Cee & Bekah interview: The Soul Movement

Steve sits down with Melbourne hip hop duo Cee & Bekah to talk about their Soul Movement mixtape

1. The mixtape is out, the shows are happening. What sort of feedback have you had from ‘The Soul Movement Vol. 1’?

Cee: Yes sir! It was initially a bit slow to pick up, mainly coz we didn’t really push it straight away, but the love we’re getting for it lately is incredible. We’ve sold around half the copies we got pressed and the downloads keep going up, which is dope. I think a lot of people are finally realizing what we can do. As with most lower profile local artists, we felt we’d been slept on for quite a while, and it seems that this is slowly changing now that we have a release out there that we’re pushing.

We’ve been getting a fair bit of interest from the US, surprisingly, mainly through MySpace. College radio in Knoxville, Tennessee have picked us up and are playing our stuff, and producers from all over have been hollering, which is much easier than having to chase ‘em all the time.

The thing is, ‘The Soul Movement Vol. 1’ was basically a warm-up or practice for us, allowing our styles to blend and establish our own sound. A lot of these songs were written while we lived in Toronto, Canada in 2004! And the rest were spread out between 2005-2007, so it’s fairly reflective of what’s to come, but we’ve considerably grown musically since then. The love is great, though.

Bekah: We have received very positive feedback with the mixtape. I’m actually quite surprised as to the type of audience we have tapped into.

2. How did you possibly manage a show in Adelaide and how did the crowd react?

Cee: That’s a bit of a funny one, eh? My man Jon Lim from www.GrooveOn.com.au hooked that up for us. He mentioned it like six months prior, and we were mad hesitant as we didn’t expect to find many fans of our style of music out in ADL. But we thought, ‘Why not?’, we hadn’t done an interstate gig for quite a while so it was about time, especially seeing as we had recently dropped the mixtape.

The show was for the GrooveOn party at Red Square in November last year. This place reminded me of Twister @ Palace (before it ‘accidently’ burned down *ahem*), with podium dancers and the DJ’s in the main room giving away drink cards to chicks and all that. The back room was the R&B/Hip Hop room, which fit around 200-300 people. The joint was packed, but we didn’t go on ‘til after 2am and we were mad tired from a big one the night before, but we held it down. When we jumped up, the whole place just screamed. We had never received love like that in Melbourne - maybe we hadn’t been playing to the right crowds, who knows – so we kinda just stopped and looked at each other, stunned lol. They got right into it, people were reaching out to touch us and shit, singing along, it was a tripper. Adelaide showed mad love, we’d go back there in a second! Peace to the homie DJ Krisp, holdin’ us down in ADL.

Bekah: Jon Lim approached Cee asking if we’d like to perform a set at his GrooveOn party in Adelaide. Naturally, we weren’t going to turn down the offer as we’d never performed there before. The gig went exceptionally well, I thought. I’d never seen a crowd show so much love and enthusiasm throughout our entire set. I’d love to perform there again.

3. You guys have an upcoming club set, but your music is far from the standard club sound. Are you going to modify your show to suit the venue?

Cee: True. Well, the Adelaide gig was a straight up club set, and I had done a whole bunch of club gigs when I was doing the Soul District project back in 2003, so I was sorta familiar with how it all worked. ‘Vol. 1’ has a few joints that can work in a club setting, which we played in ADL and some other club-like gigs we’d done in Melbourne recently. The crowd we’re aiming for is pretty much a cross between the club crowds and the festival heads, so this is something we wanna lock down.

But probably half the tracks we perform will be from ‘Vol. 2’, as we sought out a few tracks that would bang in a club so that we had more material for these type of sets. But don’t get it twisted, we don’t make ‘club’ music, per se – we still bring our own style to the club-friendly beats we select. We’ll throw in a few originals though, to show the people what’s really good.

Bekah: What Craig said

4. Cee & Bekah is a group quite obviously on the soul tip. Are you surprised given the ability our local producers have to replicate the sound, and the local listener’s inclination toward underground hip hop, that there aren’t more people doing what you do?

Cee: Good point. There are definitely a gang of talented producers in Australia who can bang out a hype soul beat, no question. But it’s true, you rarely hear this style from most local artists, whether they’re underground, mainstream or in between. I guess this is a good thing for us, as we’ve pretty much found our own little niche in the industry. There’s nobody doing what we do – I know of two other groups from other states who have a similar make-up to us, but they definitely aren’t on the soul tip.

We’re both really into music, and anything with soul immediately grabs us. The great thing about making our style of music is that the real heads who dig soulful tunes generally gravitate to us, and they’re usually the more loyal and keener fans who truly appreciate the music and ‘get’ the small things we do that probably go over the general public’s domes, nahmean?

Bekah: Like Cee said, I haven’t heard of anyone doing what we’re doing. It’s great that we have found our own way to be different, and we’re getting much love for it too. We both bring a special uniqueness to the music we make and it seems to be working.

5. How is ‘Volume 2’ coming along and when can we expect it?

Cee: ‘Volume 2’ is almost done, man. We’ve finished about 25 songs thus far, and we’ve got another 20-plus tracks half written. We want to choose from a pool of tracks for this one, and the rest will go on ‘Volume 3’ (which will be the final mixtape in ‘The Soul Movement’ series). The sound of ‘Volume 2’ is much more mature than ‘Volume 1’, in my opinion. Since a lot of the earlier tunes landed on ‘Volume 1’, ‘Volume 2’ will be more reflective of where we’re at today.

There’s a gang of political-themed tracks on there, more topical stuff and less ‘straight spittin’’ songs. Our whole thing is to not do what everyone else is doing – make songs about rapping and all that typical shit. Of course, we do that here and there, but even when we do there’s still very strong themes involved, not just punchlines and random shit. That wouldn’t suit our style, anyway. I think we’ve gone with a more organic feel as well, which will lead perfectly into the EP. We’re aiming to drop ‘Volume 2’ in the second quarter, once ‘Volume 1’ has settled a bit.

As far as producers, we’ve got beats from Styalz Fuego, Whisper, KrisblaiR (Toronto, Canada), Revelino, and a few other up-and-comers from around the country. We’ve also got features from Arte Y Lenguaje (from Bogota, Colombia, who we’ve been working with quite a bit), Notion, Tommy Gunnz, Motley (UK), GMC, Theory, some wack cunt called Tommy Carson, and a bunch of others. And we’ve locked in our big name DJ to mix it too, but we’ll hold back on that one ‘til the date gets a bit closer.

Bekah: ‘Volume 2’ - more like ‘Volume 3’! We have so much material, it’s not funny. Cee writes like a mad man! ‘Volume 2’ is almost finished, just a few little things more and we’re hoping that will be out in the next couple of months. As for ‘Volume 3’, that’s already in the process, so that should hopefully be out later this year.

6. Are there plans for an actual album sometime in the future?

Cee: There are definitely plans for an album, but that will be next year. After ‘Volume 2’, the next project is our as-yet-untitled EP. We’re currently maybe a quarter of the way through it so far, we’re still in the beat-hunting phase. We’ve got a bunch of beats locked in so far and have completed about three tracks, and it’s sounding dope. Production so far is from Styalz Fuego, Jase (Obese), Motley, Kaos and KidEight (an up and comer from the UK). We’ve also got two features completed with some decent name cats from the US, but we’ll keep that under wraps for now.

We’re definitely going with the soul vibe, with most tracks containing some sort of soul sample. It’ll be quite an organic sounding EP, with some solid singles and really topical tracks that people all over the world can relate to. We wanted to establish ourselves with the mixtapes first, get our sound together and make some noise with some free music, rather than just drop an EP straight away and expect people to buy it off the bat.

The next step is to put together a full band, with whom we want to tour and record an album. We love working with all the producers, but we really see ourselves moving in the direction of live music and real musicians, it’s something we’ve both always wanted to do and we think it’ll be perfect for our sound. I’m thinking that’s gonna be tough to pull off (no homo), but I know we can do it. It’s nothin’ to us.

As far as the crew, ‘The Movement’ fam includes my brother Notion and the homie Tommy Gunnz. Notion has nearly completed his sophomore mixtape ‘World Domi-Notion’, and will be dropping an internet-only mixtape ‘On The Corner of Notion and 9th’ very shortly, which is all his tracks over 9th Wonder beats. Tommy is currently working on both his debut mixtape and EP concurrently, and it’s sounding pretty damn fresh thus far.

Bekah: We have so many projects that we’re working on right now, it’s crazy. Like Cee mentioned, our EP is in the works right now and that’s coming along pretty well with all the above mentioned producers. I’m sure Cee and I will tap into solo projects soon, also.

7. How do you manage to juggle so much writing and recording etc with your 9-5 … and all that time you spend getting sweaty with men in the gym?

Cee: It’s hardcore bro, especially keeping it in my pants when I’m all sweaty at the gym with the men. On Tuesdays. No homo.

To be honest, we hardly go out – there’s no time. Unless we have a show to go to, or a friend’s playing a gig or there’s a birthday or something, we rarely leave the crib. We both work 9 to 5’s, which are our lowest priorities – they just pay the mortgage, really. I literally don’t watch TV at all, period. I download TV shows like Entourage and Heroes and maybe watch them over dinner, but that’s it. When I get home from work, I’m straight at it. I’m our manager, booking agent, promo/marketing guy, A&R, water boy – everything for Cee & Bekah, Notion and Tommy Gunnz. So that takes up a fair bit of time, especially since we’re really pushing our tunes hard now. I also have to fit in the gym three times a week, basketball too. I’m still the Senior Writer for www.GrooveOn.com.au, so there’s the journo work. Plus I run Hooded Ink’s Artist Connect division (www.myspace.com/hoodedinkartistservices), so I barely get time to scratch my ball bag.

But I wouldn’t have it any other way, bro. We’re quite motivated and driven people, we have a lot of goals that we want to achieve and in order to do so, we have to sacrifice a few things. It’ll all pay off in the end though, no doubt.

Bekah: Working 9 to 5 sucks. It’s VERY hard to do a million and one things in a day. I usually write whenever I have a spare moment, and go crazy recording and writing on weekends. Cee and I live together and he doesn’t cook, so when I get home I‘m getting dinner ready and then I have to make the lunches and iron his clothes - my night is gone. But I’ll put the iPod on when doing all of the above and try to do a little something so it’s not a completely wasted evening.

Check out Cee & Bekah online:

Blog/Website: www.ceeandbekah.com
MySpace: www.myspace.com/ceeandbekah
Places to download mixtape: www.GroundUpHipHop.com, www.PlanetUrban.com, Cee & Bekah MySpace (sign up to the mailing list to receive the download link).