S.A.S. (rap duo)

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S.A.S.
Also known as	Dipset Europe, Eurogang
Origin	U.K.
Genre(s)	Rap
Years active	1997–Present
Label(s)	Diplomat Records
Associated acts	The Diplomats, Cam'ron, Jim Jones, Juelz Santana, Hell Rell, J. R. Writer, Freekey Zeeky, 40 Cal., Jha Jha, Duke Da God
Website	Official Website
Members
Mega Mayhem

S.A.S. (formerly Strictly About Stacking changed in 2006 to Streets All Salute) is a rap duo consisting of brothers Sean Mega Williams and Melvin Mayhem Williams.

[edit] History

S.A.S. are a London-based hip hop duo, who came to the mainstream attention after they performed a freestyle rap on New York City radio station Hot 97 in 2001, the freestyle later featured on their mixtape Coming To America.

S.A.S. are affiliated with New York-based group, The Diplomats. They are commonly referred to as S.A.S. or Eurogang—Eurogang refers to a group they formed in the U.K..

The group was born in the United Kingdom, North London in East Finchley but came to the United States in 1998. Despite having come to the United States, the group is based and lives in the United Kingdom.

They were officially welcomed into The Diplomats in 2003 and later that year they met Damon Dash in London, Dash impressed by the duo heavily courted them as his new signings to Roc-A-Fella Records and started the process of signing them to the label inconjunction with The Diplomats, in that period they featured in Rocawear modelling campaigns and acted in Dash's State Property 2 film. However, due to the sale of Roc-A-Fella Records in 2004, and Dash's non-involvement in the label thereafter, the deal never materialized.

During the summer of 2004 the duo ran into some legal issues in the United States which meant they had to return home to the United Kingdom and incurred a two-year absence from the US until late 2006.

In the time away from the US, they re-established their Eurogang group. During 2005 in came new members—Villain and Bigz, both rappers—and only rapper Haze, producer Rephan and S.A.S. themselves remained from the old line-up. Producer Rephan produces the majority of songs for both Eurogang and S.A.S. and runs their production company, Fedayeen.

They also established the European based imprint of The Diplomats called Dipset Europe. The label was founded, financed, managed and marketed by S.A.S. themselves and in less than two years they established Dipset as the number 1 crew within the streets of Europe.

The debut release from the imprint was Streets All Salute, which was a mixtape-album, which later came with a bonus DVD. The release was intended as the prequel to their first official worldwide release and featured Juelz Santana, Cam'ron, Nicole Wray, Baby Blue and Sewuese. The video for the first single, "Cheerio," featured a cameo from Kanye West, who had previously tried to sign S.A.S. in 2002.

Despite the success, they have however struggled to get support from a section of music fans from their homeland, who believe they do not 'rep' their birth country, the United Kingdom. However their supporters argue they have 'repped' London and the U.K in many of their songs. This may be because S.A.S. didn't start their rap career in the U.K, yet due to their achievements they are attributed with being the global rap ambassador's for the UK.

The UK popular urban music scene (Not Underground scene) is dominated by grime music acts such as Dizzee Rascal, Wiley, Lethal Bizzle, etc. This has left little room for general hip hop acts such as S.A.S. and at times while S.A.S. have shown their willingness to integrate in the UK music scene by collaborating with artists such as Bigz, Sincere, Scorcher, JME, Baby Blue and Ghetto, they have also shown their frustration in not receiving the same amount of attention for their achievements in comparison to grime acts such as Dizzee Rascal or Lady Sovereign have received, on numerous tracks of theirs including the Streets All Salute album tracks, "Can You Feel Me" and "The Story Of Us." This lack of attention in the UK has led the brothers to mostly focus on winning the mainstream attention of American audiences as of late 2006 onwards.

Some UK based urban music fans tend to feel that S.A.S. 'put on American accents'. The rap duo have denied this on numerous occasions in magazine interviews and DVDs.^{[citation needed]} Mega (of S.A.S.) has stated that they simply use American slang words, as hip hop is originally an American artform and Americans also use UK and Jamaican slang words in their rap songs yet at the end of the day we all speak English.

This is a big debating point within the UK urban scene as some feel that the brothers do not rap how they speak, yet some feel that they do rap in English accents but add American as well as other national slang to their rap. Ironically, some American fans and rappers have been seen and heard to say that S.A.S. are very and sometimes too English. Rappers such as Busta Rhymes had a video on Youtube praising S.A.S. for rapping in English accents, and that it adds something different to hip hop. However some American audiences have said that they like S.A.S. but do not always understand their tracks because of their English accents. This debate proves to be the biggest obstacle for the rap duo, as they find it hard to win on both sides of the debate.

In late 2006 their legal issues were overturned and they returned to the U.S. The duo have been seen with Jim Jones at his Emotionless video shoot, with Juelz Santana on the popular The Come Up DVD, and seen in pictures with the late Stack Bundles and Juelz Santana on their MySpace.

In 2007, S.A.S announced that they were breaking away from the Dipset building in search of greener pastures. After numerous years, broken promises, and no recording deal or anything obtained or forthcoming by the Diplomats or Diplomat Records for S.A.S, the duo felt they had no real choice but to leave.

Understandably frustration must have got the better of Mega and Mayhem as they have made it pretty clear on their myspace page:

"Since our arrival back in the States, and our charges being dropped in November ‘06 (which we handled completely by ourselfs), neither Cam or Jim has made any plans to secure a deal for S.A.S in any way. The fact they are not even talking and haven’t been for a year, brought to light recently, has forced us to leave that situation to find our own. Although we will always be the London Diplomats and heavily affilliated with Juelz Santana, we will not be and have never signed to Diplomat Records. We are FREE AGENTS and are looking to brand our own imprint Road Music Group, our in house production company Fedayeen and our hometown crew Eurogang in the States.

Diplomat Europe was something we set up and completely funded ourselves making Dip Set the No. 1 crew in Europe thru guerilla style marketing in less than 2 years. We have achieved this with NO management, machine or funding from any label. Right now we are focused on our US campaign WHERE IS S.A.S?, and finding the right management that can take us to that next superstar level we should of been on since ‘05."