In light of their joint concert with reggae/dubstep group The Ruination, a continuous, one set soundclash at Five Spot tomorrow, get to know the dynamic hip-hop duo Clan Destined.
Jayforce from the Beats & Lyrics Show on WRFG named you guys the best Atlanta hip-hop group. How was it hearing about that?
I was kind of late to hear about it, nobody told me until a couple days later. That was a good honor because we were doing stuff with them before we became Clan Destined. We were a part of a bigger group called The Vinyl Junkies until everybody in that group moved to different places. Me and him (DT) were the last two in Atlanta, and that's kind of how the Clan Destined came about.
What kind of group were the Vinyl Junkies?
It was mostly everything from DJs to emcees. Nobody did one thing, like how we are now, but it was like we all were just making beats and putting all the (hip-hop) elements together.
With you guys left forming Clan Destined, how you describe your style? Is it primarily hip-hop with DJing being the main medium?
I would say hip-hop is the medium of expression, but it all comes from a root of music in general. However, we felt compelled to limit our genre bending so people would walk away from our music feeling attached to one facet of who we are. Our reviews when we first came out said that we sounded like we didn't know who we were because we had so much going on. It was kind of like Outkast when they first came out. They at first proverbially spoon-fed people a little and gave them what they were kind of used to. Then when fans got comfortable, they started expanding. So we wanted to take a step back and see how we could do that.
We still expand! DT dropped a mixtape over the summer including nothing but Yes samples, and it was a way to show that we have different influences. We use rock, funk, Parliament, sometimes I be singing on songs, but we just don't want to be categorize like that, like another group we like Sa-Ra. They fill a lot of different shoes, and that's a thing we wanted to do, but we're young and in the long scheme of things we wanna stretch things out. So we're just working from the hip-hop aspect.
Another thing we do different is we both are the DJ and emcee. Most hip-hop shows you see one dude behind the turntables and the emcee on the mic all night, but when we do shows we do all that and sometimes at the same time. People see this with us and they usually don't see it anywhere else. We usually have a boom mic over the turntables in case one of us can't get to the mic because of a cord or something.
So how do you guys DJ? Is it live DJing or is it just spotting the record as the beat plays?
We go off of serato now, and we'll have one turntable of mostly instrumentals or one turntable for most of the sounds if we plan on scratching. That's usually for shows where we're juggling. We do parties too, a lot of house parties where we DJ. I DJ at Slice a couple times a week. When I was 16 I DJed at MJQ regularly a long time ago for LOUD Records, especially listening parties.
Are you guys signed with LOUD or is Clan Destined doing things indie-style?
This is definitely on our own, we're unsigned right now. We had a distribution deal with a label called Domination for our first album. The owner of the label is going through some family issues so we parted ways. Honestly, I look at it like something good out of what is so negative and I'm glad to be out of a situation where nobody is to blame and I'm ecstatic of the good things that are coming. Plus, there's more blogs, more ways to get your music out, and you don't really need a label right now.
Their joint show with The Ruination tomorrow costs five dollars and doors open at 9 p.m.
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