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

“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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

“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….”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.’

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

“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

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.

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.

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 )

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 )

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