Five & Done: 2 Pistols

Hip-Hop is saturated with emcees laying claim to a lifestyle they never lived. Turn the radio on and you hear tracks laced with rhymes about pulling triggers and pushing weight. Sure it sounds exciting but much of it is based upon fantasy for pure profit. That is why it is rare that we come across a rapper who can speak about this lifestyle from experience. Jeremy “2 Pistols” Saunders is a rapper who can speak about it not so to glorify it but rather to relay tales from his life. What the Tarpon Springs, FL native offers to Hip-Hop is reality rap. There are no stories of grandeur from this emcee. There are however, experiences where you roll the dice of criminal life and take the risk that you might loose the game. From his rocky childhood to his stint in jail, 2 Pistols finds no reason to repine. Instead he takes those experiences and considers them the fuel he needs to build his rhymes, and distinguish himself from his rap comrades. Before his debut, Death Before Dishonor, drops in June, here are five reasons why 2 Pistols is real.On serving his bid in jail and dedicating his life to rap once he was released.“I dealt with daily drama and stress on a regular so it just made me feel better. Nobody can’t change how I feel. It wasn’t anyone trying to answer my questions or reply to what I was saying. That’s why I went in the direction of rap. They were my thoughts.”Why he chose to make his rap so personal.“It’s me. I got to be true to myself. I got a record on my album called “That’s My Word”. The record is about my life. I was in a relationship with a female and she was  telling me that the other kick off was no good for me. But I flipped it like he ain’t no good or looking out for your best interest. I took it from her standpoint. I got real rap. Emotions and feelings. You can Google and put my real name in to see if it’s real. It’s a lot of cats that are living other cat’s lifestyles and putting other people’s name on their thing. They take somebody fame that really came from the streets. I mean I don’t want to name a bunch of names and then they feel like I’m directly talking about them but a lot of cats is living other people’s lives in their music. You don’t get that from me. The real dude.”On how he hooked up with Young Jeezy for “Closed Eyes” and “She Got It” with T-Pain. The record was brought to me. It wasn’t like me and Jeezy were in the studio at the same time. I got the record and I did what I did on it. It wasn’t like me and Jeezy had an agreement. I have a relationship with his artist. Slick  Pulla. We cool. The response to [“She Got It”] has been great. The radio hasn’t been playing it too tough but the streets been on it. People getting familiar with it. It’s doing what it’s doing. I got bigger records coming just got to get the mixing and mastering right. [2 Pistols f/ T-Pain, Rick Ross, Lil Wayne, Fat Joe & Juelz Santana  “She Got It Remix”]Those cats doing what they doing. They just got an opportunity to do it. I went through what I went through in the streets and they just got an opportunity to do it like me. If I’m doing a record with someone else, I give them credit. I am not going to say I can do things so much better than any of them. I just feel like we in there doing a track and they are not different from me.[2 Pistols f/ T-Pain “She Got It” Video]On shuttling between different family members as a child. I don’t know. I take it for what it is. Everything I have been through has helped me. If you haven’t been through anything then you going to go blindly into a lot of situations. I try to apply other things I been through to the music industry. Whatever has happened whether it has been in the streets or in a relationship, I apply it to my music. I can’t say that I look down on the situation at all. On how his own grassroots promotion got him his record deal with Universal Republic.Yeah. I am the best rap urban artist that Universal Republic has ever signed period. I got on from me having my street buzz in my city. I took the record to a different level with J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League and got the production done right. I just went in to work and focused on one record. When the grind started off in the beginning, we just was getting in the studio and working the record.and getting it to the right format. The last thing I needed was production. After I got my production together, the rest is history.[2 Pistols f/ Young Jeezy “Closed Eyes”]