For about a year now, Tyler Butts and Nick Reinmann have been spending their days as two fourth-year marketing students at Ohio State and their nights as lyricists, beatmakers and producers working on what will be Booty & The Kidd’s first album, “The Heart of it All,” out Oct. 15.
Butts and Reinmann are childhood friends from Cleveland whose paths diverged before crossing again a year ago to start making hip-hop music together in Columbus. Butts, also known as Booty, said while the pair has plenty of similarities, they each bring different experiences to the album.
The artists want the album to be a personal project, touching upon themes of introspection and self-discovery.
“(The album is) about how you have to conquer yourself before you can conquer the world,” said Reinmann, aka The Kidd.
These themes motivated the two friends to release it during fall, rather than another season.
“In the fall people start taking things more seriously, and that’s what this album is for, taking things more seriously,” Reinmann said.
Booty & The Kidd cited a range of influences including Radiohead, the Ohio Players, Outkast, and Hall and Oates, who has a specific similarity to Booty & The Kidd.
“Two best friends who had a goofy name,” Reinmann said of the group.
When asked why they duo chose to rap, Butts joked, “Because we can’t sing?”
Beyond the vocals, Reinmann made the beats for and produced “The Heart of it All.” In addition to the homemade beats, Booty & The Kidd brought in other artists to lay down guitar, trumpet and violin tracks.
“We try to shoot for some organic sounds,” Reinmann said. “It stylistically sets us apart,”
Total creative control is part of the project’s approach — the duo seeks to prove that amateurs can produce professional-sounding music without the help of a label.
“We made all the beats, all the recordings,” Reinmann said. “It feels good to be doing it all ourselves from the very beginning to the very end.”
The fact that the duo’s first release is an album and not an EP is also part of the vision.
“I wish the industry wasn’t so focused on singles and it was more about pushing albums as a cohesive project and something that says something,” Butts said. He described publishing an EP instead of an album as like getting a piece of candy rather than a meal, it’s not as satisfying.
Booty & The Kidd is not merely a creative outlet for the two friends, but a diligent operation.
“We have our next 15 steps pretty much planned out,” Reinmann said.
The next of those steps is the release party of “The Heart of it All” at the Scarlet & Grey Cafe on Oct. 15 at 8 p.m. Admission is $5.
