When hip-hop duo 3OH!3 broke out of Boulder, their youthful fans loved the raucous shows and the laugh-out-loud music videos on YouTube, but the joke still persisted.
“Hip-hop? Coming out of Boulder? Go figure.”
Sure enough, the white-bread People’s Republic produced 3OH!3: MC/singer Sean Foreman and producer Nathaniel Motte. And, just as many locals had predicted, the group scored a great record deal, with Photo Finish, a subsidiary of Atlantic Records.
Their label deal isn’t the only news to report from the 3OH!3 camp. The group, once popular for their Lil Jon-styled crunk beats and rhymes, is making waves on FM radio stations with a song that can only be classified as dance-pop.
The band’s “Don’t Trust Me” is electro-inspired candy, the kind of music that is aimed at making the underage crowd lose their heads.
We talked with Motte about the beats behind “Don’t Trust Me,” the relationship he and Foreman have as collaborators, the sold-out shows tonight and Saturday at the Gothic Theatre, and, of course, the bling — the $19,000 he and his bandmate made in merchandise sales at the Denver stop of this summer’s Vans Warped Tour.
Q: Did you guys really make $19,000 in one day’s merch sales?
A: It’s crazy, right? It was mostly T-shirts. But we sold out of merch that day.
Thankfully we always have really strong merch sales, and because of that, we ended up making a decent amount of money on Warped, which is pretty unique because a lot of other bands are barely scraping by.
Q: You all were on Warped as your record “Want” came out. What was that like, watching the single catch on and seeing the crowds grow?
A: It was incredible. It was pretty surreal, seeing our music and fan base grow to the point where you could go to cities we had never been before and there would already be a couple thousand kids there who knew all the words.
Q: Let’s talk about evolution. At first you guys were more hip-hop crunk. And now it seems like there are a lot more dance-pop flourishes in there.
A: I guess since it’s me making the music, it’s me maturing as a beatmaker. We’ve always been interested in multiple styles of music. And we love hip-hop and all that, but we’ve also been loving a lot of the new electro-house stuff like Justice and MSTRKRFT. I guess the song came out of the fact that we’re always excited about making different-sounding stuff.
Q: I’m guessing you had most of the beats down before you made it into the studio, but which ones came about in the actual studio?
A: “Don’t Trust Me” was actually made in the studio with (producer) Benny Blanco, so that was spontaneous. As we were doing it, we were responding to what sounded good at the time.
Q: What else did Benny help you with?
A: We worked with him on that one from scratch, and we both sat down and reworked a song we already had mostly done, “Richman.” We had it done, but Benny and I set it up differently and moved some things around.
Q: Benny’s a superstar producer in his own right. What was it like working with him?
A: He’s 20 years old, so he’s kind of like a young genius beatmaker. The amount that I learned from him, the tricks of the trade and technique stuff, was invaluable. That’s one thing that I look forward to more than anything else — collaborations. Everybody’s got their own way of doing things.
And the more you see people do it, the more you know what you’re doing.
Q: I’m guessing that “Don’t Trust Me” isn’t an easy song to perform live, what with all the backup vocals and vocal effects?
A: At first it was a little bit tough. But now it’s pretty easy. It’s a question of carrying the momentum through the song.
I think we’ve become really comfortable with it. Warped Tour is the best place to practice and refine your songs, and we did that every day.
It got crazy toward the end of the Warped Tour, and we’d have 50-60 people dancing on stage with us each day.
Q: Is it a straight split of responsibilities: You with the beats and Sean with the words?
A: Sean writes the lion’s share of the lyrics. But a lot of times we’ll come up with something together, and then we’ll work together on the phrasing.
Q: Listening to your music, it sounds like you guys write music in the same vein that Trey Parker and Matt Stone write an episode of “South Park” — like you and Sean are sitting there trying to crack each other up. Is that about right?
A: Sure, sometimes. A lot of it is just us having fun, whether that’s laughing at each other or us writing a witty or sarcastic line.
Q: Because of the name you’ve adopted, you guys can’t help but be ambassadors for the state of Colorado. Do kids in California get the name? And has the 3OH!3 hand-sign caught on in other states?
A: Definitely. At Warped Tour, the hands were always up, and it didn’t matter where we were.
The kids knew all the lyrics to our songs weeks before our album came out because we had the album streaming on MySpace for a while. The response we’ve had outside of Colorado surprised us all.
Ricardo Baca: 303-954-1394 or rbaca@denverpost.com
