Czarface, aka Inspectah Deck and 7L & Esoteric, continue their run of impeccable hip-hop albums with the release of Czarface Meets Ghostface, a collaboration with Ghostface Killah. We caught up with DJ 7L to talk about his production duo The Czar-Keys, the Czar universe and more. Interview by Matt Horowitz.
How exactly did The Czar-Keys, with Jeremy Page, first come to fruition?
I met Jeremy years back – he is part of/and produces my man That Handsome Devils band/music, plus Kendra Morris among others. So I def knew him going back 10 years if not longer actually.
Some time in 2016 our mutual friend Matt suggested we get up and work. I was mentioning that I wanted to get a sample reworked and he said Jeremy was the guy, and from there we been working ever since! Prior to that I was working with Todd Spadafore, another amazing musician who is out in LA now writing and producing. Me and Todd worked on 7LES stuff back in the day. To me samples mixed with live music is really the best possible way to make music. What Just Blaze was doing during those early 2000 Roc-A-Fella years was what I wanted for a sound.
As far as the name, around the First Weapon Drawn record I came up with the name The Czar-Keys (off the Mar-Keys album I had in the studio at the time) as a half joke, a fake band. So since First Weapon Drawn was treated as a soundtrack-based album it just worked. I was always a huge fan of production teams i.e; The Beatnuts, Bomb Squad, Boogie Men, Beatminerz, Hitmen…Ghetto Pros etc., so the name The Czar-Keys just kind of just worked.
How did your process on Czarface Meets Metal Face, Czarface Meets Ghostface, and Rast’s I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, differ?
For the Czarface Meets Ghostface I don’t think we changed anything as far as our recording process. I remember Deck saying early on around that no matter who we are working with “they are in our dojo” so to speak. We just keep things as loose as we can and just record records and see how they happen organically. For the I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings album, Misterman Cheers (formerly Rast) def wanted a particular sound. I think I dubbed it a “surf” sound half way through. I was chopping various Hawaiian/Exotica Records and Jeremy was killing it with the Hammond/Organ.
A lot of people may not realize this but Czarface actually dates back as far as “Speaking Real Words” from 2006’s The Soul Purpose and “12th Chamber” (credited to Czarface) from 2010’s 1212. What prompted you fellas to, ultimately, turn Czarface into a full-fledged super-group/villain?
While mixing the “12th Chamber” record (a song with Eso & Deck from 2010) I remember texting Eso (pretty casually in hindsight) “you and Deck should do a whole record together”. My suggestion was no digital, no CD, no cover, just do a white label EP, six songs. Something for just hardcore fans to find and treasure as this hidden record. Eso was like “I mean, I’ll talk to Deck but we def gotta do something more than a white label record lol”. We didn’t have the whole Czarface character even in motion at this point. We were just recording songs and having fun. Then a little over half way through we started throwing around names and landed on Czarface. I think we might have had a demo of a song named “Incarcerated Czarfaces” as a half joke, but we liked Czarface.
How exactly does Czarface cumulatively represent yourself, Inspectah Deck and Esoteric? At what point in the recording process did L’Amore Supreme come up with the now-infamous character design?
Once we got the name I think we talked about having a character as the group figure head. That was one thing we all decided on from jump, was really having the project be different from each of our other records (Deck or Eso’s solo records).
I am the furthest thing from a metal person but I do remember as a kid starring at the Iron Maiden album covers and thought the Eddie character was so cool. I liked the idea of doing something similar and building off this character.
Eso saw L’Amore’s art and felt he would be the person to bring the Czar character to life. Eso came up with the character, the ideas and the direction and then he and L’Amore worked together on what Czar is today. Eso works hard on all the comic related aspects which I think moving forward is a big piece to the Czar universe. Same way I’ll obsess over a sample and staying to the fundamentals of why I got into making music I think he holds the same for comics.
How would you personally say First Weapon Drawn’s read-along comic book/album and Record Store Day Black Friday 2018’s Dog Days of Tomorrow relate to Czarface’s ever-evolving collection of music?
Well I think this was something we wanted to do once the Czarface character was developed. We liked that we could do comics or action figures and just other things based off Czarface that wasn’t specific to just making albums. When we did Every Hero Needs a Villain we touched on Czar as a character not related to the music per se. I think in the last few years that we been able to really make progress on both Czarface music and Czarface as a character.
Would you mind briefly explaining the various Get On Down packages and various merchandise to be associated with Czarface Meets Ghostface’s release? Are there any current plans to tour behind the album, as well?
Get on Down has always been ahead of the curve on the special packaging with hip-hop releases. Since the first album with the pop up CD they have always been a great partner to get our projects done in an interesting way.
I think with First Weapon Drawn we were able to split things up a bit, meaning more focus on making great albums while saving the extra packaging side for the comic/instrumental albums.
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Czarface Meets Ghostface is out now. Get it from here. Follow DJ 7L, Esoteric and Inspectah Deck on Twitter.
Matt Horowitz has been a hip-hop fan ever since he first heard Wu-Tang Clan’s Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) back in the mid-90’s, which positively or negatively changed his life ever since, depending on who you ask. He single-handedly runs online music publication The Witzard, and has been fortunate enough to interview Eothen ‘Egon’ Alapatt, Guilty Simpson, Ice-T and Mr. X, Dan Ubick, Career Crooks’ Zilla Rocca & Small Professor, Cut Chemist, and J-Zone, amongst countless others. He enjoys writing about and listening to hip-hop, Punk/Hardcore, and Indie Rock on vinyl with his lovely wife, while drinking craft beer, red wine, or iced coffee. To paraphrase both Darko The Super and the Beastie Boys: “Already Dead fans, they want more of this… I’m a Witzard like my man Matt Horowitz!”. Follow Matt here.