2Dope PremiereAlbums

Premiere: Anti-Lilly & Phoniks – Stories From The Brass Section (Album)

blame it on Shake March 8, 2014

stories-from-the-brass-section
Art Direction by Grant Tucker of SCKNOWS.

It’s almost been a full year since Anti-Lilly first made an appearance here at the DopeHouse. Since then, we’ve been following the upcoming Houston talent’s every move as he continues to improve his craft.

Today, we’ve got the world premiere of his brand new project with Portland, ME-based producer Phoniks. Coming in at 11-tracks, Stories From The Brass Section includes features from Scolla, Devin Miles and Awon.

Both Anti and Phoniks shared some thoughts on the project to us as well. Take a moment to catch the back story then proceed to press play below.

Phoniks: When a writeup on my debut album “Return to the Golden Era” with Awon mentioned Anti and myself in the same breath as far as young artists coming with an old school flavor, I checked out his mixtape and reached out to him about a collab. The music and chemistry flowed immediately and we began recording a few singles until it was clear we had to do a full album.

I love the way Anti flows over my beats, it is reminiscent of 90’s acts like Outkast and Goodie Mob who brought a southern flow over beats that had more of a raw, New York type of sound. He also comes with a lot of thought provoking lines and unconventional rhyme schemes that remind me of emcees like MF Doom and Talib Kweli, but with that Houston sound mixed in. I was listening to a lot of early Dilla beat tapes and Pete Rock stuff during the production of this album and you will be able to hear that influence throughout the project.

Anti: Ever since Phoniks first reached out to me and started sending music I knew that we would have an amazing chemistry together. My first time listening to his production, the horns immediately put into a zone which allowed me to express myself like no other way before. His sound reminded me of J Dilla or Pete Rock.

After Memoirs I was looking to keep more of classical jazz sound; after recording a few songs together we both decided it only made sense to create an album. What we ended up creating is without a doubt my greatest work up to date. I’m sure Phoniks feels the same. Sonically everything was inspired by an older era of Hip-Hop, I personally drew inspiration from Black Star, UGK, Scarface, Nas and other great storytellers from that time.