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Sibling revelry: How Starlito and Don Trip bring out the best in each other on Step Brothers

Photo by: Zach Boisjoly

Nashville’s Starlito and Memphis rapper Don Trip first got together in 2011 to release Step Brothers , a somber back-and-forth between two of the world’s most underrated rappers. Andrew Friedman talks to the duo about Step Brothers 3 , a release finally winning the pair the recognition they deserve.

Starlito and Don Trip are somewhat confused when I bring up the idea that Step Brothers 3 , their third album together, is upbeat. I think my exact words were “less of a bummer than the other ones,” but either way the Tennessee rappers don’t agree.

I get why. Despite the silly cover art mimicking the 2008 movie of the same name , Step Brothers 3 is somber both in sound and subject. Lito points to ‘Remember’ and ‘Do What I Gotta Do’, particularly dark songs that deal with the alienation of success and desperate circumstances, as counterpoints. But after some thought, he considers the larger context: “Maybe we’re just doing better.”

“I had completely fallen out of love with music. I thought it was a shit business to be in” Starlito

After all, Step Brothers 3 is on pace to be the most successful release of either rapper’s career, surpassing 2013’s Step Brothers 2 (which itself topped the first Step Brothers mixtape). Prior to teaming up, both rappers had achieved some success as solo artists, but had been bouncing around the industry for years waiting for the next break.

Don Trip built a buzz in Memphis, then broke through in 2011 with the child custody lament ‘Letter To My Son’ . (In a particularly poignant clip of him on Sway in the Morning, he tears up while listening to callers tell him how grateful they were to hear their struggles put into song.) But despite gracing the cover of XXL as one of their 2012 Freshmen, labels were unsure how to capitalize on the moment and he languished.

Meanwhile, Nashville’s Starlito spent the 2000s as the hot commodity for a rotating cast of bigger rappers’ imprints, from Yo Gotti to Lil Wayne. But he grew increasingly disillusioned with each delay of Street Ball , his theoretical Cash Money Records debut. The lack of forward progress was exhausting, and Lito remembers wanting to give up on music completely. “I had completely fallen out of love with it. I thought it was a shit business to be in and I was at a point where I would rather do almost anything else.”

Working with Trip reenergized Lito. He had watched Trip come up (although they are the same age, Starlito got his start in rap a few years ahead of Don) and recognized a kindred spirit. And after meeting through mutual acquaintances in the Tennessee rap scene, a collaboration was inevitable. They released the first Step Brothers tape in 2011, and even as both rappers have continued to build their own solo careers, their collaborations (especially given their success) have served as a source of direction and reinforcement.

Don and Lito have some of the best chemistry going in rap at the moment. The duo ping-pong lines off each other, sometimes switching after as little as two bars, and regularly finishing each other’s sentences. It can sound like they are tagging in and out of the booth like wrestlers, and it helps that they actually are. The two are dedicated to recording in person (rather than emailing verses from distant studios), and frequently assemble their songs in real time, spitting lyrics written while or shortly after the other records. This type of process is rarely noteworthy, but Step Brothers is the exceptional rap project where the degree of difficulty actually makes the music better. It helps punchline-heavy, straightforward songs like the basketball-themed ‘Boomshakalaka’ maintain their energy, and propels story jams like ‘Good Cop, Bad Cop’ .

Listen to either rapper’s solo material and the pairing makes sense. Both are deft lyricists that make interesting choices in their writing. On a track from his Manifest Destiny mixtape, Lito spends two lines over-explaining why he featured a certain rapper on that song. Don Trip, on the other hand, loves non-sequitur metaphors – “spinning like a yo-yo with no string”. More notably, they both tackle the pitfalls of street life with unflinching honesty.

Beyond penitentiary chances and risk to life and limb, the duo actively bring up some of the more nuanced collateral damage they’ve experienced. Lito speaks openly about his mental health, addressing concepts like PTSD and self-medication. When I ask about therapy, he brings up the similarities between the confessional nature of the recording process and talk therapy. And both artists are as prone to brag about threesomes with strippers as they are to beat themselves up for how doing that shit makes it hard to hold down any kind of relationship.

So it does take some context to see how Step Brothers 3 could read as anything other than an hour of exceptional but grim raps. But coming back to the original question, Lito brings up ‘Yeah 5X’, the first track on the album. A friend had told him he expected the track to be something more personal, not the punchline-fest that it ended up being. But the beat reminded him of old Diplomats, Just Blaze beats, and Cam’ron and Jim Jones trading verses – the stuff that made him want to be a rapper in the first place.

Starlito and Don Trip are both in a better place than they were six years ago, when they first teamed up for a mixtape. They are currently on a 30-city tour in support of Step Brothers 3 . While still fully independent, and still gauging their progress by the ever-changing metrics of modern indie music, their success is evident. And while that stability might not have Don and Lito making Billboard hits, their new-found chill is there if you know where to look.

Step Brothers 3 is out now.

Andrew Friedman is on Twitter

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'Step Brothers 3': Don Trip, Starlito continue Memphis/Nashville union

For Memphis rapper Don Trip and Nashville MC Starlito, the secret to their successful collaboration as hip-hop duo Step Brothers is a simple one.

“When we came up with this idea, we didn’t ask nobody, we didn’t have to answer to nobody, we just did it,” says Don Trip. “And we knew the only resources we needed was each other.”

The pair recently released their third album together, "Step Brothers 3." The disc proves the most potent entry in their joint catalog — one that finds them trading barbed punchlines on tracks like the caustic, comic “Boomshakalaka” or working up deadly serious political narratives like “Good Cop, Bad Cop” with equal aplomb.

“We can give you two points of view on the same picture,” notes Trip of their approach. “His verse could be about the same subject and not be verbatim with mine. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a track where we’ve repeated something. We’re both coming at it from our own perspective and firing off each other — that’s what makes what we do special.”

Unlike so many hip-hop collaborations, which are often done long distance and lack the feeling of real chemistry, Trip and Starlito have built a genuine kinship that extends beyond the parameters of their professional partnership. “We spend a lot of time together even when we're not recording,” says Trip. “So when it comes time to go into the studio, it’s just second nature.”

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“A great deal of it hinges on the confidence we have in one another, and in our abilities,” adds Starlito. “It all just flows from how we are as people. We can have a conversation as friends, and that carries on in the studio and into the tracks.”

Back in 2011 when Trip and Starlito first connected, each man was at loose ends. Starlito had put out a single for major label Cash Money Records, but follow-up plans had fizzled. Trip had been a high-profile signee to Interscope Records after the homemade video for his confessional “Letter to My Son” went viral. The label released a single version of the song, with an added hook from pop/hip-hop superstar Cee-Lo Green, but the expected follow-up album never materialized. Trip’s association with the label ended soon after.

“When we first got together, I think I was at a point I had something to prove and (Starlito) was just disgusted with what was going on,” says Trip. “We was just recording to record; we didn’t have a goal per se. We’d put together seven, eight tracks before we even realized it might be something to put out. We didn’t care how people were going to receive it, we just did what we did.”

Starlito came up with the pair’s moniker, a nod to the Will Ferrell/John C. Reilly comedy "Step Brothers."

“I literally remembered the moment where I said we should do a mixtape and call it Step Brothers — it was playing on the TV screen in the studio, it was my favorite movie at that moment. I didn’t think of it as a brand name, just a concept for a tape.”

Despite their modest aims, the duo’s free mixtape debut ended up playing as an underground answer to the year’s biggest rap record, Jay-Z and Kanye West’s “Watch the Throne.” “Step Brothers” would be named one of the best rap albums of 2011 by SPIN magazine. The sequel, “Step Brothers 2,” followed in the fall of 2013, released to even greater acclaim, with NPR , Pitchfork  and XXL all singing its praises.

Finally after a nearly four-year gap during which each man pursued solo projects, “Step Brothers 3” arrived last month. The 15-track disc finds the yin/yang chemistry between the laid-back Starlito and edgy Trip stronger than ever.

“On the first one we didn’t know each other as well as we do now,” says Trip. “But the bond grew, and as the bond grew, the music grew.”

Three albums in, Trip and Starlito have done much to unite their respective rival music cities of Memphis and Nashville.

“It’s funny because Memphis has always been my biggest market,” says Nashvillian Starlito. “I’ve endeared myself to Memphis and vice versa. Same with Trip and Nashville. With us linking up, and being from where each of us is from, it’s really an asset.”

Trip and Starlito have been touring in support of the record, including a run of much-buzzed-about shows at the annual South by Southwest music conference in Austin last month. In between dates, they’ve already started recording the next Step Brothers record.

“We working on number four as we speak,” says Trip. “We’re being forward-thinking. There definitely won’t be the kind of gap there was between the prior releases. We’ll be back with something else soon.”

“When we came up with the idea for this, I never thought there would be three records and, God willing, a fourth one, and even past that,” adds Starlito. “Honestly, it’s surreal, I didn’t think it would be all this. I’m not gonna lie.”

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Interview: Starlito and Don Trip

TWO SELF-PROCLAIMED OUTCASTS FIND A BOND YOU COULDN'T FAKE

In an industry that prizes individuality, Tennessee rappers Starlito and Don Trip have a rare mutual respect. Together they've released two cult-favorite projects that split the difference between funny and thoughtful and showcase the "hyper-creativity" they've found in collaboration. On the release day of their new joint album, Step Brothers 2 , they stopped by FADER to talk about what makes rapping fun and the connections between Shakespeare and Paid In Full .

It's been two years since the first Step Brothers tape . Why now for the sequel? STARLITO: I think it's perfect timing. We released the first one on the three year anniversary of the movie's release [July 25, 2011]. The cool thing about that, just being real, was it made it easy to just use the movie's promos, artwork and everything, and just cut their heads off. The first Step Brothers was just a mixtape, it was very much free-spirited, free music. We're retailing this album—we actually just got a call that we're number four on the iTunes rap charts—so the whole idea was to do it right, make sure we had all our ducks in a row. DON TRIP: Quality over quantity. We just had to make sure we did it in the right space where we weren't rushing.

How did you guys decide to start working together in the first place? DON TRIP: We met in 2010, and I guess it was just a bond you couldn't fake. At first we didn't really know what to expect from each other as rappers, but as we spent more time together—we just get along, even outside of music. And that makes it easier to work together, because I feel like his time is just as valuable as my time. STARLITO: I'd I heard some of his music, before "Letter To My Son," and I thought it was dope. One of my friends gave me his CD when I was in Memphis and was like, "He reminds me of you." I was working with Yo Gotti at his record company at the time, and Gotti asked me, "Have you heard of this guy Don Trip? I was like,Yeah, he's probably the best rapper in the city. From there, we got put in the same room, almost like divine intervention. I remember it like it was yesterday, the first day we met, he told me he fucked with my music and it humbled me a little bit, because I've crossed paths with so many rappers that are full of themselves. So I was just like, I can deal with this guy, he's not stuck on himself. And the first songs we did were smashes, recorded in minutes. Like Trip was saying, we didn't know what to expect as artists, but I knew that he could rap and I couldn't take that from him.

Where did the Step Brothers concept come from? STARLITO: It started from the movie—just the concept of the camaraderie between two strangers that were so quirky in their own regard that they wouldn't gel with anybody else. I kind of looked at us as outcasts—not to be like a play on words—but we weren't traditional Southern artists, we didn't have traditional buzzes. So I was like, we're gonna do something different and just rap for the sake of rapping, and not try to make a hit that fits with the trends of the time, let's just rap our asses off. Honestly, before Step Brothers , I was ready to quit rap music. I'd just released a mixtape, @ War With Myself , in 2011, and I was done. I was just like, this shit isn't fun anymore, I don't like it, the game is fake, everybody in the industry is fake. The thing was, earlier that year, we had already started recording the project. I had told him we were gonna do it, and it just meant the world to me to keep my word. I was like, I don't wanna be one of those guys that made me hate rap, so fuck it, we're gonna do this project. And then we just had fun, and I was able to cast some of that other shit off, and Don snapped me out of it. I always remind myself of that. It rejuvenated my entire being almost. I mean we've got some records that are edgy, maybe sad, but for the most part, the bullshit of everyday life doesn't spill into it as much.

Has the work you've done together changed either of you as rappers? Has it impacted your solo stuff? DON TRIP: When we rap individually, the songs are more involved in our personal lives. When I'm with Lito, I get more into my sense of humor. I'm not a funny guy. But it's a different chemistry, that gives me the room to have more fun than I normally have. Not that I don't have fun recording music normally, but it's less on display. STARLITO: I don't think Trip has to go far out of his element to work with me, but there's just another dimension to the creativity. A lot of songs we're just going back and forth, almost line for line. I pride myself in being lyrical, but literally going off of his last word, that's different than writing lyrics. For "4 x 4 Relay" we just traded four bars, four bars, very steady. I freestyled the first four bars and before I was even done leaving the booth, he's crossing paths, ready to record his four. With that type of thing, I don't even have time to think it through the same way I would with a sixteen, I gotta think on my feet. And that's the thing that we bring to the table working together. It's almost like, hyper-creativity. And I have supreme confidence in what he's doing. Records like "Caesar and Brutus," I couldn't have made that song by myself. It wouldn't have been nearly as interesting. And we are those characters.

"We don’t have a problem taking a back seat from each other. If Star has a more creative idea, that’s what we’re gonna do." —DON TRIP

That song is all about betrayal between friends. On first listen, I was like, Oh no, are they still cool with each other? DON TRIP: That was just us being creative. Of course we live two different lives, but in our lives there's a lot of similarities. Really with that record, we didn't know which characters we wanted to be, because it could've been both ways. That was the whole point, where you couldn't tell who was the protagonist and who was the antagonist. They're both just people. And you can pick sides but you can't tell which is the right side, and it shows how things can get misconstrued due to lack of communication.

How did you arrive at that concept for the song? STARLITO: Well it starts with Shakespeare. In the beginning of the song I say, Are you Caesar or Brutus, are you Mitch or Rico? Because I understand that a lot of the hip-hop realm may not read Shakespeare like I do, but they may have seen Paid In Full . In the movie it wasn't about a girl, it was about money, power, profile, but the same guy that comes to your rescue in prison is the same guy that wants to cross you out—that's Caesar and Brutus, that's Brutus trying to influence the Romans to overthrow Caesar, brainwashing everybody like he's too powerful, he's wigging out, he's trippin. Paid In Full modernizes that, it's set in the '80s in New York, but we're from the South and it's 2013 and the same things happen. I've known dudes to kill their right-hand man over a girl. Guys who have really lucrative businesses, legal or illegal, and fall out over a woman, or a lack of communication. So we wanted to make a street record that's not just glorifying what's going on, cause the streets are really really cruel and fucked up. This and a few of the other songs on Step Brothers 2 just started with us having a conversation like this, wanting to push the envelope. "Pimp C 3000" is a roundabout tribute to the two two-man groups we grew up on, UGK and OutKast. We highlighted the dominant personality types in each group—not to take away from the other person in those groups, but I lean toward Andre 3000, I lean toward Pimp C—but part of our brand is making it so there's not a person to lean to.

How do you guys keep that balance in your relationship, so that no half of the duo is the dominant one? DON TRIP: The way we work, we don't have a problem taking a back seat from each other. If Star has a more creative idea, that's what we're gonna do, and vice versa. STARLITO: And just the same, we can talk each other down from things. The difference between this project and the last is that there were five songs that didn't make the cut. I don't mean they weren't good enough, but for some songs, it was just me on the chorus and it just sounded like a Starlito record. And in terms of our brand, we try to shy away from this sounds like a Don Trip song, this sounds like a Starlito song, but featuring the other artist. Because the difference between us and a UGK, with an 8Ball and MJG or OutKast, is that we didn't start out as a duo, and that's another reason we don't get hung up on the dominant personality type in the group. He was Don Trip before he met Starlito and I was Starlito before I met Don Trip.

You both bring a lot of your personal life into your solo work? How do the people in your life react to showing up in your songs? STARLITO: I've had times where I've had to talk to people and smooth it over for them, let them know why I did that. The "DNA" record on Step Brothers , that was a purge for me. When I walked out of the booth I felt better. I'm an artist, it made me feel better to put it in song form. And I'm probably not the only male that's experienced a female having an abortion without your approval. Even still, I felt compelled to reach out to that person before the song came out—Hey, I made this record, I didn't trash you. I don't even know if people take that as a real thing that happened when they listen to that song, but if she said she wasn't cool with it, I wasn't gonna put that song out. To your audience, something like "DNA" might just be like, Wow that's powerful, that's a cool song. But there are people who know these people, and that's their life too. I don't want to step on somebody's toes just for my art, not somebody that I care for. At the same time my music is my music, and it is personal.

Is there a difference in style between Memphis rap and Nashville rap? DON TRIP: There might be more lyrical content coming from Nashville, and more of the street stuff comes from Memphis. But if there's a difference, it's a good difference, and there are a lot of similarities. STARLITO: If anything, it's a cultural difference. Memphis is a way more urban city, it's more streetwise, and so the music that stands out from Memphis is more streetwise, it's true to the culture. Nashville is just a music city, they have almost perpetual access to studios, and there are so many experts in different fields, you can really just hone in on your craft, which leads to maybe more lyrical content. But I mean, Memphis has its own musical heritage too, with the blues and whatnot, and that influences it too. A lot of the Memphis music I grew up on was influenced by the blues, just like Dr. Dre was influenced by funk. Cats from Memphis and cats from Nashville end up in the same jails, it's all just Tennessee. So you can commit a crime in Nashville and end up locked up down here in Memphis, and there's always been a lot of conflict that comes from that, a lot of turmoil.

In the '90s, Memphis rap seemed much more regionally specific than it is now, really marked by the sound of Hypnotize Minds. Now there's a lot more overlap with the sound of the South in general. DON TRIP: I think it's actually a benefit to Memphis that people branched out from that. If you look at it, those sounds didn't work for nobody but the people that made them. Nobody that tried to sound like Three 6 came out in advantage, nobody that tried to sound like Ball & G came out in advantage. That was the hardest obstacle for Memphis music, to climb over that and sound like how you actually sound.

Ok—best duo ever? STARLITO: Jordan and Pippen. You didn't say rap music, that was just the first thing that came to mind. DON TRIP: M&Ms.

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Step Brothers 2

self-released

December 9, 2013

The first sound on Step Brothers 2 is Starlito arguing good-naturedly with Don Trip over which one of them should go first. (The track is song is called "Paper Rock, Scissors," suggesting how they settled the issue.)  The two rappers—Starlito from Nashville, Don Trip from Memphis—enjoy a bond unusual among solo artists and particularly unique among rappers. (I recommend reading  some   interviews with the two of them if you need to feel good today.) The two met in 2010, when they were both were fairly recent castoffs from major labels; Don Trip had a cup of coffee on Interscope, while Starlito submitted his talents to the ruthless Cash Money grinder for years. Both of them were in the throes of building the kind of midlevel regional careers that ensures you'll always have fans but might never have money. They clicked.

The mixtape they made, 2011's Step Brothers , took its title from the then-three-year-old Will Ferrell/John C. Reilly vehicle. "[I was drawn to] the concept of the camaraderie between two strangers that were so quirky in their own regard that they wouldn't gel with anyone else," Starlito told The Fader . It was the most popular thing either of them had ever released; fair or not, they learned the world paid more attention to them together than to either of them alone.

Other rappers might have rushed out a sequel within six months, to strike while the iron is hot. But Lito and Trip are shrewd and deliberate, which means that Step Brothers 2 is out now, two years later, and unlike its predecessor, it's available for retail. They spent money on beats from Drumma Boy, Sonny Digital, and other in-demand producers, and honed their songs and concepts. What you don't get this time around: the bottled-lightning sound of two rappers falling in love with each other's ideas in real time. What you do get: Two of the most honest writers in rap working together at maximum comfort and confidence.

As with the first Step Brothers , Lito and Trip largely don't bother with hooks. "No chorus but it's goin' on like four minutes," Starlito says wryly on "Paper, Rock Scissors," and many of these songs just go on and on, in the best and most exciting sense, both rappers dreaming up vivid phrasing and rapping for audiences of one. "My ink pen drip icicles," Don Trip says on "Paper, Rock, Scissors". "Servin, servin like we never heard of cops/ Prefer to handle my business personally -you want this work or not?" raps Starlito on "28th Song". They elbow out the beats, blotting out the empty spaces, rap for 32 bars or more; they have too much to say, and it's exhilarating.

For the friendly-competition purposes of Step Brothers 3 , I'll observe that Lito gets Trip on this one, just barely. Trip makes his way from point A to B by stringing sometimes-dumb puns together, as in "Life is sweet, but still sucks, like a Sno Cone" ("4x4 Relay"), while Lito raps in gorgeously accumulating run-on sentences, dotted with musical phrasings and internal rhymes. Following along with the long "O" sounds in a stretch of rhyme like "On the low I been unfocused, I'm just hoping no one notices/ Trying to play my cards right, but things got wild as the Joker is/ The things I love I kill for, call my bluff with no poker chips/ got this chip on my shoulder which/ Brings me to this lick I'm about to hit" (from "Caesar and Brutus") points you toward the subtlety of Lito's writing, which never halts the force of his rapping.

Starlito has had a quietly triumphant year; Step Brothers 2 is his third  stellar full-length of 2013. His musing, wry style has gathered resonance as he's developed as an artist, and this year, every off-the-cuff thought he shared cut to the bone. On Funerals & Court Dates from last winter, he talked ruefully about not finishing college, simply because "shit's expensive." On Cold Turkey from this summer, he told us to call our grandmother to "see how her day went. "This advice come with experience, you ain't gotta take it," he shrugged.

It's this unforced honesty he shares with Don Trip, whose biggest song, "Letter To My Son", was a powerful lament about struggling to visit his child that lingered over details like court-appointed visitation rights. His adlib is a high-pitched, braying cackle, the sound of someone's soused uncle laughing at his own off-color joke; he's a good foil for the subdued Starlito, who can get lost in his own mind occasionally.  Step Brothers 2 was financed by the tour that the two rappers booked themselves, without a team of promoters. Hopefully, it will inch the career of both rappers a little further up the ladder.They deserve a dedicated cult fanbase in every major American city.

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Starlito and Don Trip Release ‘Step Brothers Three’ Album

Nearly four years after the release of Step Brothers 2 , Starlito and Don Trip are back to put the rap game on notice with Step Brothers Three , an album they just released today (March 15).

The rap duo's new project is 15 songs long and features plenty of the nimble lyricism that's helped make them one of the better pairs in the rap game. Lito and Trip gave fans a quick sample of their combined greatness at work with "Good Cop Bad Cop," a song they released a video for just a few days ago. The song deals with the issue of police brutality.

In the song, Starlito introduces one of the story's main characters, rapping, “Officer Craig, he came up hard/From the hood, but in school always said he was smart/On the other hand, you got Officer Bart/Confederate flags all in they front yard/Graduated the academy, got they own cars/Protect and serve, just playing their part."

In the second verse Don trip adds onto the story, rapping, "“In these mean streets gotta stay on guard/But behind that badge where you’ll find they heart/Officer Bart wants to be a detective/And gladly he never had to use his weapon/But sadly, he’s eager and way too anxious to be like Mel Gipson in Lethal Weapon /You know, where every other scene is a gun fight/They shooting and you gotta unload/One might say it’s a little extreme, but to him, he just playing his role."

You can hear more of the pair's rapping wizardry by streaming  Step Brothers 3  on Spotify below or downloading it on iTunes . Plus, peep Lito's latest album  Manifest Destiny   that he dropped earlier this year.

Starlito and Don Trip's  Step Brothers Three  Tracklist

1."Yeah 5X" (prod. by Greedy Money) 2. "Boomshakalaka" (prod. by NYSE) 3. "BNB" (prod. by Mr. Williams for BJS Music Group) 4. "If My Girl Find Out" (prod. by 8x8, D.O. Speaks and Street Symphony) 5. "Fortune" (prod. by Greedy Money) 6. "Me & You Both" (prod. by 8x8 and Street Symphony for Track or Die) 7. "What I Gotta Do" (prod. by Chefry Kitchen) 8. "Good Cop Bad Cop" (prod. by Greedy Money) 9. "The 13th Amendment Song" (prod. by Street Symphony and Tyshane for Track or Die) 10. "25th Song" (prod. by Fate Eastwood) 11. "3rd 2nd Chance" (prod. by Red on the Beat) 12. "Just Want It All" (prod. by Trakksounds) 13. "Remember" (prod. by Doughboy Beatz) 14 "No Rearview 3" Feat. Robin Raynelle) [prod. by Mr. Williams for BJS Music Group] 15. "Untitled No Hook" (prod. by D.O. Speaks and Street Symphony for Track or Die)

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