By Alex Thornton
If people still went into stores and bought albums like we used to, more of us might notice a trend in modern music. Most stores divide their music into genres because, theoretically, it’s supposed to make it easier to find what you’re looking for.
When you want to find The Rolling Stones or Run-DMC or Miles Davis, this works just fine. But when you want to find many new artists, the system falls apart. The Goodie Mob albums would definitely be in “Rap,” but is that where the Cee-Lo solo albums should be too? What about Gnarls Barkley? Maybe that would be in “Rock,” but is Gnarls Barkley really a rock band?
This fall, you’ll probably find Chester French’s
Love the Future in the “Rock” or “Pop” section, but with an album full of songs that were assembled more like Hip-Hop records than anything else, those categorizations aren’t exactly accurate. When it was time for Harvard grads D.A. Wallach and Max Drummey to find a record deal with a major label, it was Kanye West, Jermaine Durpi and Pharrell Williams who came to them with offers, not Clive Davis and Simon Cowell.
They all wanted the duo on their side, because they saw that Chester French had more in common with Outkast than Fall Out Boy, even if the songs didn’t make it obvious. “A lot Rock people haven’t been feeling us, but for the music that’s come out over the last ten or fifteen years, we’ve liked a lot more Hip-Hop than we have rock. We’re people that’ve always loved and appreciated and respected Hip-Hop music so when Hip-Hop people like us, it makes sense to us.”
No, Chester French aren’t making rap songs or even trying to play “rapper dress-up” like Korn and Limp Bizkit; they’re just making the kind of music they want to make and it just so happens that listening to Hip-Hop helped them learn to do that. Really though, all this talk of categories and genres isn’t important; Chester French doesn’t care and they’d prefer if you didn’t either.
AllHipHop.com Alternatives: So you guys ended up getting signed before you graduated?
DA: We got a bunch of offers before we graduated, but we didn’t end up finishing our deal until the summer after senior year. We had already decided to sign with Pharrell at Interscope before we finished though.
AHHA: What made you choose Star Trak over the other offers that you had?
DA: We did a keg standoff and, Pharrell not so much, but Chad really made a strong showing, so it was a no-brainer. We got Chad up to like 4 minutes and 50 seconds and this guy was like, red in the face but he still had that champion’s spirit.
AHHA: Have you been involved with in any design for the BBC/Ice Cream lines now that you’re on Star Trak? It seemed like they started to incorporate some of the preppy imagery after you came on.
DA: No, we’re not involved… we’re trying to mix-up our style with some wild sh*t. We did like, one photo shoot where we were wearing button-down shirts because that’s all we had. That ended up being the photo that got around so everyone’s like “oh, those guys are so preppy,” but we never meant to get in that box.
AHHA: So there’s probably no need for any New England Battle Royale with the guys from Vampire Weekend for control of the image…
DA: Nah… the music’s totally different, and I don’t really know if they’re like, parodying that sort of thing, but at least for us when we were in school, we never fit into that too much. I mean, there are people at Harvard who are actually the embodiment of that lifestyle.
They really do have a huge trust fund and their grandfather went to school there. We showed up at college like “who are these guys?” You imagine that as something you only see in movies, but then you get there and it’s actually in your face… these people have garden parties. I didn’t even know what a garden party was, but there’s definitely some subtle erotic sh*t going on there…
"The first time we met with Pharrell, he said something that always
stuck in my head, which was that music is music, people are people. You
don’t want to be like 'hey, we’re so eclectic' and all that, but in my
head, that’s just the most honest way to approach music. You don’t want
to be thinking in any box, especially today when music and lifestyle
marketing is so integrated."- D.A.
AHHA: What were your majors at Harvard?
DA: I did African American studies.
Max: I did Social Anthropology.
AHHA: Did you actually intend to follow through with that then or were you just treading water until music worked out?
Max: It’s kinda hard to follow through on either of those things…
DA: We were just treading water. I don’t think either of us intended to follow through on [our majors].
AHHA: So why not major in music then?
Max: Harvard had a terrible music program run by really ignorant people…it’s a weird place.
AHHA: You got to use the facilities to get your album done though, so it kinda worked out.
Max: Yeah, at the end of the day, we definitely stole some stuff from Harvard.
DA: The studio we had at school wasn’t actually affiliated with the music program there. That’s sort of an independent student group that Max and I were actually kind running too. We were actually engineering there as commercial engineers so even when we were getting the record deal, we were still recording weird a cappella groups and viola players to pick up some cash on the side. It was good too because we were able to learn how to record all kinds of different music and instruments and all that knowledge ends up being a resource when you’re working out your own project.
AHHA: Who do you consider your major influences? I feel like there’s some similarity to The Beach Boys, Roy Orbison or Scott Walker with the kind of wide, sweeping arrangements on Pop records…
Max: It’s frustrating to like, pick one or two things to advertise that we’re really into because at the end of the day, we listen to all types of music from all times and all types of people. If we come out and say “oh, we like this” then people are gonna look for that in our music. I’d rather they just hear what they hear and what they know in it.
DA: The first time we met with Pharrell, he said something that always stuck in my head, which was that music is music, people are people. You don’t want to be like “hey, we’re so eclectic” and all that, but in my head, that’s just the most honest way to approach music. You don’t want to be thinking in any box, especially today when music and lifestyle marketing is so integrated.
