Pete Philly and Perquisite
‘Haven’t you noticed how time flies? Can’t believe how much I’ve grown.’ (Time Flies, Mystery Repeats)
If you’d asked me a couple of years ago what I thought of Dutch music, I’d probably have just laughed in your face. That was before I discovered Pete Philly and Perquisite’s debut album Mindstate, which turned me into a fervent advocate for their music and the scene they came from. Two years (and two albums) later Pete and Perq have firmly established themselves as key players in Holland, with a raft of admirers across the globe. The way that they push the boundaries of hip-hop by seamlessly incorporating other sounds is their biggest strength, but has led to accusations of betraying their roots and selling out. As they’re poised to get even bigger with a new kick-ass live formation and sold out tours of Europe and Japan, it’s a good time to sit back and take stock with them over what’s happened to them and what lies ahead.
‘Some say I’m mainstream, some say I’m underground, guess I’m in between.’ (High Tide, Mystery Repeats)
If Pete Philly was worried about this when writing Mystery Repeats, his fears must have doubled after it outsold both 50 Cent and Kanye in its first week of release. But when asked if he still sees himself as an underground act, he’s adamant that’s what he remains, though Perq is less sure.
Perq: In Holland we’re not really underground any more. That’s to say we’re pretty well known right now.
(One of the nice things about Pete and Perq that reveals itself over the course of the interview is that they’ve got a healthy tendency to disagree with each other. There’s no false bullshit here.)
Pete: Well, we’re still being treated as underground by certain entities, I think that will always happen. I’d say the underground is something that actually tries to do something new, not that I’m saying we’re the biggest innovators, but at least we’re trying. Whereas now the music industry is dying, it’s throwing out the few formulas that will work on a short-term basis.
Perq: I don’t agree that it’s dying, I think that the industry as it used to be is dying. As record sales are going down, it’s getting more important to give good live shows, so only groups that can bring it live will survive.
And as Pete Philly will go on to say, that’s something that they’ve got on lock.
Pete: Take Germany. It was the fourth time we’d been there, without much marketing money being spent on us, so the marketing is really us doing shows. Now we’re starting to fill up venues there, so we're making real progress just by being consistent and giving good, positive, energetic shows.
‘We sell out shows without sell-out flows’ (Q and A, Mystery Repeats)
If their live show is Pete and Perq’s way to break through, then it can only be a matter of time before the world falls at their feet. I’ve seen them perform on all of their tours, and it just keeps on getting better. It might come as a surprise to anyone who has seen them in the past, but it’s only now that Pete and Perq feel they’ve got a live setup they’re truly happy with.
Perq: And I think it took us three years to get us to that point. After we released Mindstate, we started to think about how we’d do it live. We didn’t want to do a DJ and MC show, as that wouldn’t really represent our music. As we have a lot of jazz influences we have a sax and bassist, we make hip-hop so that’s the DJ and MC, and because I play cello, it was natural to do that too.
Apart from the band's individual talents, one of the main attractions of a Pete Philly and Perquisite show is how they reinvigorate their older material by turning it on its head, or by morphing the Mindstate and Remindstate versions together, to create a funkier reincarnation.
Perq: After a certain point on the Mindstate tour we’d done so many shows that we felt it had become another day at the office on stage. And you should never have that as an artist, because it becomes a blasé thing, when actually all those people have paid to see you. So we mix it up on stage to it stays interesting for us all the time.
Pete: I’m really at my best when I improvise. I like the way the band ‘s set up now as there’s room to interpret every track differently. It keeps it fresh. I feel we’ve really created a situation for ourselves now when we can deliver every time we play.
Perq: Sometimes a freestyle works out really well, sometimes it doesn’t. But that’s a risk we’re willing to take to give more energy to the show.
This willingness to take a chance isn’t just confined to the live shows either.
Perq: A lot of Pete’s vocal lines have been improvisations – for instance the end of insomnia (I’ve got insomnia, in the worst way) was just an improv he threw out. Actually everything you hear from Remco (the saxophonist) on Mystery Repeats was improvised too. He did maybe 4 or 5 takes, I made a compilation of them and sampled him to create a solo out of that.
‘The fact that that cat and I can spend so much time without killing each other, that’s real. (Hectic, Mystery Repeats)
As I mentioned earlier, it’s fascinating how this pair interact. As part of a creative partnership myself, I know all too well how much of an intense love/hate relationship it is. And as we fight all the time, it’s nice to see that a vastly more successful duo can disagree every now and then. Or every five minutes.
Pete: I think we both fascinate each other because we’re so different. We’re still trying to figure out how the other works because we’re so unpredictable. We'll make a song and both of us will get a feeling after a minute and a half that something needs to switch. You kind of see that in everything we do. That’s why we’re not only touring Holland and why we want to go for world domination because we love Holland but we can’t just do the same tour over and over for four years as we’ll get bored. We make music to express ourselves and we want to keep growing. And you’re not going to grow unless you try new shit.
‘Hip hop’s negative, can we flip the switch please?’ (Third Degree, Mystery Repeats)
But by growing in new directions the old problem of alienating your initial audience rears its head. Hip-hop is notoriously resistant to any sort of innovation – before the interview Pete and I discuss Common’s Electric Circus, an album we both love, but whose negative reception made Common retreat to the more standard fare he trotted out on Be and Finding Forever.
Pete - The thing with hip-hop as opposed to any other genre is that it’s all about representation. And that’s why credibility and selling out and all these things matter, because when a rapper comes up, he represents a group of people. As soon as those people feel that you make a move that doesn’t represent them, then you’re a sell out and not part of that group any more.
So what are you representing when you’re getting cut in half by C-mon & Kypski onstage?
Pete: That’s representing having fun man, not giving a shit. That’s why I like De La Soul, because if you’re confident enough about who you are, then you’re confident enough to make fun of yourself. That doesn’t happen enough in hip-hop. The funniest shit 50 Cent ever did was his early mixtapes. He’s actually a witty guy, but after a while he decided to lose a bit of his humour and add a little street cred and it worked. People want things to be one dimensional, because life is so complicated. That’s why TV serials are popular, as they start with a problem that is solved in twenty minutes through a few plot changes. And we wish that everything in life was like that.
‘Respect, connect, let's build!’ (Respect, Mindstate)
The reference to Pete’s role in the Circus C-mon & Kypski might have been flippant, but it’s worth pointing out as proof of the level of collaboration and mutual respect that prospers in Holland.
Perq: C-mon & Kypski are a really good example of a group who is creating their own fan base by just doing what they want to do. It would be cool if together with those other groups we could put Holland (or Europe) on the map as a place that produces a lot of original music. There’s a lot of creative stuff coming from a group of people who all represent their own genre, but are willing to crossover to new styles. And with all these groups touring internationally we can establish Holland as a creative melting pot where different cultures and races and musical genres collide.
Amen to that.