Kareem Jackson, better known by fans as Tef Poe (short for Teflon Poetix), is one of the most talked about emcees in St.Louis. Early in his career, Tef Poe rightfully gained a reputation as an elite battle emcee and has won several awards such as Lyricist of the Year from the Evening Whirl. Now due to his raw, honest, and uncut delivery...he is a much sought after lyricist. Read on as Tef reveals how he got into the hip-hop scene, his controversial moment at the Nazi rally, and more...
BL: Ok for the people who don’t know, who is Tef Poe?
Tef: I’m a simple person man and there are layers to me. There are layers to my personality. Musically what I represent is a purity of lyricism, and a purity within emceeing. If you could just take it back to the core basics of what an emcee used to be not just rhyming…anybody can rhyme and make some stuff sound good. It’s just being an all around entertainer and also putting the message in there without preaching and just taking it back to whatever city you come from. You could believe in the rapper that came from that city. Like New York has Nas, Jay-Z…stuff like that. California has Snoop and The Game. I’m just trying to be the St. Louis version of that.
BL: How did you get your start in the business?
Tef: The earliest thing I did was when I was like…18 years old, I was in the HBO Blaze Battle hosted by Big Tigger. I made it to the second round and got beat by some horrible ass dude. From there, I hooked up with my older brother Black Spade. I wasn’t really raised around him but we kinda had a mutual friend that kept talking about him to me and talking about me to him, and the dude had no idea that we were related. Then one day Spade was like “aw snap, that’s my lil brother” and we’ve been working on music since then. He actually brought me into the old St. Louis group Soul Tide which used to be like this St. Louis supergroup. That’s where it all came from. We came out with a two cd compilation and from there, I went into hittin up the St. Louis mixtape circuit. I was doing mixtapes all over the place working with people like DJ. Reminisce back then he was DJ Freaky Ty, worked with my man Kash, we did Honor’s English. We ended up winning St. Louis’ Best Hip Hop Group by River Front Times, then I’ve just been doing my solo thing ever since then.
BL: How did you come up with the name Tef Poe?
Tef: Um, the name came from…well when I was young I didn’t really have a name. I was just kinda going through things I was go’n call myself. At first, I called myself something whack like “Poetic One” and I was just bouncing from name to name. I was thinking about going by real name “Kareem”. One day I was walking to school because I missed the bus and I was freestyling. I was like “something, something, something…Teflon”. At first I thought it was kind of a generic name, but I kept the Teflon and then I merged the Poetic part from when I used to call myself “Poetic One”. I was like that’s it…Teflon Poetic! It’s kind of like a synonym for “hard rhymes”.
BL: What was the process working on your latest project, The Redeemer?
Tef: Most of the songs are left over from my last cd Glory To God. In the middle of the recording, I felt like the project wasn’t coming together like I wanted it to. Everything wasn’t getting pieced together and I felt like I was recording and recording. I ended up recording like over 100 songs last year and then I never stopped recording from the time that I released the previous cd. I called it The Redeemer cause it just redeemed the feeling that you had when you first started listening to hip hop…when you bought a new cd, you put it in the cd player and you know you were anxious to listen to it. You wanted to listen to every track, you wanted to read the liner notes and things like that. So I had rearranged what I was doing. I thought about it and I said “I’m go’n roll with Tech Supreme!” because I pretty much matured under his production. Then of course Black Spade being my older brother, I had to work with him. So I just made the project half Tech Supreme and half Black Spade and it worked out really good.
BL: Ok, so you recently opened up for Lupe Fiasco which is awesome by the way. How was that experience for you?
Tef: Um…the biggest show I’ve done thus far. I was very excited because Lupe Fiasco is a wonderful artist and I’m a HUGE fan. He’s probably like my #3 favorite rapper. It was kind of different than rocking out like normal …it was thousands of people. It ended up being like 30,000 people. Some people wouldn’t consider a couple hundred people small, but to me that’s nothing. You can kinda get a feel of where the crowd is emotionally and you try to get into the song a little bit more. But with 30,000 people, you can’t tell what everybody’s thinking. You’re looking out there and people are carrying babies, and digging in their nose…just all type of crazy stuff so you just gotta stay focused. But it was great.
BL: So can you tell me a little bit about the Show Stoppers show coming up?
Tef: I’m very excited about that. It’s gonna be me and Made Monarchs. They do a wonderful job throwing events and promoting parties. I like what they represent energy wise. They represent new ideas and just youth and kind of the passing of the baton from one generation to the next. I have a song on The Redeemer called Show Stealers...I just felt it would be fun to kind of relate the event to that song. [Show Stealers show] Sept 19th at the Urban Lounge...everybody free before 10pm. I’m going to perform of course and Rockwell Knuckles is go’n come out and do a couple songs. It should be good times, great performances, and LOTS of fun stuff going on.
BL: So let’s get to the juicy stuff. Are you dating anyone right now?
Tef: I am officially dating someone...she is like Android, the woman from Weird Science, I completely manufactured her in my bedroom. I had to create a female robot for myself because most women are just too normal for me. I like stuff like Star Trek and conspiracy theory documentaries about the Illuminati. Most young girls can't handle that so I got on some real ish and made me a lover and she's awesome. You can hear her singing on "When I Ruled the World" on The Redeemer. Also most girls need to know they're not ready to be with me so they don’t even need to bother. I like to do all types of stuff in the bedroom, hang gliding from the ceiling fan type of stuff most people only see on television. Chances are your not equiped to handle all of that.
BL: I almost forgot to ask you about the whole “mooning the Nazis” thing. What was up with that?
Tef: Uh…it was crazy cause when that happened, it spread like wildfire and I didn’t even think it was that big of a deal. To be honest, I forgot that I had even did it by the time I saw the newspaper. So, I remember when I saw the flyer talking about there was gonna be a Nazi rally, and I was so amped about going down there. I said “if nobody else goes, I gotta go”. I didn’t go to start ruckus or be ignorant, but I just wanted to make my presence known down there. So I got up early, got dressed like I was about to go to a job interview…it was very important for me to not miss this. I went down there and at first it was a scattered crowd, but then it started filling up and more and more people came. When the guy started giving his speech, I saw people sitting around watching like this is supposed to be a protest. So I just started heckling them and screaming out loud and yelling stuff at him to the point where he started speaking directly back to me. So we started talking back and forth and he was getting kind of annoyed. I was just being funny and saying ignorant stuff to him.. He pointed at me and he was like “…..your black ass!”. So I was like “I got a black ass for you!!!” and that’s when I turned around and mooned him. Then one of the state troopers came down and talked to me and said that if I dropped my pants again he was going to have to ask me to leave. So I said “you should ask them to leave because they are out here spreading this hatred and this message of ignorance and separation”. It kind of made me mad because a black girl came up to me and was like “you know when you’re ignorant, you represent all of us”. I told her I wasn’t being ignorant, this is a protest. I came down here to protest, if I just wanted to look at something…I can go home and watch tv, this is a protest. Everything I did was in the spirit of protest. It ended up being a highly discussed issue on the internet but it wasn’t that big of a deal to me.
BL: Wow, ok..well what can we expect from you in the future?
Tef: Well I just developed a blog website with Nathan Oliver…www.Milliondollamilkshake.com. We talk about everything under the sun…from music to fashion and religion.We even have a video game analyst, and we're planning on doing a few other things that I'll keep a surprise for the time being. We call it the Million Dolla Milkshake because that's the price of luxury, and the site is also a compilation of so many things that it’s like a very expensive milkshake. I also have a comic book by the name of Age of Illumination being released. It was authored by DJ Champ and written by Benjamin Sawyer. We are gonna have an official launch party at Star Clipper in the U City Loop. I'm also putting together a soundtrack that will feature Family Affair, Black Spade, Rockwell Knuckles, Corey Black, Tech Supreme, myself, and more. We're still putting the music together and its gonna truly be something epic when we're done. Shout out to B.E. Trotter (Rockwell's manager) for the idea of making the soundtrack a reality. Tech Supreme, Corey Black, and myself are working on a project called the “PBS-Poe Black Supreme Project”. I have a mixed-tape with Tech Supreme done called “Polo Shirts and Nike Hi-Tops”. That’s getting sponsored by Rockthedub.com, shout out to Khal. October 17th I will be going to ATL with Rockwell Knuckles and we’re gonna be doing a show with Elzi from Slum Village. I’ll be out in California sooner or later for some spot dates and I’m just constantly doing projects.
Be sure to visit: http://www.milliondollamilkshake.com/
Photos by: Kia Sleet & B Corin Conley
Assistants: Erika Humphrey & Erika Myles
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