H.I.S.D.
With an industry co-sign from ?uestlove, the music of H.I.S.D. is already catching some big attention. Their sound is somewhat unique and a-typical of their Houston home; however they have managed to garner a thumbs up from their local mayor who has indicated he’s a fan of the group.
This Rap ensemble of eight includes four emcees, two producers, a photographer, and a deejay that also doubles as an additional producer. While they claim scheduling to be a daunting task for a group of their size, it appears they have very little trouble creating that easy to vibe to music reminiscent of rap groups from days gone by.
Journey Of Learning: “H.I.S.D. is an acronym for Hueston Independent Spit District. The name came from a flip of what is our major public school district which is H.I.S.D – Huston Independent School District. The whole concept of H.I.S.D. is that we consider ourselves students as well as teachers in the Hip Hop realm and in music in general.” -Savvy
H.I.S.D. & K.O. "Summer So Good" from FWMJ on Vimeo.
Sound Distinction: “We get it a lot that we don’t sound like we’re from Houston, but it’s a positive and a negative. A lot of the people who hear it are attracted to it because it doesn’t sound like the norm for around here. We wanna be identified as ourselves. There’s just a whole slew of artists that aren’t really gettin’ the notoriety who are friends of ours that we work with so we just wanna help put a whole new light out there for Houston.” -Soul One
Collective Leadership: “There’s no leader in the group; we like the Boston Celtics. [Laughing] We all leaders in our own right and we all have an equal say in the group. If somethin’ is not right somebody will say somethin’ and we all grown men so we don’t take offense to it; we know it’s always for the betterment of the group and for the music. One thing I like about the group is that we all mature adults and we handle things the way they should be handled to keep the group goin’ and put out the best product we can.” -LdaVoice
Scheduling Challenges: "The biggest obstacle is scheduling and that’s a nightmare! You have eight individuals, eight different schedules, eight different lives and whatnot. Getting everybody in the same room at the same time is increasingly a challenge.” -Savvy
“Sometimes the schedulin’ is an issue because we all still have jobs and we have other fields of interests on the side so we kinda have to work along with that. We’re all responsible in how we come back together and make decisions and try to get everyone on the right page so we can move forward.” -Soul One
Multiple Influences And A Few Comparisons: “We come from different backgrounds in terms of the type of music that we like so when we come together collectively it’s an incorporation of a lot of different music that we like and that we listen to. It’s kinda hard cause we know we’re probably gunna get put in a box but we don’t view ourselves as artists like, 'Okay, we’re making this particular type of music.' A lot of fans will tie us into like a De La Soul, a Little Brother [click to read] or A Tribe Called Quest [click to read].” -Scotty Spitten
Stir Up The Music: “Our music is like a good chicken tortilla soup. It’s like you got all these different ingredients: you got corn, you got your black peas, you got your chicken, your broth...just a big old stew of stuff. [Laughing] I mean each one of the emcees we come in differently. What’s really dope to me is you can definitely tell who’s who ‘cause our voices are uniquely distinct from each other. For the producers, their beats are totally different from each others' so they stand out. You get a lot of different flavors in there and when we put it together you get that album in the shrink-wrap and it’s just a good ole’ stew.” -LdaVoice
A Feel Good Objective: “Our goal is to just make the freshest music we can make. The producers, Golden Soul Classics, they initially cook up some nice tracks and they send em’ to the emcees and if we feel it as emcees we write to it. As long as the music we make gives you a good feelin’ then that’s what we’re aimin’ to do. We make mostly feel good soul music with a Hip Hop foundation.” -Savvy
Organizational Structure: “H.I.S.D. is the group and Peace Uv Mine is the organizational entity behind it. H.I.S.D. is contractually signed to Peace Uv Mine, but it’s more of a family. It’s not like if H.I.S.D. doesn’t do what Peace Uv Mine wants it to do they’re gonna get dropped; it’s nothin’ like that and it’s not that type of a scenario. It’s really an organic thing. With Peace Uv Mine, my vision was to kinda redefine what the record label model was and I consider it more of an artist collective and a community. By definition what I call Peace Uv Mine is a platform for progressive arts and progressive artistry.” -Savvy
A Political Endorsement: “I actually double as a basketball coach; me and King Midas are basketball coaches at a high school out here in Houston. The mayor [of Houston], Bill White, his son plays for our basketball team and we went on this little trip to Wako on a ranch for some team buildin’ chemistry type stuff. All the fathers of the players were invited so Mayor Bill White came and on the way down to Wako his son, Stephen White, was listenin’ to H.I.S.D.’s first album called The District. When they got to the ranch we were all sittin’ and eatin’ breakfast and the mayor comes in like 'Which one of you guys is in H.I.S.D.?' I raised my hand and was like, 'Uh me.' You know you kinda wanna give the answer but not really so I was like, 'Uh, I am.' He was like, 'Man you guys got some really good music! We was listenin’ to it on the way up here.' As soon as I got back to the crib I was callin’ everybody from the group. [Laughing] So we got an endorsement from the mayor so we pretty much official.” -Scotty Spitten
The Process Of A ?uestlove Co-sign: “?uest [click to read] was out here doin’ a deejay set at the Museum of Fine Arts or somethin’ like that. If you remember YZ he was big back in the '90s and had 'Thinking Of A Master Plan,' he’s really cool with the group and he really likes the music, he’s actually friends with ?uest. When ?uest was in town, me and King Midas went up there with YZ and he introduced me and King Midas to him. YZ handed him the CD and was like, 'Man, I know you busy and you got a lot of stuff on your plate but these are a couple members from this group H.I.S.D. and they got really, really dope music. You need to check out this album.' I have no idea if he ever listened to it or not but that was kinda the foundation or groundwork of him gettin’ the H.I.S.D. CD in his hands.” -Scotty Spitten
“After that, maybe a year and a half, Scotty and I did a song and I got an email from DJ BrainChild and he was just sayin’ how ?uest and him were feelin’ that song. In like a millisecond I emailed King Midas and was like, 'Whatever you got, you need to start sendin’ it right now!' Within a couple of days the Okayplayer on ?uestlove’s page had our name on there and we were totally shocked. It’s a big, big, big co-sign.” -Soul One
“It was huge ‘cause he gave him the CD and we don’t know if he listened to it right them but some kinda way it ended up gettin’ back to him. He wrote up this beautiful blog tellin’ us that he got the same sorta feelin’ listenin’ to us that he got from listenin’ to Little Brother or Slum Village when they first came out. To see that it was like overwhelming; you know someone you look up to and admire who could have listened to anyone’s CD, could have endorsed anybody but he saw somethin’ special about what we do. He was like, 'Hey, y’all should hear these guys!'” -LdaVoice
Chronological Discography: “The debut was The District, that came out in late ‘07, and our second release was the The Summer Sessions, which was a mixtape EP that we dropped in the summer of ‘08. As a side project Scotty Spitten and King Midas released an EP. Now we’re workin’ on our sophomore release that’s currently untitled at this point and it should be droppin’ by the fourth quarter of '09.” -Savvy
Audible Growth: “I guess a really good term to use for this next sophomore album is growth. You’ll see a growth in the group as far production is concerned, as far as rhymin’, as far as everything as a whole. You’ll see that we started here and we are now in this place. You’ll really be able to clearly see that we have not only matured but we have grown in our sound, our rhymes, our concepts and all of that stuff that makes a really good album.” -Scotty Spitten
“As far as the production we are still kinda mappin’ it out. We are definitely gunna keep the foundation of our influences in the classic boom-bap style of Hip Hop but we’re also tryin’ to add some musicianship into the mix with a lot more keys and live instruments here and there. So for production, like everything else, it’s kinda gunna be like a growth – like and evolution. It’s still gonna be an H.I.S.D. sound that people are accustomed to.” -Soul One
How To Get Some H.I.S.D.: “Check us out [click here], on the official MySpace [click here] or on our Facebook fanpage. To get the music you can go CDBaby.com, iTunes, Amazon, Napster and so on and so forth. The Summer Sessions EP is free for download at our site! Be lookin’ out for the upcomin’ H.I.S.D. video that we’ll be puttin’ out in the comin’ months. Keep checkin’ for H.I.S.D. and the next album. ” -Savvy
This Rap ensemble of eight includes four emcees, two producers, a photographer, and a deejay that also doubles as an additional producer. While they claim scheduling to be a daunting task for a group of their size, it appears they have very little trouble creating that easy to vibe to music reminiscent of rap groups from days gone by.
Journey Of Learning: “H.I.S.D. is an acronym for Hueston Independent Spit District. The name came from a flip of what is our major public school district which is H.I.S.D – Huston Independent School District. The whole concept of H.I.S.D. is that we consider ourselves students as well as teachers in the Hip Hop realm and in music in general.” -Savvy
H.I.S.D. & K.O. "Summer So Good" from FWMJ on Vimeo.
Sound Distinction: “We get it a lot that we don’t sound like we’re from Houston, but it’s a positive and a negative. A lot of the people who hear it are attracted to it because it doesn’t sound like the norm for around here. We wanna be identified as ourselves. There’s just a whole slew of artists that aren’t really gettin’ the notoriety who are friends of ours that we work with so we just wanna help put a whole new light out there for Houston.” -Soul One
Collective Leadership: “There’s no leader in the group; we like the Boston Celtics. [Laughing] We all leaders in our own right and we all have an equal say in the group. If somethin’ is not right somebody will say somethin’ and we all grown men so we don’t take offense to it; we know it’s always for the betterment of the group and for the music. One thing I like about the group is that we all mature adults and we handle things the way they should be handled to keep the group goin’ and put out the best product we can.” -LdaVoice
Scheduling Challenges: "The biggest obstacle is scheduling and that’s a nightmare! You have eight individuals, eight different schedules, eight different lives and whatnot. Getting everybody in the same room at the same time is increasingly a challenge.” -Savvy
“Sometimes the schedulin’ is an issue because we all still have jobs and we have other fields of interests on the side so we kinda have to work along with that. We’re all responsible in how we come back together and make decisions and try to get everyone on the right page so we can move forward.” -Soul One
Multiple Influences And A Few Comparisons: “We come from different backgrounds in terms of the type of music that we like so when we come together collectively it’s an incorporation of a lot of different music that we like and that we listen to. It’s kinda hard cause we know we’re probably gunna get put in a box but we don’t view ourselves as artists like, 'Okay, we’re making this particular type of music.' A lot of fans will tie us into like a De La Soul, a Little Brother [click to read] or A Tribe Called Quest [click to read].” -Scotty Spitten
Stir Up The Music: “Our music is like a good chicken tortilla soup. It’s like you got all these different ingredients: you got corn, you got your black peas, you got your chicken, your broth...just a big old stew of stuff. [Laughing] I mean each one of the emcees we come in differently. What’s really dope to me is you can definitely tell who’s who ‘cause our voices are uniquely distinct from each other. For the producers, their beats are totally different from each others' so they stand out. You get a lot of different flavors in there and when we put it together you get that album in the shrink-wrap and it’s just a good ole’ stew.” -LdaVoice
A Feel Good Objective: “Our goal is to just make the freshest music we can make. The producers, Golden Soul Classics, they initially cook up some nice tracks and they send em’ to the emcees and if we feel it as emcees we write to it. As long as the music we make gives you a good feelin’ then that’s what we’re aimin’ to do. We make mostly feel good soul music with a Hip Hop foundation.” -Savvy
Organizational Structure: “H.I.S.D. is the group and Peace Uv Mine is the organizational entity behind it. H.I.S.D. is contractually signed to Peace Uv Mine, but it’s more of a family. It’s not like if H.I.S.D. doesn’t do what Peace Uv Mine wants it to do they’re gonna get dropped; it’s nothin’ like that and it’s not that type of a scenario. It’s really an organic thing. With Peace Uv Mine, my vision was to kinda redefine what the record label model was and I consider it more of an artist collective and a community. By definition what I call Peace Uv Mine is a platform for progressive arts and progressive artistry.” -Savvy
A Political Endorsement: “I actually double as a basketball coach; me and King Midas are basketball coaches at a high school out here in Houston. The mayor [of Houston], Bill White, his son plays for our basketball team and we went on this little trip to Wako on a ranch for some team buildin’ chemistry type stuff. All the fathers of the players were invited so Mayor Bill White came and on the way down to Wako his son, Stephen White, was listenin’ to H.I.S.D.’s first album called The District. When they got to the ranch we were all sittin’ and eatin’ breakfast and the mayor comes in like 'Which one of you guys is in H.I.S.D.?' I raised my hand and was like, 'Uh me.' You know you kinda wanna give the answer but not really so I was like, 'Uh, I am.' He was like, 'Man you guys got some really good music! We was listenin’ to it on the way up here.' As soon as I got back to the crib I was callin’ everybody from the group. [Laughing] So we got an endorsement from the mayor so we pretty much official.” -Scotty Spitten
The Process Of A ?uestlove Co-sign: “?uest [click to read] was out here doin’ a deejay set at the Museum of Fine Arts or somethin’ like that. If you remember YZ he was big back in the '90s and had 'Thinking Of A Master Plan,' he’s really cool with the group and he really likes the music, he’s actually friends with ?uest. When ?uest was in town, me and King Midas went up there with YZ and he introduced me and King Midas to him. YZ handed him the CD and was like, 'Man, I know you busy and you got a lot of stuff on your plate but these are a couple members from this group H.I.S.D. and they got really, really dope music. You need to check out this album.' I have no idea if he ever listened to it or not but that was kinda the foundation or groundwork of him gettin’ the H.I.S.D. CD in his hands.” -Scotty Spitten
“After that, maybe a year and a half, Scotty and I did a song and I got an email from DJ BrainChild and he was just sayin’ how ?uest and him were feelin’ that song. In like a millisecond I emailed King Midas and was like, 'Whatever you got, you need to start sendin’ it right now!' Within a couple of days the Okayplayer on ?uestlove’s page had our name on there and we were totally shocked. It’s a big, big, big co-sign.” -Soul One
“It was huge ‘cause he gave him the CD and we don’t know if he listened to it right them but some kinda way it ended up gettin’ back to him. He wrote up this beautiful blog tellin’ us that he got the same sorta feelin’ listenin’ to us that he got from listenin’ to Little Brother or Slum Village when they first came out. To see that it was like overwhelming; you know someone you look up to and admire who could have listened to anyone’s CD, could have endorsed anybody but he saw somethin’ special about what we do. He was like, 'Hey, y’all should hear these guys!'” -LdaVoice
Chronological Discography: “The debut was The District, that came out in late ‘07, and our second release was the The Summer Sessions, which was a mixtape EP that we dropped in the summer of ‘08. As a side project Scotty Spitten and King Midas released an EP. Now we’re workin’ on our sophomore release that’s currently untitled at this point and it should be droppin’ by the fourth quarter of '09.” -Savvy
Audible Growth: “I guess a really good term to use for this next sophomore album is growth. You’ll see a growth in the group as far production is concerned, as far as rhymin’, as far as everything as a whole. You’ll see that we started here and we are now in this place. You’ll really be able to clearly see that we have not only matured but we have grown in our sound, our rhymes, our concepts and all of that stuff that makes a really good album.” -Scotty Spitten
“As far as the production we are still kinda mappin’ it out. We are definitely gunna keep the foundation of our influences in the classic boom-bap style of Hip Hop but we’re also tryin’ to add some musicianship into the mix with a lot more keys and live instruments here and there. So for production, like everything else, it’s kinda gunna be like a growth – like and evolution. It’s still gonna be an H.I.S.D. sound that people are accustomed to.” -Soul One
How To Get Some H.I.S.D.: “Check us out [click here], on the official MySpace [click here] or on our Facebook fanpage. To get the music you can go CDBaby.com, iTunes, Amazon, Napster and so on and so forth. The Summer Sessions EP is free for download at our site! Be lookin’ out for the upcomin’ H.I.S.D. video that we’ll be puttin’ out in the comin’ months. Keep checkin’ for H.I.S.D. and the next album. ” -Savvy
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