Our own Ben Mader sat down with K Camp recently when he came through Boston on tour. The "Slum King" announced a new mixtape to be released mid-December, the "Only Way Is Up" tour for 2016, and more.
Check it out below:
SoMo performs at the House of Blues in Boston on November 5th, 2015 (Benjamin Esakof/Roman's Rap-Up).
Republic Records-artist SoMo recently made a stop at Boston's House of Blues for his "Fallin' Up" tour, part of his sixth headlining tour. Not only did SoMo take time out of his busy schedule to give Roman's Rap-Up an exclusive tour of his tour bus, but he also talked with RRU Mgmt's Ben Mader about constantly being on tour, dream collaborations, new music & more. Check out the exclusives below.
Berner performs at the Middle East in Cambridge, MA on July 28th, 2015 (Jenna Cavanaugh/Roman's Rap-Up).
If you were anywhere near the corner of Massachusetts Ave and Brookline late last night, you could hear the faint sound of fire alarms echoing from a nearby building. The rings seeped under the closed doors of Middle East Upstairs, a well-known Cambridge music venue connected to the Middle East Restaurant and its sister venue, Middle East Downstairs. Behind the closed doors, plumes of smoke filled the intimate space as rapper Berner laid out lyrics onstage. The alarms screamed at the increasing smokiness, but Berner and the crowd couldn’t have seemed more pleased to let the show go on as they strongly chanted, “Let us smoke!”
Hours before Berner’s "Cookies or Better Tour" stop in Boston, the rapper spoke on his first headlining tour. “We feel like Cookies is some of the best weed out right now, and if you’re going to come to the show, bring Cookies or better, if you got something else, come smoke it up, come share it.”
The leafy green plant pokes its head into every aspect of the business that Berner is so successfully a part of. Instead of using weed as solely a drug to get high, Berner and his boys create a social bond and experience in order to connect to fans. Have weed? “Come share it.” This leads to Berner’s version of meet-and-greets; instead of solely taking a selfie and talking for a few minutes, Berner has offered a deal where fans can get high and hang out. He put simply, “If I was a little kid, and I could pay to go smoke with Snoop, I’d definitely do it. Not comparing myself to Snoop or nothin’, but there are people who just want to smoke.” The rapper connects with his fans on that personal level by taking time to embrace the common interest: getting high. “Just seeing how far music reaches,” Berner acknowledged, is the difference between a microphone in a studio and onstage.
As he mentioned Snoop, Berner has collaborated with many other iconic artists including Wiz Khalifa whose record label, Taylor Gang Entertainment, signed Berner years earlier. “If you’re in the room with a bunch of rappers, you’re going to want to rap dope… every time I’m in a room with all rappers, I come tighter than I usually do.” The nature of the small group at Taylor Gang Entertainment, including Juicy J who toured through the House of Blues Boston earlier this summer, seems to push Berner as an artist. In response to a possible next collaboration, Berner hopefully answered, “Ghostface Killah. That’d be tight.”
The rapper has dropped a new track recently that producer Scoop Deville played during the show. “Murda Murda” is a new collaboration with Paul Wall and Demrick that stemmed from a session in Houston. Berner explained, “We just met up with Paul Wall in Houston, poured some syrup, popped a Xanax, smoked some weed, and just made a song… it wasn’t a planned release or anything.” Berner’s career as a rapper stemmed from his extensive background with weed. It begged the question: does he have a favorite type? “Right now… Skittles… you know, you move around… I’ll go for Skittles or Lemon Tree.” Joint preferable.
The crowd was nothing short of ecstatic to see Berner and his boys lighting up onstage as he laid down hits such as “20 Joints.” “We wanna say thank you on this tour,” Berner noted, “for everyone who pushed the envelope, meaning in these cities where weed is not legal… where venues don’t let you smoke, they fire it up and risk their little freedom… so we appreciate it.” You heard the guy. Let them smoke.
(Hollywood Records)
Los Angeles-based band R5 is on the road this summer for the "Sometime Last Night" tour to promote its record by the same name. In an interview ahead of their show at the House Of Blues in Boston, guitarist Rocky Lynch spoke about the tour, new music, and life on the road.
"The tour's been awesome. We love being on tour. We love playing shows. Its always nice to kinda get out of LA for a little. We actually, uh, we lived in a house together while we were on tour but we moved out of it now so we're all homeless," he joked.
Luckily, the band is playing some pretty amazing venues and locations while on tour. Though they enjoy each place they visit, Rocky says that the Bahamas was definitely his favorite place to perform so far.
"I really liked playing in the Bahamas. We played in the Bahamas for the Fourth of July. It was a free show on the beach and right when we finished the show a ton of fireworks went off. There was like a big fireworks show after our set. It was really cool. The ocean was right there while we played. Kinda liked those beach vibes," he said.
The Band's first album went to number one on iTunes in ten countries, but all that success still seems strange to Rocky.
"It's just crazy. Just the fact we can play the venues we're playing right now and that people are buying our album and it just came out... the fact that we have fans that come see us live... it just all feels surreal. Like it hasn't really sunk in yet. We're still small fish compared to what some people are doing but we're on the top of the world right now. It's awesome," he explained.
The new album, "Sometime Last Night," is different from the prior R5 album mainly because it was written by the band with fans in mind. Forget all the swanky producers send writers. R5 decided to hole themselves up in their garage and write what they felt was good music. In addition to writing it themselves, Rocky said that the sound is more mature and has grown along with the band.
"It's a little bit different than our first album... it's a little more funky," Rocky said. "We find that we write and work better when it's just us. A lot of writers want to write a single to make money, but when we're writing in our garage... we're not really thinking where the songs will end up. We're just thinking of what sounds cool."
"I hope the fans just enjoy listening to it and just really like it," Rocky explained.
With that mindset, R5 will definitely go far in their career; after all it's the fans who allow the band to do what they do.
R5 plays Boston's House of Blues tonight, get your tickets here. For all other tour dates, you can get your tickets by clicking here.
Check out the official audio for the interview, including Rocky answering some fan questions from Twitter, below:
Amy Heidemann (left) and Nick Noonan (right) of Karmin pose for Roman's Rap-Up (Benjamin Esakof/Roman's Rap-Up).
We caught up with Karmin backstage recently in Boston to discuss their upcoming music, including a short film they are working on in conjunction with their yet-to-be-released album, "Leo Rising." The film, different from music films from Nicki Minaj, Drake & more, will tell the story of their album, opting for a full plot, rather than just a collection of music videos.
Find out more on what Karmin is working on in our EXCLUSIVE interview below:
Karmin's music video for their latest single will be out later this month. Be sure to download their FREE app to stay up-to-date!
