Alchemist Interview (Originally Posted On BlackSheepMag.Com July 8th 2009)

The Alchemist has led something of a charmed Hip-Hop life. Having been a dedicated rap fanatic since the early-80s, the Cali native was officially introduced to the hip-hop world in 1993, releasing his first single ‘Put Your Handz Up’ as one-half of the Whooliganz and a fully-fledged member of the platinum-selling Soul Assassins crew (Cypress Hill, House Of Pain, Funkdoobiest etc). Following the dissolution of the Whooliganz after their label Tommy Boy shelved the group’s debut album, Alchemist turned his attentions to producing under the guidance of Cypress Hill’s DJ Muggs.

After an intensive musical apprenticeship, the aspiring beat-maker soon stepped out on his own, beginning a journey that would see Alchemist adding his sonic grit to certified bangers from the likes of Royce Da 5’9 (‘I’m The King’), Dilated Peoples (‘Worst Comes To Worst’) and Jadakiss (‘We Gonna Make It’).

In more recent years, Alchemist has continued to balance underground respect with mainstream exposure, holding his position as an integral part of the Mobb Deep camp and working with lesser-known acts such as Canada’s Swollen Members and former Gang Starr affiliate Lil’ Dap, whilst also contributing beats to projects from household names like Eminem, Lil’ Wayne and Fabolous.

With the release of ‘Chemical Warfare’, the official follow-up to 2004’s ‘1st Infantry’ album, Alchemist continues to blur the lines between underground and commercial, featuring a cross-section of artists on the project from old-school legend KRS-One to current West Coast sensation Blu and silky-voiced R&B singer Maxwell.

In an industry dominated by politics and bullshit, The Alchemist is definitely all about the music first and foremost.

Although you’ve had some underground projects out in-between, it’s been five years since you released your official debut album ‘1st Infantry’ in 2004. Did you approach recording ‘Chemical Warfare’ any differently to ‘1st Infantry’ or was it the same formula?

Alchemist: “I feel I got my Timberlands wet as far as ‘1st Infantry’ was concerned. It was kinda like when you have your first baby. I don’t have kids but friends have told me that the way you raise your first child is different to how you might raise your second or third child because you’re wiser and have more experience. So with the second album I feel like I’ve been able to take a few more chances and also feel that I’ve progressed with my production and with my rhymes. I mean, I’ve been working on this album for years off and on, so I had a lot of tracks to sift through when it came to choosing material. I had a lot of time to choose what made the album and some of the tracks were made two months ago and some were made two years ago, but I don’t really want people to know which are which because I just want them to listen to the album as a whole experience.”

Given how easy it is in today’s digital-age for people to make music, what do you think the role of the producer is in 2009?

Alchemist: “I think the role of the producer has actually become more relevant today because of all these beats CDs that people are putting together and rappers rhyming on other artist’s tracks. It’s upped the ante because if that’s all you do then you’re gonna get lost in the sauce now because so many others are doing it as well. So it’s starting to get to the point where dope producers are getting together with particular artists to do whole albums, like how Just Blaze got with Saigon, Exile and Blu put a project together, and so did Muggs and Planet Asia. That shit is inspiring motherfuckers because nothing truly great gets made by people just taking a beat off the internet or a beat CD and throwing something together. I mean, you can tell when time has been put into something because you can hear it in the quality of the music. So I think the state of the game right now has made it even more special when a producer gets with an artist for a project because you can feel the chemistry more.”

You came up in a period when a massive part of the production process was the physical act of getting out and going digging for records to sample, which is something that doesn’t seem to be so common today. Do you feel upcoming producers are missing out on part of the process if they don’t get their hands dirty so to speak?

Alchemist: “Yeah, I mean digging is definitely part of the process, but the most important thing is inspiration. I mean, whether you’re going to travel on a train for two hours to go digging though crates of musty records in a store, or whether you’re finding your sample material on the internet, you still have to open your ears to different sounds and become inspired. That’s all a sample does, it inspires you to want to create something out of it. The music has to engage you for you to want to add something to it. I mean, I’ll hear a sample and if it’s the right one then straight away I’ll be thinking about what drum pattern to put with it and what bassline to use. So sometimes when producers are listening to records and thinking that they can’t find any samples, it might not necessarily be because the records are wack, it’s probably because you’re not inspired at that moment to create, so no sound is going to catch your attention, not even the illest loop. So you really have to have your third eye open when you’re making music.”

You’ve worked with a diverse selection of rappers over the years – how does the creative process differ in the studio from artist to artist?

Alchemist: “It really depends on the artist and how well I already know them. When you’re friends with someone and you know each other the music you create is always better because that kind of weirdness that sometimes exists when you’re working with someone new gets thrown out the window and no punches are pulled in the studio. Like with Prodigy, it’s got to the point where we know how we both work and nine times out of ten if I have a beat I want to play Prodigy he’ll usually get it. Sometimes I might think something’s dope and he may disagree, but most of the time we’re on the same page so the music just comes naturally. Like when we did the ‘Return Of The Mac’ project, I don’t think we really thought we were recording an album until we were almost done with it. I mean, we discussed it a little but we were really just in the zone and the next thing we knew we had enough material for a full project. Plus, I think the reason that album was so well accepted had a lot to do with timing, which I think is the most important thing in the world. ‘Return Of The Mac’ dropped right after Mobb Deep’s ‘Blood Money’ and that album had raised a lot of eyebrows amongst fans who didn’t totally love the G-Unit / Mobb Deep thing. We kinda felt like we had something to prove and I think the fact that ‘Return Of The Mac’ came out so soon after ‘Blood Money’ made it even more special, like ‘Yo, that’s what people wanted to hear.’”

There’s a whole new generation of artists coming through at the moment – who’s caught your ear from the current crop of upcoming rappers?

Alchemist: “Nippsy Hussle is really, really dope on the West Coast. Fashawn is crazy, Blu, Jay Electronica is incredible. They’re all artists I feel aren’t afraid to do something different. I want to be challenged when I sit down to listen to someone’s record, I don’t want to feel like something’s contrived or made to appeal to a certain market. I don’t appreciate any of that shit, never did when I was a fan as a kid and still don’t today. I feel all of those artists I just mentioned are bringing something new to the table. “

You mentioned wanting to be challenged by an artist’s music, who were you listening to when you were just a fan back in the day?

Alchemist: “Grand Puba and MC Lyte were my favourite rappers, along with W.C., Guru, PMD, MC Eiht and Too Short. As far as producers, DJ Premier was my favourite because he always seemed to have the best beats on people’s albums and studying him really showed me what being a producer was all about. I mean that whole generation of producers was a big influence on me, Diamond D, Large Professor, Pete Rock, The Beatnuts, Showbiz, T-Ray, E-Swift, Dr. Dre, Battlecat, Ralph M, DJ Lethal and DJ Muggs, who obviously I came up under in the Soul Assassins.”

What was that experience like for you in the early 90s, being a part of a camp as popular as Soul Assassins at such a young age?

Alchemist: “Everything I am today can be traced back to that time because I experienced so much. Touring, performances, groupies, smoking, recording, I was out there watching how it was being done by the top squad in the game at the time and it fucked me up forever. I’m still fucked up to this day because of that (laughs). But seriously, that whole experience really changed the direction of my life because it made me realise that music was something I really want to do.”

You’re one of the few producers who has managed to bridge the gap between the underground and the mainstream throughout their career, working with everyone from Dilated Peoples and KRS-One to Eminem and Snoop. Given that you’ve experienced both sides of the rap world, have you ever been tempted to lean more heavily in one direction?

Alchemist: “It’s been a gift and a curse to some extent. On one hand keeping that one foot in the underground rap world has helped me remain relevant all these years, but then on the other hand, if I’d have put both feet in the mainstream I could’ve made a lot more money and been bigger as a producer. But I really try and maintain in the middle. My career has been more of a steady climb rather than a quick rise, but I think it’s good to rise gradually because that’s where the longevity comes in. I get high off this shit, so I’d rather do it forever the way I am doing it than blow up quick, make some money and then fade away just as quickly. Sitting around counting money wouldn’t be as fun as doing what I’m doing now.”

Are you someone who likes to stay using the same production equipment or are you regularly on the lookout for new technology to incorporate in your music?

Alchemist: “I’ve been experimenting with this new machine for a company and the machine’s called the Millennium Falcon and it’s really crazy!!! I don’t want to give away too much but it’s pretty much the secrets to Alchemist’s beats all in one machine. I really think there’s going to be a time when you just look at your computer, think of a beat or a sound, and it’s there. I hope I’m still alive when that happens, but I think we’re getting close already. I mean, when you think about what a jump Serato was from using vinyl and two turntables, we’re always moving forward with technology. So I do think we’re pretty close to just thinking of music in our heads and it’s there on the computer. Brainwaves are energy, it’s just a case of working out how to harness and convert that energy.”

What future projects can we expect from you?

Alchemist: “Gangrene is the next thing after ‘Chemical Warfare’, which is a collaborative effort between me and Oh No, Madlib’s brother. The album’s done already and it’s real dope. Of course me and Evidence are working on our project together, Stepbrothers, which is taking a bit more time. I’m more intrigued now with doing whole projects with an artist rather than just one or two beats on an album. I mean, that’s cool but it doesn’t really allow me to push the parameters of what I can do as a producer. I just really want to keep making good quality music and show people that hardcore Hip-Hop is still something that people appreciate and will support.”

Ryan Proctor

El Michels Affair Interview (Originally Posted On BlackSheepMag.Com July 1st 2009)

Although they might not claim the title of ‘hip-hop band’ in the same way as the likes of Stetsasonic and The Roots before them, the connection the multi-talented El Michels Affair has with the rap world cannot be denied. First making a name for themselves in the early Noughties with their unique brand of funky, old-school instrumentation, the collective’s credibility really started to rise in 2005 after they were approached by Scion to perform with the king of rap slanguage, Raekwon of Staten Island’s mighty Wu-Tang Clan.

 

Following the success of the perhaps unlikely pairing’s shows, El Michels Affair released a number of cult 7” singles featuring their own interpretations of some of the Wu’s most well-known classics. Turning the raw production of The RZA in on itself, the group fleshed out the melodic sounds contained within many of the original samples used to create the Clan’s gloriously gritty Chamber music, almost acting as the sonic bridge between the soul music of yesteryear and the hip-hop of today.

 

So successful were the group’s lovingly crafted re-workings of some of rap’s most recognizable cuts, El Michels Affair were inspired to embark on a completely Wu-related project, the recently-released instrumental album “Enter The 37^th Chamber”.

 

Here, group organist Leon Michels talks about working with the Wu and why live bands are still the future of music in a digital world.

 

 

 Obvious first question, how did the group come together?

 

“The group first released a 12” on Soul Fire Records in 2002. El Michels Affair was a group of musicians from The Dap-Kings, Antibalas, and the Mighty Imperials that played occasionally for Soul Fire Records. In 2005 I purchased a Tascam 388 and me and Nick Movshon from the Mighty Imperials and Antibalas started recording tracks which eventually turned in the ‘Sounding Out The City’ record. After Wu-Tang hired us to back them up, El Michels Affair formed itself into a functioning band.”

 

The group’s sound has been described as “cinematic soul” – what does that description mean to you?

 

“I’ve always been into soundtrack records and the way music is used in movies, so when we create instrumentals we always try to apply some sort of cinematic narrative to the music, whether it’s in the strings or the mix or whatever. Cinematic soul is exactly what it sounds like—soul music with moody, cinematic overtones.”

 

El Michels Affair has had a strong connection with the Wu-Tang Clan over the past few years, performing with Raekwon and also releasing instrumental single versions of some Wu classics. What were your initial thoughts when you were approached to work with Raekwon? Did you feel it would be a natural fit or where there reservations?

 

“When we were first approached to back up Raekwon, we didn’t really think much of it. We thought it would just be a one off performance that would help the ‘Sounding Out The City’ record sell better. But when we actually started dissecting RZA’s beats and playing them live, it sounded cool and completely different to the originals. Jeff Silverman, the co-founder of Truth & Soul, thought it would be a good idea to record the instrumentals and release them on 45s. Initially, it was scary because that music is untouchable. It’s like trying to cover Marvin Gaye’s ‘What’s Going On’, it will never be as good as the original. So our approach was to enhance the soul side of RZA’s beats. We just tried to turn those grimy hip-hop songs back into soul songs without losing to much of the Wu’s spirit.” 

 

Have you had any feedback from Clan members regarding you reworking some of their most memorable moments, particularly from RZA himself?

 

“The Wu-tang guys always loved the stuff live but I’ve never heard them say anything about the record. I played RZA ‘Glaciers of Ice’ and he seemed to like it.”

 

Would you consider recording a whole rap-based album as El Michels Affair and if so which MCs would you want to work with and why?

“Probably not. Live hip-hop is not my favourite thing. I think it works great live but sampled and programmed hip-hop is more interesting to me. Even when we recorded ‘Enter The 37^th Chamber’, our intention wasn’t to make a “live hip-hop record””

In today’s digital music age, is it a challenge being out there as a live band, or do you feel people are still looking for that organic sound that only live music can offer?

 “I think live band shows kill shows with DJs. When you just have an MC and a DJ on stage, there’s not much to watch. You’re really just getting a chance to hear the record, really, really loud. More and more hip-hop acts are taking live shows on the road because they realize they can create more of a spectacle, which is why people pay $40 to see a live show – it’s entertainment.” 

Ryan Proctor

Guru & Solar Interview (Originally Posted On BlackSheepMag.Com June 15th 2009)

Having already achieved independent success with projects such as 2005’s ‘Street Scriptures’ and the fourth instalment of the critically-acclaimed ‘Jazzmatazz’ series, former Gang Starr front-man Guru and his production partner Solar return with ‘Lost & Found’, a project grounded in the heritage of true hip-hop which also finds the duo seeking to push some creative boundaries.

Amidst a collapsing music industry, Guru and Solar’s 7 Grand imprint has continued to thrive, notching up combined sales figures of half-a-million for the label’s previous three releases. A relentless tour schedule has also seen the pair take their brand of hip-hop around the world, with both Guru and Solar keen to build a genuinely personal relationship with their fan base, something that doesn’t always appear to be high on the agenda of many of today’s artists.

Some 20 years after he first made his debut as a young, aspiring lyricist, Guru is still as passionate about his craft as ever, and with ‘Lost & Found’ the seasoned veteran is determined to play his part in helping to maintain the art form that has given him a career.

 What’s the concept behind the new album title ‘Lost & Found’?

Guru: “We’re approachable people and on our travels we always kick it with the fans and people in general, so we hear a lot about their feelings on hip-hop in terms of what they think it’s lacking right now and what it needs etc. So the idea behind the title is that hip-hop may have been lost in recent times, but it can be found here at our label 7 Grand. That’s why I said on the album’s title track, ‘Hip-hop’s been thrown in the lost and found, We got the claim ticket.’ 7 Grand is representing some solutions to what people think is wrong with this music.”

The album has quite a polished, contemporary feel to it in places compared to previous Guru / Solar projects – did you approach this album any differently in terms of production?

Solar: “I sat back and thought about what it would take to make a real hip-hop album in 2009 that could also appeal to people across the board and I think we’ve achieved that. But that said, what is a real hip-hop album in 2009? Is it something that sounds like it was made back in the golden-era or does it mean something else today? So I had to listen to the records that people are listening to today and kind of make a hybridisation of my idea of what real hip-hop is and the sounds that people are going to be comfortable with today that, like you said, are polished and contemporary, but not too polished and contemporary (laughs). I think ‘Lost & Found’ has all the components to make it a good, if not great, hip-hop album for 2009. Not for 1995, not even for 2005, but for now.”

The buzz track ‘Divine Rule’ has a real old-school feel to it and lyrically contains many references to New York in the 1980s. What was the energy like in NYC during that time?

Guru: “Well, we all know that back in the early days of hip-hop, cats used to rhyme over disco breaks. So when we started to put the track together we just started kicking it about that time and the more we talked the more I was like ‘Oh shit! Yeah! Do you remember that? Do you remember this?’ It really was a glorious time and the energy in New York was just phenomenal. Everything to me back in the 80s was like a mini movie. To go see a Bruce Lee flick on 42nd Street, or to go to Fordham Road in The Bronx or Fulton Street in Brooklyn, that was epic to me. Riding on the A train, or especially the J train and the real gully trains like that, those were epic moments to me.”

Solar: “A lot of people love the 90s, and I’m a big fan of the 90s too, but the 80s were no joke. There were a lot of dangerous neighbourhoods in New York back then, but that’s what made the shit fun back when we were young (laughs).”

Guru, on the album’s title track you describe yourself as being “slept-on”, which is something some fans may be surprised to hear you say considering your legendary status as an emcee. When you wrote that line, did you mean that the music you’re releasing now is being slept-on or did you also mean in terms of your wider contribution to hip-hop as part of Gang Starr?

Guru: “All of that. I mean, as much as people talk about my older stuff today, they weren’t really doing that back then, at least not to the point that some would have you believe. I mean, you’ve got to put yourself in my shoes, I’m sitting here today hearing what people say thinking ‘What the fuck is all the hoopla about?’ because I can remember sitting around while we were making those same records thinking ‘Those fuckers!’ when I would see certain ratings Gang Starr would get in different magazines.”

Solar: “I was a big fan of Gang Starr’s work, but I think part of the reason why people want to hold on to a certain era so much is because there’s not a lot of good music out there for them to latch onto today. So hopefully, if people give ‘Lost & Found’ a chance, they’ll find something they like. But a lot of people have come out aggressively against our records because of the box they want to put Guru in and that has hurt our sales and stopped those projects from being all they could be. But Guru and Solar lead with positivity, so we’ll just keep pushing and doing what we do. We respect everyone’s right to like or dislike our music, but all we ask is that people give our music a fair listen before they judge it.”

Solar is rhyming on the album as well as producing – how does that influence the creative dynamic between you both?

Guru: “For me it’s inspiring because as a team it takes us to new heights and opens up new creative opportunities. I always knew Solar had it like that with the rhymes, so it’s good to know the world is going to get to hear that now.”

Solar: “It gives us another level to collaborate on, not just in terms of me being able to rhyme, but also with Guru being a producer himself and having worked with some of the best producers in the game, it gives us both the ability to have a perspective on the whole creative process.”

What other projects are forthcoming on 7 Grand?

Solar: “K Born and Highpower are in the lab right now working on their album and I’m also working on my own album. We have a ton on our plate what with running a label and keeping our heads above water at this crazy time, so we’re just taking it one step at a time.”

Guru: “At 7 Grand we’re committed to preserving this hip-hop shit. We keep it real on so many levels and whilst our music may be intelligent, it always comes with that street credibility. We’re here to represent balance in the music.”

Ryan Proctor

 

Old To The New Q&A – Tee Max

Since its inception, Hip-Hop has been an image-driven culture. From the earliest shots of Bronx b-boys up-rocking in 70s New York to classic album covers from the likes of Run-DMC, Ice-T and Jay-Z, photographs have often spoken a thousand words when communicating the styles, attitudes and flavours of Hip-Hop to the masses. Iconic visuals of artists such as Rakim, Ice Cube and Biggie have, in some cases, done almost as much to crystallize and define their legacy as their actual music.

Having had his work published in newspapers and magazines such as The Observer, URB and Hip-Hop Connection, former UK resident Tee Max recently unveiled his first photography exhibition in his new home of Stockholm, sharing an enviable collection of images encompassing some of the most recognizable figures in Hip-Hop.

The man behind the lens spoke to Old To The New about his exhibition “OK, You’ve Got 15 Minutes…”, favourite shots, and why Puffy is no longer his role model.

What initially drew you towards photography and did you already have an interest in it before music?

 

 

Music came first. I remember listening to pause tapes my dad had at home. Reggae. Pre-”Thriller” Michael Jackson. Then one year when I was really small, we had a family party, and someone left a whole bunch of 7″ records and LPs. Stuff like James Brown, Bill Withers and The S.O.S Band. It was like Christmas!

What initially drew me to photography though was my first trip abroad to Barbados. My mum loaned me her camera, I can’t even remember the name of it now. It was so basic, but I got some great images from it. I was 12-years-old. I didn’t pick up a camera again until I was in Sixth Form at school, which is where I learned about printing and how to use a camera properly.

What prompted you to put together the exhibition?

 

 

Friends have been bugging me for years to do something like this, but I’ve always resisted. My choice for doing it now was simply timing. I moved out to Stockholm in June 2008 and hadn’t done much, apart from relearn Photoshop, which I hadn’t used in ten years.

In December last year I was walking back home from a lunch date with a friend, when I came across a very cool barbershop. It was old-school, with original chairs, shavers, the works. I stood there for a minute watching the guys work, and then moved on. Then stopped again when I saw the second half of the shop was filled with books and photographs hanging inside. I literary did a double take! I walked into the shop and looked around, and then asked one of the guys working, who happened to be one of the owners, how difficult it would be to get work exhibited in the shop. To cut a long story short, I handed them a few examples of my work and they loved them.

I’ve thought about exhibiting my work before, but never took it that seriously. It wasn’t until I walked up on that barbershop that it all made sense. Its a great place with great people working there.

Do you have a favourite picture in the exhibition and if so why that particular shot?

 

 

It’s kinda hard to say. The Method Man shot has been a favourite for a long time because of the framing, his expression, and because it was a complete fluke. I like the Brat shot because of the quality and composition. The Keith Murray shot, again because of the composition, and Nas as it was my first assignment for Echoes magazine with writer Sonia Poulton.

The title of the exhibition hints at the fact that photographers often have to work under severe time constraints during shoots – how do you ensure you get the best out of your subject in that sort of situation?

 

 

You just kinda hope for the best! A classic case of that was a shoot I did with Mary J. Blige. Because another magazine overran, our time was cut in half. So from thirty minutes, I got fifteen. In the end, I only got nine frames because they had to leave to film a TV performance. But I got a great shot. In fact, the label liked it so much, they sent it to be used by The Face magazine, as they didn’t have any original photographs they could use. I was very proud of that achievement.

It all boils down to being professional and observing your surroundings. Due to time constraints, I only got to use the environments the artists were in at the time, which were mainly hotel rooms.

Do you have memories of a worst / best shoot?

 

 

The WORST??!! Not sure I should say (laughs). P Diddy was one. Because I’d read about him and his achievements, I looked at him as a role model. I told him so when I met him in 1994 and he just shrugged his shoulders and sat there like a piece of washed-up driftwood. That was the last time I looked up to any artist.

The other one has to be, and don’t hurt me now, Luther Vandross. I got to shoot him at his home in upstate New York. When I put down a plastic film container on a small table in his study, he looked at me and said, “That’s a Tiffany table. Do you know how much that cost? Please remove that.” In both examples, I got terrible pictures. Nuff said.

The best was Mary J. because I expected the worst from her, but she shined. It was amazing. Nine frames, one golden shot. Priceless!

Which artists haven’t you photographed already that you’d like to and why?

Jay Electronica because of his energy and his vision. He’s an incredibly talented and gifted artist. Ty and Dizzee Rascal because I feel their experiences as UK artists should be documented. Black Milk because production-wise right now he’s on fire!

If I could follow them reportage style, like Dean Stock managed to do with James Dean for Magnum, I’d love to do something like that. Shooting portraits doesn’t really interest me anymore. Back in the 90s when Hip-Hop artists were coming up, there was still that element of humanity to the people and the scene. Now its all about lifestyle, which is something I’m not interested in.

In this current age of online media, do you feel that the reliance of websites and blogs on second-hand shots has cheapened the value of good quality photography compared to the days of magazines arranging exclusive shoots and focusing on capturing unique images?

 

The web has pretty much cheapened everything, including music and the whole creative experience. In saying that, everything changes, and people have to adapt and evolve. As technology made the camera smaller and more manageable, and processing film and prints moved out of purpose built darkrooms, it meant more people had access. I’m more than sure those using large format cameras saw that as a “dumbing down” of the art form in their day. But no, its not as easy to get commissions from magazines or get access to people nowadays, and everyone with a digital camera thinks they’re a photographer now. Composition in photography is a lost art. Now people just fix everything in Photoshop.

But these are the times we live in, so it’s up to the individual to be individual, and take their art that one-step further than the next person. I was never worried or concerned about other photographers copying my set-ups, or standing behind me while I was shooting, because I knew regardless of where they were, they would never see what I saw. That simple truth still holds firm today.

Ryan Proctor

 

“OK, You’ve Got 15 Minutes…” will be open in Stockholm’s “Barber & Books” until the end of April.

Archive Easy Mo Bee Interview – Part Three (Originally Printed In Blues & Soul 944 / May 2005 )

Here’s the third and final part of  the interview.

BEHIND THE BOARDS WITH EASY MO BEE (PART THREE)

With almost 20 years of hit-making to his name, Easy Mo Bee’s place in the Hip-Hop hall of fame is assured. Having crafted some of the most memorable beats to ever blast from speakers, the Brooklyn-born producer’s work has helped propel the likes of The Genius, Biggie Smalls and Craig Mack into the rap stratosphere. In more recent times the Easy Mo Bee sound has been introduced to a new generation of listeners thanks to collaborations with Alicia Keys and Mos Def. In this final interview instalment, the self-confessed Hip-Hop junkie remembers his first and last meetings with 2Pac, the infamous East Coast / West Coast feud, and the tragic death of Biggie Smalls. Remember, there’s no future without a past.

It was during your time working on the early Bad Boy material that the trademark Easy Mo Bee sound really started to emerge. Did your decision to develop that sound have anything to do with the fact that clearing samples had started to become such an expensive and painstaking process?

 

“Even back when I was still with RPM my manager used to tell me to start cutting the samples in my tracks. Around that time the whole sampling issue was becoming a problem. De La Soul had problems with “3 Feet High And Rising”, Biz Markie experienced the same thing with his “I Need A Haircut” album and Hammer had gone through his thing with Rick James and the “Super Freak” sample. Producers weren’t getting away with using samples as much. A lot of companies were paying attention and suing Hip-Hop artists. What made me different with tracks like Craig Mack’s “Flava In Ya Ear”, which had the signature Easy Mo Bee sound, was that I was actually playing the samples. I didn’t want to stop using samples, but I wanted to use them in such a way that people wouldn’t be able to tell where I was taking them from. The famous sound from “Flava In Ya Ear” is actually just one guitar note transposed from low to high. Then I took that idea a step further on records like Busta Rhymes’ “Everything Remains Raw”. There were no samples to clear for that track. Why? Because I took a 1.3 second sample and turned it into a whole record (laughs). I really wanted to create a brand new sound.”

The mid-’90s must have been such a good time for you because you really were dropping hot records back-to-back?

 

“That’s true, but at the same time I was also doing records that a lot of people don’t mention as often which to me were some of my best beats, like King Just’s “No Flows On The Rodeo”. Then there’s the Lost Boyz’ “Jeeps, Lex Coups, Bimaz & Benz”. Even though I did a lot of other stuff, those records are important to me as well. But in terms of creative freedom, that period was definitely the best time for that. Right now it’s the worst time because there’s not a lot of room left to experiment. A lot of stuff right now is very calculated. Hip-Hop used to be about people just going with what was in their hearts and what they were feeling inside. But now with the growth of technology every kid with a computer wants to be a producer and because Hip-Hop has become so big everyone wants to be a rapper. But not everybody is supposed to be a producer or a rapper because they’re just not good enough. But Hip-Hop also needs other things like good entertainment lawyers and good A&Rs. We need more diversity right now. I’ve been in meetings where A&Rs have said they want me to bring music to them that sounds more like The Neptunes. But wait a minute? I’m Easy Mo Bee. I gotta do me. If you want that Neptunes sound then go get The Neptunes.”

I remember when I first heard that you’d supplied beats for 2Pac’s “Me Against The World” album. That seemed like such a big jump to have gone from helping redefine East Coast rap with Biggie’s first album in 1994 to then working with one of the biggest solo West Coast artists in 1995. How did you first hook-up with ‘Pac?

 

“There was a Budweiser Superfest that happened at Madison Square Garden in 1993 and Big Daddy Kane was performing. That was the infamous onstage freestyle with Kane, Biggie, 2Pac, Big Scoob and Shyheim. Rappin’ Is Fundamental used to hang out with Kane a lot and he’d asked us to come to the show. I was right there on the stage watching everyone rhyme and this was the time when Biggie and ‘Pac were really good friends. I’d already worked with Biggie but at that point hadn’t ever met 2Pac. I was backstage walking down the corridor and saw 2Pac coming towards me. He pointed at me and was like, ‘You’re Easy Mo Bee, right? I’ve been looking for you.’ I was like, ‘Whoa! You’re from Cali, formally of Digital Underground, a huge solo artist, and I’m on your mind?’ So I was like, ‘Cool, let’s get together.’ So we did “Runnin’” with Biggie, ‘Pac, Stretch of the Live Squad and one of The Outlawz, which was intended for the Thug Life album. When Eminem remixed that track recently I guess he was trying to capitalise off the Biggie / ‘Pac thing because he left the other people off of his version. When I first heard there were problems between Biggie and 2Pac I couldn’t believe it because when we recorded that track we were all in the same studio and everything was cool. They were real close. They laughed together. They drank together. They smoked together.”

What memories do you have of the way both Biggie and 2Pac would work in the studio?

 

“Biggie would just rhyme a lot of stuff to himself but you’d never see no notepads. I was like, ‘Damn! How do you keep all that stuff in your head?’ In the beginning he did write, but as time went on he just used to be able to spit like that. I’d play a beat in the studio and it’d be the first time Big had heard it so I’d know he couldn’t have already written something for it. He’d sit there with his hands folded over that big stomach and he’d just be mumbling. He’d do that for an hour or two, then he’d go in the booth and I’d be like, ‘Oh shit! Did you see that?’ Now 2Pac, he wrote. He’d be in front of the mic reading right off the page. But it had to happen immediately after he was ready. He moved at such a pace in the studio that everybody had to keep up with him. He was an animal in the studio and recorded at such a fast rate. But I’ll tell you one thing, after I worked with 2Pac, you didn’t really see me getting too much work at Bad Boy and I’ve always wondered if that was the reason why.”

Can you remember the last time you saw 2Pac?

 

“It was after he’d got out of jail and signed with Death Row. I’ll never forget it. I was in LA and went to this club where Dr. Dre was making an appearance. I was in the parking lot and ‘Pac rolled in with the Outlawz driving a black convertible two-seater. He got out of the car and had a real stern look on his face. He was real quiet and walking towards the club. Now I hadn’t seen 2Pac in a real long time, since the “Me Against The World” album. But what happened in that parking lot showed me just how much of an effect him getting shot in New York had on him. I was like, ‘Wassup ‘Pac?’ Now usually ‘Pac would start smiling with that big grin of his and be like, ‘Wassup Mo Bee?’ etc. But this time he was just like, ‘Wassup?’ and kept walking right past me. I said, ‘We’re trying to get into this club so we might roll with you?’ But he wasn’t really saying much, just walking. So we went with him anyway, but when we got to the door of the club they let him in but left us outside (laughs). 2Pac didn’t look back or try to help get me in or nothing like that. That’s when I realised that New York shit really did something to him. You could tell that he really didn’t trust people anymore. But I didn’t even get mad. I just thought, ‘You know what? I can’t really blame him.’ In my opinion though, 2Pac was one of Hip-Hop’s last political artists.”

Considering the huge presence you had on Biggie’s “Ready To Die” a lot of people were surprised to find out that you’d only produced two tracks on “Life After Death”…

 

“The way I remember it, me and my manager had to fight to get those two songs. At first they weren’t going to include me, but my manager at the time rah-rahed a little bit, although I still had to go through so many beats before they found the two they used. “Life After Death” took on a very commercial approach. There were still raw records on there as, but overall it took a more refined direction. A lot of good records came out of it, but to me nothing could ever beat that first album.”

Were you aware of what Biggie was going to do with the beat that became “Going Back To Cali”?

 

“I didn’t get to witness Biggie recording any of his lyrics for my tracks. I tracked both of those beats in one day with just me and Deric ‘D-Dot’ Angelettie in the studio. Finally Biggie came in with Jay-Z. They were walking up and down, pacing, writing rhymes in their heads for “I Love The Dough”. Then Biggie said they were going out for a minute but they’d be back. I waited for hours but they never came back. That was actually the last time I saw Biggie. But I told D-Dot to tell Puffy to call me whenever they were doing the next session and went home. Then without my knowledge they went and got Angela Winbush for “I Love The Dough” and put a Roger Troutman-style vocoder on what became “Going Back To Cali”. I didn’t witness any of that. I was like, ‘Why’d Puff never call me to go to the session?’ But like I said, I’ve always wondered if the fact that I worked with 2Pac pissed Puffy off. I don’t know. But I never got called for no more work with Bad Boy and I offered my services to Puff on several occasions after that, but nothing.”

But to set the record straight, was there ever any disagreement between you and Biggie?

 

“Never! Biggie wanted to do more work with me but, in my opinion, it was Puffy who steered him away from that. Maybe it was because I was rising to a certain level and needed to be stomped out? That’s how I looked at it because how could you all of a sudden forget someone who helped you kick in the door when you started out?”

So what was your initial reaction when you first heard “Going Back To Cali”?

 

“It drove me crazy! (laughs) I saw someone soon after the track was recorded and they were like, ‘Yo! You heard what Biggie did to your shit?’ I was like, ‘What? What?’ (laughs) When I heard it, it made my heart beat faster and I was like, ‘Whoa!’ He wasn’t dissing Cali at all, but the fact that he even mentioned it with everything that was going on made me wonder if we were starting trouble. I hate to say it but that’s how I felt. The East Coast / West Coast feud was something I never wanted to contribute to and I couldn’t help wondering if the track might play a part in helping it escalate. I just didn’t want people to hear that record and think that Biggie was taunting anyone because he wasn’t.”

It must have been extremely difficult for you when Biggie passed away?

 

“My heart dropped! Not to sound negative about it but the way everything was going I just had a feeling that something was gonna happen. You could feel it in the air. As soon as 2Pac got shot in New York and started talking all that stuff in his interviews about Big knowing about it, I was just like ‘Man, I hope no war don’t start.’ We really didn’t need that. I didn’t get into this Hip-Hop thing for that. We were all supposed to just be making records and having fun. And that whole thing put me in a strange position because I produced for both Biggie and ‘Pac. But I really didn’t want nothing to do with that. I’m just a music producer! There’s been a gloom that’s hung over Hip-Hop ever since then that’s taken a lot out of me. Hip-Hop used to be about being creative with the music, but now it’s been narrowed down to just being about having beef and being gangsta. Anything that doesn’t fit into that seems like it’s almost not worthy of any attention. What’s wrong with being happy? Does this music have to be dark and gloomy all the time now? We have to be aware of what we’re doing and the effect it might have on the generation that’s listening to it. This music is very influential and it touches so many people. My daughter is fifteen and I talk to her about these things all the time and I make sure she understands that some of the music she’s listening to should be treated like a movie. It’s not real. Let it go in one ear and out the other. You don’t have to be influenced by it and you don’t have to live by it.”

So what does the future hold for Easy Mo Bee?

 

“I definitely want to be more in control of what I do which is why I’ve set-up my own label situation. I wanna be able to do what I wanna do and work with like-minded artists. The music is so devoid of soul nowadays and I just want to bring that feeling back. There’s so much despair and hopelessness in a lot of what we’re hearing today. We need some old-fashioned soulful Hip-Hop right now.”

Ryan Proctor

Archive Easy Mo Bee Interview – Part Two (Originally Printed In Blues & Soul 936 / Jan 2005)

As promised yesterday here’s the second part of my  archive interview with Easy Mo Bee – the final part will follow tomorrow.

BEHIND THE BOARDS WITH EASY MO BEE (PART TWO)

 

In the first instalment of this in-depth look at the career of producer Easy Mo Bee, the Brooklyn-born music man spoke about his introduction to Hip-Hop, the experiences of his group Rappin’ Is Fundamental and his earliest work on Big Daddy Kane’s 1989 sophomore album, “It’s A Big Daddy Thing”. Having established himself within Hip-Hop circles, Mo Bee quickly rose to prominence outside of his core audience thanks to a Grammy-winning 1992 collaboration with jazz visionary Miles Davis. The New York native would return to his rap roots in the mid-’90s with unforgettable results, helping lay the musical foundations of Puffy’s then infant imprint Bad Boy by producing classic material for both Craig Mack and The Notorious B.I.G.

In this second part of our interview, Easy Mo Bee discusses how his input on the debut album of Wu-Tang’s Genius indirectly led to his partnership with Miles Davis, and how Big Daddy Kane almost ended-up being given a beat which would go on to become one of Biggie Smalls’ crowning moments.

Know your history.

Was the fact that you had an affiliation with Cold Chillin’ Records after working with Big Daddy Kane how you came to produce most of the first Genius album, 1991’s “Words From The Genius”?

 

 

“Yeah, that was the second project I worked on before The Genius became the GZA and before Wu-Tang. The Genius album didn’t really blow as well as it could have and I think the main reason for that was that, at the time, Big Daddy Kane was king over there at Cold Chillin’. So the Genius was not going to rise above Kane. People weren’t really thinking about the Genius like that yet. In 1990 Kane would have had his third album out, “Taste Of Chocolate”, and people were still big on him. But “Words From The Genius” was the first entry into the industry of any Wu-Tang member and what a lot of people don’t realise is that me and my brother LG produced that entire record, except for the single “Come Do Me” which was done by Jesse West, a homeboy of mine. I did ten songs, LG did three. After The Genius came other things, like a lot of people don’t know I remixed the last 3rd Bass record “Gladiator”, which was on the soundtrack of the film with the same name. But I did some interesting things with that record. I always felt that a rapper sounded funky when he doesn’t rhyme ahead of the beat. To lag is to be funky. It’s the difference between how Kenny G plays saxophone compared to Grover Washington Jr. Grover Washington has more soul because he’s more laidback and everything isn’t totally syncopated and perfectly on the beat. I always felt that a rapper’s voice is like an instrument and you gotta be funky with it. Big Daddy Kane did that. Rakim did that. To me, MC Serch and Pete Nice didn’t really sound like that on the “Gladiator” record. So we set their vocals back a millisecond behind the music so there was a delay which made them sound funkier to me. I did that to plenty other people and they didn’t even realise (laughs). I never even told ‘em. Then after Big Daddy Kane, The Genius and 3rd Bass, I started getting more work like the Miles Davis project and the remix of LL Cool J’s “Pink Cookies….”

How did the Miles Davis album “Doo-Bop” first take shape?

 

 

“Miles Davis was always riding the wave and trying out things that were brand new. One of the only things that he hadn’t done up until that point was Hip-Hop. The story that was told to me is that Miles went to Russell Simmons, told him he wanted to do Hip-Hop and asked him if he had any producers or beats he could use. At the time Russell had RPM, which was his management company for producers. So the whole roster at RPM was submitted to Miles Davis. I won’t say the names of the other producers because to this day I still respect a lot of them. I was just fortunate enough to get picked out. I was still living in the projects with my mother and one day she answered the phone and this voice says, ‘This is Miles Davis. Can I speak to Easy Mo Bee?’ He said he wanted me to go over to his house and we set up a little interview. I remember he asked me if I wanted anything to eat and out of nowhere I asked for some fried chicken. Miles called up his chef and was like, ‘Cook Easy some fried chicken.’ I was buggin’. This was when he was living at Central Park West in a real nice apartment. We started playing my beats and Miles was picking the ones that stood out to him, like the track that became “The Doo-Bop Song” single. But what actually made him choose to work with me over everybody else was a track I had on the tape that had been submitted that he thought sounded real ‘Public Enemy-ish’ and sampled Kool & The Gang’s “Let The Music Take Your Mind” (mimics beat and horn pattern). That track was actually The Genius’s “True Fresh M.C.”. Miles said, ‘I want you to do that on my album.’ So we started working on the project and everything just gelled. Never did we disagree, collide or clash in the studio. He even gave me the pleasure of naming every track on the album.”

What did you learn from working with a legend like Miles Davis?

 

 

“I learnt to respect professionalism in the studio. When he was ready to record you just had to be ready to go. He’d be halfway in the booth and would start complaining the engineer was taking to long to put the track on, like ‘What the f**k y’all doing? Let’s go! I wanna play my sh*t.’ He wasn’t angry, he just wanted to do what he wanted to do when he wanted to do it. Something else I learnt from Miles was that, while a lot of people might think of him as a perfectionist, he showed me that not every little thing always has to be perfect. It was amazing to sit back and listen to that “Doo-Bop” album because even though it had the elements of Hip-Hop in there, that really was a jazz record. I really couldn’t believe what we’d created. It sounded so beautiful to me. The album came under heavy criticism from both jazz critics and Hip-Hop critics, but I don’t care what anybody says, “The Doo-Bop Song” to me was the perfect marriage. And to think, I made a smooth jazz track that was originally derived from EPMD’s “You’re A Customer”. I always loved that record. But EPMD never changed the bassline, so when I made “The Doo-Bop Song” I wanted the drums to move the same way, but I wanted the bassline to change (mimics bassline pattern). We were the first to sample that record to my knowledge.”

You followed up that project in 1993 by working on Kane’s “Looks Like A Job For…” album and producing Biggie Smalls’ debut single “Party & Bullsh*t”. What are your earliest recollections of Biggie?

 

 

“DJ Mister Cee always used to tell me about this guy Biggie. He had two emcees he was checking out at the time. One was MC Outloud, who later became part of Blahzay Blahzay, and he also had a tape of Biggie. Cee was always telling me, ‘This dude is the next big thing. I want you to meet this dude.’ But I never actually met Big through Mister Cee, even though he played me the demo that had Big rhyming over various breakbeats. Now, Puffy was over at Uptown Records working with Andre Harrell and they were getting together the “Who’s The Man?” soundtrack. Before I even knew about the soundtrack my manager told me that Puffy had a new artist called The Notorious B.I.G. he was trying to put out on Uptown and he wanted me to play him some music. Puffy fell in love with my tracks and actually called my manager back after the meeting and said ‘Thankyou for hooking me up with that guy. I didn’t know he was so dope.’ It was funny how “Party & Bullsh*t” was made because the track was finished before the lyrics were ever put to it. I’d taken the track to Biggie and he liked it but I told him I had the idea of putting the Last Poets sample over the top from an old routine of theirs where they say ‘And you know, and I know, ni**ers love party and bullsh*t…’ Biggie was like, ‘Yo! So hook it up…’ I’d always wanted to use that sample on a track.”

I understand the beat that eventually became Biggie’s “Warning” was originally offered to Big Daddy Kane when he was recording “Looks Like A Job For…” but he turned it down…

 

 

“Kane’s probably not very happy that I let that out in an interview with XXL, but he knows it’s true (laughs). When I first made the track I had Kane in mind because he was someone who always used to love to embody that whole Isaac Hayes / Barry White thing. So I was like, ‘Okay, I got him now.’ When I played him the track he was like, ‘Play the next beat.’ I said, ‘Are you sure? That’s Isaac Hayes I’m sampling, man.’ He said, ‘Play the next beat.’ Then I went up to Bad Boy, played it and they wanted it.”

That’s crazy because “Looks Like A Job For…” did have a ’70s blaxploitation feel to a lot of its production so that track would’ve fitted perfectly…

 

 

“Right, which is exactly what I was trying to do because around that time, no disrespect to Kane, there was speculation about whether he was falling off. He was under heavy criticism. I felt like, ‘Yo! Take this beat and let’s put it back on track.’ That “Warning” beat to me is Superfly, Shaft, Black Caesar and all those movies wrapped up into one. I was trying to create that whole vibe. But Biggie picked it and I knew we’d made a banger as soon as I left the studio.”

What were your first impressions when you heard Biggie rhyme?

 

 

“He was dope, but let me tell you, he kinda scared me a little bit because to me he was different to anybody else I’d worked with up to that time. Around 1993 what else was out? A Tribe Called Quest, Naughty By Nature, Leaders Of The New School, Redman. Biggie sounded, in my opinion, like the roughest thing in New York. Nobody else I was working with was rapping that way and talking about topics that to me, in the beginning, were sometimes a little too graphic. He was extra hard. When we were recording the first album I’d be like, ‘Yo! You mean to tell me that’s the direction we’re going in?!’ (laughs). Lyrically he was the hardest dude I’d ever worked with and it was kinda new to me.”

I don’t think anyone will forget the first time they heard the freestyle Biggie did for Mister Cee over the Casual beat where he’s talking about syphilis and ‘Ni**as say I’m pussy? I dare you to stick your di*k in this…’ Those lyrics were jaw-dropping at the time…

 

 

“Before then the meanest, roughest thing we had coming out of New York was Kool G. Rap. And let’s remember that at the time the gangsta style wasn’t completely accepted in NY because people thought anyone doing that was copying the West Coast. But do you remember Kool G. Rap’s “Live And Let Die” album from 1992? That was the hardest record out of New York at the time. He had records on there with titles like “Two To The Head”. We were like ‘Whoa!’ because we were used to hearing that sort of stuff from an N.W.A., but not from the East Coast.”

You can definitely see a connection between a cut from that G. Rap album like “Train Robbery” and something like Biggie’s “Gimme The Loot”…

 

 

“When Biggie stepped up like that it was kinda new and for him to get what he was saying across there had to be a certain soundtrack behind him. I heard they went through a lot of producer’s beats before recording “Ready To Die” but they picked me. From what I understand, I’m the first real producer Biggie went into a studio with. Before that he’d been making demos in people’s houses. So I had the opportunity to start at the beginning with him. He used to tell me all along, ‘Yo! This is my clique right here, Junior M.A.F.I.A..’ He always had these crazy wild young dudes in the studio with him. He told me, ‘Yo! I got Lil’ Kim to. I’m telling you we’re getting ready to do it Mo. I want you to produce all my groups.’ Unfortunately that was never able to happen.”

What was your reaction when you first heard “Ready To Die” in its entirety?

 

 

“I thought the album flowed well and that the combination of my tracks along with those from the other producers really gelled. But of course you know I sat there and listened to my joints over and over (laughs). I played “Machine Gun Funk” so many times. I was thankful for the Notorious B.I.G. project because after winning a Grammy with the Miles Davis album, people might’ve thought I didn’t have anything raw left in me. They might’ve thought I’d gone commercial. So to follow Miles Davis and come from leftfield with Biggie probably made a lot of people say, ‘Yeah, this dude got something.’

“Ready To Die” was an incredible album, but I’ve always felt that it was the tracks you produced that provided most of the project’s pivotal moments and really helped define its character…

 

 

“Yeah, and to this day, I don’t know why, but my name never comes out of Puffy’s mouth…

Which is hard to believe as not only did you contribute more tracks to “Ready To Die” than any other producer, but you were also responsible for Bad Boy’s other jump-off release which was Craig Mack’s classic “Flava In Ya Ear” single…

 

 

“It’s interesting that you say that because a lot of people don’t realise that Craig Mack came before Biggie. The “Flava In Ya Ear” single was released first. I shopped that beat around to a bunch of people who passed on it to (laughs). But I think that to this day I never ever got my proper respect at Bad Boy. For some reason my name just never comes out of Puffy’s mouth and I’ve always wondered why.”

Ryan Proctor

Archive Easy Mo Bee Interview – Part One (Originally Printed In Blues & Soul 933 / Nov 2004)

With legendary producer Easy Mo Bee having been a topic of online interest recently due to his on-off involvement in the upcoming Biggie flick “Notorious”, I thought I’d reach to the back of the stack and pull out an interview I did with the man himself back in 2004. After talking on the phone with Mo for five hours I had more than enough material to work with, but this is the first part of what actually made it into Blues & Soul magazine as a three part feature.

BEHIND THE BOARDS WITH EASY MO BEE (PART ONE)

 

Easy Mo Bee is extremely passionate about music. That is the first thing you notice when speaking to the producer who has worked with some of Hip-Hop’s true greats. Ask a simple question relating to something in his discography and the softly-spoken Mo Bee will not just give you a simple answer, but will talk you almost step-by-step through the process of how a particular track was put to together. It’s not that he’s showing-off, but simply that Mo wants people to have a proper understanding of what it is that he does.

With almost 20 years in the game, the Brooklyn-based beatsmith’s career has spanned three decades, from his early work in the ’80s (Big Daddy Kane, The Genius), to the ’90s (Lost Boyz, Heavy D) and more recently he has provided tracks for Mos Def and Alicia Keys. Mo Bee experienced mild success as an artist himself with the harmonising rap group Rappin’ Is Fundamental, but while music pundits probably remember him first and foremost for his Grammy Award-winning work with jazz legend Miles Davis, Hip-Hop heads know him as the man who helped lay the sonic foundations for Puffy’s Bad Boy empire.

In 1994 Mo Bee was responsible for producing both Craig Mack’s classic breakthrough single “Flava In Ya Ear” as well as key tracks from Biggie Smalls’ timeless debut album “Ready To Die” (“Warning”, “Gimme The Loot” etc). He is also the only producer able to say that he collaborated with both Biggie and 2Pac during the short lives of the two rap icons (Mo Bee created the original version of “Runnin’” which was re-released last year and remixed by Eminem).

In the first instalment of this in-depth interview, Easy Mo Bee recalls his earliest musical memories, while also recounting his initial forays into the rap business.

At what point did music become a part of your life?

 

“It all goes back to my father. He was always the king of the albums and 45s. He had a lot of music in the house when I was young and would play soul, gospel, jazz, rock & roll, all kinds of music. So I picked up the love of music from being around my father as a child. Then I got my own record-player, which was a Show & Tell. Remember those? It had a Jack & The Beanstalk nursery rhyme record with it and you’d watch the slides and it’d tell a story (laughs). But I never used any of those storybook records. I’d be looking at the pictures, but playing Johnnie Taylor’s “Who’s Making Love” (laughs). By the age of 12 I became a deejay and my first equipment was two BSR turntables and a microphone mixer. It was a set that wasn’t really even a set. I just put it all together. But then around 1984 that evolved into me actually thinking about wanting to make music.”

What are some of your earliest memories of Hip-Hop?

 

“My earliest memories are from my block. I lived in Lafayette Gardens in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. They used to have these street parties and would bring the equipment out into the park. This would be around 1975 and the deejay would have two copies of “Dreaming A Dream” by Crown Heights Affair and be running them back-to-back making the break section longer. I’d be like ‘Wow! That’s cool’. In Brooklyn at that time we were emulating what was going on uptown in the Bronx and Manhattan. But I missed seeing that because I was too young and my mother wouldn’t let me go up there. But I used to hear live tapes of the Treacherous Three, Grandmaster Flash, Cold Crush Brothers. When I was in high-school, around ‘79, the seniors used to break the rules and bring their boomboxes to school. I’d hear these tapes while I was sitting in the lunchroom and be like ‘Wow! Yeah!’. After I heard that I was like ‘That is what I wanna do’.

At what point did you actually start making beats?

 

“Well other people will probably say the same thing, that as a deejay you play music for so long that you end up wanting to make music. So circa ‘85 / ‘86, enter Marley Marl and the Cold Chillin’ crew, Biz Markie, Big Daddy Kane, Roxanne Shante, Kool G. Rap. When Marley came along and took that SP-1200 and was lifting a kick from this record, a snare from that record, that to me, along with a couple of other records out at the same time, like Ultramagnetic MC’s “Ego Trippin’”, that was what influenced me. Anything that Marley Marl did, I worshipped it (laughs). I always had a deep appreciation for soul and jazz, and I felt that what Marley was doing was in line with what I wanted to do. There’s a lot of things that people like Marley Marl don’t get enough credit for. For instance, the big heavy bass sound, that sub-bass sound, we owe that to Marley. He introduced that sound to Hip-Hop and later you had people who came up and enhanced that sound, like Pete Rock and myself, but we got it from Marley Marl. So that’s where a lot of my musical influence comes from. Also at that same time I was being influenced by Hurby Luv Bug, who did all the early Salt-N-Pepa and Kid-N-Play material, and before that Larry Smith who worked with Run-DMC and Whodini. It’s those influences that make up Easy Mo Bee. I always like to remind people that anything we do, we got it from somewhere else. In order to be a better producer or a better artist, go back and study those who came before you. If you’re a producer today in 2004 you owe it to yourself to go back and find out who Larry Smith was. Find out about Arthur Baker. And if you’re talking about ‘boom-bap’ then there’s no way you can forget Jazzy Jay. Those are the dudes that we’re still emulating today when we use our MPCs and all our drum sounds. You, I, everyone from that era who was a part of this music, we were rebels because no-one understood this artform. And to have seen it grow into a billion dollar industry is amazing to me. But there’s not a lot of music out there now to equal the feeling of the first time you heard MC Shan’s “The Bridge” or Big Daddy Kane’s “Raw” and stuff like that.

But I think that’s because everything was so new both musically and lyrically back then. You really were hearing revolutionary things for the first time….

 

“A lot of people making music today really need to go back and do their research. It’s the blueprint of this music. Fortunately enough people like me and you, we were there to witness all of that. But can you imagine, a 14-year-old kid getting into Hip-Hop today, everything he does or wants to do musically is influenced by what’s out now. That’s all he has to go by because he’s not being told to go back and listen to anything else. Do you understand that we had the privilege of being there in the beginning?”

How and when did your group Rappin’ Is Fundamental come into existence?

 

“I was working at Con Edison, a power company here in New York. I always lived in building 4-11 in my projects with my brother LG and then these two other brothers used to live in the back building, 4-33, JR and AB Money. They knew that I deejayed and was messing with music so we started hanging out, just sitting out on the park benches or on the staircase in our buildings. We started out just as a singing group with the doo-wop sound. We used to sit on the staircases, drinking 40s and singing Stylistics songs into the night until people got aggravated and didn’t wanna here it no more (laughs). Now JR and AB both rapped and I was the only one who didn’t. AB kept trying to influence me to rap, but I was like ‘Nah, I’ll let you handle that. I’ll just do the music.’ Then there was this one night when I was in my projects and outside it just sounded like chaos – you heard bottles smashing, sirens, people started shooting, everything. I was like ‘Yo! This is madness. It’s crazy.’ And I wrote a rap about it. I just got so frustrated with what I heard going on that I wrote my first rap. I was kinda ashamed of it, but JR told me to keep writing. This would’ve been around 1986. So that broke the ice, which meant that now all three of us sang and all three of us rhymed. We all loved soul. Things like The Delfonics, The Stylistics, Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes, all of the famous doo-wop groups. So we thought, ‘What would people think about us rapping and singing?’ We decided to put it all together and that’s how we came up with the name for what we did – doo-hop.”

Do you feel that concept confused listeners when R.I.F.’s debut album was released?

 

“We were released on A&M Records. Sometimes because the machine doesn’t necessarily understand what they have, they may not put a lot of effort into marketing it. But often what people are not ready for at a certain time becomes the biggest thing later. Rappin’ Is Fundamental never got it’s true due, but there’s a lot of things we did that people took and ran away with. We had people telling us that because of the singing it wasn’t real Hip-Hop. We went through all of that. I just don’t think people were ready for what we were doing.”

The first time I became aware of Easy Mo Bee was when you produced for Big Daddy Kane on his second album in 1989. How did you hook-up with Kane?

 

“Well AB Money and Big Daddy Kane used to go to high-school together in Brooklyn. Biz Markie used to cut school and come and hang out up there to. That was the closest thing I had to someone who was in the business that I actually knew. Rappin’ Is Fundamental actually had an independent single out before the A&M deal and AB Money kept telling Kane about me, telling him I had beats and that he should check me out. Finally we went to Kane’s house one day to play him some beats and he found some stuff he wanted to use. So we ended-up doing “Another Victory” and “Calling Mr. Welfare” on his second album “It’s A Big Daddy Thing”. “Calling Mr Welfare” sampled James Brown’s “The Chicken” and “Another Victory” was a straight lift of Booker T & The MGs’ “Melting Pot”. I always loved that record. After working with Kane a lot of people saw my name on the record and I starting getting calls for work.”

Was the fact that you now had an affiliation with Cold Chillin’ Records how you got to work on the first Genius album “Words From The Genius”?

 

“Yeah, that was the second project I worked on before The Genius became the GZA and before Wu-Tang. The Genius album didn’t really blow as well as it could have and I think the main reason for that was that at the time, Big Daddy Kane was king over there at Cold Chillin’. So the Genius was not going to rise above Kane. People weren’t really thinking about the Genius like that yet. In 1990 Kane would have had out his third album “A Taste Of Chocolate” and people were still big on him. But “Words From The Genius” was the first entry into the industry of any Wu-Tang member and what a lot of people don’t realise is that me and my brother LG produced that entire record, except for the single “Come Do Me” which was done by Jesse West, a homeboy of mine. I did ten songs, LG did three. After the Genius came other things, like a lot of people don’t know I remixed the last 3rd Bass record “Gladiator”, which was on the soundtrack of the film with the same name. But I did some interesting things with that record. I always felt that a rapper sounded funky when he doesn’t rhyme ahead of the beat. To lag is to be funky. It’s the difference between how Kenny G plays saxophone compared to Grover Washington Jr. Grover Washington has more soul because he’s more laidback and everything isn’t totally syncopated and perfectly on the beat. I always felt that a rapper’s voice is like an instrument and you gotta be funky with it. Big Daddy Kane did that. Rakim did that. To me, MC Serch and Pete Nice didn’t really sound like that on the “Gladiator” record. So we set their vocals back a millisecond behind the music so there was a delay which made them sound funkier to me. I did that to plenty other people and they didn’t even realise (laughs). I never even told ‘em.”

Ryan Proctor

Part Two To Be Posted Tomorrow.

Butta Verses Interview (Originally Posted On StreetCred.Com Nov 3rd 2008)

Regardless of how many supposed overnight success stories the music business might have generated over the years, it’s a game that offers no guarantees of riches, fame and CD sales. One moment an artist can be riding high on a wave of buzz-fuelled momentum, only to find themselves right back at square one just as quickly, often before they’ve even had a chance to fully prove themselves creatively.

Bronx-born lyricist Butta Verses is someone who knows all too well about the ups-and-downs of the rap world. After catching the ear of De La Soul’s DJ Maseo, the NY MC who calls Florida home was quickly signed to the golden-age icon’s Bear Mountain imprint and featured on De La’s critically-acclaimed 2004 album “The Grind Date”. A whirlwind of worldwide tour performances, media attention and public anticipation followed Butta’s official introduction to the global Hip-Hop community, with work on a debut solo project entitled “Brand Spankin’” beginning soon after. From the outside looking in it seemed as though the Hip-Hop gods were smiling down on the slick-tongued kid from the Rotten Apple, but high hopes were soon to turn to low moments, as Butta’s deal didn’t become the ticket to success he’d expected. The rapper’s album was shelved and he found himself back home formulating a Plan B.

All of which has led up to the recent release of Butta’s official debut project “Reality BV”. A soulful, boom-bap-flavored collection of cuts which effectively displays the rapper’s likeable down-to-earth personality, lyrical dexterity and wit, “Reality BV” also boasts appearances from true-school legends CL Smooth and Kurious, plus current underground favorite Joell Ortiz. As its title suggests, the album offers listeners an up-close-and-personal look into the life of Verses, ranging from moments of poignant self-reflection (“If I Die”) and disarming honesty (“Big Dreams”) to discussing relationship dramas (“Breaking Up”).

Here, Butta talks about settling in Florida, his time with De La Soul, and his new album.

Ryan Proctor: You’re originally from the Bronx but you now live in Florida. What prompted the relocation?

Butta Verses: The first time I went to South Florida was probably around 1990 / 1991. I was just amazed by how beautiful the place looked. Up until that time I’d never really left the Bronx, so when I came to Florida it was the closest thing to the places on TV like Beverly Hills that I’d ever seen. It was just beautiful clear skies, the grass was really green, the water was really blue, there were trees everywhere and no buildings blocking your view like in New York. It wasn’t as noisy, the people seemed to be nicer, and I just decided that when I graduated high-school Florida is where I wanted to move to.

I told myself that I wasn’t going to be a rapper anymore; I was going to be a surfer (laughs). I was really going to change everything up and just move to Florida and become a beach bum (laughs). After I graduated high-school I had to go to summer school to get my diploma, and the very next day after I got my diploma I hit I-95 and moved to Florida.

RP: Was it a difficult transition to make?

BV: The beauty of Florida kinda wore off after awhile (laughs). I mean, it was still a beautiful place, but I started to miss my friends. I missed not being able to go and hang out on the block. So in terms of adjusting to life in Florida, it was kinda difficult as it wasn’t really what I was expecting. I mean, I didn’t meet any surfers at all (laughs). I wanted to surf but I could not bump into a surfer for the life of me. But at every job I took I was meeting producers and cats who rapped which started to bring me into the Hip-Hop scene down here in Florida.

RP: Do you think moving out of New York gave you a new perspective as an artist?

BV: Absolutely! At first when I was meeting people in Florida’s Hip-Hop scene I was egotistical, like ‘Everything you’re trying to be, I already am. I’m from the birthplace of this music.’ But then I started to accept the differences. When I moved to Florida Onyx were big, Boot Camp Clik were coming up, and the East Coast thug shit had just started to pop, so I was coming from New York and was kinda on that grimy tip, but not fully. Then down here, I was meeting cats who were influenced by dudes like the Hieroglyphics, which really helped me to find a balance in myself as an artist.

RP: Most people first became aware of you after your appearance on De La Soul’s 2004 album “The Grind Date”. For those who don’t already know the story, how did a largely unknown MC end-up recording with one of the greatest Hip-Hop groups of all-time?

BV: Around that time I’d already decided that I was going to put all my effort into coming out seriously as an MC. I made a bunch of CDs that I wouldn’t say were really mix CDs or demos, they had very little structure to them and were really just me rapping. I don’t really know what my intention was when I was even making them, I just wanted to ride around listening to them and maybe give some to friends.

I’d given a CD to DJ Stevie D who was a pretty big club DJ down here, and soon after he found out that Maseo from De La Soul had just moved into his neighborhood. Another guy who knew Stevie also had my CD, and when Maseo mentioned he was looking for new artists he have gave the CD to him to check out. Then Maseo got in touch with Stevie, Stevie got in touch with me, and I didn’t believe him at first (laughs).

I mean, it wasn’t my first time meeting a rapper or someone from a group, but when it came to De La, that was my shit growing up. But I finally met with Maseo, he was feeling the vibe, and that was that. I mean, if Maseo had said he didn’t like my music but needed someone to carry his bags I’d have done it (laughs).

RP: Was it an intimidating experience for you going out on the road with De La for the first time knowing that you were going to be performing to relatively large crowds containing longstanding fans of the group?

BV: My first actual show with De La was in Florida. This was before the tour and I hadn’t even done the record with them for “The Grind Date” yet. I was totally at ease with that show because it was in front of my home crowd. But the very first show I did on the actual tour was in Las Vegas at House Of Blues inside some casino. I was terrified! I mean I had diarrhea, everything (laughs).

I was thinking of every excuse not to do the show because I had it in my head that I wasn’t ready for it. I didn’t have a record out, I just had a bunch of songs that no-one would know. I was very nervous. Plus, I was really on my own because the only person I knew on the tour was Maseo. I didn’t know Dave or Pos from De La at that point. I didn’t know anybody. So I was very intimidated.

But that feeling only lasted for that first show because after I’d performed I actually got an encore. I couldn’t believe it! The crowd was asking for an encore but I really didn’t want to go back out there as I felt that it was De La’s stage. But they told me to go out, so I came out like ‘Yo, you got a local rapper out here called Encore because I know you ain’t yelling for me??!!’ (laughs).

Once I experienced that moment, that was it. That feeling was like cocaine, heroin and crack all rolled into one. There was no turning back after that and from then on, you couldn’t tell me I wasn’t dope (laughs).

RP: What were you expectations for your career at that point?

BV: Honestly, at that time, I thought I was going to be the next Mos Def. Straight up and down, I thought that what happened for him was going to happen for me. I’m not comparing myself to him totally, but we’re not completely dissimilar as artists, and I thought what happened to his career after being on De La’s “Stakes Is High” album was going to happen to me after being on “The Grind Date”. People were saying the same thing as well, like ‘Yo! De La found Mos Def and now they got this new dude Butta Verses.’ So I really started to feel like it was going to be the same situation.

RP: When the Bear Mountain situation didn’t work out, how difficult was that for you to deal with?

BV: Personally, I felt destroyed. Artistically, my ego was to the point where I’d proven to myself that I could do this and be good at it. But personally, I was devastated. Those feelings started when I began to be told I wasn’t going on certain tours overseas. I was sitting home depressed because I’d just had the best drug in the world pumped into me for four months straight, and now I’m home, and although my friends are excited for me, when I go to the club I’m nobody again.

I was literally begging to be taken back out on tour, but that shit wasn’t happening, and on top of that the record I’d been working on wasn’t coming out. The whole experience went from being so fast to being so slow and it was very difficult to deal with. It was like being on a roller-coaster and the ride is great so you stay on it, then all of a sudden you have to sit waiting at the gate. You don’t want to get off the roller-coaster, but no-one’s going to start it back up for you.

RP: Were you ever given specific reasons as to why you were no longer being taken out on tour?

BV: I don’t really think it’s my place to say what it was because it could’ve been a bunch of things. I know the funding wasn’t always there. But I can definitely say that I fucked up on tour a bunch of times with my own personal vices and made mistakes doing shit I really didn’t have no business doing. But a lot of that came from being out there for the first time, living the life and having that drug pumped into you. It makes you feel invincible like you can do whatever you want.

I definitely made mistakes that, had they really blown-up, could’ve been detrimental to everybody. So I definitely learnt a lot about personal responsibility from that whole experience. I’m grown enough to take a lot of the blame. So looking back, I can see where I could’ve messed things up for myself.

RP: How would you say the unreleased “Brand Spankin’” album differs from your new project “Reality BV”?

BV: I would say that “Brand Spankin’” was built from being nothing to being a great album with only a small group of people involved in it. I spent a month in Seattle recording with Vitamin D and Bean One and there were very few songs used on the album that were recorded before the concept for “Brand Spankin’” was thought of. It was a very structured project. “Reality BV” is more of a collection of dope tracks that were made during the transition period between me being signed to Bear Mountain and being on my own again as an artist.

“Brand Spankin’” was more about me just making the music I wanted to make, whereas with “Reality BV” I was trying to give the fans more of what they want. Plus, “Brand Spankin’” had more of a cohesive unit behind it, whilst on “Reality BV” I recorded songs with artists who I respect greatly but I don’t really have any sort of relationship with.

It’s not that I’m talking down on “Reality BV” because I love it, but “Brand Spankin’” was like my child and recording each album was a very different experience.

RP: You have a song on the new album called “Big Dreams” which deals with some of the personal sacrifices you’ve had to make in order to pursue your musical aspirations. Considering how much of a struggle it is out there for independent artists, do you ever find yourself wondering if you’ve made the right career choice?

BV: Yeah, I’d say I go through that emotion pretty often. Sometimes I’ll ponder on where my career is and I’ll find myself thinking ‘What if?’ There are lines on that record dealing with the Maseo situation, like when I talk about going on tour but I’m not really earning any money, which is a great experience for me as an artist, but I’ve got a kid and a baby moms at home who ain’t too fuckin’ happy about it. Plus, that song also deals with people getting in my ear asking me how long I’m going to pursue this music thing for.

“Big Dreams” really just acknowledges that, as dope as it seems to be in the music business, it’s not easy, but as hard as it is, you shouldn’t give up if it’s what you truly love. People are meant to do what they do and you have to dream big to get big. When I was a kid watching videos on TV I used to see De La Soul and think to myself that if I ever made it as an artist those would be the dudes I’d want to do something with, and look what happened.

RP: So now you finally have an official album out, where would you like to see your career go from here?

BV: In my honest opinion, I can’t really see me ever having a hit record. I’m not that dude. What I wanna be able to do is consistently tour and do shows off of good music. If I could do that, then I’d be happy.

Some people are all about wanting Bentleys, being rich and hearing their shit on the radio all day, but I don’t need that. My shit is more personal. My music is more intimate. I really just want to be out there performing, be right in touch with the people, and keep making albums that are true to myself. What could really be better than that?

Ryan Proctor

Butta Verses ft. Lucian – “If I Die” ( Domination / 2008 )

Black Milk Interview (Originally Posted On StreetCred.Com Oct 31st 2008)

Ask any Hip-Hop fan about their favorite producers and you’ll probably get a variety of names as an answer. Older heads might mention Juice Crew maestro Marley Marl or record-collector extraordinaire DJ Mark The 45 King. Younger cats may sing the praises of Roc boy wonder Kanye West or skateboard fan Pharrell of The Neptunes. Boom-bap diehards will throw DJ Premier’s name out there, whilst more commercially minded rap fans might show their love for Timbaland. Pete Rock, The RZA, Just Blaze, Dr. Dre, The Alchemist, J Dilla, Large Professor, the list of talented and timeless producers in the world of Hip-Hop is a long one. Moreover, it’s a list to which Detroit’s Black Milk is determined to see his name added.

Receiving his first official production credit on Slum Village’s 2002 album “Trinity”, Black Milk has spent the last half-a-decade rising steadily through the underground ranks, with a discography that includes 2004’s “Dirty District Vol. 2″ (as a member of the crew BR Gunna), two solo albums (2005’s “Sound Of The City” / 2007’s “Popular Demand”), plus production work for the likes of Pharoahe Monch, Guilty Simpson and Kidz In The Hall.

Milk’s early material immediately prompted fans to draw comparisons between the young producer and the late, great Dilla, with both coming from the home of Motown, both sharing a love of heavy drums and soulful samples, and both also being able to confidently juggle rhyming and beat-making duties.

Whilst it’s easy to see where such comparisons came from, on his new album “Tronic”, Black Milk is looking to prove to the world that he’s his own man, displaying a musical growth and willingness to experiment sonically that should see his latest effort go down as one of 2008’s best releases. Something that should also take the gifted individual a step closer to being mentioned alongside his legendary producer peers.

Ryan Proctor: You’ve come a long way since your earliest releases and are now considered to be one of the underground’s top producers. Have you been surprised by how quickly your career has gained momentum in the last few years?

Black Milk: I think most artists believe that they’re someone who could be number one in the game or at least make some type of noise. That’s how I felt back when I started and I still feel that way now. I think I’m capable of creating my own lane with my music and am capable of creating a fan base that’s big enough to support what I do. That was always my goal, to put good music out there and be able to create what I want to create without any limits. I want to stay fresh, stay innovative and give the people something different.

RP: Many comparisons were made between you and J Dilla when you first came out. Do you feel those comparisons are still being made or do you think you’re now being viewed as a talented producer in your own right?

BM: I think people are finally starting to just look at me as Black Milk without every time they hear a track from me comparing it to a Dilla beat or saying it sounds like something Dilla would’ve done. I mean, the comparisons are still out there and probably will stay out there for as long as I’m doing music. But it’s not a bad thing and I know where it comes from; we’re from the same city, I’ve worked with a lot of the same people as Dilla did, and I also collaborated with him.

I guess people look at me as being a younger version of that new type of sound that Dilla created. I’m just taking it and reinventing it into my own sound. I don’t really get uptight when I hear people comparing me to Dilla though because in my eyes he was the greatest producer ever. It’s a compliment.

RP: Over the last year you’ve been involved in some big independent projects, from releasing “Caltroit” with Bishop Lamont and “The Set-Up” with Fat Ray, to producing the majority of Elzhi’s album “The Preface”. How did you approach each of those projects?

BM: The music on “The Set Up” and “Caltroit” was all tailor-made beats that I made from scratch for each project. The majority of the beats I did on the Elzhi project were tracks that he picked off beat CDs of mine that I gave him. I mean, it still came out dope because Elzhi’s a great lyricist. He did his thing and the tracks came out dope even without me being in the studio with him.

With “Caltroit” I knew how I wanted that album to sound, and the same thing with “The Set-Up”. I let Ray know the direction I was seeing the album going in and he just did his thing. Ray has a dope delivery and a dope voice, so I really wanted to compliment that with the music by giving him real hard, grimy beats that were still a little different to what you might usually hear from me.

RP: Do you prefer to work closely with an artist on a project or are you happy to just send beats out to people who’re interested in working with you?

BM: I think any producer would prefer to actually sit in the studio with an artist and be able to create a track together. I think you always get a better outcome that way and a better result when you’re both in the studio. You’re able to let the artist know what you like and what you don’t like, plus the artist is able to tell you what they’re hearing in the song as well. So I definitely love to be in the studio with the artist.

But, at the same time, it’s cool to send tracks out to artists. The only thing about that is that you never know what type of song an artist is gonna come with (laughs). As a producer that leaves you kinda blind and you just have to cross your fingers that they come with a dope song. Sometimes an artist has used a beat of mine and it might not turn out exactly how I wanted it to sound and in other cases they’ve exceeded the expectations I had for a track. But it’s definitely a gamble when you’re sending out beats.

RP: From the outside looking in there seems to be a lot of unity amongst the Detroit Hip-Hop scene, with artists appearing more than happy to collaborate with each other. Is that an accurate view?

BM: There is a lot of unity amongst Detroit artists, particularly since Proof and Dilla passed. That really brought everybody together and inspired collaborations between people who probably wouldn’t have worked together before. It’s dope because everyone’s on their grind now and it’s kinda like one movement, which is really putting Detroit on a level that the masses can see.

I mean, I go to the studio and Guilty Simpson might come through, Trick Trick might come through, Royce Da 5’9 might come through, everyone from the street artists to the underground Hip-Hop artists, we all just vibe out and everyone’s cool. There’s a ton of talent here. The Hip-Hop community in Detroit is actually quite small, but there’s just so much talent in the artists we do have that we can hold our own, whether you’re talking about producers or MCs.

I don’t feel producers and artists from other cities can really do the Detroit sound. You might have producers from other places making a Dilla-sounding track, but it never has that exact same feel to it. The music from Detroit definitely has a certain feel to it, and by us having that secret ingredient, wherever it comes from, it means we’ll always be able to make timeless material.

RP: What’s the meaning behind the title of the new album “Tronic” and what can we expect from it?

BM: I decided to call the album “Tronic” because it has a futuristic feel to it. The title obviously comes from the word ‘electronic’, which people associate with futuristic kinda shit and the album has a real futuristic, spacey, synth vibe to most of the songs.

A lot of it’s up-tempo but it still has that soulfulness to it with the hard drums and dirty breaks. I didn’t lose none of that, although it is a different sound to what was heard on my last solo project “Popular Demand”, which was mostly soul chops and real feel-good music.

Most of the samples on “Tronic” come from really obscure records and electronic records.

I definitely stepped up the rhymes this time around and tried to come with more content in terms of talking about stuff people can relate to, things I go through as an artist and other general stuff.

RP: Judging by your style of production it sounds like you probably listen to a lot of music beyond just Hip-Hop. Would you say that’s true?

BM: Yeah, all the time. When I’m riding around a lot of the stuff I listen to is outside of Hip-Hop. I get a lot of ideas and inspiration from listening to old records, whether it’s soul records from the 60s and 70s, or some futuristic synth stuff like Kraftwerk.

I think as a producer you should listen to a mixture of everything so you won’t just get stuck in one particular box and would be able to produce any type of record you want for any artist from any genre of music.

RP: So what’s next for Black Milk? Maybe some steady major label production work?

BM: I never rule anything out, y’know. If a major situation comes my way then I’d definitely see what I could make happen with it, especially if it would help me reach a lot of the goals I’m trying to accomplish with this music. But regardless I’m just going to keep doing my thing and stay creating music and getting it out there, whether that’s through an independent or a major.

Right now, my focus is on really trying to kill the game and becoming an artist that people won’t forget about. I want my name to be mentioned alongside all the other legendary producers.

Ryan Proctor

Black Milk – “Long Story Short” ( Fat Beats / 2008 )

Black Milk – “Bounce” ( Fat Beats / 2008 )

Freddie Foxxx Interview (Originally Posted On StreetCred.Com Oct 20th 2008)

The term ‘Hip-Hop legend’ is one that’s thrown around a little too easily nowadays. With here-today-gone-tomorrow rappers currently claiming legendary status before their first mix-CD has even hit the streets, the criteria an artist must meet in order to be considered worthy of the title has obviously changed drastically in recent times. Freddie Foxxx, however, is an MC who has earned his stripes the old-fashioned way, through hard-work, determination and a love of making raw, emotionally-charged hardcore Hip-Hop.

With over 20 years in the game, Freddie’s career is perfect “Behind The Music” documentary material. Dropping a 12″ single in 1986 as a member of Supreme Force, the man also known as Bumpy Knuckles went on to work with Rakim’s former right-hand man Eric B. on his debut major label album, 1989’s “Freddie Foxxx Is Here”. The 90s saw the New York giant’s rep grow infinitely bigger, with Freddie entering into a short-lived feud with the Bronx’s Ultramagnetic MCs, his shelved “Crazy Like A Foxxx” album for Flavor Unit Records becoming one of the decade’s most sought-after unreleased projects, and show-stopping guest appearances on tracks from Kool G. Rap, Naughty By Nature, BDP and Gang Starr establishing the gruff-voiced wordsmith as a true cameo king.

In more recent years Foxxx has remained busy on the independent circuit, releasing 2000’s well-received “Industry Shakedown” album (followed a few years later by the equally potent “Konexion”) whilst appearing on projects from Pete Rock, De La Soul and former rap rival Kool Keith. This summer longstanding fans of Freddie were finally rewarded when the rapper dusted off the master tapes of his infamous “Crazy Like A Foxxx” project and released a dual-disc package on Fat Beats which included both the 1993 demo version of the album (produced by D.I.T.C.’s Showbiz, Lord Finesse and Buckwild) and the tweaked 1994 Flavor Unit version.

Often thought to be as aggressive in person as he is in his rhymes, Bumpy Knuckles kicked it with StreetCred.Com to talk about his new-but-old album, recording with rap greats, and his sometimes-misunderstood persona.

Ryan Proctor: During the intro to the recently released D.I.T.C. version of “Crazy Like A Foxxx” you mention that Flavor Unit turned it down when you originally submitted the project back in the 90s. Did they give you particular reasons as to why they didn’t want to release that version of the album?

Freddie Foxxx: When I turned in “Crazy Like A Foxxx” Flavor Unit felt that it was too dark for what they were looking for in terms of the marketing strategy they had planned for me. Back then Flavor Unit had already been involved with big radio records like Zhane’s “Hey Mr. DJ” and Naughty By Nature’s “Hip-Hop Hooray”. My sound at the time was very different to that, so the label turned down the original “Crazy Like A Foxxx” and I went back into the studio and made some more melodic sounding tracks, which was the final version they accepted.

RP: When you went back into the studio to record new material, did you feel like you were being forced to compromise your original vision of the album?

FF: It was more about keeping the concept of the album intact for me. If you notice, some of the tracks on both versions are the same. So to me, what I was talking about on the album was more important to me than the musical underlay I was saying it on. I was more concerned about getting my message across. I wanted people to feel exactly what I was going through in 1993 / 1994 and how I felt as a young man growing up in America. So I just said ‘Okay let me try and do this differently’ in terms of the production the label wanted.

But I was so in love with the original D.I.T.C. version that once I retained the masters and started getting emails from fans saying they wanted to hear it, I had to put the album out. I know there’s been a bootleg version going around for some years now that somebody took from the demo cassette, but the quality of that wasn’t very clear. So I wanted to finally put “Crazy Like A Foxxx” out properly and let the fans know that it was coming from the original source.

RP: Prior to recording “Crazy Like A Foxxx” in the early 90s you released your debut album “Freddie Foxxx Is Here” in 1989 on MCA Records. Did you have a different mindset going into recording “Crazy…” than when you made your first album?

FF: There was a lot that went on in my life between those albums. There was a lot of disappointment because I had high expectations for my first album. I was only young at the time and I thought that once you had a record deal you’d have access to work with all your favorite artists and everything else that comes with a major deal, but that just wasn’t the case. After my first album I went back into the streets and started getting an education there, so by the time I went into recording “Crazy Like A Foxxx” I was so full of a different type of information that it just changed my whole thought process.

RP: When you look back on the material contained on “Crazy Like A Foxxx” and then compare it to the music you’re making today, how do you feel you’ve developed as an artist over the years?

FF: I’m one of those MCs who if I’m going through some turmoil, if I’m angry or happy about something, I’ll write about my feelings. My passion is in my work, so if I get on a track and I’m screaming through the record people know that’s real emotion they’re hearing. I put my genuine emotions in my music, which is what separates me from a lot of other artists because too many cats are scared to really be real on a record so there’s no believability in what they’re saying. I always try to give people the best of what I can do as an artist and put all of the passion and emotion I’m feeling at a particular moment into the music I’m recording. I’ve done that since the beginning of my career and that’s still how I make music today. My format doesn’t change, I just update my rhyme style and stay on top of my skills.

RP: You’ve gained a reputation over the years as being a very aggressive and volatile individual. Do you feel that, even now, you’re still viewed as being a “mad rapper” type of character?

FF: Exactly. Absolutely (laughs). People have painted a picture of me, and I wouldn’t say that I don’t take responsibility for that to some extent, but sometimes you expect people to think along broader lines than they do. It seems like my angry side intrigues people more than my calmer side. It is what it is and I’ve had to learn to rock with that.

The media contributes to that as well; they’ll always describe me as being an angry rapper and use pictures of me with a mad face. So sometimes if I try to do something outside of that musically it doesn’t always gel with people, so the dilemma I go through as a recording artist is do I just stick to doing what people think I am? Or do I keep trying to push that wall down so they can see there’s more to Freddie Foxxx than they think? It’s always a puzzle to me.

I take time out to look at interviews that people have done with me on the blogs and whatever. I’ll read the comments people put up about me, and sometimes I’ll even answer if someone’s taken something I’ve said out of context. People are quick to critique what they don’t know, so sometimes the only way to deal with that is to step to it and say ‘Nah, that’s not what it is.’

One thing I’ve always felt I needed to do was keep my brain fed with new information. A lot of that comes from being a kid whose mother was very strict about me reading a lot. As a kid, every time I got an ass-whipping because I’d done something wrong, part of my punishment was to read. So I’ve always tried to keep up with new information, especially being in this music business, because once you develop a reputation or people decide they think they know who you are, you’ve gotta learn how to get around that intellectually and in a smart way. But I think my temper has gotten the better of me a lot of times and caused people to back away from me without really getting a chance to know me as a person.

RP: Do you think that’s something that’s possibly held your career back over the years?

FF: You know what? It’s been a gift and a curse. Eventually you can become who the people think you are if you’re not focused, and sometimes you have to just fallback because there’s no defense from the truth. I mean, if you do something to me, I’m going to step up and say what I say. If you ask me a question, I’m going to give you an honest answer. It might not always be what people wanna hear, but it will be my genuine opinion. I was raised to always give an honest opinion and I’ve always respected honesty. That’s why I don’t trip out when I hear people saying they don’t like Freddie Foxxx because I don’t expect everyone to think that what I do is to their liking.

I’m always very realistic about things, including my career. I believe there was a time that was right for me to strike, but my temper got the better of me and people still charge me with that. People feel like they’ve gotta be careful around me, but I’m not an animal and I’m not someone who doesn’t know how to handle their business. But I’ve had to learn to deal with the perception people have of me in order for me to do what I need to do as an artist, because my main objective is to make music, it’s not to entertain what people think about me. Once I got past that hump, then I became a better individual.

RP: Throughout your career, you’ve collaborated with some of the greatest MCs of all-time, from Kool G. Rap and KRS-One to Naughty By Nature’s Treach and Guru of Gang Starr. Have you ever gone into a studio and felt intimidated by the level of lyrical skill a particular artist was bringing to the table?

FF: Nah (laughs). I wouldn’t make a song with anyone I didn’t think could put pressure on me. A lot of people have called me to do songs with them, but I felt they weren’t qualified as MCs to be able to put pressure on me. Like, I love being in the studio with KRS-One because he says so much stuff in a tricky type of way that you can’t do nothing but think that he’s getting at you (laughs). We just recorded an album together called “Royalty Check” and there’s a track on there where KRS says ‘We’re all foxes, but you’re more Vivica, I’m more Jamie.’ So I can’t help but think he’s trying to be funny. I’ll laugh about it, but by the same token I’ll turn around and say something back in my next rhyme. But we don’t get into some whole angry beef situation about it, because that’s just what MCs do to make each other better in the studio.

I think someone like Kool G. Rap is such an incredible MC that people expect him to just body you on a record, so I needed that type of pressure to bring my A-game when we did “Money In The Bank” for his “Wanted: Dead Or Alive” album, to at least make people say ‘Yo, I kinda like both their verses.’ G. Rap saying a better verse than me wouldn’t have been a problem, the problem comes when someone totally annihilates you on a record to the point where your name isn’t even mentioned in the discussion. So far I don’t think I’ve had a strike against my name like that and I’ve never felt pressure from any MC that I didn’t want.

Even if someone didn’t think I had the hottest verse on a record, the fact that I’m in the debate tells me that I did my job. It’s when it’s a hands-down decision that the other guy came out on top, that’s when you know you’re in trouble (laughs).

RP: I remember reading back in the day that the reason your part is so long on “Ruff, Ruff” from BDP’s 1992 album “Sex And Violence” is because KRS-One had actually finished his rhyme and was doing graffiti in his notepad but you thought he was still writing.

FF: Yeah, yeah. You know what happened? I wasn’t sure if KRS wanted me to talk reckless on the record or not, so I tried to come with this pro-black, uplifting rhyme. Then when I said the rhyme KRS was like, ‘I like that, but that ain’t the Freddie Foxxx that I wanna hear.’ I’m like ‘What you mean?’ He said, ‘I wanna hear the Freddie Foxxx that everyone’s talking about, the MC-murdering, gun-slinging Freddie Foxxx.’ I was like ‘Oh word!’

I wrote my “Ruff, Ruff” verse right there in like 15 to 20 minutes. When I said the second rhyme that ended up on the record, that was the beginning of our friendship right there. KRS was like ‘That’s what I’m talking about.’

RP: Do you have any other memories of working with KRS on that particular album?

FF: I remember when we recorded the album’s intro “The Original Way”; I didn’t go in the booth to spit my verse. The engineer plugged the microphone in outside in the control room, so we were just handing each other the mic like we’re at a party right there in an open room to get that live sound. It was amazing and the idea was crazy. Kenny Parker was in the studio and me and KRS were just passing the mic back-and-forth. That whole joint was just us freestyling.

The consistency of that “Sex And Violence” album reminded me why I jumped into this game and stuck with this craft for so long because KRS gave me an education in a whole different style of rhyming with that record. When I worked with G. Rap I learned a lot about work ethic. The same thing working with people like Treach, 2Pac and Chuck D, I took something from all those experiences.

That was the great thing about that time, because I actually worked with those people before it was normal for someone to just email you a verse. I was actually able to form first-hand working relationships in the studio with these people. I remember I sat in on a Run-DMC session with Eric B. one time just as a fan, and just to see them working was an inspiration. At that point I’d never even been into a proper recording booth, so when I saw those guys in the studio I was just like ‘Wow! This is what I wanna do.’ I wanted to be behind the mic like DMC, who I thought had the craziest, craziest voice in the world.

RP: There seems to be a real generation gap developing in Hip-Hop with a lot of older artists openly criticizing younger cats. As someone who’s been a part of the culture for many years, what’s your take on that?

FF: Some of the criticism is warranted, some of it’s not. When people are given the opportunity to fully explain themselves, you can see where they’re coming from, but some of it’s just straight hate. Back in the day Hip-Hop was more about lyrics and people wanted to hear MCs spitting dope rhymes. It was all about the rapper back then and it was the rapper who built the personality of a record.

Back then it seemed like artists just had a more creative approach to their overall presentation, particularly where live performances where concerned. I mean, nothing was bigger than seeing Doug E. Fresh climbing out of a globe onstage, or seeing Slick Rick sitting on a throne, Eric B’s turntables rising out of the stage, or LL’s giant radio. Performing was so much a big part of what artists did back then and I think that had a lot to do with fans getting excited about a particular artist because they had a more personal relationship with them than they do today.

When it started to become more about the producer and the rappers became secondary to who was actually producing a track, then you started hearing less quality work from some MCs. But I think the best advice someone can give these new rappers is for them to dig deep into themselves and find something more to talk about than just the normal superficial stupidness.

The business has changed to such an extent now that it’s cheapened the worth of the music. There’s nothing special about rappers anymore like there used to be. Back in the day there had to be something extraordinary about you as an artist in order for you to be considered special by the fans, now there’s such an over saturation of mediocre artists which definitely isn’t good for the music.

RP: What do you think can be done to encourage communication between the different generations of Hip-Hop artists?

FF: I think they need to bring the seminars back. Back in the day, I was going to Jack The Rapper and How Can I Be Down? and that’s how a lot of new artists were getting their information from the older artists. Since they stopped doing the seminars, it’s been more difficult to mix the culture. I was able to meet people like Melle Mel and Afrika Bambaataa and talk to those guys as an upcoming artist. I think there needs to be more events like that today, because to me those seminars were a huge learning experience because you were able to see all these artists who were already in the industry sitting on discussion panels giving you jewels. There needs to be more forums and platforms for discussion, but everyone’s so damn lazy just sitting on a computer all day long, and they’re not looking at informative websites, they’re looking at gossip websites and that kinda shit.

RP: Do you think the internet has hurt Hip-Hop?

FF: Nowadays people are quick to dismiss new music. Like a guy will download a new song, but then two days later when someone else plays it they’re like ‘I’ve heard that already – what’s next?’ It could be a good record, but once they’ve heard it they want something else straight away. It makes me wonder what the fans are listening to or what they actually want from the music. That can mess with your creative process if you’re not focused because some artists are so unsure about what people want to hear, they end up doing anything trying to please everyone. The other problem is that a lot of today’s fans are aspiring artists themselves, so they’re listening to new music and saying ‘I could make a better album than that’ which stops people from fully supporting or enjoying the music.

RP: So what’s next for Freddie Foxxx?

FF: I’m just going to continue to make rap music the way I make rap music. I don’t want to try and fit into an already overcrowded space. I love being in my own lane as an artist and I’m someone who can actually say they have a genuine fan base so I’m not mad at that. When I get emails from fans telling me they’ve been following me for however many years, that confirms to me that I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing, which is making Hip-Hop music the way I think it should be made.

Ryan Proctor

Jazz T Interview (Originally Posted On UKHH.Com Oct 1st 2008)

As a founding member of Surrey’s Diversion Tactics crew, Jazz T has more than proven himself over the years as both a talented DJ and an astute producer. From the dusty-fingered beats of DT’s debut 2002 album “Pubs, Drunks And Hip-Hop” to the unapologetically raw tracks heard on T’s new solo project “All City Kings”, the former UK ITF DJ champion has consistently remained faithful to the true-school Hip-Hop blueprint he first discovered back in the 80s. This unwavering approach to his craft has led to Jazz working with a diverse selection of like-minded individuals, from Bronx-bred underground icon Percee P to gifted homegrown mic-wrecker Kashmere.

Currently keeping busy supplying the beats at London’s respected open-mic event End Of The Weak, Jazz T recently tore himself away from sifting through old sci-fi soundtracks for new sample material to talk about his new album, production techniques, and future plans.

It’s been six years since the release of the first Diversion Tactics album “Pubs, Drunks And Hip-Hop”. What are your thoughts looking back on that project?

We didn’t initially intend on doing an album at all. We’d dropped the original Diversion Tactics EP and had got together a tour with J-Zone and one of the guys who booked us for a show was Rob Luis from Tru Thoughts. Our manager passed him a copy of the EP and he was really interested in our music. Rob wanted to put us out as one of the first Zebra Traffic releases, and he already knew me from doing cuts on Mark B’s first EP with MCM and Big Ted.

After the tour we had a proper meeting with Rob and he told us that, at the time, he wasn’t really up for doing just 12″ singles and EPs, he wanted us to do a whole album. So we really had to get it together. Fortunately, me, a guy called Optiv, who was from a drum & bass crew called Cause For Concern, and Zygote had all been making a lot of beats together for quite a long period of time. So we gave the beats to Chubby, Barron ACJ and Squeaky and then talked about the direction of the tracks.

We’d already been doing a lot of shows together so we had a strong chemistry as a group, but I’d say the whole album was kinda thrown together, but I think that gave the project a real spontaneous feel. I think when you plan too much it can take away from the natural vibe of the music you’re making. We never actually thought we’d ever have the chance to record an album, so a lot of energy went into “Pubs, Drunks And Hip-Hop”.

At what point did you make the transition from being a DJ to considering yourself a producer?

I started DJ-ing when I was 15-years-old. I originally lived in Watford, then I moved to Birmingham, then I came to Surrey. I had a couple of mates at school who had turntables, not Technics or anything, they were just straight-up hi-fi decks, but I got into DJ-ing through that.

I soon started doing pause-button tapes and multi-tracking using a couple of cassette decks, which is really when I’d say I first started trying to produce. At the time samplers and studios were extremely expensive, so I really had to work with the equipment I had. I’d say I was about 16-years-old when I actually started thinking like a producer in my head with the intention of going somewhere with the music.

How would you say your production style has developed over the years?

The Diversion Tactics album was the result of fifteen years of being into Hip-Hop, so the sound of the album reflected the music we came up listening to. But if you listen to tracks like “Hong Kong” and “Yanking Off”, you can also hear the beginnings of the music we’re making now.

In terms of the beats, we’re still using breaks and always will use breaks. On occasion we’ll sample Zygote drumming, but we’re still using that live drum sound that you’ll find on an old break. We were heavy on the jazz tip on the first Diversion Tactics album, whereas now we’re sampling stuff from anywhere.

Obviously my production techniques have become more advanced, but we’re still working within that boom-bap true-school sound. We’ve got a lot better as producers and engineers and we’re able to do a lot more, so that’s apparent in our sound now. But the motivation behind the music is still the same.

You just mentioned that you’ll always sample from breaks in your music – how much is digging for old vinyl still a part of what you do?

Digging is still a very large part of what I do. Basically, whenever I see a record shop, I’m in there. I actually work in a record shop in Guildford, so I’m surrounded by records four days a week anyway (laughs). We’re lucky enough in Guildford to have two collectors record stores, which I spend a lot of time in, so we’re kinda spoiled. If there’s something that I know I want and I want it quickly, then I’ll buy it off the internet. But the excitement of actually digging for records and finding stuff no-one else has is still a big part of it for me.

Where do you stand on the debate surrounding producers downloading material to sample from the internet rather than going out and digging for it the traditional way?

A lot of people just haven’t got the patience nowadays. A friend of mine who makes drum & bass was telling me the other day how he’s just downloaded thirty gigs worth of samples. I’m of the attitude that I’ll always dig, so personally I don’t download stuff to sample. I’ll always sample from either live instruments that we’ve recorded or breaks that we’ve found. I won’t limit myself from only sampling from vinyl though, because if you find something on CD that’s worth sampling you should do. But at the end of the day, if you’ve got skills, whether or not you’re able to go out and dig shouldn’t really hold you back.

Is there a particular idea or concept behind your new album “All City Kings”?

Well, a lot of people don’t really know who I am and I’ve never really pushed for people to know me on a certain level. I’m not the type of person to boast about what I’m doing, so I’ve always kinda been in the background doing my thing. I felt that maybe it was time for people to know a bit more about Jazz T and for me to develop myself more as an artist.

I wanted to use the new album to showcase the artists I’ve worked with in the past, either through producing or touring as a show DJ. So that’s why you hear everyone on the album from Percee P and Tim Dog to Kashmere.

“All City Kings” was a way of me showing what I’ve achieved in my career so far while also making a tight Hip-Hop album and defining myself as an artist in my own right as opposed to just being known as a DJ.

How much input did you have on the lyrical direction of each track?

To be honest, I just let everyone do their own thing really. I felt that the tone and sound of the project had already been set by the beats I’d chosen to use. Because I’d already worked with everyone on the album previously, I was confident that I could let them all do their thing and it would come out the way I was hoping it would.

Considering the mainstream popularity of Hip-Hop today, have you even been tempted to take your music in a more commercial direction?

I make music because I love music, but at the same time I also make records to sell records. Now, in terms of me making something that’s formulated to appeal to the masses, it just wouldn’t work. When it comes to making pop stuff that the masses love, that’s a skill in itself, so even if I tried to produce those type of records I really don’t think that I could do it.

Although a lot of people knock the more commercial stuff, to make something that appeals to everyone across the board does take something. So I don’t think that’s a direction I could ever go in, not just because it’s not something I believe in, but also because it’s a skill I don’t think I have.

Plus, I think producers who do flit between whatever’s trendy at a particular time cut their shelf-life as they end-up not really standing for anything, as they alienate their original fans and the newer fans are only interested for a short time until the next trend comes along.

What advice would you give to young producers getting into the game today?

I’d definitely suggest that they take the time to study music and listen to what’s come before them as that can only have a positive effect on their own production. I also think any young producer should spend some time digging, looking for breaks and old records, not necessarily to limit themselves to only sampling from vinyl, but just to have that experience. Also, as a producer you really need to have a picture in your head of what you want the end result of a track to sound like. It’s no good going into making a track with absolutely no idea of where you want to go with the music.

An obvious question here, but if you could produce your ultimate posse cut, which artists would you want to collaborate with?

I won’t mention any of my own guys as they’re obvious choices, so we’ll leave them out for the time being (laughs). But I’d definitely have Bionic of London Posse on there, Kool G. Rap, Godfather Don, Freddie Foxxx, Roots Manuva, EPMD and MF Doom. I think that’d be a nice little line-up.

So what’s next for Jazz T?

The plan with Diversion Tactics has always been to do another album and we’re now about halfway through recording the new project. It’s sounding nice and I’m really happy with it. All the tracks are done so now Chubby’s just working on the lyrics. We were trying to get the album out this year, but then Chubb started writing for another Bobba Fresh project, so we’re looking at next year now.

Me and Zygote are doing a project with Kashmere, which as a piece of music is some next level business. We’re also doing a Boot compilation, as a lot of the singles that came out on the label have never been released on CD. So we’re putting out an album that will include previously released Boot tracks from artists like Robot Boy and HUG, plus some unreleased stuff from Kashmere, Verb T and Louie G.

So right now, I’m definitely staying very busy.

Ryan Proctor

Gio Interview (Originally Posted On StreetCred.Com Aug 29th 2008)

Being an underground artist is never easy, especially when your music is at odds with what is considered to be the popular sound of the mainstream. But California’s Gio knows all about going against the grain. Turning his back on the thug life offered to him on the potentially deadly gang-related streets of Los Angeles, this down-to-earth individual gravitated towards Hip-Hop when looking for a creative outlet to help keep him focused and away from drama. Having also spent time as an aspiring basketball player and a pastor, Gio’s story is definitely not your typical straight-off-the-block rap tale.

With his recently released debut album “Basicali” boasting a tight combination of melodic, boom-bap-infused production and nimble, thought-provoking lyricism, Gio has some healthy Hip-Hop soul food to offer malnourished rap fanatics. From the warm summer party vibes of “Sun Shine On Me” to the social commentary heard on “American Pie”, this LA resident is hoping to show the world another side of West Coast life that doesn’t revolve around claiming colors and throwing up sets. California love, indeed.

Ryan Proctor: How did you first get involved in music?

Gio: Well, I’m from inner-city Los Angeles and when I was young I started to get into thugging and totally being a gangsta. Members of my family were into that and I just started getting into a lot of trouble as a youth. I got kicked out of school, I was getting into fights, I kept getting arrested, and I really couldn’t put things together. It really pissed my mom off to the point where she kinda just gave up on me, so I was really looking to try and get involved in something positive to help put me back on the right track. I was transferred over to Hamilton High School and I met Scarub, Murs and Double K from People Under The Stairs. I found myself just trying to get into a different crowd and that was the group that was the total opposite of thugging; everybody was about studying, being peaceful with each other, and everybody rapped. I kinda sat on the sidelines as far as the music was concerned. Initially I just hung out with them and I would try to rap but I was just so wack. I remember I wrote some rhymes down, went into the cipher with my piece of paper and totally forgot what I’d written. It was really wack (laughs). But then I remember when I did my first proper freestyle and was able to get through it and actually ride the beat. It was like the best feeling in the world, and that was really the start of my journey as an MC. I actually started playing ball and I left the music alone for awhile, but then when I was in college I was injured so I really started getting back into rapping again as a hobby. I hooked-up with this band and things really took off and it went from me just rapping for fun to actually being serious about becoming a Hip-Hop artist. So from there, for about the past seven years, it’s been about me trying to find the right vehicle to actually take me to my goals.

RP: In the 90s Los Angeles developed a strong underground scene which included groups such as Freestyle Fellowship and The Pharcyde. Is that scene still as healthy today?

G: It’s actually kinda weak right now. There’s a lot of talented individuals out here in LA, but everyone’s just kinda running around like chickens with their heads cut off. I mean, you have West Coast-based labels like Stones Throw who still put out good product, but I wouldn’t really consider them underground. The problem is that, if you’re a dude who’s trying to hustle his CD, you’re almost looked down on by people now. The hipster crowd is quite big out here now, so everyone’s looking for the hype and artists like the Cool Kids and MIA. So to some extent the hipster scene has kinda replaced the traditional underground Hip-Hop scene out here. Which is why, for artists like me, it’s really difficult to get anywhere. Once people get the music in there hands and sit down to listen to it, most of the time they love it. But usually it’s really difficult to get people to take any notice of what I’m actually doing because as soon as you say you do Hip-Hop, if people haven’t already heard of you or you don’t already have some sort of buzz, they don’t want to take the time to listen.

RP: Do you feel that West Coast artists who’re trying to do something different are overshadowed by Cali’s traditional gangsta-rap sound and the perceptions people might have of artists from that area?

G: Welcome to my dilemma (laughs). That’s basically where myself and other artists are stuck at – how do we navigate our way through that? There’s really no home right now for the type of music that I make. I mean, you have artists out here like Blu who’s big out here in as much as people will actually go to his shows. He’s one of the few underground artists out here who has a buzz and is on a steady rise. But the real MCs out here in Cali are roaming and they’re frustrated.

RP: After listening to your album “Basicali” it seems like you’re a very spiritual person. Would you say that’s an accurate description of who you are?

G: I was actually a pastor for eight years so that’s definitely a part of who I am. I’m from the street but I’m not trying to be street. I’m not into things that are plastic. I like things that are real and coming from a genuine place because then I’m able to interact with that. I want to explore this life and be able to learn something from every situation I find myself in, even if it’s a bad one. Through my music I want to let those people who’re selling drugs or into gang-banging know that I understand the place they’re coming from, but to also show them that there is hope on the other side.

RP: Is there anything you experienced during your time as a pastor which has had a direct influence on your music?

G: I never want to take my message and my music and put it in the hands of the public in terms of people’s opinions swaying my creative direction. I definitely learnt that from my time as a pastor. As a figure of the church you live in the eyes of everybody else where your lifestyle and what you do is constantly under the microscope, to the point where other people’s thoughts and ideas control your daily life. So in my music I never want other people’s opinions of what I should be doing stop me from just being me. Whether my decisions to express certain things are right or wrong, I still want to allow myself the opportunity to do that. My favorite MC is Mos Def and I really look at him as being a total artist. Some people might say they didn’t like his more recent albums, but when I listen to them they feel real to me because he’s truly expressing himself the way he wants to as an artist. It’s definitely a challenge to try and live off of your art because often there’s a sacrifice that has to be made. For me, I’m going to continue to create music that I genuinely love and let go of trying to reach the glitz and glamour. It’s the love of the music that keeps me going and the idea of being able to create something that I can say is an honest representation of who I am. I put 100% into the music I make, I put 100% into the rhymes, I put 100% into making sure the mood of the song is right, and I put 100% into making sure I tell the truth.

RP: You have a track entitled “Clap Ya Handz” which has some interesting lyrics. You talk about an artist who wrongfully claims they’re “the best the West has to offer” and another artist who flips out at award shows and is always “talking about what (they) deserve”. I took those comments to be aimed at Snoop and Kanye West. Is that correct?

G: That song was aimed at The Game and Kanye West. Firstly, I have a love-hate relationship with Kanye. I think he’s extremely talented and a phenomenal producer but sometimes his arrogance overshadows the quality of his music. Similarly with The Game, don’t get it twisted, I think he’s very talented. But when he came out saying he was the best from the West and that he was bringing the West Coast back, sometimes his stuff can seem real plastic to me. He’s someone I do respect, but on that particular song I was trying to show people the other side of the coin. Everyone’s always hearing about how great artists like The Game and Kanye are, but no-one ever hears people talking about how Game isn’t necessarily the best from the West and that Kanye really needs to get over himself. I’m not saying that either of those artists are wack, I’m just saying that people who get caught up in the hype of thinking they’re the greatest artists in Hip-Hop right now perhaps should also spend some time listening to less-celebrated dudes like a Black Thought or a Mos Def.

RP: Ultimately, what do you want listeners to take away from your music?

G: I want my music to be part of the healing of Hip-Hop and I think as long as people are striving for something better in their lives then there’ll always be an audience for my music. The challenge is in trying to let people know that music like mine exists. My next project isn’t likely to sound the same as “Basicali” as I’m currently experimenting with some new sounds, but the message in the music will always be the same. There’s so much shit out there in the world to make you feel terrible, so I want people to enjoy listening to my music and really take something positive from it.

Ryan Proctor

Gio performing “Just Stuntin” from his album “Basicali”.

James DL / No Sleep Recordings Interview (Originally Printed In Shook 03 / Red Cover / Summer 2008)

Hip-hop fans love to reminisce about the good old days. Ask any longstanding rap fanatic his or her thoughts on the music’s much-celebrated late-80s-to-mid-90s golden-era and you’ll probably have to threaten to snap their rare test-pressing of Big Daddy Kane’s ‘Raw’ in-half in order to shut them up. They’ll tell you what a profound impact Public Enemy’s classic 1988 album It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back had on their socio-political worldview. They’ll be able to recall exactly where they were the first time they heard Biggie’s seminal 1994 debut Ready To Die. They might even laugh about the day they almost ended-up in a record store fistfight over the last copy of Street Smartz’ 1996 subterranean smash ‘Problems’. Yep, hip-hop fans love to reminisce about the good old days.

James DL is one of those hip-hop fans. Spend anytime talking with the 33-year-old from Long Island, New York and it soon becomes clear that rap music has been much more than just the soundtrack to his life; it’s been both a passion and an obsession. Introduced to hip-hop culture at a young age, James became a key-player in the NYC underground scene of the 90s via his successful college radio show, helping introduce the likes of J-Live and Talib Kweli to listeners via numerous late-night studio freestyle sessions. He also worked for the now defunct independent label Hydra (temporary home to Godfather Don, Screwball etc).

Last year, DL threw himself back into the indie game by establishing his No Sleep imprint. Disillusioned with the greed-obsessed industry circus that hip-hop has become in recent times, James sought to help similarly unimpressed fans rediscover the creativity of rap’s glory days by releasing vintage (and often previously unheard) material from back-in-the-day favourites such as Lord Finesse, Kwest Tha Madd Lad and the aforementioned Godfather Don, plus new mix-CD projects like DJ Boogie Blind’s Definitive D.I.T.C..

With many more releases in the pipeline, James DL sat down with Shook to explain exactly why he wants to take us all back to the future.

What initially made you decide to set-up No Sleep?

It’s funny because there wasn’t really any impetus to make me start the label, it was more something that I gradually just got into. For the last few years I’ve been working with Lord Finesse and one of the things him and me got into was doing simple CDs to sell as merchandise at his shows, one of which was the Rare & Unreleased project. I thought that was too much of a good CD just to sell at shows as there was a lot of material on there that his fans would want who perhaps couldn’t make it to a Lord Finesse performance. So we added a few things to it, put it out with proper distribution and it did pretty well, particularly overseas in places like Japan. At that point, Buckwild had reached out to me and we did a similar project containing a lot of his remix and production work from the 90s for artists like Organized Konfusion, Artifacts and Brand Nubian. I was also involved in putting out the unreleased Ill Biskits album Chronicles Of Two Losers. I’d say that was probably when I decided to start No Sleep because I was putting out these CDs on separate labels, but at the same time, all of the CDs were really coming from the same source, which was me. I was using the same guy for all of the cover art, the same mastering guy, the same distribution, so I decided to set-up my own label to enable me to keep putting out similar projects but also be able to cross-promote them better. I wanted to establish a brand name so that when fans and collectors see something from No Sleep they know it represents a certain sound and level of quality from hip-hop’s golden era.

How much of a market is there for the type of releases you’re putting out?

It’s a small, small niche market. Obviously there’s been a small market for vinyl for awhile now, but it’s not really that much better for CDs. For example, I know there were thousands of people who got into Godfather Don’s Nineties Sessions CD, but that didn’t translate into sales. Of course, downloading is hurting everyone nowadays, and if you’re only putting out music to appeal to a relatively small audience anyway then it becomes even harder to get everyone in that audience to support what you’re doing. I think there are still a lot of people who would go out and buy CDs, but I think they’re disenfranchised with the music. Hip-hop has become so bad that older fans have stopped going to the record store to look for it. I think that if they knew there was a new album out from an artist they liked back in the day they might be inclined to purchase it. It’s just about getting the word out there. Those fans are out of the loop but they’re still listening to their old Brand Nubian or A Tribe Called Quest albums. That’s one of the reasons why I felt it was so important to establish a brand name with No Sleep, because the chances are if you like one of our releases you’ll like the others, so it gives people something to look for.

What is it about hip-hop’s golden-era that makes it such a special period to you?

People might accuse me of being stuck in the past, and I guess I am to a certain degree, but when albums like Showbiz & AG’s Runaway Slave and Diamond’s Stunts, Blunts & Hip-Hop were coming out, you just couldn’t get enough of the music. There was a feeling you used to get when you heard a record like Tribe’s Midnight Marauders for the first time. I think we need to preserve that feeling as much as possible because that’s not coming back. I don’t think young kids today fully understand just how exciting hip-hop used to be. It’s kinda easy to be a hip-hop head now because it’s all about just going on the internet message boards every couple of days to check in on things. But back in the day you had to really dig and you wanted to know and have everything. That’s what No Sleep is about, finding the stuff that maybe you heard on the radio but never picked up, or those tracks that weren’t on a particular album, and putting them out there in a physical form for the people who actually still want to own a copy of everything they like.

Would you ever consider releasing a new artist through No Sleep or do you want to keep your releases strictly old-school?

I probably want to keep the label as just being more of a vintage sound. But I actually am working on a project right now with Buckwild that will be all vintage beats but with vocals from a newer artist who people know. I can’t really say too much about it at the moment, but when it comes out I think it’ll have a pretty big impact.

What’s next for the label?

Well, the next thing is me and Godfather Don are putting out the Kool Keith / Cenobites album again with some additional songs that were recorded during the same mid-90s period but never released. Also, I’m putting out a double-CD with Nick Wiz, who I feel is one of the more slept-on producers from the 90s. It’s all stuff that he did between 1992 and 1997 with artists like Channel Live, Cella Dwellas and Rakim. I’m also doing an unreleased album with Shorty Long who people will remember from his work with Lord Finesse.

You’ve already worked with some of hip-hop’s greats like Lord Finesse, Buckwild etc, but is there a dream project you’d like to put together?

I would love to do a CD with DJ Mark The 45 King and be able to go through his archives because he must have so much stuff that I’d want. I’ve actually spoken to him before and he told me ‘Yeah, I did about thirty songs with Marky Fresh’ which, just as a fan of hip-hop, I’d love to hear. I’m not sure how much of that stuff he’d still have though, but that would be a project I’d love to be able to put together.

Bonus Q&A With No Sleep Affiliates Lord Finesse, Nick Wiz, DJ Boogie Blind & Kwest Tha Madd Lad.

What do you think the biggest difference is between today’s rap game and the golden era?

Lord Finesse: The difference I see between today’s rap game and the golden era is that there were so many classic artists and albums created back then compared to now. There was an extreme focus on the quality of the production and the lyrical content. Today’s rap game is more image driven.

Kwest: I think it’s become more focused on financial gain than really trying to up the ante skills-wise. Dudes step in the booth and say anything just to get a cheque. It’s all about who has the best car and the most money etc. Most MCs today don’t really show skill, if they even have any to begin with.

DJ Boogie Blind: In the golden era, everybody was being creative. Nowadays people concentrate on your hustle more than your actual talent.

How important do you think it is for a label like No Sleep to be out there giving exposure to music from the past?

Lord Finesse: A label like No Sleep educates new fans and it gives archive collectors a chance to purchase history.

Nick Wiz: It’s definitely a great look because there’s people out there that still want to hear that classic sound and No Sleep provides that.

Kwest: The younger generation forgets where hip-hop came from and only know the current artists. No Sleep resurrects the past music and lets them see how we did it. It also lets the mature hip-hop fan reminisce on what it was like when they were still growing and loving the music.

So far No Sleep has concentrated on the 90s hip-hop era – can you name a favourite album from that period?

Lord Finesse: I can’t really cut the list down to just one favourite album and would be lucky if I could even cut the list to a top twenty.

Nick Wiz: The Cella Dwellas’ Realms ’N Reality. When we were recording that album, we weren’t thinking about anything other than making great music.

DJ Boogie Blind: Ice Cube’s Amerikkka’s Most Wanted just because I wanted to see Cube do it up without N.W.A. and he definitely made a classic.

Do you have a particular favourite recording and / or performance memory from that same period?

Lord Finesse: My greatest memories are associated with the recording sessions I did with Big L and The Notorious B.I.G. I will forever remember working with two of the immortals of hip-hop.

Kwest: I remember being in Firehouse Studios in NYC recording and the engineer came in and said someone wanted to see me outside. When I went out, The RZA was there with a few other Wu-Tang members. He said he liked my song ‘Lubrication’ and gave me props. They had just dropped Enter The Wu-Tang and for him to say that about me was an honour.

DJ Boogie Blind: Seeing the X-ecutioners battle the Skratch Piklz in 1996. Classic turntablism.

Ryan Proctor

Buff1 Interview (Originally Posted On StreetCred.Com Aug 13th 2008)

Having spent the late 90s perfecting his craft as a member of underground Michigan crew Athletic Mic League, Ann Arbor’s Buff1 is nowhere near being the newcomer some of today’s current Hip-Hop fans may view him as. Already proving himself to be a skilled lyricist on AML releases such as the well-received 2002 album “Sweats & Kicks”, Buff took center-stage last year with his debut solo project “Pure”, an apt title for an album if ever there was one.

Combining a deep-rooted love of Hip-Hop culture with a passion for cutting-edge sounds, “Pure” found Buff stepping beyond the strength-in-numbers comfort zone offered to him by Athletic Mic League. Using the album as a platform through which to introduce himself to a wider fan base, the forthright MC added his own worthwhile chapter to the Detroit area’s rich rap heritage, which, of course, includes such heavyweights as Eminem and the late J Dilla, with current local favorites like Guilty Simpson and Black Milk also playing their part in helping to shape the next generation of Motor City music.

Now returning with his recently released sophomore set “There’s Only One”, Buff is hoping to take his unique sound to the masses one listener at a time. Under no illusions about the realities of the rap industry, but prepared to grind hard to reach his goals, Buff offers a creative breath of fresh air in an increasingly predictable Hip-Hop scene. Meet a true leader of the new school.

Ryan Proctor: What lessons did you take away from your time as a member of Athletic Mic League?

Buff1: I definitely learnt the importance of having patience. Just being a young MC and being hungry, thinking you’re better than everybody else and wondering why you’re not always getting the shine you think you deserve, I definitely had to learn to be patient. Being in a group also taught me a lot about teamwork. You definitely have to compromise sometimes and you can’t always be on every song you want to be on. You might have an idea about a particular track, someone else in the group might have a different idea about the same track, and sometimes it’ll go your way, sometimes it’ll go the other way. So learning to be patient and the ability to work well with other people are definitely the two biggest lessons I took from being a member of Athletic Mic League. But that said, we all still get along and the crew are just as much a part of my new album as they were the last one.

RP: So what prompted you to go solo?

B: Actually, it was the group’s idea for me to go solo. They came to me and were like, ‘It’s tough focusing on this music thing now we’re getting older and have more responsibilities.’ Some of the guys have children now and other members had to do the regular nine-to-five thing to pay the bills. We weren’t a bunch of kids anymore just making music for the fun of it in the basement. So the group decided to fallback and focus on putting me out as a solo artist. I was reluctant at first, but I’m glad I did it and I’m proud that the group asked me to be the one to step out on their own. There’s a little bit of pressure for me to live up to what we did as a group in the past, but for the most part it’s just pressure that I put on myself because I want to make good quality Hip-Hop music. I’m always trying to grow as an artist and keep the music moving forward, so that’s the main pressure.

RP: How would you describe the Detroit Hip-Hop scene?

B: When the underground Detroit scene as we know it now was first blossoming, Athletic Mic League wasn’t really a part of that. For one, we lived about thirty minutes away in Ann Arbor, and secondly, we just weren’t old enough at that point in time to be able to go to Detroit to see what was happening. We just had to hear through the grapevine about stuff like The Hip-Hop Shop and The Shelter. So we had to create our own scene in Ann Arbor and that’s eventually what we ended up doing. But once we’d done that it was inevitable that we’d venture into the Detroit scene. So around 2001 / 2002 is when we first started doing shows in Detroit and getting recognition out there. It was tough at first because not a lot of people knew us, but once they saw we made good music it’s been all love ever since. It’s like there’s a big family in Detroit now when it comes to music because everyone’s supporting each other and working together. I think that the state of Michigan is producing the best Hip-Hop music out there right now.

RP: How would you say the new album “There’s Only One” differs from last year’s “Pure” project?

B: I would say it’s more aggressive than “Pure”. The Lab Techs brought a bigger sound to their production this time around. I wouldn’t say it’s a step away from what people heard on “Pure” because a few of the tracks on the new album were originally recorded for that project. So it’s not like we’ve tried to create a whole new sound or take my music in a completely different direction, but this album definitely feels bigger than “Pure”. I really think that when it comes to production and lyrics, the Detroit scene is leading the way right now, and it’s definitely an honor to be a part of that. Nowadays, so many people are talking about taking the music back to the old-school, but whilst I think it’s definitely important to pay homage to that era, I think we should be concentrating on moving the music and the culture forward, and that’s something I’ve tried to do with the new album.

RP: Speaking of paying homage, the album cut “Classic Rap” is a throwback track with a difference – instead of calling out artists’ stage names you refer to them only by their real names. Why did you decide to do that?

B: Everyone knows that artists paying homage on record to those who’ve come before them has been done many times. I also wanted to show respect to those artists I looked up to coming up, but I wanted to do it in a different way. I had the first couple of lines to the song in my head for a couple of weeks and I didn’t really know what I was gonna do with them, then I heard the beat and it inspired me to keep writing the song and I decided I was going to go all the way with the concept of using artist’s real names rather than the names they record under. If people hear the song and don’t recognize the names I’m mentioning then I hope they’ll jump on their computers and do some research because if you really love this music then studying the history behind it is something you should be prepared to do.

RP: The album’s lead single “Beat The Speakers Up” is a potentially radio-ready record that actually criticizes the same playlist system it could possibly find itself a part of. Isn’t that something of a risk on your part?

B: Yeah, definitely. It’s tough as far as the radio is concerned, especially here in Detroit, because there’s only a handful of people who support local music on Detroit radio. I don’t think that’s right and it just doesn’t make sense to me that you can listen to the radio for a short period and hear the same song three or four times. The purpose of “Beat The Speakers Up” was to highlight that issue. I like to go to the club and I enjoy club music, so I wanted the song to be catchy, but I also wanted to put a twist on it with the lyrics. I wanted the track to be able to be played in the club and on the radio, but at the same time, I wanted to challenge people and make them think about the music that they’re hearing.

RP: Another album track that really stands out from a lyrical point of view is “Rain Dance”. What was the inspiration behind that?

B: That came from being in the club and seeing everybody doing something like the Soulja Boy dance. I was watching all these people reacting the exact same way to certain records, whether it was by doing a dance or some call-and-response routine, and I started thinking, ‘What if everyone could be on the same page and reacting in unison to other things in life that matter a bit more than a dance or the fashions people follow?’ I mean, what if we were all working together to help raise the next generation of kids or cleaning up our communities? That’s where the idea for “Rain Dance” came from. Obviously, I wanted people to be able to groove to it, but I also wanted the song to capture the feel of a large group of people all moving and pushing in the same direction for something that matters, like the marches that used to happen back in the day with Martin Luther King.

RP: Do you still feel that Hip-Hop has the ability to instigate positive change amongst its listeners? Or do you think we’re at a point now where most people aren’t even looking towards Hip-Hop for any sort of lyrical substance, they just want the simple, redundant music that’s largely become the norm on a mainstream level today?

B: To answer the first part of your question, I definitely think the potential is still there in the music to make a change. But really, in the current musical climate we’re in right now, I think it will take someone unexpected to do something in that vein for it to really make a difference. I mean, I’m doing my part, but I’ve only got so many listeners right now. I’m not really on TV or on the radio, so I can only reach so many people. Obviously the internet helps a great deal, but even still, I’m not the coolest cat on these blogs right now (laughs). But if someone like a 50 Cent was to try something different and start addressing certain issues in his music, I know it would have a real impact on his listeners because so many people really follow what he does. But that’s the whole conundrum in Hip-Hop right now because I don’t really know what people want, but I still make music because I do feel that I can have a positive effect on people and I feel that there is room for me in today’s Hip-Hop landscape. I don’t know if the masses will ever get sick of only being offered a particular representation of mainstream Hip-Hop music, but I do feel that artists like myself could get to that same level of exposure if people within the industry and the media were willing to push the envelope in order to help us get there. It’s tough because it seems like nowadays we’re pitted against each other in Hip-Hop, like you have to choose a side. But I’m trying to do my part to balance it out.

Ryan Proctor

Buff1 – “Beat The Speakers Up” ( A-Side Worldwide / 2008 )

SkinnyMan Interview (Originally Printed In Hip-Hop Connection 226 / UK Special Cover / September 2008)

 Photo: DarkDaze Photography

North London’s inimitable SkinnyMan has always played by his own rules when it comes to this game called UK hip-hop. Whether bursting into impromptu freestyle performances inside cramped record stores, jumping onstage unannounced at numerous jams, or speaking to the youth about walking a righteous path, the unofficial mayor of Dungeon Town has, throughout the years, shown himself to be an individual who always follows his heart and embraces life to the fullest.

After the 2004 release of his critically acclaimed debut album ‘Council Estate Of Mind’, many were no doubt expecting to see Skinny capitalise on the success of his poignant musical snapshot of inner-city Britain. However, the larger-than-life rapper, as always, had his own plans. Instead of rushing into the studio to record a second album to appease his newfound fans (‘Council Estate…’ received positive support from both mainstream radio and press), SkinnyMan instead chose to step out of the spotlight, with very little new music being heard from him in recent times, other than the odd cut such as the topical ‘Smoking Ban’ and a smattering of guest appearances.

HHC caught up with Finsbury’s finest to find out exactly how he’s been occupying his time since dropping a homegrown classic.

It’s been four years since the release of your ‘Council Estate Of Mind’ album. Is there a particular reason for the delay in you putting out a follow-up project?

“Yeah, I’ve simply been having too much fun (laughs)”

How would you define fun?

“Going out raving, linking up with my people, linking up with my gal, looking after my kids and walking the dog. I’ve just been having fun living.”

You had a massive buzz around the time of ‘Council Estate Of Mind’. In hindsight, did the album do better than you were expecting it to?

“It exceeded all my expectations by far. I didn’t think the album was going to get further than my local area. When I was putting the album together I was dealing with social issues that I saw plaguing my community, so I knew that people in my area would know what I was talking about as they were there going through the struggles as well. What I didn’t take into consideration was that there are communities throughout the country all suffering from the same social ills, such as single parenting, drugs, gun crime etc.

“Looking back on it now, at the time ‘Council Estate Of Mind’ came out I don’t really think there was anyone else out there acting as a voice for the frustrations of the youth and speaking on the social conditions they were living in. I think my album nailed it on the head and you could hear how passionate I was about the message in my music.

“Outside of my core audience, some of the flattery I received from highly-regarded critics in publications like NME and Q made me feel like, ‘Are they talking about me? I’m not worthy.’”

Recently you’ve been heavily promoting the WaterAid charity. How did you become involved in that?

“I’ve always been a great believer in charity and that was something I was first really made aware of by one of my heroes Sir Bob Geldof back when I was young and he was doing things like Live Aid. For a musician to put himself in a political position to enlighten Western society about the famines and plagues that were occurring in Third World countries, that was a massive thing to do. I did the whole Run The World thing when they organised that back in the day and I won’t tell you exactly where I came but it was good enough for me to get a medal and be up onstage shaking hands with LuLu, Cliff Richard and Bob Geldof. Let’s just say I’m a very good long distance runner. I’m like a white Cambodian (laughs).

“Seeing what was achieved through the power of music back then with Live Aid was something that really struck me. So when I started to achieve some success I looked at myself and thought ‘What am I doing to help?’ I started investigating different charities but I found flaws in all of them, mainly because of how much of the contributions actually go into the running of the charity instead of going to the people they’re supposed to be helping. But then God sent me in the right direction when I was at Glastonbury in 2004, and the reason why I believe it was a higher power that sent me to this particular charity is because James Brown was performing, and there was nothing more I wanted to see than the legend himself, the Godfather of Soul.

“As I was making my way to the stage, I came across this area with a big screen showing the work WaterAid were doing to help the children in Africa by giving them clean water. I just stood there looking at this screen and I must have watched it for about an hour. James Brown came on and went off and I didn’t move. I just thought, whatever money I’m getting can be sent straight to WaterAid because people around the world are really suffering. So I took the charity onboard as something that I wanted to push.

“It also made me realise that, with all of the problems the lower working class has to deal with here in the UK, we’re still blessed in many ways with things like the NHS, schools and pensions for the elderly. As much as we might think we’ve got it bad, we don’t have to deal with things like widespread starvation and malnutrition.

“So if anyone wants to come rob me for the money they think I’ve got, it’s already gone. What you gonna kill me for? My money’s been sent to those children across the world who need our help.”

Given your charity work, do you feel that people in the entertainment field have a responsibility to be role models and set a positive example?

“I believe it’s a personal choice that one has to make. I myself feel that I’ve been given the responsibility. I feel that even if you don’t think you’re a role model, you already are a role model because you’re in the spotlight and people will be looking up to you. Now whether you want to be a good role model or a bad role model is up to the individual. Personally, I’m motivated to make music so I can be a voice of the people and be someone that people can learn from, rather than doing it to obtain superstardom or for any other reason.”

Thanks in-part to the success of ‘Council Estate Of Mind’ you’re one of the few older UK hip-hop artists to also be embraced by the younger Channel U generation. Do you see any similarities between the hip-hop scene you came up in during the 90s and the grime scene of today?

“It’s the exact same energy. I remember, for example, when I used to hear Onyx ‘Slam’ and as soon as I heard the opening bars of that riddim my face would be screwing up and I’d have a big vein on my forehead. The music just gave me that feeling and that’s exactly what these kids are doing at the moment with grime. I feel the exact same energy from these grime kids today as I used to get from the hip-hop scene back then. It’s the same thing and I really can’t find a difference between the two. I love it and it’s a beautiful evolution.”

So is there a new SkinnyMan album forthcoming?

“Yes, there’s definitely something in the pipeline that’s under construction for presentation next year. The next album is going to have a wider political view that’ll be going for the jugular of the United Nations. I’m definitely going to be in a radical, revolutionary mind state on this one. Just like ‘Council Estate Of Mind’ the title will be a play on words, with the album being called ‘World Of Fairs’, so when you say it out-loud it’ll sound like world affairs.

“The cover art I have in mind will depict the United Nations leaders riding around the globe on a carousel. The concept of the album will be based around how we view the idea of freedom and what freedom means in the present day with new laws and legislations being passed regularly which contribute to us living in a controlled society.

“Whereas ‘Council Estate Of Mind’ was dealing with issues I was seeing in my immediate surroundings, the new album will be dealing with bigger subject matter on a world scale.”

Who are you planning to work with on the new album?

“I’m probably going to oversee the production myself, but as far as featured artists are concerned, I would love to be able to work with Chuck D and dead prez and also reach out to someone like Shabazz The Disciple. Plus, I’ve always wanted to work with Morgan Heritage and Louie Culture, although right now that’s a dream that’s far from reality, but you never know.

“In the meantime, I’m going to be releasing the ‘Smoking Ban EP’, which is going to contain material that I felt didn’t suit ‘Council Estate Of Mind’ and that wouldn’t suit the new album either. It’s still material that I believe my fans will appreciate, so why not give it to them. The EP will have about ten or twelve tracks on there like ‘Warrior’s Chant’, ’Lady Heroin’ and, of course, ‘Smoking Ban’. It’s gonna be a lot. I’m also doing an EP with MC Trip called ‘Horrorcore’ and we’re going to be spitting some grimy lyrics over acid house.”

Acid house? Really?

“Yeah. I even want to sample Shut Up & Dance. We’re going to be on some hip-house vibe like Doug Lazy and Fast Eddie (laughs). My music will be going in all directions from now on as I don’t have to stay focused on establishing myself as a hip-hop artist anymore because I’ve done that now.

“Back in the day when jungle was blowing up and you had emcees like Navigator and Creed, I was thinking ‘I can do this, but it means I’ll buss as a junglist emcee’ and I didn’t want to do that. I’d go to raves and people like General Levy would be like, ‘Skinny, jump up on the set!’ I’d jump up, kill it and he’d say ‘Are you coming to the next dance?’ and I’d be like ‘Nah, blood’ and people would say ’Why not? You’re killing it on jungle.’ I’d be like, ‘Exactly! People will be saying that Skinny’s a jungle emcee when I’m a hip-hop rapper.’

“I had to bite my tongue in nuff dances when I wanted to jump on the mic because I knew I’d be labelled as a jungle emcee and it was very important to me to come up under hip-hop. But now that I’ve done that I feel like I can branch out and do anything I want because I’ve already got the backpackers with me.”

Any parting words for the people?

“I want to encourage everyone to make a donation of any kind to www.wateraid.org and I also want to say sorry that there’s been such a long gap in my creativity since ‘Council Estate Of Mind’, but the fire is burning strong once again.”

Ryan Proctor

Cee-Rock “The Fury” Interview (Originally Printed In Hip-Hop Connection 224 / The Game Cover / July 2008)

The career of Cee-Rock “The Fury” has, so far, been a journey full of extremes. The Queens-raised Rotten Apple resident has been active as a rapper since the 80s, but is only just now releasing an official debut album, the uniquely titled ‘Bringin’ Da Yowzah!!!’. He’s fiercely proud of his New York roots, but records regularly with artists from the UK and across Europe. Cee-Rock’s music is clearly influenced by the boom-bap backpack vibe of hip-hop’s golden-age, but he remains focused on moving the culture forward. His name probably won’t ring any bells amongst rap fans who rely too heavily on MTV for their hip-hop fix, yet they will have unknowingly seen the underground champion numerous times thanks to his cameo appearance in Nas’s extravagant ‘Hate Me Now’ video.

Hailing from the very same Linden Boulevard made famous by low end theorists A Tribe Called Quest, Cee-Rock spent his youth watching local rap royalty such as Run DMC and LL Cool J go global with the same music he was hearing blasting proudly from boom-boxes throughout his beloved Q-Sector stomping grounds (‘Bringin’ Da Yowzah’ includes a nod to the old-school with an appearance from Queens park jam legend and former Main Source emcee Mikey D). The 90s would find “The Fury” sharpening his rhyme skills with none other than battle rap giant Chino XL as part of a crew named Total Impact. So whilst it might be a little too predictable to label him as being rap’s ‘best kept secret’, it’s clear that Cee-Rock is definitely no newcomer, irrespective of his current ‘debut album’ status.

Fresh from his recent collaboration with Rawkus 50 artist 12Bit, the hardworking lyricist already has a handful of new projects in the pipeline, including a sophomore album produced by Hungary’s eclectic hip-hop / electronica maestro Marcel (a.k.a. Carmel), plus other joint ventures with Swedish beat junkies Freddie Cruger (of Red Astaire fame) and Last Days Of Disco’s Soul Supreme. All of which suggests that, whether you’ve already heard of him or not, Cee-Rock “The Fury” is determined to leave his mark on the game this year, but on his own terms.

Queens has always had a rich hip-hop pedigree. What was it like in the 80s and 90s seeing so many legendary artists from your area blowing up?

“I was actually networking with a lot of the artists who were making history back then. We used to have this place in Queens on Jamaica Avenue called the Music Building, and if you speak to anyone like the Juice Crew or Run DMC, they’ll tell you how everyone used to be up in there. I was working with Tim McKasty, the brother of legendary producer Paul C. I recorded in Studio 1212, which is where Paul C worked out of, and that’s also where I first met Stretch of the Live Squad. Jam Master Jay used to have his studio across the way and Onyx used to be up there all the time along with The Afros, so I’d be hanging out with Hurricane and all of them. I remember one time we had an ill cipher in the hallway with me, Tragedy Khadafi and, believe it or not, MC Brains who recorded ‘Oochie Coochie’.

“Where I’m living now is actually right across the street from the studio where Jam Master Jay was killed. I was at work when I heard he’d been shot, and that really hurt because I used to see him all the time.”

You must have plenty of ‘back in the day’ stories having been around so many prominent hip-hop figures?

Let me tell you some history. I was actually supposed to hook-up with Rakim years ago. I was on a job hunt in the city, dressed up in my suit, and I saw Rakim in his jeep. This was right around the time when the ‘Follow The Leader’ album was out. I saw Rakim go into this building and decided to wait awhile because I was thinking, ‘I ain’t leaving until I’ve met Rakim.’ He came out of the building with his lady and their young son, so I approached him like ‘Ra, I’m your biggest fan. I’ve been waiting out here for over an hour and was hoping you could listen to some of my music and give me your opinion?’

“Rakim invited me into his jeep and put his girl and baby in the backseat and so I could sit shotgun and play my cassette. I played him a joint and was looking out for some sort of reaction. Then he started nodding his head and said ‘Yo, you’ve got some skills.’ To hear that from someone like Rakim made me feel real good. So he asked me who I was working with and I told him Tim McKasty. Ra was like, ‘Paul C’s brother?! I’m about to do some stuff with him. Next time you’re over there maybe we’ll hook-up and see what happens.’ Unfortunately, shortly after that was when Paul C was murdered, so the meeting with Rakim never happened.”

Are you concerned that, even though you’re releasing your first album, people might automatically place you in the ‘old-school’ category because of your history and the length of time you’ve been around as an artist?

“If people want to call me old-school that’s cool with me because to me that was the realest era when the music and the lyrics actually meant something. Back in the day people knew the difference between good music and bad music, but today consumers are almost being brainwashed to just accept whatever it is they’re being given regardless of its quality. It’s like people feel as though they’re going to be left out if they’re not listening to one of the five records you’re hearing on the radio all day. But I don’t care if a song sells a trillion copies, if I’m not feeling it then I’m not feeling it.”

For those who might be confused by the title of your album, what exactly does the word ‘Yowzah’ mean?

“Yowzah is a word that describes the impact of something. If someone drops a brick on your foot you might shout ‘Ouch!’ If you see a girl with a nice behind you might say ‘Damn!’ Yowzah is a word that can be used like that. So when people hear my music I want them to be like ‘Yowzah!’ because it’s hitting them that hard. That’s what the title ‘Bringin’ Da Yowzah!!!’ means.”

Your current single ‘Kill Da Killin’ deals partly with the increasing number of violent beefs in hip-hop today. Was there a particular incident that inspired you to write that song?

“It was really a combination of things that I was seeing around me, like rappers dying unnecessarily over nonsense. It just feels like people have had to elevate the levels of tension in the game to prove how real they are. Nowadays it’s not enough to just battle someone on wax, cats feel like they’ve got to take it to a physical level. But when that happens it’s not about the music anymore, so to me that’s not what hip-hop is about. I mean, if all you want to do is shoot people then you may as well just join the army and go to Iraq or something.

“The level of ignorance out there is so high now that people think the beef route is the only way to make a name for yourself as an artist today. Battling has always been a part of hip-hop since the very beginning, but regardless of what was being said, the artists involved in any battle were still being judged on their talent. Nowadays, a lot of these dudes involved in beefs aren’t actually making good music, but they’re still getting attention because of the drama they’re causing.

“People’s egos get hurt too quickly nowadays, and that’s when the guns and knives start to come into play. Cats really need to start understanding that there can be very real consequences to getting involved in these unnecessary beefs. You can still gain respect and be seen as ‘real’ without having to go out and shoot somebody.”

You don’t use bad language in your rhymes – was that a moral choice or an artistic decision?

“I just don’t really have the need to use curses. Back in the day cats like Chuck D only ever cursed to get a point across, whereas today cats have limited vocabularies so they’ll throw a couple of curses into almost every line just to fill the gaps in their verses. I mean, you can be street but you don’t have to be a Neanderthal. A lot of people just aren’t sitting down to think about what they’re going to say in their rhymes anymore.”

With that in mind, what’s your take on the controversy surrounding the supposed title of Nas’s next album, ‘Nigger’?

“One thing about Nas is that there’s always a method to his madness. The N-word is a very sensitive issue and I think what Nas is trying to do with his album title is use it as a way to start discussing some other issues. But I’m not sure if just putting the N-word out there like that is necessarily a good thing because it might make some people think it’s okay for them to use it freely when they don’t fully understand the implications of doing that.

“I know some people are saying that Nas is just doing this as a publicity stunt, but I don’t think he’s the type of artist who would go that far with such a sensitive subject. So I definitely think there’s a deeper meaning behind the album concept. I just hope that whatever vision Nas has for the project is how it actually turns out, because if it backfires it could generate the kind of controversy that could be career-ending.”

You’ve had strong ties with the UK’s Wolftown collective for some time now and your album features input from a number of European emcees and producers. Why do you think more Stateside artists haven’t taken the opportunity to collaborate with talent outside of America considering the rise of the internet etc?

“So many people don’t think outside the box and just like to keep everything in their own little circle. But there’s so much hip-hop out there for people to listen to. I mean, you’ve got producers in other countries now that will blow out a lot of the producers in the United States. Good music is good music wherever it comes from and people should learn to appreciate that. I mean, I like Chinese food, but I’m not from China!

“A lot of people in the States are ignorant to what’s going on in other countries as far as hip-hop is concerned, but once they become exposed to it they’re like ‘Man, I didn’t even know they put it down like that out there.’ There’s definitely more of an appreciation for real hip-hop in other countries than there is in the US.”

Now that your debut album is finally being released, what are you hoping people will take away from it?

“At the end of the day, if someone leaves with a smile on their face after listening to my album, or some of my lyrics sink into their head, that’s everything to me because that lets me know my music means something to someone else.”

Ryan Proctor

Cee-Rock “The Fury” – “Kill Da Killin’” ( Abstract Urban / 2008 )

Swift It Major Interview (Originally Printed In Hip-Hop Connection 224 / The Game Cover / July 2008)

“I’ve read so many articles that have labelled me as only being a Jump Off battle finalist, but I want people to know that I’ve got something to say in my music as well. I’ve never really looked at myself as a battle emcee, I just dived head first into the Jump Off thing to see if I could get through. But if the battle rapper tag helps me get recognised, then so be it.”

Initially inspired to start writing his own rhymes after hearing UK hip-hop collective 57th Dynasty, north west London’s Swift It Major has spent the last five years or so on a mission to standout from the crowd. His virtually unrivalled (if unplanned) success at the capital’s premier open mic event might have led many to view Swift as nothing more than a punchline pugilist, but that’s a first impression the forthright rapper is hoping to shake with his recently released debut album, ‘A Park Bench Drama’, a boisterous mix of wit, humour and personal opinion that covers a variety of topics, not least the impact of the MySpace generation on an increasingly fragile domestic rap scene.

“People are trying to get into this thing sideways,” states Major, with a nod to his 2007 single ‘X Factor’. “Artists today want everything to be quick and easy, which is never going to work, man. They just want to see their video on Channel U and get their fifteen minutes of fame, but they’re not putting any thought or planning into what they’re doing. Do you know how many times I’ve seen a video and thought, ‘This tune is alright, let me go and buy this shit’. But do you think you can find it as a single? Do you think there’s even a single or album coming out? It don’t make no sense, man. We’re never going to build an industry that way.”

Gripes about the music business aside, Swift is also keen to deal with more serious issues, namely the rising level of violent crime occurring on Britain’s streets and the apparent lack of urgency amongst politicians to address the situation. “I think the government really needs to start looking at the root causes of crime in the UK instead of just locking people up and thinking that will solve the problem,” he offers. “But that said, a lot of families need to start showing their kids the right way to go as far as things like education are concerned, because if the government isn’t going to help our communities, then we need to start helping ourselves.”

Swift’s balanced, realistic worldview also extends to his own career aspirations. “All I can do is push ‘A Park Bench Drama’ as much as I can,” he says matter-of-factly. “If the people call for another album, then I’ll do another album. If not, then at least I know I put everything I had into this one.”

Ryan Proctor

Bonus Clip: 2007 Swift It Major interview on London’s now defunct pirate Hip-Hop station Itch FM.

Chain Of Command Interview (Originally Printed In Hip-Hop Connection 223 / Public Enemy Cover / June 2008)

Describing the formation of multi-cultural UK hip-hop crew Chain Of Command as a “meeting of minds” may sound a little cliché, but it’s hard to disagree with member Manage’s summary of the collective’s genesis after hearing their ‘Rogue State’ EP. A hard-hitting collection of intense, brainstorming lyricism and high-calibre production courtesy of longstanding allies Beat Butcha and Chemo, the seven-track release definitely sounds like the work of a group with a shared vision, albeit a harsh and sometimes uncomfortable one.

“We never wanted to do a full-on political project,” says Manage of the social commentary running throughout CC’s debut. “It just took shape naturally because we were all pissed off with different things we were seeing in the world around us. We like to think of ‘Rogue State’ as being more of a conscious release. We’re not Public Enemy, so we weren’t planning to change the world with the EP, but we did want our music to have some meaning.”

With Manage, Conflix, CLG and Syanyde having all gained experience as solo artists prior to Chain Of Command, the four emcees finally came together after regularly bumping heads with one another at London’s many open mic nights, not least the Speakers Corner events, a monthly jam which recently came to an end after a lengthy and successful run. “There was never any cliquishness about Speakers Corner in terms of the artists who were allowed to perform,” recalls Conflix. “Any emcee or crew was able to come down and do their thing. It was definitely good for the scene.”

Certainly not for fans of sing-a-long ringtone rap, Chain Of Command’s music covers everything from UK involvement in the Iraq war (‘Not In My Name’) to the general pressures of everyday life (‘Stress’), with the group displaying a take-no-prisoners attitude towards their craft that evokes the spirit of early Britcore legends such as Hijack and Gunshot.

“Negativity is the main problem,” offers Manage when asked to pinpoint the cause of the widespread community unrest addressed on much of ‘Rogue State’. “I think right now there’s just general paranoia on the streets and people are scared to embrace each other. We don’t talk to each other enough and England is becoming a very anti-social society. People need to learn how to interact with each other on a correct level. There are a lot of problems in the world today, but I think the first step towards solving some of them is just through general communication with each other and music is a great tool for that.”

Chuck D would be proud.

Ryan Proctor

Rob Swift Interview (Originally Posted On SixShot.Com Apr 3rd 2008)

Ever since Clive ‘Kool Herc’ Campbell dropped the needle on a dusty piece of wax at his first party in a Bronx project building recreation room back in the 1970s, the art of Hip-Hop DJing has been in a constant state of evolution. From the early eclectic sets of pioneer Afrika Bambaataa, to the swift cuts of Philly’s DJ Cash Money, and on to the complex symphonies of chaos constructed by the West Coast’s DJ Q-Bert, the once relatively straight-forward act of manipulating vinyl using two turntables, a mixer and your imagination has moved on in leaps and bounds since its humble beginnings at old-school BX b-boy jams.

Whilst many DJs have come and gone over the years, Queens, New York native Rob Swift is someone who can pretty much claim to have dedicated almost his entire life to the science of turntablism. Introduced to music at a young age, Swift’s career officially began in 1991 when he was asked to join legendary NYC DJ collective The X-Men, a formidable crew of turntable terrorists that counted the likes of Roc Raida, Steve Dee (inventor of the beat-juggle), Kool G. Rap collaborator Dr. Butcher, and Sean C amongst its ranks (yes, the same Sean C who recently co-produced a hefty chunk of Jay-Z’s “American Gangster” album). The crew was notorious throughout the Rotten Apple’s five boroughs for their near-flawless battle routines and razor sharp scratching skills. In 1992 Rob won the coveted East Coast DMC DJ competition, that same year he would also perform cuts on fellow Queens resident Akinyele’s debut Interscope album, the Large Professor-produced “Vagina Diner”.

As the 90s went on, original members of the X-Men moved away from the battle scene to pursue other career aspirations, leaving Swift and Roc Raida flying the flag alongside new member Mista Sinista and the upcoming Total Eclipse. Keen to carve out a new niche for themselves in the DJ world, the foursome combined as The X-Ecutioners, dropping the critically-acclaimed album “X-pressions” in 1997, an ambitious project that saw the group making good on their promise to take turntablism to the next level of artistry and exposure.

A subsequent deal with Steve Rifkind’s Loud Records led to the crew releasing their sophomore set “Built From Scratch” in 2002, from which came the rock / Hip-Hop crossover hit “It’s Goin’ Down” with Linkin Park, a single that elevated the X-Ecutioners to new levels of success that included MTV rotation and advertising deals. The album also featured appearances from heavyweight Hip-Hop names such as M.O.P., Pharoahe Monch, Xzibit and Big Pun.

However, soon after the group’s third full-length effort (2004’s Columbia-released “Revolutions”), Rob would choose to leave the X-Ecutioners amidst a blur of industry politics, strained personal friendships and creative frustration. Having already tasted life as a solo artist with album projects such as 1999’s “The Ablist” and 2002’s “Sound Event”, the down-to-earth deck-wrecker was keen to explore new directions in which to take his talents, unhindered by the demands of recording for a major label. The result was “War Games”, a unique album blending socio-political themes with cutting-edge turntable techniques, proof that DJs really could speak with their hands when they wanted to make a statement.

Given Swift’s previous group experiences, it might be surprising to some to see him coming back out as a member of Ill Insanity, a three-man DJ unit that also includes former X-Ecutioner Total Eclipse and newcomer Precision. Forming last year due in part to a shared determination to reinvigorate what many see as a fading turntablism scene, the trio recently released their debut album “Ground Xero” on New York’s Fat Beats label. A sturdy collection of boom-bap beats and on-point turntable tactics, “Ground Xero” evokes the unpredictable spirit of the X-Ecutioners’ late-90s debut, whilst still establishing Ill Insanity as a group with their own musical identity intact.

Here, Rob Swift talks about his career foundations, gaining new fans, and the impact of technology on the DJ game.

What initially drew you towards DJing?

I grew up in a family of DJs. My dad was a DJ and so was my older brother. I kinda just picked it up from being around them. As the young one of the family you naturally want to follow in the footsteps of the people you look up to, so my dad was the person who actually introduced me to the art of DJing, but it was my brother who introduced me to the whole culture of Hip-Hop. I was very lucky and fortunate to be around that at such a young age and that was pretty much the beginning of it all for me.

Was it primarily the musical aspect that interested you in DJing or was it the personal connection between the DJ and the crowd?

I guess it was the fact that as a DJ you’re controlling people’s moods and how they feel. Seeing my dad control a room of two hundred people with music, I think that’s what attracted me to it. Plus, as I was around DJs, it was an innate thing that I picked up kinda easily, so naturally you stick with what you do best and I stuck with DJing.

You initially made your mark in New York’s early-90s battle scene. What was that like in terms of the level of competition between everyone at the time?

It was definitely intense. At that time we didn’t have YouTube, DVDs and stuff like that, so everyone was forced to really master their craft and be creative. I think the fact that there wasn’t the accessibility to the technology younger DJs have now, it forced us to be more original. Nowadays you can watch a DJ on YouTube instantly, like an hour after they might have just done their routine at the DMCs or something. Basically that means you can study what they’re doing and learn it right then and there. The DJs in my generation didn’t have that luxury coming up, so we had to figure a lot of things out for ourselves and really try new things, which I think made for a lot more creativity. To me, having to delve into yourself like that was one of the best things about coming up in my era, and that’s what has helped me maintain the longevity that I have. When I was younger, aside from my dad and my brother, I was the only DJ in my neighborhood, so my exposure to other DJs was through listening to people on records of the time like Jam Master Jay and Jazzy Jeff.

I can remember hearing Jazzy Jeff do the transformer scratch for the first time back in 1987 on “The Magnificent Jazzy Jeff” and I really couldn’t understand how he was making those sounds.

That was the fun of it back then, trying to figure out what someone was doing to create those scratches you were hearing on people’s records. In a sense, that helped bring out your creativity and originality, because in trying to learn what other DJs were doing you’d come across different things as you practiced that you could then perfect in your own way. Now you can go straight onto YouTube and see exactly how someone’s performing a particular scratch or beat juggle, so it kinda makes it easy to learn and therefore isn’t as challenging because you’re not having to push yourself as much. But that being said, I think technology’s great, especially with me being an underground artist. It’s great knowing that even though MTV isn’t necessarily going to embrace a project like Ill Insanity’s “Ground Xero” album, I still have avenues like YouTube and MySpace to reach the fans and promote what I’m doing. So yes, technology does make it easier for people and takes away some of the nuances of DJing, but at the same time, it definitely helps to bridge the gap between the fan and the artist. There are pros and cons to it all.

 

90s Rob Swift Biz Markie Beat Juggle

The X-Ecutioners made a huge leap between the crew’s first and second albums from being an underground Hip-Hop act to a globally recognized group with a lot of mainstream exposure. In hindsight, was it a shock for you when that success came and how did you deal with the transition on a personal level?On the one hand, our whole goal as The X-Ecutioners was always to reach the next level of notoriety. We felt like the artform of turntablism was so creative and so special that we wanted people beyond the underground scene to see it and be exposed to it. So we always had intentions to make it big and bring the artform into homes all over the world. But at the same time, as much as we wanted to accomplish that, in my opinion we weren’t really prepared for it when it actually happened. Having to deal with the new responsibilities and pressures that come from being well known, like dealing with major labels, being expected to sell a certain amount of records, making music videos and stuff like that, it created a lot of tension within the group because it wasn’t so much fun anymore, it became like constant pressure. I mean, when we first came together and started working on music, we didn’t care about selling a million albums, we just wanted to make good music and for people to hear us doing our thing. That’s why I feel like Ill Insanity is a return to that feeling of having fun with the music. Now that we’re free of the pressures of album sales or making records for the radio, it’s like we’re having fun again and have also found a brand new appreciation for the artform of DJing. Yes, we’re still trying to push the art and expose it to people, but we understand that we have to do it on our terms and we can’t let a label be in charge of what we do creatively because it’s not going to come off the right way.

 

The X-Ecutioners ft. Ghostface, Trife & Black Thought – “Live From The PJs” (Columbia / 2004)

Last year you released a DVD project entitled “As The Tables Turn” which dealt very openly with the reasons behind the X-Ecutioners break-up and your decision to leave the group. Was that something you felt you had to do before you could move on with your career?That’s exactly what “As The Tables Turn” was. It was a way for me to bring closure to a part of my career that everyone had questions about. People would see me and be like, ‘Why’d you leave X-Ecutioners? What happened to Roc Raida? What’s going on with Mista Sinista?’ I obviously had a lot of feelings and opinions about what happened and making the DVD was a way for me to get a lot of that out of my system, put it behind me, and then move forward.

So with that said, some people might be surprised to see you coming back out as part of another group rather than continuing to pursue a solo career.

Well, here’s the thing. I left X-Ecutioners in September 2004 and dropped “As The Tables Turn” in April 2007. So I was actually a solo artist for three years, redefining what my goals were and kinda reinventing myself. For me, “As The Tables Turn” was a way of putting an exclamation mark at the end of that part of my career. Once I’d done that I was open to whatever new opportunities were gonna come at me. The funny thing about Ill Insanity is that we really came together because of that DVD. I scheduled a release party in New York to promote the DVD and I had plans to invite Roc Raida and Mista Sinista to perform with me at the party because they’re in the movie and I thought it’d be a great way to show people that none of us have harbored any ill will towards each other because of the X-Ecutioners break-up. But Raida had moved away to Maryland and Sinista had moved to Virginia, so the only people I had near to me were Total Eclipse and Precision, who was a protégé of mine at one point. So I asked them to join me onstage to perform at the release party and we went from deciding to just improvise on the night to then deciding to rehearse something to give the people a really good show. As we were rehearsing it started to feel like back in the X-Men days with everyone practicing together, having fun, motivating each other, no-one arguing about anything. It just felt right, so we decided to get the whole group thing going again because, for one, it felt good, and for two, we felt the artform needed it because there’s a wide consensus amongst a lot of DJs that the turntablist scene is dead or it’s dying. We’re of the opinion as Ill Insanity that, instead of complaining about it, we should all try to do something to breathe life back into the artform. So forming Ill Insanity and releasing the “Ground Xero” album was our way of trying to reignite the scene and get this whole thing going again because we love what we do too much to just let it die.

Other than the line-up of the group, what would you say are some of the biggest differences between The X-Ecutioners and Ill Insanity?

Obviously there are some differences, but there are also some similarities. Difference-wise, I feel like right off the bat there’s a freedom the three of us have that we didn’t always have with X-Ecutioners because of the pressure to sell records and stuff. In turn, that’s made the chemistry in Ill Insanity a lot tighter and we’re more in synch with each other’s ideas. The group hasn’t even been together a full year yet, but in the eleven months we have been together we’ve done tours in the US and Europe, made an appearance on ESPN, we were on Rap City, and we’ve dropped an album. Most groups can’t even record an album in eleven months, but we did that plus more. I feel that the fact we’ve managed to accomplish so much in such a short space of time symbolizes how much we all see eye-to-eye as a group and that we’re ready to make moves. But then you can also see the X-Ecutioners influence when we’re onstage performing in terms of some of the routines we do.

 

Footage From Ill Insanity’s 2008 “Ground Xero” Tour

In a recent interview, you said that one of the reasons you feel like you’re starting over again with Ill Insanity is because the original X-Ecutioners fan base isn’t really out there anymore. What exactly did you mean by that statement?

Even before Ill Insanity, after I left X-Ecutioners I noticed that the majority of people who’d come out to see me spin were kinda there either by chance and they didn’t really know who I was, or they’d kinda heard about turntablism and were just curious to see what it was all about. There’d be small pockets of people who came specifically to see me, but it just seemed like the fan base started to change. Maybe it’s because our original fan base have gotten a little older and have families and work commitments, perhaps they’ve gradually lost interest in the art form, or maybe they just don’t have the time to keep up with it anymore. But I’m seeing this change happening right before my eyes, and now it’s to the point where pretty much ninety percent of the people that come out to see Ill Insanity have never heard of X-Ecutioners. Or perhaps they’ve vaguely heard of X-Ecutioners through a friend or they’ve seen a video on YouTube, but they don’t own “X-pressions” or “Built From Scratch”.

Is it disheartening to see almost an entire generation of fans falling by the wayside?

It’s definitely disappointing because I feel that those fans really supported the whole movement during what I call the golden years of turntablism. Back then you could drop a turntablist album and easily sell 80,000 to 90,000 copies because the fans went out and supported your shit. You could do tours back then with an all-DJ line-up like Z-Trip, Mixmaster Mike, Rob Swift and The Beat Junkies, and it would be sold out from front to back. The fans at that time really helped the artform to grow, but now the majority of those fans aren’t around anymore. With music and entertainment being so fast moving nowadays it’s easy to get lost in the shuffle. So we’ve gotta start over as Ill Insanity and convince people all over again that our album is worth the twelve dollars it’ll cost to buy it or that it’s worth the price of admission to see us perform. So it’s really like we’re starting from the beginning again, which I’m cool with because I’m all about exposing the art to new fans, but at the same time it’d be good to still have that old fan base there to help us. I mean, today it’s hard enough trying to get someone to download one of your songs from the internet for ninety-nine cents, whereas back in the day fans would physically go to the trouble of going to a record store to buy your album. It’s just a different time now.

With that said, what’s the response been like from the younger crowds who’ve been coming to see you perform on the recent Ill Insanity tours?

As much as I’d like to see some of the older fans supporting more, the reaction we’ve been getting from the new people we’re reaching on our tours has been positive, man. I get people coming up to me after shows who’re amazed like, ’I’ve never seen anything like that before!’ People just seem to always be impressed by the fact that we’re really trying our best to entertain the crowd, we’re not just up there playing music, we’re actually performing. This new generation of music fans hasn’t seen something like that before, so they’re just astonished by it, and I’m convinced that maybe in another year or two, if other DJs follow in our footsteps and do their part to help the art grow by recording albums and reaching more people, then we’ll be back in another golden-era of DJing.

There’s been a lot of debate in recent years surrounding the technology that’s entered the DJ game such as Serato etc, which, amongst other things, has led to people not having to use vinyl anymore when performing. How do you balance the organic spontaneous feel of old-school DJ techniques with taking advantage of the benefits technology can offer?

I think that what you have to do is apply the same values that you hold about the music to the technology. You shouldn’t let the technology change the way you view the music. I mean, after we finish this interview I’m going to go record shopping in Manhattan, but that said I now do shows with Serato. The technology hasn’t changed the fact that I still love going digging and the feel of vinyl, but when I get home tonight, I’ll digitize the music I’ve just bought on vinyl and transfer it onto my Serato. What that then means is that instead of taking crates of records on tour, paying huge excess weight airline fees and worrying about my records getting lost, I can travel with all my music on my laptop. It’s all about adapting. I feel that a lot of DJs now actually let technology change them, so instead of still going to the record store to look for vinyl they’ll just download the track they’re looking for.

Do you get tired of constantly having to justify why you’ve embraced some of this new technology to die-hard vinyl-only turntablism fans?

I don’t get tired of it necessarily, but it does frustrate me because I feel like that guy sitting on the internet saying that I’m a sell-out because I use things like Serato, he’s probably never stood in front of a ticket agent at an airport having to pay two hundred dollars to check in records. That guy’s not having to lug eighty-pound crates around all over the world or having to replace that special piece of rare vinyl that was damaged or lost on tour. So it’s frustrating because a lot of the people who might criticize DJs for using the new technology that’s available don’t see the other side of what we do. But I don’t get tired of explaining it to people because that’s also a part of what we do. DJing isn’t just about performing; it’s also about being willing to break down your theory on things and educating people as well.

So where would you like to see turntablism go next?

I’ve been saying this for years now, but I’d like to see artists like Ill Insanity and other DJs who’re releasing music being acknowledged at award ceremonies. I’d love to see a Best Turntablist Album category at the Grammies. It’s my dream to see one of us walk onstage with the tuxedo on and accept a Grammy for turntablism. I think we’ve made a lot of strides forward as DJs over the years, but I still don’t think the artform receives the respect it deserves.

Ryan Proctor

Old To The New Q&A – Mr. Thing

Having gained notoriety in the late-90s as a member of the formidable Scratch Perverts deejay collective, London-based deck-wrecker Mr. Thing has always refused to allow the glare of the industry spotlight to distract him from his musical goals, with the 2000 DMC champ choosing instead to remain true to his passion for playing (and making) good quality Hip-Hop, as well as his addiction to unearthing dusty, often forgotten breaks.

As a producer Thing has worked successfully with homegrown emcees such as Yungun and Life, whilst as a deejay the down-to-earth vinyl junkie’s near-flawless skills have seen him in constant demand at club nights up and down the UK.

It’s the combination of Thing’s ear for great music and technical skill that no doubt encouraged the BBE label to offer him the opportunity to put together his own compilation, the recently released “Strange Breaks & Mr. Thing”. Having already collaborated with the legendary DJ Premier on the label’s 2005 release “The Kings Of Hip-Hop”, it was only right that the imprint should give the respected wax-spinner the chance to helm a solo project.

An eclectic mix of gems discovered during countless hours of digging, bartering and haggling in record stores, charity shops and garage sales across the globe, “Strange Breaks…” is definitely the work of an individual who can hear a back-of-the-stack banger from a mile away.

Here, Mr. Thing momentarily blows the dust off his fingers to give Old To The New a brief insight into the art of looking for the perfect beat.

What was your selection process when it came to choosing the tracks that ended up on “Strange Breaks…”?

When Pete from BBE first put the idea to me about doing the comp I had to go in for a meeting about it, so I decided to make up a compilation CD of the kind of thing I thought would be cool, like some covers of famous breaks, funky reggae tunes, funky rock breaks, all kinds of odd stuff I liked and had found over the years. I gave it to Pete at the meeting, and literally about 75% of what was on that CD made it onto the comp. We had clearance issues with some of the more obscure stuff that’s now owned by major labels so I went back and dug out a few more tracks. I wanted to put a broad mix of stuff on the album so it wasn’t all one kind of thing, so you’ve got some library music, reggae, funk, rock, soul, and even religious music on there! It’s not so much mega rare “trophy” records, but just interesting stuff that you could find if you went out digging and were persistent enough.

You’re an experienced crate digger now – what tips would you offer people who want to start digging themselves?

I would start the way I started out, going through the record collections of your family and friends. I was pretty lucky because three of my uncles had pretty big and diverse collections for me to check out. A lot of it is detective work and you get to learn what labels, musicians and producers to look out for. I’m a cover versions nut, so I always look for versions of tunes that I liked in the first place and sometimes you get results that way. Always take a portable record player with you, although some dealers or shop owners are a bit funny about you listening to stuff (“You either want it or you don’t!”), so it’s good to ask if it’s cool to use them. But if not and the record’s cheap enough, it’s always worth a go!

Yungun & Mr. Thing – “Forget Me Not” (Silent Soundz / 2006)

Do you have any amusing digging stories you could share?

I have a gross story from driving home from digging the other day. I was stopped at a roundabout and I looked over and saw a woman having a dump at the side of the road with a can of super strength in her hand in the middle of the day!

But other than that I always seem to attract nutters on a dig, especially in charity shops, but they’re not really funny, just scary! One guy clocked me in one shop and was really staring at me. I went to the next shop and he was there, same thing again, then the next shop. So I went somewhere else in the town, went to another spot and he was in there too and then he started shouting at me to stop following him around! He was a big f**ker too, so I just left and let him get on with it. The mad thing was that he was buying books not records!

Are there any records out there that you’re still looking for?

I recently got my top want “Moody” by Gentle Rain, or whichever way round it really is as I don’t know two people who can tell me for certain. I was looking for that for maybe fifteen years! But I’ve got a little book I take out with me that’s got my wants list in, but there’s a couple of big records I’m really after which are “Ball Of Eyes” by the 70s Belgian band Placebo, and I’d also love to replace my copy of “Sexy Coffee Pot” by Tony Alvon & The Belairs – I had that but some bastard stole it! They’re both three figure records and I just can’t find them cheap enough and can’t afford the record dealer prices.

Mr Thing In The Mix On DJ MK’s Kiss FM Rap Show

What’s your most treasured piece of vinyl and why?

I think my Gentle Rain LP just because I was looking for it for so long. But other than that, at the total other end of the collecting spectrum is my Al Green “I’m Still In Love With You” LP. That was one of the first things I found when I used to dig at my local indoor market in Sevenoaks. It’s totally battered and someone’s written all over the cover, but it’s one of the first and best break LPs I found before I started to really find good good stuff. I’ve found and sold many copies of it since but I’ve always kept my original one.

Any new production projects coming up?

I’ve just finished up a track for Jehst’s next album which I’m really happy with, and I’ve got two tracks with Life that are next on my to-do list. I’ve got a few other bits on the go that are still only in the demo stage, but my main ongoing project is the mixtape I’m doing with Yungun. We’re just getting the last couple of bits mixed, then I’ll mix it and we’re gonna put it out there for free as a promo thing. It’s basically a bunch of remixes and new versions of songs off our “Grown Man Business” LP and a few exclusives. When we’re done with it you’ll be the first to know!

Ryan Proctor