Pitt Duo speaks no evil

All college students have dreams, some bigger and more implausible than others. Many take steps… All college students have dreams, some bigger and more implausible than others. Many take steps toward achieving them before they even graduate. But few have dreams as big as the members of hip-hop duo See No Evil. Even fewer have the recordings to back it up before entering their junior year. When Pitt sophomores Brandon Jackson and Johnny Drucker formed See No Evil last year, they had bigger plans than making music a hobby. ‘We mutually came to the agreement that there’s nothing important about being here if you’re not going to be remembered. And if you’re not famous, you’re not remembered. So we realized we better do something,’ said Drucker. The two met the second semester of their freshman year at the fraternity house for Pi Lambda Phi, where Drucker is now a brother. Jackson is a master of ceremonies ‘mdash; or microphone controller, depending on who you ask ‘mdash; and raps over the beats Drucker creates as disc jockey. Jackson’s stage name, Johnny Knuckles, comes from the combination of Johnny, a name he picked for its ordinariness, and Knuckles, which emphasizes struggle and hard times. Drucker’s stage name, DJ Mickey Cake, came from a character in the children’s book ‘In the Night Kitchen’ by Maurice Sendak. ‘Probably only 1 percent of our following understands that, but I like it,’ said Drucker.’ Only 10 months after fusing its talents, See No Evil has completed its debut album, Cellar Door Dreams. Jackson and Drucker had a very clear, almost mathematical concept of what they felt their album needed before they started recording. ‘Albums have love songs, aggressive songs, fast songs and slow songs, commemorative songs,’ said Drucker.’ Hours were spent attempting to capture the balance and flow they wanted and determining what order the tracks, consisting of nine songs and two interludes, should go in. Both hoped to craft an album without filler tracks, as opposed to the single-driven hip-hop and rap scenes. ‘We did not make a mixtape. We did not make a CD. We made an album,’ said Jackson. They chose the title Cellar Door Dreams to incorporate dreams with the two words that many believe to be the most beautiful phrase in the English language. ‘[The album] should be played from start to finish. At loud volumes. The first song sounds great after the last one,’ said Drucker. Though See No Evil is not yet signed to a label, Jackson and Drucker have been sending out their album to the labels of artists whose careers they respect in the hopes of emulating them. Although their partnership is integral to their music, Drucker and Jackson do not need to be in the same room to work together. Jackson can record his portion in his home town of Atlanta while Drucker works from his home outside of Philadelphia. Drucker makes a beat encapsulating the emotion the two want, which Jackson then takes and writes rap lyrics for. They merge the separate sound recordings later. Drucker and Jackson were raised with very different music cultures, but they have found that they have much in common. ‘We can come together because there’s so much gray area in music,’ said Drucker. Luckily, both had musical and performing experience before forming See No Evil. Drucker was a singer and guitarist in a rock band. ‘My respect for rock has only grown since I’ve started rapping. I can’t wait until we’re done working with Cellar Door Dreams so I can go back to writing other stuff,’ he said.’ Jackson has almost one decade of rap experience since beginning at the age of 9. Jackson learned to rap from his cousin Tony, who he said taught him everything he knows. One of the two memorial tracks on Cellar Door Dreams, ‘Tuffy,’ is dedicated to Tony. The other commemorative song, ‘Oliver,’ is dedicated to Oliver Hertzel, a Pitt student and close friend of the duo’s who died earlier this year. ‘It’s about him and how he made us think about our lives, just generally about what it meant to us [that he died]. Oliver was our boy, our biggest fan,’ said Drucker. Drucker taught himself to use an MPC500, or music production center, to create his beats by sampling sounds. He then adds his own bass and drums, frequently playing guitar over the samples. Thanks to his father owning a record label and a record store, Drucker has more than 10,000 records in his basement from which to choose samples. Drucker described samples as ‘my own phrasing with [other musicians’] notes.’ It can take him hours to find the right one. ‘It’s not a hard thing to do once you find the right sample, but finding that sample can take 25 records. You can turn over every side and not find a legitimate sample,’ he said. The chopped but clean beats Drucker creates through sampling gives his music a distinct style. ‘You can take sounds that were happy originally and make them just the saddest thing ever,’ said Drucker. Reflecting on their accomplishments so far, Drucker said, ‘Last year this was a pipe dream, and now we’re here. It’s so natural, it’s not hard to do any of this, and it just took time. As a life goal, to have this finished is pretty cool.’