After.Words

http://eastofla.com/index.php?s=After.Words&x=11&y=6 - East of L.A. reviews After.Words "Maybe" video

http://blog.pennlive.com/afterdark/2009/05/midtempo_thursdays_returns_to.html - Penn Live

http://www.pennlive.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2009/01/go_afterwords_at_spy_club_satu.html - Penn Live

http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=43804614&blogId=486443385 - Mode Magazine

Bangin,Bangin, Bangin! That describes this mixtape that has actual mixing on it. Just released by STLP records, an imprint out of Harrisburg, PA, it’s straight dopalicious. Trust me when I say you’ll be bumpin this all week long. This mix features remix versions to a grip of songs form STLP artists like Pluto, WindCHILL, Artists Over Industry, El *A* Kwents , Apollo’s Sun and the Visionaries type megagroup After Words (Artists Over Industry,Apollo’s Sun,El*A*Kwents) and it is mixed superbly by Gard from Artist Over Industry. This is some true underground real Hip Hop sh*t. The Northeast is definitely making it’s presence known in the Hip Hop world with this right here. - EastofLA.com

Harrisburg hip-hop supergroup After.Words celebrate the official release and video premiere of "Maybe," the lead single from their debut album Before the War, Saturday night at the Spy Club.Doors open at 10 p.m. with performances by After.Words, The Avengers and Repeat Offenders set to begin at 10:30 p.m. Admission is $10 ahead of time, $15 day of.


Entry includes a newly-pressed copy of the "Maybe" maxi-single.After.Words might be a new name on the Harrisburg hip-hop scene but it's members are very familiar, consisting of local staples Artists Over Industry, El*A*Kwents and Apollo's Sun.After hosting the Midtown Tavern's popular MidTempo Thursdays series during much of 2008, this hard-working, veritable family of musicians has upped their ambition and opened STLP Studios, a professional venue offering recording, mixing, mastering, production, short-run CD duplication and more.The After.Words project will be the first fruit from their labor.


This week, I received a tour of this impressive facility as well as a quick sneak preview of the "Maybe" video.The video, shot on location in Harrisburg, brought back fond memories of watching The Ocean Blue's "Drifting and Falling" video years back.


It's great to see Central Pa. so lovingly reproduced onscreen.Below is After.Words' first video, "GrassRoots," which also features Harrisburg sights and sounds. - Michael Sedor/PennLive.com

AOI – along with a handful of other artists, friends and collaborators – make up an outpost of vibrant underground hip-hop with its nexus in the Harrisburg area. If those that are doing it for the love are truly few and far between, then WindchILL must have been in the right place at the right time to have found such kindred spirits to partner with.

For those uninitiated into the world of underground hip-hop, you can check your preconceptions at the door. Here, misogyny, drug-dealing and gang-banging braggadocio are replaced with free-form self-examination, political commentary, psychedelic imagination and even an MC-versus-MC debate about the existence and nature of God.

After a half-decade of DJs and MCs coming and going under the AOI umbrella, the group now has three or four years of constancy and growth under its belt as the focused trio that it is now. Referring to the time in 2004 when this current lineup solidified, WindchILL says glowingly, “It’s the three that it always should have been. The last three years have just been smooth sailing. Ever since this trio got together, it’s been unbelievable.”

Inkwell (which I think is one of the most interesting MC monikers since Dr. Octagon and MF Doom) reflects on those early days often.

“Each and every time we take the stage and I see the enjoyment on the audience’s faces,” he explains, “I think back to where it all came from: Just three kids from Enola drinking 40s in my parents’ basement, recording on a four-track and burning our own CDs. Each show we do defies the odds.”

The members’ mutual loyalty is so cemented that WindchILL boldly claims, “That’s AOI. It will forever stay that way.” It affords all of them the confidence to strike out on their own without risk of fracture or ego-bruising. After two collaborative Artists Over Industry releases in as many years, both WindchILL and Inkwell have released solo albums. Fly’s own Dugan Nash summed up his assessment of Inkwell’s Better or Different succinctly: “Inkwell’s blunted-out tales and anxious, discontented self-reflection are nicely supported by beats from various producers that know when to shine and when to stay out of the way.”

About WindchILL’s debut, Nash wrote, “WindchILL’s LP boldly declares, ‘I have arrived…’ Indeed, he has. … He has an authoritative command of his intelligent and thoughtful lyrics.”

The standout moments on the two solo albums are the perfunctory “collabo” tracks, on which the MCs provide guest rhymes for each other’s songs, confirming WindchILL’s assertion that AOI’s lineup is perfect and permanent. These tracks brim with energy as they trade rhymes and lines with a synergy that can only be the fruit of partnership. Meanwhile, Gard has been turning up on countless hip-hop tracks from rappers throughout this self-made scene.

WindchILL explains how his love of music took hold early on. “Dad was an avid record collector. He had mountains and mountains of records, and it was only a matter of time before I learned how to use the record player,” he says. “He would come downstairs in the middle of the night and I’d be in his den with headphones on listening to, like, Aerosmith records and Jimi Hendrix.”
Fast-forward to high school, where, as WindchILL explains, music was part of teenage emotional survival. “I mean, a Walkman was a necessity for school. It was my release. After every class to the next class: Walkman on.”

After becoming a devotee of early ’90s gangsta rap, WindchILL – admittedly an observer looking in on a life that was foreign from his own – was given a whole new perspective upon hearing the thoughtful, confessional and personal rhymes of Nas on the classic Illmatic. He says, “[Nas] would rhyme about the way he felt about things, rather than exact instances that he went through.” Then Gang Starr introduced the idea of applying imagination to the reality of those experiences.

The final influential piece of the puzzle came from the legendary MC who not only reigned as a rapper from the notorious Southern California gangsta scene, but also became known for his thoughtful, poetic, reality-based lyrics. “Tupac was my influence to not be afraid to put my personal experiences down,” says WindchILL.
Gard’s influences have had a similar trajectory. He says, “I first remember listening to Tupac, Biggie, Dr. Dre. But my biggest hip-hop influences came when I was 19 and a friend of mine introduced me to the underground hip-hop scene. … Right after that, I bought my first beat machine and started making beats and playing my guitar to them.”

These days, the group’s tastes have expanded and evolved, as has the whole genre. AOI’s current collective influences include a list of semi-obscure artists (Jedi Mind Tricks, Brother Ali, Atmosphere) that WindchILL says are “just making a living doing what they gotta do. At the end of the day, they don’t have to sell out or be someone they’re not. They are who they are and they are good at it.”

Inkwell, who employs a degree in philosophy in his mind-bendingly trippy rhymes, answers the question of influences by describing a process and a stage of life that led him to where he is today artistically. “I was 20, at which point I hit a rough patch in my life, or, more esoterically, an existential crisis. I imagine it’s what people describe as a midlife crisis, but mine was slightly younger,” he explains. “I was questioning everything in my life – love, religion, adherence to societal standards. With all these questions swirling erratically in my head, I sought an outlet. My writing not only alleviated the inherent stress, it focused my frantic cerebral pulses.”

The age of the Internet has hit the music business hard in the wallet. However, for underground hip-hop musicians, it has blown open a global subculture. For example, WindchILL’s album features beats that are made by producers in NYC, Switzerland and the UK. For him, the whole process begins there. He says, “The beat has to totally move me inside to where I want to write. Basically, my job as an MC, to me, is to interpret what this song is trying to communicate.” A block-rocking beat can be huge and danceable, but an album full of meaningless party rap or violence over these beats is instantly forgettable. AOI’s songs cover a wide emotional range, where each song has a narrative, and each narrative has an intimate relationship with the beat.

While it’s clear that art comes first for these artists, the members of AOI do not take the business side of things lightly. They have formed their own record label, STLP, as a means of releasing their own albums, as well as those of other hip-hop artists, further cementing their status as shrewd kingpins – albeit humble ones – in the local hip-hop scene.

Standing outside the Midtown in Harrisburg on a “Mid-Tempo Thursday,” WinchILL says, as if to assure me that business is never far from his mind, “No bullshit, man! Right now, I got my book bag, [and it’s like an] underground hip-hop pack. I got CDs, stickers, business cards. I got markers, Sharpies, rubber bands. I got no books, but I got posters up in there ready to go, man.”

AOI continues to confidently work towards the restoration of real hip-hop. One album (solo or otherwise), one hot track, one show at a time, WindchILL, Inkwell and Gard are pursuing their goals with a sense of destiny. WindchILL says, “I don’t really believe in coincidence or anything like that. I believe that hip-hop, and music in general, needs a revolution.” - Keith Wilson/Fly Magazine