RH Inspired By: Grey Granite
Last week Grey Granite hit us with his Grey Granite Amplifies The Killers, a reworking of Killers’ tracks with Grey’s vocals and beats by J. Brookinz. The album struck a chord with us based on the creativity of the project. We wanted to know more about its origins, and what led to its creation. Grey obliged and hit us with this week’s edition of RH Inspired By. Here he talks about how a his boredom with Hip Hop circa 2004, and growing up in Indianapolis pushed him take a revisit to Sam’s Town.
…I had to turn off the Hip Hop music in 2004. Wow, I had enough, way too much of the same style of music. There was no diversity and I just couldn’t take it anymore. It had to go! At the same time, a lot of really good Rock music was coming out and I have always been into whatever sounds good regardless of who is making it, and regardless of the fact that my homies ain’t listening to it. It was this band called The Killers that made me really turn off the Chingy, Nelly, or Slim Thug (sorry Pharrell), that you couldn’t escape from…I stopped even making music for like two years until my Producer/Partner J. Brookinz said, “Hey Grey what would it take to get you interested in making hip hop music again”? At the same time he said this, a commercial for some cell phone was on and they were making a complete mockery out of hip hop, it had all the terrible hip hop clichés rolled into one terrible cell phone ad. So I quickly responded, “NOT A GOD DAME THING!” See, you have to understand where I see myself in this hip hop music, I am not just rapping to gain a few groupies or free pass in the club or even to be on the cover of XXL. I’m rapping cause I have like 108 other artistic passions and I need to release them. Plus I think I can help the world- cover of TIME type s**t. Any way… after that, J. Brookinz (myspace.com/jbrookinz) asked me what I thought about that new Killers album Sam’s Town and he hit me with the idea of Grey Granite Amplifies The Killers! He would make the beats if I laid the verses. Now that sounded like a challenge- that sounds like fun! AHA!
…I can’t really explain it- they just touch in a way. I think If they continue to go down the same path they’ll probably go down in history as one of the best bands ever. The First Album was on some electro rock and I was all about electro 80’s when that came out. Then the next album was like classic American rock reminiscent of the “Boss”. They are extremely diverse yet they still maintain to be themselves effortlessly and I really like that. They also have a lot of different elements and build-ups in their music and I really like that too. During the about half way through the making of this project I heard that Ghostface wanted to work with them- I don’t know if that’s true… my other pick would have been The Strokes.
…Where I’m from is a big inspiration, on the album I have a song called, “Guns, Killers, Drugs”. It’s about the area where I grew up. A very bad place, nothing but pollution pumping factories and insanely poor people. I have a line where I say, “nothing compares to the hopeless faces, I’ve seen hearts that can only hold pain and hate/and hands that can only let go of fate.” It’s a very bad place, but for some reason I always excepted a different reality for myself- I wanted more and I wanted to get out (I still need to get my moms out). So, that drives me, plus the fact that I have like 109 other artistic passions that haunt me at all times. I talk about that on the second track on the Grey Granite Amps The Killers album, “Welcome”. There are so many things I need to do and even If I could have went to school, I could have never graduated with a degree for all of them. But with fame you all of a sudden can be a fashion designer, or screen play writer, or even speak at a high school to motivate some loser ass kids (lol). The pain of not having options and artist freedom plagues me and thus inspires me!
