Joseph Hamoui, better known as hip-hop producer Thanks Joey, tells Orlando Weekly that he still recalls the day Nikolai Paiva — Brazilian rap artist Niko Is — showed him his first rhyme.
“I think it was called ‘All My Hoes,’ something like that, and I’ve always been really critical, it’s like part of my nature,” Hamoui says. “So I was like, ‘It’s all right, it’s cool, but keep practicing,’ and then we would just hang out and start.”
Searching for his own unique flow early on, Paiva tells OW he would rap-battle in the high-school cafeteria and hallways, saying he was “pretty Eight Mile.” He remembers hanging with Hamoui when he showed Paiva a track that changed things forever: “Blueprint” by Jay-Z.
“It changed my life, and then we decided we wanted to do it,” Paiva says. “We didn’t even know what we wanted to do, but we did it. We started making our own mixtapes and selling them $5 hand-to-hand in high school, and doing little parties. It was quite a time.”
The pair bonded over music all the way back in middle school, their music-making endeavors continued while students at Dr. Phillips High.
Hamoui said that what began as beatboxing along to Paiva’s schoolyard freestyles eventually became producing. Once Paiva’s rhymes improved, Hamoui knew it was time to figure out how to make a beat, something of a feat for a high-schooler 23 years ago. Hamoui says that they really had to figure it out from scratch.
“We started recording on cassette tapes, like we would just download beats off of Kazaa or Limewire or something, and then burn them to a CD, and then record them through a cassette, and then record it into the boombox onto the cassette,” Hamoui says. “It was a whole process.”
Hamoui eventually downloaded FL Studio, the infamous FruityLoops, and started making beats. A Brazilian immigrant, Paiva had stacks of his mother’s Brazilian CDs for Hamoui to sample.
Paiva says that even with his East Coast flair, everything he does in music is influenced by his Brazilian heritage.
“I rap in Portuguese English, and English is my third language, it’s the language that really changed my life,” Paiva says. “I was born in Rio de Janeiro and then immigrated to Orlando, where it’s like one of the biggest concentrations of Brazilians, so that’s pretty crazy.”
Hamoui says that he fell down a Brazilian music rabbithole at a very young age because of Paiva, and that it was one of the first genres of music he ever sampled. Of Arabic descent and growing up on Fairuz and Biggie, Hamoui came to Florida with a love for Arabic music and New York hip-hop, genres that still greatly influence his production style. Artists at the time like Aaliyah and songs like “Big Pimpin’” may have dabbled with Arabic samples, but he didn’t see many doing the same with Brazilian tracks.
“For me it was like hip-hop was such a jazz-forward genre, sampling jazz music, and I wanted to do something different,” Hamoui says.
Speaking of something different, on Paiva’s first big tour (opening for left-field rap star Talib Kweli alongside adventurous MCs like Immortal Technique, Chino and Excell), Paiva would hand out fruit at the shows, both as a symbolic gesture and way to stand out.
“It’s the fruits of my labor — rappetizers,” Paiva says. “I think music is food for thought, so I like to mix both.”
Paiva says it feels surreal to reunite onstage with Hamoui after so many years Thursday at Will’s Pub. The pair are headlining the Store Run rap festival with a lineup of local rap artists including Gabrielknowseverything, Creativangel, Skyler., Marcus Auraylius, Iampvyne, Nicey Most Likely, Rey Sparta and Cordero Eubanks.
“We literally started together, we changed the world together, we changed ourselves together, we traveled the world together. We released incredible music, and then he moved to Los Angeles,” Paiva says. “Life just happens when you’re busy making other plans, you know. So for this to happen is an incredible blessing. I’m super excited.”
6 p.m. Thursday, June 25, Will’s Pub, 1042 N. Mills Ave., willspub.org, $10-$15.
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