The phrase “almost famous” seems like a cheap cliché in most instances, but when it comes to South Carolina’s Spectac & Amiri, it’s frankly a sad truth. Sad, simply because if there were ever two individuals whose music deserved critical acclaim, these two would fit the bill. Having traveled the globe and acquired fans in places far off and in between, yet destined to roam their home turf unrecognized seems like a bittersweet victory. Despite that, these artists remain as upbeat as their music and push forward with great momentum. You can’t help but feel the love that Amiri produces under each track, and the affection that Spectac writes with. With a decade and a half (the duo debates whether they formed in ’91, ’95 or ’97), this is no overnight operation. Spectac & Amiri do music for all of the right reasons and never for the hype.
S&A has experienced milestones such as their single “Lessons From da Ghetto” that charted on Billboard’s top 100 Hip Hop/R&B List. They’ve also had the privilege of performing at the annual Rocksteady Anniversary reunion, plus an appearance on NPR. With their new project Almost Famous catching a viral buzz, Spectac & Amiri stop to talk to DXnext on why the old school feel still bring forth a new school fun in their music.
Bit With The Hip Hop Bug: Spectac recalled, “Around ’83 I believe, I was sitting in the garage with my dad cause he’s an auto mechanic and I heard Run-DMC’s “Sucker MC’s” come on the radio and the moment I heard it I was just like, ‘Yo, this is dope and how can I be down?’ The rest is history and it took me on a quest up and down the east coast.” Amiri added, “My introduction to Hip Hop was definitely ‘Rapper’s Delight’ [by] Sugar Hill Gang, and Kurtis Blow. From the moment I heard it, it was a wrap from there.”
It Ain’t Where Ya From, It’s…: “Both of us are originally from South Carolina. I still reside here and Spectac now lives in Atlanta,” said Amiri. Spectac clarified, “Amiri is from the upstate part of South Carolina, and I’m from the lower end and we met in the midlands.”
Creative Chemistry: “To be honest I’m really big on being moved by the music. I listen to the track and see what the beat is saying to me than I turn around and record it,” said Spectac. “It’s never really just a situation where I’m just running around and writing down lyrics out of the blue I have to hear the music and by moved by it first. I always start the creative process from that point. That’s my mode of operation.”
Talkin’ All That Jazz: “The early ’90s Hip Hop movement inspired my musical development,” said Amiri. “I was influenced by the crate diggers such as DJ Premier, A Tribe Called Quest, the whole Native Tongues family and so on. Those were the cats that taught me how to sample and create real music for building Hip Hop.”
Finding Inspiration Together After 15+ Years: “I look at emcees as being in the moment,” began Spectac. “When you’re in the moment right now like Drake or Lil Wayne, you honestly just don’t see the long-term. It takes a true genius to see the long-term and revolutionary turns that music may take ahead of time. We were in the moment at that time and we thought the golden era of music would last forever, but it didn’t. But at that moment in time, that’s what we thought.” Amiri continued, “I still think that the golden era of Hip Hop is still alive it’s just existing at a lower level now. At one time it was mainstream and then it went to being mainstream and underground. It’s like a circle every era has its time and it revolves around. Cats are blowing up everywhere now though through the Internet.”
Carolina Pioneers: “In the beginning of my career I worked with an independent record label in Columbia, South Carolina, and the guy was well known in the music industry because he was known as a marketing rep for Def Jam [Records] or somebody like that. One day he basically explained that the record labels love this part of the country because this is one of the few places where the people don’t have their own sound. The artists do not have a distinctive sound. There’s a good and bad to that. The bad is that because we don’t have own sound we don’t really have a market to launch from. On the flip-side, the good is that we’re so diverse because of what the fans are listening to, labels know that they can push and type of records to break here whether it be Booty music, Pop music, hardcore Gangsta Rap, or whatever because we haven’t identified ourselves with a particular style,” explained Spectac. Amiri added, “I think radio is a big part of that battle as well because the radio here follows trends instead of trying to break records. Like for us, we had to go overseas to make it. We’ve got fans in Europe over in England and all the other countries. We get love from all these people and South Carolina doesn’t even know that we exist.” Spectac chimed in with that sentiment. “That’s like with the album right now Almost Famous our label [HipNOTT Records] brought it to our attention that we had a iTunes front page article that was featured in Norway, Belgian, Italy and a few more places overseas but is that going to happen here in the states, probably not. It’s sad but that’s just where it is and the crowd over there just better appreciates what we do.”
Bridging The Gap Between ’95 and ’10: “On the lyrical side cats just don’t spit anything that’s conscious anymore. Either you’re banging, mackin’ on all the chicks your can score, or talking about your 30 inch rims. It’s all just so redundant and it’s fool’s music. There’s no sustenance to the lyrics that are coming out now. Again, that’s not every artist but the ones that are saying something whole industry rallies behind. All of this falls back on us as consumers because we have to be able to start demanding a higher quality of music from artists. As long as the people are accepting the type of music that is out the record labels are not going to change it,” asserted Spectac.
Career Vs. Love: Amiri explained, “We both have serious careers. Spectac was a high school principal, and now he’s in an executive position within the school systems and I work for BMW, so we both have really good jobs that we’re not letting go unless something big happens. We’re going to keep doing it how we’re doing it. I mean we’re comfortable doing it from the independent standpoint, but if an opportunity came along for us to take it to the next level than I think that Spec and I would be interested.”
Almost Famous: “Originally, Spec would be like, ‘Okay, I’m comin’ over and we’re gonna work on some music,’ and it was supposed to be Spec, me and DJ Shakim that used to tour with Bow Wow, but he’s now wit New Edition and SWV. Spectac has worked with 9th Wonder, and I was working with A Tribe Called Quest. We’ve all had our moments where we could have gotten a foot in the door and walked through, but it never quite happened so we decided to do an album together as a crew called “Almost Famous.” The project never materialized because of conflicting schedules so Spec and I decided to just go ahead to put the project out with just us two. The album came together and one of my favorite stand out tracks is ‘My God’ because it gave me that reminisce vibe of nostalgia,” said Amiri. Spectac added, “Yeah after that we really just decided to roll with that title. Amiri called me up like, ‘Look, it’s New Years Eve. I’m going to roll through and bring in the New Year with you in Atlanta.’ I told him that was cool and when he got here we went downstairs and he hooked up his equipment than 15 hours later, we had the album complete. My favorite song on the project ‘Mass Effect,’ and the video took that song to a whole new level. All the songs are great though like ‘Soldier Story’ or ‘Oh Baby Please.'”
Listener Take-Away: “As far as I’m concerned, I want the people to recognize it as real Hip Hop. People are already feeling the singles and I want that feeling to continue for the whole album. I think that if people really sit down and listen to the music that will make me happy.” Amiri said, “I just want people to continue to listen to the music and support it. I want people to feel the positive vibes that we’re trying to bring forth from our music. If people just listen and give it a chance that will make me happy. We want to grab the cats that may not be aware of us and wake cats up to recognize that good Hip Hop is alive and well.”
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