As a hip-hop-flavoured act on venerable label Sub Pop, you're automatically going to create some type of buzz. Doubly so if you're actually any good and Seattle, WA's THEESatifaction fit that bill. "Starting out, we just basically made music for ourselves and we were happy with doing that," says Stasia Irons, one-half of the Afro-futurist rap duo. Deceptively complex on production, the jazz piano grooves provide a chill backdrop to the group's laidback, socio-political, feminist sensibilities. Put succinctly, awE NaturalE leaves listeners wanting more.
How do you define your sound?
Stasia: I don't really like to put music in a genre or category; I feel like people will do that naturally to make themselves feel more comfortable. The way people interpret their sound is their business; we draw from many different genres and things so it's going to be difficult to pinpoint that exact one. But we feel good about what people have been saying about us, for the most part.
What influences have you drawn from and how do they inform your music?
Stasia: We love jazz and we love hip-hop. R&B, funk, soul, gospel — all of that you can find in our music. We put it out there and people give us back what they want.
How do you collaborate? What does that process look like?
We both have ideas about music and we both make beats; we'll either separately come up with music or sit down together and go back and forth. We do everything ourselves [production-wise] and it's a cool little thing that we have going.
What's success look like for you?
To be able to get our music out as far as we can. [We're] not really concerned about numbers, [we] just want to be able to do it, travel and have fun. And I think that we've been successful at that since we've started.
Read a review of awE NaturalE here.
How do you define your sound?
Stasia: I don't really like to put music in a genre or category; I feel like people will do that naturally to make themselves feel more comfortable. The way people interpret their sound is their business; we draw from many different genres and things so it's going to be difficult to pinpoint that exact one. But we feel good about what people have been saying about us, for the most part.
What influences have you drawn from and how do they inform your music?
Stasia: We love jazz and we love hip-hop. R&B, funk, soul, gospel — all of that you can find in our music. We put it out there and people give us back what they want.
How do you collaborate? What does that process look like?
We both have ideas about music and we both make beats; we'll either separately come up with music or sit down together and go back and forth. We do everything ourselves [production-wise] and it's a cool little thing that we have going.
What's success look like for you?
To be able to get our music out as far as we can. [We're] not really concerned about numbers, [we] just want to be able to do it, travel and have fun. And I think that we've been successful at that since we've started.
Read a review of awE NaturalE here.