Somerstown are Billy and Glen Pearson.
They've had assistance from a few people over the years but the two brothers have always been the core of the hip-hop act.
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The albums:
Get Rich - a concept album telling the story about a young geezer who inadvertently nicks a gangster's drugs after robbing a girl he has a one-night stand with. Various characters are performed by Billy and Glen throughout the album. Glen put quite a bit of live guitar/bass on but the overall production was a bit limited due to resources and Billy has always felt he could do better on the vocals with this one.
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Welcome to Somerstown - with guest appearances from Billy's friends since childhood: Nate Watkis (appearing as Assassinate) and Todd Powell (Brass Knuckle). This album was better produced but more sample-based this time. The concept album idea was abandoned in favour of separate tracks. Contains the track with the now infamous music video - Thievin' Bastards. The best produced and most highly viewed music video shot in Portsmouth to this day.
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Last Night Out - Somerstown's coda. Was intended to be longer but by this time the brothers were running out of things to say so Glen just released it as is. Bill, however, is fully in his element on this album. The confidence he displays in his rage on certain tracks exceeds that of Get Rich more than tenfold. Contains the track Cummin' Thru that Somerstown made another music video for. This was since removed but can be seen in the video/playlist The Final Compilation on Youtube.
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The history:
After producing Get Rich the brothers went about selling 100 copies on ebay, to friends and in pubs. A few were sold but not a lot happened so they continued with their second album.
After starting their second album, Welcome to Somerstown, the brothers had their first gig in Havana nightclub on 14-6-06. This was the only gig where they were joined on stage by Assassinate who decided to leave the performances to the 2 brothers in future.
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Billy had the idea of sending a copy of Get Rich to Nick Love, the Director of The Football Factory, The Business and The Sweeney and The Firm remakes. Loving the album, Nick gave Billy a call and invited the brothers on the set of his film Outlaw. Unfortunately, the scenes that they appeared in as front-line extras were not included in the movie but can be seen in the Rave and Riot scenes on Extras section of the DVD. Glen found a copy of a partial script in one of the trailers and Billy noted that Danny Dyer rarely stuck to it. Inspired, he said to Nathan and Peter Jefferies (Glen's friend who also came along) "I could do that."
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Other gigs followed and the brothers regularly appeared at a new Portsmouth hip-hop night, South Coast Statements. This event was the brain-child of Matthew Taylor who helped them get their first two gigs and also has a cameo on She'll Pay on Last Night Out. The event was later taken over by DJ Shifty, who would later be Somerstown's DJ. The venue, upstairs of the V Bar on Guildhall Walk, was to be used for part of Somerstown's music video.
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Thievin' Bastards was shot on 22nd, 28th and 29th of April 2007. A few thousand had been obtained for the shoot so Somerstown employed the professional outfit Caput Films who had a range of dollies, cranes and steadi-cam. The tame version, Thievin' Rascals, narrowly missed being on Channel U's regular playlist via their phone-in competition. Glen had his introduction to editing with the "lairy" version, Thievin' Bastards and realised that this was something that he'd like to continue with in the future. Despite some people not liking the content it cannot be disputed that this was the best produced hip-hop video ever made in Portsmouth and (together with being the most viewed) still is, to this day.
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The inspiration of being on a movie set never wavered for the brothers and, motivated by making their own music video successfully, eventually managed to pull off Portsmouth's first full-length feature film, despite having no money. Fit-Boy was written, directed and produced by Glen and starred Billy. Glen's friend, Peter Jefferies and their father, Robert Pearson were Executive Producers. Unable to obtain distribution, the film was placed on Youtube where it can be seen for free, together with other Somerstown content.
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Since then Glen has kept his hand in the film-making with a number of videos over the last six years which can be seen in the playlists on the Somerstown Youtube page and Billy has stuck to the family life. There is talk of further scripts having been written by Glen however, so who knows what the future may bring..........?
