You Oughta Know: VerBS
Posted by Rebecca Haithcoat on Dec 21, 2009
VerBS is dressed for winter.  He greets me on the street in front of his mom's house in Culver City in his usual layers and wool cap.  "I love Portland," he tells me in my car later, wiping invisible perspiration from his brow and cracking his window. "If I moved anywhere, it'd be there."  Considering the city's dreary, drippy reputation, and the glimmering blue skies quality of his music, the statement strikes me as ironic.  Then again, the day we meet is not "just another day out in sunny L.A."- a temperamental gray sky is moodily spitting drizzle.  

"I need to get my own place again," he says as he leads me into a living room stuffed to the ceiling with Mos Def movies, books, and knickknacks, "but I don't have a job." As if to further highlight his innate sunniness, he had a job hustling- American Apparel clothing, not drugs- but his supervisor grew suspicious and VerBS quit before he could get fired.  Besides, he had something a little brighter on the horizon. Murs had asked him to go on tour.

"One of my homegirls from high school...had a friend who worked at a studio [Murs] used to record at, and she was a big fan...her screen name was 'mursismybff.'  He started talkin' to her...they just became friends.  Then she introduced me to him at a Christmas show he had at the end of 2006.  He's like, 'Oh, you rap? Why??' He had a weird, like, kinda condescending vibe, but it was a playful vibe.  Then I'd see him around...I gave him my cd, 'The Progress,' and then hit him up for advice. 'You don't need my advice; your cd's really tight,' he told me.  Then he'd come to my event, The Spliff. He randomly hit me up: 'I might have a job for you...you wanna go on tour?'"  

Touring with Murs was a lesson in discipline, one VerBS didn't always take.  "He would tell me, 'Yeah, don't drink before the show,' but sometimes I would do it anyway.  Sometimes he could tell, and then he'd be like, 'I told you not to drink!' He doesn't smoke cigarettes, doesn't smoke weed, doesn't drink, runs two miles a day...if there's somebody I could model my career after, it would definitely be Murs. That fool's independent hustle game is legit. He goes hard for himself. He even told me, 'If you don't invest in yourself, who will?' He puts up the money for all his videos, he takes himself on tour...he'll stay til every fan's gone, just shakin' hands and kissin' babies."  

Growing up, Kyle "VerBS" Guy's mother played jazz and Michael Jackson records ("one song, on repeat"). She says Kyle used to hum constantly as a toddler.  Enrolled in piano lessons, his teacher said they were unnecessary due to his uncanny ability to play by ear, and he later went to Hamilton High School, a magnet school for the musically gifted (serendipitously, so did Murs).  "I used to play with Legos for hours on end.  I read comic books for hours on end.  When we were on tour, [Murs and I] would stop in comic book stores and buy a gang of [them]...I just got a big imagination, and they feed that," VerBS says.  I glance up and spot a certificate awarded him from Santa Monica College.  He's not currently attending, but he wants to go back and spend more time developing his penchant for photography.  

These snatches of his background snap together like pieces of a puzzle.  He designs each of his solo cd covers individually, drawing and using his own photos to craft unique works of art. He hosts The Spliff LA, usually jumping into the cipher that wraps every show ("When I'm in the zone, my freestyles blow my writtens out of the water. It's like when Neo sees the Matrix- I can see rhyme patterns sentences ahead," he tells me).  He collaborates with a list that reads like a "Who's Who" of underground L.A. artists- his crew, Swim Team, Dibiase, Equalibrium, Gumshoe, and Intuition.  

His project with Intuition, the six-track EP "Buzz," is actually what first caught my attention. Though both rappers focus on their solo careers, as a duo they performed at the Paid Dues Festival this past spring alongside Atmosphere, Brother Ali, and Tech N9ne; they also opened for Murs at a sold-out House of Blues Anaheim show. When they appeared at LA Stereo.TV's launch party, VerBS' irrepressible grin and puppy-like ebullience were contagious.  It's his personal spin on the old adage that says you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.  "I just act the same all the time...you can easily get caught up in your own ego. I don't really think I'm the 'greatest rapper in the world.'  I feel like humble kings rule forever...I'm tryna live like Michael Jackson and Jesus," he says.     

Like them, he's a man in demand.  Suddenly, eagerly, he asks me, "Wanna hear a new song?" He starts playing tracks he hasn't released and occasionally rapping over beats producers have sent him. One producer out of Canada, who found VerBS over the internet, sent him a handful of lushly layered tracks reminiscent of Foreign Exchange's Nicolay.  VerBS is a big fan of the other half of FE, Phonte ("He and Murs and Mos Def are probably my three favorite rappers on the known tip," he says), and thoughts like dominoes start tumbling through my head. VerBS wants to start singing more; Phonte is a rapper-turned-singer!  North Carolinian Phonte and Netherlander Nicolay composed their first album by exchanging beats and rhymes back and forth online! VerBS and this Canadian cat could model a working relationship on FE's! But the last thought falls with a thud: Nicolay eventually relocated to North Carolina.  VerBS likes cold weather; what if he moved? For L.A.'s sake, I'm hoping VerBS stays  "sweat(ing) a lot."

VerBS' next drop will be a free download entitled, "Fuck Yeah, Man."  You can catch him live hosting The Spliff Friday, January 1st, at Freak City, 6613 Sunset Blvd, and online at www.myspace.verbsisthehomie. 


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  • Categories: Photography , The Spliff , Rebecca Haithcoat , You Oughta Know
dope...ness!
Great piece! Keep up good work, Rebecca!
  • m ma
  • Dec 21, 2009
  • 3

yeah really was an intriguing piece...i actually read the WHOLE THING.

nice story about Murs X verbS.....murs is so down to earth...and FE latest cd is suCh a great 1 !

- @sunrisesundown

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