Xpress Magazine Article

Article by: Eddie Drury

Date: 27th August 2004

People under the stairs - one step at a time

Long before it became an MTV catchphrase, Californian hip hop duo People Under The Stairs were immersed in 'old school' hip hop. In the six years since the release of their first album 'The Next Step', Double K and Thes One have continually set the bar with their dedication to the old school vibe.

Probably the predominant movement in alternative hip hop over the past few years has been the return to the sounds and styles of old school. Groups like Ugly Duckling, Jurassic 5 and Blackalicious have been the public spearheads of the movement dubbed 'new old-school', however, with their unrivalled adherence to the methods and ethos of old school, People Under The Stairs make them all look like Justin Timberlake.

From digging, to producing, to rapping, and even down to the artwork, Thes One and Double K are in complete control of literally every stage in the production of their music. There are many control freaks in the music industry, but few who take their artistic control down to that level. Some would say it's a masochistic way of working, but it's the only way they'd ever make music.

"We just don't want anything to come between our artistic vision and what the consumer or listener gets," Thes One explains. "Let's say we start even just having like an engineer in the studio controlling how the music sounds - already we're bypassing our version, that's one way it can happen. What we have in our minds goes straight back to the listeners and it's the same with the artwork, what we envision in our minds the listener gets."

This stringent approach to authorship also means they engage in very little, if any, collaboration in the studio. In a genre where extensive collaboration is the unquestioned norm - in both commercial and alternative scenes, it certainly sets them apart. Turn over virtually any hip hop album and you're guaranteed to see as many tracks with collaboration as without. It's almost become a showy little game of 'look who my friends are'.

"We don't really hang out with 'other rappers'," Thes One begins, clearly cynical over the trend. "One of the things we've always been clear about is that we don't go after people to try and get guest appearances on our album just so we can appeal to a larger audience. If you see anyone on our album it was only just because they were there, they're our homies and they were just sitting there and we're like 'hey, get on this track.'

"Making music is a real personal thing for us, we don't do it just to appease a consumer, by getting guests and things, we do it because we want to. [Collaborations] are definitely what the labels want and what the artists want, but only because they feel that's what the consumer wants. So to me, it's like it's just plain out for the consumer. Also it's a cheap way of getting words on an album and a real lazy way to put an album out."

Obviously they're a group with some pretty sharply defined scruples, and they extend this strict approach to their methods in the studio. Walk into their studio and you won't see any computers, digital samples or systems like Pro-Tools, but rather just analogue equipment and walls of vinyl. Literally every sound you hear on a PUTS record is sampled from an old record somewhere - the old fashioned way. However, with the digital revolution increasingly relegating vinyl to a niche market, it's not an easy time for vinyl junkies.

"Just to find samples and what not you might have to sort through a lot of records, so I spend a lot of my time looking over them, and also getting inspired by them at the same time. But it is getting more and more difficult. When we were younger we had all these different records, it was kind of like you could pick and choose. But now, just to maintain the standard we've gotta get pretty ballsy, and try new things, you definitely have to be more creative with it.

"Old records are in limited quantity, they're becoming a commodity and so you definitely have to look harder and try harder but also we're setting standards for ourselves where we don't wanna keep using and reusing the same ideas, we're trying to move forward. We're just making it harder on ourselves really."

Given the obstacles they face, you could hardly criticise them for rolling with punches and giving in to the inexorable drive of progress by going digital, but it's a challenge they welcome. "It's kind of cool and a little exhilarating. Technically I think definitely Double K and myself are getting to the point where we are going back and taking a record we've already used a million different times and taking it and making something entirely different and new out of it. We find a new context for the old thing and get all these new different relevance to it... It keeps getting deeper and deeper and more complicated," he emotes enthusiastically. "I don't think we will ever run out of things to use in hip hop expression."

With all his talk about the old ways, you could be forgiven getting a picture of the two as a pair of musical dinosaurs, forever trying to recapture the glory a past era, but it's not so. Thes One is keen to point out that while they're a group more conscious of their history than most, they're about paying tribute to their predecessors, not mimicking them.

"Yes, we have a respect to the people that came before us in hip hop, but we absolutely do not ever want to be looked at as people who are just trying to relive a certain moment in time. We are trying to make music that will evolve from that point in time, that you can still see a relation to that era of hip hop. It's kind of like with a father and son, the son still has his own life. That era of hip hop is the father but we are not trying to be that we are just trying to be a member of that family."