John Stamps

It’s a mid-August Monday night and there’s a full crowd outside at Bella Vita — an Italian restaurant on Geist Reservoir. If it were a Saturday, the deck would be populated with Northside Indy’s wealthier residents sipping martinis and taking breaks from afternoon outings on their yachts.

Instead, it’s occupied with 18-, 19- and 20-year olds hanging on to their few remaining days of freedom before they pack up and head back to college.

The guys look like they’ve just returned from spring break —— neon tanks, backwards ball caps cocked to the side, flip-flops —— while the girls are dressed in skin-tight, club-ready cocktail dresses or high-riding cutoff mom-jean shorts with crop tops. A third of them are on the upper level of the deck that’s been roped off for those of legal drinking age, while the remainder of the congregation sip on Red Bulls on the lower level and hand out hugs to every familiar face who walks through the gate.

They’ve all assembled this evening to watch emcee John Stamps perform electro hip-hop from his locally-famous repertoire of rap songs. Together, Stamps and his producer/partner-in-crime Kyle Nagy make the group Tommy Law. It’s a name I’ve had on my radar for more than a year.

It happened one day while clicking around YouTube trying to discover new Indianapolis artists. I stumbled upon a videos series featuring a group of guys from Ball State partying in basements, clowning in DIY recording studios, punking unsuspecting friends and performing other common collegiate pastimes. On the surface, I was moderately entertained by their antics, but when the last minute of the video cut out to give a raw preview of the song they were working on between all the shenanigans, I was genuinely captivated. Just 60 seconds of the young artists rapping on the microphone, fully in their element, added a crucial layer of legitimacy to an already hilarious video.

—

Fast forward to now and you’ll only find one video on the official Tommy Law YouTube page: the trailer for their current release Low Wages and High Times. It’s actually quite misleading for a promotional video; the group is presented as though it were comprised of five members instead of two. When it was recorded that was true, but six months passed between the album’s expected and actual release dates. As three of the original five members withdrew from the group during that time, Stamps and Nagy found themselves constantly reworking the tracks (one emcee demanded his verses be cut from the project) and continuously pushing back the release date.

After six months of egging on fans and still not dropping the album —— nearly necessitating the need for their own Sorry 4 the Wait mixtape —— Tommy Law finally closed the books on the lingering project and released Low Wages and High Times in July. While they’re proud of the final product, it’s not an accurate representation of present-day Tommy Law. Recognizing this, the duo immediately went to work on their next album, Peaces.

Having relocated from Muncie back to their hometown of Indianapolis, the pair of high school friends saw the change in Tommy Law’s structure as an opportunity to concurrently alter their sound and image. It’s also why the videos from Ball State that helped them prove their authenticity as part of Indiana’s next generation of electro hip-hop scene are no longer available online. Stamps says they represent a phase of his and Nagy’s lives that they’ve transitioned out of.

“We’re trying to revamp our image. We recently made the decision that [the Muncie video era] was 'then.’ We’re totally proud of it, but what we are now and what we were then is completely different.”

Tommy Law’s earliest material is party-themed and easily danceable with the underlying theme to simply have a good time and bounce to the music. But as of late, Stamps says he’s striving to write more meaningful lyrics and Nagy is challenging himself to produce beats that maintain the catchy, poppy vibes they’re known for. With Nagy freshly 21 and Stamps soon to be of age, the pair is ready to reach a broader audience.

“You can still vibe to it, but it would be more suitable for chilling with a room full of people as opposed to throwing it around at a party,” Stamps says of Peaces’ ultimate goal.

Peaces will drop in pieces on Halloween. In addition to working closely with audio engineer Freddie Bunz to record the album, Tommy Law will release four accompanying videos filmed by Kenton Montgomery of Crooked Creature. One is for breakout single “10 O’Clock” and three additional videos will function as a miniseries that follows Stamps as he sorts through the effects of witnessing something he shouldn’t have.
The next day, after spending Friday afternoon chatting at Stamps and Nagy’s well-kept Eastside bachelor pad, I spent my Saturday evening at The Hoosier Dome, an all-ages venue in Fountain Square. The pair were booked on the bill twice; Tommy Law performed early as a suppo - Nuvo Magazine- Danielle Look

It’s a mid-August Monday night and there’s a full crowd outside at Bella Vita — an Italian restaurant on Geist Reservoir. If it were a Saturday, the deck would be populated with Northside Indy’s wealthier residents sipping martinis and taking breaks from afternoon outings on their yachts.

Instead, it’s occupied with 18-, 19- and 20-year olds hanging on to their few remaining days of freedom before they pack up and head back to college.

The guys look like they’ve just returned from spring break —— neon tanks, backwards ball caps cocked to the side, flip-flops —— while the girls are dressed in skin-tight, club-ready cocktail dresses or high-riding cutoff mom-jean shorts with crop tops. A third of them are on the upper level of the deck that’s been roped off for those of legal drinking age, while the remainder of the congregation sip on Red Bulls on the lower level and hand out hugs to every familiar face who walks through the gate.

They’ve all assembled this evening to watch emcee John Stamps perform electro hip-hop from his locally-famous repertoire of rap songs. Together, Stamps and his producer/partner-in-crime Kyle Nagy make the group Tommy Law. It’s a name I’ve had on my radar for more than a year.

It happened one day while clicking around YouTube trying to discover new Indianapolis artists. I stumbled upon a videos series featuring a group of guys from Ball State partying in basements, clowning in DIY recording studios, punking unsuspecting friends and performing other common collegiate pastimes. On the surface, I was moderately entertained by their antics, but when the last minute of the video cut out to give a raw preview of the song they were working on between all the shenanigans, I was genuinely captivated. Just 60 seconds of the young artists rapping on the microphone, fully in their element, added a crucial layer of legitimacy to an already hilarious video.

—

Fast forward to now and you’ll only find one video on the official Tommy Law YouTube page: the trailer for their current release Low Wages and High Times. It’s actually quite misleading for a promotional video; the group is presented as though it were comprised of five members instead of two. When it was recorded that was true, but six months passed between the album’s expected and actual release dates. As three of the original five members withdrew from the group during that time, Stamps and Nagy found themselves constantly reworking the tracks (one emcee demanded his verses be cut from the project) and continuously pushing back the release date.

After six months of egging on fans and still not dropping the album —— nearly necessitating the need for their own Sorry 4 the Wait mixtape —— Tommy Law finally closed the books on the lingering project and released Low Wages and High Times in July. While they’re proud of the final product, it’s not an accurate representation of present-day Tommy Law. Recognizing this, the duo immediately went to work on their next album, Peaces.

Having relocated from Muncie back to their hometown of Indianapolis, the pair of high school friends saw the change in Tommy Law’s structure as an opportunity to concurrently alter their sound and image. It’s also why the videos from Ball State that helped them prove their authenticity as part of Indiana’s next generation of electro hip-hop scene are no longer available online. Stamps says they represent a phase of his and Nagy’s lives that they’ve transitioned out of.

“We’re trying to revamp our image. We recently made the decision that [the Muncie video era] was 'then.’ We’re totally proud of it, but what we are now and what we were then is completely different.”

Tommy Law’s earliest material is party-themed and easily danceable with the underlying theme to simply have a good time and bounce to the music. But as of late, Stamps says he’s striving to write more meaningful lyrics and Nagy is challenging himself to produce beats that maintain the catchy, poppy vibes they’re known for. With Nagy freshly 21 and Stamps soon to be of age, the pair is ready to reach a broader audience.

“You can still vibe to it, but it would be more suitable for chilling with a room full of people as opposed to throwing it around at a party,” Stamps says of Peaces’ ultimate goal.

Peaces will drop in pieces on Halloween. In addition to working closely with audio engineer Freddie Bunz to record the album, Tommy Law will release four accompanying videos filmed by Kenton Montgomery of Crooked Creature. One is for breakout single “10 O’Clock” and three additional videos will function as a miniseries that follows Stamps as he sorts through the effects of witnessing something he shouldn’t have.
The next day, after spending Friday afternoon chatting at Stamps and Nagy’s well-kept Eastside bachelor pad, I spent my Saturday evening at The Hoosier Dome, an all-ages venue in Fountain Square. The pair were booked on the bill twice; Tommy Law performed early as a suppo - Nuvo Magazine- Danielle Look