ATLiens Abroad

Supreme in My Heart

By Shawn Wen

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On Saturday, October 22, three dirty, tired, road-weary boys slept on the floor of my dorm room. I managed to secure two sleeping bags and one set of sheets, but there were barely enough pillows to go around. And certainly no Cristal champagne, gold chains, hummers, or scantily clad women were on hand.

The boys came to my floor as friends from back home in Atlanta. They were brought to Providence to play the Living Room as an up-and-coming rap group called Supreeme. Their first studio album, Supremacy, was recorded in Los Angeles in early September, and they are currently on a nationwide tour with Fat Lip. As the opening band that night, they played to a sparse, unenthused audience.

Supreeme is composed of three MCs: Shaka Girvan, Negashi Harvey, and Sam Terrell. The three met at Grady High School, a racially diverse, prominent, and almost utopian magnet school that stands out among Atlanta's other segregated and under-funded public schools. They formed Supreeme in the summer of 2003, as Girvan and Terrell were graduating high school. The Syllabus I Mixtape, their debut album, was hastily produced in the Terrell basement. They pressed hundreds of copies of Syllabus I, and beyond simply distributing it to friends and family, the CD was sold in local independent record stores, reviewed in local college newspapers, and found a small following amongst Atlanta youth.

Uneasy Bedfellows

The members of Supreeme were first introduced to me as friends of a friend. We met in Terrell's basement, the winter after Syllabus I came out. I was an impressionable high school junior, transfixed by the charm of three older boys; they were bawdy, egotistical ingénues, interested only in performance, self-promotion, and girls. Sitting on the basement floor and watching them rehearse for a show at a local club, I was completely taken by the energy of their performance. As a complete stranger to hip hop, I could not say that they were great rappers or that the door to the genre had been opened for me. But in that initial meeting, I fell in love with Supreeme.

In the time since meeting them, I have spent countless hours witnessing and sometimes playing a part in their lives. As far as eyes can tell, Supreeme's time is spent cruising around in cars, walking the cracked sidewalks of Atlanta, talking about nonsense, talking about nonsense in patois, watching mindless TV on someone's couch, and smoking pot under the benevolent nose of the Terrell parents. They are fun, unreliable, and unpredictable - typical for people caught in the transition between boyhood and manhood. But when it comes to music, they regard it with a seriousness unseen in their attitudes toward anything else.

It is to Supreeme's credit that they have never come across as a run-of-the-mill high school band. Supreeme have validated themselves as serious artists by arranging their lives around making music. The ultimate validation came the summer of this year when they were signed by Record Collection Music, the same label that carries Hot Hot Heat, John Frusciante, and Simon Dawes.

When asked what he thought set Supreeme apart, Shaka replied, "Ever since I was thirteen, I took myself very seriously. Ever since I was fourteen, I thought I should be on the radio. Nobody is as serious as we were. In high school, we were never joking around."

Negashi, expounded on this, saying, "We were always good. We were always better than everybody. With the availability of studio equipment at cheap prices, anybody can make music. But we had talent. It wasn't a hobby to us."

But Supreeme do not view their success in an accurate light. In a market as hypersaturated as hip-hop, talent and drive alone hardly ensure success. Much of Supreeme's force stems from the efforts of the people around them. Supreeme demand and receive an orbit of attention from friends and acquaintances who want to see them succeed. When they performed in Atlanta, half of Grady High School was there, wearing their t-shirts, handing out stickers, and cheering them on. Their momentum picked up through word of mouth. Gradually, kids from other Atlanta public schools were playing their CDs and saying, "Hey, have you heard of this band from Grady?"

The importance of the band's presence and personality are not to be underestimated. The rapport between Shaka, Negashi, and Sam has the power to fill a room, be they bickering, joking, or performing. After each show, a few people (mainly girls) always approach them. Sometimes it is to ask about their music, but often the fans want something more — an autograph, a hug, or an email address. Supreeme's success is clearly a product of their charm, charisma, and powers of persuasion.

I told Sam once that I liked Syllabus I best. Sam's reply was, "Yeah, a lot of moms like that one the best too." He meant it sincerely; he was not trying to show me up. But I get the feeling that Supreeme, although proud of the album, have moved past it. Shaka calls it, "an experiment, the first time we created our own unique sound." Negashi describes the album as something which "captured the innocence and joys of youth," expresses the "essence of an exact place and time," and is essentially the product of three "dumb kids."

As such, it is their most honest work. They are not underprivileged; they do not relate the story of making it out of the hood by any means possible. But Supreeme's members are children of the city, and they are able to talk about it with sincerity and authenticity. Many of Syllabus I's songs touch on being young, being male, making music, growing up, and mucking about in the Atlanta heat. It should be of no surprise that their friends identify most with this album.

Dope Pope, King Self And Negashi Armada

The next serious follow-up to Syllabus I is Church and State. Syllabus I has obvious reggae and OutKast influences. It was founded on the music that they listened to in high school. Church and State is more outlandish, sampling from flamenco, jazz, and even Frank Sinatra. Musically, they shifted away from traditionally hip hop friendly sounds, and tried to create a splashier, more extravagant feel.

The problem with Church and State is that it lost the honesty that was so precious and unique in Syllabus I. Here, Supreeme portray themselves as international bachelors. They rap about "fine foreign wenches," expensive wines, and escapades around the globe. In explanation as to why their music went from focusing on Atlanta to mentioning Tokyo, Paris, Milan, and Cairo, places where none of the members have ever visited, Shaka said, "We don't want to be local, you know? We want to be universal, global."

And as their content veers away from their own lives, they have invented rap personas. Shaka is "Dope Pope," Sam is "King Self," and Negashi is "Negashi Armada." When asked who Negashi Armada is, Negashi replied, "Basically, he is glamorous, aggressive, militant, all sorts of things. He might be capable of being the best rapper in the world someday." In this statement, I had a hard time finding my friend who loves Batman comic books and often performs in hot pink gym shorts because he thinks they're funny.

Explaining the new directions and the invention of the personas, Shaka said, "We are entertainers. We came up with these characters that aren't necessarily fake. The personality overtakes the person. The rapper is supposed to live out the music, make the music reflect their lives. You have to make the music grandiose and then you feel that way."

Though his logic and grammar are somewhat convoluted, I vaguely understood what he meant. The members of Supreeme have an aggressive optimism and earnest devotion that are unmatched. They fought and negotiated diligently for their record deal. College, internships, joblessness, and at times homelessness, have separated them—but all members have banded together for the music. They have used their talent, their energy, and any connections they have to further themselves in the climb up.

In their eyes, their music is not dishonest, because Supreeme are doing exactly what they want to do. It did not matter that Supreeme were sleeping on the floor of my dorm room because, according to Sam, "The record label gave us almost enough money to stay at a hotel every night. But, you know, we save where we can." They get to earn a living by making music, traveling, and performing. They exceeded everyone's expectations of them.

Sweet Home Atlanta

They are not Jay-Z; there are no mansions, gold chains, or fine wines. But as Supreeme sees it, they have already won and are continually winning. Negashi says, "Supreeme is an abstraction of me. We don't make regular guy rap. I am so proud. I don't want to hear about some regular woes and regular lives and shit. I'm living good, extravagant, stylish, and shit. Maybe not financially right now. But really, life is good."

I asked them where they plan to go from here. Shaka said, "From here to the top. Exotic wives, a really nice bird collection. Birds from all over the world. Really nice cribs in four different world cities. Beautiful wife, beautiful kids. Buy beautiful art to put on my beautiful walls."

Negashi said that as they continue to perform, their stage show will include, "Laser beams and animals onstage. And a bathtub. I'll be taking a bath - a bubble bath. With a girl next to me and drinking champagne."

I take this to mean that the boys of Supreeme are still the silly friends from home and that the present is so overwhelming that the future is not a serious consideration. As Sam said, "We are exactly where we need to be. We've got a good start and we're on the right path."

After the tour, Sam plans to spend the next two months in England and Scotland, where he has family. Shaka is going to move to Houston and possibly Los Angeles. Negashi hopes to move to New York and work for American Apparel, not for the money, but because "the women who shop there are fine." After the sabbatical, they will go on another tour and continue their music careers. None of them are returning to Atlanta anytime soon.

Most of the people who were part of my life in Atlanta have left, usually for college, or in Supreeme's case, in search of fame and fortune. The Atlanta that I knew no longer exists in reality, but rather in anecdotes and in memory. If I ever get homesick, I can rest assured in the knowledge that familiar streets are no longer dotted with the smiling faces of my friends. And in the future, when I long for Negashi, Shaka, and Sam, as I undoubtedly will, it will not be for who they are at the moment that I am missing them, but for who they were in a past, albeit not-too-distant, lifetime.

The morning after the show, I helped them move their bags into the van. We hugged and kissed and promised to stay in touch. They climbed into the car, and I walked in the opposite direction. I was determined not to watch them drive off into the distance—there is definitely such thing as too much melodrama and too much romanticism. But, to my chagrin, the van turned the corner and drove in front of me, then past me. I was forced to wave goodbye to my friends and watch them disappear into the horizon.

SHAWN WEN B'09 is fond of overthinking and ambivalence.

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