All Out with Fratpack

It’s only a matter of time before Fratpack is one of the first groups that come to mind when you think of
good hip hop. That’s if they already aren’t. We hooked up with the brothers from the Vaal, Mr Calibre
and Me, who both just happened to be rocking the same pair of Nike Air Max 1’s on the day. They
hooked us up with their mixtape, Not In The Mixtape, needless to say we had to find
out more about them so read on.

CM: Not in the mixtape, that’s a very interesting name for a mixtape, care to elaborate?
Mr Calibre: We started off calling it ‘Leak Season’ because we just leaking songs every Wednesday,
which we still do. We were putting out so many songs, not random all with a nice train of thought. We
still gonna call it Leak Season but a more known artist starting putting out songs on a Saturday so we
couldn’t use the leak name anymore. Then we didn’t really have a title for it, we looked at our situation,
we’re not super established and we’re also not bedroom rappers. We are not in the in-crowd, we not
the guys at Rand Lords sipping on Patron. We are just us, we put a title that was on a play on ‘not in the
crowd’ so we are not in the mix, so we are not in the mixtape.
Me: We not the guys buying Loius Vitton at Carlton Centre

CM: The intro to be interesting, and it could be an eye opener to many people.
ME: It should be an eye opener, I hope people listen to it and pay attention to it. The voice on there is
dropping a lot of science as far as the music business the way we have it right now. The voice there is
Young Guru, Jay-Z’s engineer.

CM: How do you plan on promoting the album and do you have a distribution strategy?
Mr Calibre: Distribution is our main focus right now. We think we have the artistry done; we’ve got
the hang of it. The machine we are trying to work at now is the promotion machine, the distribution
machine. We gonna be looking at independent stores such as Ritual, Munks Concept Stores and you can
also get it from us as well. We also looking at the net
Me: Unfortunately the net is not as big in South Africa as it is overseas which is wack, because on the
net we could give it out for free. Now we have to print copies so we have to charge a fee, it’s R30. We want people to listen to the music, if we could we could get people to give us disks and
we could put the music on there for them but it’s too much admin. Plus we could make it look better if we
printed it ourselves.

CM: You could push your sound cloud page further.
Me: Yeah, I was gonna push that but we also working on a Bandcamp page which we will only talk about
when it’s done and looks good. Sound Cloud is cool because I can put waves on Facebook and you can
just play it, you don’t have to go somewhere. Check it out at www.soundcloud.com/fratpack.

CM: There is a lot of hate with regards to hip hop currently, what do y’all love about it?

Mr Calibre: For me it’s the most expressive art form in music, literally. With all the words that you say
that you putting out in your verses, you can say so much. You can put your whole life in your music.
There is a line by a rapper that I love m Joe Button, “in few bars 25 years get packed in” so in a few bars
you can narrate your whole life though hip hop and Kwaito is not very lyrical.

ME: I’m not gonna hate on Kwaito because it has artists like Tokollo from Tkzee, Brown Dash was very
dope when he came out; Bricks was very dope when he came out. Sweety my Baby is still my ish right
now. And and im not hating Kwaito because hip hop right now, we can complain about the same thing
with Kwaito, its very repetitive. It’s like 16 bars of saying the same thing, an album saying the same
thing. With hip hop you can do anything, and that’s whats wrong with hip hop now, people don’t feel
like they can do anything, people feel like there is a ‘how to’ manual to hip hop.

CM: What exactly is a Blue Chip Cool Kid?

Mr Calibre: That’s me, that’s what explains me. A blue Chip Cool Kid is a person that takes care of
themselves physically and doesn’t have that rugged look and when you tap into their mental they’ve got
a lot to say and they are in tune with what’s around them. What wrong with the new generation is that
sadly the majority of them talk about being fresh. What I’m trying to say is that there is nothing wrong
with being fresh, just be smart and have some substance while being fresh. That’s exactly what a Blue
Chip Cool kid is, a fly person with substance.

CM: What was the best hip hop album of 2010, locally and internationally?

Mr Calibre: Im just gonna say Whole Worlds because that’s what I was bumping in 2010. Also the Ill
Skills project was not bad, the 24hrs project. Internationally, ill call it an album because I don’t think it’s
a mixtape – Mood Music 4 by Joe Budden, that was it for me. Tacklebox was also quiet dope, by The
Cool Kid.

ME: Whole Worlds for me, Tumi held it down proper. Lyrically Mood Music 4 was it for me lyrically but
I’m not sure beats wise. For me a cross between beats and vibe, Kid Cudi, Man on the Moon. But I’m
sticking with Mood Music 4.

To get in touch with Fratpack, search for Fratpack All Out on FB, and on twitter @MrCalibre and
@Fratpackmusic. Look out for the Frwednesday releases on soundcloud/fratpack and also visit