By Jeff McCord
***KUTX Artist of the Month is powered by PNC Bank***
Their 2021 EP, The Geto Gala, was an instant fan favorite. But was it a one-off? Catching them performing their music around town with a live band was inspiring. But were Deezie Brown and Jake Lloyd, two very successful Austin artists in their own right, serious about making a go as a duo?
Their first full-length album, Major League, leaves no doubt. The songs are more tightly focused and collaborative. There are hooks, actual singing, a reach well beyond the normal hip-hop geofence. It’s clear that for Jake and Deezie, Geto Gala is more than a label; it’s an actual band. And it might have never happened if Deezie hadn’t been in a venue when Jake happened to be soundchecking. Impressed, Deezie reached out.
Jake was surprised. He had admired Deezie’s work online as well. But they had never spoken.
“I feel like in the hip hop scene,” Jake explains, “you feel you have to stay in your corner. Everybody felt like they had to hold everything for themselves.”
Once they did connect, they discovered a rare commonality.
“Our personalities are very similar,” Jake explains. “We’re different, but we listen to music the same way. We understand art and creativity. There’s no egos between the two of us.”
And they like a lot of the same things. For example, a certain hip-hop duo from Atlanta. They both claim Major League is their most Outkast-influenced recording to date.
“Mostly,” Deezie explains, “it’s the experimentation when it comes to the sonics, using live guitars and using live drums. [Listening to] Outkast was the first time you really could hear like rock and roll elements within hip hop. If you listen to Speakerboxxx/Love Below, you hear every single sound in the world listening to that record. Referencing Outkast doesn’t stop with this album. It’s something that has to be really studied. And I think that’s what we’re trying to capture.”
Jake continues. “The melodies. This record has Deezie singing more. I like that because I never wanted to feel like there is a structure to Geto Gala. Deezie does a verse. Then I do a verse and then I sing the hooks. Deezie sings the hooks…. The Outkast thing is ingrained. How can you not be a hip hop act at the age that we are and not being influenced by Outkast in some sort of capacity?”
Their common interests don’t stop there, either. Geto Gala mostly record in home studios,and when the creative juices aren’t flowing, they take a break, watch movies. Pulp Fiction provided a recent writing inspiration. And there’s something else they watch a lot: sports.
You rarely catch Jake and Deezie without their Rangers and Yankees caps, and the sports metaphors abound on Major League, along with name checks of their favorite athletes.
“Deezie and I both are number one sports fans. All sports. It doesn’t matter. Baseball, basketball, everything. We both grew up in the era where everybody was wearing throwback jerseys. That was just that time period in hip hop. I feel like sports and hip hop have been connected for a long time now. The saying goes, rappers want to be athletes and athletes want to be rappers.”
They’re both quick to point out they’re not unique in this regard and that sports don’t define Geto Gala. But it is an inescapable piece of their puzzle.
“I think our references come from our dads,” Deezie says. “Our dads are like super football fans. We had to grow up in households where our dads were screaming at the TVs. So when we go and we write these records, we write about the things that we grew up and saw on a consistent basis. And one of those things was sports. Sports brought families, everybody together in some sort of way white, black, green or brown, to enjoy a game. I think it has a lot to do with our culture, coming from a place where black people weren’t allowed to play in these professional leagues and we had to create amongst ourselves to do things. Seeing the progress of so many black athletes in so many different sports is just a beautiful thing.”
“Another thing that’s actually cool, Jake continues, “we had a mix tape. We recorded a whole bunch of songs and we chose the ones that were for sure going on the album. We’ll call the album Major League and the songs we weren’t going to use. [We’ll] put out a mixtape we’ll call Minor League. Who knows if that still is going to happen, but that was kind of the thought process.”
The songs that made the cut for the album are dazzling, full of unexpected musical detours and creative wordplay. Both Jake and Deezie are quick to credit producer Danny Saldivar [DSII], who helps create the sonics and records most of the music backing. Deezie has recently been recording with a friend out in Bastrop, which has opened his eyes to more they could accomplish in actual studios. They’re both excited at what they can expand on their next record.
But for now, Major League is the focus. When I ask if they plan to go on a US tour, they both laugh.
“I like how you think, man,” Deezie says.
Like a lot of artists today, Jake and Deezie are well attuned to the hard realities and incremental work needed to get ahead in today’s music business.
Deezie spells it out. “Some of the first steps for us are to really capture some of these local entities and really hone in on a lot of these interviews and phone calls, showing up to any and everything that we can. To push a record, we have to push the artwork, we have to push every single thing the way they pushed it in the 90s. Once we can capture some of that, then we can start moving around and start doing some regional things. Moving around Texas a little bit, move around the US after that. It’s capturing the foundation a little bit more. We have a residency coming up, every Tuesday of November will be headlining at the Hotel Vegas. So it’s just capturing things like that with the album coming out. Just staying consistent.”
