| FREESTYLE MASTER & STEG-G from Glasgow, Scotland UK |
 |
 |
 |
| Written by tricksta |
| Friday, 03 July 2009 08:17 |
|
Easy Tricksta, hope your good! I'm from that sleepy little hamlet called Glasgow in Scotland!!! The Hip Hop scene up here is a bit of a mixed bag mate with a whole host of different groups that definitely produce varying styles of Hip Hop music and there is also a number of different crews holding it down for other aspects of the culture through breakin' and graff. There’s no doubt it's much bigger than it was back in the day when it was really just ourselves and a coupla other bands that were out there trying to break down doors but sadly some things never change and like it was back then there is still a sad lack of unity between the various acts but to be honest I’m cool with that as I never started rapping in the hope I could make friends. Industry wise it is very poor though I would say that it is the whole music industry in Scotland that is very poor not just the hip hop scene exclusively I mean this country puts on one of the U.K's top festivals at T in the park but never has any local hip hop playing come to think of it they never really have any hip hop full stop. There are a few different labels but generally they are just either the band themselves or the bands mate that has made up a name and all of a sudden they call themselves a record label, so you could say it is still very naive in that sense but there is a huge amount of talent up here waiting to be discovered.
I first got involved with hip hop through break dancing when I was knee high to Verne Troyer so I grew up in what could only be described as "the golden era” I first started trying to rap around 87 or 88 when I was a young kid. At that time I was definitely influenced by people like KRS One, Ice-T, Run Dmc, Public Enemy, Tribe and U.K. acts like hijack and the London posse, it's hard to pick out a definitive influence as the music at the time was so varied in style but so full of quality I guess I would've been gaining inspiration from everything that was around me but if pushed I would say KRS I still recall the first time I heard " The Bridge Is Over " it was the first time I thought to myself " I want to do that", then I met Chuck D after sneaking in to see P.E. open up for LL Cool J in Glasgow and always remembered him saying to me that " if I put my mind to it I could achieve anything" then years later I found myself rocking the very same stage so I have to big Chuck up for giving me that inspiration to go for it. I almost forgot the legendary John Peel as well who was the only man spinning Rap music back in the day I remember being in primary school and staying up listening to his show for two hours to tape the one or two rap tunes he would play in fact if it wasn't for him and the old Streetsounds label with their Electro albums we would've struggled to get any tunes as most things were on import then and import prices were crazy so unless you could steal them you were snookered for new music so big up John Peel for giving hip hop heads outside London something to listen to, but I suppose my biggest influence would have to be my man Jimmy P who was my mate back in the day, see Jimmy was illiterate which meant he could hardly read or write but the boy used to just freestyle constantly with my other mate Shooey Shoo, at that time I was scared to go off the top in case I messed up but I used to watch Jimmy and for all his shortcomings he was fearless and mad funky when it came to rhyming, in those days we used to score a lump of hash get some cans and just rap all night in Steg's house or out in the streets, every night. It was in those early sessions I started bouncing off wee Jimmy's freestyles 'til before I knew it I was freestyling instead of writing...long before jay-z made it trendy to do so!
wow where do I start with this, myself and Steg-G's first release was a 12" way back in '93 with a group called Power Move which was the first record ever to feature the Glasgow accent in all it's glory then myself and Steg-G decided to focus as a duo and along with Damaged Goodz we set up our own label Powercut Productions which is now on its 19th release and I think I’ve been on about 18 of them ha-ha, I’ve done a few e.p's " The Next Level" "Mindgames" and "Universal" a few albums " The Journey" "Clyde-Built" "Natural Selection" and a mad spoof album we done with Damaged Goodz and Cad called " Spin Cycle 50/50 " Same Shit Different Planet " which is like Monty Python meets Star Trek meets reality TV. Meets Kool Keith on an acid tab, plus there’s been a host of singles releases through the years as well. the response has always been good, when we first came out like I said there was nothing like us and we have always tried to keep it that way by letting our sound grow and evolve with every release and I think the people appreciate that fact with us plus the fan base keeps on growing everyday and the best part of that is we are now at a level in Scotland where it's the average Joe in the street not just the hip hop audience who is buying our material and I’m really pleased about that 'cos I would hate to think my music only appeals to a small portion of a potentially huge market. The new single Cool / Big Bad City is already making a lot of noise before it's been released and has been racking up a lot of airplay and cracking reviews from all over the world so it looks like people are really feeling the new material which is always a blessing and long may it continue to grow.
I’ve got a huge back catalogue so this is a difficult question, I would say there has been various tunes that have stood me in good stead starting with "it's fresh" from mindgames which we gave to Westwood on a demo tape that he proceeded to blast off and Scottish television also picked up on it and shot a video for us for the tune, hold your breath with Braintax was mad popular with heads across the U.K. and helped us to shift a coupla thousand" The Journey" albums with no promotion, "The Realm" with Gamma was a big tune as well and saw us making the play list on Radio 1, then there’s "Anti Social Behaviour" which 1xtra used as the theme tune for one of their home-grown weekends, " Temptation " was called " the greatest Scottish song ever recorded " by the press up here, but I would say it's a toss up between " Paper-Chase " and " Schemes ", Paper-Chase was done as a single after I had won U.K. Battle Championship live on 1xtra round about 2005 and has Steg-G sampling up Abbas money, money, money and me spitting about being skint in a "rich mans world" the tune is still requested daily on radio up here so I suppose that puts it high up the list, then there’s Schemes in which I’m spitting about the ghettoes in Glasgow which are called Schemes. Schemes really took off after channel 5 done a programme called "Colin and Justin on the estate" which was about the area me and Steg grew up in so we knocked up a quick video and hit the press with it, it ended up paying dividends and saw us making front page news in Scotland, I would say most people identify Schemes as our signature tune so I would say Schemes.
I’ve always worked with Steg-G I’ve been mates with the dude since primary school and for my money he's the most underrated producer in hip hop...period! I’ve done various things on other peoples tracks but when it comes to my own material I work with Steg but that’s not too say I’m adverse to working with other people I plan on doing more of that in the future but I’m the kind of guy that prefers to do an entire project with someone rather than have a track from here and a track from there as it usually makes an album feel quite dis-jointed when you throw too many cooks into the mix but I do have a few things which are cooking right now including a thing with a guy called pale soul from the Washington area which I’ve done a few tunes for and some other projects in the pipeline with producers from other genres that I’m looking forward to exploring as you always need to grow as an artist but it's like Jay-z say's in fade to black you always got to stick with the men you trust to deliver what you want and Steg always does that without a doubt. one thing a lot of rappers are guilty of is working with producers who just let them spout anything on their beats with no quality control coming into it but with Steg because I’ve known him so long there’s no ego's involved if he tells me to re-write something or vice versa but more than that it's a double act hence the name Steg-G & the Freestyle Master people always get confused and think Steg is the rapper but old school heads'll know that way back it was the d.j's name who was first so the name is in homage to the old school d.j and emcee combo's I suppose you could use the old expression to sum up how I feel about the dudes beats "why go out for a hamburger, when you can stay in and have steak ?"
in the past I’ve collaborated with heads like Braintax, Juice Aleem, Toastie Taylor, Gamma, Cyrus, Gridlock Fam, Royce Da 5'9, Stig of the Dump, Junior Disprol and Scottish artists like Loki, Damaged Goodz, Jinx, Dark Rumours, Madhat and I also got a project popping off with Respek B.A. which is going to be crazy when we get the album finished. the most memorable one I think would have to be the realm with gamma, we done the tune in about 15 minutes no b/s as they were on tour at the time so we had to nail it and get to the B.B.C. for a radio show where we were all getting interviewed for a show that was going out at 9 o'clock, by the time we got there they had about 5-10 minutes time in between they finished recording the show and them broadcasting it so everything was going fine 'til right at the end when we were freestyling I swore you should've seen their faces it was priceless they didn't know whether or not to broadcast it or edit it bearing in mind it was before they were using computers to tape it, some poor soundman ended up having to trawl through an hour long dat tape in 5 minutes to reverse it which they did, then after that we rocked a show at the arches in Glasgow so that was a pretty memorable collabo.
Still rocking on Powercut Productions Tricksta, as I’ve always been since back in the day, when we first came out we got advice from old U.K. act the Kaliphz who at the time were signed to London records. they basically schooled us on the industry and the pitfalls of being on a major at that time I don't want to discuss their business but all I will say is the stories they told us about their treatment at the hands of the label was a major eye-opener. They advised us to stick to our guns and stay independent which was when we set up Powercut Productions. I cant lie being independent is a struggle but through the years we've got to a level where the music pays for itself so to speak, also Steg has built up a top studio over time after starting out with one deck and a tape recorder so now a days we can save a whole wad of cash on recording costs. Distribution is another thing entirely in the past we've been ripped off for thousands by distribution companies apparently reputable ones as well so this time around we're experimenting with download only releases, the album will be a physical release but for singles now I feel download is the best option as there is absolutely no money in pressing up singles, even in the days of vinyl, singles were loss leaders in business terms so this time we've been working with a pr company to push the single into different markets and as we know the internet makes the world a very small place, so for now we're concentrating on doing the distribution digitally but at the same time our management are talking to a couple major labels so that could all change, but knowing the music biz it'll take time so it's Powercut Productions all the way for the foreseeable future.
Shoot somebody!!! ha-ha nah but it does seem nowadays that you need a gimmick or some shit in order to stand out as there is definitely more rappers now than ever with everybody that’s ever bought a rap record out there "dropping bars", there’s a whole slew of mediocrity that’s sprung up through myspace etc. that without a doubt conspires to hold good artists back I mean you go on some cats pages and the tunes are horrendous but they got like 2 million hits or some shit just 'cos mans know how to use computer programmes, it's not right. the only way really to stand out is to get your shit on radio and I’ve been successful at that in the past so with the undoubted quality of the new material I’m extremely confident of that continuing into the future and hopefully make the leap from radio 1 in the evening for example to radio 1 during the day which is the holy grail for all musicians regardless of their genre who find themselves in the same position as that’s when you move into the big market through the help of radio's daytime listener ship. The other way is the oldest method of all...get out and do as many gigs as possible! One thing we have always excelled at is playing live even if it's 10'000 people at ally pally opening for the streets or a crusty old pub in Inverness we never fail to rip the stage up or make good money from merchandise sales, so we will be looking to get out on the road as soon as possible we got a couple things in the pipeline in that regard so I’m looking forward to getting out and rocking some show's. A lot of young emcee's have spent all their time in their bedrooms multi tracking vocals and stuff but they have no live experience I come from a generation where it was all about being dope live and I’ve been fortunate enough to share stages with a lot of the biggest names in hip hop old school and new so you could say I’ve learned from the best and from the response we always get at shows from all walks of life that learning curve has proved to be one of our biggest weapons which we plan on using to our advantage over the next few months.
well back in the day I featured on a few of the U.K. Hustlaz tapes Disorda used to put together plus I’ve featured on numerous ones that have come out over the years, I have one sitting which we plan on dropping quite soon called 60 minutes of fizzunk which is crazy tricksta we taken a box of old funk tunes and flipped them into an ill epic shit. I do a radio show up here on a Sunday night where I just play old school funk and soul and I usually end up freestyling through the show cos of the tunes so Steg thought we should take them into the lab get the old technics out and go back to basics with two turntables and a mic I got to say the buzz we been getting from cats who've heard some of it is off the meter man so definitely look out for that in the next coupla months. I hate to say this but I can't remember the names of a lot I’ve featured on through the years so I must apologise to the d.j's that put them together, I’m not to good at holding onto c-d's and old tapes I usually end up selling them ha-ha.
yeah man that’s all we do, we currently working on new l.p. which is still untitled but it's sounding ill mate, we recorded an l.p. last year with about 22 songs but decided to put it to the side and start from scratch not that the l.p. we had done was bad, trust me cats have been begging us to put it out after we leaked a few of the tracks to some heads but we felt we wanted to make something truly unique that fuses all modern British music into a new sound instead of just going down the well worn road of sampling old crusty soul songs. I do my radio show where I play that stuff all night I love to rap over it but at the end of the day I wasn't brought up listening to that music by my parents or peers so it is not really MY influences in the same way it isn't to 90% of U.K. rappers, it's Americans influences, that’s why I think Americans or even British people at large really don't get U.K. rap in the wider context 'cos they are used to hearing that style of music with Americans rapping on it so when they hear a British cat on that kind of track the accent throws them, but when you take a U.K. voice and put it on something like dub step for example it sounds new and exciting to the public and they get it a whole lot quicker, what I really love about the grime scene for instance is how British it sounds musically by fusing dance music, drum and bass, jungle etc. to make a whole new sound which I consider to just be hip hop not grime or some other tag dreamed up by somebody it's all just hip hop, dub step the lot. So we started messing about and the first experiment we tried was "Big Bad City" which of course has become the first single from the new album. the new stuff features a lot of variety as always and is definitely in my opinion our best work to date musically lyrically and performance wise, I’ve been doing a lot of double times on it and trying out different styles and Steg has been banging out joints that'll shake any system to the core people are going to very surprised when they hear it, the next single we'll be putting out is an old school electro party joint called The D.J. the music on it is crazy and will move any crowd anywhere it's actually an ode to the old party rocking d.j's of the old school so watch for that in the autumn. The album which has a working title of " Future..." should be out around November it is like a soundtrack for Britain in the future with a lot of surprises in it definitely look out for that you will not be disappointed. I also have project I started recently with Steg and Respek B.A. we got a few tracks done for that and that'll be dropping next year probably, plus Steg also has an album worth of material from artists called Vulgar Eloquence that features people like old school legend Craig G and a host of other names from the U.K. and the U.S. and there’s a hot joint on it (no pun intended) called Fire that features me Big Stig and Royce Da 5'9 trading verses it's a big tune man. I always feel you have to keep moving in the studio and you can never have enough songs which is why we never really stop recording, I get all moody and dangerous when I don't record so simply for my sanity's sake we stay in the studio constantly but keep it fresh by bouncing from one project to the next, to be honest in the last 2 years we must've done about 60-70 songs.
aw man again there’s been so many m8 for different reasons like the time we played with Busta when we just happened to notice that the dudes dressing room was like the garden of Eden full of food and booze meanwhile ours had 1 bottle of fucking water...thankfully two bottles of cristal a case of Guinness and a coupla curries just fell into our pockets for some bizarre reason...cheers Busta. or the time we were playing with black eyed peas who I detest, the way the stage was set up there was only one way off but no-one told us they were about to come on so there we were taking down our gear when we looked round and they were on stage with a full band so we thought fuck it nothing else to do but sit down ‘til their finished behind the decks... they ended up onstage for about two hours the funniest bit was when they asked everybody to put a peace sign up for where is the love...all the crowd saw from behind the black eyed peas was two middle fingers rising up from behind the decks like a coupla anacondas it was mad funny cos they didn’t know we were there but we had all our weed and shit so we sat and got blazed but every now and again one of them would notice us and get a fright it was hilarious m8, I also done a gig at a high class fashion show where I had to share a dressing room with about 30 models strutting about in their drawers...that was memorable, so memorable you could go blind thinking about it ha-ha but the most memorable would be when we toured with 50 cent and g-unit opening up a show to 10,000 people every night and getting 650 quid each for twenty minutes on stage takes some beating.
Like I was saying earlier first up we have the double a single “Cool / Big Bad City” which is out mid-July and that will be followed by another single probably “The D.J. “around September. You can probably expect to see the “60 Minutes of Fizzunk “mixtape in October just before we drop the album around the end of the year. We also have a tour of Europe lined up for November which is all getting rubber stamped at the moment plus we'll be keeping busy on the road in the U.K. trying to do as much as possible gig wise, we have a few big things lined up over the summer festival season and are currently getting a lot of offers for various parts of the country so look out for us coming to a town near you, plus we have been receiving a lot of feedback stateside for the new material from various record labels and TV. stations so things look as if they are going to hectic until the year ends and well into next year and with a bit of luck it'll get busier still once we start dropping the releases.
There are only really a couple of stations up here who deal with hip hop to be honest so the real focus this time around is to get more spins nationwide. we get love from the B.B.C. and Galaxy but the station that is like the home of hip hop up here is Sunny Govan Radio where Steg-G does the Temple of Hip Hop show on a Saturday night from 10pm 'til 12 on 103.5fm or online at www.sunnygovan.org the new single big bad city has already copped some spins on radio 1 and a couple other major stations in the U.K. and a few around the world so hopefully that continues, but definitely Sunny Govan for example the most requested song on the station everyday is always one of ours and the good thing about that is it's members of the general public who are requesting them not just exclusively rap fans and that can only be a good thing for all emcee's up here as it means the public are getting used to hearing a regional accent rapping and that will only continue to grow once they hear more, so all you rappers/producers out there get in touch with us through myspace or through the website with your material and if it's good enough it'll definitely get some spins, I also need to big up s-dot at Sheffield live who are another station really getting behind us.
I think the same thing applies to this in the way I was talking about producers I feel you have to have some element of friendship with whoever your working with, I don’t really like the whole e-mailing tracks thing I prefer to get face to face and get vibing with the other rappers over some beats and create something that means something as opposed to just getting a big name to drop a random 16 on a beat for 5 grand or something I don't feel there is any sense of accomplishment in that, plus now there are just too many collabs on peoples albums back in the day there was maybe one or two at the most on a record but now it seems like every song has some guest on it...how can they perform it live? I hate doing good songs then because the artist lives miles away there is no chance of ever performing it on stage so I try to keep it to minimum, don't get me wrong though if I was to tour with an a-lister next week you can bet I’ll be asking him for a sixteen...but I’d get him drunk first to try and get it for free hah.
we're currently working on new video's for the new material so keep checking www.powercutproductions.com as that's where they'll be first, but in the meantime there’s a load of video's on-line featuring us you can find them on you-tube or on my myspace page and there are also some of my battle video's on the jump off site.
There’s a couple of myspace pages heads should hit they are www.myspace.com/freestylemaster1 and www.myspace.com/steg-g and our official site is www.powercutproductions.com
Spontaneous, informative, revolutionary, honest, unique.
It’s available at all the usual suspects to download i-tunes Amazon etc. for all details go to www.powercutproductions.com
without a doubt if the deal was right being independent is a beautiful thing with all the freedoms it allows you as an artist but the big drawback is you can't compete with a major labels marketing machine when it kicks into gear. independence is what every artist yearns even your big selling acts but the harsh reality of the world is money talks and if you don't have that money life is extremely difficult and with the way the whole industry is set up you need them to get on most tours for example 'cos as you know a lot of times artists pay to tour with the big acts unless they are connected through the record labels so being on a major has numerous plus points, a lot of heads don't know about record pluggers and the inner workings of the industry that enable you to have a bigger shot at the prize, pluggers cost thousands if only it was as simple as just sending your tune and then it's on Chris moyles show everyday and you sell millions from the comfort of your home studio but unfortunately it's not like that unless you have a good record label behind you pushing your product into all the correct hands. the downside of course is the sheisty nature of major labels when it comes to contracts etc. and just because your on a major doesn't mean your going to sell any records or even get your record released but after being independent for so long I would be up for trying it to see what it's like, in an ideal world though I would prefer to do a deal that involved a major distributing and marketing Powercut Productions as a label so we retain some of the freedom we have at present.
Yeah man his name is Alex Hamilton you can contact him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Cos the government don't pay me enough every fortnight ha-ha, people should buy my music because it's honest in conception and delivery and is always forward thinking and creatively entertaining. It is never bland or trying to be something it is not and from Steg-G's beats to my rhymes it is a sonic experience that you should try at least once in your life...not to mention the fact that it bangs like a German porn star lighting nuclear warheads on Guy Fawkes Night with a flamethrower!
Sure, I want to big up my man the Mighty Zed make sure you check out his video on you tube called Dolphin Love it's hilarious, I need to big up Patricia Panther my good lady friend who is making some ill music of her own check her out at www.myspace.com/patriciapanther , also need to big up my man Respek B.A., my man Pale Soul, big up Beejay from Damaged Goodz and his new band The Paradox, need to big up Kay and Tony at Manilla PR, I want to big up all the Shadowless crew from the Midlands Juice Aleem, Toastie Taylor, Tomz, Cyrus and all those men, I need to big up my manager Alex for the support he's giving us, I want to give a big big up to my man Steg-G for getting a university degree after leaving school with no qualifications and of course I want to big up yourself Tricksta and all the Wolftown heads...stay cool bruv, peace!
|
| Last Updated on Friday, 03 July 2009 08:27 |
