Greenwich-born duo has new EP with Big Boi, huge rap star

By Cathy DeDe & Mark Frost, Chronicle Managing Editor & Editor

A music duo who grew up in Greenwich has joined forces with one of rap music’s biggest names in a seven-song EP titled Big Grams to be released on Sept. 25.

The pair, known as Phantogram, are Sarah Barthel and Josh Carter.

The rap star joining them is Big Boi, one half of Outkast, iconic Atlanta rappers.

“Fell in the Sun” — the pre-release teaser for the Big Grams EP — is available now on YouTube and iTunes.

It sets Phantogram’s lush electronic orchestrations against Big Boi’s rap and Ms. Barthel’s haunting support vocals.

The Popcrush website compilation of “Best Songs We Heard This Week” last Friday put “Fell in the Sun” atop the list alongside new songs by Ben Folds and the Foo Fighters, among others.

Ms. Barthel and Mr. Carter are already in the big time, with international tours and best-selling, Billboard-charting CDs.

They first worked with Big Boi on three songs for his 2012 album Vicious Lies and Dangerous Rumors.

As Rolling Stone tells the story, the collaboration began when “Big Boi heard Phantogram’s ‘Mouthful of Diamonds”’ in an Internet pop-up ad. Using the phone app Shazam, he identified Barthel and Carter as the song’s creators.

“Impressed by the group’s style, the rapper arranged a meeting and realized they had collective chemistry as a trio,” says Rolling Stone.

The Chronicle could not reach Ms. Barthel and Mr. Carter by press-time.

Interviews with and information about them is readily available on the Internet.

“When Josh and I were growing up,” Ms. Barthel told Rolling Stone, “we idolized Outkast and based our whole goal of innovative and fresh-sounding music [on them].” Now, she says, they’re friends.

“Big Boi and us will call each other whenever we need support or if we’re going some through some stuff. I can always count on him to talk. We’ve been good friends for five years now. He’s just a real person and a true friend.”

In an interview on mashable.com, Ms. Barthel says she and Mr. Carter were neighborhood friends in Greenwich, starting in middle school. They favored grunge, smoking in the graveyard, hanging out at McDonald’s and skateboarding.

They started making music together in their 20s. She said she had returned from art school and he came home after trying to make it in a band with his brother.

“We met randomly at church on Christmas Eve, actually,” Ms. Barthel is quoted.

“We hadn’t seen each other in like five years, so it was kind of like, ‘Hey, Josh Carter. What’s up?’”

They started working on some of his songs, and writing their own — that was the start of Phantogram. The latest collaboration put them in recording studios in Los Angeles and Big Boi’s Atlanta.

Rolling Stone says that Ms. Barthel and Mr. Carter even stayed with Big Boi’s family while they finished the EP.

In a Reddit “AMA” — Ask Me Anything — event, Big Boi describes going out with Josh to a club and meeting Dave Chappell, among other outings — pretty heady sorts of adventures for two former grunge-loving teens from Greenwich.

Big Boi in the Reddit interview also pegs classic British electro-rocker Kate Bush as a favorite non-hip hop artist, which perhaps explains his interest in the Phantogram sound.

Big Boi’s birth name is Antwan Patton. His Outkast partner is André “André 3000” Benjamin (formerly known as Dré).

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