Premiere • NoName, Saba & Chelsea Reject: "Counterfeit"
As the local scene has emerged on the national scale, many from around the city that have bided their time creatively helping those artists get to those heights, growing alongside the performers. Perhaps the most consistent and dependable of those crews has long been 119 Productions, a sort of full-service creative shop that has helped document the rise over the last few years through documentaries, music videos and compilation projects that spawn singles like this one, which TheseDays is proud to premiere. "Counterfeit" produced by Phoelix and featuring a cross-section of Chicago's biggest names in Saba and NoName, pitted across from NYC-based Chelsea Reject. It's a testament of sorts to the kind of interesting collabs the guys from 119 have been piecing together for several years now, including their recent jaunt, "Vices" which paired King Louie with Dally Auston and theMIND. We caught up with Jackson Duncan of the group to get some further insight into the song itself and the project, Countdown to Midnight due out in December.
TheseDays • Explain the process of getting this single together?
Jackson • Mainly it takes a lot of patience, which when being geeked to work with these artists takes a lot of effort to slow our roll and just chill. It's politicking and asking questions. No Name had submitted the track with Saba and Phoelix on it, and we were like "uhh, you're sure we can use this?"...to be sure we got in touch with Phoelix and Sab who both gave us their blessing. Otherwise we've been working a lot with Brooklyn's Chelsea Reject, who has toured with No Name, Mick and has performed at showcases with Saba in NYC and we wanted to get her in the mix, so when she was in town she laid everything down at OnGaud's stu. Now here we are.
TheseDays • What does 119 aim to prove with these compilations?
Jackson • Not sure we aim to prove anything, if we do it's not necessarily an overt planting of any flag. I think we'd just like to be a place where we're consistently putting out raw media whether it's the music, videos, events, etc. We only have such a window to put these things out before we have to decide to put rubber to the road and try our best to become an actual label, where we can rest on our laurels of putting out these releases. I'd love for us to be a modern Rawkus without us being Rupert Murdoch's son lol.
TheseDays • What has it been like growing along these creative?
Jackson • It's been an amazing experience, and seeing all these artists evolve has been really cool. It def pushes us to try to keep our eyes open, because it's no longer 'before you know it...', it's right now that these artists are huge and have a reach well beyond Chicago, so we've kept our eyes and ears out to find who in our opinion is the next evolution out of the city. So we have nothing but gratitude for not only being there, getting to put on some of these artists first shows, seeing where they are now, but also for the way they push us to be better at what we do.
TheseDays • Is there anything in particular folks should be looking out for on the project?
Jackson • Look out because we have a couple monster singles, and some collabs that are crazy. Our dude Benny Nice has set up shop for 119 out in NYC so we trying our best to expand out there and all of the NYC artists went nuts on this tape. It's def our biggest project to date. Otherwise if you visit www.countdown2midnight.com our mission is to get heads to donate to some great causes in return for this dope music... if we get a cent to any of those causes, this one is a success.
TheseDays • How does this project stack up against earlier releases?
Jackson • (Laughing) I swore this one wouldn't take a year to release, but def been a year and some change since we first started.. I think the time put in will show that it's certainly had a lot of thought put into it. While CSS was an amazing tape, Countdown has a super cohesive sound all around. Best one to date by far.
