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Dubcnn Exclusive – RydazNRtist
By: Jose Ho-Guanipa

Download The Interview Audio: Here
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RydazNRtist


Dubcnn: Dubcnn.com what’s going on I’m with the guys of RydazNRtist. First off tell us a bit about yourselves.

GQ: I go by the name of ya boy GQ Ryder.

Kevin: My name is Kevin Ryder.

Ruben: and it’s ya boy Ruben the artist.

All: and we are RydazNRtist.

GQ: You can tell we practice that right? (laughing)

Dubcnn: Well rehearsed. First off your name is very unique. When people first hear it they think how do you say it. What’s the name, where does it come from?

Kevin: People ask that all the time. RydazNRtist comes from the fact that we are artists, but we are songwriters as well. We were all songwriters before we came together as a group. So we figured it’d be a perfect name. We wrote every song on our album, it’s very fitting. At the same time, as much as we write love songs for a living we…..

GQ: We rydaz. We rydaz. So it’s RydazNRtist. There’s a dude with a big ol’ afro in the group that raps. So that’s where it comes from, it stems from there.

Dubcnn: So tell us how you guys got together and found the situation that you’re in right now.

Kevin: It’s crazy. We were all out in Hollywood doing our own thing. Ruben and GQ came from North Carolina and I came from Detroit and we were all just out here grindin’. I was producing and these guys were rapping and singing. There was a lot going on… and we were friends and family before we came together. It all was just natural; we started making a lot of records together. At that point, Ruben had a relationship with Nick Cannon and brought the records to him and as soon as he hear it you know, “You guys got something.” And we took it straight to Def Jam and the rest is history.

GQ: Def Jam, Mariah Carey Tour, 106 and Park Tour, 106 and Park the show, the Monique show, God has been good this year. 2010 has been amazing.

Dubcnn: What role does Nick play musically and with everything. How you do guys interact with him?

Kevin: Well Nick Cannon is the CEO of Ncredible, which is a subsidiary of Def Jam. He’s a great executive and he empowers us to make our music and believes in that function. So we really just enjoy having him have our back and having a positive ear.


Dubcnn: I know he’s a busy guy, he has a lot of stuff going on.

GQ: Yeah he encourages us a lot to take that role and that path that he took to create our own and be creators ourselves. Don’t just look in one direction and step outside the box. And with our music we’re trying to do that too. Our current mixtape is called Strip Club Music/Sunday Music. One side is the strip club music and on the other side is the Sunday music. Like we say it’s something or your flesh and something for your spirit. Kinda what we doing with that, just putting out good music. Also what’s hot right now is a bunch of radio songs and upbeat songs that people can put on the radio, which leads us to our second single which is “Cakes” off of Def Jam/NCredible, on iTunes now, featuring Fabolous. We getting’ it in, in the club. We started off with a balled “Sorry Apology” which is on iTunes right now. We heard so many crazy things from “Sorry Apology”. Kevin showed me a message someone sent him saying the song mended their marriage. It’s deep, from music we created. So we attacked that name, but it’s like you can’t play sorry Apology in the club so we got Cakes for ‘em. We reached out to our labelmate Fabolous and he just showed us some love and spit a hot 16. That’s what we got goin’.


Dubcnn: Tell us about the whole thing you got musically. You’re going for the R&B flavor but you have some other influences as well. What do you think about the state of R&B and mixing it up with other aspects.

Kevin: I mean the crazy thing is that there haven’t been any great R&B groups out since the days of when we were in middle school. 112, Boyz 2 Men, K Ci & Jo Jo. It’s crazy. We’re bringing that back to the forefront ‘cause that’s what we are, but at the same time we have the flavor of hip-hop especially with GQ being so lyrical. It really gives us an opportunity to cover both groups. We didn’t walk into the situation trying to make an R&B rap group, but it was organic for us based off of our skill sets. It’s been really cool to make music and challenge ourselves and push the boundaries of music forward.


Dubcnn: I know you guys talked about doing other stuff, producing, songwriting, and other stuff. How has the transition to an artist, I know you hopped on some tours, how has that experience been?

GQ: Amazing. It’s been a blessing. I remember we were at one city on the Mariah Carey tour and this little girl started crying because she met us, she saw our Sorry Apology video and she just felt that personal with us to that when she saw us she started crying. It kind of scared us, like I’m not trying to get arrested with a little girl crying. It’s kind of weird being the dude that everyone’s looking at, coming from just grindin’ it out. Only have local people, your family supporting you. But it’s getting more and more real. Dreams can come true. We’re just humble every day, pushing forward and just getting where God wants us to be. And we love the music, that’ll never stop. Even if it wasn’t on this scale, I believe we’d all be in basements and closets still doing music. It just lives in us and we just try to present that to the world, get that rawness. And it’s like what Kevin said, that’s what we’re trying to bring back. That’s what’s missing, the raw love of it. These days people just doing it because it’ll make them. Ain’t nobody doing it to the point where you can say, “He loves it”.

Ruben: That’s what we trying to bring to the music today. He said it. RydazNRrtist.

Dubcnn: Tell us about your touring experience. You had some big tourmates, Trey Songz. Who else were you with?

Ruben: Mariah Carey. That’s the biggest you can get. Nobody living right now is bigger than Mariah Carey in music. It was amazing, sold out concerts every night. What more could you ask for, especially as a new group? We’d only been together for a year. That just blew our mind. Every night on stage. A year ago we was tryin’, now we doin’ it. It’s just crazy, it’s a blessing to. That Mariah Carey tour was crazy. Trey Songz, that 106 & Park Tour was crazy too.

GQ: Day 26, Mario, Sean Garrett. It was a lot of fun. It was good just to sit back and watch. Watch the vets do it, and how they treated their rehearsals, and being on stage. Just watching their timing and their professionalism. It was real good to watch, especially us being a new group and being at the beginning of our journey as RydazNRtist. That was such a blessing ‘cause you really don’ t have that opportunity out here. We have a lot of friends doing music out here and you really don’t have that opportunity to be in the situation and then watch how it’s done. It was a blessing just touring and all. We can’t wait to go back on tour, we grindin’ everyday, puttin’ that music out there.

Dubcnn: You dropped the first single, shot the video, all that stuff. Tell us about the first stuff you put out and what’s about to come out.

Kevin: The new stuff is the double disc, we’re really excited about it. Our newest mixtape is a combination of the old one and the new one but we dropped some songs, added a lot of new stuff and have the singles on there. DJ Finesse blessed us with the DJ drops and just hooked it up, it’s really big. For us to be able to combine it, we put Sorry Apology on there, we put Cakes on there. We’re giving it to people to let them know that we here to make music. We have a bunch more records to make.

Ruben: It’s on the myspace too. We haven’t really said where to get it. Go to the myspace, RydazNRtist myspace. Download the mixtape for free, it’s all free. It’s about 40 something songs for free.

GQ: Free. Tweet us, we’ll send it to you. We gettin’ it in.

Dubcnn: So do you have any concrete plans for the album or are you just taking it day by day?

GQ: Soulful Warfare Vol. 1. It’s coming man. It’s the ying and yang, the up and down, the left and the right. All on the album. We got something for your grandma, something for your little brother, something for your aunty, something for your teachers. We touched on so many aspects, really tried to be true to ourselves, we all come from different walks of life and we ended up here. We got a song called Pretty Feet for those freaks out there. We got a lot of different content, touch a lot of stuff. Club music, slow music, makin’ love music. That’s how we all got here, don’t be sacred of it.


Dubcnn: We definitely like your guys’ fresh approach bringing the R&B back. Tell us where we can find you guys on the web, the twitter, the myspace everything.

Kevin: Check us out we’re on twitter, we’re on myspace, we’re on facebook. It’s really us, we don’t have a bunch of interns doing it for us. It’s facebook, myspace, twitter – you gotta check your spelling though because we flipped it on y’all. It’s RYDAZNRTIST.

GQ: RYDAZNRTIST.

Kevin: And go to our website rydaznrtst.com. We’re blogging every single day. We got videos, we got pictures, we got behind the scenes, we got all kinds of stuff. GQ: I just learned how to do a backflip, you can see that on there. I ain’t never did a backflip until the other day, its up there, there’s so much content. Kevin: Youtube, ustream, we’re alwys on there so come check us out.

GQ: Come check out Cakes featuring Fabolous. Hottest song ever created. We love y’all (laughing).

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