A Perfect Storm

Dubai-based hip hop artist Perfect Storm catches up with triplew.me ahead of the launch of his mix-tape ‘The Calm Before’ this week-end. We talk to him about growing up in Dubai, his career highlights to date and what we can look forward to from a rising star of the UAE hip hop scene.

The Perfect Storm story begins in Dubai, then cuts to his formative teenage years between England, Australia, Hong Kong, Italy and finally back to Dubai. Since he’s been back there, Perfect Storm’s picked up his fair share of attention, supporting the likes of Akon and Fat Joe in recent times (at the Urban Desert Festival – his first show!).

Storm is a man of many talents, and before a career in hip-hop beckoned, he was a semi-pro basketball player - spending time playing in Italy. Describing his basketball years Storm says “I spent a year playing in Italy for the city of Nereto, it’s a small city on the east coast of Italy near Pescara, and it just got too much for me. I was training 6 hrs a day 50 weeks a year and it started to take a toll on me and also took some of the enjoyment out of the game.”

Now with his pro basketball days behind him, P Storm as he’s sometimes called, is also part of Dubai's The Recipe hip hop collective, itself a part of a burgeoning, and increasingly accepted, Middle Eastern hip hop scene.

Support for the scene, however, hasn’t always been so forthcoming, as Storm recalls “hip hop wasn’t allowed in music stores here back then so we also had a guy called Babu [not his real name] in a small tiny shop in Dhiyafa Street [a street in Dubai] selling us albums under the table;” Storm adds “that’s also where [Dubai-based] DJ Ronne Jaxx used to sell his homemade mix-tapes, the last one I bought was over 10 years ago and I remember it being volume 40, so Ronne Jaxx is the man and has been holding it down for a while.”

Ahead of the launch of The Calm Before, we're compelled to ask - what is a mix-tape and what does it mean? Storm puts it simply; “The mix-tape has been around in hip-hop forever, it’s a way to feed the “streets”, it’s promotion, it’s marketing,” ok, so  a sort of teaser campaign to keep people hungry then? “In Dubai the mix-tape is great because there is so little material coming out over the space of a year so the mix tape keeps people involved and gears them up to your album release" and clearly the mix-tape has gained popularity in the industry, as Storm puts it "your favorite rapper in the industry is doing a mix-tape right now, even R’n’B artists are doing mix tapes now.”

This one is quite special too, with the mix-tape being ‘hosted’ by the internationally acclaimed DJ Warrior (of the Caliuntouchables). The very same DJ Warrior who was named recently by Rolling Stone as one of the ‘Top Ten Most Influential DJ’s In the World’ for his contributions to hip hop.

So what’s the benefit of having a mix-tape being hosted by someone of the caliber of DJ Warrior? As Storm puts it “[it] basically gives it a seal of approval and credibility, it lets people know that my music is on point and up to industry standards.” It also comes with benefits such as promotion and opening international doors for Storm “I think I’m also the first artist from out here to legitimately have my music co-signed by the people who matter.”

Couldn’t agree more, so now that the people who matter are on board, what is it about freestyling that matters to Storm? He replies “When I think of the word freestyle I think freedom, creativity, no boundaries,” he adds that “in terms of hip hop though you got the traditional form of freestyling which is just on the spot rhyming anything that comes to your head and really having to think on your feet,” but, he laments, “there are not many proper freestyle battles anymore.”

So what is the divide between commercial hip hop and underground hip hop, if there is indeed there is a divide? We put it to Storm; “In my opinion there is a big divide, the underground guys hate the commercial guys because they believe its ruining the music.” an understandable position, and a world-wide problem as the aesthetic-art-versus-commercial sales debate rages, but P Storm can’t be drawn “I try to stay somewhere in between both worlds, I’m trying to find my middle ground right now, and I believe if it’s done properly it can be marketed, all the great rappers from the golden era played the middle (ground) real well and I want to follow in their footsteps.”

You can’t go wrong if everyone’s happy is our general rule, though Storm puts it a bit more eloquently: “I love underground music and I love the commercial stuff it all depends on the mood I’m in,” he adds “It’s like watching movies. I can’t say dramas and thrillers are real movies and comedies aren’t, it’s just different genres. Commercial hip-hop is one of the reasons why hip-hop is more accepted in the world now, and I do think we feed off each other.”

Going out on his own for a solo effort is, of course, different to performing with The Recipe, and as Storm explains, takes a little getting used to “When I write with The Recipe we are usually all together so even the atmosphere is different and content will definitely be different,” he adds that the writing process is also different to his solo writing process “I just sit on the metro or wherever for an hour with my headphones on and just black out.”

So, with our time drawing to a close, we asked Perfect Storm what we might expect at his mix-tape launch “Saturday is going to be crazy! We got Kaz Money and The Ghost performing, we got Swerte hosting and then you got me performing tracks off my mix-tape, we’re also going to be releasing my new video on the night Take Away The Pain and will be giving everyone a copy of the mix-tape.”

Something to look forward to – and definitely one of the rising stars to keep an eye on.  Check out the event details here, and if you’re in Dubai, get along to the concert on Saturday evening.