A friend and sports writer for the Gettysburg Times, Adam Michael put the following together. The Artists are all guys I went to high school with. I've yet to see them perform live, but tonight might be the night. They will be performing at the Ragged Edge Coffee house at 7. If you don't know where that is in Gettysburg, It's located at the corner (almost) of Chambersburg and Washington St right in the heart of Gettysburg.
Adam, the writer of the following is a very talented sportswriter. Beyond sports he has an incredible knowledge of hip hop, rap, and the like, but I'm sure you'll notice that when you start reading. If you're local come out and support some local talent. The show is FREE.
Here is a link to the Article but I copied the text portion below.
Gettysburg’s first official hip hop collaborative is returning to Gettysburg this weekend, and the cost of admission matches the name of the group.
The Nothing, a trio of native local emcees, will perform a two-hour concert called “A Little Thanks Given” at 7 p.m. Saturday at The Ragged Edge Coffee House located at 110 Chambersburg Street in Gettysburg. In the spirit of the season, the performance is free for all to attend.
Solomen Pade (Kendrick Johnson), Wallypeanuts (Jamar Tyler) and Teddy Holmes have come a long way since their first concert in Gettysburg. In spring of 2007, the group was still in its infant stages when it held its first concert in the community that helped mold it.
“People from Gettysburg are showing a lot of support,” Johnson said. “People travel and pay a cover when we’re on the road. Since we’ll be home for the holidays we thought we’d give a little back; just a little thank you for all ages. The content is family friendly. Anyone’s welcome to come and have a latte. Nothing goes better with hip hop than latte.”
The show will feature songs from their new album, “Digital Villains,” the group’s fourth album released in May, as well as songs from their previous release, “Closer.”
The group is excited to perform in Gettysburg again. Since the last performance, the group has improved both lyrically and in stage performance, having played dozens of shows in south central Pennsylvania, around Harrisburg and York. They’ve also traveled to New York City, among other places.
No one is more excited to show their new skills back home then Holmes.
“When you start anything, you think, ‘I’m going to be serious about this,’ but you’re apprehensive,” he said, reflecting on his first year trying to make it as a rapper. “Not to say I didn’t want to do it, but there’s a lot of questions that go along with it. It’s not just a CD and what you see on TV. It’s your actual life.
“People told me I had to move more on stage. I’m becoming a better performer, a better rapper and I think I was alright at it anyway. I like the direction things are going right now. I want to keep it moving forward.”
The travel has been timeconsuming, but fun for the group. Johnson has kept a video journal of their travels on a video blog entitled “Pade Blog” which can be found in a YouTube search.
“We go and see people and you just learn from them,” Johnson said. “You learn ways to rock crowds. It’s sort of like in sports. If you’re around basketball people you get more knowledge of how the game is run. It’s not just scoring buckets and running the court. There are strategies. You have to put your spin on it, but there are working formulas. Traveling makes you seasoned and more aware of things.”
Their newest album, “Digital Villians,” is a steady benchmark for the group. The Nothing’s most popular album to date is a 10-track LP that shows conceptual, lyrical and technical growth from the first stop in Gettysburg.
Tyler produced nine of the tracks on the album, sampling bits from some of his favorite soul, rock and jazz records. The playlist starts with “Sunday Thru Sunday,” a feel-good track serving as a reintroduction to The Nothing that also illustrates the group’s work ethic.
Fans of the music will notice a stark contrast in the sound and production quality from previous albums. After three years, Tyler’s trained his ear to find key parts of songs that help accentuate the voices of the artists. The group also received assistance from The Green Room Studio, a music production facility in Harrisburg.
The Nothing produced “Closer” using their own equipment. Johnson said that doing all the leg work themselves gave their previous album sentimental value, but “Digital Villians” shows the group’s progress.
“‘Closer’ was our baby because we did it ourselves,” he said. “We wanted to see what product we could get with that.”
Sounds in the song “Sunday Thru Sunday” such as a carbonated beverage opening, selective fades or a steel drum riff help tie the beat together nicely, and give listeners extra sensory imagery to interact with on the track.
“The engineer we worked with was great,” Tyler said of The Green Room’s Derek Euston. “The relationship, we get along with him personally and then again in the business realm too. He has a lot of ideas and it was exciting to work with him.”
Like their previous works, tracks like “Deep In A Hole” and “Five Year Grind” tell stories of determination to work through day jobs and still continue to put out music that is thoughtful and public friendly. Other tracks like “Good Music and On Me” seem to be aimed at expressing how the group is trying to create a voice separate from what’s become cliché in the rap culture.
“Everything has it’s place, we’re just kind of focused on us,” Johnson said. “We write about things we go through in our life experiences. We’re not trying to be different, we’re just trying to be us. I appreciate some gangster rap, party rap, hipster rap. We’re just trying to do us and be as real as possible with it. There’s enough negative stuff out there and we’re trying to stay on the positive side.”
The song “Rich” is a curveball in the otherwise feel-good album. Rather than use samples, Tyler produced the somber tune from scratch. An eerie melody is complimented with a treble-heavy drum beat and heavy exhaling question “why?” that follows the statement, “so you want to be rich.”
“Sometimes it’s tough because what’s in my head, I can’t put out,” Tyler said. “I’m not classically trained on instruments. That was just one of those days that something came out. It was one of those lucky things.”
The song is delivered as a third-person narrative, describing the life of the main character named Rich who symbolizes wealth and greed.
“It’s about the love of money and the way we worship that in society,” Johnson said. “we just wanted to make a statement; everyone wants to be wealthy to the point where it’s kind of disgusting right now.”
In Holmes’ verse, he acknowledges that, while he’s turned off by the characteristics he’s describing, he would not refuse the same fate.
“Mar came up with that concept,” Holmes said, adding that it was the most challenging, but rewarding song he’s worked on. “It took me a while to write my thoughts. It made me step my game up. Everyone that I’ve talked to likes it.”
The Nothing has sprinkled in songs about social and political issues along the way, but Tyler felt the next album will target those topics for a deeper look.
“The next batch of stuff is going to be better. It’s going to have a theme to it,” he said. “The world we live in, the stuff that’s going on… I can’t sit back. I feel like I’m doing an injustice. I just feel like we need to take responsibility for our world. That means speaking up, saying things, showing some action.”
No one in the group has gone through more in the last year than Holmes. The only one in the group who still resides in Gettysburg lost his mother, Katherine Holmes, last Christmas Eve.
Holmes said he’s working on a song to pay tribute to his mother, but is being very careful how he goes about it.
“It’s kind of hard,” he said.”I want it to be a perfect song. I just want the song to really show where I’m coming from and what I’m still going through.”
While Holmes has struggled wih his mother’s death, the music has served as his therapy.
“Right now I’m giving this music everything right now,” he said. “I’m depending on it. At the end of the day, this is what I want to do. This is my way of life. I’m really trying to push us in that direction and really trying to make it happen with this music.
“We’ve had open mics in New York City and they loved us. I’ve seen what we can do and that’s what motivates me. The people we’ve met, the people that show us love… it’s crazy, and it’s all motivation.”
“Digital Villains” is available on iTunes, Amazon, and Rhapsody.
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