Black Truth News: Can you take a second to tell the people who you are?
Newsense: My name is Carin. I go by the name of Phoenix, formerly known as Newsense of the infamous underground rap group from Chicago Psycho Drama. I’m here at the ITC Salon supporting my man T- Hyphen, and my girl Kim Sermon and this wonderful organization. I’m supporting what they have trying to bring mentors together; you can literally teach children on how to be functional citizens; and I think that’s a good target market because a lot of our non for profit organizations aren’t really targeting the individual, so I think this is a very wonderful event.
Black Truth News: I was talking to Cold Hard from Crucial Conflict the other day and I was asking him how difficult it was to be successful from a non-hip hop city. Can you explain to me how difficult the journey was for you guys coming out of Chicago? Also how rewarding was it for you guys to succeed in Chicago?
Newsense: You know what? It wasn’t difficult at all, and I think it was probably because we weren’t hip hop, and I have to make sure I am clear with that in every interview. Psycho Drama was more of what you call rappers, like hip hop is a culture and I didn’t understand the culture. I wasn’t reading I wasn’t breaking, tagging or DJing; all the things that entails the culture. The elements of hip hop I wasn’t doing that.
We were rappers, but what made us different is that we represented the soul of the city, we were unafraid to tell our story, and we told it in a very rhythmic way that sounded good; the combination of these two guys and this one girl. The element that we had was more so of a god sent and I believe the reason we reign so hard when we came out, is because it was just different. People like stuff different, we like things that can attract us.
Chicago is more of a soul type of city; from the Chaka Khans to everybody who come from here. I think what happened to change the culture once we got our deal; Crucial got their deal also, and people start thinking the cool thing to do was to go somewhere else and get a deal. I didn’t take the deal that Buc and Psyde took with Suave House, I didn’t take the deal because I didn’t see the need to leave home when we had all these powerful resources at our hands, and I bid them well with Suave House, and I still recorded with them when they was on Suave House, but I just didn’t take that deal because I didn’t see the point. The way we blew up was from the streets; the streets talk in Chicago.