Few record labels existing today carry with them the sort of weight that means they only need to utter the name of a new signing and you are already safe in the assumption that their album will be yours imminently.
Sub Pop – and specifically their recent foray into hip hop – certainly falls under that category. The Seattle-based label, made famous for its Grunge associations has now followed up the success it had with Shabazz Palaces (its first hip hop release) with another group – THEESatisfaction. The duo (Stasia and Cat) have been steadily developing the name and buzz around them with a stream of mixtapes (seven in total) and an appearance on the opening two tracks of Black Up. We called the pair to find out more.
When did you start making music?
Cat: We had been friends for a while and were both members of a neo soul group but decided that we liked making music more together. We left the group in 2007 to start working on our own stuff.
Did you want to carry on making that kind of music or move away from it?
Stasia: We definitely have some of the way vibes but a lot of things happened to us – I went on a trip to Cape Town and we had both graduated from college. So dealing with the transition of those events as well as real life had a big influence on our sound.
Cat: There was six people in the group so a lot of personalities. Now it’s just us two vibing off each other, different things and creating new sounds. It helps that we’re best friends too and always hanging out.
Do you listen to the same stuff?
Cat: Yes and no. We’ve introduced each other to a lot of new things. I didn’t know about a lot of early 90s hip hop because growing up in Hawaii, I just didn’t have access to a lot of that stuff. I knew about Tribe and Digable Planets but I didn’t know about other groups. When I first met Stasia and started hanging out she was already into a lot of groups like Wu-Tang and Snoop Dogg and she showed me about a lot of music that I didn’t know about and I feel like I did the same for her.
Stasia: Cat was very well versed in jazz. I’d only been aware of Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Miles Davis and John Coltrane but she introduced me to Horace Silver, Dr. Buzzard and all kinds of musicians who are influenced by jazz in some way.
Would you say that that’s fed into the group?
Cat: Definitely, all of those artists are a huge influence.
How would you describe your sound?
Cat: We don’t really ‘go’ for anything. We make music to comfort ourselves as a creative release, be it from work, school or anything that’s going on in the world. It’s always been fun for us but has never been targeted down. It’s expressing how we feel in audio form.
How do you approach your writing?
Stasia: Writing is another release. Sometimes we write together, sometimes separately, although when we do write on our own we’ll bring it together at some point. I feel like we’re on the same page when we do write. We don’t necessarily write about the same topics but they’ll correlate or play with each other.
Could you recommend anyone to us that you’re listening to now?
Cat: We’ve been listening to Danny Brown from Detroit, The Internet which is Syd Tha Kid from Odd Future, people from Seattle like OC Notes and Chocolate Chuck and then any soul, hip hop, Jazz and obviously Shabazz Palaces.
How are you feeling about following Shabazz Palaces onto Sub Pop?
Cat: It’s a huge honour, it obviously has the associations with Seattle and we’ve always listened to a lot of groups who were on the label like Nirvana, Soundgarden, Fleet Foxes – the list goes on and on. It’s a real privilege to be part of that and their really good people, the staff have a real energy and vibe. It’s nice to have them as part of our family. We’re still learning and they’ve been very supportive throughout the whole process.
Stasia: They’ve got a great ear for music and the fact that we could be part of their legacy is crazy. We still have a lot to do but we’ll be putting out our first album – although it will be our eighth release – in the Spring.
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THEESatisfaction are set to release their debut album (proper) ‘awE naturalE’ on April 9th.
Words by Sam Ballard
