The Kickdrums may be hip-hop’s next big beatmakers. And they work out of a closet in Avon

The Kickdrums seem like pals you might make at college. Fitts, 26, wears torn jeans and clunky skater shoes, and hides thick pumpkin-hued hair under a Lacoste skullcap. He's thoughtful and quiet, unless you get him onto the topics of ancient Rome or Impressionist art. Penttila, 25, is the group's boisterous self-promoter. (Every hip-hop duo needs one.) He's the guy who texts women while driving and speaks in an Ebonic twang, despite being raised in Chardon. Both love chess and swear by the philosophies of one book: The Teachings of Don Juan, by Carlos Castaneda — the chronicles of a man exploring spirituality via peyote tripping. "This is something I learned from my grandma," says Fitts, as he digs Don Juan out of the microphone booth and hands it over. "You should never keep a book; you should always give them away."

They aren't who you would suspect are behind the popular crack rap that pounds from the mixtape CDs being slung on East 99th. C.J., however, is.

The muscle-bound rapper arrives at the apartment four hours late, trailed by his seven-year-old son and his manager, all carrying steaming bags of Wendy's. C.J.'s arms are covered in tattoos. A motorcycle chain connects his wallet to a belt loop on his tan Dickies.

"A lot of rappers talk about stuff they haven't done," says Penttila. "The thing people like about C.J. is that he lives what he raps about."

Mostly, that's dealing coke. C.J. is an unabashed Young Jeezy clone, extolling the determination of his hustle in an exclamatory drawl. "All day trapping/Posted on the corner, sorry Frank Jackson!" he raps in the closet soon after arriving, his hand brushing against hanging button-downs.

This den-closet studio isn't flashy, but it's hosted almost every local rapper with current street buzz. That includes former high-school stunna Corey Bapes, pudgy party-anthem specialist Chip tha Rippa, and Ray Cash, the rangy, bespectacled rapper with a fat man's voice — perhaps Cleveland's most nationally known rapper since Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. The Kickdrums produced four of the songs on Cash's latest album, Clangin and Swangin.

"It doesn't matter how much or how little you spend" on a studio, says local hip-hop DJ Terry Urban, "just as long as you know music and have a sound you're comfortable with. Everything they do is pro."

A week later, when Fitts and his fiancée move, they bring the studio to their new home — a larger but almost identical apartment in Avon, in a 'hood marked by streets called Americana Boulevard and Constitution Drive. In Hunter's Chase, Fitts made nice with the neighbors, who seemed to tolerate the constant visitors and booming bass. But in this new complex, C.J. roaring around a bend on his Harley could be interpreted as a sign of the apocalypse.

"I'm back on square one in explaining the studio to the neighbors," Fitts says with a sigh.

If there's such a thing as musical soul mates, Penttila and Fitts are them. "We're more like brothers than friends," says Penttila. And until their first meeting at age 19, they lived oddly parallel lives.

Both came from middle-class, professional families — Penttila's in Chardon, Fitts' in Chesterland. And both were weaned on music. Fitts' father, the owner of a woodshop, made fine instruments, and there was always a freshly carved guitar or violin hanging around the shop. As a kid, Fitts learned new instruments as naturally as classmates might master a video game. Now he can play virtually anything with strings. Penttila's father, an architect, filled the home with everything from "big band to rock to opera to old soul."

But the boys gravitated toward the brash energy of hip-hop. "I liked the message," says Penttila. "It's not just one line repeated over and over, like other music. It's people putting their thoughts right out there."

Both began making hip-hop in high school, Fitts DJing and Penttila producing beats. And as each attempted college, their twin obsessions proved too strong to ignore. Penttila spent his one year at Kent producing and managing another student's rap career. "I slept in a [dorm room] with four other people," he remembers. "I didn't want to have all my recording equipment in everybody else's space, so I put it on my bed. And somebody was sleeping on the couch, so I slept on the floor. I slept like that for a year.

"I had to make a choice," he says. "I decided, 'I gotta give one thing 100 percent of my attention.'"

Meanwhile, Fitts lasted just a semester at Tri-C. "I was what you'd call a poor student," he says. "I didn't have any interest in it. It was like working a job you don't really like, just waiting for the opportunity to get out of there."