Free To Be Grits
By Melissa Riddle for GospelMusicChannel.com
For more than 15 years, Teron “Bonafide” Carter and Stacey “Coffee” Jones – a.k.a Grits – have been blazing their own hip-hop trail inside a contemporary Christian music industry maze that, needless to say, on many levels, didn’t really ‘get’ nor support them. For more than 10 of those 15 years, these faith-fueled rappers stayed the course with Gotee Records, releasing 2002’s bar-setting The Art of Translation, a seminal project that established the duo’s credibility and talent once and for all.
But over time, Grits began to understand their limitations, not in terms of vision or talent or innovation, but the limitations of the music business as they knew it. So after fulfilling their contractual obligations, they jumped off the ship to build their own boat: to make their own music, their own way.
GospelMusicChannel.com caught up with Grits at a local coffee shop in Nashville to get the latest on their new CD, Reiterate, their new venture as label owners and what really happens when you jump ship.
GospelMusicChannel.com: Tell us about starting your own label, Revolution Art...You guys had been at Gotee for so long. What made you want to charter your own path?
Teron “Bonafide” Carter: It’s just a growth thing, really. Our contract was up, and we both had to figure out what we wanted to do. We’ve always wanted to have more control in the music we make, and in order to better explain our brand, even to the industry, to create space in the genre, we have to be in control. That’s the big difference in how mainstream and CBA/gospel works...Puffy, Jay Z, Russell Simmons – they all have control of what they create. All these years, we’ve not had that.
Stacey “Coffee” Jones: [Running our own label] has been very freeing...We’ve been learning a lot on the business side, which has been so important. And we’ve learned to meet in the middle more. We’ve got a better understanding now of artists’ needs.
GospelMusicChannel.com: So which takes precedence, then, business acumen or artistic integrity? Which wins out?
Carter: We have an advantage now, in that we can manipulate the business side to better support the creative side. Now that we are the label, we can release the right single at the right time, instead of choosing the safe single to fit what is happening in the industry at the time.
GospelMusicChannel.com: Let’s talk about the new CD, Reiterate. You guys have said that this CD is simply “building on the past 10 years...and what you’ve always been about...”
Jones: It’s really about expressing that creative freedom, from guest appearances to the sound, we’ve been very intentional in its creation. We want to play ball, to be musically accessible. Our music has changed sonically over the years, we’ve changed and evolved, but we’ve remained true to who we are. We’re bringing up the next generations – we’re gatekeepers – looking out for the next Bobby Jones, the next Group1Crew. We want to get artists ready to be in mainstream arenas, to take their music out to the culture at large.
