Leeds Hip Hop Scene

Released: 18th February 2008

Pete Philly and Perquisite found each other in their quest to widen the boundaries of the hip hop genre, which is dominated by meaningless bling videos, lyrics about boobs and guns, and music deprived from any form of creativity.

Pete and Perq phrased their mission “bringing analog sound back in times of plastic”. They went back to the meaning and inspiration of the past and generated something new and fresh. It took them nearly 2 years of hard work in a small Amsterdam studio, to ‘perfectionize’ a sound they could call their own.

Since then, the route took the duo from a small upper room release party, via gigs in Cape Town, France, Spain, Germany, Scandinavia and Los Angeles, performing with the likes of Kanye West and James Brown (RIP) to festivals and sold out shows all over The Netherlands. With a suitcase full of new encounters, touring experiences and new musical inspiration the band travelled to a house in the North of France to write, and worked night and day in their Amsterdam studio to finish their second full length. They named the result ‘Mystery Repeats’.

Perquisite started to create hip-hop-beats in 1996 at the tender age of 14, using Fasttracker on his mum’s PC. However, playing the cello since he was eight years old, he had always been involved with all kinds of music and later on he started to merge elements of his classical background into his creation of beats. His musical journey led him from travelling through the U.S. on his own as a youngster, to starting up his label Unexpected Records, and collaborating with everyone from accomplished Jazz-musicians like Benjamin Herman to producing tracks for The Proov, one of Hollands’ best-known hip-hop crews.

Perquisite and Pete Philly hooked up for the first time in the autumn of 2002. Philly had, by then, already built up quite a resume, being widely regarded as one of the tightest, most imaginative rappers in The Netherlands. It’s Philly’s heady mix of influences (from metal to Michael Jackson and De La Soul) that made Pete and Perq click in 2003.

“We push each other”, says Philly about the partnership. “We compete about who comes with the wildest, most unexpected sound to add to the mix”. Perquisite ads: “You can hear a lot of psychedelic influences on the record and I composed quite a few string-arrangements. But there’s also four-to-the-floor beats… the trick is to make it all sound as easy and matter-of-fact as possible.”

www.myspace.com/petephillyandperquisite
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