Denver, they told us the day before it was 70 degrees, and as soon as we get there, it starts snowing. Eleven: It was. People were wearing shorts the day before! And then anytime they put us in a session together, we just clicked, and we just kept working together, and, you know, we both did our own thing. We just focused in. We wanted to get the records correct; exactly how we wanted it to sound — how we wanted to be presented, and, you know, it just kind of went from there. STS: Yeah.
We put everything together, and we started to put it out independent, and then Steel Wool [Entertainment] got wind of it, and they wanted to get involved with it, so we ended up doing it like that. How does the collaborative process work? During the week was pretty treacherous because we were doing our own thing, and we would cut records — we would do our thing. That was pretty much the collaborative process.
I would work on films I was doing during the week, and sometimes during those breaks I would make some music and present it to him on the Sundays when we would get up together. It sounds like you really had limited time, but you were always clicking when you had that time. STS: The chemistry was just good from day one. We just automatically clicked from day one. Khari was out in LA, and I came out there to do some work, and he was staying like right down the street from me.
It just kind of made sense; everything was lined up. If anyone else got something to say, you know, kick rocks. It just worked out. You gotta put your ego aside and get to the beat. We know what we want, and we know what we want to be. And we know what it takes. With the same effort we put in the studio. Each album is really different, sonically, in the way the instrumentals play off the vocals.
On Better On a Sunday , the instrumentals are really lush and have some funk to them. Is there a conscious effort to make each album different or are you both just naturally musically curious people that have a lot of influences?
KM : I think the latter is where I am. I mean, we worked on it for a while! We just kind of keep it all in the family. Everybody brings something unique to the table. The sound that we have is something that we keep building on — we keep building on to what we do!
We know that feeling. Why you want to listen to someone talk about how much money they got when you gotta go to work? Especially coming from where we come from. They both got money — they probably got more money than most of these dudes talking about how much money they got. It was one of those things where we knew exactly what it was and what we were trying to do.
Raised in Atlanta, STS found poetry as a high school freshman. After dropping out of school he headed north where he found new teachers and shifted his focus from poetry to rap. Like I would probably just be a literary poet. With a beat constraining you as a rapper, and then you having to use couplets all the time.
But to understand how to do each of them perfectly, you have to really focus in on it. AJC: It would seem that sort of the literary bar for poetry is higher than the literary bar for rap, is that a fair description? STS: Very much so, I hate to say, people say you have to dumb down, but yeah you have to dumb down. Because literary work is for people who actually read, rap most of the time is to have a good time.
And because STS raps to pay the bills, his hip hop is geared towards club and radio play. His poetry though, remains sacrosanct. STS: Because I respect the work so much. I wanna be remembered as a poet. The music speaks to your soul. I need to get your attention.
The n-word was not a cool word to say. We took it and made it what we wanted it to be. We saying it the way we wanna say it so its ours. He also has an international following as a solo artist. He says the key to finding happiness in the rap game is by redefining the rules. AJC: When did you realize that was okay? Because everybody wants to be Jay-Z and a lot of people drive themselves crazy before they realize what you realized. You can never question who he is as a lyricist, as a man, none of that.
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