Silver Medallion Goes For The Gold
by Sam Gavin
published on Tuesday, April 22, 2008
In a music scene littered with aging hippies, screamo bands and teenage boys aping "Clarity"-era Jimmy Eat World, Tempe hip-hop duo Silver Medallion is already an anomaly.
But the group composed of singer Oren J and rapper Carnegie doesn't just sound like anything else in the Phoenix metro area — they don't sound much like anyone else, period.
"We're literally the only people doing the kind of music we do out here," Oren J. says.
It's that pioneering spirit, laced with serious skills, unbridled creativity and a wicked sense of humor, that has the duo on the verge of breaking big in the Valley and beyond.
"We want to have a cult following where we're relevant for years," Carnegie says, "but [our music] has the potential to be on TRL."
"It's basically how far we want to go with it — how far we want to push ourselves."
Born out of a scene where cutting-edge sounds hit dancefloors well before rock clubs, Silver Medallion draws inspiration from the compelling and chaotic sounds of electro and futuristic hip-hop. It's a multicultural mashup defined only by defying what audiences expect. And it's hard to label.
"I'm actually looking for a new word for it — hi-ro-pop?" Carnegie says, laughing. "It's just a fuse of everything, taking from the electro scene and what hip-hop is doing, and sprinkling it with a little bit of alternative, metal, pop — everything," he says.
In a city often justly accused of being bland, the duo wants to counter the national perception of their hometown as being a cultural void.
"Arizona itself is a melting pot of different races, creeds…" says local native Carnegie. "So seeing how it's flourished into this place where you can find anybody from anywhere here — our music is like that."
The duo's infamous track "Scottsdale" is one example, nailing the coked-out vibe of a city full of professional partiers through glammy synths and decadent rhymes.
"You gotta take things that you actually do and see," Carnegie says, "and when people hear 'Scottsdale,' they hear what they know."
Carnegie and Oren (a Hawaii native) met through mutual friends at ASU, quickly bonding over a shared love of electro, hip-hop and partying. Slowly building up a reputation by DJing parties all over Tempe, the duo played their first proper show as a live act Sunday night at the weekly Hot Mess party.
The single "Gravity" is already seeing play on Valley hip-hop stations — a relative rarity for local acts — and the group says they're getting attention from labels. Although the duo wants to take their music to as big an audience as possible, they're dead-set against sacrificing the creativity that sets them apart.
"We're never going to make anything typical," Oren says. "Our desire is to be as creatively out-there as possible, so if people like us and we [get] that liberty, we want to do that."
The first Silver Medallion release is no exception. "Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" is an adventurous self-released record that falls somewhere between a mixtape and a three-act "hip-hopera" play — something that Oren and Carnegie, a former high-school drama geek, intend to take to the stage sometime over the next year.
But right now it's about building buzz and making a name in a city that the two say will be the center of national attention in the next few years — even if they have to drag it there themselves.
"We want to be on the forefront," Carnegie says, "so when people start noticing Arizona … it's a perfect place to be from."
