Brooklyn's BS Delivers His Best

Don’t drop the camera. That’s all that was going through Brooklyn hip-hop artist BS’ mind last year when award winning photojournalist Dan Chung handed him a brand new Nikon D800, set it to record, and told him to start rhyming. They were at the famed New York City graffiti spot 5 Pointz, and BS was with beatboxers Grey Matter and Spencer Beatbox, and singers Dan Cary and Cocoa Sarai.

The three and a half minutes of having to hold the camera at arm’s length started to get to BS, who remembers, “There was one point where you can see me kinda sag and dip, and I rap about my arms being really weak, or having tiny arms. I felt like I was gonna drop the camera. (I was thinking) Oh my God, this camera is worth more than I have. It’s not even out yet. Don’t drop it. Don’t drop it. Don’t drop it. WRAP!”

This is BS, the person, and it’s someone he feels is finally starting to be represented in his work, most notably with his recently released EP, a collaborative effort with producer Good Goose titled The Best of Brooklyn’s BS. “I think I figured out how to channel myself as a human being a lot more into my music,” he explains, “and to not really think twice about it.” BS continued, adding, “Now it’s letting that personal, and that human, element out to run rampant, and then kind of dial it back, instead of thinking about how far to let it go before trying to let it out.”

Another recent change for BS has been the inclusion of electronic music elements in his work. “A lot of this is definitely Goose’s influence,” he says of the electronic music additions, “but a lot of it is also just what people are responding to. People dig it. I dig it. It’s fun to be able to do cool rappy things, but also have people dance and bounce around, and not feel like you’re compromising anything.”

BS started gauging people’s reactions to his work with Good Goose in January of this year when the two released a new song every Tuesday for the entire month. After all was said and done, the folks at Act Live Music liked what they heard so much that they offered to put it all together as a downloadable EP, which became The Best of Brooklyn’s BS.

For BS, the frantic, yet personal, release, which was made available at the beginning of February, is part of a personal evolution. He notes that some of his previous work, such as his collaborations with Kamikaze Picnic, were in character. “You’d have, I guess, craft elements of me coming through, but me projecting that through a lens of this different character, and this fictitious world.” He adds that his work with Albert Rhymestein as the duo Dollar Coffee is something he’s still “definitely proud of,” but he’s quick to note “if you listen to that, and you listen to something like this (The Best of Brooklyn’s BS) EP, I feel like you’re almost dealing with two different people.”

In addition to The Best of Brooklyn’s BS, BS recently released the single “Douchebag Aviators,” which was featured on the front page of the iTunes store the week it came out, and he’s in the process of getting his own Vevo channel.

With all that going on the next logical step for BS would be to release a full length album, but he’s not about to rush anything. He gives only the vaguest of potential release dates for such a project, saying he’ll release a full length album “when the people demand it.”

In the meantime he’ll be continuing to record, so as to make sure when the demand is high enough he’ll once again be ready to deliver nothing but his best.


Interview originally ran on Arena.com.