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Music

The Shop Boyz Are Still Partying, Like Whatever Kind of Stars They Want to Be

Watch the premiere of their new EDM-influenced video "Party All Night" and find out what the "Party Like a Rock Star" singers have been up to lately.

The Shop Boyz / Screengrab via "Party All Night" video

In 2007, you heard it pretty much any time someone got a phone call: “Party Like a Rock Star,” the rap song that went, well, “party like a rock star” over and over again, was maybe the most popular choice of ringtone at the pinnacle of the ringtone’s relevance. It was a hit, but it was also a scourge, and the distinction of being the new wave of rock-rap for the ringtone era was a mixed blessing. After all, when’s the last time you heard about the song’s authors, The Shop Boyz?

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The Shop Boyz were never exactly high profile as individual rappers. They may have been ahead of the curve when it came to borrowing rock imagery in rap, but, even in rap’s current punk rock era, they’re not exactly on the tips of people’s tongues. They’re almost the textbook model of artists ensnared by one hit wonderdom: Following their 2007 debut album for Republic, Rockstar Mentality, the group more or less went dark, only releasing a couple of extremely low-budget and low-profile projects.

Earlier this year, they emerged with arguably the most public thing they’d done since their debut album and run of singles, the mixtape Gift and a Curse. A solid set of cuts of Atlanta street rap that found Fat, Meany, and Sheed offering their own version of the melodic street rap that rules radio today, it’s not exactly a classic album, but it’s a lot of fun. It’s the kind of thing that might have gotten people a lot more excited had it come from the “next big thing” instead of the guys whose main claim to fame is recording the best utterance of the words “totally dude.” A few songs in particular, especially the bleak but beautiful Black Lives Matter tribute “On and On,” are straight up moving, offering a potentially unexpected amount of depth and nuance.

According to the group themselves, there hasn’t been any break in the music, though, and they’re already preparing their next move with a set of more EDM-focused songs, including “Party All Night,” which Noisey is premiering below. I gave them a call to find out exactly what they’ve been up to the last few years and to see what it’s like being rap’s most well known adopters of the phrase “rock star.”

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Noisey: You put out a mixtape earlier this year, but what else have you been doing in the last few years? There was a long period where we didn’t get much new music.
Sheed: We were basically just putting out music in the clubs, to the DJs and whatnot. A lot of stuff we’ve been doing was like underground almost because we came from the underground scene. Even though we made it to the Grammys from “Party Like a Rockstar” or what have you. We were still putting music out, and a lot of opportunities that we had we were turning them down. Like we could have been took a deal… They were trying to do 360 deals and stuff like that. So we decided we’ll just be independent.

And the music industry has changed so much since “Party Like a Rockstar” as far as being with a label or being independent as far as how you market yourself. So it may seem like we’ve been doing nothing, but in Atlanta we’re probably one of the top groups here.

One thing that’s changed is that when you guys came out your whole thing was this rock image, and that was kind of unique. But now every rapper is claiming punk rock as an influence. Guys like Travis $cott. What do you think of that?
We started a trend. We made it cool to wear tighter shirts and skinny jeans—even though we never wore skinny jeans—it was like we just created a whole new epidemic almost, with a whole new sound, a whole new look, what hip-hop artists would look like. And it’s acceptable now. And it’s a great thing. It’s wonderful.
Fat: I look at it as a compliment because in the music business today you’ve got a lot of people who follow the trend, who follow something, but to see that something that we created—we created it seven years ago and right to today it’s still fresh. People are coming out all the time with it. I feel like it’s a compliment to still be around.

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Do you still feel like that’s your image? Do you want to be seen as the rock star group, or has that changed?
Sheed: Our image has been trendsetters. So we can go anywhere, we can do anything, we can dress any kind of way and make it popular because we are the trendsetters.

Well one trend you guys are jumping on is the EDM thing. You’re doing an EDM tape for next year. Why get on that sound?
Fat: We try not to be considered as one genre. We said a few years ago that we don’t want to be known as one genre, like hip-hop or EDM. We want to be known for being musicians. We want to break barriers down from each genre and just be a total group. That’s one thing that we strive for. So we don’t say “OK, we finna do some EDM music” or “we finna do some hip-hop music.” We do music. That’s one thing that we stress.

“Party Like a Rockstar,” we started that in a hood club, and it crossed over to pop, to rock. So our whole thing is we just want to be known as musicians. Because when I grew up on music, it was like—not to talk about nobody—but when you do a song, you wanted your song to be better than everybody else’s song who’s out. And we want to bring that competition back.

Who do you see as your competition?
Everybody! It’s a good thing, though.

As musicians, what is it musically that draws you to that electronic dance style?
Sheed: As far as our music, it’s whatever the beat says to us, the production. If it’s a nice hip-hop beat, the beat’ll speak to us. If it’s a nice EDM beat, the beat’ll speak to us. We’ve got country music. We don’t necessarily go in the studio and say ‘we’re going to make this kind of song,” it’s like “turn the music on, and let’s see what the music is saying to us today.” So we don’t necessarily have a goal when we’re doing our music. It’s almost like a natural thing, like giving birth. You don’t know how your child is going to look until you actually see it.

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One song that I really liked on your mixtape is this song called “On and On,” that’s kind of a protest song talking about Mike Brown and Eric Garner. You guys are known more for party music. What inspired you to make that song?
That song just came from frustration. We wasn’t necessarily trying to make that song a single; it was just something that was on our chest. For real, just looking at CNN and looking at the news and seeing how these murders were being caught on tape and whatnot and there wasn’t any kind of repercussion from it. So I felt like the only way we could express ourselves was through the music. To me, to say how I felt and to say how we felt about the situation. We’re not trying to be revolutionaries or nothing like that, but we definitely wanted people to know that we’re aware of what’s going on.

What do you think of the Atlanta scene right now?
Fat: Personally I love the Atlanta music scene right now because I know that a lot of guys who are on right now they were influenced by us, some that we know personally. And to see somebody from your city to come from nothing to something the same way you did, it’s a good feeling. And plus, by Atlanta doing the things that they’re doing, they’re giving us an opportunity to still be relevant because we’re from Atlanta. To keep the spotlight on the city. So people like us, we can come back and do the things that we do.

Do you guys have any favorite places to hang out these days?
Sheed: We’re in the club, baby! We go to all the clubs. I don’t want to say we’ve got a favorite because different clubs be packed on different nights. I mean from Club Havana to the most hoodest club, we go to all of them.

Kyle Kramer parties like a rock star when he's not too exhausted. Follow him on Twitter.