Headphones & Backpacks

We at BRL TV were able to sit down with The Coup Kids’ Eric “Zirgs” Zirger for an interview. This interview will also be featured in the group’s full-length documentary about the group recording their debut project, Six Strings & a Mic: An EP. Zirger touches on many topics during this interview including how he got started playing guitar, how he first started writing his own guitar riffs, how he got into writing lyrics, and more.

While there is no set release date for my and Zirger’s debut as The Coup Kids. We are probably looking to release it before June. Here is the link to the two singles we’ve released from the project, thus far.

Preface:
When I started writing album reviews at Okayplayer.com last November, the second album I was assigned to do was Custom Made’s Hi-Def. I was blown away by this album, and the west coast group quickly became one of my favorites.
I recently had to opportunity to talk with Scoobs of Custom Made for a phone interview. He gave a really great interview, but unfortunately when I tried to upload the audio file onto my MacBook, it erased all of the data on my voice recorder, including my interview.
Luckily I jotted down some notes during the interview, and I have enough to salvage the story:


What the eff is a Custom Made?

Custom Made is an underground rap trio based out of Las Angeles. The group consist of three emcees: Scoobs, Element and Bluff. They have four LPs released on underground powerhouses such as Babygrande, Rawkus, and Coalmine Records.

All three members have a unique style to their rap deliveries and have lyrical content heavily influenced by their L.A. surroundings, Scoobs said. Scoobs, whose delivery has the most energy and aggression in the group handled production, but doesn’t make beats anymore because he wanted to focus mostly on emceeing, he said.

Custom Made features several skilled in-house producers including Abstrakt Soundz, THX, Finesse, and Jayem. Despite being from the west coast, their production style is heavily influenced by 1990 east coast hip hop.

A Las Angeles State of Mind:


The group’s debut album, LA State of Mind took about a year to record during their senior year in high school, Scoobs said.

“We all knew each other from cyphers in our high school,” he said. “Eventually we started to respect each other’s styles, and we formed the group.”

At that point Custom Made was a five-member group: Six, Bluff, Element, Scoobs and Aneek. And their sound was extremely raw and unpolished, but LA State garnered them local buzz and critical acclaim including an 8 out of 10 at one of the most respected hip hop review websites, rapreviews.com.

The album was released on the group’s own Custom Made Records, a label started by Scoobs that has distribution by IODA. This label was the platform for the group to release their Street Cinema mixtape series.

The Street Cinema mixtapes, along with other underground acts out of LA, helped spark a mixtape scene, that was not getting much attention, Scoobs said. He also credits the mixtapes for getting attention from record labels including Babygrande, which they signed with in 2006.


Taking Babygrande Steps:

Upon signing with Babygrande Records, the group was rushed to release a project to capitalize on their buzz they were making with their Street Cinema series, Scoobs said.

He said that they were forced to release Sidewalk Mindtalk, a compilation of their best tracks from their mixtapes, which was packaged with a DVD.

“We wanted to get out there, we just wanted to release new material,” Scoobs said. “They kept making us shoot these videos (for the DVD) and we had an album’s worth of new material.”

Custom Made’s roster also went through some changes in 2006, as Six was sentenced to four years in prison and Aneek moved to the east coast to settle down and start a family, Scoobs said.

He said that Custom Made is still on good terms with Aneek and Six, and Six even appeared on many tracks on their latest LP, in a “Malik B for The Roots type of role.”

C-Made’s relationship with their label continued to grow sour, as Babygrande kept ignoring the group’s wishes to release an album.

“Babygrande is based on the east coast,” Scoobs said. “So it was pretty easy to ignore us out here in LA.”

When Rawkus Records announced their “Rawkus 50” campaign in 2007, a friend of the group recommended that they submit their album to Rawkus, and that’s how their second LP Truth Be Told was finally released.

“Truth Be Told was the album we had recorded for Babygrande,” Scoobs said. “But they didn’t want to release it, and we wanted to get it out there… And that kinda hurt our relationship (with Babygrande) a little.”
After releasing their first proper album on Babygrande, Original Dynasty in 2008, Custom Made parted ways with the underground hip hop label.

“With the knowledge I have now, would I go back and do things differently? Most definitely,” Scoobs said. “But I can’t be mad (at Babygrande). They gave us our start, and I learned a lot (from) our situation there.”


‘High’ Definition:

After leaving Babygrande, the group inked a one album deal with New York-based indie label Coalmine Records.
Initially Custom Made’s fourth LP, Hi-Def was set to be a collaborative album with another group, that’s why there is a lot of guest appearances, Scoobs said.
Hi-Def shows the growth of Custom Made’s sound. The album is a lot more introspective than previous efforts from the group, and it is heavily inspired by drugs. Many songs make reference to drug abuse, dealing drugs and the harm drugs have on their neighborhood.


A Promising, Yet Uncertain Future:

Custom Made has big things in store for their future, Scoobs said. Last March, Scoobs branched out for the first time releasing his first solo mixtape, Trap Star Vol. 1.

Scoobs said he is currently working on videos for his current project, and will likely release the second volume of his Trap Star mixtape series before the year’s end. Element is also expected to release a follow up to his 2008 project, Great Expectations.

Custom Made is also planning on re-releasing their back catalogue in physical format through worldwide distribution, Scoobs said.

While the future is bright for Custom Made, there are many questions surrounding Bluff’s troubles with the law.
Recently he was indicted on 15 counts of wire fraud, and is facing up to 20 years in prison. Bluff is currently on house arrest.

Scoobs said that Bluff is optimistic in getting the sentence shortened and has a good team of workers. He also said Bluff committed the crime many years ago, and that sometimes “crime doesn’t pay.”

BRL Radio- Headphones & Backpacks Podcast episode 1 by zgase
This is my first attempt at a podcast, and a nice reminder that I should stick to print journalism. In this podcast I talk about some latest news in hip hop, and play some recent tracks that should be getting some more attention.

Tracklist:
1. XV – Witchita
2. Talk about XV
3. BRL Intro
4. Talk about Atmosphere’s New LP
5. Atmosphere- “If you can save me now”
6. Talk About Family Tour
7. Grieves – “Lightspeed”
8. Blueprint – “Radio-Inactive”
9. Phonte’s solo album….
10. Little Brother – Tiggalo for Dolo
11. Custom Made info
12. Scoobs – These Days
13. Talk about StudyAbroad album
14. GooseFlames – few good blokes
15. Wrap it up – upcoming posts, future podcasts
16. The Coup Kids – All Iever wanted

PackFM – Nasty (Live in Basel) from 2dopeboyz.com on Vimeo.

QN5 emcee, Pack FM performs his lead single off of his 2010 album, I F*cking Hate Rappers in Switzerland while on tour with the CunninLynguists. His flow is incredible on the studio version, and it’s amazing to see him perform it live.

In a video from Urbandaily.com Phonte and 9th Wonder announced that they will be collaborating again on Tay’s upcoming solo debut.

Last year around this time, Phonte and 9th had a public dispute on Twitter about the Little Brother bonus track, “Star” which appeared on Phonte and Big Pooh’s final album as a group. The two took it to the internets again a few months ago, announcing that they had finally squashed their beef, after several long and heated discussions.

Now Phonte is gearing up to release his long-awaited solo debut album, and 9th will be producing much of it taking on a role similar to J Dilla’s on Q-Tip’s Amplified album (Dilla co-produced with Tip on all but 2 tracks). The album will coincidentally be released on the 6-year anniversary of the classic Little Brother album, The Minstrel Show, September 13.

I’m extremely happy to see these two great minds work out their differences. Their early Little Brother work was one of the best hip hop of the last decade. 9th has seemingly grown as a producer as made evident by his work in 2010 including great albums such as Murs’ Fornever and David Banner’s Death of a Pop Star.

I’ve been awaiting a solo “Rappin’ Tay” album for years. He gave us a little glimpse of the first Foreign Exchange album, but it was predominantly “Singin’ Tay.” Phonte has been one of the most premier emcees over the past decade, and his up-coming solo record is easily one of the most exciting projects being released this year.

Here’s a little glimpse of “Rappin’ Tay” off of Little Brother’s LeftBack LP released in 2010.

Raekwon – Ferry Boat Killaz from LRG on Vimeo.

Here’s the Chef’s latest music video off of the Shaolin vs. Wu-Tang album. I have yet to hear this whole album (because I’m brokeee), but every track I’ve heard has been fire. This one is produced by Alchemist.

Summer is rapidly approaching us, and of course that means it’s touring time. Tours are extremely important for independent rap acts. It’s how acts like Atmosphere has built such a cult following throughout the early 2000s. I personally will be attending the Macklemore and Ryan Lewis show in Ann Arbor. I’m extremely disappointed about missing the Atmosphere/Blueprint/Grieves/Sab the Artist show in Columbus next Wednesday, but I’m going to a Pixies concert that Friday in Detroit and the Macklemore show is the following week. I’m going to be broke. But here are a list of exciting shows in the next couple of months in the Northern Ohio/Southern Michigan area:

Headphones & Backpacks Guide To Summer Tours:
Atmosphere, Grieves, Blueprint & Saab the Artist – 4/20
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis – 4/26
Tyler, the Creator and OFWGKTA – 5/16
Lil B and Danny Brown – 4/27
Devin the Dude – 5/2
Machine Gun Kelly – H.O.B. Cleveland 5/7
Ray Cash – Peabody’s Cleveland 5/21
Chiddy Bang and Pusha T 6/5
Raekwon – 5/21
Aesop Rock – 05/17

(video swiped from Okayplayer.com)
One of my favorite parts of writing for Okayplayer is discovering new artists that I probably would’ve never heard from. Of all of the albums I’ve reviewed so far, two artists really stood out to me: Custom Made (more on the LA trio later) and 19 year-old female emcee Marz Lovejoy.

Marz is the total package: charisma, lyrics, style, mic presence, and ability to craft songs. Her 7-track EP, This Little Love of Mine was released last November is a short, but great listen and I highly recommend it.

More info HERE.

Bonus:
Here’s a music video from Marz, also my favorite track off of the EP.

Atmosphere’s long awaited 7th LP is finally released today. My review of the record will come later in the week, via Okayplayer. But it is the group’s most mature sounding effort to date, and exactly what hip hop should sound like when it’s made by people almost in their 40s (Jay-Z take note, bro).

The Video up top is a presentation of the album’s awesome artwork (I’ll be picking up my copy on Sunday once I get paid). And the video down below is the great music video to “She’s Enough” the album’s second single.