Video Exclusive: Loud.com Favorites With Sha Stimuli
New York, NY (August 19, 2008) – I’m a fan of creativity. Always have been, always will be. The problem is, there always seems to be a fine line between creativity and madness. And nothing embodies that principle more than Free Jazz.
I took a History of Jazz course at my college (Florida Southern, shout out to swimming in November with blonde chicks), and if you’ve ever listened to Jazz, you know there are all kinds… the danceable, 1940’s swing shit that I couldn’t do with a gun to my head, the crazy, up-tempo, holy-shit-did-you-hear-that-solo at 180bpm where the drummer looks like he’s got two sticks in each hand cuz he’s movin so fast, the Kenny G/CD 101.9 smooth garbage that used to lull me to sleep driving home with my dad as a kid after Yankees games… and of course, the aforementioned Free Jazz, which, to be blunt, sounds like a bunch of drunken 8th graders getting together in their band room after hours and playing whatever the fuck they want, possibly in key, usually not, recording it, and calling it a song.
The point is, there’s creativity I can get down with, and the rest is often so inaccessible that it never achieves what perhaps it’s intended purpose is. It’s a struggle all artists fight against. But there are some exceptions…
Cerebral Knievel Sha Stimuli is madness, but he doesn’t fall into that inaccessible category. In fact, he’s in the complete opposite stratosphere. It’s pretty impressive. I’d heard some of duke’s music before, but to be in his presence and hear the delivery of it live, you get the sense there’s something extra to the kid’s spits. Charisma. Personality. SOMETHING. Indeed, he’s a veteran in the game and been exposed to a lot (chillin with Biggie in the studio – WHAT!), he’s had numerous brushes with mainstream greatness (ahem, the Jay-Z “fiasco,” as he labeled it), he’s honed his artistic craft (a gentleman and a scholar)… but to approach music with such a creative drive and pull it off so AUTHENTICALLY is tough. In the same way I mentioned last week that Hasaan’s greatest ability was to reveal conviction in his words, Stimuli channels the artist’s inner-most task of creation and flips it so well, you actually FEEL enlightened when you listen to his music. Perhaps it’s because he’s so… free… that the madness, then, BECOMES accessible? Funny how that works.
Sha took some time out from recording his seventh (yes, 7th) mixtape this year to kick it with us up in the SRC offices and downstairs at Columbus Circle for a segment of Loud.com Favorites. Just watch… dude is on his hip-hop shit…
Part 1 – Sha kicked it with us up by Columbus Circle and talked about hosting, acting, bein in the studio with Biggie as a little kid and the fall-out with Jay-Z and Def Jam. Stimuli!
Part 2 – Amidst dog fights and the smell of hot dogs, Sha goes in with three of his favorites (ignoring my request for that “Back of The Bus” joint), one from the Stevie mixtape, a brand new gem no one’s heard yet, and the fatal blow, the monstrous, “Look at You, Look At Me.”
Tags: favorites, freestyle, hiphop, interview, john, loud, Music, public, rap, sha, stimuli