Sugar Tongue Slim, a.k.a. STS, is a rapper, poet, and one-fifth of the Money Makin’ Jam Boys crew, along with fellow Philly rappers Black Thought, Dice Raw, P.O.R.N., and Truck North. He has released three mixtapes under the “Demand More” title (Demand More 1, Demand More 1.2, and Demand More 2), with another installment in the works. He is featured twice on the latest Roots album, How I Got Over, on the track “Right On” and the bonus track “Hustla." 215mag.com recently sat down with STS to discuss what brought him to Philly, the art of jacking beats and the links between streetwear and hip-hop. 

You came here from Atlanta. What made you chose Philly as opposed to say, New York?
When I came up here, I was actually just coming to visit. My homie in Memphis was from Philly, he was like 'you should just come up to Philly to visit.' I came up for a week,  and stayed. I just loved it. I never went back to Memphis. I left school year books, everything, everything is there.

You were big on the slam poetry scene in Atlanta and started to rap when you came to Philly, but Atlanta is generally more known for rap than Philly is, no?
Atlanta is known for making music, a lot of dance music. Philly is known for rap. Up north itself is known for rappers, that’s what I wanted to be. I wanted to rap, I didn’t want to just make music. Most people talk about rappers in Atlanta, you're only gonna name a certain amount of people but here there’s been mad rapper “rap acts” come out.

You're saying it’s more poetry up here, whereas in Atlanta it’s more for radio?
Up here they are into the lyrics, even in poetry. You can’t beat me up here whereas down south if a girl does a poem about being a black woman in the struggle, she’s gonna win because they just into that. They aren’t into the whole art of poetry whereas up north people are more cultured.

Can you tell a little bit about your car accident and your subsequent treatment by your old label, Def Jam?
I was down in Miami doing a slam, a friend of mine who I grew up with lived in Miami, so we had got up and we were going to hang out that first night. Just going back to his crib we went around the corner. I hit the pole, shattered my pelvis and I was in the hospital for a month and a half in Miami. The day I got out my leg was stuck, I couldn’t straighten it out so I had to get another surgery six months later. That’s how I lost the Def Jam deal because they didn’t think I was going to walk again.

Since you lost the deal, how are you getting your name back into it?
Once that happened, they bought us out. So I took the money, bought a crib, put a studio in the basement, soundproofed and everything. Built a booth, me and my brother, my man Tino, we did the whole thing then started making music. I get all my homies to produce. My man Brian and Kev came to me [saying] we should do a mixtape. We did Demand More 1, Demand More 1.2, and just dropped 2, and all that stuff besides “Ill Street Blues” was done in my basement.

You use a lot of jacked beats in your old stuff and I remember when you said on Demand More 2 you didn’t want it to be all jacked.
Jacked beats, it’s all really a song that you like. You may not like it at the time but when it first came out, you liked it, it was a winner. So, if you liked the song, if you listen to it you’re probably like me, so therefore it’s already set up for you. The thing with those joints is I try not to go into song mode. [I] just rap on them because that’s just fun. I like taking beats that people wouldn’t think I would take.

How do you pick what beats to jack?
We go through, we’ll listen and we’ll be talking about somebody and whatever comes up some of my outlet people just tell me. When I first started Demand More 1, I did this MF Doom beat, I didn’t know it was MF Doom. This dude named Cal from RockTheDub.com heard about it and reached out and told us he liked it. That one and the Busta Rhymes joint, he sent me both of them and I was like 'I’ll do it.'

This may seem kind of obvious, but in what ways do hip-hop and streetwear go together? 
That’s what it is. It tells you where the game is. When everyone was wearing hoodies and timbs and baggie jeans, it was all about street shit, that was when everybody was talking street shit and now most of these street dudes even tightened up their wear a little bit. They started to switch it over because its not gonna sell. You gotta watch what the people are into. It’s come around to the point where hip-hop is more presentable now than it was before because a lot of those doors that had to be kicked in are already kicked in. You don’t have to go in there with a hoodie, you can put a blazer on. Before, streetwear would just be grassroots but it’s spilled over into the mainstream now. It’s becoming the new pop culture.

What do you mean by "Demand More"?
"Demand More" was at a point where, me and my man Biggie was talking, we were just talking and was like sometimes you go over people’s head and they don’t get it. Sometimes you gotta slow it down so people can catch up, you gotta walk with them. You gotta teach the people to demand more. It’s like you can’t just go in and tell them to demand more, you gotta teach them to demand more. "Demand More" is just everything, every time I do something I just wanna keep getting bigger and bigger until everybody just demands more. The first mixtape was mostly all jacked beats, demand more 1.2 was something we threw around, and Demand More 2 got better. The next one should have all original material, for the most part.

I heard you say that ATLiens and The Blueprint are your favorite albums. Those are two well known albums, what lesser known albums do you draw inspiration from?
De la Soul's Step 2 Step, that’s one album I can’t live without. Goodie Mob, Soul Food and Still Standing. In my opinion, those are the only two albums Goodie Mob ever made. Cool Breeze, Incubus, I have a lot of Coldplay. I like Barris Hammond in the summertime. He’s old head smooth type reggae. As far as hip-hop, Camp Lo probably had one of the biggest influences on me. When Camp Lo came out I used to dress like them. If I could get my Valentine's picture it’s probably in my school yearbook. I wore a little Parie scarf, I had the old school sweater on. It was awesome, I woke up in the morning and ironed my clothes to that.