When you hear the phrase caught on tape, many things come to mind. Dressing room hi jinx, botched gas station robberies, and dumb criminals come to mind. In Stone and Rob: Caught on Tape, Camp Lo returns to the music scene caught in the midst of a Hip-Hop landscape that is probably more prepared for their original steez than it ever was. Here’s the problem: they are going left and hitting the road a bit harder than they used to. Is this another case of bad timing, or is the Camp immune to these Romper Room tunes?AllHipHop.com: Stone And Rob, that’s a reference to
Stone and Robert from Cooley High, correct?
Camp
Lo:
[Laughter]…It’s ill that somebody just got it…just got the connection like
that.
AllHipHop.com:
So you’ve continued with your connection the Blaxploitation flicks like Cooley High with this new title. What about that era do you connect with and
how does it inform your music?
Sonny
Cheeba:
Probably how cats was talking, what they had on. CooleyHigh wasn’t corny either. The style, the slang, everything that cats do,
those flicks had in it.
AllHipHop.com:
This time around you got artists like Styles P and Pete Rock. A mini-departure
from your previous albums. Why the change?
Cheeba: Pete Rock is not a 100% percent departure,
cause if you listen to Pete Roc and CL Smooth, if you listen to what they was
rapping over back in the days we were fans of that.
Geechi
Suede: My
first allowance I ever got, that’s the first Hip-Hop record I ever bought in my
life was Mecca & The Soul Brother.
I got my allowance for sweeping the front porch and the hallway of my
grandmother’s house. First album ever
Cheeba:
And as far as Styles P is concerned, it’s not way to the left cause your man
still stay true to the art you know what I’m saying? We’re dealing with cats
that stay true.
AllHipHop.com:
Your first album was very slept on but ironically, when you look at present day
Hip-Hop you were probably about a decade ahead of your time. Were you too ahead
of the curve?
Cheeba:
You would rather be ahead instead of running with the crowd. At certain times
cats might say that being ahead of your time, you know, that s**t don’t really
translate. But to me it translates. Cause everything coming outside of the vein
is gonna be a little ahead of its time. Plus when people hear that, they know
that they can only get a certain style of music coming from them. You getting
mixed in with the pot and cats ain’t checking for you period.
Suede:
Well I appreciate that first and foremost, and second of all me and Cheeba
don’t think time with anything you know?
Especially not fashion or music related. So I guess that where the
classic essence of what we do comes from. Time is not a factor in what we do.
AllHipHop.com: I think a lot of these cats like say a Kanye
or a Mikkey Factz inform their style from the stuff that you did a while back. I
don’t really think it’s out of pocket to say that.
Suede:
Wow. See me and Cheeba are humble dudes so we don’t really…wow, I appreciate
you for saying that man. I guess we just gotta keep pushing that bar so that
the cats that don’t know who Camp Lo is know that, and those that do, keep
knowing. But I really appreciate you saying that.
AllHipHop.com:
The game is really different from when you initially released a record. How do you feel about the theatrics
surrounding the music?
Cheeba:
It’s like how these TV shows like reality TV. You get your little quick fix you
laughing and you good for the day. So that translates over to the music.
Instead of it being straight good music you hearing who’s beefing with whom. I don’t know how that started but I’m a fan of
the music, before a fan of the drama.
Suede:
My son he has a real good diverse taste. He loves the “Stanky Leg” but then he
love Wu. He love Nas, Hov whatever the case may be. I like where he’s at with it. If the rest of
the world could be where he’s at with it where he can appreciate the “Stanky
Leg” but he appreciates Big Daddy Kane, too. I think that’s important that we
know it’s not just “Stanky Leg,” it ain’t just “Lookit Boy.”
If there was more diversity with s**t it would be a
good look. You can only check them on
BET J or VH1 Soul. Not everyone has
those channels. There aren’t a lot of outlets for that real creative stuff
anymore.
AllHipHop.com:
Tell us a bit about Stone And Rob: Caught
on Tape.
Suede:
We been wanting to do Stone & Rob. Stone & Rob is like an alter ego.
Cats always look at [Camp] Lo as martini music, you know? I mean we are always
gonna give you that martini, the sparkle, the Black connection, but there is a
Stone & Rob dimension to us because we are from the Bronx. We just wanted
to get people more in touch with that side of us; that we do have that
side.
The die-hards know because they remember the “Krystal
Karrington’s” and the “Killing Them Softly’s” and all that, but we just felt
like it was time to bring Stone & Rob to the forefront because we had been
wanting to bring them out of the bag for a minute. That’s where we went with
this record right here. We kinda went Uptown with it.
AllHipHop.com:
Lightning Round. Superfly or Shaft?
Suede:
Shaft
Cheeba:
I’mma go with Superfly.
AllHipHop.com:
Creeper
(Dolomite) or Ned The Wino (Good Times)?
Camp
Lo (in unison): Ned The Wino!
AllHipHop.com:
Thelma (Good Times) or Foxy Brown(Pam Grier)?
Cheeba:
I’mma have to go Thelms. It might be neck and neck though.
Suede: I
can’t go Thelms, you gotta go Fox, yeah I’m going with Fox.
AllHipHop.com:
Muhammad Ali or Mike Tyson?
Camp
Lo:
Ali all the way.
AllHipHop.com:
Jay-z or Nas?
Cheeba:
Your man Nas’ bars is better, but I partied more to Jay-z over the years.
Suede:
Oh Nas! I love Hov, don’t get me wrong, but Nas? I know more of his lyrics.
AllHipHop.com:
If Ski had given you the beats that he had earmarked for you on that first
album instead of putting them on Reasonable
Doubt, do you think Uptown Saturday
Night would have been held in the same esteem as Reasonable Doubt?
Suede:
Honestly, I dug “Feeling it” but I wasn’t crazy about it. So I don’t really
feel that we lost anything by that record not being on Uptown because I thought it was cool but I wasn’t back-flipping
over the s**t. I thought it actually made a better fit for his record than
ours. We didn’t have no singing joints on that first record, so I didn’t really
think it would have been a good fit.
And I feel like, in its own right, Uptown is held to the same esteem as Reasonable Doubt as far as just being some classic s### that came
out in a classic time. And it has a certain association with it based on the
producer and everything but nah I never felt no kinda way. But he was trying to get “Luchini!” Now that
would have been some ol’ other s**t! That woulda been like…that’s fighting!
That’s war s**t right there. Something would have had to come back for that.
AllHipHop.com:
Any last words?
Suede: I
love AllHipHop. I always check you guys out so it’s always a pleasure to be a
part of this s**t.
Cheeba:
Me personally, as far as the [Camp] Lo go, you can always come to us to get
that fresh new boutique kind of music that you can’t get no place else. Keep
checking for that new music.
