St. Paul, Minnesota's The Stand4rd (Allan Kingdom, Bobby Raps, Psymun and Spooky Raps) right after their sold out show Saturday night at the Amsterdam Bar.
It's starting to get closer to winter's song in the Twin Cities, with the fall temperatures dropping more each day into the lower 30s, but that didn't stop an all-ages crowd on Saturday night from lining up outside of downtown St. Paul's Amsterdam Bar to see the first show from the highly anticipated St. Paul boy group The Stand4rd.
The group is made up of 4 members including the homie Bobby Raps (Rapper, Producer), Allan Kingdom (Rapper, Singer) Psymun (Producer) and the biggest internet teen sensation of 2014: Spooky Black.
Spooky Black's famous introduction video "Without You," was released in February and struck a lightning bolt on Twitter feeds collectively inspiring the members of the Stard4rd to unify their individual sounds and join forces with a full length album released today.
Last Thursday evening, after attending the Fine Line Music Cafe's sold-out show for Australian singer Kimbra (which was awesome by the way), I was invited down to the Shock and Audio studio with a few friends for a late-night private listening party by The Stand4rd's manager world-known producer Doc Mckinney. After hearing a few tracks, I took a look at Psymun and Bobby Raps who proudly sat in front of the mixing board, nodding their heads and shifting around in their rolling chairs to the beats they produced as if they were in agreement that "this is it!"
Both guys in their early 20s, were humbly interested in knowing everyone in the room's honest opinion. Especially with all of the hype lately built around the criticism of Spooky Black's name (some feel it's racially offensive) along with his FUBU apparel, gold chain and durags; many have blocked their ears and eyes due to whether the 16 year old kid and his group members should be taken serious as artists or not. They had me and my homegirl singing and dancing as soon as we heard the catchy hook of one of their songs "Pretty."
I was able to chat with manager Doc Mckinney who has a connection with the group of young guys not only through music, but is also an alumni of St. Paul's Central High School, the same school Bobby, Psymun and Allan graduated from and where Spooky currently attends. I have worked with Mckinney and consider him one of the most talented people I know (not being biased), but honestly in my opinion Doc has created two of the best R&B albums of the past five years House of Balloons and Thursday; introducing the world to the Toronto based artist The Weeknd. Mckinney has had an amazing year with receiving two Grammys for his work on both Drake's and John Legend's most recent albums. When I asked Doc (who wears the hat of not only management, but serves as an influential mentor to the group) about how he feels regarding the critics and local comments expressed in recent articles regarding the Stand4rd's talent he answered, "Look, people are always going to have something to say. Sometimes it's positive, sometimes negative, and you know that...especially in this business, but these kids are working at an industry level and are good at what they do! They're a young collective with a new sound with a member who's already a star before his first show."
Spooky was the first one out of the group to take the stage on Saturday night. His voice highlighted smiles and cheers from the packed crowd of under aged kids with X-marked hands and their cell phones recording every note while they recited every lyric he sang. I must say that as the set climaxed, the impacting sultry voices by Spooky, Allan and the well-put flows from Bobby Raps turnt up the Amsterdam making kids jumping around like they were inside the Mall of America's old Snoopy Jumping Bounce House.
