Exactly 20 years ago, Twin Cities hip-hop greats Heiruspecs got their shot at the big time with A Tiger Dancing. On this episode of RacketCast, MC Chris "Felix" Wilbourn and bassist Sean "Twinkie Jiggles" McPherson reminisce about the highs (giant shows, Harold & Kumar soundtrack) and lows (label expectations, snubbed Euro tour) that coincided with the release of their breakout 2004 LP.
This isn't the group's first reflection on that pivotal era—McPherson wrote candidly about it in 2016 for City Pages—but it is the first via the audio format, the favored medium of such luminaries as Abbott & Costello, Terry Gross, and Bubba the Love Sponge. Our conversation is part Behind the Music, a whole lotta remember-some-guys, and a fitting anniversary victory lap for one of the best hip-hop acts to ever come outta Minnesota. (Cheap Trick emerges as a surprising/amusing enemy.)
"This record is a really proud document for me and that moment. Only one of us was even 25 when we started meeting folks from [record label] Razor & Tie in their office in New York, and it was an amazing feeling," McPherson wrote in '16. "Probably the hardest part was that, on the level of folks we considered our competitors, we were doing pretty good. I don't have SoundScan access, but I believe Tiger [sold] about 13,000 by 2007 and over 10,000 in 2005. In the indie-rap world you were desperate to hit 10K, that was a big sign."
Ultimately, Heiruspecs never broke into the mainstream. Instead they've settled into the enviable role of local music institution, rallying together each year for an annual concert that recently expanded to the Heiruspecs Summer Classic mini-fest. The St. Paul crew is still doing pretty good, as you'll hear below.
"[Tiger] did feel like we had lightning in a bottle," Felix told us last week. "Maybe not the giant lightning strike that makes you as big as, fucking Journey or something, I don't know… But it really did feel like we had something that needed to get out, and we got it out there."
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