Sha Stimuli On His Career & A Planned Return To Rap
Sha Stimuli details his history in hip-hop and the behind-the-scenes developments that carried his career forward more than 20 years after his first time in the booth.
More than two decades into an on-and-off career in hip-hop, Sha Stimuli sounds flattered to simply be talking about himself. The Brooklyn emcee began making music as a child in the early '90s with his brother, producer Lord Digga, and later embarked on a professional career that slowly gained steam throughout the 2000s (Lord Digga, who is a rapper himself as well, was a MEMBER
of the group Masta Ace Incorporated and later produced three songs on The Notorious B.I.G.'s Ready To Die as half of the duo The Bluez Brothers).
Speaking with Arena, Sha reflects on his trajectory in music, from his first experience in the booth earning him a feature on Masta Ace's album in 1993 to his time interning for a then-nascent Roc-A-Fella label while he was in college. His career milestones are marked by behind-the-scenes maneuvers and near-breakout moments, and throughout the early 2000s he jumped through old-industry hoops to SECURE
a deal for himself at Virgin Records. His big break never came, and after sitting in major label purgatory for two years, Stimuli watched the industry begin to devolve into an Internet-based free-for-fall before releasing a mixtape a month in 2008, a hint at his own second wind.
Not long ago, he was INVITED
to record a verse on 106 & Park's The Backroom, and the clip was released just weeks before an announcement that the show was set to end its run. For fans, the nearly five-minute performance was quick proof that Sha has more to offer, and while he doesn't sound exactly set on what's next, it's hard to imagine him STEPPING
away from the mic.
Arena: One of the releases I was most excited about last year came from a small hip-hop LABEL
in France. They released what was previously unreleased Masta Ace material recorded in 1992. One of the tracks, called "Hell Up In Harlem," features a young emcee by the name Kid Dynamite. I'm not sure if you were aware that the record was released. Can you explain how you came to record with Masta Ace in the early '90s?
Sha Stimuli: (Laughs) Wow. I had no idea. "Hell Up In Harlem," I was a little kid. My brother, Lord Digga, went to high-school with Masta Ace. My brother used to bring me around all the time, anytime they would go into the studio, little things like that. Ace knew I was writing raps. I guess he heard me rhyme here and there so he just wanted to get me on a song. I don't even know if he remembers that I was on more than one record.
He picked me up from middle school and brought me to the studio. That was like one of the most exciting days of my childhood. He was out here last month and I told him about it, he was like, "Man, I don't even remember that." Yeah, that was my first time in the booth. I was really excited. We did "Hell Up In Harlem," I was on the "Movin' On" remix I think. And then I was on the Slaughtahouse album.
Arena: What were you hoping to achieve with hip-hop at that point? Did you realize music as a possible career even then?
Sha Stimuli: I just wanted to get better. It wasn't like it is now where everybody raps. At that age, to be able to be around guys that had chosen hip-hop as their careers, you're seeing it live, it became a reality for me. My thing was to get better and hopefully challenge Kriss Kross and whoever was doing it at the time (laughs).
Arena: You mentioned your brother Lord Digga, it sounds like he was responsible for bringing you into the industry at an early age.
Sha Stimuli: Yeah, he was bringing me around. We were kind of in the house experimenting with rap together. He had just kind of started doing beats and he started rhyming. We were 10 years apart, but I was doing the same thing. We were both kind of novice. When Ace brought him around, I would just ask to come to the studio. I think I was kind of [helpful] to what he was doing. I would find SAMPLES
. We would talk about music all the time. He knew that I had a good ear and understood certain things. When he first started doing beats he would play the beats or he would play something in his room, I'd come in there like, "Yo, what's that?" I was real inquisitive.
I gotta say, looking outside of myself, I was a cool kid. I wasn't annoying. It wasn't anything for him to bring me to the studio. My mother wasn't tripping about it as long as I went to school the next day. So when I was at video shoots or in the studio late, as long as I got up and went to school she was alright with it. Me just being around, sitting there quietly, waiting for them to speak to me, I didn't speak to anybody out of turn.
Arena: A few years after that initial verse on Masta Ace's record, you ENTERED
the hip-hop industry from a different angle and interned at Roc-A-Fella. I'm not sure if that was off the strength of your brother's connections as well. What was that experience like?
Sha Stimuli: That was great. It actually had nothing to do with my brother. I went to college with Jay Z's cousin, it was a girl I was seeing. She was somehow related to Jay. I would go to her room, me and my rap partner at the time, and she would have all these Jay Z posters up. She would have things before [they were released]. BACK
then it was kind of tough to get your hands on stuff so I when I see her with Roc-A-Fella t-shirtsβand this was '96βI was like, "What's going on? How is this happening?" She had all the stuff. I was trying to find out what was up. She thought I was trying to get my demo to Roc-A-Fella. I was like, "Nah, I want a job."
When I walked in there, they were like, "This is not really for college kids, this is more for high-school interns. We can't really pay you but like $50 a week." I was like, "That's fine. I'll do it." From there, just being in the office, calling REQUEST
lines, learning the business, it was hands on. Seeing the label start from the beginning, it was small. The biggest thing was that everybody believed. Everybody believed in this guy.
My run-ins with Jay were interesting. (Laughs) He was the same Jay. He wasn't really cool with people he didn't know, so he [would] definitely treat you like nothing until he got to know you. (Laughs) That was interesting but it didn't take anything away. I still got a chance to learn.
When school came back around, I actually wanted to quit school, but Chaka Pilgrim, who was very instrumental and works with Roc Nation to this day, she wouldn't let me quit school. She was like, "Use this as a backup and join the street-team. Join the street-team." Trying to be the best street-teamer ever, that's when me and Lenny S kind of got cool and that SET
up the rest of my life actually.
Arena: So, quite a few years later you LINKED
up with Virgin Records. The industry was at such a different point when you signed than it was when you were interning for Roc-A-Fella. How did the Virgin Records deal come about?
Sha Stimuli: It was a lot of hard work. It was about three years of internal work where I just kind of went into a shell. Some of my boys, we used to get together in Jersey. One of my producers had an apartment in Jersey so I would take the Greyhound every weekend and we would just record. I'd work on my craft, rhyme out loud, and just try to get better and find my place in the game. Sometimes we talk about those days and if we had a camera setup in today's world, we'd have a million views of us just being young and rhyming and having fun. For me, that was like my bootcamp, years and years working on something and figuring out what I wanted to say. It was about 2002 that I decided I wanted people to hear what we were doing and when I STARTED
to jump on the mixtape circuit.
I didn't have a JOB
all that time. A lot of that frustration with not having money and making struggle rap, it came out in the music. One of the first people I went to was Lenny S. Every year I would probably come to him and say, "Hey, let me show you something and let me know if I should get a job or if I should keep going." 2002, I think, is when his eyebrow kind of raised. He was kind of like, "This is pretty alright." I saw a little difference. He didn't just see me as Sha the intern.
My first mixtape, Let Me Show You The Way, it was a lot of freestyles. It was kind of like my first album to me because it was all the rhymes that I had written in school. A lot of the rhymes were just sitting around. I had so much to say. I think he listened to it one day and called me. This is the guy I interned for BACK
in '97, it was 2002, 2003 then. He said he was on a plane with G Roberson and he was like, "I'm playing stuff and we just keep listening to the whole thing." He was like, "Do you have more of this?" I was floored. "Yeah." He's like, "Come to my office."
From there things started to move. I had Joe Budden's crew interested, we had meetings with them. Got paperwork from Desert Storm. All of these production crews were kind of looking at us but no majorLABELS
. People just wanted to sign me off of the mixtape and this freestyle CD I did with like 6 freestyles on it.
Sha Stimuli details his history in hip-hop and the behind-the-scenes developments that carried his career forward more than 20 years after his first time in the booth.
More than two decades into an on-and-off career in hip-hop, Sha Stimuli sounds flattered to simply be talking about himself. The Brooklyn emcee began making music as a child in the early '90s with his brother, producer Lord Digga, and later embarked on a professional career that slowly gained steam throughout the 2000s (Lord Digga, who is a rapper himself as well, was a MEMBER
of the group Masta Ace Incorporated and later produced three songs on The Notorious B.I.G.'s Ready To Die as half of the duo The Bluez Brothers).Speaking with Arena, Sha reflects on his trajectory in music, from his first experience in the booth earning him a feature on Masta Ace's album in 1993 to his time interning for a then-nascent Roc-A-Fella label while he was in college. His career milestones are marked by behind-the-scenes maneuvers and near-breakout moments, and throughout the early 2000s he jumped through old-industry hoops to SECURE
a deal for himself at Virgin Records. His big break never came, and after sitting in major label purgatory for two years, Stimuli watched the industry begin to devolve into an Internet-based free-for-fall before releasing a mixtape a month in 2008, a hint at his own second wind.Not long ago, he was INVITED
to record a verse on 106 & Park's The Backroom, and the clip was released just weeks before an announcement that the show was set to end its run. For fans, the nearly five-minute performance was quick proof that Sha has more to offer, and while he doesn't sound exactly set on what's next, it's hard to imagine him STEPPING
away from the mic.Arena: One of the releases I was most excited about last year came from a small hip-hop LABEL
in France. They released what was previously unreleased Masta Ace material recorded in 1992. One of the tracks, called "Hell Up In Harlem," features a young emcee by the name Kid Dynamite. I'm not sure if you were aware that the record was released. Can you explain how you came to record with Masta Ace in the early '90s?Sha Stimuli: (Laughs) Wow. I had no idea. "Hell Up In Harlem," I was a little kid. My brother, Lord Digga, went to high-school with Masta Ace. My brother used to bring me around all the time, anytime they would go into the studio, little things like that. Ace knew I was writing raps. I guess he heard me rhyme here and there so he just wanted to get me on a song. I don't even know if he remembers that I was on more than one record.
He picked me up from middle school and brought me to the studio. That was like one of the most exciting days of my childhood. He was out here last month and I told him about it, he was like, "Man, I don't even remember that." Yeah, that was my first time in the booth. I was really excited. We did "Hell Up In Harlem," I was on the "Movin' On" remix I think. And then I was on the Slaughtahouse album.
Arena: What were you hoping to achieve with hip-hop at that point? Did you realize music as a possible career even then?
Sha Stimuli: I just wanted to get better. It wasn't like it is now where everybody raps. At that age, to be able to be around guys that had chosen hip-hop as their careers, you're seeing it live, it became a reality for me. My thing was to get better and hopefully challenge Kriss Kross and whoever was doing it at the time (laughs).
Arena: You mentioned your brother Lord Digga, it sounds like he was responsible for bringing you into the industry at an early age.
Sha Stimuli: Yeah, he was bringing me around. We were kind of in the house experimenting with rap together. He had just kind of started doing beats and he started rhyming. We were 10 years apart, but I was doing the same thing. We were both kind of novice. When Ace brought him around, I would just ask to come to the studio. I think I was kind of [helpful] to what he was doing. I would find SAMPLES
. We would talk about music all the time. He knew that I had a good ear and understood certain things. When he first started doing beats he would play the beats or he would play something in his room, I'd come in there like, "Yo, what's that?" I was real inquisitive.I gotta say, looking outside of myself, I was a cool kid. I wasn't annoying. It wasn't anything for him to bring me to the studio. My mother wasn't tripping about it as long as I went to school the next day. So when I was at video shoots or in the studio late, as long as I got up and went to school she was alright with it. Me just being around, sitting there quietly, waiting for them to speak to me, I didn't speak to anybody out of turn.
Arena: A few years after that initial verse on Masta Ace's record, you ENTERED
the hip-hop industry from a different angle and interned at Roc-A-Fella. I'm not sure if that was off the strength of your brother's connections as well. What was that experience like?Sha Stimuli: That was great. It actually had nothing to do with my brother. I went to college with Jay Z's cousin, it was a girl I was seeing. She was somehow related to Jay. I would go to her room, me and my rap partner at the time, and she would have all these Jay Z posters up. She would have things before [they were released]. BACK
then it was kind of tough to get your hands on stuff so I when I see her with Roc-A-Fella t-shirtsβand this was '96βI was like, "What's going on? How is this happening?" She had all the stuff. I was trying to find out what was up. She thought I was trying to get my demo to Roc-A-Fella. I was like, "Nah, I want a job."When I walked in there, they were like, "This is not really for college kids, this is more for high-school interns. We can't really pay you but like $50 a week." I was like, "That's fine. I'll do it." From there, just being in the office, calling REQUEST
lines, learning the business, it was hands on. Seeing the label start from the beginning, it was small. The biggest thing was that everybody believed. Everybody believed in this guy.My run-ins with Jay were interesting. (Laughs) He was the same Jay. He wasn't really cool with people he didn't know, so he [would] definitely treat you like nothing until he got to know you. (Laughs) That was interesting but it didn't take anything away. I still got a chance to learn.
When school came back around, I actually wanted to quit school, but Chaka Pilgrim, who was very instrumental and works with Roc Nation to this day, she wouldn't let me quit school. She was like, "Use this as a backup and join the street-team. Join the street-team." Trying to be the best street-teamer ever, that's when me and Lenny S kind of got cool and that SET
up the rest of my life actually.Arena: So, quite a few years later you LINKED
up with Virgin Records. The industry was at such a different point when you signed than it was when you were interning for Roc-A-Fella. How did the Virgin Records deal come about?Sha Stimuli: It was a lot of hard work. It was about three years of internal work where I just kind of went into a shell. Some of my boys, we used to get together in Jersey. One of my producers had an apartment in Jersey so I would take the Greyhound every weekend and we would just record. I'd work on my craft, rhyme out loud, and just try to get better and find my place in the game. Sometimes we talk about those days and if we had a camera setup in today's world, we'd have a million views of us just being young and rhyming and having fun. For me, that was like my bootcamp, years and years working on something and figuring out what I wanted to say. It was about 2002 that I decided I wanted people to hear what we were doing and when I STARTED
to jump on the mixtape circuit.I didn't have a JOB
all that time. A lot of that frustration with not having money and making struggle rap, it came out in the music. One of the first people I went to was Lenny S. Every year I would probably come to him and say, "Hey, let me show you something and let me know if I should get a job or if I should keep going." 2002, I think, is when his eyebrow kind of raised. He was kind of like, "This is pretty alright." I saw a little difference. He didn't just see me as Sha the intern.My first mixtape, Let Me Show You The Way, it was a lot of freestyles. It was kind of like my first album to me because it was all the rhymes that I had written in school. A lot of the rhymes were just sitting around. I had so much to say. I think he listened to it one day and called me. This is the guy I interned for BACK
in '97, it was 2002, 2003 then. He said he was on a plane with G Roberson and he was like, "I'm playing stuff and we just keep listening to the whole thing." He was like, "Do you have more of this?" I was floored. "Yeah." He's like, "Come to my office."From there things started to move. I had Joe Budden's crew interested, we had meetings with them. Got paperwork from Desert Storm. All of these production crews were kind of looking at us but no majorLABELS
. People just wanted to sign me off of the mixtape and this freestyle CD I did with like 6 freestyles on it.
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