Styles P and Dave East talk “Beloved,” today’s sound, and being a “gangster and a gentleman.”
We recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Styles P and Dave East, the minds behind Beloved for a conversation. Asking about the project’s inception, Pinero kept it one hundred. “I’m a fan,” says Styles, of his rhyming partner. “I’m not scared to be a fan. I’m not scared to say ‘I fu*k with your sh*t’…When I heard East, I started tuning into all his music, kind of watching videos on the internet. It was relieving to see somebody carry the tradition. Carry the flag of what we stand for. He held a spot in my heart for that…This is young New York!”
The pair also open up about beat selection, which was, by their own description, a somewhat unspoken process. “We would just look at each other, and be like that’s it,” remarks East. On that note, Styles son actually landed some production credits on the project. “I really appreciate the ideas and vision of the youth,” says Styles. “A lot of us forget that when we were younger, if we were intelligent, sometimes people weren’t listening to our ideas and we really knew something.” He proceeds to show some fatherly love, saying “that’s my lil homie!”
Dave East reflects on the differences between “today’s sound” and his own. “That’s why I feel like the Beloved project is so refreshing cause that’s the music I actually love to make. If I could wake up and if that was the music that was getting Grammys and number one on Billboard, that’d be perfect. But I also understand the times, and what the youth are turning up to, what they think it dope. I start to feed into that as well, as I’m still being who I am with the music I like to make. It’s a mix. I listen to Biggie and I listen to Future.
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