Photo: Danielle Barnett

“If we were in the art world and we were to make a collage, it would get hung up in LACMA or the MOCA and it would be respected as art,” says one half of the duo, rapper/producer Thes One “But if you make a collage of sound, from records – it’s the same thing, putting things together – it’s a double standard. People say, ‘aw man, you’re just stealing the notes.’ It's another form of inherent racism towards hip-hop in America.”

Together with Double K, PUTS is one hell of a triple threat - producing, rapping and DJing hip-hop into both a prolific, and critically acclaimed discography that is as genius as it is entertaining.

It all starts with the vibe. And PUTS have vibe by the truckload. They make good old-fashioned hip-hop, some for stoop sitting and blunt smoking, some for cutting up the proverbial rug. Guitar stabs, horns of all sorts, organic pianos and futuristic keyboards are all colors on Thes and Double K’s musical palette. PUTS are some of the best producers in the game. And that’s without even touching on perhaps their best weapon - impeccable drums.

“I saw a bumper sticker the other day that said ‘drum machines have no soul’, that’s absolutely not true,” Double K says. “If you have soul than you can make the drum machine have soul.”

“The person who made that sticker probably got down to Prince songs or who knows what they’re listening to, but chances are someone that they listened to used a drum machine,” Thes One adds. “If they enjoyed Thriller or Prince or Phil Collins, whoever, they enjoyed a drum machine at least once.”

Thes One and Double K met, like most people meet, through a mutual friend. “We were in high school, he was making beats, I was DJing and a guy we went to high school with was telling me about him, making beats and getting the records,” says Double K. “We met at a record store on Pico (in Los Angeles), we both had a love for collecting old records and sampling. The first time we got together we played each other some beats and that was it.”
Despite sharing a vibe and a love for that classic hip-hop sound, one would think that two individuals making art for the good of a group could lead to trouble. Talented singular artists are bound to have creative differences in a plural setting. Right?

"People Under the Stairs means it’s one sound, one style," Thes insists. "Whatever that may be, it's both of us. I trust him and he trusts me. I know that if I’m not there, he’s not going to do anything to a song that I won’t dig on."

"We make the same kind of music with similar sounds, but we’ll pull different things off the same record," he says. "There’s this one record that he pulled ‘Outrun’ off of, the way he put it together I never would’ve thought to put it together like that. I was like ‘whoa, I have this record. I never would’ve done it.’ And I love it."

And the way that PUTS pull samples off of records is in the fashion of head nodding, feel good hip-hop. The band dismisses sentiments that being the only hip-hop band signed to Northern California’s primarily electronica label Om Records is incongruous. "We’re a different kind of rap group," Thes says. "We’re not the throw back jersey, bandana dudes, ya know?" Double K knows and he expands, "They've gotten us out there. We’re out there on the road and we do our jobs and they help us do that."

And it's on the road where PUTS has really made a name for themselves. Traveling everywhere from Australia to Europe to Asia and back again, Thes and Double K have made the rounds and it feels good. "Seeing people standing in the crowds singing the songs, to the point where you can stop rapping and they won’t miss a beat, that’s a wonderful feeling right there" Double K says. "It's like wow, 'people are actually listening to the stuff that I wrote.'"

But it can’t always be gravy. Road trips are renowned for peril at every corner. "We were going from Arizona to Albuquerque, there’s a little check point in there. And of course, we’re out on the road and we smoke a little herb in there and this dog [at the check point] went crazy, it jumped up on the back of the truck," Double K recalls.

"The dog tried to jump through the car man," Thes elaborates. "We’ve had lots of run-ins with the cops man, but once they realize why we’re there, they usually let us through. When you see us in a rental car with plates from three states away - we don’t look like we’re a band on the road. We’re not in a tour bus, we look like a bunch of dudes who are up to no good. We’re usually playing our music really loud, cigarettes, fast food in the car, we really look like we’re up to no good."

The fast food culture is a big part to any road trip, but as any European traveler can attest, it’s not the same across the Atlantic. "We were in Belgium and we were staying at this old ass, cranky ass dude’s house - the promoter told us that we were going to be up in some hotel, but it was just some old dude who let us stay in his house. And we were like ‘hey, we’re trying to get some food here before the show.' And he said, ‘I’ll take you down the street, it's good American-Belgium fast food, you’ll love it.’ He took us down to Binky Burgers and they had a deli case with a bunch of patties and we’re like ‘oh what, you just pick your patty and they cook it for you? Oh word, that’s alright.’ So we picked our patties and the dude from Binky Burger took it out the case and threw it into the deep fryer. It was a deep fried burger. Just imagine a beef patty, deep fried."

"I had a real hard time on stage that night," Double K says, shaking his head as if mourning the passing of a lost relative. "I was really sweatin’."

There are a lot of reasons to sweat these days, many more reasons than just Binky Burger and the oldies. The coming months leading to a pivotal election are on the minds of many, regardless of profession.

"I can’t put all my faith in Kerry, it’s the lesser of two evils or something," Thes says. "Just because I hate Bush doesn’t mean that I need to love his opponent. I think it’s a little blindsided to just support anyone who’s against the person that you absolutely hate. We all hate Bush, let’s get over that. Anyone who’s under the age of thirty and knows anything about anything has ten reasons to hate Bush. Different reasons, but they have their reasons."

Thes One - small in physical presence, especially when seated next to the larger than life persona of Double K - pauses and prepares for a tangential passion-filled rant. "I’m not too upset that Reagan died. Reagan died, okay, turn back the TV stations, I’m trying to watch Judge Judy. People’s Court is on channel nine at one o’clock and you got Reagan’s funeral on, c’mon man. The motherfucker helped to invent crack, he made up stories about welfare, he created racial hysteria in this country, nah, I don’t…I don’t really want to get into that shit. The bottom line is that we make music and we don’t get all political in our songs. We’re just two rappers, who the fuck are we? Everyone should come up with their own ideas based upon what their experiences have been, we’re not going to preach about what ours have been."

Speaking of experiences, since their first meeting, Thes One and Double K have been a LA hip-hop team through and through.

“I don’t think that we can leave and make the same albums that we make here,” Thes says. “Sitting right here, we have different sounds coming from everywhere: latin music, hip-hop, rock, everything and it’s all coming together at all points at all times. So we’re just trying to take all that and make our music out of it. That’s why I get frustrated when I hear cats claiming LA, but they’re biting a producer from Detroit or New York. That doesn’t make any sense to me. Are you in LA? Are you making music based on your experiences here or are you just trying to make music that sounds like Jay Dee or Premier?”

Location, influences, accessibility, longevity -- all are contributing factors that make the band ready to evolve past the “underground hip-hop” genre. “Sure we invented and embraced the term,” Thes says. “We can’t really complain. My New Year’s resolution is to stop referring to our music as ‘underground’. Every time someone says, ‘you make underground hip-hop,’ I’m going to be like ‘no we don’t, we don’t even make hip-hop, we just make music.’ It is what it is." In late August, and for the first part of this month PUTS is on a two week Australian/New Zealand tour. They’ll then hit the US road, all in support of their fourth full length, Stepfather, due out soon on Om Records.

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