Are you down with Rated Z?
In late June I attended a private party hosted by
Kardinal Offishall for the launch of a new drink mixer—Rated Z. The party took
place in one of my favourite spots in the city—Harlem Underground, so you know your
girl had to be there!
I arrived at the venue and the vibe was cool; not
pretentious. I saw hip hop legend Maestro bobbing his head to some classic hip hop tunes (courtesy of DJ Starting from
Scratch) while Kardi emceed and kept the party people happy.
A few minutes after I reached I was able to sample the new
drink. I sipped it...liked it... and then ravenously
savoured each and every rum infused drop.
It’s a smooth, island-y type of drink that evokes images of up tropical
vacations, palm trees and steel pans.
As the party progressed, I happened to bump into a guy I
went to high school with. We started to
talk and during our convo I told him that I was interested in writing about the
event. He immediately told me to follow him and introduced me to Solitair—hip hop
producer, artist, friend of Kardi and V.P. of Multi-media Relations for Rated
Z. (Thanks, Lloyd!) Solitair and I spoke
for a few, and I casually asked him if I could interview him for my blog. He
gave me his business card and told me to contact him.
After a series of emails, we settled on a day and time to
meet at his studio.
When I walked into his studio he was in the middle of
working with R&B artist, Lisa Michelle, but he graciously asked me to take
a seat and get comfy. We all chit
chatted about random things - like Kanye being Kanye and then dove right into
the interview. Check out the deets.
What is Rated Z?
It’s a drink mixer that can go with any type of alcohol.
It’s very versatile. It has all natural ingredients that you can read and pronounce.
How did Rated Z
come about?
The recipe was passed down in Zamani Thomas’ family (he
is the president of the company) for a few generations now. When we would have
BBQs back in the day, his dad would make the syrup for us and we’d make rum
punch from it. Every single year, that
would be the first drink to go. We
didn’t have a name for it, it was just rum punch. It’s just a syrup that his dad brewed up and
it smelled delicious.
Why did you decide
to create a drink mixer?
One day we were sitting in Zamani’s basement and I was
like, “It’s the syrup. That’s a product
that we can sell!” As a mixer, there’s no liquor in it – it’s so versatile on
what you can do with it. The flavour is
so unique and so tasty.
We did our own market research.... we had it at
BBQs and parties, and it just went. When we decided that we wanted to sell it,
we would do tastings here and there because we wanted to make sure that we had a
balanced perspective on what people thought of the flavour. So we tried to hit
different demographics.
How would you
describe the taste?
Some people have compared it to sorrel. West Indian people would say to me, “C’mon
bredren, it’s sorrel!” I’m like,
“Actually, no! It’s comparable to it,
but there are spicy notes. I like to
describe it as a spicy lollipop. It’s like the Caribbean flavours in a syrup.
I saw different
drinks online. How did you come up with
the different flavours?
Those have been concoctions that we’ve come up for
different events. Every time we do a different event we give the client a
specific drink. We’ve partnered up with some pretty diverse clients—Nella
Bella, Orbit Room among others.
Where can you buy
Rated Z?
We’re working on increasing our manufacturing
capacity. For now we are giving Harlem restaurant the exclusive. It’s also in two restaurants in Miami.
You can order it from the website- www.ratezonline.com. We take credit cards and you can pay by PayPal.
Besides Rate Z,
what other projects are working on?
I’ve been working since January on this project called
The City T.O., which is an idea that me and Zamani Thomas came up with to bring
together talented artists from Toronto to work on one cohesive project about
Toronto. It’s more a matter of the artists from the city getting together in
the spirit of collaboration. There are
artists from the current crop of young artists representing the city—Rich Kidd,
Lotus, May Marcourt, Adria Kain among others. Lisa Michelle is on the project
as well.
I have a single out right now. It’s called “Can’t Break My Stride" featuring Rich Kidd, Lotus and May Marcourt. I also recently produced
an EP for Lisa Michelle called “This Moment” which is out now!
I also want to mention that the newest single “City Love”
featuring Adria Kain and Dwayne Morgan was also released (the singles were released
on soundcloud.com/solitairmusic).
After that last
question we got a little off topic and started talking about the Canadian music
industry (very interesting convo!), Rihanna on Twitter and the necessity of social media. I had sooo much fun talking to Solitair. Our
interview was brief, but it was definitely time well spent. Thanks, Solitair!
You can find more info on Rated Z at:
You can find Solitair’s music at:
Michelle
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