Go back to: Magazine Articles
Colorado Springs Gazette Article
From: Colorado Springs Gazette
Article by: Bill Reed
Date: 8th November 2002
Good old hip hop - People Under The Stairs take sound back to origins
People Under the Stairs want to take you back to a forgotten time and place.
Here, nobody is expected to roll up in a Cadillac Escalade.
Here, the beat boys wear jeans and sneakers instead of Armani suits.
Here, the only ice is in the glasses.
Here, Kool Herc is spinning old funk records forever and ever.
People Under the Stairs - the duo of Double K and Thes One - got together in '95. The Los Angelenos have put out three albums since then, building a reputation for old-school hip hop.
Thes One (Chris Portugal) doesn't like that description. He says it's "not old school or mid-school or underground or breakbeat or true school. Just good old hip hop."
This is not the rap you hear on the radio. Instead of Bentleys and Gucci, these guys are rapping on everyday city life. P. Diddy fans can get their ditties someplace else.
Thes One is proud when critics call his sound "dated." He wants to harken back to the time when hip hop rocked block parties instead of corporate cash registers.
"Some things are so fundamental to an art form that they are not true-schoolisms," he says. "They are the very rules by which we define our music. Sampling is not old school, it is our medium. As a sculptor uses clay, or a painter uses paint, we use old records to make our music."
Thes One thinks hip-hoppers focused too much on being experimental and progressive instead of sticking to the basics. People Under the Stairs take the sound back to its origins.
No keyboards. No backing bands. No gimmicks.
Just beats, rhymes about real life and scratching that replicates the sounds of the city. The People's new joint, 'O.S.T. (Original Sound Track)', sounds like an interrupted conversation on the front porch.
They crack 40s, hit a few neighborhood parties, scrape up the rent and dig through record crates for fresh sounds. They're living the "analog life-style." That's about it.
While other rappers stuff albums with boasts about their toughness, their abilities with the ladies and their vast wealth, these guys rely on self-deprecating humor. The People are just "touring like the Griswolds."
The beats shift and sway beneath the lyrical flow. Along the way, the duo cranks out head bobbers such as 'Jappy Jap' to make you "jump out your FUBU," the disco of 'The Hang Loose', and the laid-back Caribbean vibe of 'Montego Slay'.
Thes One savors the symbolism of his music - rescuing the old, tossed-out sounds of the city from dusty bins and turning them into brand new creations. He likes to compare hip hop to freed slaves picking up marching instruments from Civil War battlefields and inventing jazz.
The People make you feel the heat rising off the blacktop, the 'hood honeys walking by and the cold brew going down.
