“Peel Potaydahs! Latkes and pancakes made of spuds do a little number on my taste buds. Peel Potaydahs!”

We bake potatoes. We boil potatoes. We fry potatoes. And…we rap about potatoes? 

You do if you’re rapper Michael “ToTs” Heagerty and his producer/DJ, Emmett “Mix Master Mash” Van Slyke, who have created groundbreaking music chock full of potatoes. Since 2007, ToTs and Mash have been belting out their unique tunes locally and internationally, winning people’s hearts with their lyrics.

Inside the Black Lagoon Studios here in Syracuse or at other favorite downtown haunts, the duo can be found hard at work, cranking out tunes and improvising in front of an audience. After four years, ToTs’ exclusively spud-related rhymes have started to cause a musical ripple. He’s even heard fans singing along at gas stations.

“Genetically enhanced, cryogenically froze – I skipped high school, went straight to the ‘prose.’ But then I went back, man, to get my degree in po-tay-to philosophy.”

It might be to believe this started as one of ToTs’ jokes with college friends. After fooling around as a performer, he realized he had a talent for rapping and started to take this more seriously. But why potatoes? “If you can go back 10 days, can you tell me the truth and say you haven’t had a potato in some form?” 

Okay, so the subject matter is rather inimitable, if you will. Perhaps deliberately so. “It’s kind of neat to be pioneering something in music,” ToTs shares. “We’re not trying to be affected by the new trends – we’re doing our own thing.”

That “thing” has resulted in three albums so far. In 2007, The Famine is Ovah, helped to put them on the map. They followed up the next year with The Coup de ToTs and completed their self-proclaimed “tuber-trilogy” in 2010 with Au No You Didn’t.

In case you’re wondering, ToTs doesn’t support himself exclusively through his musical endeavors. Like many in the arts find, it’s rough trying to make it entirely on his craft, so he does have a day job. In between, though, he still finds time to share his talent with youth and makes the occasional appearance at after-school programs (sometimes wearing his $30 fry costume), while gently coaxing the shy kids out of their shells.

If you’re interested in checking out the music, visit www.crispyonthemic.com, where you can “book the ToTs” or buy any of the albums.