High-energy rap duo Ross Standaloft and Leon Rhymes formed Too Many Ts and have now taken the hip-hop world by storm with their debut album ‘South City’.
With performances supporting hip-hop giants such as Public Enemy, Big Daddy Kane and De La Soul, Too Many T’s will be showcasing their talents at Liverpool Sound City.
The pair met in Wakefield where they were introduced to one another through a shared love of hip-hop. After meeting on a night out, the pair formed a friendship and around eight years later formed the obscurely named duo Too Many T’s.
‘We got introduced because we were both rappers and not many people rapped in Wakefield! Then we started jamming together and ended up doing a gig. We were buzzing from writing together and we both really enjoyed having someone you could write with and bounce off because hip-hop can be quite personal.’
‘In terms of the name we couldn’t think of anything better, and we wanted something that would roll of the tongue. We wanted something that would be easy to say on stage, we also have so many t-shirts and we drink a lot of tea as well!’
Too Many T’s style draws inspiration from the golden era of hip-hop and has been influenced by artists such as Biggie Smalls and A Tribe Called Quest. Ross has been influenced by fast rap from the late eighties to early nineties era, as his brother used to DJ. Leon, on the other hand, grew up listening to Motown and Funk, as he didn’t have a ‘cool older brother’ to influence his music taste. The pair feel like hip-hop has evolved from genres such as Block Party, into Gangsta-rap and now it has become commercialised through trap-rap.
‘Rap’s the biggest thing in the world now but its become more commercial and dumbed down because its infiltrated that pop market. It feels like a lot of its fake, it’s portraying a fake image of rap, and has lost its originality. But there is still loads of old-school hip hop it’s just more underground than the other stuff.’
Since the release of their debut album ‘South City’ in 2017, Ross and Leon’s music has been featured on a BT Sports Segment and they aim to get one of their tunes featured on MOTD ‘Goal of the month’. They also embarked on a four-month tour across Australia and Asia and the duo documented their tour travels aptly named ‘RAP YEAR’.
‘The album really helped us focus and develop our sound. It’s amazing having an album because it allowed us to travel to other countries and that turned into a four-month tour across Australia and Asia’.
‘RAP YEAR is something that we are thinking about developing into a brand and do it with other artists. With ours, it was an experiment because we didn’t have a cameraman and we edited all ourselves, but we thought how cool would it be if we actually did it properly. We also just wanted to remember all the stuff because we haven’t really got good memories’.
‘Another funny story is that we were at a festival on the Isle of White, and Rob da Bank who’s a bit of a fan got us on the main stage just before Wu-Tang Clan. We got to play a few tracks to about 35,000 people and introduce Wu-Tang Clan. Afterwards, we sat in their dressing room eating Doritos and chatting with them. It was really crazy’.
Leon and Ross are extremely excited to be returning to Liverpool and to be performing at Sound City with their high-energy act.
‘Liverpool has been our favourite place to perform. We performed here a few years ago and it’s great to be able to come back and play a bigger venue like Sound City.
We came up to Sound City about 5 years ago and we had an interview there, but this is the first time we are on the actual line up for Sound City. We are doing a panel on the Friday just chatting about our tour and things and then we will be performing at Love Lane on the Saturday and we can’t wait’.
