The Milwaukee rapper/producer duo Pharaoh Mac and DMT met nearly a decade ago, when both artists where teenage lifeguards at North Division High School. They hit it off almost immediately, bonding over a shared love for the kind of hip-hop that lots of kids like when they’re in high school: Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Pharoahe Monch—the conscious stuff, mostly, though they both had a soft spot for Wu-Tang, too. They channeled those interests into their 2009 debut, Dream Driven, an album that wore its love for ’90s hip-hop on its sleeve.
“I really thought I was the second coming of the RZA,” says producer DMT, looking back at the album six years later. Though the duo was proud of the record at the time, it didn’t register much on anybody else’s radar, so they changed course for their 2013 follow-up, Loyalty & Betrayal, a more contemporary, consciously pop-minded album that followed in the all-inclusive footsteps of acts like Lupe Fiasco and B.o.B.
The makeover worked. The duo began receiving airplay on Radio Milwaukee for a couple of singles, including the dreamy jazz number, “Take It Slow,” with singer Dalia Auffant, and landing plum gigs opening for rappers like Big Sean, Machine Gun Kelley and Flatbush Zombies at The Rave.
“We had a sense of where the music industry was going, so we wanted to make sure we were playing hip-hop that’s marketable now,” says Pharaoh Mac. “Over time, you learn to stay original to your own style and your own art while matching with what other people are trying to hear. We call that folk-rap. It’s music that’s true to us, but that other people can relate to as well.”
This month, the duo will release their third album, SYMBOLS, their best yet. It’s neither as rigidly classicist as their debut or as deliberately pop-centric as Loyalty & Betrayal, but it plays to the duo’s strength for hooky, mass-appeal hip-hop. It also features their sweetest single yet, “Same Time,” a big, open-armed hug of a track featuring an orchestral accompaniment from the Milwaukee string duo, SistaStrings.
|
|
“We’re always trying to push ourselves, trying to get to a higher level,” Pharaoh Mac says. “With SYMBOLS, we just wanted to top what we accomplished with our first two albums, and make an album that’s industry-level but that came from an underground artist. I also wanted to push the envelope writing-wise, because you don’t hear a lot of people speaking from real experience in hip-hop anymore. We’re not just out for popularity; we have a message we’re trying to get out to the world. We’re just two real, genuine artists that want our message to be heard.”
