I have been a fan of Pootie’s for a longer than I realized. I found him thanks to a 2019 Potluck TV video where he spit a freestyle after eating the hottest chicken wings in NJ, Cluck U’s 911 wings. I knew if he could rap that well as his mind was being poisoned by hot sauce that I needed to hear how he rapped when his mouth wasn’t on fire. His 2019 Roper Williams produced tape P was among the very first reviews I wrote for GSC, and I am happy to report Pootie’s writing from that era held up a lot better than my own. Pootie wowed me with his nimbleness on the mic and with his humor. On “Rare Jazz” he impersonates a bandleader who is forcing Pootie to perform in front of the Roper Williams band to a hostile crowd. Most of the time when a rapper tries to get theatrical it comes off corny as hell but the opposite is true here as the track really comes alive thanks to Pootie’s showmanship, truly feeling cinematic.
Pootie had spent a half decade honing his skills up till P dropped, freestyling for five straight years with anyone and everyone in Hudson County, New Jersey. He was hyped that P was so well received but started to feel stifled by his own high standards. He was feeling like he needed to top P the next time he dropped, and was starting to become jaded at the business side of the music industry. External family issues meanwhile only made it more difficult to record. He released two gorgeous Nathan Franx directed videos in 2021 for the Roper Williams produced “Riding” and the YL produced “Over Easy” as he plotted his next moves.
Pootie was able to channel the pain he was feeling onto his Hudson Trash produced EP DUMPLINGS and his Driveby produced EP BERMUDA DUFFLES. The two tapes were particularly cathartic for Pootie and helped him find a new rhythm for writing. He relished in the opportunity that rap gave him to create a whole universe with cover art, merch, and videos, finding great joy in the collaborative artistic process. Pootie also stopped trying to outdo himself every time he got on the mic and instead started trying to take a snapshot of how he was feeling in the moment. Pootie talked in particular how important and emotional a song “Friends and Family” was, and how writing that track allowed him to open up further on BERMUDA DUFFLES. The two tapes helped him develop a more workman-like approach to rap, where it started to feel less stressful and more like another day at the office. He was also a stand-out artist on Roper William’s excellent 2023 tape Infinite Victory Loop, which GSC named our favorite album of 2023. Pootie showed that he could more than keep up with ascendant stars of the underground rap scene AKAI SOLO, YL, and Fatboi Sharif, delivering stand out verses on tracks like “Palace” and “Hooptie”. Pootie appreciated the camaraderie the group had recording that tape during their hectic 24 hour session, describing the conversations they had in between rap takes as the kinds Socrates and Plato would have in the Ancient Greek forum.
The whole time Pootie had been working on those tapes he was also slowly building out a project with Brooklyn musician and producer Nothing_Neue. Nothing_Neue has deep ties to the Jersey scene both through his work with rap figures like Brainorchestra and Ewonee and thanks to his work as a drummer in Jersey hardcore and metal bands, so he and Pootie were well acquainted long before Pootie suggested they work on a record together in 2020. Pootie loved Nothing_Neue’s artistic and business approach, building beats from the ground up sample-free. Nothing would ask Pootie what he was fucking with in the moment and then would tailor a beat that matched his energy. Pootie credited Nothing_Neue’s attention to detail for bringing the best out of him on the mic, as he had become jaded with the process of producers sending him a million beats and keeping their fingers crossed. The two knew they wanted to have a concept to the record like DUMPLINGS and BERMUDA DUFFLES and slowly conjured an album theme related to their workman-like approach to rap. The track “Rinse and Repeat” ultimately was the inspiration for not just the name of the record but its car wash setting, which the duo further expounded upon in their Nathan Franx directed video for the song. It features a hilarious cameo from Freddy Stone’s whole family and is representative of the universes Pootie likes to create with his raps, which fall somewhere between Kevin Smith’s Clerks and Jim Jarmush’s Ghost Dog Way of the Samurai. Just because you’re putting your whole head and heart into your art doesn’t mean you have to take yourself all that seriously.
The most exciting aspect of Rinse and Repeat is that Pootie and Nothing_Neue sound like this is just step one in their plot to take over the rap world. Each not only talked about their excitement about a potential sequel to this tape but about several other tapes they may drop separately this year. Pootie is in talks on a potential sequel to the DUMPLINGS EP and Nothing_Neue mentioned he was working on an R&B project and an indie pop project with old bandmates. Nothing_Neue compared his work with Pootie to Voltron; They’ll go out and work on side missions and then bring that momentum back into whatever the two are working on, slowly putting their next project together just like they did with Rinse and Repeat. After all, it’s just another day at the office for the Harris brothers.
I talked with Pootie and Nothing_Neue about Hoboken, calling people Harry, and the process of putting together this excellent record.
GSC: What is your name and your artistry of choice?
Pootie: Pootie is my name. My artistry of choice is rapping and writing. Secondary would be producing. Tertiary would be visual art, paintings, digital paintings, sketches.
GSC: Where did you grow up? What are your earliest music memories? Who was playing music around the house and what were they playing?
Pootie: I grew up in Hoboken, New Jersey in the projects. The first song I remember hearing and being like, What the fuck is that? Was that song “I put my hands up on your hips when I dip, you dip, we dip,” What was that track?
GSC: Da Dip! I forget by who honestly [Ed Note: Freak Nasty]
Pootie: When I was like five years old that song blew my mind.The first hip hop song that really captivated me was “Gangsta’s Paradise” by Coolio. My brother had this big boombox and whenever that intro would start with those vocals, it just sounded like something bad was gonna happen. I remember being surprised that a song could make me feel scared, that a song can make me feel anything.
GSC: People forget what a massive hit that was too. I was embarrassingly more into the “Weird Al” Yankovic parody “Amish Paradise”.
Pootie: That is hilarious. That also bugged me out about hip hop though, how there was not one set way to do it. Motherfuckers were being funny with it, or being serious with it. Then you have motherfuckers finding a middle ground like Ludacris where he could be funny with it, but then if he wanted to bar down he could. A lot of ways to skin a cat.
GSC: My next question was going to be about your earliest experiences with rap music, but it sounds like your brother was helping you fall in love with rap from an early age.
Pootie: Yeah, for sure. My brother started rapping first, he was really fucking good man. He was doing his thing, but he ended up getting his lady pregnant, so he couldn’t really pursue rap like that. He inspired the fuck out of me to work on my own art in the shadows. When I ended up telling him that I wanted to rap, he told me to just focus on freestyling. For the first five years, all I did was freestyle freestyle freestyle. By the time I met Roper in high school, no cap, I felt comfortable saying I was probably the best freestyler there and in my city, and even in the county I’d say. Roper noticed that instantly. Around that time, he was making beats on the MPC, his first MPC, so I would go to his house and while he was making beats, I would freestyle to them and his beat making would help my freestyling and I like to think my freestyling also helped his beat making.
Pootie: Wow so you met him in the hallowed halls of Hoboken High School?
Pootie: Yeah, it is crazy to look back on honestly.
GSC: I’m a St Peter’s Prep alum, Hoboken had a lot of characters our age. It is definitely a more enigmatic city than people realize, it’s got grit to it. What was it like growing up in Hoboken? Can you describe some of those characters that populate Hudson County?
Pootie: I think Hoboken is interesting because what you see is what you get, but not really. Like in Futurama where there’s New York under New York. There’s a lot of people whose families were born in Hoboken, three or four generations deep. Then you got the gentrification which comes over and overshadows the living history that Hoboken has. How tight a lot of the Italian and Irish and Hispanic and Black communities still are because our grandmothers know each other, or our mothers went to school with each other. When it comes to our time now though, it’s Degrassi Season 10.
GSC: I was talking to Driveby about the Journal Square neighborhood of Jersey City where it is nice to see it get built up and for people to be out and about but there were always people out and about and so many people there now just want to be in NYC anyway.
Pootie: For sure. It’s trippy. I like Hoboken because it was a healthy mix of everything. The highs and the lows, the safe parts and the places with opportunity. So much good food and it’s so much more scenic that it gets credit for. I feel comfortable around all of Hoboken, but I feel that way about all of Jersey and even the tri-state. I feel like we have a great community in rap where we all fuck with each other, I feel like a big ass kid going to shows and studios sometimes.
GSC: Were there any musical figures in Jersey growing up who really inspired you?
Pootie: Absolutely. Ironically enough, it was the motherfuckers that I started with. Roper Williams was producing for a group called The 93 that Nate Franx and a few others were in. That bugged me out because they were all my age and they were doing cool shit. I wanted to do music so bad, but I was nervous about doing it the wrong way, so I was surprised that there were people my age in my neck of the woods that were doing it as tastefully as they were. Around that time Roper heard me freestyling and we started hanging more. I grew up with everybody in the group, but they kept it tight for obvious reasons, and I ended up getting along with them and just learning so much from them. Learning a lot from Nate, from Meho Burns, from my boy Maxx, from Roper Williams, from DJ Boogaveli. Then it fizzled out and we all went our respective ways, but everybody that was in that group is doing their thing in different ways now.
GSC: One last question Pootie before we move into your discography. How have you seen Hoboken and Hudson County change over your life?
Pootie: It’s interesting, because many of the changes are obvious with gentrification. Back in the day, there weren’t so many sushi spots and coffee spots, but I like sushi. I like coffee. The block has been kind to me for the past couple of years. My family found a little nook and cranny where we could hold it down, but plenty of people have been squeezed out. There really is a problem with displacement, rent in Hoboken is getting out of control. People can’t stay in a city where they were raised, they’re being forced to move out and that sucks. Especially when it seems like the city’s priorities are the wealthy parts of town. Uptown there are blocks that are legit like gated communities without gates. If anything happens there, the boys are there within five minutes. Mind you, Hoboken is only a square mile, but still something happens in the hood, you got to wait 40 minutes for someone to come. The city seems to pick and choose who it’s trying to appeal to.
GSC: Your first tape I heard was P produced by Roper, did you have any tapes before then?
Pootie: No, not at all. From when I graduated high school up until P dropped was a seven to eight year period where I was making music, but I wasn’t releasing anything. I was just doing stuff with The 93 and with Roper. I was seeing guys like Fatboi Sharif plotting and planning and executing shit. Then 2019 felt like the perfect time for our tape.
GSC: What were your goals going into P, what were you and Roper trying to put together?
Pootie: An informal introduction to me as an artist. I think it gets the job done. I like to think that I’m a man of many hats, so I like the fact that no two songs sound the same. That’s something we wanted to get across with that tape, because I didn’t know which direction I would go after that drop. I wanted to show everybody my range.
GSC: I love “Breakfast After This”, one of the first tracks on that tape. How long have you known YL and how did you know that you needed him specifically for that track?
Pootie: Oh, that’s crazy. I’ve known YL for a minute. To double back to the last question about who inspired me early on, seeing Wiki and YL also being in our age group and making fire shit. These motherfuckers are just no holds barred, unapologetically being themselves, I was a fan from the jump. I told Roper, when it’s time for the first project to drop I wanna see what’s good with YL and Roper was like, “Oh, shit, we know him.” YL came through to Roper’s studio one day, so I pulled up too. We ended up freestyling and hitting it off, because we both love to freestyle, he actually has some old footage of us freestyling from that era that I’d love for him to resurface. After that session I knew I needed a verse from him for the album.
GSC:I like how he really wrote to the breakfast theme.
Pootie: He’s crazy talented with the pen, he always got some crazy rhymes tape after tape. It’s impressive, really. He also produced a single for me called “Over Easy” that Nate shot a video for, and he killed the beat there too.
GSC: “Rare Jazz” is another favorite from that tape. I love the narrative element with the Roper Williams band. What was the inspiration behind that track?
Pootie: I like voice acting and doing silly shit like that. When we were doing that track I was just doing this announcer voice, and Roper was like, “Yo, we should record that.” and I was like I think that would be cool. So we literally followed that idea all the way through. I was like okay, I’m gonna be the guy introducing us and we’re gonna have a fake band and have the crowd in the back yelling so there’ll be intervals because we’re being interrupted. I just tried to make it sound as organic and live as possible, even though none of that shit was happening.
GSC: After P you had the Wen Ballace EP with Tab Jones, how did that tape come together?
Pootie: Since P did so well, I was stressing on how to follow it up. I learned instead of trying to outdo the last project, treat everything like a photo where I’m just trying to capture a moment in time. I’m constantly competing with myself, but I don’t make that too hard of a focus anymore because it literally stalled me. While I was scrambling on what we were going to do next, Tab Jones reached out and he had an idea to do a project with a couple of artists on eight different beats. I think out of all of the artists I was the person that sent back verses the quickest, on six of them. He was like nobody’s really responding fast enough and these are bombs, let’s just do a project. He came through and I had a Ben Wallace jersey hanging on the wall. We were trying to figure out what we’re going to call the tape and the jersey fell a little bit and the light shined on it, and it almost felt like the tape named itself.
GSC: “Dr. Strange” with Brainorchestra is my favorite track from that tape. The Beat sounds like the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater menu. How did that track come together?
Pootie: I met Brain around when P dropped. He didn’t really know a lot about me because I didn’t have any body of work, but he was fucking with us based off of the shit he had heard. We invited him over to my first studio so that we could listen to P. It was me, him, his lady, and maybe five other people, it was the first little listening party that we had. The room was blown away because we had just gotten the masters from Dan Hickson, and Brain was like, “Yo, we got to work.” So I hit him up when I was working with Tab and he killed the verse as you heard. He’s a wizard.
GSC: Moving into Bermuda Duffles, Driveby is one of my favorite people.
Pootie: Same here, he’s a really good guy.
GSC: How did you first connect with DriveBy and how did you know that you needed to make a tape with him specifically?
Pootie: I’ve known DriveBy for a long time. That’s the crazy shit about all of this music scene of ours is I’ve known all of these people for years. DriveBy went to school with my cousins in Hoboken. He was also always making beats with Roper. Me and him bonded over video games and movies as much as we did music. It was never a question of if I would ever do a project with DriveBy, it was when. He would send me beats back in the day that I liked but I didn’t think were for me. Eventually though he got to a point where I was fucking with his beats so much that it inspired me to start making beats myself. I started asking him more questions and really getting nitty gritty with him, and our chemistry just built where I found myself always freestyling over his beats. That’s when I know I can rap over something, if I’m just freestyling. We started to think about what we could do for this project. I knew I was sitting on Dumplings, and I was excited for that. I wanted to do the same thing with the merchandise, and he trusted my vision with the merch, so we made it happen.
GSC: DriveBy said you were in a bit of a rut when you recorded Bermuda Duffles, and he loved how much you poured into the project lyrically. Was it a cathartic project to record and release?
Pootie: I’d say so. I had just recorded a song from Dumplings called “Friends and Family” about something that was going on that really fucked with me, there was a lot of chess pieces moving. By the time we got to Bermuda Duffels I was starting to get to a better place, but still getting over that shit. The crazy thing about Bermuda Duffles is that was when rapping really started to feel like another day at the office. Dumplings felt like my resurgence after so much time in the shadows, plotting how I wanted to approach this next run. So by the time Bermuda Duffles came around, it was like the pre-workout stretch was done and I was trying to get my reps in at the gym you know, I’m ready to just pump these raps out. So yea, it was really fun and good for my mental health. I was happy that we structured it the way we did where it was a song, a beat, a song, a beat, a song, a beat. I was telling Nothing_Neue when I was younger I struggled to find beats so whenever I found an album that just had an instrumental on it, I’d go crazy and rap on it over and over. Now that I’m doing my own albums, I really like to have those pauses where people could just hear the producer shine, almost like a guitar solo.
GSC: DriveBy also said when you have a beat you like you write very quickly. Nothing_Neue was that your experience?
Nothing_Neue: When I was working with P it was a lot of sending him ideas. If it stuck it would stick and if it didn’t stick you would know. A track like “Muse” I sent to him in the afternoon and the same day I got this crazy rap back from him. It comes down to having that synergy and being on the same page as Pootie, if you have that he’ll get it done immediately.
Pootie: Big facts. I love that shit. I even tell people that commission me for verses, you can expect a reference in stems within 48 hours of me receiving payment. I don’t fuck around.
GSC: What is your writing method? Do you have a notebook full of rhymes?
Pootie: I’m on my ninth rhyme book right now. I would have been on my thirteenth if I didn’t transition a lot of it to the phone. I write shit down but when it comes, but I don’t have ready rhymes per se. Like I am always working my pen so when I actually need to work my pen I am ready to go right away.
Nothing_Neue: You’re always ready so you never have to get ready.
GSC: I loved the Dumplings EP. How did you connect with Hudson Trash?
Pootie: Hudson Trash had a studio down the hall from Parlay Studios with Andy Mac called Nights Like This. Andy introduced me to Hudson because he thought my raps would work well with his beats and we just hit it off. You know, he’s a really, really good guy. He has a good heart, and he has a great taste in music. He sent me some beats, I sent him references ASAP. I think we had twelve songs and we picked the best six for the EP.
GSC: So you have a second order of Dumplings ready if need be.
Pootie: We may have had some discussions around a potential sequel though nothing is set in stone yet.
GSC: One track I really love off that tape is “In Love With Money”. I love how you use a different voice for the chorus and the verse. How do you approach a track like that? Are those two different characters?
Pootie: I see like a mafia guy that’s fighting in a kung fu movie. He’s fighting a fast dude, so he has to rethink how he’s going to fight. He knocks that fast dude out, and then a big bruiser comes, so he can’t fight him the way fought the fast guy. Rather than it being two different characters, it’s just me trying to express my versatility, show how I can escape and maneuver through any landscape.
GSC: The Roper Williams tape Infinite Victory Loop was GSC’s favorite album from last year.
Pootie: We had so much fun with that tape.
GSC: What do you have any particularly fond memories from that day? I heard it was basically a hectic 24 hour session with everyone jumping in and out of the booth.
Pootie: I’m gonna be honest with you, I was so fucked up that day. I can really only remember so much. From what I remember, it was a beautiful vibe. All those dudes are so smart man, so good at their shit. The round table that day felt like the kind of conversations you’d hear about Socrates and Plato having in the Ancient Greek forum. We were chopping it up with wine, talking shit, nobody’s getting offended, and then we brought the energy of those conversations to the mic. It was a really good vibe, being around like minded individuals, everybody being 100% themselves. Nobody imposing on anybody because we all love each other, both in the artistic way and in a human way. My mistake though was trying to keep up my drinking with Fatboi Sharif. I am a smoker and I should have known better there.
Nothing_Neue: Nobody can keep up drinking with Fatboi Sharif bro.
Pootie: I’ll smoke him under the table I swear, but he brings out the bottle and I am done.
GSC: Moving onto Rinse and Repeat, how did you two connect and how did this tape come together?
Nothing_Neue: It was 2020 and Pootie was off to the side while Fatboi Sharif was rhyming out in Washington Square Park. He pulled up and he told me we should drop a tape and fuck everybody’s heads up with it. I’ve always wanted to build a tape around an artist but nobody really understood the vision. Mind you, me and Pootie had been around the same circles. I’ve been in Jersey a lot, shout outs to Nine Livz, Good Food, all of them good people over there. I was there just hanging around with Pootie, getting to know him personally, smoking and chilling. After we connected at the park, I would send him loosie rap beats. He kept on sending me songs back and it went from like, okay, I got a single with him, to an EP, all the way to the album. It took shape organically by us actually hanging and building chemistry.
Pootie: Something that bugged me out about working with Nothing_Neue is that he’s an artist in every sense of the word. He sees shit visually, and he has a way he can articulate it and get it out. He would send me a beat, I’d send him a reference, but I’d send him an artistic reference too, and he’d send me something back even better. We were collaborating in every sense of the word. It was a really refreshing way to work, I felt like we were really building something together.
GSC: How did you guys create the 9-5 carwash concept behind Rinse and Repeat?
Pootie: Coming off of Dumplings and Bermuda Duffels I knew this wasn’t gonna be a data-dump. I already knew Nathan Franks was going to direct a video, I already knew we were gonna have thought out merch. There are some ideas there too we’ll probably save for the sequel. It came out well but I’d say we built the concept over time as we worked on the tape. The idea was being workman like with rap how you are with your job, working on your craft and building daily, and that’s how it really came about. He’ll tell you we originally thought of a laundromat idea too, before coming up with the car wash.
Nothing_Neue: Yeah, it just took its own form. As you work consistently with someone over the years, the concept seems to build naturally just off of shared chemistry. The concept came as it was being written, the carwash just seemed to embody what we were putting together. Eventually, we were trying to figure out the name of the album when it was finished. We were at my crib and I had the projector going, we were smoking and listening to that album, and we still couldn’t land on anything. “Rinse and Repeat” was the last song on the album when “Drive2Jerz” was still a bonus track, and that name just fit the vibe of the record. Make something fire, wash your hands, rest, and come do it again the next day. Shoutout P for always coming hard with the concepts too, I knew he always brought that extra dimension to his tapes and I love how this came out.
GSC: I like the name Rinse and Repeat too because it both speaks to that workman like approach and your comfortability on the mic, like how you said starting with Bermuda Duffles rapping was less nerve wracking and more another day at the office.
Pootie: For sure. I grew up in a household where I see my Dad get up and boogie to work every single day. He always told me if you’re gonna do something, you might as well do it well. Rinse and Repeat was a sweet spot because I lost the feeling for a second. I feel like as artists, it’s normal to do some shit for the passion and then realize there’s a business aspect to it. You can get consumed by the business and feel like it’s eating your soul, but it’s important too. I am glad this album helped restart things where I care about it fully. This is my craft, it saved my life, it put me onto like-minded individuals and brought me into a whole culture. I’ve traveled from state to state, selling merchandise and rapping in front of people that I never knew. There is a good, positive, loving rap community I feel lucky to have been tapped into. When I go to Philly or Atlanta or Florida and see they have their own Pooties and their own scenes, it is so inspiring. It’s like Naruto going to another village and seeing ninjas do it in a different way.
GSC: I love the music video for “Rinse and Repeat” you did with Nate Franx. He has such a phenomenal sense of color, his videos just pop.
Pootie: He’s the best. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. If you ain’t get Nate to do your videos, you ain’t doing shit. People always tell me to pump out stuff, the world needs content. I feel that when you’re on some quality control shit, it’s always worth it. I put out visuals once or twice a year but whenever they drop they’re some solid ass visuals. Nate has such a great eye and understands the vision I am putting together, it is always a seamless artistic working relationship there.
GSC: How are you guys as actors? Did you feel comfortable in front of the camera?
Nothing_Neue: It definitely helped already building a repertoire with P. It wasn’t so much that we had to act, we were just doing what we do regularly when we link up.
GSC: I love Freddie Stones‘ cameo, he cracked me up.
Nothing_Neue: Same! That’s one of my favorite things in music videos in general, when I see people in scenes cross over and do cameos. I was hyped he came through.
Pootie: I love Freddie bro. That was his baby moms and his son too, the whole family made the video. He is a real deal thespian, a method actor. I’ve learned so much from Freddie, especially on the road together. Harry has been so good to me over the years.
GSC: I love how you call everyone Harry, how did that all start?
Pootie: Harry is a term of endearment. I didn’t know that it was going to be a thing, it’s not like I woke up one day and I was like I’m gonna start calling motherfucker’s Harry. For real, one of my best friends started working on Wall Street. We didn’t see each other for like a month and then when I saw him, he was calling me Harry. I was like, why are you calling me that? He told me he couldn’t really remember faces and names of all the white people he worked with so he just started calling everybody at work Harry and they thought it was hilarious. So he started saying it around me and then I started saying it and now people are saying it all over the country. We have meet ups, the Harris’.
GSC: My grandfather was a Harry, well his name was Henry Higgins, but we all called him Harry. He was also famous for giving people fake names, my Grandma in fact thought his name was Pat Egan till she introduced him to her Father.
Pootie: That is full circle, shout out to all the Harry’s worldwide.
GSC: I love “Million Degreez” with Dre Doso. How’d you first connect with him? How do you know you needed him for the track?
Pootie: I knew that I wanted to work with Dre from the first time I heard him. I remember I was riding around in a car with the cassette player, and I had just finished going to one of these functions with Good Food. I had a cassette that Food did and the only verse on it was a Dre Doso verse, and I found myself constantly going back to that song, he was rapping his ass off. When I met him, I was just bugging out because he was so humble. He got that track done fast as fuck too, my guy works on Pootie time.
GSC: How did the production on this track come about?
Nothing_Neue: That was at a Parlay Studios session. Back in 2021 I was working with Brainorchestra. I pulled up on him one day and he had to boogie. He was like, yeah, I gotta hit the state fair. I was already in Jersey, so I hit up Pootie and we linked at Parlay. I had a bare bones mobile setup that I was taking with me to make beats over there, and it kind of just came together naturally. It wasn’t locked in at first, but once I did the drums and figured out what the chords would be, it came together naturally. I like to work with the artists in the room, I like getting a live reaction and read. Pootie is an easy read, and that was one where I saw him pacing and thinking of bars as soon as I played it.
GSC: Was there anything consistent with the beats he was fucking with?
Nothing_Neue: What was consistent was that there was no consistency. I did “Million Degreez” so I gave him another one like that, but It didn’t ring off the same way. Throughout the album, he goes through a lot of different deliveries, a lot of different characters. I think that’s where he thrives where there’s a variety of different places to take it. So it was all about figuring out where he was at and meeting him at that moment. When we did “Muse” I had sent a couple other beats that didn’t really hit. I hit him up and was like what are you listening to right now? What’s the energy? And he sent me over a reference for something else. From there, I was like, okay, he’s in this pocket right now. Let me meet him where he’s at rather than take him somewhere else.
Pootie: I really appreciated that approach from Nothing_Neue. Being able to read where I am at really helped me work because a lot of people send beats and keep their fingers crossed. He was able to read me and that led us to building some amazing shit on the fly, that is just a different kind of working relationship that I got so much out of creatively.
GSC: “Assorted Cheeses” was another favorite of mine, was that track similarly collaborative?
Pootie: I’d say so. He sent the beat, and I got to work. I think I had really been fucking with charcuterie boards at that time and was feeling the cheeses in the moment.
Nothing_Neue: With the production on that track, I was listening to Sour Soul by Ghostface. I was really trying to figure out okay, now that we’re getting a body of work together, where do we want to go? Where is his voice naturally leaning? And what are some of the influences that we share that I want to draw from? Ghostface is that common thread and I wanted to see if he’d be into something really grimy and drumless that almost sounds like an Alchemist sample flip or something.
Pootie: You definitely brought that out of me too. When I started writing this track I wanted to approach it differently. I wanted it to feel like I was whispering, telling motherfuckers shit that you weren’t supposed to know. Like we’re trying to get information across quickly and discreetly.
Nothing_Neue: Mob mafioso energy.
GSC: “Body Royal” is my favorite on the tape right now, it has a great knock to it. How did that track come together?
Nothing_Neue: I was again hanging out with Brianorchestra. Ewonee was there going through beats, he had put me on to Showbiz and A.G. and was deep diving into 95-97 hip hop, real grimy. DJ Premier was doing solo stuff at the time too, I was listening to Group Home, studying that kind of knock, that kind of energy. “All Out” by Showbiz and AG, I remember hearing it while I was zooted and thinking I bet Pootie could skate on something like that. I also wanted something that’d really slam at our live performances.
Pootie: Shit made me want to fucking wrestle. It’s really really gets you hype. The boom boom boom before we even get to the verse makes me feel like a boxer looking at his opponent, pacing before he gets into the middle of rings and starts going off.
Nothing_Neue: I was thinking of Mike Tyson shadowboxing on the roof, mad pigeons and shit.
GSC: Ghost Dog Way of The Samurai type scene right there.
Nothing_Neue: That’s deadass what brought me and Harry together. We were at 9th house for movie night, and they picked Ghost Dog. We’re watching this and Pootie was narrating the whole thing, and we’re crying laughing. I was like I gotta lock in with this guy.
GSC: They filmed that in Jersey City too. So you were talking earlier how you love to give a moment for the producer to shine, I couldn’t imagine a more appropriately titled track than “Harry’s Theme”. Was there anything in particular you wanted to bring to that beat?
Nothing_Neue: ”Harry’s Theme” was originally called “Drive2Jerz” but when he did “Drive2Jerz” I was like okay we’ll use that name elsewhere. We have been calling each other Harry for so long, everybody was Harry at that point. It felt like a good moment to bring Harry like to the spotlight. I had done the beat at Parlay, Cartel was in a room, he was freestyling. Pootie was freestyling, but nothing really landed. When we were figuring out interludes, that one stuck with me. When I put it together and sent it to P, he liked it. I wasn’t expecting to have one of those moments on this record, that was crazy to me. The album is supposed to feel cinematic. That moment between “Wanting to Shine”, which I was saying to P yesterday, it’s like Robert De Niro at the airport in Heat tryna get away. “Harry’s Theme” is the airplane rise and “Rinse and Repeat” is like the islands.
Pootie: I catch myself freestyling to it now that the tape is out so I appreciate you on that one. I love how dynamic and airy it is.
GSC: I love you freestyling to your own album.
Pootie: I set it up for that. I get hyped listening to my own shit and it gives me a little moment to do my thing while I’m listening.
GSC: “Drive2Jerz” is a great closer and it does feel like you’re like in the car too. How did you know that was the last track?
Nothing_Neue When we did “Drive2Jerz” we had done the rest of the album and “Rinse and Repeat” was the last song. I thought we should try and get a bonus song for the vinyl. Then when we put everything together, we were like, man, it says bonus, but it really does tie everything together. It didn’t feel right to put the album out without it. Again with the movie theme, “Drive2Jerz” is the repeat for me. You’re driving back to work, back to the muddy, back to the gutter, back to doing what you need to do to get through. So we took you all the way down to a mellow vibe, but then brought it back to the dirt one last time before we close the curtains.
GSC: You’re ending the movie not at the end of the day, but at the start of the next day. I watched this movie, Perfect Days. about this dude who cleans the toilets in Tokyo and about his life every day for a week cleaning the same toilets and finding little things to be happy about in his routine, this whole album reminds me of that movie weirdly. Will you two be touring together around this record?
Pootie: We’re gonna hit the road as many places as we can together. We have eight shows on the horizon in NY, NJ, Philly and Delaware and hope to get more scheduled. The nice thing too is if he gets a beat set, he can play “Harry’s Theme” or if he can’t make it for a show I can still rock those tracks. I am hyped to play these tracks live, I feel like we really took the live performance aspect into consideration with this record.
GSC: Any closing thoughts on the record?
Nothing_Neue: First and foremost, thank you to everybody that believed in it from the beginning. The thing that I really want to impress upon artists is that there’s still a value to fleshing out your body of work. We’re still in the singles driven society where that’s what the focus is, but the people will pay attention when you put together cohesive bodies of work. It was easier to build this immersive experience for our fans to be entering into because we each had a body of work to build off of, which allowed us to understand one another better going into working together. So I’m thankful for that.
Pootie: Nicely said. For me, this album is a testament to everything that came before and everything that’s going to come after. I love movies, physical art, hip hop, and we let those influences pour into the art, but so do our family and friends. This doesn’t happen without Freddie Stone in the video, Nate Franx directing, Dre Doso, all the homies who’ve given tips and tricks in the studio. The people who’ve supported and bought the music and showed love at shows. We’ve taken everything they’ve given us and put our artistic spin on it to create something totally new. That is also why I really tap in with the merch. I feel like rap has touched my life in so many ways, with a bag or a towel or a shirt I can be a small part of your life outside of music. So I appreciate all the people in my life thanks to this music shit.
GSC: What is something outside of music that makes you happy that people may not know about you?
Pootie: I really love every aspect of being creative. Whether it be sketching, digital painting, or editing videos, chopping beats. I was telling Harry I have been looking at 3D modeling and the Unreal Engine lately. I’d love to make movies eventually and think it’s possible for us to do it. So I love rap and it’s my primary passion as an artist, but I love how rap lets me also make videos, and work on album art, and merch and all that. Like Harry killed it with the cover for example which he did on some Pixar shit.
Nothing_Neue: Yea I created that sign in Blender, it is a 3D image. I’d echo all that, I appreciate how Harry lets me have an outlet to do that stuff with the art too. I loved getting to design that cover and help create the universe of this album outside of just the music, it makes it all feel so much more real and developed for me, we’re turning it into a movie. Him having good business sense as he does it all too, like we just are very aligned mentally and artistically.
GSC: Oh wow I love the cover story. Did you start with physical art or music?
Nothing_Neue: I went to school for graphic design and I come from a design career path. It’s all the same muscle for sure, but I’ve also been a musician all my life too. I was in hardcore bands and metal bands out in New York and New Jersey back in the day.
GSC: Have you ever played The Meat Locker?
Nothing_Neue: That’s funny as hell, yes I did. We used to play in VFW halls in Jersey too. So I am familiar with that grimy energy.
GSC: Are you in any bands at the moment?
Nothing_Neue: One of the guitarists from my old band we’re doing an r&b project. Me and my girl, Chenoa we’re doing an indie pop-esque project.
Pootie: Harry always has a couple plates spinning.
