When Marrice Anthony moved from Detroit to Wichita, he immediately fell into the rap scene. He liked the artists here, and the town. 

But there was also a problem: There wasn’t a rap label in Wichita. He’d never launched a label before, but that wasn’t going to stop him. 

“What we had was camaraderie and an idea,” he said.

Anthony and his friends stepped in to fill the void. Their music collective The Cookie Store serves a backbone for artists bridging rap, hip hop, soul and gospel sounds. But “label” is a loose definition of what they do — it’s half mentoring, too. 

“We just want to be a launching pad. We want to stick around and help,” said Anthony, who operates The Cookie Store with business partner Morgan Alexis. 

Their combined love of music brought them together for the project. They worked together on ICT Fest and then developed a podcast. They also serve as event planners, vocal coaches — Alexis' specialty — and producers for the various mixtapes and albums by artists under The Cookie Store banner.

They weren’t called to this work specifically. It just sort of happened. But Anthony remembers hearing the voice in his head eventually. 

“If this is what I’m supposed to do, then maybe I’m going to do it,” he said. 

He had to come up with a name for the collective, and the one he landed on can be tied directly to the late underground Detroit rapper J Dilla, who released the 2006 album “Donuts,” a favorite of Anthony’s. 

“You can just name shit for what you like? I’m taking ‘cookies,’ then. Who doesn’t like cookies?” Anthony said. 

The Cookie Store evolved from the work he and Alexis were already doing. It started in 2015 as a way to host shows and bring friends together for live performances and then matured past being a label and into a storefront, too. The Cookie Store Bandcamp page serves as the launching pad for the collective’s roster, which includes acts like Debonair DeVaughn, Paris Jane, F.Y.I. Jovanni, SIOUXXBOYY888, Vada Fly and MichaelBlvck, among others. 

The Cookie Store is by all measures a ragtag organization. There’s not a marketing budget. There are no headquarters to maintain. Anthony said he learned to mix and master songs via “YouTube University.” He’s watched other better-funded operations try those things in Wichita and fail. What keeps his going, he said, is their passion for the product. 

“I’m sort of like Arizona iced tea,” Anthony said, noting a brand that has stubbornly refused to change its pricing. “I’m not impressed by what other people like. 

“You may have the resources, but you don’t have the heart,” he said. “You have to know that the grain is to know how to go against it.”  

They are the lone rap label in Wichita — and the only Black-owned label in town — which means The Cookie Store could have an outsized role in defining a sound. Anthony said he’d rather not set rigid boundaries on what their artists should do.  

“We do what artists need to do. We’d rather not make it a monolith,” he said. 

Live, the collective hosts events like the annual nontraditional Christmas concert called The Company Party. Last year’s Company Party was hosted at Kirby’s Beer Store and featured most of the Cookie Store roster. 

It’s also an outlet for creating releases, primarily mixtapes. There are dozens floating around from Cookie Store artists, including Anthony’s “Live at Stardust,” a concept rap album where he imagines himself performing at his mother’s wedding in 1992. 

Anthony released his latest work, “Cooler” in April. It’s a reworking of an album of the same name he made in 2014. He needed to make it again for a simple reason — he's a better rapper now, he said. He’s also listened to feedback from his label mates about the need to be a bit more approachable in his music. 

“When I wrote that record, it was my first foray into this kind of music,” Anthony said. It’s now catchier, and friendlier, as a result of his upgrades, but make no mistake — it is still a hardcore rap album at its core. 

It’s occasionally funny. 

“If they say they got a mac,” he boasts, “then it's prolly macaroons.” 

And it’s always referential to those he admires, dropping names like Public Enemy and T.I.P. and including a song called “Member’s Only 2” that is a response to “Blow My High (Members Only)” by Kendrick Lamar. He’s dropped several songs as singles in anticipation of distribution later this year.

The album features collaborations from several members of The Cookie Store roster. The collective approach to the work is critical, said DeVaughn, who performs on Anthony's new version of “Cooler” and joined his labelmates live for the April 4 show at Kirby’s. 

A little more than a year ago, DeVaughn had never met Anthony or Alexis, but mutual friends encouraged them to connect. Soon after they met, Anthony told DeVaughn he should be cutting his own tracks. He wasn’t concerned that DeVaughn had never recorded anything before. DeVaughn was initially reluctant, but Anthony was offering him studio time for free, and DeVaughn did have lyrics in his notebooks. So he took Anthony up on the offer, and months after meeting he was cutting a record under Anthony and Alexis’ tutelage. He’s never been charged for that, DeVaughn said. It’s always about making music. 

“That’s what made it easy for me,” he said. “They didn’t know me from Adam. They didn’t have to do that.” 

He’s since cut several Cookie Store projects, including his most recent album “Luxury Sport,” which he released at the beginning of this year. 

He knew of the rap scene in Wichita, but he had no idea of the size and scope of it until he was more of an insider. 

“It’s growing exponentially, and it was already much bigger than I thought it was,” DeVaughn said. 

DeVaughn doesn’t expect that to stop soon, and he points to Wichita artist Big 40 getting signed to Sauce Walka’s TSF Records as a sign that local artists will continue to flourish. 

Anthony and Alexis team up for a pair of podcasts that work to promote good work by locals. Team Uncut features the pair discussing pop culture through a hip-hop lens. “LuvChiild Radiio,” available through The Cookie Store’s YouTube page, features interview segments with local musicians.

As Anthony said, he and Alexis “know the grain” of the community. And that allows them to lift up Black culture in Wichita, Alexis said. 

“We have this Black, Midwest POV, and it’s a lot of fun for us,” she said. 

The Details 

The Cookie Store
As Wichita’s only Black-owned music label and only rap and hip-hop collective, it plays an outsized role in the city’s scene. 

Music from The Cookie Store-affiliated artists are available via the organization’s YouTube Page, its SoundCloud and its Bandcamp pages.

Kevin Kinder never learned to play an instrument but has written about music for more than two decades just the same. He’s a freelance writer and journalism educator. 

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