Chidera “Chiddy” Anamege and Noah “Xaphoon Jones” Beresin are no ordinary Drexel students. They comprise the groundbreaking hip-hop duo Chiddy Bang, and they are turning heads for their infectious, sample-driven tracks. Street even named them one of our Artists to Watch for 2010 in our January 21 issue. The boys are getting back in touch with their Philly roots and performing tonight at Beta’s FOP event at the Roxxy. To get you ready for the show, we sat down with the group’s gregarious frontman and picked his brain for Fling alcohol strategies … among other things.
Street: How would you describe your sound?
Chiddy: Hip-hop/electronica, with an old-school twist to it. It’s me and Xaphoon… bringing back the old school hip-hop duo, but the music that we’re making — we’re chopping up samples, stuff that’s relevant today.
Street: What is your production process like?
Chiddy: Most times, he’ll make the beat … and I’ll hear it and I’m just like, “Yo, this is amazing!” I just write the lyrics from there … But we bounce off of each other a lot. When we got something that we love, it’s like gold … I’m coming from a different world, so if I like it, it has to mean there’s something good about it. That’s sort of how “Opposite of Adults” came about, because I’d never even heard of MGMT.
Street: Do you guys think you’re doing something revolutionary with your samples, or does it come naturally?
Chiddy: When [Noah] samples, what he wants to do as a producer is go where other people haven’t gone. We want to do something that is original and something that nobody else has done before. It seems so simple, like, “Oh, just sample MGMT,” but stuff like that hasn’t really been done.
Street: What’s going on with your Drexel education amid all your success?
Chiddy: We’re currently taking a break. We’re on academic hiatus, as we like to call it.
Street: So what do you think of Mike Posner finishing his senior year at Duke while touring and recording?
Chiddy: To each his own. Mike Posner is a buddy of ours, he was one of the early supporters of the movement, he had us opening up and doing shows for him…. I think everybody has their own way of doing it, and everyone has their own path. We don’t knock anybody that wants to stay in school… For us, we wanted to focus solely on the music, because it was affecting us when we were at Drexel … We just wanna focus on what we love to do, and we’re not really like, school cats, you know what I’m saying? All we really wanna do is this.
Street: How did Chiddy start? Were you and Noah always friends?
Chiddy: We met at Drexel through a mutual friend. My next-door neighbor was cool with Noah, and I was trying to get into the studio… Noah was in the music industry program [at Drexel], and they have access to the studio. Me, I’m just a rapper, trying to get into the studio to be able to record, and [the next-door neighbor] was like, “Yo, I have a friend who makes beats… you guys should link up.” The very first song we did, I don’t know if you’ve heard it [Ed. Note: We have], was a song called “On Our Way.” It was a Weezer sample, and our whole thing was that we were gonna do indie rock [samples] … we were gonna do a mixtape just full of chopping up that kind of stuff. Once we … put it on MySpace and the response was great, it was just like, “Hold up, we got something.”
Street: How did you get signed?
Chiddy: Well, you know, getting signed was a long, long thing … When we first started, no record label wanted to sign us because of the samples. They were just like, “You guys can’t keep sampling, it just cuts into the profits.” We were just making music that we liked, and the music that we liked was all sampling, so it’s a part of us in a sense. It was difficult to get labels to back us. But EMI saw something in us … and took a chance on us … They never intended to have us sign a full out-record deal, it was just gonna be a singles deal. But they signed us and we put the single [“Opposite of Adults”] out and the response was crazy … and we signed a full record deal March 1.
Street: What drew you to doing a show at Penn?
Chiddy: Well, we went to Drexel so Penn is like, right next door. We started, essentially, doing these little basement parties, then we moved up and started going to colleges across the country – doing the frat houses and stuff. So that’s very much part of Chiddy Bang culture, in terms of our shows. The Penn event is as close to home as possible, and it’s right up our alley.
Street: What is a Chiddy Bang show like?
Chiddy: The live show is crazy. Xaphoon will be on the drums … and he’ll be on keys … and he’ll cue stuff up with his laptop and DJ, and I’m on the mic. Everything together is really crazy. We got a lot of tricks in the live set. We usually start off with Xaphoon DJing, and then he brings me out on stage and we just rock the house.
Street: How would you sneak alcohol into the Quad for Fling?
Chiddy: There’s nobody on the inside that could … [laughs] know what I mean? Like, slip somebody a $50, and [have him/her] get the alcohol in, like someone on the administrative end? I’d probably just get in with the bouncer or whoever’s organizing it … and make it happen.
Street: What do you want to say to your Penn fans coming to the show?
Chiddy: I can’t wait to come out there and reunite with all of y’all, and y’all gotta help me get this liquor in.
** See Chiddy Bang in action!**
Who: Chiddy Bang and Beta
What: Beta’s annual pre-Fling downtown
Where: The Roxxy, 939 North Delaware Avenue
When: Tonight,10PM
Why: To support FOP research and to see Chiddy and Noah in action!
