Simmering deep in America’s Midwest is one of hip-hop’s best kept secrets.
Stevie Stone, a 25-year-old Columbia, Missouri native, is poised and ready to deliver. A hip-hop hero in the making, Stone is here to save the day, ready to leap through lyrics and bound through bass at any given moment.
Composed of lyrical versatility, broad range and diverse music, he can easily be referred to as hip-hop’s bionic man. One spin around his aptly titled “New Kid Comin’” album and you’ll understand why.
Before music became the center of his world, Stone was an enthusiastic baller, but not the type that immediately comes to mind. Physical education is what ruled his world. As a child, he lived to play basketball and football.
While Stone spent the majority of his free time active in athletics, music was always the underlying current in his life.
“Music was really in my family,” Stone said. “My mom plays the piano, my dad played the piano and all my siblings sing.”
“Around high school, I was in between what I wanted to do. I had a scholarship to play basketball at a college in Iowa but music was pulling me,” Stone admits.
Then one day in 2001, Stone stepped onstage and it was decided: hip-hop would become his sport of choice.
“It was the first time I performed at a live show,” Stone says, recalling the fateful performance. “It was at the Fairgrounds in Fulton, Missouri, and me and my clique got on because we knew the promoter of the show and had been making noise around town.”
Stone opened for many artists that night, including fellow Missouri natives Tech9, with whom he would later establish a brotherhood bond. Stone remembers feeling the adrenaline of performing on stage and everything else paled in comparison.
“Once we got done with the set, I knew it was what I wanted to do,” he said. Living off the rush, Stone was impatient for what was next.
For the next two years, he would pound the pavement, performing at talent shows, booking small concerts at local venues like Columbia’s well-known Blue Note and strengthening relationships with area entertainment industry folks.
His work started paying off and soon he was opening for Snoop Dogg and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. As his popularity began to inflate, Stone made the decision to expand to St. Louis, where his luck just kept on growing.
While recording at Phat Buddha studios in the Lou’, Stone was recruited as an artist on their Fly Moves Production company roster. He soon recorded the battle anthem for the St. Louis Rams, which was played in video and audio format at all the home games throughout the 2005-2006 season.
In 2006, Stone traveled to Atlanta to showcase as an up and coming artist at the Billboard Hip-Hop and R&B Conference.
It was there that Stone met Tomica Woods-Wright, CEO of legendary Ruthless Records.
“Tomica met with one of my production people and that was the first time that I caught wind that she liked my lingo and the original joints I had,” Stone said.
But she wouldn’t sign him on the spot. There was still work to be done. Stone immediately went back into the studio and effortlessly compiled more demos. By 2007, Tomica had heard enough. Stone was signed to Ruthless Records and the full-on construction of his debut album “New Kid Comin’” commenced.
Stone’s album is complete with smart and witty lyricism; bumping baselines and neologisms known as “Himmi Hyme,” which come from Stone’s own “Himmihyminary” (a dictionary of self-created lingo.
From the title track, a certified arrival anthem that boasts of impacting vocals over sparse yet percolating percussion, to the dance-inciting, hard hitting and hypnotizing melodic arrangement of “Rap Gamez Callin’,” Stone shows how his hard work has paid off.
He’s already locked down collaborations with Tech9 on the head bobbing banger “Midwest Explosion,” and also with the iconic funk doctor George Clinton for Stone’s remake of “Red Wine.”
Just throw a cape on this man’s back because with the release of “New Kid Comin’,” Stevie Stone solidifies his spot as more than just a savior to hip-hop, he’s a certified superstar.
