thePULSE
By Jillian Locke, Music Editor
“If you have good music and are a good entertainer and are honest with your music, you can play with any bands on any type of tour,” says 1 Ton, who represents one half of CA’s Humboldt County feel-good rap team, Potluck. Along with hip hop engineer/mixer/rapper extraordinaire UnderRated, Potluck have landed a spot on a most coveted tour ~ Saturday, September 12th, a reunited D12 (featuring Eminem) will give fans at The Palladium what they’ve been yearning for: the Dazed N’ Dirty Tour, D12’s first tour in three years. Underground rabble-rousers Potluck will be right there beside them, and 1 Ton couldn’t be more stoked.
Pulse: You’re part of this huge comeback tour, but what’s going on with you? You’re signed to Suburban Noize Records, correct?
1 Ton: Yeah, we signed with SNR back in 2006, and just recently released “Pipedreams” a few months ago. We’re getting a good response to that, and we just got off tour with La Coka Nostra, Kottonmouth Kings, Blaze, and a bunch of others, and now we’re ready to go out on another tour with Detroit rappers. I was laughing when my manager told me he confirmed this tour. It’s like we keep getting involved with the whole Psychopathic movement…Detroit has a really big, independent hip hop scene that we somehow keep getting hooked up with.
Pulse: How do you feel your sound compliments that of D12?
1 Ton: I would say our sound is a product of our lives and our scenery. Had we grown up in Compton, we would’ve been gangsta. If we grew up in the South, we would’ve been crunk. We grew up in Humboldt County, so we’ve got more of a hippie vibe, that “everybody get along” energy. D12 grew up in Detroit ~ one of the roughest areas to grow up. We both represent where we’re from, but there’s respect in the honesty of the music, and that’s what I think makes it mesh well together.
Pulse: What should fans expect from this reunion?
1 Ton: I think it’ll be a good collection of people who love hip hop music. People who know D12’s history ~ their foundation was all independent, and they locally built their own scene as MCs and a crew. They built their own movement, and with the success of Eminem, they were able to take it mainstream. We’ve built our own solid core foundation, and it’s gonna be cool to combine what they have going and we what have going. With this tour, fans will get both sides of the hip hop world ~ mainstream and underground locked together. Anyone in Worcester who’s come out to see us when we’ve come around with Kottomouth Kings and Twizted and Tech N9ne have only seen short, 15-20 minute sets from us. This time around, we have a full 45 minutes to an hour long set. Now people will get a real show.
