"THE ORVILLE PROUST PROJECT"
This album was the very first release on Soul Seeker Records. The artwork came from letters written in jail by my dear brother and amazing artist and producer. When I first met Eric Richard Tovar on the scene, he went by the name "Stealth Entity". Over time, he took on many different personas in his music, one of which he was most known for on the internet, "Richard Gein". Our friendship started more than 20 years ago and all the time, I collected all his music and kept it because I always thought he was so dope as an artist. When I first met him, he was making his own beats on the Kurzwell 2000. We used to hangout in his old apartment where he lived with his girl at the time and make beats. He taught me a lot about hip hop production. Not only was he a super dope MC, but his beats were also even doper. I still have all the beat CDs he used to give me to pick from or hold onto for him. I speak of him in past tense because he lost his life to a hit and run accident only a few months after creating physical copies of the project. I had the idea of creating my own record label to be able to showcase my art as well as some of my closest friends and brothers and sisters who are unique artists as well. Through our correspondence, Stealth expressed how onboard he was with the label. This would be the first of many projects we were supposed to release by the name of "Orville Proust". One thing that was very unique to me was that for this album, he wanted me to produce it entirely. Things had come full circle now and to know he respected my production enough to give me free rein made it a personal honor to record him. Weeks leading up to our collaboration, Stealth was calling me everyday day with updates on when he would be finally off paper and free from serving time. As part of his transition back into civilian life, he would be transferred into a minimum-security facility and spend the last 3 months of his sentence there and finally be free. Everything went according to plan until he was accidently sent on a bus to El Paso instead of his home city of San Antonio. After about two weeks, he told me he was going to have his girlfriend drive to El Paso and pick him up. His plan was to wait when no one was looking than run and jump the wall and get to his waiting ride and drive away. I told him to just ride it out because he was almost home free and not risk it. But he was convinced that as long as he didn't get any other charges while on the run, he wouldn't have to serve any more time. So, what does he do? He calls his girlfriend, she drives from San Antonio to El Paso, he jumps the wall, gets picked up, and goes on the run. One night, at about 1am, I get a phone call and its Stealth. He says he outside a cheap hotel drinking beer and wants to get picked up and record. I grab my boom box that plays cassettes because my car only plays CDs and a hip hop mixtape i recorded of a bunch of records I own and ran out the door. When I picked up Stealth, he was definitely buzzing and enjoying his freedom and the music and night air as we drove. We got to my house and went to my room where all my recording equipment is and loaded up all the beats he had chosen through playing them over the phone for him a few weeks back. He pulled out a notebook from his backpack he had on and flipped through a few pages and was ready to go. The first track we recorded was "The Tree". The reason this project is so unique and special to me is because we literally recorded the entire project in one night. The fact he was on the run, buzzing off alcohol, drunk with freedom, and FINALLY able to do what he loved so much and that was record his poetry, his energy was just so raw and in the moment that I kept nearly all his one takes for each song because the emotions were just spewing out in the verses. That night, he passed out on my floor. The next morning his girlfriend picked him up and took him back to the hotel they were staying at. A few days later the police were able to get his location through Facebook and came to arrest me. He was actually right about not getting any extra time and was finally released 3 months later as a free man. The beats for this project were all produced pulling samples from vinyl, processing them through the Ensoniq ASR10 and sequencing everything on the AKAI MPC 2000XL. Aside for 2 tracks, all the cuts for the project were performed by my brother for over 25 plus years, DJ Bones McCoy aka Lean Majorz, a super-duper dope turntablist and producer. This video was recorded about a week before Stealth left the physical. Rest in peace brother.
"VENUS IN MY EYE" VIDEO