
SOL-T
Tell me about your history? How did you get where you are now?
"See I'm sick like Rambo's Bowie,
Sportin' unisex by Chloé...
Emo bitches whoa like Joey -
Baby-talk, tell you i'm saw-wy."
Esteemed as one of Long Beach and Orange Countys premier golden calf's of hip hop and funk, Sol-T has commanded respect on the stage long before his days on the mic. Having toured majorly through So. Cal - Hollywood and Orange County - venues as a show-stopping pocket-funk bass player in his early teens as a young Angelino, Sol-T is said to have been raised by Sunset-Strip club owners, and watched all his television through his audiences eyes. Whether in the vocal booth at Buttasopht Studios, or live on stage with his prodigious band The StreetFevers, backing him, Sol-T remains poised for velvet in 2007.
Mixing street-savvy dialect and Father Time intelligence with gutter-quick delivery and classic Slick Rickesque story-telling in his raps, Sol-T has attracted a wide array of producers and musicians to his projects over the years, and the list keeps getting bigger. Billboard-graced producer Jud Nester, Psytrip/Electro producer, Schlaut, and Hawaiian Island page-oner, Skrewfase Elle, have all produced for Sol-T, who remarkably produced most of his debut full-length album, The Great Angelino Secret, on his own. While Sol-T had several mixtape cd's, collaborations, and demos in circulation, the full-length, 15-track recording was finished at Earth Tone Studios, under the cold pimp-hand of producer and Columbia recording artist/engineer, Michael Raphael in early 2006.
Delivering solid cadence, catchy rhymes, hooks reminiscent of the music's swanky funkadelic era, as well as bona fide cinematics laced throughout his flow, Sol-T has again linked up with his number one choice as favorite turntablist, DJ Trizkut, with the upcoming release of his second and third LP's Oranje Crusche as well as another self-produced project he's dubbed Nickel Slots & Dollar Shots, both of which Sol has already released first singles for. In the meantime, Sol-T is staying busy with collaborations with well-known underground hip-hop artists and funk personalities such as DJ Premier protégé DJ Lord Ron of the Universal Zulu Nation, Existereo of the Shape Shifters & Candys .22, Wes the Mes & Jereme 'Preacher J' James of Violet Lantern Music, Scotty B. the Digital Assassin with Beef Productions out of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, Ivan Ives of No Treshold Records, Michael Nhat of Novemberblack Records, and guitar virtuoso, Planet Kaziah of New Roll Soul. DJ Cocoe of the Abstract Workshop is also turning the hotplates for the next few legs of SOL-T's Southern California tour, set to blaze early Fall 2007.
"The rise and fall of magistrates,
Kingdoms on their Sabbath Day -
Now hold your money in the wind and
See how sweet the cabbage sway..."
Your musical influences
Motown. The Funk. 80's Metal. 90's rap.
What equipment do you use?
Soul. Lots of it.