Words Hurt just released their debut album, Fuck That Pretty Boy Shit , but we’re a long way from the start of rapper Alaska’s rap career. Gingerslim caught up with him to find out about his musical ventures past, present and future, as well as some insights into his thoughts on the current state of hip-hop.
For those people who aren’t that familiar with you or your music, can you enlighten us a bit on your background?
My name is Tim, I go by the rap name Alaska. I was part of a weird fringe of the 1990s underground scene that developed when a bunch of weird assholes got together to make weird rap music as a collective called The Atoms Family, which spawned my old group Hangar 18, as well as Cannibal Ox and Cryptic One. Hangar 18 eventually dropped a few albums with the indie label Def Jux, home to acts such as Aesop Rock, EL-P, the aforementioned Cannibal Ox, etc.
We toured for a while, lost a lot of money, and eventually called it quits. I then formed a group called The Crack Epidemic with a producer named Kojo Kisseih, we dropped an EP and an LP.
I had a kid, needed to make a lot of changes in my life to make sure I could be a functioning adult who could live up to the responsibility of being a dad, so I walked away from rapping for a while. A few years later when my friend Pawl, who produced the Hangar 18 albums, was working on a documentary about indie rappers who were now pushing 40, I reconnected with some of the old Atoms Family heads and caught the bug again. We put out an album called Sands and this reignited my love for rap music. I had a few failed starts at working on a solo album either due to my material not being good enough, or the producers I was working with falling off the face of the earth. Eventually I met Lang and we just formed Words Hurt. From that, Fuck That Pretty Boy Shit was born.
How did you and Lang end up working together?
Lang and I have never actually met, I am not 100% sure that he is even a real person. I knew him from my days writing at SYFFAL, he submitted some music, some of which I liked quite a bit. Eventually I did a guest appearance on his album Lang Vo Is An Asshole and as a favor I asked him to mix this little mixtape EP I made over Outkast beats. This fucker went and took all the vocals, and added original production to them, making them doper than they had ever been. From there Words Hurt was born. We found a formula that worked for us and ran with it.
Your new album is fueled in part, by an element of despair at the current state of rap culture; what do you feel needs to be done to bring us back from the fuck boy era?
I think if anything it is fuelled by a frustration with American Culture in general. Rap is just part of that. I just fucking hate posers, I always have, and yes I know I am way too fucking old to give a shit about posers, but I do. It’s ingrained in me. I think the current state of rap is awesome, but I also know nothing about the current popular state of rap. That shit is for 16 year olds and 16 year olds have always been suckers who follow trends and do all they can not to stand out. Fuck those assholes. I think our culture as a whole has completely gone that route. There are no true individuals, we are just a gang of tribes who identify solely with what we consume. It’s disgusting. I don’t think we can fix the current state of popular rap until we fix our society. In the meantime though, it is making for some truly awesome underground music. So its a boom for me and my tastes.
What do you think triggered this shift in taste, or is it just part of the cycle of trends?
I think it is natural to an extent. I think teenagers should be repulsed by the shit their parents like and vice versa. We are in a fully fledged generation gap at this point. My hope is that their tastes will evolve and they will move towards more quality younger cats. I think you kind of see it happening already, there is a movement towards something more lasting from younger hip-hop heads, not just people who like rap for driving around to. I also think us older folk need to get the fuck off our high horse and remember what it was like when we were young and totally going against the shit our parents liked. A lot of the shit we liked sucked too and has not aged well at all.
What are the pros and cons of putting music out totally independently vs. through a label?
The pros are that I can do whatever the fuck I want, whenever the fuck I want. I don’t have to tour. I don’t have to pretend to like people who are assholes. I don’t have to worry about being a disappointment to anyone but myself and I can make music without any concerns about what anyone else thinks. I had a bad experience with Hangar 18 and the Sweep The Leg album, where we worried too much about reaching certain markets, trying to make other people happy and making sure we had something that was commercially viable, as opposed to making the record we wanted. Mind you this was all bullshit pressure that we put on ourselves. We were in such a bubble that we created that we thought this was the right way to create; we sort of lost our way and compromised our principles for the idea of commerce. When the album came out and bombed commercially and critically, it was soul crushing. And it wasn’t anyone’s fault but our own. We had a much better version of the album, but we started focusing on the right guest appearance, or the catchy hook to sell to a car company or some shit, and what would work to make people say “hey” at a show.
After that album I made a conscious choice that I was only going to make music that I liked, and only when I had something I needed to get out. Being totally independent allows for that. The only con is that we do not have the mechanisms behind us that we would enjoy if we were on a label, so we have a smaller reach, but I think we are OK with that. We make fringe music for angry weird people, and that is a limited fucking audience. I like that audience because they don’t show up at school functions when I am with my kid, so I don’t have to have awkward conversations about my rap career within earshot of the other parents. I can be anonymous.
Do you feel it’s an advantage having the Def Jux name behind you, or do you feel people have an idea of how you should sound before they’ve even heard your music?
At this point I am not sure. I mean, it has been almost 10 years since the last Hangar 18 album. I think a lot of the people who supported us have aged out of the system and I really have no idea how to reach them. So I don’t know if it helps out. I guess to a certain class of rap fan the name will always help, but it probably does breed expectations that I am not sure I care to give a fuck about. It is a big part of the reason I wanted to have a group name instead of Alaska and Lang Vo or some shit. It kind of wipes the slate clean and allows it to live on its own.
As you mentioned earlier, you hooked up with some of your former Atoms Family members to record Sands a few years back; what prompted the ‘reunion’ and are we likely to hear any more from you guys in the future?
Sands was really a right place, right time kind of project. We were all working on Pawl’s film and Cryptic was doing the score. Pawl asked us to record a song to one of the beats for a companion cassette he was dropping with the film, so Cryptic, Wind and I recorded Sands. From there we just kept recording until we had an album. I would never rule something out. I think doing a full fledged Atoms project with everyone could be super fun and super dope. It would just be a matter of the planets lining up correctly for a few months. I would definitely be game though.
You’re always very receptive to people supporting your work on online platforms, is that a case of not wanting to bite the hand that feeds you?
Nah, I’m not really worried about biting the hand because I don’t make any real money off music, I make music because I love it. So I am not looking for the next big score, or the right Needle Drop review or whatever. I appreciate that people are sharing something and I am assuming they are doing it because they like it. It is really a way to say thank you for the time they took to check out our music. It means a lot to me.
What’s next for Words Hurt and your career in general?
We are finishing up a new summer single right now called Kings of Summer which features Windnbreeze, my old rap partner from Hangar 18 and that has a b-side called Eloise (Hey Young Girl), which was kind of inspired by the Nas song Daughters. I wanted to make a song that was about my kid, but was sort of general enough that it could relate to anyone in a father-daughter relationship. Its about my hopes and dreams for her. We are also in the very early planning stages for our next album, which we will probably start work on once Lang finishes his Reinforced Steel project with Kwam.
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Gingerslim has been a hip-hop fan since 1994 and has written for various blogs and websites since around 2006. During that time he has contributed to style43, Think Zebra, Headsknow and Front Magazine. His main interests in rap are UK hip hop and the underground movement in America, with a focus on Rhymesayers Entertainment and the once mighty Def Jux label. He lives in Bristol and has a beard. All other details are sketchy at best.