When good music releases, it’s recognized and respected. Now, imagine if that was consistently true in Hip-Hop culture. Certain artists have actually garnered a fan base that are willing to wait for new material longer than most, because the product will be that damn good. Cue in Overdoz., a larger Los Angeles collective that’s represented by its core four members Kent Jamz, P, Cream, and Joon.
The rhyming rat pack’ buzz grew a few years back, but they decided to take a hiatus to reevaluate how they wanted to move forward with their music. For artists like them, it’s easy to get caught up in and ultimately get too comfortable being independent. That wasn’t their goal. Instead, Overdoz. are confident in their talents; talents they see becoming world renowned one day.
With a little patience, a lot of recording, and a some faith to boot, the four signed a deal with Polo Grounds Music/RCA Records nearly two years after releasing their last body of work. Their hiatus ended November 14 when they released BOOM, a 17-track mixtape that’s just as animated and meaningful as it’s title.
Hip-Hop Wired had an opportunity to speak with Overdoz., this week’s Certified Fresh feature, about their latest body of work and share a few jokes as well (most were too raw for this written piece).
Who: Overdoz. are a direct representation of the things that are authentic to them. That includes the women, weed, and weather the sunny streets of Southern California are known for. But that’s today. The four MCs’ stories actually stem back to when they initially met about a decade ago. As friends first, the music thing comes easy to the collective, because they’re all still fans of Hip-Hop culture, music overall, and each other.
Credentials: Overdoz. have been a rising fixture in rap music since emerging on the scene around four years ago. A free project called NOVA was their first release to make noise, which was directly followed by a feature on Dom Kennedy’s “The 4 Heartbeats,” a track on his breakout From The Westside, With Love mixtape.
With that momentum, Overdoz. made their rounds doing shows and gaining the experiences necessary to create their free album, Live For, Die For, in 2011. The crew’s stock rose soon after, and with an admittedly higher notoriety, they had the opportunity to display their talents at larger events like Lollapalooza 2012.
Fun Fact: Pharrell likened Overdoz. to legendary rap duo Outkast. The exact quote read as follows: “Waiting for somebody to come in and reinvent the movement, swag their personality just like what OutKast was. OutKast was…at that time when everybody had they backpacks on, those ni**as still kept it hood, and that’s what I get out the music that ya’ll making.”
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Photo: 10 Deep, Overdoz.
Hip-Hop Wired: After doing some research, I saw that some tracks from BOOM were two years old. What made you select from that pool of records, rather than create all new ones?
Kent: Well, we never stopped creating fresh material. We have a very close relationship with our producers. We see each other all the time and we’re working on music all the time. I think what took so long is the fact that we wanted our hard work to portray in what we receive — from not just our fans — but from people who can give us money to do what we do.
I don’t know if we were necessarily looking for a deal, but we were looking to be recognized in a bigger way before we dropped music. We didn’t want to just keep dropping free CDs and not be able to send our kids to college one day. It started getting more realistic for us.
We didn’t want to give out free music without a plan, a well-developed plan.
Hip-Hop Wired: Well, it looks like your plan worked, but you guys signed prior to you dropping BOOM. Did you give the powers that be an advanced listen?
Kent: We actually met with almost every label. We met with almost every label, and we only played them… probably a couple of songs. When we met with Bryan Leach and Peter [Edge] from RCA, it was just so organic; they got it. We damn near played them like at least 20 songs, and he got it.
It was just from that point on, we already knew we were probably going to roll with RCA, even though we had met with Epic, Tricky Steward; even though we had met with Joie Manda at Def Jam, we still knew at the end of the day we was always going to be with Brian Leach.
Hip-Hop Wired: Speaking on the project, do you think it’s gotten the desired effect early on or is it still work to be done?
P: There’s always work to be done, but we basically put out this tape to service the fans. It really wasn’t about nothing but that. They’ve been waiting so long, so we had to give them something. And we didn’t want to sell ourselves short at the same time. Basically, BOOM can get big. If it does, you know… if it doesn’t, if it uses more promotion, that’s cool. If it doesn’t, we got sh*t that’s going to be big on its own coming out next.
Joon: Joon is just ready for the next sh*t to come out.
Hip-Hop Wired: Ha! I feel that. The project dons older material, but a cluster of songs have a love theme. How did you go about arcing a story out of older material?
Kent: That was actually kind of hard. We went through, like, sending each other playlist to everybody sending to one email to bringing in other people. I think it just came to… we knew which songs that we were going to use for the album, 2008. We knew which songs that we would want to put out to sell, but at the same time, we wanted to — like he said — service the fans.
We kind of wanted to crossover into, uhh… I don’t know. We kind of make — I don’t know what type of music you can describe if for, but most Black people, or people that we went to school with, aren’t accustomed to the music that we make. So, we wanted to service the streets kind of.
If you listen to most of the beats or listen to most of the content, people always say, from the reviews that I’ve read, that it kind of gets into the place where we’re talking about a lot of girls and we’re talking about a lot of weed. I mean, I don’t like to be boxed in, but coming from the West Coast, that’s what we see a lot of. And I think we were servicing our fans mainly on the West Coast.
It’s some elements that you don’t get; it’s just so West Coast. It might be a store that you’ve never been to or a person who we all went to high school with that’s just so random, and you wouldn’t appreciate it. But, I feel like we had to take care of — people tell us all the time that if you don’t got your own city, then it’s going to be hard to kind of take over the rest of the U.S.A.; let alone the world.
We were servicing our fans, but it was more of a bubble of the district that we come from in Los Angeles. I think just us focusing on that part of the world is what made everything organic the most, and it just kind of formed itself.
Hip-Hop Wired: In going through that thought process, were the songs’ concepts or production the determining factor in selecting which cuts made it?
Cream: It’s like a mixture. Sometimes, Kent will have a concept or, you know, Joon will have a concept. Sometimes Axel and Ricky — that’s THC — they’ll just have a beat and they’ll just throw it on; and we’ll just vibe on it. We don’t force music.
Kent: We’ll just go to the studio, and nobody will have sh*t. We’ll just smoke and watch f**kin’ Love & Hip Hop the whole day, and leave. I remember one time, me and P got a verse off. And Joon wrote his sh*t, and didn’t like it and stormed out the studio. But, at the end of the day we don’t force sh*t.
Joon: Man, I f**ked my car up storming out the studio too. I hit a f**king pole.
Kent: He was so mad he couldn’t get his verse out, then ended up changing the verse and you know, it still flows together. At the end of the day, we don’t ever force sh*t. We don’t force the music. We might have to force getting on stage because my voice is horse, or because Cream got a headache, but we never force the music.
