Quincy Vidal is sticking to their mission—poetry, music, and a message. The Brooklyn based hip-hop duo, comprised of CE and Le’Asha Julius, have built a strong following since graduating four years ago, focusing in on the foundations of hip-hop. Their songs are packed with musical ideas, social commentary, and blistering technical skill. After a few years perfecting their sound, the two released Chi'ren in April, a project "years in the making" that could well bring them into the mainstream—as long as it's on their own terms.
CE hails from the Bay Area, Le'Asha from D.C. The two met in college where they studied acting. They self-released a series of EPs from 2010-2014, building a following in New York with music that invoked the city's past—A Tribe Called Quest is a heavy influence. For Chi'ren, however, things were be different. The EP was released through Styles Upon Styles, a NYC record label with deep ties to the city. “We had to come hard and have a very specific sound for this thing because it was the first time we were going to have a bigger reach,” CE explained over drinks. “We had to represent for being [Styles Upon Styles'] first hip-hop group, especially for a label that was named after a hip-hop lyric.”
Watch the "Chi'ren" video below, then our interview with CE and Le'Asha.
How did you guys end up together doing music?
CE: I was making music before hand on my own. I was more into like acoustic, almost like Jack Johnson-sounding stuff. I was working on recording my own music before then. I was doing hip-hop as well. My parents are preachers; I grew up in the church, singing since I was little, rapping since I was like twelve.
Le’Ahsa: I used to write poetry. I had like three top poems, [to CE] I don’t even think you know this. I had dope ass poetry. I used to try and play the guitar ever since I went to see Prince the first time in my life. He made me get a guitar and I tried to learn how to play. This was a long time ago. I was probably like eleven or twelve. I wasn’t trying to be a musician at all. At all. When we met in college, I knew I loved music and I wanted to DJ. I was taking lessons from a DJ on campus and she was trying to teach me how to DJ. When [CE] and I met, he was doing the music and I was supposed to be the DJ. We were going to do that thing. But the girl who was giving DJ lessons, she graduated and took all her DJ equipment. I didn’t know anybody else who could DJ. It cost way too much money for me to get it.
The music you guys make is really confident.
CE: Yeah, it took us some time. A lot of our early stuff was for our classmates.
Le’Asha: Or whoever. We just put it on the Internet. Since this is our first time working with a label, obviously they can push it way further than we can. But we had had a lot of practice by the time we released Chi’ren.
Even if people, even if we didn’t have this whole label and we still had Chi’ren, I think that Chi’ren happened at this particular time because of where we are emotionally and physically in this point of our lives. It just happened to be so harsh sounding because we’re in a harsh part of our lives. We just graduated and have no money.
CE: Put it like this, you go to school for four years—
Le’Asha: Still ain’t got no money.
CE: Chi’ren, you could say this is our fourth year of being out of school. You can look at Chi’ren as our thesis in a way.
Le’Asha: Real world thesis.
CE: It’s a culmination of what we’ve gone through since graduating. We’ve put out two albums since we graduated. One was Sentimental Moods and the other was a double album. If you just follow that arc, it’s short, it’s concise but it’s very...
Le’Asha: To the point.
Was it a tough decision to make it only seven tracks?
CE: We were going to do an LP with the band and then it started taking a little bit more time, so the label actually approached us about doing an EP first. We were like great that’s easier and we already had beats we already written to. So we collected a handful of songs that we knew we could finish, release, and that we knew were good.
So the next project will be with the whole band then? How many people are in the band?
CE: Including us? Six.
Le’Asha: It’s really hard, especially having no money to get around and take everybody with you to shows somewhere. It’s hard.
CE: With the writing though, the hardest part about writing the music and just getting everybody together at the same time. If people get a paying gig their going to take that. All of our musicians are fucking amazing and everyone wants them. That’s probably the hardest, but when it happens, it happens because they are all brilliant.
Le’Asha: At one point in time I swear to God I thought Action Bronson was going to take our band. I was pissed but I couldn’t be mad. I can’t be mad if Action says, “We want your band.” Of course they’re going to go play with him, because he’s paying them.
CE: Everybody’s on this live music kick right nowadays.
Not a lot of people do it well, though.
CE: Not a lot of people do it well but everybody wants to do it. I would say Chance The Rapper has really changed shit. Everybody wants to hop on that bandwagon now. I mean we’ve been doing it but we’re under the radar. When people like Bronson see the talent that we have…
Who are you guys listening to right now?
CE: When I hear somebody good that’s all I listen to... Let me go through my iPod real quick... I’ve been listening to Malibu a lot, Anderson .Paak.
Le’Asha: I have a problem. The day that Prince died, before I knew that he died, I was on my way to work and was literally telling myself, ‘Le’Asha, you’re a weirdo. You need to listen to other music,' because all I listen to is the same stuff that I’ve been listening to for years and years. Like Prince, Funkadelic, Michael Jackson, Led Zeppelin, The Who, all that kind of shit. I don’t listen to anything [new] unless I’m trying to be ‘Alright, let me see what’s going on nowadays.’ I have to make myself listen so that I can feel like the age that I really am. I listen to the same shit.
