In many college towns, Davis included, Thursdays have developed a new moniker for those students without Friday classes: Thirsty Thursday. Tonight will give new definition to the term as Starting Six comes to Davis to perform their club banger “Thirsty,” among other songs.
KetMoRee and KRüMA entertainment present Starting Six for a show of firsts. The Six, in their first live show, will be christening KetMoRee as the first group to perform there. Tickets will be sold at the door for five dollars to UC Davis students and eight dollars for regular admission.
Though the Six have Bay Area roots, Davis makes sense as a launching point for the Six. Greyson “(Grey)Goose” Tarantino is a student athlete at UC Davis and KRüMA entertainment, which manages the Six, consists of UC Davis students Guma Fassil and David Kram.
“Greyson is a big part of it, and the support is amazing,” said fellow Starting Six member Steven “Big Steve” Yaris. “Without support from Davis we wouldn’t be doing this. Without support, none of this would be possible.”
Big Steve is cousins with Nick “NicNac” Balding, who makes the beats and does the production for the Six. From his basement studio in El Cerrito, NicNac produced beats for his former group Go Dav and former Go Dav member, solo artist Young Bob (aka Bobby Brackins).
“I’ve been doing this damn near my whole life,” NicNac said. “We are just having fun trying to see how far six average dudes can get in the rap industry.”
The groups other members are Ryan “(Ry)Bread” Bremond, Jared “Riggz” Richmond, and Robert “Fess” Stewart. All six members have been friends since attending St. Mary’s High School in Berkeley together, and each bring something different to the group.
Riggz describes Big Steve as spicy.
“My key ingredients are humor, sex appeal and flyness,” Big Steve said. “If I was a Spanish word I’d be ‘caliente.'”
NicNac is the seasoned veteran who makes the beats, while Riggz describes himself as “the playfully serious guy.” Fess provides the comic relief, Bread is the athletic one and Goose brings “the short guy swag.”
Starting Six is also ethnically diverse – NicNac is Caucasian, while cousin Big Steve is white, Filipino and Hawaiian. Fess is half white, half Peruvian. Riggz is black, RyBread is half black and half Filipino and Goose is half black, half Italian.
The group is currently scattered all over the state with members enrolled at UC Davis, UCLA, UC Riverside and San Diego State. The Six are coming into Davis for just one night and they are looking to go hard.
“The crowd should expect the unexpected,” Goose said. “People kind of think of us as the ‘Thirsty’ boys, but we want to show them we are more than that. We want to show them the Six.” Currently, the video for “Thirsty” has received over 35,000 views on YouTube alone, and their two singles “Jackie Chan” and “Thirsty” have been available on iTunes for months.
While the group hopes they can parlay early signs of interest into further successes in the industry, they are more concerned with enjoying the ride.
“Honestly, I’m more excited that people actually listen to the music that I make,” Goose said. “Being famous doesn’t really mean that much to me. It’s just that having people listen to my stuff is more exciting to me than anything else I’ve ever done.”
Bread echoed those sentiments.
“The coolest thing is when I go to these guys schools and people we don’t know will be driving their cars slapping our songs,” Bread said. “We’re not doing this to become the best hip hop artists, or to become super famous or blow up the toughest.”
That being said, the Six are excited to be doing their first performance at KetMoRee. “KetMoRee has supported us from day one,” Big Steve said. “[Bar Manager] Sandeep [Dahal] is a huge part of it. If you are showing support and showing love, you are going to get our all.”
Be the first to get the ‘Sixperience’ tonight at 10 p.m. at KetMoRee.
JOHN S. HELLER can be reached at arts@theaggie.org.
