Good Taste

Miles Bonny‘s apartment looks virtually unlived in apart from a ransacked back room scattered with CDs, computer equipment, production gear, and milk crates filled with vinyl. Scotch-taped to the otherwise bare white wall above Bonny’s Dell computer is a magazine photo of a disheveled third-world girl wearing large headphones.

“I’m really not a messy person,” Bonny insists, surveying the mess. “I’m just not organized.”

Actually, he is one of the most organized people you’ll ever meet. In 2002, Bonny — half of the hip-hop tandem SoundsGood — became the primary organizing force behind Lawrencehiphop.com, a communal online entity that has since become a local epicenter for its 750-plus members to discuss and celebrate hip-hop.

“I don’t really consider it my Web site, otherwise I would have named it Milesbonny.com,” Bonny says. “I just wanted to get people more involved in what was going on.”

Half the time, Bonny is what’s going on. His résumé includes contributions to a hefty number of local releases, including his own projects, such as SoundsGood and DinoJack Crispy.

“I don’t like to call myself a DJ. I’d like to think I’m more a producer or composer,” Bonny says. “I just find things like a cool guitar sound or whatever and make a beat out of it. Basically, I make a bunch of beats, and Joe picks through and decides which ones he wants to use.”

Joe Good (real name: Jamal Gamby) is the voice coursing over those beats. The Kansas City native is one of the area’s top MCs and also handles recording, mixing and Web-design duties (with his brother Jaz) for the 64111 Clinic studio. But it is Good’s keen sense of tempo and conversational vocal style that provide a perfect complement to Bonny’s unorthodox backdrops.

“I knew as soon as I met Miles that we were going to be good friends,” Good says. “I didn’t know we’d be doing all of this, but we clicked right off the bat.”

Good and Bonny started SoundsGood after meeting five years ago in the Hashinger Residence Hall while both were attending the University of Kansas. The duo quickly gained local acclaim with their polished sets and party-style performances.

“We just started doing house parties,” Bonny says. “We knew a bunch of people who had houses in Lawrence that liked to throw parties. At that time, there weren’t a lot of people doing actual hip-hop shows.”

In 2002, the pair released Joe Good and Miles Bonny Present on Bonny’s independent InnateSounds label, which would later be used to launch side projects, including the Find, DinoJack Crispy and Al Japro. Last month, SoundsGood arrived at the Bottleneck wearing “Joe Is Good” and “Miles Is Bonny” T-shirts to celebrate the release of the new Money/Pacin EP and to provide an energetic preview of Biscuits and Gravy, the pair’s sophomore full-length, which will be released early next year.

The album couldn’t come at a better time. The past few years have seen an insurgence of Midwest hip-hop collectives from cities such as Minneapolis; Madison, Wisconsin; and Columbus, Ohio, making tidal waves in an industry that has historically been planted on the coasts. The one-two punch of Kansas City and Lawrence artists such as Mac Lethal, Approach, Deep Thinkers, C.E.S. Cru and SoundsGood has led some to speculate that the region could be one of the next to emerge nationally. But there is the Kansas problem.

“I think people around here just can’t seem to get over that word, Kansas,” Bonny says. “It’s funny to hear artists say they’re from Kansas City, Missouri, like they’re afraid that people will think they’re from Kansas. You get tired of the jokes about The Wizard of Oz.”

Good agrees that the local scene is thriving, albeit in the underground. He credits independent record stores — 7th Heaven, Recycled Sounds and Love Garden — as well as radio stations such as KU’s KJHK 90.7 for stoking the embers. But even in the face of marginal success, Good sees humility and restraint as keys to capitalizing on momentum.

“It’s funny, you see a lot of guys make one record and then go out and buy nice cars or a bunch of clothes and don’t know what to do from there,” Good says. “But take a cat like Slug [of Atmosphere]. He’s been keeping at it for years. He’s constantly touring, sleeping on floors and in vans to get the word out. You’ve got to respect that. And he’s running the game over there now.”

Bonny and Good are sitting in Bonny’s cluttered back room deciding which interludes will be kept on the nearly finished Biscuits and Gravy. The pair champion the album as a substantive progression in beats, lyrics and mood from the feel-good vibe of their first release.

“Our first album was tailor-made for Lawrence, whereas this new album isn’t really intended for anybody specific,” Bonny says. “It’s really a product of where we are at musically. I’m the Biscuits, and Joe is the Gravy. We complement each other’s styles and form a hearty meal. Yum — can’t you taste it already?”