Thunderheist Discuss Their Shift From Rapping To Singing

BY Joshua OstroffPublished Mar 9, 2009

Toronto's hippest hip-hop act Thunderheist may be only just about to drop their first full-length album, but their days as electro rap flag-bearers may already be nearing an end.

"Any of the songs where Isis is singing, that is our shit," producer Grahm Zilla told Exclaim! of their upcoming self-titled debut. "That's been the case for over a year."

The Canadian duo rose to prominence with their underground club jam "Jerk It" - a global floor-filler that even made it onto the soundtrack of the award-winning film The Wrestler and has been pushed by online gossip queen Perez Hilton - but their new album features several more traditionally sung songs.

"With rapping, you have all these words, but it just gets overdone at a certain point. But with singing, it's like haikus. You don't have to rhyme. You can say anything and there's so much more breadth to it," says front-woman Isis. "For me, it's an opportunity to write less but say more. Now I'm addicted to that. I'm all about writing songs now."

Zilla says he's totally on the same tip. "We really want our next thing to be an EP of strictly singing tracks, just to cleanse the palate. So that people aren't expecting a party rap album because we've done that. We're over it. We just want to do other stuff. We want to evolve."

Watch for our in-depth interview with Isis and Grahm in April.

You can catch Thunderheist on Exclaim!'s 17th Anniversary Tour this April, dates below:

4/2 Guelph ON - E-Bar
4/3 Kingston, ON -€“ Grad Club
4/4 Hamilton, ON -€“ Pepper Jack's
4/7 London ON - Call the Office
4/9 Peterborough ON - Montreal House
4/10 Ottawa, ON -€“ Babylon
4/11 Montreal, QC -€“ Club Soda
4/17 Winnipeg, MB -€“ Pyramid
4/18 Saskatoon, SK -€“ Amigo's
4/21 Edmonton, AB -€“ Starlite
4/23 Calgary, AB -€“ Warehouse
4/25 Vancouver BC - The Biltmore
4/26 Victoria BC - Lucky Bar
4/30 Toronto, ON -€“ Phoenix

5/2 Halifax NS - The Paragon Theatre

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