Teddy Faley wrote and performed the rhymes for the album “You Can't UnChop Trees” that he describes as “Stand By Me” to a 4/4 beat. Don't get the wrong idea and think that this album is a fictional portrayal of comaraderie, instead, each song is plucked from the reality that was Faley's younger years as a maverick kid with booze and drugs on the brain. His music bursts of emotion and a wiley use of metaphor in a stream of consciousness that overflows your speakers' capacity. Delivering the music by speaking to the listener in such a way that one knows the imagery as if it was spoken by themselves is a by-product as Teddy says, “I made this album for me.”



You Can't UnChop Trees, the new album with producer New York producer Joe Schaefer, showcases the Baltimore based emcee as coming of age both as a musician and as a person in a myriad of ways.



TEDDY FALEY {VOCALIST: DROPOUTS INC.}

Teddy's musical template draws from a variety of styles – but mentioning them would only be cliché as the hip hop world has become fragmented and mostly mainstream. More importantly, Teddy has taken those influences and delivers a unique sound and approach that benefits him and the character of the music. The fact that the Baltimore rhyme-spitter has grown a sizable following in both releases and live performances, is the icing on the cake.

Producer Joe Schaefer concocted the idea of making an album with a theme based on the 'good, bad and ugly' of drug and alcohol use and abuse. Having met Teddy Faley by way of MySpace, the two set out to create the album. “You Can't UnChop Trees,” under the group moniker DropOuts Inc., eventually turned into the fabric of Teddy's youth put to progressive hip hop flavors. That leap has made itself evident in this new album. The original theme of drug and alcohol use and abuse is there, but the true-to-life stories of friendship, love and loss takes the album to heights neither of them could have expected. Faley reminds us, “This album is for me.”

In the year since they formed, DropOuts Inc. music producer, Joe Schaefer, asks, “Where's the album Teddy?” alluding to the length of time it took to create a little more than an EP. To vocalist Teddy Faley's defense, he performed numerous live shows to rave reviews as well as produced and recorded a solo album during the making of the DropOuts' “You Can't UnChop Trees.”

The mere fact that Faley is writing his parts of the album based on real events has been a labor of love and difficulty. Getting the years of camaraderie, moments of guilt, and introspection into each song has prompted Faley to be a perfectionist with good reason. There's no turning back the hands of time, instead, the album is an opportunity to release the buried and sometimes hidden feelings that have brought both joyful memories and pain.

Few emcees speak with the exposed raw nerve or diseased mindset of today's youth gone emotional, delivered in the elixir of the hip-hop medium, like Maryland's own rhyme spitter, Teddy Faley. Truth and myth collide with empathy and self-concern in Faley's lyrics. Teddy's adventurous approach to word combinations, delivery and metaphor almost make him an outlaw storyteller in the land of hip-hop. That is to say, in a musical genre that tries to be more pop than truly hip, Teddy Faley takes the high-road and makes the music his own rather than borrowed.

26-year-old Faley has been making his own splash-cum-tidle-wave on the Baltimore live circuit while perfecting his rich style. The much older Schaefer has been trying his hand at many different styles throughout an on-again, off-again career as as producer and DJ.



JOE SCHAEFER {MUSIC: DROPOUTS INC.}

Beat Chemist. Audiophile. All around beat geek. Former DJ. Pisces. Schaefer takes cues from art, books, film and too many cigarettes to come up with a style unto his own. Faley's very personal true-to-life stories of a hard life lived through the fog of recreational drug use and alcohol-fueled experiences in his not-so-long-ago youth make for a fresh take on hip hop and new and exiting direction for the genre. Yes, hip-hop. Not hip-Pop.

Adding Faley's dented spirit to a uniquely progressive, if not unheard of, production style to their collaboration acknowledges both a hip-hop perspective and fragility of the American human experience. The newly introduced crossover between accessible experimentalism with emotional jabs and laments at Faley's past make for an album that is both extremely meaningful to the real characters and events brought back to life and those who can relate in a self-cathartic way.

“This is an album I've been wanting to make” says Faley who reaches deep into his memory banks of love, loss and friends he hasn't spoken to, as he laments on the album, “in a moment.” Clearly that moment seems like a lifetime ago, but sounds as fresh as yesterday on the hard-hitting and emotionally charged album.