When the founders of Fubu, the World’s most successful contemporary clothing line, announced that they were entering into the music business, they sent a seismic wave throughout the entertainment industry. The waves turned into a full fledge earthquake when the native New Yorkers announced that their flagship act would be a four-man unit from New Orleans called 54th Platoon.

Named after the famed 54th Platoon of Massachusetts, Big Nut, JS, TI and Nu Black are definitely not your typical N.O. rap group. For starters, like Mystikal, these boys don’t bounce, nor do they chant or sing. What they do is spit hot lyrics over blazing tracks.

We recently took a trip down to the Big Easy to see just what these boy had and let me tell you, the 54th Platoon not only won me, but they also manage to win a handful of seasoned hip hop critics from nowhere else but Nu Yawk City.

Down-South: OK, let’s start out by talking about your background. You guys are from New Orleans’ infamous 9th Ward. Now everybody knows about the 3rd Ward thanks to Master P and Cash Money, but few fans outside of the N.O. know anything about the 9th Ward. For the benefit of the readers tells us about your section of town? What was it like growing up there?

Nu Black: Aw man, it was a beautiful experience even though it had its little killings and whatnot, we were children. We were oblivious to it almost. We’d walk around the corner and catch a little body or whatnot and you’d see everybody gathered around and you’d hear something, ya know. You’re a kid [and] that don’t really register with you, you’re just out there having fun.

T.L.: Yeah, we’re just kids out there enjoying life. Even though it was dangerous, we had good parents that taught us right from wrong and let us know the consequences to all our actions.

Big Nut: It was a good community outside of bad stereotypes.

Down-South: I would guess that you guy came up in New Orleans during the late 80s, early 90s, which when New Orleans underwent the transition from just a tourist city to a murder capital. How did that affect the way you all did you all’s music?

Big Nut: To me music has always been there for us. We heard music everyday in the household. We were involved in that. You know how parents would call you out and say come dance for ya mama, while everybody was in the back or the front of the house doing they thang. So it like carried over into today and it still like thing. Ya know we black people everything is about rhythm for us. That progress over into the hip hop thang today.

Down-South: Tell me about your first experiences with hip hop?

JS: My first experience with hip hop is pretty much the same as yours or anybody else. I mean it brings me back to my family and it brings back memories of my family and friends. It brings back memories of a dear family member. My first experience hearing hip hop was with my uncle playing an old Schoolly D tape and playing Ice T for me. That led to everything. From that came NWA and Rakim and LL and all that. It just all branched of from that. And it’s always been down here, we’ve always had [hip hop] culture down here. We just didn’t have the outside exposure. Nobody never came here to see this side of New Orleans hip hop. With our opportunity to bring our music elsewhere that’s all we’re trying to do. We’re just trying to get it out there.

T.L.: Good music has always been here, always. This is where Maze & Frankie Beverly got popular.

Big Nut: Yeah, Fankie Beverly, Anita Baker…they all have been here. They still come to New Orleans and do they thing. Tina Marie always comes down here. You know one thing about the South is we have old souls, ya know what I’m saying. We young at age, but we old at heart.

Down-South: You all grew up together like family….

Nu Black: We are family, we cousins.

Down-South: So when did you all start rhyming?

Nu Black: It started in 1998. I’d say it was a blessing because back before then to take on the brunt of all that getting that music pressure and getting’ ya stuff out there and gaining the respect. These two Nut and JS, they took on all that as Face Forever. When they brought us in they created the 54th and it was just this whole new creative level brought to the group. T.L. was at every single one of they shows when they was doing shows. They never let me go because I was too young. They didn’t want me out there. I ain’t gone beef with nobody ‘bout that cause it’s too late right now. That was about seven or eight years ago, ya feel me. I was doing my thing. I was writing. And J.S. came and took me under his wings and Black was like my lil’ cousin can spit ya know. And it was beautiful. It just clicked. Right there in Nut’s living room we just did beat and stared rhyming and doing freestyles and coming off the head. Many people can write, but they can’t freestyle. Many freestylers can’t

Down-South: Let’s talk about you all’s name. When I think of the name 54th Platoon, I immediately think of the historic 54th Platoon who were immortalized in the movie Glory. Who is the history buff?

Nu Black: That was me, Nu Black.

Big Nut: That was all of us….

Nu Black: Alright, me and my cousin Anthony we had a group called the 9th Ward Kings back n the day. And we took that name from the actual group of men, the 54th Massachusetts. They represented us in the Civil War as far as the Blacks go. They were thrown in like straight chimpanzees to lions to die, yet they came out victorious every time. And that’s the way we feel we are down here. As far as our hip hop realm down here in New Orleans it’s not much as far as the real spitters go except for your Cash Monies and your Master Ps, it’s mostly bounce music down here. There’s no real spitters out here and we represent that. We feel like we are destine to come out victorious even if we don’t go platinum or gold this rip. As long as we’ve touch, we’ve reach a few more people that’s platinum and gold in our hearts and that’s good enough to us.

Down-South: In listening to your music, I can definitely feel a love for rap music. You can tell that you guys are doing this not just to sell records but to…..

JS: Paint a picture.

Down-South: Exactly. A lotta people when they think of New Orleans they automatically think of bounce music and no disrespect to bounce music because I do love it to the utmost.

JS: Yeah, we do too. We like some of it.

Down-South: But you guys come from a long line of N.O. MCs that starts with rappers like MC Thick, Tim Smooth and Bustdown.

JS: Yeah, yeah, I see you know you New Orleans’s hip hop history. You remember joints like “Pass the Snake,” “It’s A West Bank Thang” and all that?

T.L.: Speaking of those MCs, I’m glad that you mentioned them because we are [an extension] of those people. We feel like we represent the New Orleans that didn’t get that chance because bounce music just overshadowed it.

JS: Yeah, Tim Smooth was one of the coldest in the game.

T.L: And that’s the people that we wanna represent and send shout outs to those MCs who went before us. Much love to ‘em…much love to ‘em. 

Down-South: How did you hook up with Fubu Entertainment?

Big Nut: Number one God, he di it for us. It was back then through all the trials and tribulations we were able to get with somebody that helped us establish our own company called Fearless Entertainment. And through that we was throwing parties and we were able to put out two underground albums that did alright in the streets. And a friend of Carl (one of the four owners of Fubu) got our tape to Carl and he like what he heard so he came down to one of our parties because we never got radio play. This our first radio cut ever. We’ve always been underground. But like I said a friend of Carl’s got our tape to Carl and he came to one of our parties and saw how we ran the party and then we got on stage and performed. Once he saw that energy it was like a marriage from then on.

Down-South: When we were riding around on the tour bus and yall were playing the mix tape I was really impressed with yall lyrical ability. Yall were dropping hot lyrics over some classic beats and showed me that you cats can really spit. I actually thought that I was listening to the album until Nut told me it was just a mix tape. By the way, good looking out to Nut and Cindy for a copy of that mix tape. Tell us about this album, what can we expect?

Nu Black: the album has got thirteen tracks on there. It’s called all or nothing and it’ll be out in January. We gotta a lotta producers on there too. We got N.O., Ty Fife, Joe, we got Epitome, We got Craig Love, we can’t forget about little Jon, Mannie Fresh. We got a whole lotta good producers on this album.

T.L: But the thing about this album, see, like when we got on that mix tape we just got in the booth and we spit. But on this album we put a album where we gone give you a feeling for every day of the week. If you pissed off, we gone give you a song for that, if you thinking about your girl, we got a song for that. If you wanna party we got that covered too. We really painted a picture on this album. It’s well-rounded. I know that everybody say that, but I’m gonna be real, I’d rather you listen to the album and you tell me because the album in my eyes it’s a well-rounded album. When we was in the process of putting together this album we sat down and we looked at what we had and okay we got this now what don’t we have right now. Okay we need a song touching on something a little bit more calm. Let’s do that. Okay now we got enough calm stuff now we need something a little more party-oriented. Like wh

Big Nut: But we still stayed within our element.

Nu Black: And if you’ll notice, we don’t have too many feature artists on our album.

T.L.: Naw, we stayed away from that.

Nu Black: We didn’t wanna stand on nobody’s shoulders. We got Eightball, Jazze Pha … We got Nicole Raye on there and we got Lil’ Jon. We mostly keep it us because we don’t wanna stand on nobody’s shoulders.

T.L.: In fact the only rapper that we have on there is Eightball. We don’t have no more rappers. Because we wanna give yall our hearts.

Down-South: That’s good because that means that you all will have to stand on you all’s own merit.

T.L.: Right.

Nu Black: Yeah, because when we make it we don’t want nobody saying that they made us. If anything the 54th….the lord made us because he put us together. My cousins here…if you cut anyone of them you’ll get the same blood that you’ll get outta me –I’m gonna hurt ya if ya do.

T.L.: And we’re more than capable of doing it. (laughs)

Down-South: Okay, let’s talk about you all’s underground past because you all have a very serious history with New Orleans underground.

Big Nut: You know it’s funny that at the time when you were mentioning Time Smooth and MC Thick and all of those names you mentioned because when they were putting out albums we was still putting out albums at the time. We were Face Forever then. It’s like we done came and seen a lotta people before us blow up and we still stayed humble enough to maintain our position in the game, because even during that time we were still against the grain. We were Face Forever dropping raw on Redrum Records. We been around when P came along and did “Bout It, Bout it,” and scooped Mystakal and Fiend up. We were there during all of that.

Down-South: So you guys are some veterans in the N.O. rap game?

Big Nut: Yeah, and that’s why this makes the marriage between Fubu so great because they started out with four. They have four members and we four members. Four is a foundation. They went through their trials and tribulations and we went through the the same trials and tribulations and we still going through ‘em. But it don’t stop. We love wht we do because we know it’s a gift. It’s a gift for us to put together a whole family tree. We got two generations right here. Everyday, I watch my little cousins grow as MCs and as men. I respect them as MCs and I respect them as men.

Down-South: Earlier you all talked about your album painting a picture, what kinda of picture do you want your audience to see after listening to this record?

JS: I think that the overall picture would be the music history of it all as far as the different levels that we can take you through, as far where we go lyrically. We can make the ordinary seem fantastic. We just paint that picture to make everyday life and everyday struggles seem worth it. You gotta give something back in terms of giving something to teach. We gotta reach everybody and change what we don’t like about where we at, the lives we’re living or the world we’re living in. It’s too much craziness going on right now. And life can change in a day. And we all have to be aware of that and can’t that for granted. Yet and still you don’t wanna be depressing so you gotta make the best of what ever you get.

by: Charlie Braxton © Down-South.com