Hailing from the island of St. Thomas, Rock City is preparing to change the face of music, period. Comprised of brothers Theron aka Da Spokesman and Timothy aka Don’t Talk Much, the creative two offers up international flair combined with a Hip-Hop aesthetic with their debut, Wake The Neighbors. Already gathering critical praise throughout the music industry because of their writing talents—the pair have gathered songwriting credits ranging from Akon and Usher to Nicole Scherzinger and Mario to Cassidy and Busta Rhymes—the talented twenty somethings are poised to bring their brand of Caribbean spiced Hip-Hop with a Pop sensibility to the masses.
Rock City was named after their island, the lush but beautifully mountainous terrain of St. Thomas is known as Rock City. After high school graduation in 2000 the brothers were given a choice by their parents. “We were real poor but our parents said if y’all go to college we’ll try to help you out,” remembers Da Spokesman. “But, if you two want to do music, you’ve got to be men. So we got two buddies passes and went to Miami and became men.”
Miami was their destination of choice purely because it was close and the tickets were cheap. But after six months the brothers decided the music scene was not “popping” in MIA. Fortunately, a year later a promoter offered them $350 and plane tickets to perform in Atlanta, and they never left town. In “The A,” the duo quickly made a name for themselves winning talent shows with their high energy performances. Besides showcasing their prowess in concert, it also provided income, for a while.
“We would win talent shows to buy groceries and pay bills,” says Theron. “We started to win so much when we came to talent shows people told us y’all can’t compete no more.” So the brothers got 9 to 5’s all the while continuing to hone their craft, waiting for their turn at the spotlight. “We definitely are first and foremost artists more than anything else,” states Timothy. “We were getting a lot of love from the people in the streets from us performing. The attention we were trying to get [from the industry], we weren’t getting. We’ve always been writers for ourselves, we always wrote our own shit. Then me and my brother were like, let’s try to write for other people.”
Their first major placement as writers was Akon’s “The Rain” from his double platinum CD Konvicted via a connect from their friend Benny D, who happened to be the Senegalese-American singers’ DJ. “Ever since then we’ve been getting a lot of work,” adds Timothy, humbly. He’s certainly not giving Rock City enough credit, though. In a short time—they began penning songs for other artists in 2006—they’ve amassed a staggering number of tunes renowned artist including Mario, Usher, Eve, and Sean Kingston, to name a few.
Says Timothy, “We real cool dudes so we built a lot of relationships, got cool with a lot of people, networked and found ourselves in a lot of doors we never thought we were going to enter. The writing started taking off to the point where a lot of people don’t even know that we’re artists. I thank God everyday that my brother and I are so blessed to have this talent. When we started doing the writing thing everybody started messing with us, and that’s what really got us our deal.” Around the same time, Rock City’s buzz became deafening thanks to their song “Bang It.” A drum soaked, relentless barrage of energy, it now fittingly features a guest turn from Busta Rhymes. “Bus heard ‘Bang It’ and Bus wanted to get on the record, no charge,” says Timothy.
Performing “Bang It” lead to the pair entertaining offers from the likes of Jive, Universal, TVT and Atlantic. Initially nothing manifested from these meetings. Returning home to Atlanta they found new management, Ray Daniels, and continued at their grind. Soon the likes of Lil Jon, Usher, Mr. Collipark and, of course, Akon were interested in signing up with their brand of riot inciting music. It just had to be on the brother’s terms. “Our major thing was creative control,” stresses Theron—the group signed with Akon’s Konvict Musik in September 2006. “Give us the opportunity to be ourselves. Because what we doing nobody has ever done. It’s never been about money with us, to be honest. We always felt God is going to bless us enough for us to make our own money. Just give me the resources to do what [we] need to do. Trust me; nobody is going to outwork us. We don’t drink or smoke, we don’t club, we don’t do any of that. So when people in the club partying we work. When they sleep, we work. When they working, we work. So at the end of the day we are going to get more work done than anybody.”
That said, their eclectic debut Wake The Neighbors is anything but a work in progress. A listen to their work reveals a range of influences that extends from Steel Pulse and Bob Marley to Busta Rhymes and Jay-Z to song crafting peers like Johnta Austin and Sean Garrett.
“We know what we want to hear, we know what sound we looking for,” says Timothy of their music creation habits. On Wake The Neighbors, the aforementioned “Bang It,” produced by Benny D, finds the duo in rapid fire lyrical mode delivered through their West Indian twang. “We rapping in our accent,” says Da Spokesman while adding, “We were surprised that people in Atlanta gravitated to it like, Damn, that’s the record. We started performing it and this is when we created that crazy buzz and everybody was throwing deals at us and throwing crazy money at us.”
Their St. Thomas upbringing is clearly evident on the Madd Scientist produced, Calypso influence party anthem “Wave.” “We’re like, “Yo, this sounds like Calypso! This is where we from but it has a Hip-Hop feel,” remembers Theron of first hearing the track. “As soon as we did it we called Akon, “Yo, when you hear …’. Akon heard it and was going crazy and he sets up a meeting with Jimmy Iovine and Ron Fair to hear the song.” Then there’s the reality checking banger “Stop Lying.” The song received its inspiration while Theron was riding around listening to the radio. “We’re listening to the radio and I’m like everybody’s selling drugs, this can’t be right.” Produced by Shondrae (Ludacris) it can be described as hard but positive music and an entire Stop Lying campaign is being launched around the song. While the laid back Timothy may sit in the cut while Theron is a bundle of energy that bounces off the walls, their dichotomy creates a splendid musical union. “We’re night and day but we mesh perfectly together,” says Theron, the soulful Yin to his brother Timothy’s Hip-Hop flavored savvy. The fact that their music is a genre bender isn’t lost on the siblings.
“It’s hard to explain our music because we are doing something that is rarely done. But if you’re going to try to classify it and compare it, if you had The Fugees without Lauryn Hill, you would have us. We sing, we do Caribbean vibe, but then again we rap raw, in our accent.”
Lofty ambitions indeed, but they have talent to pull it off. Whatever you want to call it, Wake The Neighbors bangs enough to keep any neighborhood up all night.
