PORTSMOUTH, NH – New England has had a strong hip-hop scene for the past few decades, but the art form is recently being spread out in various directions. Numerous styles are being intertwined, either through instrumentation, through samples, or a little bit of both. One of the premier purveyors of this approach is STL GLD from Boston, one of the hottest acts on the local scene while steadily growing its fan base around the region and beyond. This hip-hop band has a knack for putting on a stellar live performance, and they’re going to be doing exactly that at The Press Room in Portsmouth on February 7. The show starts at 8 p.m. with R&B artist Tori Tori opening up the evening.
I had a talk with STL GLD co-founder, rapper and lyricist Moe Pope about two new tracks the band released in 2024, the importance of collaboration and having big plans for the imminent future.
The Press Room
77 Daniel Street Portsmouth, NH 03801
Feb. 7, 8 p.m.
Rob Duguay: Last year, STL GLD released two singles with “Gld Fish” and “Don’t Look Back”, so what was the process of making the first tune? What was the experience like making “Gld Fish”?
Moe Pope: We record all our music ourselves and our producer, The Archetype, owns The Bridge Sound & Stage Recording Studios in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It’s a beautiful place, we’re lucky to be there and it’s the place that we call home as a band. Our process is somewhat a bare bones version of a beat, something that’s a little stripped down. Then I write to it and we build it up as a band.
RD: With “Don’t Look Back”, you guys collaborated with Anjimile and Rasheed Chappell on it, so how did you bring both of them into the fold? Were their parts done remotely or were you all in the studio together?
MP: We were all in the same studio together. Rasheed is a wonderful MC from New York, luckily he likes our music and I’m a big fan of his, so to be able to have peers who are doing great music and utilize each other’s talents is a wonderful thing in hip hop that I don’t really see too much across other genres. Collaboration works everywhere and it happens everywhere, but in hip hop it’s part of the process. It’s very rare that someone makes an album while not collaborating with somebody else.
RD: Speaking of collaborating, STL GLD has collaborated with a bunch of different people including Slaine, Darlingside and Too Many Zooz among others. When it comes to working with other artists and musicians, do you usually walk away learning something new about either your approach, their approach or discovering new artistic avenues?
MP: Yeah, we love that. I’ve been lucky enough to do songs with bands and musicians from like Tan Vampires, Lady Lamb and others who have been heavily involved in making records with us, I’m extremely grateful. There’s also Will Dailey, and if you’re folk music, you’re wonderful, you’re a fan of hip hop and you’re accessible, we’re probably going to try to ask you to be part of something. We just love music and we like to collaborate with people because we think that’s where the best music lies.
RD: I totally get that. Do you feel like you have a responsibility as an artist to push both artistic and creative boundaries with your music?
MP: There’s no boundaries, we’re heavy on choosing what we want to do. We don’t try to steer the ship too much because I think it’ll inhibit artists from doing something different, but the whole point is to get something out of an artist that wouldn’t be on their record and we haven’t put on our record. We want to try to be different, we want to try to learn and grow and try new things, so hopefully the people that we’ve chosen know that we picked them to be on the record for a reason.
RD: That’s awesome. It seems like STL GLD is getting ready to have a big 2025 due to closing out last year by playing City Hall Plaza in Boston for “First Night”. With this mindset going forward, and what are your plans for the coming months after this upcoming show at The Press Room?
MP: We’re lucky enough to have created our own festival, which takes place at City Hall Plaza, and we’ve been running it for the past couple of years called GLD FSTVL. We’re going to continue with that and we’ve been working on new music, we actually just released a new single called “Pennies” that people can check out. This year for us is hopefully going to be very big, we’ve done a lot of work on this new art and this new music and we’re just trying to push ourselves to go to different places and try new things. Things we haven’t done on other records, things that a lot of MCs, rappers and bands don’t do, but also, hip hop is changing to such a dramatic level so quickly that there are rappers who sing now, there are rappers who are doing rock music and there are rappers who are doing different things. We’re just trying to do stuff that’s both unconventional and is every aspect of music.
It is blues, it is jazz, it is heavy metal and it’s rock and punk. We want to show people that without sacrificing the hip hop of it, the culture of hip hop, and make it authentically hip hop while having all of these other things in there. We want to utilize every aspect of music and art to make our sound.