Twin brothers, 2XL, have just begun their journey to stardom but are definitely no strangers to strife. Recently booted from the Pretty Ricky tour a few months ago, and dealing with a sick mother are the types of things that make them stronger, motivate them, and keep them humble.

California natives, Laze and Royal Armstrong have released their first album, Neighborhood Rapstar (Tommy Boy Records) and been going strong ever since. So far, they’ve worked with Scott Storch, Unk, and E-40 but there’s a lot more going on. With more touring coming up, a clothing line, acting and a record label, the 17-year-olds got their minds right.

TEC: You guys are from Cali but you moved around a lot growing up, did you guys move from state-to-state or was it within California?

Laze: It was all throughout Cali.

TEC: Even though you stayed in Cali with all the moving around, it still must have been different worlds, so did the different places where you lived influence your music and your style?

Laze: Without a doubt because, growing up, we’ve seen the best and the worst parts of life. We’d be living in a bad neighborhood but going to school with kids whose parents were millionaires and stuff like that. And once you go through stuff that makes you who you are…we just saw so much that it’s only right that it influenced us. It made our whole style; it made our whole swagger — everything. It made us who we are.

TEC : You guys were working on Neighborhood Rapstar for a long time so how did that work out since you guys have grown and matured a lot since you started working on it at 11? You’re 17 now, so how was the process of making it and going back and changing stuff?

Royal: The album is actually in stores now. When we say it was a long process, we weren’t recording the album for a long time. It took like six to eight months, but we’ve been rapping since we were 11. We just turned 17-years-old, and we take that whole time as we were working on Neighborhood Rapstar because we were still developing ourselves as artists, finding our own sound, our niche, our own style, in that we take that as the whole development time for our first album, which is Neighborhood Rapstar.

TEC: What can people who don’t have the album or are not familiar with you guys expect from it, and who have you worked with?

Royal: People can definitely expect to be let into our world. We have really personal songs on there, like “Mama of Mine,” which is a song dedicated to our mother, who raised us as a single mom. People can definitely learn more about us as far as where we come from, like with songs like “Chapter,” — and at the same time, we’re young and having a good time. The whole album has a positive and good energy, it has swag to it; that’s really what we’re brining. We’re the first young artists to come out and really write our own stuff so everything is definitely more personal, and we produced half of the album as well.

TEC: How is your mom doing, speaking of…

Royal: It’s funny you say that, we’re actually in the parking lot right now visiting her at the Hospital.

TEC: How does your mom having Cancer motivate you guys?

Royal: It really keeps us humble. A lot of people have a lot of fake people around them, a bunch of their boys from the neighborhood, telling them “you’re the future,” “you’re a legend,” blah, blah, blah…we came home straight from the airport [from the Pretty Ricky tour] and went straight to the hospital to a sick mother, paralyzed. It really keeps us motivated, and especially since she raised us as a single mother, we feel obligated to pay her back for all that she’s done. It really just keeps us humble and down-to-earth because no matter how many cities we go to, how much money we make, how many albums we sell, at the end of the day, we still have a sick mother.

TEC: Do you find that you’ve been inspiring other young people who might be going through the same thing, or something similar?

Laze: Definitely. Without a doubt, we get emails everyday. We’re real personal with our fans regardless of whether it’s messages on myspace or if they’re texting us on our cell phones or something like that. Somebody saying, “Oh, my God, my uncle is going through the same thing as your mom, do you have any advice for me,” stuff like that — we’re hit with it all the time from fans that are going through the same thing, so it’s affected…not just kids, I know everybody going through a similar situation will be able to relate to it.

TEC: Going back to your album a bit, you guys worked with E-40, how was that?

Laze: That was a really good experience. He was the most down-to-earth dude. We like being around people like us — high energy, fun, down-to-earth and hard working. One of the joints he did on the album was more like a favor because we have two joints on the album [with him], and he was recording to another one of them and wanted to hear more material from us. We played another joint, “Kitty Kat,” and he decided to get on that too.

TEC: Speaking of E-40, he’s a veteran and from the Westside so has he been an influence on you guys before working with him?

Laze: Without a doubt, especially with him being from the west, there’s…I wouldn’t say it’s sad to say but we have limited influences, probably more than people from other regions, because it’s not as much coming out [from here] but he was definitely an influence.

TEC: Who are some of your other musical influences?

Royal: I can answer for both of us when I say Jay-Z, as our all around influence. Dude came from rapping to building an empire off of that, as far as the record label, clothing line, club, he owns his own drinks, he has his own artists — and it’s really the same thing that we’re trying to do — everything. He used rap as a stepping stone and built himself up to be a brand.

TEC: Staying on the topic of influences but switching it up a bit to fashion and style, who are some of your fashion influences?

Royal: We’ll throw people off, we have a really quirky style – everybody from Pharell to skater people in the Hip-Hop world with know a cat like Terry Kennedy who’s a skateboarder. We like anything that stands out. We’ve always been like that. We like colors, we like going out in public and having people stare. We’ll mix it up where we’ll do the hoodie, do this, do that, with some skater shoes with big laces or do some DCs or some Adidas with some fat laces in our shoes, we’re really just us. Anybody that knows us knows our fashion, whether we’re in the studio or going to a fashion event, we just like to be different. So many cats out there are doing the same thing — just wearing Air Force Ones and a hoodie, so we really try to stand out. We mix everything from Punk Rock to Hip-Hop.

TEC: It’s funny you said that because I did notice that about you guys but moving on to other teenagers, and young people your age, what are some trends what you see going on where you feel like people just need to let it go and get original, or that should just go away?

Royal: I wouldn’t say a trend. I’m just talking about originality as for as personality — as far as the way people talk to the way people dress, everything is just going off what’s hot at the moment. There’s not really trends out there that I think need to stop because everybody is going to do their own thing and I don’t want to knock that, because I wouldn’t want anybody knocking us in what we do. But people have to keep everything original as far as the music to the slang [like I said], to the way they talk, to the way they dress, and the way they carry themselves. People need to find their own personality and follow whatever is hot to try to succeed.

TEC: Being that you guys mix and match, I noticed the 80s and 90s are coming back big time, in terms of fashion. What do you think about that?

Laze: I think it’s hot. Even though it’s the past, it’s new to today’s style. I just think it’s going to constantly change, but we definitely think the whole 80s and 90s thing is a cool look.

TEC: What do you guys like to see the ladies wearing?

Royal: Bathing suits, everyday [snickers]…

TEC : [Laughing] Ok, how about regular clothes like with jeans and tops…

Laze: The whole sweatpants look, that’s real cute and sexy, like with Juicy Couture and stuff like that. We don’t know a lot of girl brands but something that will be real cute.

TEC: What else you guys got in the works?

Royal: We just secured our acting agent, we have a clothing line that we’re working on with designers and it’s going to be really hot, our production company — we have a female artist signed, we have to pretty much keep it under raps, but we’re really excited about that and just continuing to move on. We go back on tour in July, so that’s going to be a big thing.

TEC: Who are you going on tour with?

Royal: We can’t say, but it’s going to be real big, though.

TEC: With the clothing line, is it too early to speak on it yet? Does it have a name? when is it expected to drop?

Royal: Right now we’re going between a few names, we want to play off of our album a little bit. It’s called Neighborhood. The men’s line would be Neighborhood, and the girl’s line will be something more feminine but we’re thinking of basing it around Neighborhood.

TEC: Any last words for the people?

Laze: Just go to our myspace page. Myspace.com/2xlworld. And also, our fan phone number. We’re really personal with our fans, and we love talking to them all day, everyday. This is Laze talking and my number is (818) 795-4330, and my brother’s phone number is (818) 793-8584, and we have them with us all day, everyday. We can’t always text back right away though. Other than that, we’ve been real blessed and thankful for everything that’s happening real fast on a big magnitude but it’s still the beginning for us. There’s still a lot of people that have stopped supported us since the beginning of our career, so for you to support our career at the beginning stages is much appreciated.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 6th, 2007 at 7:42 pm and is filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.