Back a couple months, I spoke with my Philly cats, Low Budget (who you might know from his world class message board) and Dirty South Joe (who you might know from Philly's hot shit record spot, Armands). The topic of the day was Baltimore Club, but as it turns out, the duo had another trick biatch up there sleeves; snap music. These guys are ready to Hall & Oates this shit with their just released Snap Or Die mix CD, and now that it's hit the streets, it's time you learned yourself a thing or two about the new punk rock; sounds snappy, eh? Read on...

Low Budget

So what’r you and Joe working on?
We’re working on an ATL mix CD, but all snap music, like “Lean Wit It” and “Laffy Taffy” and all that. But, we wandered into this rabbit hole of all this stuff that sounds like it was made in these kids basements, so we’ve got forty tracks of songs like that, that no one’s never heard of, that you can only get in Atlanta.

How’d you get your hands on the tracks?
We just did some research, and ended up talking to some record store people down in Atlanta and they hooked us up with some MP3s; none of it’s on vinyl.

So it’s a whole regional scene?
Yeah, there’s this place called The Poole Palace, a strip club, and there’s a song on the tape, actually, called “Do The Poole Palace” and that’s like the center of everything. They have under twenty-one nights that aren’t strip nights but a talent show, and all the kids go there and, you know, do all their shit; pass out CDs and give them to radio DJs. It’s a cool scene, like original hip-hop type scene, all in Atlanta.

Is it all underground, or do they make money off of it?
If it gets picked up... I mean, D4L’s making all kinds of money now, and Franchise Boys too. But it’s a scene really, I mean, I bet they all hope and dream of making money, but they’re really all just young kids doing music.

 

Dirty South Joe AKA Deluxxx

So Low B was telling me about this Snap music shit, it sounds pretty nuts...
Yeah, it’s out of control man, it’s cool. It’s funny, the last thing I did before I left the store was I had this argument with this dude who was like “I don’t like hearing that same damn song over and over again!” and I said “Yo you’re going to love it when you hear the CD we’re doing, we got forty tracks of it!”

Is there really that much out there?
Yeah, it’s crazy, and it’s all real real real youth driven; most of the cats making this music are 18, right out of high school. Everybody got real inspired by Crime Mob.

Is it good?
Hell yeah man, it’s all I really wanna listen to, and Low Budget’s like the same way... we’ll be playing dance classics and we’ll both be like “this would sound a lot better with some snaps in it!”

Why is it called snap, exactly?
It’s funny because, it’s just like every track is basically, kinda minimal and bouncy, and each track has a snap, a snapping sound, which is like a major means of percussion.

So it all revolves around when the snare hits?
Exactly, and the snare is always a kind of finger snapping sound. It’s funny because we started calling it “snap music” just between ourselves, not really realizing that it’s a straight up movement down in A-Town. You can’t call it crunk- you can’t call it anything but snap. There are so many groups that keep popping up and doing it, making really good songs.

What’d they produce on, like, Fruity Loops and stuff?
Probably, yeah. Most likely.

Epic... And what’r the lyrics like?
Generally kind of dumb. Like the “Laffy Taffy” shit, and the Franchise Boys “Lean Wit It, Rock Wit It”... So basically it’s all kinda about flossin’ and snappin’ and getting money and being at the club kinda stuff. There are a few tunes where they’re more into some head bussin’ type shit, but generally its good time party music. And, you know, there’s a dance to it that they’ll do... pretty much the whole night- a special snap dance. It’s cool, my favorite music has always come from Atlanta, and so you know it always keeps giving it to me. You hear the three or four songs that’ve been on the radio, and you kind of have no idea how out of control it is. There’re really only two groups that are actually signed.

Do you think more people are going to get picked up?
Hopefully, if we’ve got something to do with it. We’re getting affiliates for the disc, like DJ Drama cosigned on it and everything. The thing is that I’ve been looking at a lot of regional mixtapes coming out of Atlanta, and they just haven’t kept it specifically on the snap tip. We’re really like putting the whole past years worth on there... Basically it’s the Snappers Home Companion right there. Every snap track worth it’s salt in one mix. And the kids down there are going to love it too, you know.

How wide is the distro?
I think it’s probably going to go outside the usual lines of the Turntable Lab type places, and I’ve got people telling me were to take it to get in the serious hip hop mixtape sites, Texas, here, there. Realistically we could move a good ten thousand of ‘em. Mike and Wes, in all of there Hollertronix-ness have never played in Atlanta, so I think it would be fucking crazy if Low Budget and I get booked down there to play snap music, their music, down there. There’s nothing to say we couldn’t do that. Realistically, I don’t know how long the sound can last, but in my head it can pretty much last forever, but... you know if it only lasts like three years, still in the timeline of snap music, hopefully we can figure in there as a point were these groups got out there. They don’t have any web presence or website.... basically there’s a club called The Poole Palace in Atlanta, they have an 18 and over night on Weds, and they have, like, a talent show, and these groups will get together and perform, put the shit on a CD, and get it to this one particular DJ that plays the stuff on the radio- and that’s it. They don’t have any deals, they don’t have any aspirations like that, they’re just geared up to play their shows at The Poole Palace.

Kinda punk rock, in a way, wouldn’t you say?
Yeah, it’s nuts because there are mad squads. There’s a particular producer who’s like the hub of it all named K-Rab, he’s produced the bigger stuff, like D4L and Franchise songs, as well as all these other groups, and then his own stuff. He did this song called “Bubble Gum” it’s like “Laffy Taffy” but it’s a lot better than that. “Laffy Taffy” is one of those things that gets a “love it or hate it” response from the people you talk to, but at the same time, it smashed all the sales records as far as online legal downloads. “Gold Digger” was something like eighty thousand, or something like that in one week, and “Laffy Taffy” did like one hundred and seventy seven, and nothing else came close to that. The kids love it, so that’s really all we care about, we don’t really care about the hipsters or the music illuminati or anything like that, just straight getting it to the kids. Even in Philly which is a “last city in the country to play something” type of place, we have a plan where all of our school teacher/DJ friends make tons of copies of the CD and give them away to the kids that they know like music, because if you’re under twenty, this is going to be your favorite CD for a while, so we’re going for that as our focus.

That’s rad. I mean, when D4L and Franchise hit the air here, you could definitely tell that something was bubbling under all that, something for the kids...
Oh yeah, and it’s an arrogant and simple swagger filled type of music, so kids all over can relate to it, especially if you’ve got a white tee on- they don’t give a fuck.

 

 

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