by Jake Espinoza
A lot of artists are faced with the temptation of moving to New York or LA at some point in their career.
“You definitely have this perception that you are going to move to New York, which is the mecca of hip hop, and there’s going to be fucking street cyphers on the corner, but when you get there you realize that it is just like anywhere else,” said Sentence of the group Metermaids. He moved to New York from Colorado in 2004.
“It’s almost harder to create something that is going to have an impact (in New York) because people have so many options. The other thing that you have to keep in mind is that people really have to grind here in order to just live and pay the rent. So people are really particular with how they spend their time and money.”
Sentence and Swell created the group Metermaids while on tour together in 2006. They recently released “Rooftop Shake” via Strange Famous Records. The album features five tracks produced by 9th Wonder.
“We were throwing ideas around about producers we wanted to work with and our manager said, ‘How about 9th Wonder? I have a connection to him.’ And we were like, ‘of course.’”
Metermaids’ manager, Kristi Clifford, was also managing an R&B artist named Tyler Woods—who is one of 9th Wonders artists. They traveled down to North Carolina, from Brooklyn, and put some time in the studio. The plan was originally to release five of the tracks as an EP produced by 9th Wonder.
“We were just planning on releasing it on our own, but we both kind of knew Sage a little bit, and we both had kind of sent him stuff we were working on.”
Sage Francis became interested in releasing the project on Strange Famous, but wanted to release the album as a full length album instead of an EP. Sentence and Swell put five more tracks together produced by M. Stine—the producer of the group’s previous EP.
Metermaids are touring with Sage Francis this week. They will be at the Roseland in Portland on September 21 and in Seattle at Neumos on September 22.
Visit www.metermaidsnyc.com for more information.