Kwestion

Epiphany jokingly calls the newly released Such Is Life his “second” debut album. There was a previous debut by the Little-Rock-by-way-of-Pine-Bluff hip-hop artist. About eight years ago. But Epiphany is not counting it. It’s not that Epiphany is embarrassed about his true first album. It’s just that he was so young and inexperienced when he made it. He needed seasoning as an artist. First with a Conduit Fam album then a string of mixtapes over the past few years.

“With each [project] I felt as though I showed progression in different areas,” Epiphany says. “I told myself that I didn’t want to put out a full project until I could do it correctly.”

Correctly is the 17-track Such Is Life, an album Epiphany recorded over the last half of 2011, working with producers such as Apollo Lane, BlazeBeatz. Kwestion, Don Key and others. It’s the work of an experienced hip-hop artist. And the experience shows.

Epiphany is a fan of albums. Real albums. Not these CDs nowadays where there are three or four singles wrapped in filler. Such Is Life is an album. Front to back. The album flows, from the big beat bounce of “Zone Out” to the organ-y, street gospel of “Gettin It (Hay)/The Real” featuring the soulful vocals of Gina Gee.

“My goal is to make no filler tracks,” Epiphany says. “Tracks that are there just to be there. It was a collaborative effort. I very much so worked with people who proceeded to make [my ideas] bigger. Sometimes I just felt like I was the conductor of an orchestra.”

Beyond working with seven different producers, Epiphany also employed a live band on Such Is Life, with musicians such as Bo “Warwick” Floyd, Lucas “Cool Hand” Murray, Velvet Kente’s Joshua, Rodney Block and Verenda Lowe lending their talents. And guest artists included Gee along with Justin Paul, Bijoux and Joshua.

Epiphany sat down last week for a chat about Such Is Life and how the project came about:

On what he learned from a 12-city tour in late 2011

“Man, I got to go back out. I put it like this: If it has to be a struggle to this destination where I’m in the same spot or a struggle to the destination where I’m bouncing around and doing shows and what I love, then put me on the road every time. ... My goal was never to be a ‘Little Rock celebrity’ — just be known around this area. Somehow, someway, I want to expand so it was let’s just go some place and perform. ... It was great. I’m been pretty much going out of town since then. I’m working on some more tours right now. That’s what I want to do. That’s what I need to be doing.”

On Such Is Life being an album and not hits with filler

“The thing with me is that I am very project oriented. I didn’t want something that just sounded like a bunch of good songs thrown together. I wanted something that was cohesive. ... My main thing was to have a flow to it. The way I describe it is ... you can throw it in there and let it ride completely to the end and it goes together.”

On picking beats for the album

“I have two or three different processes. One is I hear a beat and know that somehow, someway that’s going to be something. Sometimes it works out; sometimes it doesn’t. I go off feeling nowadays. ... I find the ones that are going to be dope for me cause it makes me feel this way. Then I just listen to it on repeat, and the theme comes out of it. ... Other times I have ideas for a songs and build around it. Like, I have this hook, and I want this sound. All these producers I had worked with before so they know my visions and can take it further. The one I did that with the most on this album was Kwestion. He could see what I wanted and make it even doper than what was in my mind. [Lastly] someone might have an idea for a song for me. The only one on this album that was a collaboration like that was ‘Standing Ovation.’”

On the message of the album

“For me, it is that in life we have extreme highs and extreme lows, and everything in between. Regardless, you got to keep moving. Whatever happens, Such Is Life. Not so much shrug your shoulders and move on; you got to progress and there is no standing still. You either go forward or you go back. If you're standing still, you are going back. You keep moving on and doing the best you can. Such Is Life.” - Sync Magazine (Shea Stewart)

Local rap duo Suga City, made up of Arkansas Bo and Goines, is featured on the insanely popular new video game "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 2." How insanely popular? Earlier this week, it broke the single-day video game sales record, selling, in the UK and North America alone, 4.7 million copies and doing $310 million in sales in just 24 hours. Some 26 million gamers are expected to play it.

The unreleased song is called "New New." Kwestion produced and Maria V features.

Gamers will find it on a training level.

Suga City plans to release a new mixtape, "Black Friday," on, appropriately enough, Black Friday, Friday, Nov. 27. - Lindsey Millar

When Little Rock hip-hop artist Kwestion says his new album Greater Than Great: 2nd Quarter was all done “right here,” the here in question is a bedroom. A small, square-shaped bedroom located in the back of the house where Kwestion lives just a block or so north of Asher Avenue.

The bedroom is without frills. A bed, a dresser, a TV. Wood-paneled walls. And then in front of a window with its blinds closed, a monitor, keyboards — both computer and musical — and various other recording equipment. Off to the side, there is a recording microphone with acoustic foam forming a semicircle around the mic. This is it. This is where the 13-track Greater Than Great: 2nd Quarter — being digitally released the Fourth of July — was created. A back bedroom where on this afternoon — the third day of summer — an industrial fan shoves cooler air from the front of the house down a darkened hallway to Kwestion’s bedroom/recording studio.

When I arrive, Kwestion’s partner-in-music and fellow Little Rock producer/hip-hop artist Blaze Beatz is present. So is Kwestion’s new manager, Perry Ward. Blaze Beatz is heading out, but first he and Kwestion conjure up a beat on request. All I want is a sample of how it’s done. How do the pair create their music? (Blaze Beatz also works out of a home studio.) How it ends is Kwestion laying down some church-inspired piano over a quickly constructed beat progression with Blaze Beatz rapping on the fly.

I’m not sure how we got here, here being a point where I’m standing dumbstruck, awed by the creative energy I’m witnessing. The note-taking is sketchy because at some point I stopped taking notes and just lived the moment. It started with Blaze Beatz finding a clicking beat from the thousands and thousands of beats on Kwestion’s hard drives. (Millions and millions of beats maybe? There are a few thousand gigabytes of musical sounds on Kwestion’s computer drives. From one-second snare snaps to longer beats and sounds.) There are some more drums layered on. Some bass. I lose track, and then Blaze Beatz starts rapping as Kwestion plays the piano. The song — or a rough sketch of it — is gospel meets hip-hop meets underground. It’s great.

The few minutes are really a lesson in how Kwestion created Greater Than Great: 2nd Quarter, the second album in Kwestion’s four-part series which follows the theme of a basketball game. In this back room. Working mainly in the day before his job and while the rest of his family was out of the house. But he also works when the beats come, and the beats come quite often. And the words come, too. Kwestion is no longer just a producer.

“The overall story [of Greater Than Great: 2nd Quarter] is that I can rap, so don’t think I can’t,” says Kwestion before laughing. “I’m evolving with the plan to make every quarter better both lyrically and musically, and I know for a fact that I achieved that with 2nd Quarter.”

Kwestion created Greater Than Great: 2nd Quarter — wrote, produced and recorded the album — between the end of recording earlier this year an album with LabRatz (a Little Rock hip-hop collective Kwestion belongs to) and the end of May. Writing for the album took place while Kwestion was in Florida for four weeks, including stops in Orlando and Miami, in the winter.

The result is loosely 48 minutes of music serving as the follow-up to Kwestion’s November 2011 release Greater Than Great, his proper debut album.

Album done, Kwestion is now promoting it and himself, working with Ward’s Headliner Entertainment Group to build his brand and his own Rock Da Block Music Group. Kwestion has plans for the final two quarters of Greater Than Great though, including taking the best tracks from the first three albums and re-recording them with live instruments for the final album. “Kind of like a greatest hits,” Kwestion says. “I want to do kind of an unplugged thing.”

Greater Than Great: 2nd Quarter is an album showcasing Kwestion’s evolution as an artist. From Michael Sykes (his real name) to Kwestion, a 27-year-old who has learned “rapping isn’t just about rapping. It’s about the whole essence of life.”

“I think I’ve grown so much,” Kwestion says. “Dealing with the LabRatz made me dig deeper as a writer. I found myself, when I took my trip to Miami, digging deeper and really painting pictures [with my words]. I painted a lot of vivid pictures with the 2nd Quarter.”

The album includes guest spots from Osyrus Bolly, Ferocious, Eklipse, Justin Paul, Apollo Lane, King Knowlej, Raven Latrice, Asylum, Nick Broadway and Bijoux. And Justin Paul and Chris McGehee also produced two tracks — “Ms. High Self-Esteem” and “Overdose (Autumn Nights),” respectively. Elsewhere it’s all Kwestion, with some bass work by fellow Little Rock rapper/musician Bobby and guitar by Lucas Murray.

Kwestion lets it all go on the album-closing “Magic.” The frustrations. The pain. The past. The life of a Little Rock hip-hop artist and beat creator. “I can’t go back in time - Sync Magazine (Shea Stewart)

”The Anthem” is not the first tune from Kwestion’s new album Greater Than Great. It’s not the first single from the Little Rock hip-hop artist’s album released last week either. Maybe it will be the second. But the track is first-single, seriously good. Just over four minutes of sick rhymes and a beat that burrows itself in the brain’s neural structures.

The track starts with a repetitive piano chord backed by slicing and then swiveling synths with a muffled beat kicking in before a drum machine comes tinkling in and Kwestion starts his rhyming: “Hey, all aboard my spaceship/Never coming back to this place is two faced.” It’s DeLorean music, Kwestion says, hinting at Back to the Future, or music “beyond our time. Timeless music.”

Kwestion was listening to “This Plane” by Wiz Khalifa during the origin of “The Anthem,” but the track is not Khalifa-like. It’s a weird tune, Kwestion says, mainly because the hook doesn’t match the lyrical message of the verses. Still, it’s a killer number.

“I think one of the things that stands out on that is the music itself is still kind of dark but bouncy, and then [Jus] brought that to life,” Kwestion says.

Kwestion meets me at Stickyz a few days before the release of Greater Than Great. Comfortable in a gray, Polo Ralph Lauren zip-up hoodie over a black shirt and wearing a black Arkansas Razorbacks hat, Kwestion (his mom and dad raised him as Michael Sykes) answers questions while sipping a Coca-Cola. He’s animated. Excited about the magic he captured over the last eight months for the 45 minutes of Greater Than Great. The album is more than just “The Anthem.” There are 12 other tracks. Many excellent, some great, all good. There’s the uplifting, space-y hip-hop of “Not Going Down” and the aggressive, gritty grind of “Nothing to Something” featuring Ferocious, who mastered the album, along with the seductive groove of “Fresh Charisma.” Other album guest stars include Bobby, Nick Broadway and others, but the album is mainly Kwestion’s own. He wrote the lines and created all but two beats. He recorded and mixed the album.

Greater Than Great is intended as the first album in a four-album series mirroring the four quarters of a NBA game. And after two mixtapes, Greater Than Great is a true debut from the central Little Rock-based hip-hop artist who learned drums from his father Michael Sykes Sr., the former drummer of One Stone Reggae Band. The 26-year-old wrote and recorded the album following a period of tumult. But Kwestion didn’t want a sob story. He wanted a statement announcing he’s in the game. Kwestion’s Greater Than Great is another accomplished entry in Little Rock’s ever-growing canon of great, locally made hip-hop. It’s an album of rock-solid beats, and Kwestion’s deliberate flow.

Greater Than Great is where Kwestion is now. But where does he want to go? Live instrumentation. That’s where. He wants the fourth-quarter album to be recorded totally live.

“I want to take rap from just your hard-hitting beats to actual music,” he says. “Me having a musical background, I wanted to instill more music than just beats in my actual process.” The senior Sykes taught his son drums, but Kwestion also plays piano, saxophone and is “fooling with the guitar.”

For Kwestion’s Thursday show at Stickyz he will front Machetes and Spoons, a live band consisting of Arkansas Baptist College students under the direction of Michael “Turnpike” Carvell, an Arkansas Baptist instructor and CEO of All Out Entertainment. So Kwestion, a man who did pretty much all of Greater Than Great, is turning his music over to six students he didn’t know a few weeks ago? Nervous?

“With this group of musicians? No,” Kwestion says. “They pick it up. The core elements are there, but ... there are so many additives they added to it.”

So the first quarter ends with Greater Than Great. Next comes the second quarter, perhaps six months from now, but it depends. Kwestion’s also busy creating music for others (it’s his main day job), but his next progression as an artist takes place Thursday at Stickyz. He’s not scared. Kwestion welcomes the future. - Sync Magazine (Shea Stewart)

”The Anthem” is not the first tune from Kwestion’s new album Greater Than Great. It’s not the first single from the Little Rock hip-hop artist’s album released last week either. Maybe it will be the second. But the track is first-single, seriously good. Just over four minutes of sick rhymes and a beat that burrows itself in the brain’s neural structures.

The track starts with a repetitive piano chord backed by slicing and then swiveling synths with a muffled beat kicking in before a drum machine comes tinkling in and Kwestion starts his rhyming: “Hey, all aboard my spaceship/Never coming back to this place is two faced.” It’s DeLorean music, Kwestion says, hinting at Back to the Future, or music “beyond our time. Timeless music.”

Kwestion was listening to “This Plane” by Wiz Khalifa during the origin of “The Anthem,” but the track is not Khalifa-like. It’s a weird tune, Kwestion says, mainly because the hook doesn’t match the lyrical message of the verses. Still, it’s a killer number.

“I think one of the things that stands out on that is the music itself is still kind of dark but bouncy, and then [Jus] brought that to life,” Kwestion says.

Kwestion meets me at Stickyz a few days before the release of Greater Than Great. Comfortable in a gray, Polo Ralph Lauren zip-up hoodie over a black shirt and wearing a black Arkansas Razorbacks hat, Kwestion (his mom and dad raised him as Michael Sykes) answers questions while sipping a Coca-Cola. He’s animated. Excited about the magic he captured over the last eight months for the 45 minutes of Greater Than Great. The album is more than just “The Anthem.” There are 12 other tracks. Many excellent, some great, all good. There’s the uplifting, space-y hip-hop of “Not Going Down” and the aggressive, gritty grind of “Nothing to Something” featuring Ferocious, who mastered the album, along with the seductive groove of “Fresh Charisma.” Other album guest stars include Bobby, Nick Broadway and others, but the album is mainly Kwestion’s own. He wrote the lines and created all but two beats. He recorded and mixed the album.

Greater Than Great is intended as the first album in a four-album series mirroring the four quarters of a NBA game. And after two mixtapes, Greater Than Great is a true debut from the central Little Rock-based hip-hop artist who learned drums from his father Michael Sykes Sr., the former drummer of One Stone Reggae Band. The 26-year-old wrote and recorded the album following a period of tumult. But Kwestion didn’t want a sob story. He wanted a statement announcing he’s in the game. Kwestion’s Greater Than Great is another accomplished entry in Little Rock’s ever-growing canon of great, locally made hip-hop. It’s an album of rock-solid beats, and Kwestion’s deliberate flow.

Greater Than Great is where Kwestion is now. But where does he want to go? Live instrumentation. That’s where. He wants the fourth-quarter album to be recorded totally live.

“I want to take rap from just your hard-hitting beats to actual music,” he says. “Me having a musical background, I wanted to instill more music than just beats in my actual process.” The senior Sykes taught his son drums, but Kwestion also plays piano, saxophone and is “fooling with the guitar.”

For Kwestion’s Thursday show at Stickyz he will front Machetes and Spoons, a live band consisting of Arkansas Baptist College students under the direction of Michael “Turnpike” Carvell, an Arkansas Baptist instructor and CEO of All Out Entertainment. So Kwestion, a man who did pretty much all of Greater Than Great, is turning his music over to six students he didn’t know a few weeks ago? Nervous?

“With this group of musicians? No,” Kwestion says. “They pick it up. The core elements are there, but ... there are so many additives they added to it.”

So the first quarter ends with Greater Than Great. Next comes the second quarter, perhaps six months from now, but it depends. Kwestion’s also busy creating music for others (it’s his main day job), but his next progression as an artist takes place Thursday at Stickyz. He’s not scared. Kwestion welcomes the future. - Sync Magazine (Shea Stewart)