Ruff Endz – Interview

Get around Ruff Endz!

When did you finish the new record?

Chi: We were traveling and performing for about a year and went everywhere. So as soon as we got a chance to come home we got a couple of pieces of equipment and went to the basement and we were doing it.

Do you come up with tracks on the road?

Chi: We forgot a lot of ideas. It’s like an everyday thing.

Davinch: I lose ideas every day. I have ideas and I forget to put down. We are always thinking of something.

Do you ever look at the tracks for the album and say ‘we have too many ballads’ or ‘to many songs about _____’? Or do you just put the best available songs on there?

Chi: It’s a whole vibe, it’s a whole feeling. We just record. Actually we write, record it and put it down at the studio. It’s very spontaneous. Sometimes we’ll write the music at home and write the words in the studio.

Has your approach changed about entering the studio this time around?

Chi: Not really. We go home in the basement and back to Sugar Hill studios in Jersey to record. Same old thing.

How has life changed in the last couple years?

Davinch: Life has gotten better, money wise. We’ve moved and got a house, car, but other than that it’s just busier now.

Chi: Much busy. (They laugh)

Davinch: It is. We’ve traveled the world and that has affected our songwriting. Amsterdam loves hip-hop.

Chi: They know us by name, its love.

In the music genre you are in, is there pressure picking up women? (Everyone laughs)

Davinch: Actually, funny as it is, the women come, but not how people think it is. It can be like that if we allow it. But we are so busy that it isn’t like that. We are too busy. We leave one show and there might be women that want to get with us, but we are on our way to the airport.

Chi: By the time I get around a bed in the hotel room all I’m thinking about is sleeping. (Everyone laughs) You are sleeping halfway reclined on the plane, on the bus, or in the car. You know to get a nice bed; you know how good that feels.

Davinch: People think you have so much time but we don’t. We rush off the plane to get to sound check, talk about the show on the radio, do autographs, and we end up doing that stuff for hours, then we have to go to a record store and its just crazy. By the time you get to the hotel you tired.

Okay, now lets say you found the time and you meet a girl. All your songs are romantic and all that? Is there pressure there to have to live up to that everyday?

Chi: Definitely, but I’m a Pisces, but I’m hopelessly into females because of my relationship with my mom and two sisters. I don’t have any brothers. Women are flowers to the earth to me. What is more beautiful and organic than a woman? I have no problem getting me, well you know, but women are just amazing. Hell in New York alone there are so many types of women that are beautiful but all different.

Davinch: I’ve seen so many different nationalities of fine women here in New York.

What is the biggest misconception for fans about what you guys do and don’t do?

Chi: The biggest misconception is that they think its all a big party. They think we are having constant parties. People are like ‘you sing, but tomorrow I’ve got to go to work’. We are on the road straight for a year and do interviews in every state. We do three shows in one day and have to get on a plane for each and flying around. And we do that for straight months. That doesn’t sound like no party.

Davinch: We aren’t sitting around eating and sleeping.

Chi: And we have to take care of business. You’ve got to be a businessman in this business today. You gotta be business minded. That is a lot. People don’t see it. That is why I loved when they started all this behind the scenes. The see a video and people think it’s one take, or that you record a song and you are there for twenty minutes and they think you gone and that is it. It’s a twenty-four hour job.

It’s like Ruff Endz the corporation.

Chi/Davinch: Exactly.

What is the one thing you love most about all this?

Chi: To connect and meet people through the music. To see that music really is a universal language. When we go to Japan fans might not know barely any English, but they know and love our album. That is like all those hours on the plane, I mean that is mind blowing. That is the best part to know our music, something we work so hard on, touches people around the world. It’s just amazing.

Which artists connected with you when you were growing up?

Davinch: Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder.

Chi: Marvin Gaye and a gospel group called Commission, in a big way.

Is there one song that you wish you wrote?

Davinch: There are a couple songs I wish I wrote.

Chi: I wish I wrote that India.Arie song “Brown Skin”.

Davinch: I wish I wrote “Dangerously In Love” from the Destiny’s Child album. That song is crazy.

Chi: I wish I wrote “Lady” by Michael Jackson. Either “Lady” or “Remember The Time”.

Davinch: I wish I wrote Thriller the album. (Laughs) If we did I probably wouldn’t be talking right now.

Lastly, what do you hope fans come away with after they listen to your music?

Davinch: I hope they feel good and they feel the vibe. Like we did a show yesterday and we were in the zone. We were in our own world and a lot of people were in the same world we were in.

Chi: If everyone in the world could feel what the people at our show was feeling yesterday we’d accomplished what we set out to do. Some do it for females and fame, but we have a passion for singing and performing.

+ charlie craine