Interview: Rose Brown of CHH Duo The Brownz Talks About Their New Short Film "I Shall Speak"
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“It’s important to know what your standards are before you go after something. You can probably achieve or obtain just about anything in the world if you’re willing to do ANYTHING to do so. But at what cost? We’ve both literally been in situations where we could have compromised our standards for a desired outcome, but we didn’t – and we won’t.”
Congratulations on the release of the short film of your single "I Shall Speak", which you co-directed with Ben Cinematic. Tell us about how the song itself became the visual we see now and how long did the video shoot take?
When Fierce first came up with the hook, he wanted to add more to it, but I told him it was so powerful just like it was; it left no room for compromise. It had that feel like even if it means our life, we are going to stand on what we believe, like we had this important message to get out and we just have to - NO MATTER WHAT. It just went from there.
We came up with all the ideas for the visuals and started making calls, scouting locations and gathering props. It took about 2 months from the time we got the idea before we got to start shooting it, and the video took 4 separate shoots at 4 locations over about a month’s time to pull off. (Shout out to Ben Cinematic.) We shot during the winter which brought additional challenges, but it all worked out.
Tell us about Omegalistic Music, and what your goals are with this record label?
When I was a solo secular artist, I released several albums as “Loose Change Productions” reflective of the fact I was self-funded, and was just scraping together what I could. Although I put out a few projects, when Fierce and I got together, much like I gave up my old last name for his, I was happy to start from scratch with him to form a vision together for our brand. He always says it’s “Omegalistic Music- Sounds of the Revelation”.
I can definitely tell you it has been a big investment for us. We are both very passionate about this music. It is a blessing to do what you love with your spouse - we play off each other’s energy and ideas. Our goal is to make good music with a message. With hip hop especially, you have to choose if your message is going to be medicine or if it’s going to be poison to the minds of your listeners. We choose to make music that is clean, non-degrading and that glorifies God. Our music is reflective of where we are in life presently.
For a long time I had a stigma as to what I thought “Christian” music was, so when I first was exposed to some great Christian music it was very exciting. We strive to make music that’s true to the craft of real lyrical emcees on a conscious level, and that is hot enough to win over listeners outside the normal demographic of “Christian” music fans.
As far as goals for the label, we would like to keep growing it. We want to be able to quit our jobs and do music for a living full time. We would love to eventually be able to sign and mentor other artists. Strange Music is based here in Kansas City, and we would love to grow our label to something comparable in size that presents opportunity for artists that don’t fit into that lane.
Speaking of Kansas City, how would you describe the Christian Hip-Hop scene there now in 2020?
It pales in comparison to KC’s secular Hip-Hop scene, but I think the scene is growing. It’s kind of exciting to see other artists who like us, used to be “secular” artists, who now have a testimony and have “changed lanes” so to speak.
There are a couple of good Christian artists in Kansas City I know about, and likely several more that I don’t. A Ward is tearing up the Battle Circuit all over the U.S. which is pretty impressive for a Christian artist.
What can you tell us about your upcoming album "D.E.M."with S.H.A.D.O.W.; when will it be dropping? Also, how did you connect with him?
“D.E.M.” which stands for “Destroy Everything Moving” is a project that will be highly anticipated by real hip hop heads. It’s a very lyrical project where S.H.A.D.O.W. kind of meets us halfway. He is a secular artist, but he had no problem with excluding any kind of vulgar language from the project. It’s been really fun doing that project because it brings 3 different styles and personalities into each song.
It has grown all of us as artists because you end up doing songs on a subject matter you never thought of, or on a beat you may not have picked. We all pride ourselves on being really dope artists so it’s friendly competition every song -you know you gotta bring your “A” game, because the other 2 are going to, and no one wants to get ate on a track. Lol.
S.H.A.D.O.W. built himself a reputation as a dope battle rapper back in the day. We both met him on the music scene, and just recently reconnected via social media. We went over to his house for the Superbowl last year (2019) and I got the idea to do a group project as we listened to each other’s music and he was down to do it. So we agreed to doing an EP and started knocking out some heat.
The way 2020 is going with this pandemic, we haven’t set a release date for the project yet but it will definitely be this year. We did release one single with a video from the project last year, “Right Now” which you can check out on our Omegalistic Music YouTube channel. (It’s dope- totally worth checking out).
When someone listens to or watches "I Shall Speak" for the first time, what do you want them to take away from the experience?
“I Shall Speak” was the first track we did that’s kind of that “new wave” – the beat is kind of trap, and we rapped faster than we do in a lot of our other songs. I hope that keeps people from trying to place us in a box – we are seasoned artists, we can do it all.
More importantly, though, we want people to know we can’t be bought, we won’t sell our soul to make it in the music business, and it really is about the integrity of the art. If a major label told us the ONLY way to be successful in this business was to “dumb down” our lyrics, or leave God out of it, or help push an agenda then I would try my hardest to prove them wrong and have no regrets about it if they weren’t.
It’s important to know what your standards are before you go after something. You can probably achieve or obtain just about anything in the world if you’re willing to do ANYTHING to do so. But at what cost? We’ve both literally been in situations where we could have compromised our standards for a desired outcome, but we didn’t – and we won’t.