured and played before thousand-person crowds in Boston and Atlanta, as well as an entrepreneur with his own clothing line, Live Famous. He’s been mentioned in a feature article on the Recording Academy Grammy Awards website, and has a forthcoming mixtape, “Before the Tour Bus 2,” and headline show at the Middle East Sonia in Cambridge March 12.
The niche he’s found is rapping explicitly about Lynn, and his experiences living in it. He walks through local restaurants and parking garages in his music videos, and raps about summertime rides through the city in cool cars.
There are bad things about Lynn, Williams said, and he doesn’t ignore them in his music. Shootings and other city violence inspired him to write much of his music.
“I can tell you bad stories about Lynn and I can tell you good, but as long as the message goes through and you know where this city is at the end of the day, my mission is complete,” Williams said.
But, Williams said, the perception of Lynn, whether it’s reality or not, gives it character. The city and its residents have to prove the world wrong, and prove their greatness.
“It’s that chip on the shoulder that I really like,” he said.
Williams said with his success, he’s proven children in Lynn can be legitimate artists. He has been invited to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston to take part in its exhibit, Writing the Future: Basquiat and the Hip-Hop Generation, about the Jean-Michel Basquiat influence on the musical genre.
“I want to show that kids can do that,” he said. “A kid from Lynn getting invited to the Museum of Fine Arts, just think of that.”
“I should call my style Lynn, because that’s what I focus on,” Williams said. “When you listen to my music, I want you to feel like you’re here.”
For information about C Wells, visit spark.adobe.com/page/wK1OfeJ4cyUKI/ for links to various websites featuring his music. To get tickets to his upcoming show, visit www.mideastoffers.com. Tickets are $15 online, and $20 at the door.
