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L.A. Duo People Under The Stairs Return For "Fun DMC" - By : Rud - September 12, 2008

Celebrating a decade in the game, Los Angeles’ People Under the Stairs finally return with a new album this mont - with "Fun DMC." The follow up to 2006's "Stepfather" - "Fun DMC" is their 6th album by rapper/producers Thes One and Double K and their most fully-realized album to date.

The boys have a simple goal this time around, "On our last album, Stepfather, we did a lot of thinking instead of just going in there and doing it. Now we just going back to what we were doing on the first two albums, which was basically having fun and not caring about anything," Double K reveals.

After more than 18 months of near-constant touring, the pair hit Thes’ custom-built studio in February to record "Fun DMC" and capture the spontaneous vibe of their live shows on wax. To accurately put the party back front and center, the duo went to the streets of South Central to record the sounds of weekend barbecues and parties, capturing a sound and atmosphere impossible to recreate in the studio.

"We wanted to get the ambience of the dudes playing dominoes, the meat sizzling on the grill, the planes flying by," explains Thes One. "We just said, ‘Let’s try to get what our Saturday is like onto a record. Instead of making a record about Saturday, let’s actually go out and record Saturday.’ Our overlying goal on this record is to make sure that when you listen to it, there’s a geographical context for it like, ‘That’s a L.A. record.’"

As longtime fans know - which includes the Dubcnn office personnel - when you hear a PUTS record, all the work, from the beats to the rhymes to the scratching to the artwork (Fun comes with a comic book written by the rappers themselves), is almost inevitably done strictly by the duo themselves. Instead of cashing in on hot outside producers or of-the-moment emcees, the pair has always been fiercely independent, with barbecue guests the only collaborators on the 20-track album. "Wouldn’t no one like to work with us and we don’t like working with nobody else," Double K bluntly says.

One listen to "Fun DMC" and the musical growth is obvious. Sure, this is still a hip-hop album, but the productions and arrangements recall Phil Spector and Brian Wilson as much as Pete Rock and Dr. Dre. (Hell, Thes was bumping the Pet Sounds instrumental album nonstop on tour.) Credit a lot of that to Thes’s recent work on Street Dreams, a drama out this year on which he acted as music supervisor and worked with strings, horns and other live instruments extensively for the first time.

“The album’s still sample-based, but we used live musicians to augment what was there and implement more of a song structure to make it more accessible to everyone," says Thes. "Before, we’d have these musical ideas in addition to samples and we just couldn’t do anything about it. Now, we have the understanding to sketch notes and melodies and everything available to us. It’s about looking at it more like an arrangement as opposed to just a beat."

Looking back on ten years—a lifetime—in the industry, Thes One succinctly sums up the group’s mentality; "We’ve never been the darling of any era or publication. We were never the hot boys for any given period of time. We just roll with the punches and not get hung up in an era, cause those are the people that get dated and are gone."

Today we have the albums lead single "Anotha BBQ" that can be listened to in one of our Brand New Streaming Audio players as well as downloaded for free. Both those options - as well as the options to embed the song on your MySpace pages or even on our forum are within the link below in the tracklist.

01) The Swan Fever
02) Step Bacc
03) Up Yo Spine (Live At The Fishbucket pt. 3)
04) Ste. For Peter Pt.1 “The Fun”
05) Ste. For Peter Pt.2 “The Grind”
06) Anotha BBQ
07) The Ultimate 144
08) Letter 2 c/o Bronx
09) Party Enemy #1
10) Enjoy
11) Gamin’ On Ya
12) Critical Condition
13) The Wiz
14) People Riddum
15) California
16) Love’s Theme #1
17) A Baby
18) Same Beat (The Wesley Rap)
19) D
20) The Mike & Chris Story

In related news you can catch People Under The Stairs on the West Coast over the next month promoting the new release, check the schedule below and get to one of the shows in your area.

09/19 Denver, CO: Marquis Theatre
09/20 Colorado Springs, CO: The Black Sheep
09/21 Salt Lake City, UT: Urban Lounge
09/22 Pocatello, ID: Icon
09/24 Missoula, MT: The Other Side
09/26 Portland, OR: Hawthorne Theater
09/27 Olympia, WA: China Clipper
09/28 Seattle, WA: King Cobra
10/01 San Francisco, CA: Independent
10/02 Pomona, CA: The Glass House
10/05 San Diego, CA: The Casbah

Check out the single and lookout for "Fun DMC" in stores on September 30th, 2008 via Gold Dust.

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