Ribcage
Gig Seeker Pro

Ribcage

Lansing, MI | Established. Jan 01, 2010

Lansing, MI
Established on Jan, 2010
Band Hip Hop Rock

Calendar

Music

Press


"Rising Hip-Hop Duo Ribcage Sheds Light on New EP and Musical Influences"

By Eric Spitz
Substream Magazine Contributing Writer

It’s always an interesting treat to avid concertgoers to discover a local act that sets themselves apart from other groups in the area. Lansing, Michigan-based hip-hop duo Ribcage fit the description of different, having two primary songwriters and bringing on three additional members to create a live band during performances.

Substream Magazine had the privilege of sitting down with the two masterminds of Ribcage, Roy Kirby and Kyle Nabbefeld, to discuss musical influences, lyrical content and their experience performing at Common Ground—an annual music festival that drew nearly 50,000 people to the Lansing area in its 16th year of operation.

What originally brought you and Kyle together to start writing music?
ROY KIRBY: Me and Kyle actually started Ribcage in high school with me playing acoustic and him singing, and it wasn’t even a rap group at all. We wrote one song and didn’t even really do anything after that.

Where did the name Ribcage come from?
KYLE NABBEFELD: I think it was whatever day in high school that it was we started doing acoustic side projects of some other bands we were doing and we just decided on a random word.
KIRBY: I don’t know, it was a long time ago.
NABBEFELD: I think it was 2010 that we started the hip-hop version where [Kirby] just showed up at my house and was like, “Let’s do Ribcage again and do hip-hop.”

Is it primarily just you and Roy who writes, and then you bring other members to perform with you live?
NABBEFELD: Yes, Roy and I write it, we produce a majority of the beats ourselves. And then when it came to live stuff, it started with live drums, and then we got a bass player, and then we got a guitar player, and we’re like whatever, we’ll just do it like this.

So do the beats on the computer come first, and then the live instruments?
KIRBY: We play instruments too. Kyle will make some beats and I’ll be sitting on my guitar just fucking around and trying to figure out something and we’ll get something going with a piano or whatever, and we just go from there. We start simple and then kind of complicate things from there. [Laughs.] With our new EP [The Revolve] especially we were more conscious about song structure and having changes and different parts as opposed to just having the same parts over and over again like in our first mixtape [Midwest Sound]. We would go into a chorus but you would still hear the same instrumentals, so we tried to be a little more dynamic this time around and as we go forward.

I know you have some hip-hop influences. What are some of your other influences that either inspire you or the music you write with Ribcage?
KIRBY: A lot, it’s really hard to narrow it down. I mean, you’ll hear a lot of blues in the music because I grew up with blues music; BB King and Stevie Ray Vaughan, you’ll hear a lot of that in the instrumentals. Melody-wise, I’m a big fan of pop music, so I could name the gauntlet of every band that’s ever been on pop radio. Hip-hop wise, a lot of classic ’90s stuff; Tupac, Wu-Tang Clan, shit that stays verbal.
NABBEFELD: I would add for live obviously a Rage Against The Machine-meets-Beastie Boys type, not that we’re saying we’re like them…
KIRBY: … but we try to have that energy and a little angst here and there.
NABBEFELD: For the record, we used to tell people that we we’re a G-Funk Rage Against The Machine-type thing. I don’t know if we were serious or kidding with that. I’m not sure if you listened to records if it came through like that.
KIRBY: We like to be thoughtful but also keep an upbeat funk sound.

What inspired some of your lyrics, are they politically driven?
NABBEFELD: Absolutely.
KIRBY: Absolutely, politically, socially, personally. It’s hard not to have all of those things step into each other because as a person I think politically, I like to be aware of what’s going on around me, I like to be involved. It’s hard to not ingrain your own personal life into your music. I like to make music that’s honest, and reflects me as a person as opposed to just the general “this is a song about hanging out.” I want to make a song like what it’s like to hang out if you’re me.
NABBEFELD: One of the songs on our current EP, we tried to make into a club jam, and it didn’t work. [Laughs.]
KIRBY: And it just turned into another one of our songs.
NABBEFELD: The song sounded great, I think.
KIRBY: Even when we tried to not be ourselves, it usually doesn’t work out for us. [Laughs.] Which is a good thing.

Given your vast musical influence, what ultimately inspired you to take the hip-hop route?
KIRBY: I wanted to be able to say something. Pop songs are great, and I love playing guitar, but at the same time…
NABBEFELD: We’re more verbose than a pop song.
KIRBY: Yeah, exactly. I’ve got a lot to say, and it’s very hard to fit all that in the context of a standard pop song. Hip-hop was the only way for me to express what I was feeling.
NABBEFELD: There’s more of a play on words too that I just find fun.
KIRBY: The poetry, the lyricism, the rhythm of it all, the way that you say things. There’s a lot to it, we bring a lot of pop elements to it. You’ll hear us rapping and it might not sound like we’re singing and we’re doing pitches. We’re singing, but it doesn’t sound like we’re singing. We’re familiar with the concept and how to use our voices in that manner. It brings something a little different to the table.

I know you touched on this a little bit before; it’s mainly you two who produce and everything.
KIRBY: Yup, I mean we’re the main songwriters. It’s not like a dictatorship or anything, we allow everyone to be themselves and do their thing.
NABBEFELD: We give them the key and the rhythm and about the change-ups.
KIRBY: We like it to be different. We don’t want you to hear the same thing necessarily. Every time we give you something a little different.
NABBEFELD: I’ve been bored more than once at a hip-hop show, and I think it’s just because they play the songs.
KIRBY: You’ll see a lot of guys who just rap along to the tape itself. I remember the first time I saw that it was so off-putting to me. That’s why I really wanted to do something different.
NABBEFELD: The live drum sounds cannot be matched.
KIRBY: You can’t match the energy of a live drumset.

How would you describe your style of music to someone who has never heard it?
KIRBY: The thing I notice is that we’ll mention that it’s hip-hop music, and then we’ll mention that it’s a live band. People will always discredit your musicianship when you mention that it’s hip-hop, which is unfortunate because it’s kind of a complicated genre. It just gets a bad rap.
NABBEFELD: And then there’s kind of the opposite of that where we’ll show up with a live band and people will be like, “Oh, you’re a rock ’n’ roll band.” And we’re like, “no, we’re hip-hop, we just brought a live band.”
KIRBY: I just want to tell people it’s thoughtful, melody-driven hip-hop.

What are some of your favorite tracks off of your releases?
NABBEFELD: I already know what Roy’s going to say. His favorite is “Clock In.”
KIRBY: Yeah, “Clock In,” and I also like “Shoelaces” a lot. “Clock In” is definitely my favorite. It was a subject that’s personal to me because of workers’ rights and proper compensation. The disparagement of poor people for no reason.
NABBEFELD: Production-wise, I really like that track too, because that was one of the first beats we made this year. And I remember that being a turning point for our production style where I just said, “Whoa, this is different.” Roy plays guitar on that song, but I cut his guitar up and sampled him. We started sampling ourselves in some weird way this year.
KIRBY: Before we would cut samples from other records and stuff. We had a bassline and I think I played some piano and stuff, and we put guitar over that, and Kyle sampled some of my blues solos and he pulled some of the stabs and cut it together. The guitars you hear are my guitars sampled and restructured, it’s kind of cool.
NABBEFELD: My favorite on the EP is probably “Right Now.” That one sounds really good live too, we found out.

What type of program do you use for producing and mixing?
KIRBY: FL Studio. It’s simple, straightforward; I don’t like to over-complicate it. They’re a little bit more my pay rate. [Laughs.] We’re musicians, we’re not engineers, a lot of those programs are meant for engineers. FL Studio is very much an old-school style of format of just plug in and play and do your thing. It’s the next step over just having a mixer board and the old-school style. It’s just that on a computer. That, for simplicity’s sake, because like I said we’re musicians, we’re trying to make music. I’m open to different sounds and experimenting, but at the same time I’d like it to always sound like something I can actually perform and play. FL Studio you can do some of that mini programming, it’s got some better sounding stuff. But the main thing I like about it is that you can record instruments.
NABBEFELD: I fell in love with FL Studio and personally I’m just too stubborn to learn anything new.
KIRBY: The next thing I actually want to get is a mixer board.

Do you have any future plans in regards to continuing writing or do you have any big shows coming up?
KIRBY: Nothing but records, all the time. [Laughs.]
NABBEFELD: We actually just spoke about this two days ago of the next CD we’re going to put out, probably another EP within the next couple months. We’ve already got a majority of the songs figured out for that, demoed and everything, we just need to professionally get those done.
KIRBY: We have a lot of songs and we always tend to crank out a lot more whenever we give ourselves the chance, so we definitely can’t keep up. [Laughs.] We definitely always try to get in and record more and just get more stuff out there. We’re going to spend this fall getting our name around East Lansing doing some local stuff and then prime ourselves for the Loft hopefully after that and do a big show there. We’re really just trying to put a solid name out there really, build our rep up and keep putting out music. - Substream Magazine


"Common Ground Crowd Draws Nearly 50,000"

Jaimie Bozack
A&E Editor

Giant balloons, bright lights and colorful confetti all brought the 16th annual Common Ground Music Festival to a close on Sunday, July 12 at the Adado Riverfront Park in downtown Lansing.

The festival’s “Sweet Sixteen” closed with performances by Empire of the Sun, The Flaming Lips and other acts that brought amped performances and sweet sounds to the stage.

This year’s festival had a slow start due to rain and the sudden cancellation of the most anticipated headliner, Meghan Trainor, on July 7.

Headliners throughout the week, including Snoop Dogg and The Flaming Lips, made up for the lack of attendance earlier in the week and pushed total festival attendance to nearly 50,000.

LCC student James Christen said he had fun despite the cancellation of Trainor.

“I was originally going to see Meghan Trainor but ended up seeing Wale,” Christen said. “I had never heard of him, but as you can tell by the T-shirt and album I bought, I became a huge fan.”

Lansing native Justin Pine had the chance to perform with local rap group Ribcage on July 11.

According to Pine playing drums and opening for Snoop Dogg and Wale was an incredible experience.

“We were rehearsing for an upcoming show when we received a call asking if we would be available to perform,” Pine said. “Our reaction was what anyone would expect; a lot of jumping around, yelling and high fives.”

Pine said it has been his dream to perform at Common Ground since he was young.

“The performance was one I’ll remember for the rest of my life,” Pine said. “Playing on the GM Pavilion Stage was rather intimidating at first, but listening to your drums be amplified is a feeling like no other.”

The Flaming Lips brought in confetti cannons and dancing rainbows during the finale of Common Ground on July 12. The acts brought in more than 5,000 people and ended the festival with a bang.

“The Flaming Lips put on the best show ever,” LCC student Sara Thompson said. “I will be picking confetti out of my hair for the next few days.”

LCC Early College alumni Erika Wentworth encouraged everyone to come to Common Ground next year.

“My favorite part about the festival is there is something for everyone,” Wentworth said. “Most festivals try and cater to a specific niche audience, but Common Ground presents options for everyone.” - The Lookout


"Lansing’s Hip-Hop Community is Building a Foundation"

By Isaac Constans
Listen Up, Lansing staff reporter

Like it or not, hip-hop is stating itself as the youth’s genre throughout the country and in local communities. And while Lansing might not exactly be a landmark city for profuse artistry, the importance of rap is tangible in Lansing, and it is only growing.

In Lansing, local hip-hop can serve as a serious source of income for the artists who rely on a dedicated, musically inclined fan base to buoy their careers. For fans, the scene is a consistent source of entertainment and a frequent hub for nightlife.

“I really enjoy it,” Scotty Bell, a lifelong Lansing resident and longtime follower of Lansing hip-hop, said about the local scene. “I frequently am touting the hip-hop scene’s vitality in this city, especially to a lot of people who don’t really interact with it.

“To be honest, right now it’s the genre that I use as a (counter)example when people give you that very tired speech of, ‘But the local scene sucks. There’s nothing to do here.’”

Mac's Bar on Michigan Avenue.

Mac’s Bar on E Michigan Avenue.
The Loft, standing above 25 Taps and Tin Can Bar.

The Loft, standing above 25 Taps and Tin Can Bar.

Bell, a talent buyer for Fusion Shows, says that there are sometimes four hip-hop shows a week that attract 150-300 people to the local venues of Mac’s Bar, the Loft, and Fahrenheit Ultra Lounge. The hip-hop fan base in Lansing is growing too, evidenced by the attraction of touring artists such as Big K.R.I.T., Skizzy Mars, and King Los to local venues in the past year alone.

Yet, nonlocal performers often have a tough time plugging into the market and have found that promoting their shows requires a lot of exertion. Andrew Meftah, a DJ based in Lansing with the stage name of Meftah DJ, says attendance and attention at his shows is far from guaranteed.

“If you play a show at Mac’s Bar in Lansing, you still have to promote pretty hard. While if you play at a popular bar in Detroit, there’ll always be people that will be there,” Meftah, who is originally from Detroit, said.

Kenny Greene, who has performed at The Loft and Mac’s Bar, recalled a similar experience. He noticed an immediate style and community difference from his hometown of Philadelphia.
The Loft (left) and Mac's Bar (right). The two venues are a nine minute bus ride on the no. 1.

The Loft (left) and Mac’s Bar (right). The two venues are a nine-minute bus ride on the no. 1 down E Michigan Avenue.

“It’s really hard to meet those people (dedicated rappers and followers),” Greene said about Lansing. “It didn’t really have that vibe (of a rap city). In terms of just the culture, the integration, how people respond to it, I really just didn’t see it.”

Meftah, too, found that equally culpable for the seemingly absent culture was a lack of full-time artists. There were rappers, he said, but “bedroom artists” instead of devoted musicians.

“You know, I don’t actually see too many people out here professionally like putting on shows all the time, and albums, and projects, and stuff, and promoting it.” Meftah said. “While in Detroit, everybody is doing that. You have to promote really hard in Lansing with all your friends to get them to come out to a show.”

From his experience, however, Bell has seen a different side. While he acknowledged that Lansing did not have the rap resources of Detroit, Bell thought that the local scene “punched above its weight” and, like anywhere else, took years for people to plug into. Artists that he has tried to connect to local talent often are deceived by the apparent success of other artists and scramble before connections can be made.

“Anybody who feels like it’s hard to break into, just know that they have to keep trying,” Bell said, referencing many artists’ lack of patience. “And also know that the grass is always greener. Everybody always looks like they’re stunting harder than you… but in reality, everybody’s busting their ass to get 80 people inside the door.”

Bell has seen plenty of successful, unique rappers, such as Joshua Smith, JR Bad Influence, Ribcage, and Big Sherm stay in the Lansing, while others have been groomed locally before leaving. Additionally, the start of the BLAT! Collaborative and the All Of The Above Academy marks a new page for Lansing hip-hop. These programs are geared towards leaving a lasting impact, whether upon the individuals or upon the building of a communal hip-hop foundation.

Dr. Austin Jackson, a Michigan State assistant professor and rap historian, has studied the role rap can play in cultural and academic literacy. Jackson cited his childhood as a direct example of how hip-hop can motivate scholarship, as he would research the themes sowed into lyrics he heard and apply them in ciphers. This habit led to his increased knowledge of the world around him and developed a cerebral passion that would remain with him.

“Hip-hop was born out of the need to really, truly educate people in a real way,” Jackson said.

Jackson, 42, saw his teenage self as vulnerable to the temptations of selling drugs because of his exposure to that lifestyle, raised by a mom who was addicted to cocaine and a step-dad who used. However, he credited the lyrics and implied meanings of rap as what kept him going, such as “Hip-hop, you don’t stop. Keep on, keep on going you don’t stop.” Furthermore, the culture encouraged him to explore the social injustices that he faced as an African-American, inner-city youth and question the system in a way that kept him out of trouble.

“Now I’ve oftentimes thought how scary it is, that if hip-hop would have been different, if hip-hop would have been 2 Chainz in ’87, I don’t think it would have had the same impact on me as it did,” Jackson, 42, said.

“So I was very lucky, very fortunate in that respect, and in fact, hip-hop saved my life. And it was in fact that call to educate yourself through hip-hop that led me to do the things that I’m doing right now.”

Jackson is optimistic about the future of Lansing hip-hop because of organizations such as the BLAT! Project and the All Of The Above Academy. Jackson, also director of the My Brother’s Keeper program, has worked with both to make sure that these organizations not only popularize local rap, but also teach the pillars of hip-hop (knowledge, MCing, DJing, dance, and graffiti) properly to Lansing youth, promoting the right message.

Formerly a touring artist, Ozay Moore moved to Lansing in 2006 and saw the need in Lansing for a true hip-hop community. In 2010, he started the All Of The Above Academy, a nonprofit organization designed to help fuse the independent talents of Lansing hip-hop into a unified group and truly plant the roots for a hip-hop city by teaching the lessons of hip-hop.

“There’s always been the ability to connect with music and connect with artists, and I’ve always been kind of set towards the history side of hip-hop culture,” Moore, formerly known as Othello, said. “So I started noticing I had a natural tendency towards engaging youth and I had a kid who I knew wanted to get involved in hip-hop but had a loose understanding of what the culture was really about. So saw a need and wanted to address it, because you can’t expect the next generation to understand the culture if we’re not teaching them.”

The All Of The Above Academy’s work is designed to keep students constructive and spark their interest in learning, with classes in the basics of hip-hop held at the Oak Park YMCA. The other aim of Moore’s vision is for people to recognize the hip-hop talent that thrives in Lansing, and to build a highly visible community that is more than a pit stop.

“There’s crazy talent here and there’s really, really good artists, but by the time they realize they have something the world values, they end up moving to Chicago or New York or LA, somewhere that’s more conducive to an actual career like that,” Moore said, reiterating that an artistic, hip-hop community served many purposes to better society.

“I think the perspective is needed around the world that hip-hop can be a positive force in a community and in society. We know that not everybody is going to choose the positive path, but if you can build this synergy in your community with a variety of faces and truly a sense of community, it’s amazing what can come out of that.”

Incorporating hip-hop into kids’ curriculums, Jackson believes, will not only build that sense of community but also help foster an appreciation of the arts and intellectual drive. That is one of the goals of the All Of The Above Academy, to instill a culture of “edutainment,” as dubbed by KRS-One, whereby learning the art of hip-hop simultaneously teaches kids about the world.

“It’s the thing that kept us productive,” Jackson said about studying hip-hop, crediting it for his own consciousness. “It kept us off the streets. Using this art as a way to educate people… hip-hop was my first education.

“It’s how I learned about Malcolm X. It’s how I learned about African history and the system of oppression. I only gained that knowledge through the intellectual work of hip-hop during that time period. The history of hip-hop is based on education.”

With programs like BLAT! and All Of The Above, Lansing is building its hip-hop base upon the five pillars and the important edutainment roots of the genre that now primarily only come from the underground scene. While Lansing’s historical hip-hop scene historically lacked the organization as a unit to establish itself as a permanent force, that is changing. And that change is spearheaded by community members like Jackson and Moore, tracing their teachings to the fundamentals popularized by The Roots, KRS-One, and other rappers dedicated to the cause of edutainment.

“We need hip-hop activists that’ll represent the genre and push back at these corporations that continue to exploit it for money,” Jackson said, “All of this ‘I’ll kill you,’ all of this quasi-pornography that you hear now on the radio, and I’m not prudish, but if that’s the only thing represented on the radio, then that’s a problem.

“As Mos Def said, ‘Old white men are running this rap (expletive)…’ People that don’t care about anything except for money, and we have to challenge those people.” - Listen Up, Lansing


Discography

Midwest Sound (2014)

The Revolve EP: Theories 5 & 4 (2015)

Books! (2016)

Photos

Bio

Lansing, Michigan hip-hop outfit Ribcage can give it to you in a number of ways. Their studio releases provide a sound similar to early 90’s boom-bap with a little g-funk mashed into today’s hip-hop and rock influences.

Live, however, the duo—comprised of Roy Kirby and Kyle Nabbefeld—bring with them a three-piece band to augment their dual vocal styling, much like the past’s Rage Against the Machine and Beastie Boys. Energetic and occasionally hilarious, the five members—drummer Justin Pine, bassist Chris Davis, and guitarist Kyle Hutchinson in tow—put on a live show that has already impressed the likes of talent promoters around Lansing, garnering the group a spot headlining a stage at the local Common Ground Music Festival, sharing the same night in early July 2015 with Snoop Dogg, Wale, and Tech N9ne, capping off a final total of over 50,000 in attendance for the week long festival.

Other notable performances include opening slots for Kuniva of D12 and most recently, for Insane Clown Posse.

Whether playing the albums in your car, seeing them command the stage, or catching them on a live radio performance such as on Michigan State University’s campus radio, Impact89FM, Ribcage always delivers the best sound and performance they can offer.

In August of 2015 the group was featured in an online interview with Substream Magazine.

Steadily releasing music videos, yearly EPs, mix tapes, and other projects, Ribcage has a growing catalogue that covers a wide range of styles and issues.

Ribcage studio releases include Midwest Sound (2014), The Revolve EP (2015), and BOOKS! (2016).

Music videos accompany the songs “Right Now” and “Worthless”.



Band Members