Interview: Curly Castro on ShrapKnel, health, solo albums and more

Curly Castro is a rap artist associated with the art of unapologetic penmanship. From his work with ShrapKnel and Wrecking Crew, as well as his own acclaimed body of solo material, Castro is a force to be reckoned with, both in the studio and on stage. GingerSlim caught up with him to discuss all things music, including his partnership with PremRock, his roots and his views on hip-hop as a force for education.

Thank you for joining me. I know it’s been a long time coming so I’m glad we’re finally getting it done. How’s everything going with you? How’s the year treating you so far?

Things are okay. With my condition, the winter’s not the best time for me. Also, with my hip and all the metal I’ve got in there, winters are tough. Let’s just say that. But it’s manageable. We’ve had a weird one over here, because it’s been up and down, not even consistently cold. But nothing to complain about really, just weather shit.

I know a lot of us are still feeling the aftershocks from the last ShrapKnel album, which somehow seemed to level up on the previous projects. Is that a conscious effort by you guys to reach new heights with each release or is it something that’s happened organically as you’ve progressed?

I mean it’s a little of both. There’s some organic augmentation going on there, but there’s definitely a deliberate goal of mine and Prem’s to write better, to reach new heights. We also share a label with the greatest duo out now, so… I always bring them up because I need people to understand that they set a good pace. It’s about the company you keep. So once we started aligning ourselves with sharper swordsmen, we wrote better. We can’t come half-stepping; it’s not really a game. Some people are kinda like jolly with rhyming, having a good time. I’m not having a good time, I’m here to chop your head off. I’ll talk to the severed head and we’ll have a good time after the battle. But yeah also a little organic. Working with Prem so close, that’s increased my writing tenfold cos he’s incredible. That’s the basis I start with when I describe my partner: he’s incredible. So just to keep step with him, made me up what I was doing. It just had to happen, or else ShrapKnel wouldn’t be what it is.

You and Prem had known each other a long time before ShrapKnel came into existence, so how did the group form? Was there any significance to the timing?

Well it’s interesting, the irony, because me and Prem had been working on music together for like 10 years. So when people go and dig, find a song on his project that I’m on, or find him on one of mine, they’ll find little nuggets of our collaborations. But ShrapKnel was a wholly different thing in the sense that we tell people that it was the great idea that we never had. When we told people, like I was thinking of doing a project with Prem, everyone we told just thought it made so much sense. So it was right there in front of us but we were sitting there thinking some people would be quizzical and would want to hear it before making their mind up. But even when we were in our infantile stages, everybody was excited. And of course, we also have a very deep performance history too. We balanced each other very well on stage. Before we officially committed to our collaboration, I would help him out on shows and he would do the same for me. Then when we officially put it down, that’s our live element. You’ll see him do solo things, you’ll see me do solo things, but when you see us live together it’ll be in the form of ShrapKnel.

I’m always intrigued by the blend of camaraderie and friendly competition in some rap duos. Do you think that’s played a part in ShrapKnel’s chemistry?

I will say we’re both very prideful and we forge our blades with the hottest fires. But I don’t know if we’re trying to one-up each other. I think we’re trying to one-up everybody. I definitely think it’s more unified, like we’re gonna smash them on this track. And I don’t ever have to worry. If we’re writing a song, I don’t ever have to worry about Prem’s part. Which is a luxury you might not have in certain duos; some people will feel like they have to do all the lifting, or they have to occupy this element within the duo. With Prem, I’m worry free. I know when I pass him that baton, this song is going to go nuclear. Or when he starts a song, it’s already a smash. So it’s definitely more a sense of calm and confidence in our abilities, than us competing with each other on a song. More so I’m just trying to keep up with the god, you know what I mean?

I know last year was a success for you musically, but it was also tough for you on a personal level. Did you ever find it difficult to maintain a positive attitude towards your creativity while you were dealing with everything else?

Well normally when people get a cancer diagnosis, or anytime you’re facing your mortality, there are certain ways you can go. But I never felt – and people know that I’m a spiritual person – I never felt the spectre of a black cloud over me, that’s just not the feeling I had. I was talking with doctors, going through treatments, but that energy was just not with me. So it was more a case of me getting myself physically able to return to full capacity. And that was always a big worry for me. I’m sitting there in recovery, supposed to be focused on getting well and I’m sitting there thinking about owing people feature verses, or I’m holding up the tour with Prem [laughs]. This is how I’m thinking, I’m stupid. And so last year was definitely a battle of wills in terms of just wanting to get back to a level where I could still perform and do projects. That definitely wasn’t rushed. I was down, I had to relearn to walk and things of that nature – I’ve said this story a couple of times – so that definitely put everything on the back-burner. I actually wrote and recorded some stuff while I was in recovery, which was real cathartic. I recorded a verse for Rich Jones, shout out to him. That Blankets verse, I was in a wheelchair when I did that! And so again, I’m supposed to be recovering but I found an outlet cos there was this music therapy cat that was at the rehabilitation centre. But then I was worrying about recording my verses sitting down, how would it affect my diaphragm. Not thinking about how I’m going to be in a wheelchair for a while, just deal with it. Me, I’m thinking will the verse be different? So it was just a matter of me getting back to some type of functionality, where I could still contribute to the culture. That was my main thing. And I didn’t know if it was going to happen again, so I’m glad that it has.

Well I think we all are, man, so that’s really good to hear. And on the flipside of that, do you feel like the experience has brought anything new to your creative vision, like a different perspective?

Oh, I mean of course! When you almost die, as clichéd as it is, there’s now a lack of insignificance in my life. Everything is important. I don’t want to get all poetic, but a ladybug on a windowsill is important, watching the rain is important, spending time with my girl is important; everything has value now. Talking to my mother consistently, talking to my friends consistently, things aren’t as frivolous. When you don’t think about your mortality, you’re happy, you’re carefree. I’m 20, I’m 30, I’m going to be around until I’m 70-80… But when you face it and it’s right there in front of you, you realise you don’t have as much time as you thought you had on this planet and so I can’t just be carefree and let the time loose. I have to use the time in a valuable way. So it definitely makes you more aware of the time you had left, that perhaps you’re closer to the end than you are to the beginning. It’s not as open-ended as you thought it was, so it brings everything into focus a lot more.

Yeah, I’ve never dealt with anything like that in terms of my physical health, but definitely with my mental health. I was heavily into drugs when I was younger, I spent a good portion of my life not caring about myself, and it wasn’t until I reached 40 that I had some sort of enlightenment and awakening.

Oh well that’s a great age.

Yeah exactly. Life began again at 40 for me and so now I’m becoming a father, I’ve met the woman I’ve fallen in love with, everything is coming together. So I understand that feeling very well.

Yeah and I know you went through that experience, but I know there’s probably a part of you that felt like you might have lost some years, or you could have been a little more productive.

Oh yeah definitely.

But hindsight is 20/20 and so that’s why I don’t want to look back like that no more. You just want to value what you’ve got and give your energy into that. And I feel like that productivity, it won’t leave you wanting for nothing. If you just live with your life ahead of you and start focusing on the fact that everything has a certain importance, you won’t feel like you didn’t get to do something. You’ll feel fulfilled.

Yeah, because that plays into the whole idea of letting go of things you can’t control. You can’t control the past, so why worry about it?

Right! And things can change, anything can happen. Like with this hip hop shit, it’s taken me to territories I would’ve never been to, so anything is head of you. I might go overseas this year; anything is ahead of you. The possibilities are endless so don’t focus on the past and think about the things you might have missed out on. Do it now! I met this one guy who didn’t start being a photographer until he was in his late 50’s and he had already done two other careers before that. Now he’s a worldclass photographer at 64. You can always start your cycle whenever you want to, just go out there and try it.

Yeah it’s a beautiful thing. Now I want to go back to the early days because I’m always interested in finding out about an artist’s roots. So I was wondering what sort of musical influences you were exposed to as a child?

I mean I grew up in New York, so hip hop was like oxygen; it was everywhere. It was on the trains, it was on the buildings, it was coming out of boom boxes, coming out of first floor windows. People was beatboxing on the corner… so because I came up in the mecca, I had early Tribe, Nas, Wu-Tang. That was in the 90’s, but even in the 80’s I caught wind of late Public Enemy, NWA… so hip hop was always the pulse. I listened to hip hop and reggae growing up, period. I grew up in a West Indian family, so it was either reggae playing in the house, some oldies, or I was in my room playing hip hop.

And obviously that comes through in your music heavily.

I’m a Foundational Hip Hop American, FHAA, that’s what I would say.

And so, was it always going to be rap for you, or were there any other creative avenues that you were exploring when you were younger?

I didn’t actually rap when I was younger. I was a writer – I wrote poems, I wrote stories, so I had a gift of writing, but I didn’t want to rap. And it wasn’t in me as a teenager either, I wasn’t like a breakdancer or anything like that. It’s just the culture was all around me, so when I got to college, my dream, as far as music goes, was I wanted to be hype man. I wanted to be Flavor Flav, I wanted to be Freaky Tah, I wanted to be that guy. I felt like I could help your stage out, I could do all the extra jumping… like the way the S1Ws were, that was a big influence on me… that’s all I wanted to do. So when rap groups started emerging around me in college, I just said I’d be their hype man, lemme just get a copy of the lyrics. Then eventually I started writing because I was just around other likeminded cats and I remember that my writing was almost as good as the others in the group, so then I said okay, I’ll be a fully-fledged MC. I had a wack, really weird name back then.

So how old were you at that point?

I was like 19, 20. So I’ve been rapping over 20 years now. But like I said, I knew cats that was rapping in high school, they were all adept at it by like 17, so I was a bit later. But it was a good time because it was the mid-90’s, hip hop was cracking off. It’s funny when I think about it now, because this was right before every commercial started being hip hop, maybe a McDonald’s commercial or something like that. But right after ‘95, everything started being hip hop, it’s right when the virus took over.

I think it’s fair to say that you’ve always strived to educate as much as entertain with your music, as we saw with the Little Robert Hutton album for example. Do you think music can be a legitimate force for change in that respect? Are listeners still engaging with the material on that level?

I think people say they don’t, but it’s still resistance music. When I got into it, it was the 80’s. Self Destruction was out, there was a certain element about how baseheads was bad, crack was bad. So I always feel like I got very much educated by the music. I listened to KRS One, I listened to Public Enemy, I listened to Paris. So a lot of the names and dates and issues, I would learn from rap music. And it was just natural, because I was listening to the music so much, that I would just take the lessons and let them guide me. Even if you move forward to Ras Kass, Nature of the Threat was educational for me. I went a looked up everything he talked about. And I think that’s still there. It’s always going to be there. Thos alternate forms of learning. You don’t always want a teacher droning at you, you don’t always want to watch an instructional video, some cats learn from hip hop. I think that element will always be in there, so that’s why I drop a gem in there. I’ll drop a black icon in there, because I felt like that was my job. I brought it to the forefront with Little Robert Hutton, but pretty much all my material has that element of rebel in there. And that’s just how I feel, you know. I’ve got the blood of the Black Panthers in me, I feel like I’m a resistance spirit… you know I don’t want to go to jail or anything crazy, but I use my music in that way when I can. Because I also know people don’t want to be overblown with it, they don’t like it preachy, but they will take an anthem, so you can slide things in. It’s a good Trojan horse to get people to understand systems and movements and methods, so that’s why I use it when I can.

And that’s really good, but I guess on the other side of that, the protest energy is still within the music but it’s whether the people are listening. The way music is consumed nowadays is a lot more throwaway than it used to be.

Oh yeah, it’s a lot more disposable than it used to be and there’s no way to predict what could be a hit, but you’ve just gotta keep plugging away. And now we have a new phase. Like before we had ringtones, that was like a small portion of the song and now we have TikTok, which is an even shorter portion of the song. There’s many TikToks that I see are very popular, I go Shazam the song and I find out that’s just the bridge or whatever. But I think there’s no formula that’s really exact, just do it. You might have a hook that gets popular, you might have a celebrity that goes on Jimmy Fallon and says a few of your words and that’s how you get popular, who knows? I know when they made Hip Hop, Dead Prez wasn’t shooting for any popularity with that song; they didn’t want to be popular at all with any of their tracks. I feel like the formula is malleable so always shoot your shot. If you make protest music, shoot your shot. Keep shooting your shot and you might get the platform you’re surprised that you have. Especially with social media, everybody has their own mini platform. Social media makes it so your corner of the internet can be important.

Yeah and staying with that point there, from the outside looking in it feels like it’s a good time to be an independent artist. You can use platforms like Bandcamp to sell your music and you don’t even really need a label, I mean they can help but they’re definitely not essential. Is that accurate to how you see it from the inside as an independent artist?

The label is not as necessary as it used to be. If you can get a situation that’s beneficial for you, then you go for it. That’s what I say nowadays. You can wait for a situation that benefits you, you don’t have to just throw your hat in the ring. There was a time when to get your music on the radio, or to put it out there, you had to be part of a label. So when that was the game, you played that game. Now the game is different. Labels need us, the artists, to keep their things going. So you make that situation beneficial to yourself. If it works well to do a certain project with a certain label, then so be it, but just take it one project at a time. You don’t need to be locked in. I always follow the DOOM standard. People thought he was jumping around from place to place, but if you look, he had deals with like 10 different labels. That means 10 different revenue streams, that means 10 different sets of royalties. That’s a great model. You don’t have to be locked in, unless it’s beneficial. We do Wrecking Crew business, that’s kind of our own imprint. But then ShrapKnel works best on Backwoodz, Zilla works really well on Chong Wizard Records, Small Pro works well on Coalmine Records… I think you have to spread your tentacles that way, it’s important. Because then you have multiple factions working in you favour. When I did my research about labels, you would be surprised about how many rappers had their projects shelved. Their stuff just disappeared in the sense that no one could hear it, it would never get released. How many hours they worked on it goes for nothing and that’s a horrible situation. I couldn’t imagine having music that I didn’t have control over. So make sure you have a good grasp of your situation.

I know we touched on it earlier, but you’ve always been loyal to your roots by melding reggae and dub into your rap, especially on the Tosh album. Do you think you could ever go the whole way to making a whole dub project or something along those lines?

Oh no way! I’m not like Snoop Lion out here. [laughs]. That part of my music is really sacred to me and I always wonder if I’m doing a good job, am I representing my folks right? You know, I’m pretty Yankee, so is my accent okay, do I sound right? It’s important to me, so I just try to dabble, do little splashes of it… but also, I’m Bajan and a lot of people think it’s Jamaica or bust, like that’s the only island we got out there, so I don’t want to be mistaken for doing the Jamaican thing. So, I guess I grew up with it, I tap into it if I need a rhythm or melody; I just try to pay homage the best I can without sounding foolish.

We’ve got an artist over here, Roots Manuva, and for his second album, Run Come Save Me, he did a whole reworked version called Dub Come Save Me. He brought in a load of dub producers and reworked every track on the album and it came out really well. So don’t give up on the idea [laughs].

Okay, I can do that! I can do a dub version of a record.

Yeah, you keep the lyrics the same and just rework the beat. I know Prem has been to the UK a few times to perform, but have you ever made the journey?

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Stream and buy Curly Castro’s solo albums on Bandcamp and Spotify here and here, and ShrapKnel’s music here and here. Follow Curly Castro on Twitter and Instagram. 

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 The Wire, style43, Think Zebra, Headsknow, Front Magazine and more. 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. Read his own hip-hop blog and follow him here.