ZONIN’ REMIX

Nick previously documented the genesis of the Northside Swag Unit. After that, we cut one amazing song, which we perform at Coolio & Housemouse shows whenever we’re all together. While we’ve talked about doing more, it’s taken until this year before those plans solidified. 

Alongside the mainstays (myself, Nick, Matt and Simon), we’ve brought Evan Buckley (aka The One Inch Grinch) and Liam White (Ghostnoises) to the fold. Work has begun on an EP – I’m especially excited as we’ve split production duties between myself and Simon/Coolio – both of us have contributed three tracks.  

A majority of rap lyrics are the same interchangeable riffs on braggadocio, crime and wealth (no shade, but you can drop any Migos verse into any other of their tracks and nobody would notice) – in contrast, Coolio and Housemouse write complete songs, with inventive themes that match their musical backing. Their rhymes still frequently sound like stream-of-consciousness and go off on fun tangents, but they keep to a topic close enough that that’s how I remember them – The Space One, or The 80s One, for instance. It gives a focus and a cohesiveness to their material that I don’t hear often in other hip-hops acts. With up to six emcees on any NSU track, the potential for songs to get disjointed is high. We’re going to cleave tightly to this model and have already agreed on themes for each of our tracks.

Nick came up with one of those themes – he coined the term Zonin’, which means to travel on a budget, but to do so with swagger and style. It’s a perfect jumping-off point – broad enough for each emcee to put their own spin on it, but focussed enough that the track will hold together. It’s The Travel One – we have The Heist One, The Diss One, and others in the frame.

The plan now is to reconvene for a lyric-writing session, where we all sit in the room, put the tracks on loop and write our rhymes together. As someone that likes to be prepared as much as possible beforehand this is going to be an interesting (read nerve-wracking) challenge.

It’s also been a challenge to not to work on any rhymes beforehand. In fact, I found myself coming up with ideas for Zonin’ driving home the other night. An opening four bars soon turned into a full verse and then another. Determined to write all my material fresh in the room for the EP, I hit on a novel idea – what if I took these rhymes and made them into their own track? I essentially created a remix to a song that does not yet exist. Have a listen below – additional bass and vocals by ‘Killer’ Kev Lauro.

For fans of Ill Communication and Bug Powder Dust (I didn’t help myself by sampling Reef, but my stuff always comes out sounding like the nineties!).