Smilez and Southstar
Photo: ArtistDirect

Since the release of their debut album, Crash the Party, in July, Smilez and Southstar have gone from Florida favorites to touring the country with Beenie Man and Ludacris. With the video for their latest single, "Tell Me," though, they make sure everyone knows they're still Orlando boys to the core.

Orlando? Home of Disney World and boy bands? Not exactly a hip-hop hotbed, right?

"See, that's where people have it wrong," Smilez said. "We got a huge hip-hop scene, so we're trying to shed some light on our town." That's why everybody in Smilez and Southstar's crew and in the video — mainly the dozens of female dancers and models — are from O-Town, he adds. "No Miami, no Tampa. In every city there is, there's aspiring artists trying to get into the game, working hard and staying at it. So we have to represent our home."

While the duo's first hit, "Who Wants This?," became a popular club jam last summer, the '70s Philadelphia soul-influenced "Tell Me" has proven to be their breakthrough, peaking at #17 on the Billboard rap singles chart. " 'Who Wants This?' kicked open the door [and] gave us the introduction," Southstar said before a show with Ludacris in San Francisco. "But with 'Tell Me,' we get to show another side. You gotta respect that era of music, because it opened the doors for all of our generation."

The song features a sample from the Stylistics 1971 tune, "Stop, Look, Listen (To Your Heart)," not to mention the same beat that appears in Ja Rule and Ashanti's "Mesmerize." Smilez and Southstar said they got the beat first, from Orlando's DJ Nasty, but they hold no grudge against Ja for using it. "It's just a coincidence that he used the same thing," Smilez said.

Though they eventually wound up together in Orlando, Smilez and Southstar came to Florida with plenty of experience in more traditional hip-hop hotbeds — Smilez from the Bronx, Southstar from Los Angeles by way of Jersey City. "When I first got there, I was like, 'Damn, it's clean down here,' " Smilez said, laughing. "My mom got me down there by promising me a swimming pool. But it took me a while to get used to the more relaxed pace."

Born to Chinese and Filipino parents in Hawaii, Southstar has joined the ranks of Black Eyed Peas' Apl de Ap and Dilated Peoples' DJ Babu as one of the few prominent Asian-American hip-hop artists. And while he gives props to them, he recognizes that he's just about the only Asian-American frontman out there. "That's how big hip-hop's gotten," he says. "You see German, Japanese and Spanish rappers, but this might be the first time there's been an Asian dude up front. It's about finally getting the opportunity to get in the game, and hopefully other people like me will see me up there and identify."

Once you're in the game, of course, it's a matter of staying there and stepping it up. Smilez credits the tour with Beenie Man with showing them how to be performers worthy of touring the nation. "He's so crazy, and generates such intense energy, but he's so professional," Smilez said. "He really showed us how to be performers."

Along with touring on a national level, Smilez and Southstar took what's become the de rigueur next step for hitmakers — they formed their own record company, Groundworks Entertainment, and hope to use it to showcase more Orlando talent. In the meantime, they're setting up "It's On" as their next single, and they're putting together a mixtape. And they've already got their sights set on album number two. "We'll just use this as our stepping stone," Smilez said. "We know we've got to make the second album 10 times better than the first."

• Smilez & Southstar

Beenie Man
Photo: Virgin

Fresh off making the highest debut for a reggae artist on the Billboard albums chart (#18), dancehall don Beenie Man is taking his show on the road.

The Tropical Storm 2K2 Tour will arrive on U.S. shores on October 1 in Providence, Rhode Island, and is currently scheduled to run through an October 30 date in San Francisco, according to the tour's promoter. Three more weeks of November dates on the West Coast and in the South will be announced soon.

Joining him on the tour are rappers Smilez & Southstar (see "Smilez & Southstar Come Up From O-Town With 'Who Wants This?' "), as well as two members of Beenie's Shocking Vibes crew, Silver Cat and Kirk Davis. Tropical Storm has already spawned the hit "Feel It Boy," a collaboration with Janet Jackson and the Neptunes that's currently at #46 on the Billboard Hot 100. The album also features a duet with Lil' Kim on the explicit "Fresh From Yard" and a hookup with fellow dancehall stars Sean Paul and Lady Saw on "Bossman."

Beenie Man's tour itinerary, according to a spokesperson:

• 10/1 - Providence, RI @ Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel
• 10/2 - Winooski, VT @ Higher Ground
• 10/3 - Lancaster, PA @ The Chameleon
• 10/4 - Newark, NJ @ Club Eclipse
• 10/5 - Washington, DC @ VIP Club
• 10/6 - Trenton, NJ @ Conduit
• 10/8 - New Haven, CT @ Toad's Place
• 10/10 - New York, NY @ Irving Plaza
• 10/11 - Toronto, ON @ Kool Haus
• 10/12 - Montreal, QC @ Le Medley
• 10/13 - Philadelphia, PA @ Pegasus Nightclub
• 10/14 - Pittsburgh, PA @ Metropol
• 10/15 - Columbus, OH @ The Brickyard
• 10/16 - Detroit, MI @ Majestic Theatre
• 10/18 - Cleveland, OH @ Cotton Club
• 10/19 - Chicago, IL @ House of Blues
• 10/20 - Minneapolis, MN @ Quest Club
• 10/25 - Calgary, AB @ MacEwan Hall
• 10/26 - Vancouver, BC @ Commodore Ballroom
• 10/27 - Boston, MA @ FleetCenter
• 10/28 - Seattle, WA @ Ballard Firehouse
• 10/29 - Ashland, OR @ Ashland Armory
• 10/30 - San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall

• Beenie Man
• Smilez & Southstar

Smilez & Southstar
Photo: Artist Direct/BMG

Smilez & Southstar have been making a splash on radio, BET and the Web with their first single, "Who Wants This?" Gratifying as that is, the Orlando rap duo prefer reaching out to people the old-fashioned way.

"The radio play is great, but what we know we really gotta do is get out there and meet people," Southstar said. "The best thing we've done is shake people's hands, be personable, try to build a relationship with them. If we're showing them love, we know they'll show us love and pass the word."

The word started spreading last year from Orlando to Fort Myers, where respected DJ 007 began playing them on his afternoon show on WBTT. "We feel like we've kind of got the lockdown in Florida," Smilez said. "It's important to get out on the street elsewhere. Not everybody listens to the radio or goes to the Internet. So we've got to come to them."

Word of mouth — plus a solid response to the Internet streaming of the Gregory Dark-directed "Who Wants This?" video — has the guys hoping for great things from their debut album, Crash the Party, which came out Tuesday (July 23).

Smilez & Southstar had been bangin' solo around Orlando for five years, freestyling and working on their lyrical skills. They hooked up two years ago on a local DJ's mixtape and kept running into each other on the basketball court, so they got together to knock out "It's Time" and "Let's Get Naked," club-ready joints that ended up on Crash the Party.

Dakari, a Boston native who'd worked previously with 'NSYNC, O-Town and LFO, produced Crash the Party, bringing plenty of pop hooks to Smilez & Southstar's street sensibility. "We wanted to keep it catchy, but still speak about what we do on an everyday level," Smilez said. "We definitely wanted strong hooks on there, stuff people would get immediately and remember."

"Who Wants This?" has hooks aplenty, with a sing-song chorus and attention-grabbing rhymes. The video features the duo taking on a string of opponents: the Haters, the Doubters and the Jealous Ones. "It's like 'Fight Club' meets 'The Matrix,' " Southstar said. "We're kind of proving to everybody what we have to overcome: the jealous, the people who hate you. The effects in the video kick ass."

For their next single, the duo are debating between "Tell Me," an R&B-style breakup song, and "Gully," which features perhaps the year's most unexpected sample: the guitar-and-organ riff from REO Speedwagon's 1972 song "Golden Country." "We'd never heard that song before," Smilez said. "But Dakari has been talking ever since we first met him about wanting to do something using that song. I never woulda guessed it, but it works."

Dakari's been a strong influence on the duo, matching his music to Smilez & Southstar's lyrics. "We spend a lot of time on our lyrics. If they're not really strong, we come back to them and come back to them until they're perfect," Smilez said. "We're still into battling. We both used to do lots of freestyle. Then Dakari comes with the beats, and they're just bangin'."

Smilez & Southstar have been spending the last few months making the rounds at radio stations and parties in New York and Los Angeles, but they're not limiting themselves to industry schmoozing. "We just got back from a sit-down with some kids in Gainesville," Smilez said. "It was just some middle school and high school students who've been in trouble. We're really lucky to be doing what we're doing, and we always try to give something back to the community, to let kids know that they can find success if they put their minds to it."

• Smilez & Southstar