Too Many T's are an exciting alternative hip hop duo based in London. The band were established in 2011 by Leon Rhymes and Ross Standaloft. “We started quite late in our musical careers - most people will start when they’re like 17 or 18.  We were like - Ross had whole career by this point, I’d moved down to London after university and had a decent career with another band. I’d met Ross in Wakefield when I was at university and we would like hang out, we’d jam - then every few months we would meet up and we'd write raps for fun. Then Ross moved to London and we were just sort of writing more songs together and then that kind of crossed over with my band stopping- so it was a kind of natural evolution and then we started performing more and more together and the rest is history”.

Ross had quite a dramatic career change, swapping sustainability consultancy for hip hop. “I still do some consultancy on the side you know cos like it's easy, I work with a few architects and they still give me work. I had like a whole career, I've done a Masters in it and I was really passionate about it and I worked for this wicked company. But then me and Leon starting rapping together, and I was like “this is sick, this is wicked” and we started doing these gigs in pubs and stuff in 2012. I asked a few of my clients at the place I worked if they'd employ me if I left the company and they were like “yeah”- so I started properly rapping with Leon”.

Ross and Leon had the pleasure of working with Flux Pavilion on their first album, South City, in 2017. “It was such a good opportunity; the album was co-produced by Flux and Odjbox. Odjbox is this producer who started off making kind of swing hop, trip hop and then he was living at my house and he went to university with Flux and they were best mates from a music course. Odjbox was producing for us and he went round to Josh's [Flux Pavillion’s] house and he played him the stuff we were making. Then Flux was like “wow this is really like unique and is really fresh like can I get involved” and so we went round to his studio. I think it came at the right time as well – he’d done his first album and he was keen to sort of establish himself as a more varied producer and was looking to get his teeth into someone else's project and be a producer - like the glue amongst it all. He wanted to do something at the same time we were looking to do something big as well so the timing of it was amazing. Every time we were in Flux’s studio writing songs and recording with him, he has this big collection of whiskey, four different shelves and it was like £50 and under, a £200 shelf, a £500 shelf, and an even more expensive one after that. You always knew how happy he was with the days recording because he asked you to take a bottle off a higher shelf when he was in a good mood!”.

Too Many T’s have developed a unique and alt hip hop sound that ultimately serves to entertain. “I think we were just doing our own thing as well like - there's not that many - in UK rap a lot of its quite sort of about smoking weed and not having any money and there was a lot of that in the early 2010s. There wasn't that much that was kind of like on a positive tip and like a throwback to the early 90s - kind of bloc party fun vibe. So I think we sort of naturally just cos of the music that we kind of inclined towards that funky style. There just wasn't many people doing it which I think felt refreshing to people - and then we were like alright wicked we’re doing something that has uniqueness”.

Following the success of their first album, Ross and Leon went onto to produce a collaborative album - LA FAM ILL. “We’ve had a huge amount of success in France, we played a huge festival out there called Rencontres Trans Musicales, then off the back of that the guy who books it all, a guy called Jean-Louis, who’s been running the festival for like 35 years or something - he's broken some huge artists in France, he's been responsible for it. He heard us and put us on one of the best stages at one of the best times and we blew the 3000 crowd away to the point that the next day we had enquiries from all over France. We'd never played in France before and then all of a sudden we spent all 2018 just touring round France just from this one show. We met all these producers and rappers and then we got a label in France and they asked us if we wanted to do an album with everyone. Shout out to Banzai Lab in France cos they helped us massively you know - organising tours and stuff”.

Collaborating with various artists has allowed Too Many T’s to explore a range of hip hop inspired musical genres. “It's a blessing and a curse isn't it - in one way it's great to have so many different ideas - we’re not short of ideas but we're also not very good at channeling all our focus into one thing and nailing it. We've been very lucky to have met the people that we have and then with our opportunistic attitude towards it we've jumped on things like Ross had the Better than idea - I thought “wow that's a great idea let's do it”. With our debut album, we had an opportunity to work with various hugely established artists like “wow let's do that”. We were touring in France loads and we've met so many French artists and we sorted out this idea around it and all of a sudden that developed into an album. I think that's the word opportunistic we like seeing something start unfolding in front of us and just running with it, as oppose to it being all set out and intentional from the outset”.

Too Many T’s have been working hard over lockdown and hope to release new music later this year. “We definitely want to get back in the studio when we can when the studios are open again. We’re bound by rules and regs at the moment. I think they open in a couple of weeks or something so I think we can go and record some stuff in our studio in London - we've got a whole bunch of tunes. We've just discussed today like - we've probably got enough tunes to make an album - do all these tunes go into an album or like an EP or do we just do singles? Again, there's always questions, we want to get stuff out so maybe singles is better but also just the way people consume content these days. I think we’ll wait till we have a reason to make an album when we want to put a bow on the top of a project”.

Like all those in the music industry, Ross and Leon have been unable to gig over the last 12 months - but they’re excited by the prospect of UK summer festivals. “It’s been really weird, but I quite enjoyed the break to be honest, it felt like a bit of a needed reset because we're used to going 100 miles an hour all the time. Especially last couple years we've been travelling a lot - a lot of gigs abroad and it's absolutely amazing but every time you go abroad it takes a couple of days out of the week you know . So like you keep doing it every week and all of a sudden you're behind on the rest of your life or on writing. But the last like couple months I've been really thinking I need to grab a mic and just like tear it up, expend some energy and like feel the vibes. We’ve got some gigs lined up, some festivals we've announced. Yesterday we announced Long Division Festival which is epic - in Wakefield – Standaloft’s hometown! We’re really excited to get out there”.

Massive thank you to Ross and Leon for taking time to speak to us. Check out Too Many T’s website here.

Ben Stuart • Joseph Caden • Create More • 2021