In the music video for rap collective Fist Fam‘s song “Posted,” emcee Philo stands on a Columbus Avenue median, the Transamerica Pyramid pointing into the sky behind the North Carolinan, traffic whizzing by on either side of him. “I’m posted in the middle of the street/And we don’t even look right/But I got that million dollar mouthpiece/So we gon’ be allright,” he sings, at home in his new city.
It’s an apt portrayal of the group of back-home friends from Asheville who seem set on taking the music they grew up with to the ears of the Bay. Fist Fam’s latest album release, also called Posted, is straight up, laid back, “psychedelic country rap tunes,” so dubbed by Philo and producer Al Lover, who are sitting with me outside Farley’s on a gorgeous Potrero Hill morning.
The boys grew up in the embrace of early ’90s hip-hop: Goodie Mob, UGK. Their tunes still have that Southern feel, but the layering of soul samples and front porch hooks (see: the sunshine feel of “Drinkin’,” a track the group just shot a video for on Philo’s family’s Appalachian farm) betray a citified knowledge of sound.
The group’s trickle west was led by Philo, who established connections with the SF music community that made everyone else feel at home upon their arrival. But. “I didn’t have a safety net!” Philo says. “I had a backpack and $400. Back in the Gold Rush of ’05…” he trails off in an old man voice, his San Francisco debut having already achieved mythic status. He’s urged to share more of the legend. “My first move? I went to a bar in the Sunset, got a quesadilla at Gordo’s and tried to fandangle a place to sleep.”
Did the crew run into any funny business? Hey, a lot of people have funny perceptions about Southerners out here. “But we have funny perceptions about West Coasters – and they’re all true, by the way,” Lover teases.
But with a ready-made, tightly-knit clan like theirs, there’s really no need for Fist Fam to sweat whatever still exists of regional stereotypes. This is how they record an album: they’ll set up shop in someone’s house (Philo has been building studio space since he was a teenager and says with the techonology available today, he can do it pretty much anywhere — and besides “we’re not going for a super clean sound”). Alcohol is usually involved. Budweiser is the group’s beer of choice – the two have stories about earning the king of beers for catching fireflies when they were little, a story that sounds adorably Southern to this West Coaster.
Back to recording: there’s usually a fair amount of bickering. “A lot of us have known each other since high school,” Philo says. “We really are the Fist Fam — and I think that’s why we work. A lot of people are afraid to hurt each other’s feelings — ” Lover picks up the thread: “but we like it.”
“You gotta be chaotic to produce something,” Lover continues, conceding that for Posted, the group took a slightly more structured approach – he produced all of the beats and told people which songs they’d be on. Lover got some attention earlier this year for an electronic remix he did of the recently departed blues surrealist Captain Beefheart, but his favorite palettes to work from are old R&B songs. He’s also been doing work with contemporary beats, mixing Fist Fam over the music of Ty Segall and Thee Oh Sees. “Why use the old stuff when you have all these things going on now?” Added bonus: by using the tracks, Lover can cross-promote and strengthen connections with the psychedelic garage scene where the group sometimes find itself in the city.
Talking about the range of sound that Posted is built on takes me back to the image of Philo swinging his arms around, un-fuckwithable despite the North Beach traffic dashing around him. Sure, they’ve still got their twang, but you can’t quite see these boys doing what they do if they were still in Asheville. South comes to San Fran, welcome y’all.
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