DON'T MISS TODAY:

Back to Artist Profiles

11/10/2006 Interview with Crisis What’s up? I’m good, man. Pharcity is doing good. We’re grinding. How did Pharcity come together? We came together about six years ago. We’re all from different areas in Connecticut. Two of us are from Middletown, one of us is from Hartford and the other one is from New Haven. That’s why we call ourselves Pharcity. Me and Beatdown, our producer, went to school together. Pro is from Hartford but has family near me so he comes down and Sho-Off used to come down every summer. What’s the scene like in Connecticut? We’re between two major markets, New York and Boston. We kind of get overlooked, marketwise, but at the same time, Connecticut breaks a lot of records. Being from here, people do hear our music and a lot of New Yorkers come up here. An advantage being up here is that the mixtape and albums scene out here is real big. Connecticut really supports album sales out here. How have your Talk of CT mixtapes done for you? We did about 10,000 on our first mixtape and 15,000 on our second on sales alone in Connecticut. The first Talk of CT mixtape had a lot of big guns like Cory Gunz, Maino, Styles P and Lil’ Flip. It’s about politicking. We have radio out here and that helped push our mixtapes a lot. We call ourselves the Talk of CT because we have the street teams and presence out here. We’re moving CD’s every day. Every day, there’s money coming in. I have to re-press every week. How did you get the big names down with you? A lot of people who come down here have already heard of us or they know somebody affiliated with us. I just politic with them and we make it happen. It’s about politicking. That’s how a lot of things happen. Plus we got radio out here, so our spins out here are bananas. I guess that comes from making good music. And of course 50 lives out here, so we attend a lot of the parties that he has out here. DJ KG, who’s also based out of Connecticut, has been a major supported of Pharcity. How did you guys link up? I’ve known KG personally for years. We never really worked together but we would talk here and there. When Pharcity started doing bigger things, we started working with KG more. It’s like a team. He’s our DJ now. We’re also cool with Kay Slay and he hosted both of our mixtapes. We also did an interview on Shade45 that went really well. It’s just that grind and going up to the DJ’s and talking to them. How did your Sunglasses at Night campaign go this summer? That went real good. We had that song done a year and a half ago before the Federation came out with theirs. We wanted to wait until the summertime and we wanted to let the “Got to Have It” get out first. We had the t-shirts and everything to go with it. Then people started getting confused with the Federation song so we backed off. From personal experience, it’s harder to see at night with sunglasses on. Yeah. It definitely is. That’s why I rock them in the club for a little bit but then I take them off because I can’t see where I’m going. What’s the most important thing that Pharcity can do right now, the mixtapes, radio or clubs? The way the game is now, the battling and all that stuff has been done. A lot of these things have been done already. The way the labels are these days, they want you to have that buzz already. They want you to sell records and to have a buzz before you get there. We try to get the buzz through radio if we can. That’s been going all right. We had 700 spins on our last record with Trey Songz and Pitbull called “Got to Have It.” That got us known a little bit, but it didn’t really break like we wanted it to break because the South music was really at its peak. It’s hard for someone from Connecticut to really come out at the time. Mixtapes and the radio are what’s important to us and you always need to get in the clubs. Do you feel that if fans aren’t paying attention to New York, they’re going to pay even less attention to Connecticut? It might and it might not. Connecticut has its own theme. We are overlooked. If New York doesn’t do well, it might hurt Connecticut just a little bit. I think New York is really stepping their game up and I think there’s going to be a big turnaround. I really think that it’s a goldmine out here. I think if one artist pops, it’s going to be a big thing because there are a lot of people who buy albums and mixtapes out here. I feel that if someone does get signed out in Connecticut, well we do have Cassie but she’s more R&B, it will be a goldmine out here for artists in Connecticut. What are your plans for Pharcity? We’re just sticking to the script. We’re actually working on an album. We had a couple people holler. We’re just trying to figure out the best situation for us as a group. We have a few features that I can’t really mention now that are going to be extra-crazy. We’re just grinding, trying to make hits and get more radio spins. Are you looking for a label now? We might go the independent route. It depends on management. We’re signed to Xtreme Entertainment. They’ve really been behind us on this whole project. As far as a major label, if it’s the right label, we’ll take it. Going the independent route could be good because the money will come in. We can sell 30,000 off one mixtape and keep it moving. I don’t have to drop ten to twenty mixtapes to make that money. I can do one every few months and really cake off it. If a good major deal comes, we’ll take that. If not, we’ll make it pop independently. Do you have any solo aspirations? No. It’s all Pharcity. I got a team. The main thing about the Pharcity group is that we have the MC’s and Beatdown as a producer. That makes us stand out. What’s your focus going to be heading into 2007? The fourth quarter is a hard time to come out so we’re really doing our thing and getting everything right for the first quarter when the game opens back up. What do you want to say to everybody? Pharcity is something new. It’s a goldmine and a new market. There are a lot of cats out here doing big things. Be on the lookout. And shout out to our engineer Ariel Borujow and DJ Semi. http://myspace.com/pharcity1

By Brian Kayser

[476] REACT TO THIS INTERVIEW