Hot damn, am I ever psyched to share this one. One of my favorite collabs I’ll drop this year, I do believe, and a cold-ass banger, besides. “Triple Rock Steady” is an eminently 802 piece of work, featuring a funky Es-K beat, 2/3rds of legendary Windsor rap crew Maiden Voyage, and all of it orchestrated by executive producer Garrett Heaney for PROVISIONS.
There’s a lot of backstory to unpack here. That kind of self-indulgence is exactly why this website exists, too.
Maiden Voyage was Jarv, Nahte Renmus and Teece Luvv, all longtime friends who also happened to be naturally talented rapper/producers. “Freakishly talented” might be more accurate. They got their start opening for Lynguistic Civilians, a rap crew that was inescable in Vermont (and much of New England, too) for a long, long time. Civilians was the brand that brought in fans, but Maiden Voyage were the kids who stole the show. Every time.
Fast forward a decade & some change, and the landscape up here is … well, not that much different. Jarv has a solo career, routinely tours the country, and is often cited as the single best rapper that Vermont has to offer. (I myself wouldn’t quibble or complain about that. Check out his latest LP “The Amalgam” if you haven’t already heard it.) Mister Burns, always the management & business brains behind the Civilians success story, is also going solo, often with a killer band, and he’s still one of the hardest-working hip hop promoters around.
Teece and Nahte have been thriving solo, too. In fact, I’ve had the debut Nahte Renmus LP FUNK.95 in heavy rotation since he dropped it late last year. Teece Luvv, for my money, is one of the very best emcees Vermont will ever know. “Triple Rock Steady” is, ultimately, downstream of the fact Nahte & Teece were both on the first PROVISIONS project, Know Thyself. (Which, by the way, is a banger. Check that tracklist.)
I’m grateful for every connection & opportunity I get…but yet that ain’t entirely true, is it? Fact is, I pass on 99% of the opportunities and connections my improbable life has offered me. It has to be an organic fit. It has to feel right. I don’t want to collaborate with successful artists who are phoning it in for a deposit, I want to work with motherfuckers who wake up to die in the booth every day. A legacy is more important than a name.
Speaking of which: Es-K has both. The combination of his prolific output and his killer quality control put him in the top 0.01% of the field, and that will be come clear to the culture over time. It’s a paradox in theory, but in practice, a constant release schedule is very much the result of slow, steady work.