Rap Reviews Thes One Interview

Interview by: Steve 'Flash' Juon

Date: 8th May 2006

Thes One had a few minutes to give me some comments after the show. I asked him if People Under the Stairs were expecting that much energy tonight. "Omaha was a big surprise! We thought it would just be a stopover between Minneapolis and Chicago, but there was a real connection to the crowd and it shows you've got a solid hip-hop scene." In fact Thes pointed out that the West Coast is hella jaded, saying they rocked 'San Francisco Knights' in San Fran and the crowd just stood there and acted like it was no big deal. "They're only into who is hot and who is not, and they're not happy unless they're frontin."

What about the difficulty of getting larger tours together that promote acts like theirs? Thes squarely placed the blame on the gangster behavior of large tours in the 1990s that burned the bridges for so many other groups. He was also very pointed in his critique of the available promotional outlets. "The system is all run off labels and payola. That's why international tours are our stronghold. Over there you can hear our music on BBC1 right next to the mainstream stuff. Cats feel hip-hop in London. You can see amazing tours like Juice Crew, Pete Rock, Public Enemy, things that would never happen over here."

Of course one might wonder why they'd even do US tours after reading that, but according to Thes it's all about doing business hand to hand at small shows like these. "That's the only way we sell. Honestly we live off the merchandise on our shows. That's why when we travel, it's just me and Double K. There's no entourage of 20 people like a 50 Cent show. We don't get the distribution in Best Buy. We get a little distribution thanks to Sony Red and Basement, but not like other groups." He also had some pointed comments about the lack of new groups in hip-hop today. "Everybody is all about freestyling, making their name off dissing other cats, and not about building a scene. Consequently there's no radio support. Pharcyde sold a million units of "Bizarre Ride," imagine if they came out today, it would never happen. It's just wasting talent. Take all these freestylers and put them in a group with a DJ. Form the links in the chain, we make a chain and link it from the last generation to the next, there's too many MC's who are out of context."

When asked if he had any beef with OM over lack of promotion he said "Nah, we're happy with OM and we're not looking for beef. Honestly I've given up a little bit on promotion, because we're real hip-hop and not an angle. We tried to go to Epitaph, Boots told us to come through when we were free, but they wanted to know what our angle was. Uhh, what? We're hip-hop. That's not an angle. We just make good music." Perhaps the most shocking revelation Thes gave me was that URB magazine wanted them to do an interview where they'd diss OM just to get more publicity, and they flat out refused to do it.

Big up to Thes One for keeping it positive, he drove nine hours just to do this show and had to pack up and be ready to roll out again when our interview was over. That's love for hip-hop, something far too few artists have these days.