When we are stimulated there are agents called stimuli's, which are connected to our nerves, which then results in a state of activity. This can be the reason why the man, self named Sha Stimuli, entices your sense everywhere he's mentioned and managed to keep us relatively stimulated in 2008 when he dropped 12 mix tapes in 12 months.
"What I did last year by dropping 12 mix tapes in 12 months was put convos with people on record, is not common for me to do songs for ladies like the secret or a dedication to Stevie Wonder, but I wanted to show how I'm different and I wanted you to feel me," He begins to tell me surely of himself and his music, as we speak from Atlanta, where he is now a long distance away from his beloved Brooklyn. "Atlanta's got a great scenery, we record and a bunch of producers come through all the time, Atlanta is a smaller version (of New York), people think is easier and try to capitalize on it."

Sherod "Stimuli" Khaalis was born in Brooklyn and came up in the game with his brother/producer Lord Digga alongside Masta Ace and the Juice Crew. At 11 years old he gave his power to the Mic and at 14 he was featured on Masta Ace's Slaughter House LP.
The grind and cypher battles he put time in, came to a pay off when in 2004 he received The Source Magazines Notarized Unsigned Hype honor. "I told myself since Unsigned Hype, I was gonna celebrate everything, you always on what's next, I call this the beautiful struggle," Sha begins to tell me and this I can begin to see.

He was signed to Virgin Records in 2005 and even though it was one of his most memorable career moments, the artistic pressure was on. "I didn't have high expectations, I knew I wasn't gonna sign for a lot of money up front, it was something I strided for," This is the set reality many of our hip hop greats face in the time of the web epidemic, where your MySpace page becomes your resume and just as much a gift as it is a curse. "The power of the Internet makes everybody think they can do it. now you can hit your favorite rapper on Facebook, I know the game became so saturated with people, now every 5 people are somebody in the industry." Sha Stimuli's assertion and experiences are not words of ignorance, as they are the reality of many artists behind close doors. "The next step after getting signed was breaking through board meetings, I go from doing records to having to have a single the next day, I learned about myself looking back, now I know who I am," he speaks to me so assertively as he graphically depicts his experiences.
Maybe this is why a rapper with his knowledge was quoted as being the "Voice of his People", because as he speaks, he enlightens you with the realistic voice some of us can shy away from expressing, but then again he is a rapper and that is what they do, they express what many of us feel inside but cannot put into words and beats, the words that make you, you. "I don't like to say it has been hard for me but it hasn't been easy, but I look and ask why people grab to things and not me, one night I get love and is all good and I exist but I'm not at the top, that might be my gift and my curse, I represent the human, the grown man."

Even though he's experienced a lot of the "I made It" moments in his life, being in the room with Hova himself and feeling like he was a bout to loose something, the inner powers within him, stepped into stimulating action and went lyrically crazy on JayZ just to show him. When asked if New York Hip Hop is dead he calmly and humbly tells me, "We can't be egotistical and say we run the game, all I wanna see is positivity, when an A&R says they don't want NY rappers because they don't sell because in Kansas they support, we created a industry where everyone thinks they somebody, before it was crews, now they don't even have that." But we do have artists like Sha stimuli who at the end of the day still carry what they were put on this green earth to do, "I do feel the hunger but is not the same, before I wanted to out rap people, now is more like a thirst, a more mature approach to it. My hunger is to go to more schools and talk to more kids. My hunger has changed, my hunger is to be a better person."




The trials and the tribulations can be some of those A tribe Called Quest spoke of in rule 4080 and that of the words of JayZ, on how they build you up to tear you down. One thing which is not questioned, is that no matter what, fan love and loyalty will remain the same, nothing feels better than being remembered, nothing is more pleasing to the soul then a person smiling as they think back of a artist who struck a note while listening to their album bump in their radios. Perfectly titled "My Soul To Keep" is Sha Stimulis next album set to drop in the summer, hes taking some of the work from the Virgin album and applying a whole new genre to it. "I'm trying to contribute to good music," he firmly reminds me, but I think that task has been done. It was the works of him and many other in the business which have helped us identify the sounds we like and don't like. With saturation or without.

"After leaving Virgin I learned to do things your way, if you go down, go down fighting your style," the strong speaker explains. Everything else can disappoint, from the videos thrown at us, to the auto-tune infested songs we have been bombarded with, but one thing remains the same, Sha Stimuli's words and rhymes ain't ever gonna let you down.

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