Everyday People are a dope hip-hop group from Hamilton, Ontario. We caught up with them at Hess Village before they took to the stage for this interview. You can download the show for free, stream it with the player below, or just continue reading.
Chase: “All right everybody, this is Chase March in the heart of Hess Village with hip-hop group, Everyday People. How many people are in the group?”
Part Mada: “Well, we got two primary members, which is me and Sin Yung. And then we have Pranks, Brandon, and we have some other members as well. Me and Sin Yung are the front men, more or less.”
Chase: “And you’re representing Hamilton?”
Sin Yung: “Steel City! We’re repping the world, man. We don’t just seclude ourselves to Hamilton. This is Everyday People. This is for everybody. We repping the world!
With Galvanized, the mixtape, we starting with where we’re from, Steel City. This is where I grew up. This is where he grew up. We’re just showing the world where we’re from and trying to get worldwide.”
Chase: “So that is where the title of the current mixtape comes from then?”
Sin Yung: “Yes. Steel City, Galvanized!”
Chase: “How about your name? Why are you Everyday People?”
Part Mada: “You know what? We’re Everyday People just for that reason, because we’re everyday people. I’m not a rock star. I wake up and go to work in the morning. This man goes to work. We all go to work. We’re just normal. We are all trying to do what we love to do.”
Chase: “So how did you get started?”
Sin Yung: “I’ve been doing this for a while. High school, just beatboxing, ciphering, hanging with some friends that influenced me to Mobb Deep and a bunch of other groups, and just took it from there.”
Chase: “Okay, that is Sin Yung, how about Part Mada?”
Part Mada: “Me and the other producer, Brandon, started out years and years ago. Brandon was departed for a few years and I kind of took a break, then me and Corwin (Sin Yung) ending up linking up and bing, bang, boom. You got what you got.”
Sin Yung: “A couple years ago, I was in a group, New North. We were a Hamilton, local group, started in 2003. It fell apart and now it’s been reincarnated to Everyday People. It’s been going good for about a year now.”
Chase: “In the late 1990s, I was trying to get a rap career started and Hamilton was not a hip-hop town by any means back then. It was hard to get gigs anywhere in the city. I’m not sure what it was, either the audience or the club owners weren’t receptive to local rap acts. But that seems to have changed a lot on the past few years, hasn’t it?”
Sin Yung: “There was a good scene for hip-hop a few years ago when Circadelic was running the scene, my boy Raiz, about five or six years ago. We’re trying to bring it back.
There ‘s a lot of good people coming out right now. This summer has been a good one for hip-hop. We got Slur, FCM, Indi Feenz, and a lot of people doing their thing. This summer and forward, it’s gonna be pretty good. We’re gonna play our part to bring the scene back to where it should be.”
Chase: “Also, in this day and age, it’s important to have a web presence. I went online, I could find you right away, found a little bio, and that is good to have. I just went to a festival in Toronto, and I had a hard time finding bios from some of the acts. So how important is it to have a web presence and where can we find you online?”
Sin Yung: “We’ve only been together a year and we’re still trying to put a lot of things together. We got our manager, Steph Kelly,on board. Beatbinjaz! She’s really made us what we are right now. She got Ghettosocks to come out for our first big show.
The one thing I try and stress to the group is that we have to be active in social media. We’re on YouTube – Everyday People 1, we’re on Reverb, Facebook, everywhere we can try and be. We’re trying to network and make everything happen. I think it’s really important because that is where everyone puts their time to. It’s good for music.
Soon, there won’t be any CDs. They’ll just be downloads, mixtapes, and whatnot.”
Part Mada: “Hope not, man.”
Chase: “Yeah, I think it’s going to be totally on The Internet, streaming. There isn’t going to be downloads. You’ll just stream stuff and have everything online. It’s kind of scary though,because how do you as an artist make a living these days?”
Sin Yung: “Like Everyday People. That sums it all up. That’s what we say for everything.”
Chase: “That’s cool, because you both have day jobs, so do I. We do hip-hop for fun here at DOPEfm. We’re not getting paid for it. Hopefully, you’re getting paid for this.”
Sin Yung: “We’re not getting paid? We get to come to the show for free at least.
I’m a dad now. I grew up. I work my 9 to 5 – it’s better to earn.
I try to stress to people, do what you do. You gotta do what you do to get by, right? We’re trying to do this music thing. Hopefully we can get paid off it one day, but to me it’s just like a by-product of what we really love, which is music. So, money ain’t a thing – on that level.”
Chase: “Can you tell us a little bit about your writing process, how you go about writing your songs?”
Part Mada: “It just depends.”
Sin Yung: (fake coughs) “I do all the work! I write all his rhymes. Excuse me. My allergies.”
Part Mada: “For the mixtape, it’s a little more lax. The content is a little more free to be whatever it wants to be. As for our self-titled album that will be coming out soon, the content on that will be much more focused and specific. But it didn’t take us to long to put together this project.”
Sin Yung: “There were a few tracks that I had from before and when we got together as a group, we made them bigger that what they were. They were tracks that I had written verses to, and then we got together and wrote a hook, he wrote a rhyme to it, and then bang!
Galvanized was more of a showcase to show people what we can do. Have fun with music. We are really going to put our heart into the self-titled.”
Chase: “Do you guys freestyle?”
Sin Yung: “No, not on DOPEfm – Just kidding! Of course we do, man. You got beats? You gonna beatbox for us?”
Chase: “I can beatbox.”
LISTEN to the beatbox session starting at the 7:36 mark on the podcast or with the player below.
Chase: “That was wicked. I was just asking that question as a question, because some MCs can’t do it. I wasn’t trying to put you on the spot, but that was cool. I haven’t done that in a while either.”
Sin Yung: “That was pretty good.”
Gamma Krush: “I have a question about Galvanized, how many are original beats and how many are borrowed beats?”
Part Mada: “We only have about four original beats on that album. Sin Yung has another project coming soon that is going to have all original beats on it, produced by our good man, Pranx. Shortly after that, I will have a project with all original beats too.
For the mixtape, we did a little bit of variety, just to get out feet wet. But for all of the projects in the future, they will be all our own beats.”
Gamma Krush: “Good, cause Galvanized is all we got right now, and I’m really choosey with what I play. It’s good when you have someone rhyming over someone else’s beats, but I’d rather hear it from the original person. The new artists also come into their own with their original stuff.”
Sin Yung: “We got Black Anonymous, Pranx, just be on the lookout for local producers on the new stuff coming out. My project, Year of the Hair is gonna be good. I put some time into that. I’m gonna do some videos this summer.”
Chase: “In this day and age, you gotta have original tracks. It’s cool to have a mixtape before an album. A lot of people are doing that.
But it’s so easy to connect with people now, as opposes to 15 years ago when I was trying to do this. It’s more open with the social networks. I mean, I have people on Twitter trying to sell me beats everyday. So I think it’s probably easier to find original beats now that it was back in the 90s. I’m dating myself now, eh?”
Sin Yung: “Dude, I wasn’t even rapping then. I was in grade school. But, I hear what you’re saying. There are a lot more producers now, I think. Everyone and their grandma makes beats.”
Part Mada: “But does everyone and their grandma make good beats?”
Sin Yung: “That’s what we got Pranx for. Really they should be playing Pranx’ beats in the background.”
Gamma Krush: “We’ve played Pranx, Beat Doctors beats when I first joined the show.”
Sin Yung: “That was New North days. It’s all about Everyday People now, man. It’s gonna be a good year.”
Chase: “Pranx, is here. How’s it going Pranx?”
Pranx: “Good, just chilling, waiting for the show to start.”
Chase: “Can you tell us about your production, what kind of gear you use, stuff like that?”
Pranx: “I pretty much use an M-audio trigger finger, I got a 2500 Akai MPC, and I also use Fruity Loops. It’s more convenient for me when you’re laying down your beats.”
Gamma Krush: “I know you started with the Beat Doctors with Visions. Are you guys still working on beats?”
Pranx: “Oh yeah. We’re coming out with a new Beat CD soon.”
Sin Yung: “Visions, what’s up?”
Gamma Krush: “Yeah, shout out to Vision. He’s a crazy comic book head too. I love you’re MySpace display pic where you’re Luke Cage. Old school Luke Cage, Powerman.”
Sin Yung: “Weren’t they going to make a Luke Cage movie with Tyresse? Tell me, they couldn’t pick Michael J. White?”
Gamma Krush: “I guess because of Black Dynamite and Spawn.”
Sin Yung: “All the listeners, can you agree with me? Write in to DOPEfm.”
Chase: “Comic book movies are off the hook right now. I love what they are doing with them. I still think they should take Black Widow from Iron Man 2. She was awesome. They should give her, her own movie-”
Sin Yung: “I agree.”
Pranx: “Good call.”
Chase: “- and since Black Widow had a thing with Daredevil, they should have a Daredevil cameo and then reboot Daredevil.”
Pranx: “They should scrap all the Hulks and make a new Hulk.”
Gamma Krush: “I like Incredible Hulk with the French director, the one with Ed Norton.”
Sin Yung: “I think they should make a Sin Yung comic book. What’s up with that?”
Chase: “Yeah, Everyday People comic. Krs-One had a comic back in the day. It came with a tape. What was that guys name?”
Gamma Krush: “Big Joe Crash.”
Chase: “Public Enemy had a comic, Wu-Tang had one.”
Part Mada: “So keep an eye out for the EDP comic coming out soon.”
Sin Yung: “That’s our next project. You already know.”
Gamma Krush: “One more question. Who came up with the logo? It has a key in it, what’s the whole meaning behind it?”
Part Mada: “We have a great artist working with us. His name is Joel. Sin came up with the original idea of the key. EDP is the key. Simple as that.”
Sin Yung: “That’s basically what it means. The people are the key. When we come together, we can make anything happen. It’s just like hip-hop, if we all come together – Bam! There’s endless things we can do.”
Chase: “Well, it’s been awesome talking to you.”
Sin Yung: “And remember to check out us, Reverbnation – Everyday People 1, You Tube – Everyday PPL 1, we’re on Facebook. Just look for us!”
Part Mada: “Download the Galvanized mixtape from Beatbinjaz”
Sin Yung: “And show love to DOPEfm. Thanks for having us!”