Shephard releases ‘Post Crack Era’

By Anthony Hypolite
April 8, 2014

Shepard and hip-hop partner Fulton talk music
Shepard and hip-hop partner Fulton talk music

The generation of Hip Hop has many different angles, but the one type of Hip-Hop that lasts the longest are the relaxing type of Hip-Hop. When artists rap about killing all the time, that’s okay sometimes but not all the time. There is a time and place for everything.

Shephard and Fulton pose during one of their promotional shoots. (Ricardo Shephard/Submitted Photo)
Shephard and Fulton pose during one of their promotional shoots. (Ricardo Shephard/Submitted Photo)

Ricardo Shepherd, 22-year-old junior from Brooklyn that attends Cabrini College, is trying to bring a new light to rekindle the essence of Hip-Hop and the production of beats to portray a positive image. For his freshmen year of high school he went to Thomas Jefferson High School in Brooklyn. Then transferred to LaSalle Academy in Manhattan. Then he went to Valley Forge, and then transferred here this semester. Inspired by his third oldest brother to pursue music, Ricardo realized that his older brother was more serious about himself and wanted to help him in any way so Ricardo found a liking to produce instrumentals over actually being a rapper to help his older brother. If you want to be proficient at something you must good to be at all aspect of your profession.

“I listen to all kinds of music and I get inspired by different types of music, we wake up differently every day and we don’t want to listen to the same thing every day when we wake up,” said Ricardo. He finds a lot of inspiration from Jon Bellion, a 20-year-old producer and singer from the Visionary Music Group. “I have really drawn a lot of inspiration from Jon Bellion as far as expanding and taking on different techniques to get real creative.”

Ricardo likes all types of hip-hop but the type of he would listen to least is trap music because when he listens to music he looks for meaning. “hip-hop was created to uplift the communities where a lot of violence [occurred] so Hip-Hop was used as a positive outlet,” says Ricardo.

Dynamic Equilibrium is the rap group that Ricardo is apart of. It consists of two, Ricardo Shepherd “Macchi” and Brandon Fulton “Alpha Memphis.  They met sophomore year, but never talked at first. After school he would rap with another group and had cypher a couple times a week. “One day of sophomore year Brandon pulled me to the side and said I can rap too, so he spit a verse and it was a good verse so I was like okay here is how we are going to do this. I will let you do your thing, while I produce for you,” Ricardo said. The name Dynamic Equilibrium came to be because of our music complemented each other. Alpha Memphis had intellectual things to talk about, and the beats that Macchi had produced had fit perfectly with what Alpha Memphis was saying. Ricardo stated “If you think of Dynamic Equilibrium in the sense of science its basically two forces meeting each other creating balance and that’s why we chose that name because its just pure balance with good beats and good lyrics.

The tracklist for 'Post Crack Era.'
The tracklist for ‘Post Crack Era.’

Ricardo Shepherd name stage name “Macchi” was sourced from an old English world literature class. In this class he learned about an Italian historian and intellectual that went by the name of Niccolo Machiavelli. He wrote a book called “The Prince” and it made perfect sense to me. “When people look at the name Macchi they all interpret it differently and that’s the thing I like about it,” says Ricardo. His partner Alpha Memphis

If Ricardo became famous he would be perfectly fine with sticking the production side of creating music. “I have been producing for eight or nine years now” says the determined Macchi. Macchi produced every track on the album, and the album has consistently good beats on the album.

Alpha Memphis and Macchi also known as the Dynamic Equilibrium released an album on ITunes Tuesday, April 8 at midnight called the Post Crack Era. “What Post Crack Era is twelve public service announcements to the world, each one has a very strong message and a lot of content. One of them speaks on suicide and depression which is common and a shame that and not a lot of people had spoke up about the matter because it hasn’t been addressed,” said Ricardo. “In order to help people with depression and suicide the only way to combat that with peace and love, and we need to spread that amongst each other in this world.” Pangea, a track released last year by the Dynamic Equilibrium hit 70,000 views on YouTube. The most expensive part of creating the album was the booth time, twenty-five dollars and hour and it took a couple of hours per song.

Ricardo is fully equipped with a gift from God and he recognized that he can use this God-given tool to better the world, and the situation of the world. All his beats always include a certain sound that shows glimmers of inspiration, or promising good towards the world. “Music has been my calling for years,” Ricardo said.

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Anthony Hypolite

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