Marko, Sho ‘Nuff and I began recording The Spice in Williamsburg, Brooklyn during the summer of 2008. Of all of the songs, only Alone had been pre-written. It was my reaction to having moved to New York for the first time when I was young. The rest of the album was written spontaneously as we recorded, save for Fragile, which Sho ‘Nuff wrote the lyrics for.
We decided the summer before to move in together and see what could come of sharing the same creative space/apartment. Marko and I had been working on his solo album while Sho ‘Nuff and I had been songwriting together and producing for others.
On a Thursday during May 2008, while hanging out with my good friends Mark Rosal, Nick Keirstead and Jazmine Atienza, all of who work in New York’s highly competitive and ever changing creative industry, I was hit with a brainstorm. In the creative speak; a func spec is short for functional specification. It is a blueprint, necessary to be provided in order to build any code based project upon. At that moment, I knew that I wanted to create a conceptual art project wherein I would borrow elements from classic hip-hop trios and create a “blueprint” of sorts for the type of hip-hop that I would like to hear: One part organic and ethnic instrumentation, one part rapping, one part singing. Add in the fact we are all Bengali, and I knew something interesting would result from this.
Two groups were my inspiration for assembling Func Spec: Digable Planets and the Fugees, neither of which withstood the release of more than two albums. The dynamic of two men and one woman seems to bode well. Thankfully, that’s exactly what we had going on in Brooklyn. We had just never thought about recording together on the same pieces of music. My two album mission was born.
By the next Monday, Mark had created a typeface and logo specific to the project, Jazmine had created our cartoon likenesses and started defining a visual universe for our characters, and Nick had begun filling our heads with Dune and the philosophies of Frank Herbert. I had already been on a steady diet of Freud, Jung, Ray Bradbury and George Orwell. Between sci-fi, conspiracy theories, and heartbreak we wound up with the perfect mix of influences to work with.
I set a project goal of 10 days to compose, write, produce record, mix and master the album. I had a lot of fun sitting Marko and Sho ‘Nuff down at all hours and record them everywhere from our kitchen to the bathroom. Toward the end, I had become a bit obsessed and recall waiting for Marko outside of the bathroom as he finished his morning shower so I could grab one final take when he came out so that I could complete Melange Dreams.
We released The Spice originally only on iTunes primarily in the U.S. in July 2008 to absolutely no fanfare. Our friend Kunal Merchant helped us throw a party at BLVD in Manhattan, and we had some nice Func Spec 40 oz beer on hand. By then, Marko had already departed for a stint in Texas for the summer and Sho ‘Nuff was in Italy kicking off what would become the beginnings of her first collection of short stories to be published.
It was at that time I recorded Vivrant Kids and shot a video so that we could capture some of the vibe in New York amongst our friends who were all very excited to be the only ones “in” on the secret of Func Spec. In many ways, they will always be.
Over the last year, through word of mouth alone, the project has begun to gain steam. We re-released The Spice worldwide on all digital networks in July 2009 almost a year to the day. Some of the songs have begun to get licensed, and the BBC has taken notice and is playing many of the tracks as singles on regular rotation. We don’t know if we will tour to support the project or not. We are, however, in the studio working on the second album already and have many surprises in store!
