It was a rainy and blustery Tuesday night out in downtown Buffalo, but the weather didn't dictate musical impulses inside. White, translucent curtains hung from the doorway, lending the small and lively space an ethereal feel. When pulled back, the curtains revealed a room where magic was already in the making. The musicians were in the zone, the studio was blazing (in every sense of the word)and there was plenty of creative juice to go around (including enough Sam Adams Alpine Spring Ale to keep the party popping). The little unnamed recording studio at the corner of Ellicott and E. Huron is where the hip hop powerhouse There Goes the Neighborhood, composed of live hip hop band Type Relevant and local emcee Keith Concept, announced their inception. Although a newly established partnership, the musicians and their friendships go way back in Buffalo hip hop history. Guitar player and emcee Brian Herlihy (Relevant) and drummer John Hunter (TypeNice) who have been jamming for quite some time together, had the idea of creating a live, jazz-infused hip hop band about 11 years ago. Key player Stefan Wajda taught Herlihy how to play the guitar 19 years ago, and joined in their endeavor just last year. Brian and Stefan's friend of 19 years, Eric Stachewicz, who jammed with Stefan in the Dave Matthew's Tribute band, also jumped on board as bass player in 2012. “We just kind of faded into it at some point,” Stefan said of Type Relevant's organicness.

Eric gently gripped his bass and prepared his fingers for an impromptu jam session. “Let’s make some magical juices happen,” he said while in the studio. And just like that, he took the lead by strumming a melody so theatric, yet at the same time so serene-sounding you would have thought it was something out of a classic Spanish telenovela. Stefan began playing a beautiful bluesy chord progression on the keys to accompany the flamenco-styled bass playing and Brian brought out the hip hop heartbeat of a snare and high hat as he repetitively tapped away on the beat machine. The final element was added as Keith Concept entered the session with a Buffalo-based freestyle, and the rhythm sailed away with his words. From the moment he met Type Relevant in 2003, Keith instantly gravitated toward their sound. Years later, the emcee was inspired after attending a Machine Gun Kelly and Tech N9NE concert where the main acts were performing with live bands, and so he initiated the collaboration in early 2012. “It blew my mind,” he said of his concert-going experience. “So I contacted Type Relevant and said listen…I want to be a part of this.” There Goes the Neighborhood was finally formed, ready to share its organically blended creativity with the world.

And its humor. While Brian played a track on the computer, Keith, a goofball at heart, busted through the doorway with entertaining commentary and occasionally chimed in to relive the glory of his heydays through storytelling rants. “I wrote this joint,” Keith joked, stealing all the credit. “Sure you did,” the guys said together sarcastically on cue. Concept laughed, “It’s an on-running joke…We talk shit to each other all day through text message and through Facebook.” Time flies when you’ve having fun with old chums, and that quality time spent together has allowed the guys to become familiar with one another’s diverse musical backgrounds. Time has also afforded them the luxury of developing a cohesiveness of unparalleled strength. “I met Keith not long after I started going to Brian’s studio with Eric, so Brian and Keith were really the first people associated with a hip hop scene that I have ever worked with,” Wajda, who studied jazz and classical music at Villamaria college, said. Stachewicz joined Type Relevant as a member of the punk metal band Chester Copperpot and learned to quickly adjust to playing different bass lines. ”I definitely had to tighten up my playing and restrict myself from going off (on the bass),” Eric said, whose eclectic musical palate includes everything from blue grass to experimental funk. “Playing with them has made me more melody-aware…You got to have that basic real deep groove to work off of.”

A deep groove, of course, needs feeling behind it. The majority of lyrical inspirations for the group’s tracks, Brian said, are derived from family. “I transition music to my words. It’s about feel and energy. I talk about family, I talk about my kids a lot, as opposed to being really metaphorical and battle-style like a lot of other emcees,” the family man revealed, whose youngest son Isaac is a drummer and whose other son Alex has been spinning on his head since he was two. “I started playing (instruments) before I started writing. I’m coming from the perspective of a musician rather than an emcee (in my lyrics).” A lot of ideas for the new album, tentatively set for release in late spring/early summer, are thrown around during improvisational jam sessions at the studio. It’s a process of music making that comes naturally to the guys, Stefan said, because “we’ve all been schooled musically in some fashion.” There Goes the Neighborhood is a melting pot of artistic brilliance because of the diversity of their experiences. Stefan himself is a guitar and piano teacher at Vida Studios in West Seneca, and Eric attended UB for music performance. Brian is a sound engineer by nature and Keith is a self-taught emcee that has been in the game longer than Shaq. Keith still finds the partnership ironic, but believes the intermingling of musical flavors makes There Goes the Neighborhood the powerhouse that it is. “It’s kind of funny that we all actually do make music together, because if you look at it from the outside looking in, you’d be like, ‘There’s no way that any of these dudes would be in the same room with each other, as far as our music,” he confesses.

But it works. And talent helps, too. Keith has rocked with the best of them throughout his career, sharing the limelight with hip hop power players like Ghostface Killah, Dilated Peoples and Kool G Rap. As the winners of the Artvoice BOOM award in 2009, Type Relevant made their presence known as Buffalo’s best live hip hop group, and perhaps the only live hip hop group still going strong after 11 years of making music together. “We were just in the zone,” Brian said while reliving their winning performance at Nietzsche's. “We had the hip hop community behind us. They really helped us out. I think people were really together during that time.” The group’s gusto will surely continue to unify the hip hop community in Buffalo and propel them into a bright future. All for one, one for all and there goes the neighborhood…