thaFormula.com - First off, a lot of your fans been wondering where you've been Crow?

Crow Soto Of Sick Symphonies/Street Platoon - I just took some time out to take care of some family stuff and also I was trying to get back in school to finish up some classes so I told the guys I'm just gonna take a break for a little bit and work on some music. I started working on the music side on the Street Platoon album. The guys were gonna continue doing what they were doing and I was just gonna take a little break and put more time into some schooling, some family and making the beats for the Street Platoon album.

thaFormula.com - How did the whole Street Platoon group come about for you?

Crow Soto Of Sick Symphonies/Street Platoon - I was going to school with these dudes that were doing music. They formed into a group called Global City and they knew Jack and Duke from the neighborhood they lived in and they invited me to go hang out with them and we were just trying to do music and Jack and Duke were starting to take off doing shows and stuff like that. So we would just be at the shows and with time a couple of years passed and Jack and Duke got signed with Sony and they knew Cynic from the streets as well and they introduced us both. What they seen was that they had two young guys underneath them and we were probably doing our solo things and they said "you guys should just hook up and maybe do a song together and see what happens "and we ended up just kind of forming a group and Duke gave us the name Street Platoon and we just ran with it.

thaFormula.com - So what did you originally want to do with the music?

Crow Soto Of Sick Symphonies/Street Platoon - The way I saw it doing music and what interested me was how people could just lose their minds and all that type of stuff and you know jus the human nature of people in how we are and the things that we fear. All that type of stuff is what I try to write about and we work well together because Cynic is just straight Hip-Hop. I love Hip-Hop too cause that's what I came up on but I find influence in like psychedelic music or progressive music or things like that so I try to use that element of what I like and he mixes what he likes and we just try to mix it together to create our sound.

thaFormula.com - What made you get into the production side of things?

Crow Soto Of Sick Symphonies/Street Platoon - I started as a DJ like for a couple of years and I was like "this is cool," but I started getting real curious about how to make music so I bought myself a keyboard. My first keyboard was an ASR-10 and I just started to try and learn how to make a beat and went from there and I just kind of got into the production at the same time that I was rhyming. So it all just kind of came together.

thaFormula.com - So when you guys came together to record were you surprised at the chemistry?

Crow Soto Of Sick Symphonies/Street Platoon - I wasn't surprised by it because after the first song we recorded we decided "let's become a group" and from there on it was just almost like an everyday thing where we would be together working and we had the same goal of just putting this music out. We would talk to Jack and Duke and we understood that the mission was to put out quality music that had a message to it about all types of life. So together we just grew all as brothers.

thaFormula.com - Now over the past few years, Sick Symphonies has built a huge underground following yet you guys are extremely slept on by the media. Like how The Source magazine put a picture of everyone at the Unity festival but you guys, why do you think that is?

Crow Soto Of Sick Symphonies/Street Platoon - I think people judge us by how we look and if you look at our fan base, a lot of us look like street kids or street people. But I don't think too many people take the time to listen to what we're talking about and listen to lyrics and the music. The quality of the beats is up there with anything else. I think the lyrics and what we are talking about is pretty different. I was listening to "Mind of a Martyr" and just that concept to talk about the perspective of taking the mind of a terrorist, I don't think anybody else talks about ideas like that. So I just think people don't listen really. They just kind of look at what kind of fans we have and look at that and I think a lot of people don't think that they are welcomed into it, but everybody is welcomed to listen to our music and be part of what were talking about. But I think people look at us like it's not their type of music because the majority of our fans are Latino and to me it's just Hip-Hop and it's always been Hip-Hop. Every time it's always, "so, you guys do Latino Hip-Hop..." We don't do Latino Hip-Hop, we just do Hip-Hop and we've always done just Hip-Hop.

thaFormula.com - I remember speaking to you a while ago and how you guys really wanted to cross over to the "Hip-Hop" crowd more as far as being respected on that level. How does it feel to finally have done that?

Crow Soto Of Sick Symphonies/Street Platoon - I wasn't at Unity but I wanted to be there. Unity though was one of the biggest things that had an influence on me growing up in L.A. I was at the Unity's as a kid in LA. I seen Biggie perform at the OG Unity. I seen Wu-Tang, Jeru and all these groups performing Unity. So when it came that we were gonna be performing at Unity, to me it was just like we finally reached somewhere that I thought that we always should have been at. So Unity was a big thing for me.

thaFormula.com - How did you feel about the Sick Symphonies project and were you happy with how it did?

Crow Soto Of Sick Symphonies/Street Platoon - You know L.A. is our best market, but outside of the United States is probably our second best market. It's either Europe, Japan, Mexico, or South America. I think the rest of the United States is just a strange thing to us 'cause I think it's still uh, we are underground and that's just how it is, but I don't think that the rest of the country has really paid attention to what we are doing music wise. I think we just gotta keep working and it will just continue to grow.

thaFormula.com - So the next Street Platoon album is coming right?

Crow Soto Of Sick Symphonies/Street Platoon - Yeah, we are working on an album right now. Cynic is working with Jack on the Muggs album and they are gonna finish that up and then we are gonna put out another Street Platoon album probably this year.

thaFormula.com - And what about Sick Symphonies, what is the status of that?

Crow Soto Of Sick Symphonies/Street Platoon - We were just talking about that. We are seeing if we can put another album together next year.

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