Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Camp Lo keep it creative

Old School Style Cheeba and Suede of Camp Lo bring their distinct blend of neosoul hip hop to Garf's this weekend
1541lo

Who: Camp Lo & Ra the Rugged Man

When: Sunday, Oct. 12, 9 p.m.

Where: Garfinkel’s

Admission: $15 in advance at Billabong and The Circle

The soulful hip hop stylings of Sonny Cheeba (Salahadeen Wilds) and Geechi Suede (Saladine Wallace) are recognizable to any diehard old school hip hop fan. And this week, the duo, best known as Camp Lo, brings their distinct sound to Whistler.

But earlier this week, they were in a studio in North Carolina, working with the Apple Juice Kid.

“Doin’ this quick EP or whatever,” Cheeba trailed off.

The two first met up in 1995, through a mutual friend.

“Actually, Lana, I went to school with her — she lived on (Suede’s) block and we had the same name, so she introduced us ’cause I thought I was the only one,” Cheeba recalled. “And then I see him coming down to the block, and we became cool off the namesake.”

Suede was working as a solo artist when Cheeba came into the picture. At first, he just used Cheeba as a sounding board to bounce his lyrics and music off of.

“I was just listening to it, saying if I liked it or not, you know what I mean? Sometimes I gave him records or whatever, but I wasn’t rhymin’,” Cheeba said. “Then one day, he was like, ‘You wanna rhyme, B?’ I said, ‘Sure, I’ll try anything once.’”

Their sound and approach to hip hop worked well together, and the pair started to get serious about their music.

“Basically, when we’re in the studio, we’ve got different ideas, but collectively, they’re the same thing, plus we always try and think of what we haven’t done, and what’s not out at the time,” Cheeba explained. “…We don’t want it to be the same ol’ same.”

Growing up in the Bronx, the musical style and lyrical content of Camp Lo is strongly influenced by the pair’s roots. But the hip hop-rich community also forced them to make their sound original.

“As far as being that we’re from the Bronx, we had to keep it creative and new, being as that’s the birthplace,” Cheeba explained.

They decided to take an entirely new approach — after all, they wanted to stand out from the rest. Well, their music definitely isn’t your modern-day mainstream hip hop.

“Especially at that time of hoodies and gun-toting and all that,” he recalled. “…You see that every day on the blocks. Don’t get me wrong, we used to dress like that, but we said when we introduced ourselves, we’re not going to come like that. We’re going to come on that ’70s good vibe feeling. We don’t want to reflect what’s really going on in the hood.”

They opted to adopt a more classic look and feel, and over their 13 years in the industry, they’ve managed to keep their fresh sound, incorporating the timeless influences of soul from the ’70s. Both had grown up listening to a lot of hip hop and classic R&B: “The Stevie Wonders, Marvin Gayes, Earth, Wind and Fires, Al Greens, Curtis Mayfields, all that type of vibe.”

In terms of hip hop, the Jungle Brothers, De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest were just a few of the groups that inspired their sound.

“Whoever was coming original with their sound, that you could only get it from them, that’s what we reflect on,” he said.

The end result was a distinct new sound.

“At the time, they didn’t even have a name for what we was doing. They had to name it, we got caught into the neosoul,” Cheeba said.

Uptown Saturday Night , their debut album, was groundbreaking. But there was an almost five year hiatus between the release of the first album and Let’s Do It Again , as the duo dealt with issues with their label, Arista.

“How we was doing it visually, in the videos, we was hittin’ them with something they hadn’t seen before, down to the album cover, the names of the songs, everything was just different from what cats was used to, so I think that’s why cats still talk about Uptown ,” Cheeba mused.

They soon left Arista and eventually began making independently produced music before switching to a new label, SRC Universal, which encourages their creative, unconventional approach to hip hop.

“We always felt like we had creative control until we got on Arista and they didn’t want us to creatively come up with the music people knew us for. They wanted us to switch our style up,” he said.

Now, they’re back to doing what they want to do, 100 per cent of the time.

One of their secrets to longevity may be their indifference to what’s going on around them in the industry.

“We really don’t care about who’s doing what, you know what I mean?” Cheeba added. “Rhyme-style wise, you don’t ever want to rhyme like nobody.”

In recent years, the duo began introducing themselves as The Lo, hoping to appeal to a new, younger generation of hip hop music lovers who are being force fed mainstream music.

“It’s a whole new crowd of kids out there that don’t really know the difference between original and what’s hot, radio hot,” Cheeba said. “…We want them to hear something and be like, ‘oh, I didn’t even know that was out there.’”

But the new name didn’t stick.

“We tried it, but we found that we couldn’t use it,” he said. Turns out, they’re too well known as Camp Lo to break away from their name.

Their newest full-length album, A Piece of the Action , has taken a bit of a fresh direction for Camp Lo, and should be released in the New Year.

The original duo are slated to perform in Whistler this weekend, alongside acclaimed emcee RA The Rugged Man, who has worked with the likes of Notorious B.I.G., Mobb Deep, and Killa Priest.