Welcome to Orlando where life ain’t always a sun soaked, holiday vacation. Where ballers, players, pimps and gangsters hit the steamy streets, looking for action. Where the rhythms of east, west, north and south collide in a wondrous, cultural gumbo. Where Smilez & Southstar, the most promising MC’s to emerge from the sunshine state in a long while are ‘bout ready to forever change your perception of southern fried hip-hop with their debut album, Crash The Party.

“What makes our music so unique is that we’ve been influenced by everybody,” says the animated, baritone-voiced Southstar. “Living in Orlando, we get to hear the Jay-Z’s, the Cash Money’s, the Trick Daddy’s, the Dre’s. Everything comes together here.”

“We rep for the streets, the hoods, the clubs, from coast to coast and everywhere in between,” adds Smilez, the smooth, game-spitting half of the duo.

Born in the Bronx, Smilez honed his rhyme skills performing for the sick and elderly at the hospital where his mother worked, in addition to testing his mettle on the hard knock streets of the legendary Boogie Down. At 17, his mother moved the family to Orlando so Smilez would stay out of trouble. Continuing his passion for words and wit, Smilez began showcasing his skills in local battles and on mix tapes, and opening up shows for rappers like Mobb Deep, Ja Rule, Busta Rhymes, and Terror Squad, earning a reputation as an MC whose street-toughened rhymes and biting humor made him as nice as they come.

Meanwhile, Southstar was also building a devoted following among Florida’s rap fanatics. Born to Chinese and Filipino parents in Hawaii, Southstar’s family moved to L.A. when he was a baby. But by the time he turned 12, they fled to New Jersey after the devastating Northridge earthquake of ’91 destroyed the family business. At 15, Southstar moved once again, this time further south, to the palm tree-lined hoods of Orlando. It was here that he would immerse himself in the surprisingly competitive Orlando hip-hop scene, spitting his fast-paced, LA- Jersey flow in the same ciphers as Smilez, opening up shows for Jadakiss, Mr. Cheeks, The Beatnuts, and Cuban Link, and doing street team promotion for various major record labels to learn the business side of the industry.

“We had heard of each other from playing ball, and we did a freestyle together on a local DJ’s mixtape,” says Smilez. “The chemistry was there.”

But it was long-time friend and famed Bostonian producer Dakari (who was in-house producer for T. C. Records, and has rocked tracks for N’Sync, O-Town, LFO and 95 South), who brought the two together, and the two hottest young rappers in Florida officially became Smilez & Southstar. “It’s crazy. We saw that we had the same personalities. The same energy, the same goals… We even would be thinking about the same things,” laughs Southstar about the duo’s first encounter.

With the help of Dakari and promotions company StreetDwellaz, Smilez & Southstar snagged a coveted deal with Ted Field’s ARTISTdirect Records and immediately began work on their debut album. And so, in between Smilez’s tireless shifts working at a local Orlando hotel and Southstar’s retail job, the hungry MC’s spent late nights and early mornings in the studio creating Crash The Party.

Of course it doesn’t take more than a cursory listen to realize that the verbal dexterity and lyrical wordplay exemplified by Smilez & Southstar on their debut joint is good enough to compete with anybody in the rap game. And that means anybody.

Check out Smilez on the battle rap banger, “Alright”: “Any dude sayin’ he open like me/ Is on a cold table getting surgery!” Or hear Southstar brag on the Latin guitar-driven, “What Can You Do”: “ I.V’s in my arm cause I’m so ill!”

Indeed, the lead single, “Who Wants This?”(produced by Dakari) with its addicting hook, hyper-fast snare shots, velvety flows and reggae interlude is certain to have radio stations and clubs alike touting the group as more than just up and comers.

But club jams ain’t all that’s in their arsenal; Southstar raves about “Gully,” the hard-knock street anthem which lets all haters know that this duo is ‘bout their business when it’s time to get dirty. “We came from the streets. And no matter what, that’s who we are. The lyrics on this song are crazy and the flow is gully!” Southstar explains.

The epic, symphonic “Tell Me,” produced by Orlando’s own DJ Nasty, is a brutally honest confession about getting hurt by a female. “This is us trying to figure out why we’d been hurt, through the song. Everybody’s been through it but not everybody is strong enough to talk about it.”

For those of us who’ve ever lost someone close, whether it’s death, jail or unforeseen circumstances, there’s the moving, “Now That You’re Gone,” on which Smilez, whose mother passed recently and Southstar, who lost his son to a still birth, give particularly heart rendering performances over a riveting piano and guitar progression.

Crash The Party is a tightly constructed, whirlwind of an album, with songs for the block, the dance floor, the cars, the ladies and family. It not only hurls Orlando onto rap’s ever-growing map, but establishes Smilez & Southstar as a lyrically gifted tandem that ain’t going nowhere but up.

“It’s very crazy how complete it is,” remarks Southstar about the group’s first album. “You can throw it in and not have to worry about changing the CD. It’s a journey through our life and yours.”

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