by Alex Shtaerman
After ripping through BET’s 106 & Park Freestyle Fridays for seven straight weeks SunN.Y. became the first artist signed to Virgin Records by Virgin’s new President of Urban Music Jermaine Dupri. JD ran on stage to offer the Rochester rapper a recording contract after SunN.Y. was crowned Freestyle Fridays champ for the seventh week in a row. Freestyling since the age of seven, SunN.Y. prides himself on never having spit a written rap in public. “People used to swear my shit was written. I used to have to convince people”, recalls the rapper reflecting on his days climbing to the top of Atlanta’s battle circuit. With his debut LP Overnight Celebrity set to drop September 13th, things are looking up for the 23 year old MC from Rochester, New York.
RIOTSOUND.COM: How high were your expectations going on 106th & Park Freestyle Fridays; you were already making considerable noise in Atlanta so how confident were you going into it?
SUNN.Y: I was about as high as a crackhead fresh out of rehab. As far as my confidence, if you saw me on the first week when AJ said “how are you going to do up there?” – seven weeks later [I was still the champ], seven is god’s number, there’s no way I could lose – it’s got to be a blessing for me to be here. So my confidence was already there, I’ve been confident from day one due to the fact that I was forced to. I got a song called Red Carpet; where I’m from you gotta wake up and act like you on the red carpet everyday in order to feel good, image is everything. Just ’cause you live in poverty, you can’t walk around like that.
Just ’cause I’m on the show where I know I gotta compete against somebody I can’t go in there nervous. I gotta go in there like I already won, I am the winner, I am the champ; and that’s what it is. But the funny part about it is that’s what it is anyway. In Atlanta I never lost, so I went to 106 & Park as a champ, with the heart of a champion and the mind of a champion.
RIOTSOUND.COM: You got two tracks that are circulating right now – Soul Of A Hustler and Introduction. Introduction is more on the party tip and Soul Of A Hustler is more street. In a way those two tracks represent two different directions your career can go in; how do you see it unfolding from here?
SUNN.Y: I believe in being an artist and not just a rapper. I’m an artist and an MC and that’s where I separate myself at. It’s just like when I go to church; I go to church every Sunday and I still smoke weed, drink and have sex out of wedlock. So it doesn’t have to be like pick one or the other. Its just you know what’s right and you know what’s wrong, you just gotta work on making everything right in life and that takes time. So as far as riding both sides of the fence, I’m not really the party-making song dude but I tried though and by doing that I jumped on a party track. But the flow was still like of a story type of flow instead of just taking the beat and jumping into popping bottles and girl back your ass up.
I mean, people criticize Nas for wanting to make Black Girl Lost and then making You Owe Me, but both of those people is Nas. I care a lot about my black community but that doesn’t mean like I’m Gandhi or the Pope or nothing. I mean I’m from the street, but what dude from the street that hustles all day don’t wanna go to the club and get a piece of ass and pop some bottles.
RIOTSOUND.COM: Jermaine Dupri has a long-standing reputation for crafting big commercial hits, what have you and him talked about as far as the direction of your music and where you would like to take your talent?
SUNN.Y: Don’t like quote this the wrong way but Introduction, it’s a hot song and all that, but when it was time to pick my first single, Jermaine was ready to make Soul Of A Hustler a full video like it is from day one. I was gonna do Soul Of A Hustler and Introduction as a 50/50 split. But Jermaine was like “you want to just shoot a whole video for Soul Of A Hustler and put that out and then put Introduction out?” And I didn’t think he would want to do that, that’s why I said let’s do the 50/50 split. I was going into the studio when I first started my album and doing straight club songs and shit like that ’cause I’m thinking with Jermaine that’s what people talk about.
But when I got to know Jermaine – Jermaine was like “nah, whatcha doin? go in there and do what you was doing on 106 & Park”. So that to me was like “go in there and keep it hood”. I mean my album as is not [100% hood] but you know what I’m saying – he just told me to go in there and be me. If you don’t pop bottles and all that shit at the club then don’t do it, do what you do at the club if you going to make a club record. So me and JD man, we collab real beautiful on my album, word to mother. I couldn’t even picture making my album with nobody else ’cause I don’t even know how anybody else is for one, and for two I had the big assumption about this dude and it turned out to be totally different. Me and him and my A&R who is his right hand man Eddie, every song I did that was grimy, they was with it man.
RIOTSOUND.COM: How did growing up in Rochester, New York influence you; you count the Beastie Boys among your influences and you also used to skateboard; how is all that reflected in your music and style?
SUNN.Y: Well, the Beastie Boys came from the birth of Hip-Hop and the skateboarding part came from hustling. Remember that movie Gleaming the Cube?
RIOTSOUND.COM: Yea, I do remember that.
SUNN.Y: Now didn’t that movie make you want to go out and get a skateboard? You know what I’m saying, you gotta keep it real [laughs]. That was the movie that made a nigga like me want to get a skateboard. I’m in the street and everybody else is out there standing on the corner, hanging out or riding bikes and shit like that. I said fuck it I’ll jump on a skateboard ’cause I’ll look so alternative and different that the police won’t really fuck with me – they gonna look at me as the black kid in the hood that ride a skateboard – like “what the hell is he doing?” So that gave me a good camouflage to be honest with you.
But I learned how to ride, I learned how to jump on the curb and all that stuff. Instead of wearing Airwalks I wore Travel Foxes, which used to be a Jamaican shoe they wore back in the day, my pops is Jamaican. So that’s how skateboarding kicked in, watching Gleaming the Cube and not wanting to go to jail.
As far as growing up in Rochester, it’s just like growing up in New York but it’s not as big. [In a way] it’s worse though ’cause everybody knows everybody. Once you get to a certain age, you know who’s holding the drugs, who’s got this, who’s got that, you just end up knowing everything. I had two older brothers and two older sisters and they all lived the Hip-Hop life – fast money, cars, jewelry, nice clothes, hanging out, being popular, and I kind of grew up in the same ranks. And growing up in that, that’s just Hip-Hop.
RIOTSOUND.COM: Who are some of the artists that you were a fan of that really influenced you to write rhymes and make a career out of your talent?
SUNN.Y: I started freestyling first, I ain’t write till ’93 when Nas dropped Illmatic, that’s when I wrote my first rap. Nas and my friend L.I. inspired me to write. As far as artists go – DITC, Big L, Fat Joe, also the DOC, NWA, the Pharcyde. Man when the Pharcyde hit, the first Pharcyde album was off the chain. All the major movements in Hip-Hop prior to the Hard Knock Life Tour [inspired me]. Once the Hard Knock Life Tour was over, that’s when Hip-Hop was done, ’cause everybody else was like copycatting after that.
Everybody that had the ill movements [influenced me], the Bad Boy movement, the Wu-Tang movement, the Native Tongue movement, even like the X-Clan back then. Remember that [Public Enemy] song Burn Hollywood Burn, stuff like that is what inspired me to rap because people was like really saying what was on they mind. Of course Biggie, Pac and Nas is like my favorite but at the same time you got people that helped mold they careers. I mean, Biggie & Jay-Z, you can’t tell me they wasn’t moved by Big L, especially Jay-Z.
When I moved to Atlanta, I didn’t move there with a demo or telling people like “yo I’m nice, listen to me”, running up on people. I just exposed myself ’cause I loved the opportunity to rhyme and I never ever spit a written rap in public. I drove the people’s minds crazy with my freestyles, people used to swear my shit was written. I used to have to convince people. One time we got into a little fight back in 2002 with Lil Scrappy and his peoples. Lil Scrappy probably don’t even remember, we ain’t fight but it was like an argument. Lil Scrappy was like “your man ain’t even freestyle” – I mean it was crazy [laughs].
RIOTSOUND.COM: Coming from Rochester to Atlanta, how would you describe that experience; did you find anything about Atlanta that was different than what you may have expected?
SUNN.Y: To me, Atlanta is like the southern New York, they got a subway and all that; downtown is real metro, northern metropolitanish. It ain’t really country until you hit the outskirts. People the same everywhere man, and that’s what I had to realize. You don’t realize it until you get out the box. Like me and my man, we be around people and we be telling them our stories about Rochester and they really be amazed and [at the same time] we be happy to realize that everybody ain’t really grow up like us. Coming from where we from we been in the box for so long, we automatically assume that the outside world be dealing with the world like we do but they don’t.
Like my man was telling somebody how he got shot and had to go to the hospital and she really couldn’t believe it. She ain’t never know anybody that got shot before. So it all helps mold the person I am. The more I go on and the more I realize I am like a so-called “rapper” now and I’m like this dude on TV and all that, its weird man. I been like running the streets in Rochester for so long and every Friday I be up in the spot getting money and there’s fiends coming in and telling me [I should rap] – like “son, you better than that”, and I’m ignoring them. I coulda been already doing this like five years ago.
RIOTSOUND.COM: When is Overnight Celebrity due to drop? What producers are you working with now and what producers would you like to work with in the future?
SUNN.Y: The album drops September 13th. The producers I got on my album right now; I was blessed to work with EZ Elpee, I got Chad West who did Soul Of A Hustla, Track Boyz who did Introduction. My man Big Reese did a blazing song that’s going to make you think of Reasonable Doubt ’cause the song is hot! Word, it’s like a classic man, its called You Gotta Get This Paper. Then I got another song on my album produced by JD called Streets Forever and then this cat Nimrod did a hot song.
As for the producers I would like to work with, I want to get with DJ Premier. I mean everybody would love to work with Dre and also Pharrell and the Neptunes. But I would also like to get around people like Maroon 5, Green Day, Red Hot Chili Peppers and see what they offer to the table and get with like Melly Mel or something, Rick Rubin too.
RIOTSOUND.COM: Do you feel any pressure being the first artist signed to Virgin under Jermaine Dupri?
SUNN.Y: I mean you put god first and after that you really got no fears. With god first what else was I supposed to expect. If I was the first [artist signed] then that’s what it is, be ready for it. They say be careful for what you ask for in life, well I ask for the world and one day if I get the world I gotta be ready to control that, so that’s what it is.
For all info and news on SunN.Y. stay tuned to www.SunOfNY.com
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