Originally published in the December 2011 digital copy of Hurt2Healing Magazine
The Exclusive with Savvi and EQuality, Co-Founders of Peace Uv Mine Entertainment
Ebony S. Muhammad (EM): Let’s begin with the history of PeaceUvMine Entertainment and H.I.S.D.
Savvi (S): After graduating from college in 2002, Equality and I reconnected and began doing our thing as artists on the poetry scene. We started a group called “Black Embassy”. I was more Hip Hop focused and EQ was more poetry focused. I would come out as an emcee on the poetry scene, and he would be the only poet on the Hip Hop scene. We continued to perform in ways that overlapped, which resulted in this mutual chemistry.
Once we developed the group, I put out my solo album entitled “The Hueston Chronicles” in 2004. That was the birth of PeaceUvMine Entertainment. We were officially registered with a DBA in 2003, but in actually having a project, it was in 2004.
Equality (EQ): Once Sav put out “The Hueston Chronicles”, the plan was for us to do something together under “Black Embassy”. We were performing in ways that integrated poetry with Hip Hop, and we would perform this way in certain Hip Hop and poetry spots. Little did we know, this would introduce us to King Midas and LDaVoice, who is a former member of H.I.S.D., who were attending Lamar University. They were a group called “Daily Supplements”.
I’m not sure if we got a hold to their music first…Savvi did you get their music first?
S: Yes. Someone sent me their music. I listened to it, and I really liked it. I believe it was the same thing; someone sent them our music.
EQ: One night, Sav and I had a show in Beaumont, Texas. That was our first time actually meeting King Midas and LDaVoice. When we all met in the flesh, there was a bond that was formed.
Initially the idea was to have a project that was a compilation of Black Embassy and Daily Supplements. The other member of H.I.S.D., Scottie Spitten, just so happened to be related to King Midas; they’re brothers. He was brought into the fold as a lyricist. I didn’t know that he rapped until after I met his brother. I think Scottie rapped for Sav. He felt that Scottie was made for this; he could rhyme. I was introduced to Scottie Spitten through Sav, through King Midas, through LDaVoice. We all sat down and agreed we were going to make this album, which began The District.
We had two other producers that were in the group. We had E. Classic and Soul One. We knew them just from being around the local Hip Hop scene. Sav would perform at all of the local Hip Hop spots, so a bond was connected with Soul One, and a bond was connected with E. Classic. They soon met up with King Midas and became “Golden Soul Classics”. That was our first production team.
Therefore, you had the three producers of Golden Soul Classics, which was E. Classic, Soul One and King Midas. The emcees were Savvi and I as Black Embassy, LDaVoice and King Midas as Daily Supplements and Scottie Spitten who was the brother of King Midas. So, we had three producers and four emcees, therefore, we needed a name.
We met at Scottie’s home. We were just sitting in a circle throwing out different types of names, and Scottie said, “I got it! H.I.S.D”. He came up with the acronym, Hueston Independent Spit District. It made sense, because we were from Houston and most of us graduated from an H.I.S.D. (Houston Independent School District) school. It just made sense.
The name eventually evolved into other things; “Slang District” and “Style District”. That evolved into the concept of the actual CD, The District. The Theme, if you notice on the CD cover, is a school bus. A lot of the promotion behind the CD is us in a classroom. The name H.I.S.D. triggered the concept for the album.
The first song that we recorded as a group was “Only A Fool”. Before we recorded “Only A Fool”, we were still in the mode of doing a compilation album to promote the different groups that we have. “Only A Fool” came out so great that we decided to keep making more songs together.
When you listen to the album, you’ll notice that Scottie Spitten has songs, Black Embassy has a song, and you have H.I.S.D. songs. However, we felt that we would be stronger together as a unit as H.I.S.D., and we would be under the umbrella of PeaceUvMine. Sav had already done the footwork for the label. He put out his album under PeaceUvMine, therefore it only made sense for all of us to be under PeaceUvMine as well.
EM: Which group was on the song “Three Story House”? That song cracks me up (laughing)!
S: (Laughing) That’s King Midas and his best friend Furious. If you hear some songs that don’t really sound like its H.I.S.D. and it sounds more like a parody and more humorous, that’s King and Furious.
EQ: They’re like our Flava Flav if we were Public Enemy.
S: Yeah, they have personality (laughing). It’s a balance to the group. We give you the more serious persona and hit you with the beats and the rhymes, and then we give you the comic relief in the album as well.
Allow me to give you the premise of PeaceUvMine. If you look at the way the name is spelled it gives you a double entendre. It’s spelled Peace then Uv and Mine; not like m-i-n-d. However, it means both Peace of Mind as well as Peace of Mine. We are hoping to achieve some type of level with the music that we put out that people feel at peace and feel good. It’s feel-good music that’ll basically give you peace of mind.
At the same time, we feel like there’s a certain niche or piece of the pie that’s ours, and we want our piece of the pie from doing this music. When you see the logo, there’s a piece that extends out like a slice of pie. So that’s the whole symbolism behind the name and the logo for PeaceUvMine.
EM: Awesome! That’s exactly how I feel when I listen to your music. I tell Equality this all of the time. I listen to your music every day. It’s always in my CD changer.
EQ: That’s commendable.
S: Yes, thank you much.
EM: The “feel-good” vibe in your music that you spoke of is the feeling that I get every time I listen to you all. Your music has a very positive vibe. Just recently I had couple of older family members in my car while the music was playing, and I didn’t have to hurry and turn it down. There’s no profanity or anything degrading within your lyrics. You all are so well rounded, and it creates the perfect recipe for music; the comic relief, the different personalities and the metaphors are amazing!
How did you all come to discover and develop your own personal styles with the delivery, lyrics and the futuristic language? By the way, I really appreciated the glossary in the back of your comic book (laughing)!
EQ: All of that started evolving within our last album The Weakend. The District had its moments. We were in school. We were the students. The EP Summer Sessions was like Summer school, which we released during the Summer time. The Weakend was our journey where we took it outside of just being here on Earth. Therefore, PeaceUvMine evolved into “Planet PeaceUvMine”. Under the guise of PeaceUvMine, you don’t just have Hip Hop. Sav can expound later-on regarding some of the other groups and the vision that he had behind making PeaceUvMine. It’s an all-around label.
Our part, H.I.S.D., was on the Planet PeaceUvMine, and we were combating against the weaknesses. Whatever you want to identify as weak, weakness in frequency, weakness on the job or any type of weakness. The whole goal was that we were there battling the weak, and it took place over the weekend. So, it started on Friday and ended on Sunday. It was The Weakend during the weekend.
Our journey is traveling toward Planet PeaceUvMine. There are a lot of different underlying meanings within all of the songs; everything from “Cranberry” to “Rockin’” to “Moon Water”. We took the approach of a comic book as superheroes of Hip Hop. We’re going against the weak, and when we’re traveling, we hope those who are listening will take the journey with us.
S: It was really an evolution. From day one, H.I.S.D. took the approach of being students and teachers as well. That process is ongoing, and it never ends. It was a struggle from the beginning to attempt to distinguish ourselves, and I think that factor that helps us do that is our creativity. Even before we got to The Weakend , when you listen to our songs with the wordplay we use, we really try to set ourselves apart with having lyrics with layers containing multiple meanings. There’s something you can get from the surface, and if you listen again a year later you catch something else that you probably didn’t hear the first time. Therefore, the music will last longer to you.
Going into The Weakend, we understood that we needed to take it a bit further. The thing about the moniker of H.I.S.D. is we have the “Slang District”. We came up with an actual storyline for it. We wanted to create a whole new dialogue and a new language for people to use. We’re looking at what’s out there, and a lot of it is weak and stale. We wanted to bring something refreshing to the plate. Whether people take a hold to it or not, we must embody a new way of thinking and a new way of saying certain things. Language and culture are two things that made Hip Hop what it is. It’s the language, the way you walk and the way you talk. We didn’t feel as though anything new had been brought to the whole dynamic in a long time. So we said, “We can create that”.
We pretty much did everything we could to create a whole new language and try to illustrate that through the sound. King Midas wanted it to feel as if you’re watching a movie. Therefore, it wasn’t as if we were trying to make an album, we were trying to write a create score to this movie that we had in our heads. That’s why the concepts are how they are, and they sound is what it is. We as emcees just have to match the sound that our production team provides for that score.
EQ: Exactly. We have to be the narrators.
One thing I forgot to mention is one of the primary things we came up with called “Spacing Up”, which is just taking yourself to a higher level of consciousness. So when we say Planet PeaceUvMine or Radio Galaxy or anything that’s outside of the normal realm of Earth, we’re Spacing Up. When someone says they’re “building” or they’re “conscious”, our slang is Spacing Up.
EM: All of these different layers to your lyrics is something Hip Hop lovers will appreciate, because you really don’t have that in commercial hip hop or what they call “mainstream”. What we hear on the radio is so basic. It doesn’t make you think or appreciate the art form of spoken word. It doesn’t elevate the mind at all.
You all incorporate live instruments; you have unique background vocals and a combination of sounds. Your voiceovers it take it to a completely different level of music.
I want you to talk about the comic book because that’s something unique as well. Who came up with the artwork for it, the script/storyline, and characters?
S: The Characters are based on all of us as individuals. We partnered up with this comic book company, Brady’s Comics, out of Utah. They have their own line of comic books called Wombat Rue. Someone they were cool with told them about our idea. We knew from the beginning that we wanted to create a comic book with The Weakend album. Of course, that’s not our field, so we didn’t know how to get it done. We just spoke it into the Universe. Eventually, someone agreed that it was an amazing concept. They loved it and were all in to help us create it. A partnership developed, where they did the layout for us as well as the artwork. As far as the actual script inside of the comic book, it was done by King Midas and Damien Randle. It was based off of all of our themes, and the dictionary was already created.
EQ: And the album is like the soundtrack to the comic book.
EM: With those two albums, The District and The Weakend, what were some of the struggles and challenges you faced considering that you have several individuals in the group with different backgrounds and styles?
EQ: We started with three producers and four emcees, and now there’s one producer and three emcees. Throughout the process and through the album The Weakend , we had to battle some weaknesses within our group dynamic as well. Certain people had to Space Up and do their own thing. That’s what we call it and that’s what they call it. It’s similar to when you have a job and you want to move to another job. You tell your co-workers and employers you’re Spacing Up. You appreciate working with them, but you gotta Space Up to another company. It’s the same concept with us. Certain people Spaced Up and Spaced Out.
Anytime you’re dealing with a group dynamic, you have to compromise. That’s in any organization. You have team players. In football, if you’re a wide receiver, you don’t get all of the passes all of the time. It’s the same thing with music. It’s also beauty in it. We filter out so many different things. It’s just like the name. If there were just two people in the group, we would probably have some weird name. Yet, because it had to go through so many different filters it allowed us to take everything to the next level of creativity. You can’t just settle for the first thing that comes to your mind. When we make music, it’s not just for one person or just my idea and I lay it out and we all go with it. You have other people’s opinion, and we’re all doing it together. We all value the opinions of others, because we don’t want our name associated with something that’s …
EM: …wack (laughing)!
EQ: Exactly (laughing). I may think it’s a good idea, but it has to go through several people, and they may be like, “nah, that’s crazy”.
EM: That’s awesome that you all can be honest with each other like that.
S: It took a long time to build quality control. There was so much stuff on the cutting board that I, myself, was like “Man that’s hot”, but some of the others weren’t feeling it. It makes the process much longer. If you notice the time between our first and second album, you’ll see that there was about two and a half years in that process.
Another thing with having 7 people in the group is scheduling. We still have day jobs. Some of us work during the day and some of us work during the night. We made a commitment at the outset of this project that every Saturday we would meet at 12 noon until however long it takes to get that day’s idea and brainstorming done. We’ve been doing that for about two and a half years religiously now. Even after the album was complete, we continued to keep it up. Some days we’re out of there in three hours and other days we’re in there for ten hours. To be perfectly honest, only ten percent of that time we’re actually making music. The other 90 percent is us brainstorming.
EQ: We don’t meet to actually record music per se. We meet to police ideas. A lot of the time we go into our own personal pads to write rhymes and make beats. When we come together on Saturday, we get our “assignments”, and when we leave the meeting we go do our “homework”.
EM: I see you have built this up to a science!
What’s the story behind the Summer Session album?
S: The Summer Session is a ten track EP that we did in about two months to keep everyone tied over to the next album. It was the Summer Session that gave us notoriety, and it’s what led Quest Love to take notice of us. He gave us the endorsement by writing an article about us. He was being interviewed, and he was asked about who would be the next best artist. He mentioned us based off of the Summer Session. The Internet went crazy! Everyone was like, “Who is the group called H.I.S.D. out of Houston?” People all over the world started checking for us.
EQ: Quest Love was like a taste maker.
S: Right. That meant a lot to us. A lot of people were checking our web pages and looking for us. That was a big boost for us. That gave us a lot of fuel going into The Weakend.
EM: That’s awesome!
Now, to the latest EP, The Hue A.D. Let’s discuss the significance of the name and how all of you came up with the entire concept.
EQ: It was just our way of feeling as though we have Spaced Up with The Weakend. The next phase after becoming Spaced Up was to be “Spaced”. It was our way of describing how a person is baptized or born again in a religious sense. Therefore, once you are Spaced, you have that eternal glow. When you’re Spacing Up, you’re trying to be “Seen Green”; it’s the “Hue”, “The Weakend”.
EM: So, on a base level it’s kind of like Leroy in the movie The Last Dragon…
EQ: Exactly…
S: Once you’ve actually completed the process of Spacing Up, you become Spaced as it is with the whole symbolism and metaphor with Christ after he died, it became A.D.
EQ: That’s when we feel Christ became Spaced.
S: He transcended.
EQ: We took it upon ourselves to say, in music terms, we want to have that same concept where we transcend, so this is the A.D. The Weakend was like our B.C. It was our Spacing Up. As emcees, we’re all getting to the point where we’re maturing, and the music aspect has to mature. We want other people, who will be on that same journey with us, to mature. As they mature, we want them to have something to listen to. At the same time the children can listen to it.
S: Just to go back to the point you made about being able to listen to our music in front of anybody, with PeaceUvMine in general and with H.I.S.D. that’s something that we take pride in. I’ve always taken pride in the fact that the product is something I can hand to my mother, and she can listen to it and not be ashamed or taken aback by something I’ve said. I can hand it to my niece and nephew…
EQ: …without having to give a lot of disclaimers (laughing).
S: Exactly! I can’t tell you how many people have come up to us telling us how they listen to our music with their children. That means a lot to us. We want to be able to reach different generations…and it’s still edgy. The children can listen to it but it’s not corny or lame.
EM: You’re absolutely right about the edginess! I was in New York a few months ago during Ramadan, and we were breaking bread at the mosque. While they were playing the New York Hip Hop, I was thinking to myself of how I wish I had my H.I.S.D. CD so I could show them how we do it down South (laughing)!
EQ: That’s the southern pride that we have. We grew up in a certain time when people looked at southern artists as unintelligent or that we only made a particular type of music. Therefore, when groups like OutKast and Goodie Mob came out, it was like a breath of fresh air for us. We had that CD to say, “Hold up, you’re talking about this, well we have this”. We want to be that for the generation under us. When they go off to college and they’re talking to people from different regions about music, someone from Houston can say, “Hey, have you heard of H.I.S.D.?” They can give them a different perspective on southern artists or southern Hip Hop.
It’s popular now, but before it wasn’t popular to be a southern artist. Nobody wanted to rap with an ascent that sounded southern.
It means a lot that we can go to New York and people like us just as much.
EM: I don’t know if you’ve had the opportunity to read Jay-Z’s book Decoded …
EQ: I’m reading it.
S: I haven’t read it yet.
EM: Well in a bean shell, he’s breaking down the lyrics of his songs and explaining the metaphors and the story behind the songs. He also delves into what was going on during certain periods of his life.
With that said, I would like for you to go through a couple of songs from The Hue A.D. EP and do the same thing by breaking down the hidden meanings and metaphors. Let’s start with “Juices and Berries”. Can you decode this song for those who may be new to the language and culture of H.I.S.D.?
EQ: Battling the “Automatics” (laughing).
S: Exactly. If you’re familiar with The Weakend and have read the comic book, you might be familiar with the term we use called “Automatics”. You have the parallel universes; Radio Galaxy which is parallel to the Milky Way, Planet PeaceUvMine which is parallel to Earth, and then you have Space City which is parallel to Houston also known as the Hue.
Within Space City, there are these robots called Automatics. Automatics are programmed to exploit your weaknesses, which basically takes you off of your path, whatever your path is. Automatics distract you and take your focus away.
“Juices and Berries” is a continuation of the story about the Automatics. The Summer Session was the beginning of the Automatics. The song “Sheet Rock”, which is from the album The Weakend is part two of the Automatics. “Juices and Berries” is part three. Once you’re Spaced Up, you know how to battle the Automatics and overcome them.
EQ: You see a picture of them in the comic book. They can be real fine (laughing).
S: You know, for some people Facebook is an Automatic. If you’re at work, yet, constantly on Facebook, it’s a distraction. It’s a weakness.
Juices and berries is what Automatics use to make weapons. You may hear a part in my verse … “Ticking when she walk, pop-locking…” When the Automatic robots walk, they tick and pop. They have that sway to them. The song “Juices and Berries” is learning how to battle and overcome the Automatics.
EQ: The first bars is Scottie Spitten, and he says, “Attack of the Automatics; monkey on it, need a chiropractic…” It’s like a monkey on my back. Then he goes into you have to be focused.
S: He makes the analogy of Kobe when Chris Rock was messing with him during one particular game, yet, he was so focused that nothing can take him off of his game. “Kobe ignoring Chris Rock for the win. Show me the score when it counts in the end”.
EQ: He also makes the analogy, “Designed to keep your eyes off the prize”.
EM: Wow…thank you for breaking that down. I think that those are the layers you were talking about being able to go deeper into the lyrics and making it applicable. Everybody has weaknesses.
EQ: I think sometimes, metaphorically, it can be seen as a woman. With us, you gotta be Spaced Up to the point you don’t let that take you off the path of what you have to do.
Automatics can come in the form of drugs. There are a lot of things with musicians that are taking them out as Automatics.
From a female’s perspective, Spacebunny comes in and explains what a male Automatic is.
EM: Exactly!
Okay, the next song is “Rock It Man” with Damien Randle. Break that one down for us.
EQ: “Rock It Man” is like a hero and the anti-hero at the same time.
EM: The duality…
EQ: Precisely. When you listen to it, you’ll hear in Sav’s part that we’re here as super heroes. When you hear Scotties part, he describes the character of Rock It Man (Rocket Man), and he’s battling a drug addiction at the same time. In my part, I describe the character of an older person. He’s an 80’s baby-daddy, and the children want new stuff, yet the old people want you to keep it true. He’s a character who’s in conflict because he wants to Rock It. However, he has to sell drugs to be able to Rock It. The people tell him to go out and Rock It, but they tell him what he has to say. So, it’s just the character of a hero and an anti-hero.
S: “Rock It Man” is also a continuation of “Space City Express” from The Weakend as a mode of transportation; a rocket. It’s an extended metaphor where you can take it in different directions.
EM: You all are on a different level of Hip Hop…that’s all I can say!
You mentioned how your personal life ties into H.I.S.D. How are you able to balance everything out; going to work, if you have children and your families?
EQ: Work, our day job, is like the 401K. That’s our investment for the future because you don’t have a retirement plan in music. Keeping the 9 to 5 helps us to keep coming up with these concepts and be uncompromising. In music, you become a servant of the public. Your mode of survival in contingent upon other people that you don’t know having to demand what you supply. Sometimes you may have to compromise what you supply to get what you demand, because you have to pay that light bill. You gotta pay that car note. You gotta pay that rent or mortgage. You gotta buy school clothes for your children.
Therefore, the way we see it is that it gives us good balance. We would love to be able to travel the world and make music for the rest of our lives, but we also know that we have to have something planned for the future.
The thing about Hip Hop is that it’s youth-oriented where people are getting older in Hip Hop, and now they’re starting to realize that you have to have something else. When you started out, it was about being able to rap thinking that this money will last forever, but there’s no retirement plan set up for musicians. You have Blues musicians that have to play up to being 80 years old. With us, on Saturdays when we meet in what we call the “Gold Room”, that’s our day that doesn’t consist of a lot of pressure that comes throughout the week.
We have our assignments; we do our homework and we are seeking to graduate into a higher degree in music.
S: Along with that, we don’t have to answer to anyone. We don’t have to compromise our music or have someone stand over us. We do what we want to do, how we want to do it and when we want to do it. That’s freedom and that PeaceUvMine.
EM: Thank you both so much for your time and mind! May Allah (God) continue to bless you all with much success!
EQ & S: Thank you for the opportunity to share!
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MONARCH | EBONY SAFIYYAH is excited to collaborate with Peace Uv Mine with the Ultimate Candle Experience! Release date is February 15, 2024. Where fragrance, music and technology intertwine! Shop Peace Uv Mine – The Legacy Candle. All proceeds go toward the Annual Saviours’ Day Gift Drive!
