Alex Faith and Dre Murray’s musical brotherhood on ‘Southern Lights: Overexposed’

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Rappers Alex Faith and Dre Murray released their first collaborative album, Southern Lights: Overexposed, last month and the pair of emcees shared what it’s been like working as a duo after establishing themselves as two of the most dynamic individual rappers in the faith-based hip-hop movement. For Alex, he saw a kindred spirit in Dre that made him realize they were a perfect musical fit.


“We are a part of a collective called We Live As Kings and there were four of us and we put out an album at the beginning of 2013 and we went on the road together,” Alex recalls. “None of us had ever known each other, but Dre and I [were] more alike and I feel like me and him connected immediately more than I did with other brothers on the label. It was a natural chemistry that started on the basis of enjoying the same things and we sort of regionally come from the same place. We were raised sort of similarly. Not identical, but there’s enough similarity there where we get certain humor and we get certain styles of hip-hop. We can joke and understand each other better than some of the cats we were around.”


Faith grew up in Atlanta, Dre in Houston; and the pair’s Southern roots inform virtually everything about their artistic approach. For Dre, growing up in the shadow of the DIY rap legacy of Rap-A-Lot records and UGK meant that he understood how to push himself to grind for whatever he wanted.

“Houston definitely influenced me in the ‘put your head down and get it done’ mentality,” explains Dre. “There wasn’t a lot of waiting around for anybody to do something for you on the music scene in Houston. There were dudes who were as successful monetarily as the dudes signed to the major labels. But they just had regional hits — they were hometown heroes. So you aspired to be that. It’s hurt me a little, because it’s something that I’ve tried to learn to balance. I try not to be prideful and have that ‘I don’t need your help’ mentality; but I’m not waiting on anybody to do something for me. Not just music, but anything that I’m focused on. I got that a lot from the mentality in Houston. You feel that — just the independent grind and getting up and building something from scratch and taking pride in the fact that you’re accomplishing these things without help from an outside entity that could get you there a lot faster. In Houston, we enjoy the process a little bit more. The success is greater because we go through those things.”


“I live in East Point [Georgia] right now, right off of DeLowe, which is where Big Boi is from,” Alex shares. “So I’m all intertwined in this Atlanta scene—especially the southwest Atlanta area. I think you can see how iconic Houston and Atlanta sounds can be on the music industry. You’ve seen Atlanta be a staple in the industry for a long time, but you’ve also got guys like Drake who came up with a lot of Houston co-signs. I think the influence of the South is undeniable; and I had a conversation with a cat who’s a prominent Christian hip-hop artist, and he said there’s no classic hip-hop coming out of the South right now. And that’s insane. I think there are more iconic rappers from the South than anywhere else. I know I’m biased; that may not be an absolutely true statement, but that’s my perspective. I think that’s influenced me and Dre in the same way it influences the mainstream. We grew up listening to the same songs on the radio that the Big Seans and the Drakes and the Kendrick Lamars listened to.”

With the release of Southern Lights: Overexposed, Alex and Dre were able to tell stories that reflected the reality of their individual upbringings. The project also doubled as a visual album, and allowed both rappers to address themes of racism and violence and love — all filtered through their own perspectives.

“If there was anything that I was intentional about on the record, it was this nostalgic feel,” Alex says. “Authentic southern content; like what are the things that make the South tick? Money, the club and dope boy culture — all of these things that you’re taught to love. But I wanted to say, ‘How do we properly approach things we’ve been taught through this medium without just saying it’s bad?’ Because not everything associated with southern hip-hop culture is bad. It can be positive and the negative things need to be looked at from a more nuanced perspective as opposed to just ‘Oh, it’s bad.’ ”

“And the fact that we pulled that [visual album] off, I don’t know if everybody could’ve pull that off,” Dre adds. “Because of the things that we went through to actually get that done: I don’t know if everybody would’ve been cool to go to some of the places that we went to shoot things and at the times that we went to shoot things. But whatever it calls for, that’s what we have to do.”

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