Hip-hop Essays – Grown Up Rap

Nobody Beats The Baz

A few years ago, many followers of Mass Appeal’s Rhythm Roulette series noticed a glitch in the Matrix. Alongside the regular films of 9th Wonder, El-P and Large Professor testing their beatmaking chops on random records, there emerged a clip fronted by a middle-aged English bloke in wire-frame specs, a needle-sharp v-neck sweater and a lemon shirt, clutching a carrier bag from Lidl. “I’m Barry Beats,” he said, before ducking through the door of a record shop. Inside, he blind-picked an INXS 12”, some AC-DC and the Hair soundtrack. Then he got busy in Pro Tools and duly unleashed heat.

The clip somehow found its way into Mass Appeal’s official rotation, and has since racked up close to half a million views and hundreds of comments – the vast majority of which can’t get over how someone as unhip-hop as this guy could be banging out that kind of beat. There are a lot of Ned Flanders comparisons. Walter White. Lenny from Memento. He was called the ‘dirty old man of hiphop’, and a ‘korny ass mutha fucker’.

Then there was this: ‘If this cat had 2-3 dead boys n his closet and one cut up and stuffed in his bed I would tell anyone thats not even the craziest shizt I seen him do.’ [Sic]

Indeed, despite all the confusion, there was one sentiment that drove the response: this weird-looking dude is lit.

Digging for a living

Should you ever find yourself in the town of Camborne, deep in the rural English county of Cornwall, you’ll feel the past. The town is dissected by long terraces of granite cottages built back in the 18th Century, for men who spent their lives underground in a perilous hunt for tin. Back then, Camborne was the richest mining area in the world. But all that bustle, industry and purpose is now a distant memory, hanging heavy over the town like the mist that still hugs its hills. These days those streets are dotted with bored kids, old folk and shops struggling to survive.

Today I’m in a particularly weird example of the latter, one full of thick carpet, lavender and trinkets. I’m here following local resident Barry Beats, clad today in slick bottle-green wool-felt slacks. He strides purposefully up the stairs, past Miss Molly’s Tea Room and a terrifying display of old Dutch dolls, and through a room of floral drapes and paintings of pink carnations. Well-honed instincts lead him to a corner annex, where he discovers a rich vein of old vinyl. “This one looks good,” he says, extracting a battered copy of Non-Stop Latin Party. Price: 20p.

Newcomers may be happy speculating over the contents of Barry’s locked attic, but those of a certain vintage may be aware of the man’s real secret – he was once half of production duo The Creators, going under his old alias of Si Spex. As well as doing remix work for Dilated Peoples and Nas, The Creators released one full-length LP, The Weight, back in 2000. It was a transatlantic banger, with Mos Def and Talib Kweli, El Da Sensei and Dilated all gracing the mic.

In the wake of that LP, Barry got hit with label troubles, and his MPC got shut in the loft while he went out delivering Chinese takeaways to make ends meet, and to fund a troubling addiction to model railways. But now Barry is back and dropping his debut solo release, the instrumental ‘2 Sides of Barry’, on King of the Beats records. The sound is what Barry calls ‘new bap’: crisp, tight and funky with hard drums and playful edits. On the first side of the record, everything is sampled. On the other side, Barry deftly twists software instruments to perfectly ape ’70s easy listening LPs from the charity shop crates.

It’s a sound he knows well. “My brain is programmed with a default mode to sniff out records wherever,” he says. “The other day I went to the car park at Carn Brea Leisure Centre, which had three stalls of records. One guy just kept pulling Bags for Life with records in out of his car boot. Then I popped into Pool Market, which had four stalls next to a fun fair – one of which was a pick-up truck with the entire back-end full of records. I’ll always be diverted to get records.”

I watch as Barry contorts among the cramped shelves, hunching his back, his knees creaking to the floor. These days he could just sit on his arse with a mug of Yorkshire Tea and sample stuff from YouTube. But, he says, “the discovery is the joy”. He goes off to pay for his pile, smiling as he recalls once finding a solid break on a Wombles record. Then, much to the bafflement of the shop owner, he tries haggling for 50p off.

Chopping it up

We head back down the stairs and sit in Molly’s Tea Room, to share a couple of saffron buns and blow the dust off Barry’s stash – which includes Peter Skellern’s ‘You’re a Lady’, a Pebble Mill LP and a flexidisc selling the Magicair ‘salon-style home hair dryer’. It doesn’t look promising. But, as Barry says, that’s the alchemical art here: creating gold where you really have no right to.

“Pete Rock’s work on Rahzel’s ‘All I know’ is ridiculous,” he says. “He uses Dorthy Ashby’s ‘Windmills of your Mind’, and what he gets out of it is just bonkers. The original isn’t really funky, but the way he chopped it is. That’s probably my favourite chop of all time – you can hardly even hear the little bits he took.” He bites into his bun, and then starts salivating over the back catalogue of DJ Premier. “He’s great at taking something from nothing,” Barry says. “On Royce da 5’9”’s ‘Boom’, the original is by Marc Hannibal, ‘Forever is a Long Long Time’, which is just really lightweight and terrible. Premier makes it sound so powerful and meaty.”

Many subscribers to Barry’s ‘School of Beats’ YouTube series have the same reaction to him. With his idiosyncratic approach to Ableton, he’s inventing his own methods to get the sounds he wants from the gear, recalling the early days of DJs first manipulating turntables to turn forgotten funk records into hip-hop classics. He’s a craftsman: drums are sampled, cleaned and chopped, and days can pass while he perfects a particular bass line. Barry points out that he came up in the age of the MPC, when it could take 40 minutes just to fill the pads – only to find what you had was crap. He’s now happy building a community around his generous online tutorials, but he still mourns that lost sense of struggle. “There’s no secrets in beat making now,” he says. “Back in the day you had no internet and had to learn it yourself.”

Barry’s own route in to hip-hop was typical for rural British kids in the ’80s (meeting breakers at the local monster truck show, getting LL Cool J tapes in Woolworths). But he was soon taking it further, following a growing curiosity into playing with four-tracks and early samplers. It was after a chance meeting at a Cornish holiday park that he hooked up with fellow Creator, Juliano, and the digging became serious. In the mid-90s, when break insanity was at its peak, and the top US producers were paying crazy dollar for records they knew their rivals hadn’t touched, Barry and Juliano would travel to the US to serve them with these mysterious European slabs. “The likes of Buckwild were getting paid $10k a track,” says Barry. “They’d do two or three tracks a week, and would go out and chuck thousands of dollars around at record fairs. We’d go over there with Top of the Pops records, and we could trade them for killer US funk breaks. I couldn’t tell you how many Playschool records we took over.”

It was, he says, an insane time – and not just because of the inflated market for local charity shop finds. Here was a Cornish lad who’d scored a backstage pass to the centre of hip-hop’s Golden Era. “After one record fair, I’m sat in the driver’s seat of Q-Tip’s Mercedes, next to Pete Rock. Tip’s in the back, and they’re playing our demos. They’re both freestyling over the beats, going: ‘Yep, that’s a good one’.”

And then?

“A week later I’m back in Cornwall, stood at the bus stop in Troon.”

Or your Honda or your Beemer…

There was a story about jeeps that emerged back when Q-Tip and Tribe Called Quest were still yet to release Low End Theory. The group would apparently make copies and rush them direct from the studio to the parking lot to hear how the bass sounded in the ride. They were crafting an album for a particular context, a certain time and place. A few weeks after our sojourn to Molly’s Tea Room, Barry offers to give me a test drive of the still unfinished ‘2 Sides of Barry’. I’m stood waiting in the centre of Camborne when a dark blue Hyundai i30 pulls up, and Barry stretches across to the passenger window. “Jump in, pard,” he says. I sit on a Fruit Salad chew.

Barry kicks off my tour of Camborne’s back streets. Pointing as we pass one property, he tells me it’s home to local ghost hunters, Terry and Tracy. “They reckon they’ve got the best ghost footage in the UK,” he says. “They wanted me to clean up the audio on it. It’s probably just interference from local radio, but they’re convinced it’s little girls.”

The album kicks off with the familiar bells and Fender Rhodes from Bob James’ ‘Take Me to the Mardi Gras’, instantly mangled into new shapes under some scratched spoken word. Barry explains how, for the first side of the record, he wanted to take hip-hop staples and find a way to flip them in a way that still feels fresh. Soon massive uplifting drums rumble under ‘Harlem Shuffle’, while Bobby Byrd’s ‘I Know You Got Soul’ is chopped to within an inch of its life under an extended cameo by Clay Davis from The Wire. This all serves to set up the sample-free second side, where somehow the absence of crusty source material doesn’t change the quality of the sound at all. Everything feels like it’s culled from the same crates.

As the sound bounces off the surrounding pebble-dash, Barry keeps interjecting to explain bits he’s added and bars he’s cut, or to ask whether a particular vocal sample really works. This is minor detail stuff, but like a true beat scientist he only hears all the details that are missing. Judging from his mental unrest, Barry still has hours yet to spend trawling through arcane hair dryer sales records before he’s happy. In an age of constant throwaway ‘content’, he’s like an industrial craftsman seeking the precise nugget that will give the whole work the timeless cohesive sheen.

“A scratch may take only minutes to do, but you could be there for days trying to find the sample,” says Barry, as he pulls up to a red light. He slips a Fruit Salad into his mouth, dropping the wrapper casually on to the slip-on resting patiently by the clutch. “I don’t know how Premier does it.”

***

Barry Beats’ 2 Sides of Barry is out now . Download via Bandcamp here. Vinyl copies available from King of the Beats, complete with free Barry poster and postcard. The vinyl release will be marked with a secret LP drop in charity shops around the UK. Check out Barry’s Instagram/King of the Beats for clues.

Dave Waller is a writer based in Cornwall. He occasionally lurks on Twitter as @diameterdave. He’d like to keep writing about music from different angles.

Interview: Brother Ali

Few musicians are as wise, spiritual and deep-thinking as Brother Ali, which certainly makes him somewhat of a rarity in the world of hip-hop. The Rhymesayers Entertainment artist recently took time out from his European tour to speak to Gingerslim.

It’s coming up to a couple of years since you released your last album and we got that single last year; is there a new project looming?

There is…

*line goes dead then reconnects*

Sorry I lost you then, man.

Okay, are we back?

Yeah I think so, all I heard you say was “There is”, then the line went dead

Oh well maybe that’s for the best [laughs]. But yeah I started working on a new project and it’s very different from the last project – the way I’m writing it is different, the production is different, really the whole approach is different and so I’m excited about it. I’m not really wanting to say too much right now cos it’s still taking shape, but I hope to have it out by the end of this year.

That’s good to hear, man. Now, you’ve been quite vocal in previous interviews about some of the problems you’ve faced as an American Muslim; I was wondering how noticeable the impact of Trump’s presidency has been from that perspective?

For me personally it hasn’t really changed anything. The security people at the airport always gave me trouble and they still do sometimes, so that hasn’t really changed. I think the differences are for my wife, my daughters and for the community that I’m a part of. You know my ancestry is European and I’m an albino, but I was raised in African American and black culture, so sometimes people are unsure of my racial makeup, but for the most part if I have problems it’s because of the work that I do.

But for black and brown people, and those who small-minded people think look like Muslims, it’s dangerous. I mean not only from the authorities but from regular people who are from the dominant group, you know they’re poor, they’ve been financially oppressed, they’ve been used, but they’ve always been told “oh but you’re white and this is your country”, so pride in America is really pride in their group.

But now they’re losing that hope of whiteness and being an American, so when they say make America great again, what they mean is make white people great again. And then they see black people being proud as a direct threat to them, and also Muslims, you know anyone not completely bowing to them is a direct threat to what they want their life to be about. So it’s really difficult and because the president now is one of them, they feel completely confident acting really horribly – really bad character, really bad manners, being really violent. There’s a video that’s on Facebook of this grown man in a parking lot and he’s just screaming in the face of this black woman who’s pregnant. It’s really bizarre how empowered people are feeling now to be horrible cos they think they’re fighting for their country when they do that.

And how powerful a role do you see music playing in the act of resistance?

Honestly I’m not that impressed with it. I love hip hop music, I feel like I’m a part of the culture, but me being an underground artist who is a little bit of an outsider in certain ways, I’ve always looked at the landscape and wondered what’s the next thing? What should we be doing next and what are we not thinking about? What should we be focusing on? So when I came out in the early 2000’s, the popular narrative at that time was about triumph over adversity, so Jay-Z was leading it and 50 Cent, people like that – I came from nothing and now I’m cool and I’m rich and powerful – and that’s great, that’s a great story cos it’s true and it gives people hope, so I appreciate that.

So I was never against that, I’ve always okay, but what are they not saying? And so I made music about being vulnerable and then in the late 2000’s, I would say 2010, I put an album out and at that time people were celebrating extravagance and being really successful and rich, that was like the Rick Ross time, Watch the Throne, that type of thing. Kanye and Jay-Z were talking about black capitalism and black consumerism as a way out. So then I came out and said look most of us are poor, let’s just start from there. Were not living extravagantly, we’re actually going to tell the truth and we don’t just want to beat the capitalists at their own game. Not that I’m a communist but I’m saying hyper-capitalism, hyper-consumerism, that’s not a win for me – for us to be able to buy more than other people can buy and then say that that’s freedom.

But you’re still stepping on people and people are still suffering, so that you can have more; that goes against the grain. And now that Trump is the president, so many of the artists are now talking about prisons and all this stuff, but to me it just feels really anaemic, man. It’s not powerful to me, most of what’s being talked about. I mean Lowkey has always been talking about this, Akala has always been talking about this, Immortal Technique, Mos Def, you know you have artists who have always been speaking on this stuff. And I like hearing Jay-Z talk about it, I’m a big Jay-Z fan, but I just don’t think it’s really impacting the people.

So what do you think they could be doing, could they be doing more? Do you think it needs an alternative voice?

I don’t spend any time thinking about what I wish other people would do differently, but I really do like a lot of the emerging voices and so that’s really cool. But in terms of all the public political thinkers in America, I probably align most with Dr Cornel West. He’s a Christian and I’m a Muslim, but his idea of justice comes from a loyalty to being moral and there’s a spiritual dimension to being a moral person because the unseen virtues have to be more important to you than anything worldly, including power. So if it’s a pure Marxist idea about power, that basically starts with the same epistemology, the same metaphysics as secular capitalists, that basically say the world is all goods and resources and power to control those goods and resources, that’s what life is. So then we just fight over how to get power over those goods and resources, and that’s what winning is. I’m sorry, but I can’t with that. To me the unseen world of virtue is more important, to me virtue is more important than power. They’re both valid ways of looking at things, but that’s what I believe in. So that’s why when everyone’s making this political music that I already did, now I’m focusing on spirituality, which is not instead of or in lieu of, it’s not a bypass for the political and social reality, but it’s like how am I going to become the type of person that will deny myself material things because it’s the right thing to do.

It’s going to take something spiritual to do that and you’ve got to have the type of heart that can put virtue and other people before yourself. The modern conversation around power and revolutionary power, is not talking about that. Even modern spirituality, kinda like internet spirituality, it’s not about breaking the ego and that’s what real spirituality is about in all the traditions – in Hinduism, in Buddhism, that’s in authentic Christianity, authentic Judaism, indigenous peoples’ religion. It’s like look the human condition is we have beautiful hearts but we have ego. Ego will always command us to take from other people and to oppress other people, the ego is always going to want more, so we have to discipline the ego. But most modern spirituality doesn’t do that and so basically without doing that outer work, or the inner work to get your heart right, if the oppressed people got power now they would just become the new oppressors. And to me that’s not a victory, to most people that’s not a victory, but what’s the road map to be able to live with dignity in a way that is also virtuous? Virtue requires us to deny ourselves things that our ego demands. Like I should be able to have sex with whoever I want, why can’t I just grab a woman and have sex with her? Because that’s rape! Well okay then I have to tell my ego that this woman’s right to freedom of choice and freedom over her body, is more important than my desire, but I’m going to have to discipline my ego to get to that point.

And it’s the same with what’s wrong with consuming gold, if I want gold and it looks good on me? Well then you say what’s gold doing to South Africa, what are diamonds doing to West Africa? So if I had the money to buy gold and it looks good on me and people seem to think it looks good on me, there’s something spiritual that’s going to make me think that those people I’ve never met are more important than how good it feels for me to wear gold. So to me, that’s what my focus is and I can’t say what other people should do, but I listen to my heart and that’s what I believe.

That’s a really good perspective to have though. Now you’ve said before that each of your albums has been the result of the pain, growth and eventual healing that you’ve experienced, and to me your last album sounded like your most joyous one to date, so I was wondering if you feel fully healed now from whatever you went through before?

No, I think it’s always a process and I think that’s one of the things about real, genuine spirituality is that we know it is a never-ending process. But I will say when we’re early on that path, sometimes the narrative that spiritually immature people have is that they were once lost and now they’re found, or they used to damned and now they’re saved, but it doesn’t work like that [laughs]. Once you start going on the path it’s just like anything else, like now does Venus Williams think she’s the greatest she can ever be? No because she’s always going to be working on it until she can’t anymore and it’s the same with anybody who is really dedicated to something. Once you solve one problem, you just move up in problems and you realise there’s a much more nuanced problem that you couldn’t even know about because you weren’t wise enough to see it.

So do you feel like that sort of complacency is a problem elsewhere? Because that’s how I see it in music, I see some people who feel like they’ve achieved everything they can so they get complacent and then their art suffers as a result.

It can be a really traumatic experience to create without fear cos the reality is there is fear. So you do something that is really creative, you pour your heart into it and then people might just ignore it, or they might hate it. And I mean hating it is better than ignoring it honestly, but I know I’ve been through that and then it’s like why did I do all that? I kinda died internally to make this album and now it’s just another one with all the 50 million albums that came out and so I think at a certain point some people are like I’m not going to plunge the depths of my soul again if it’s not going to be received.

So people who have done that in the past, or they’re no longer in the spotlight, it’s really hard work doing that and so the average person isn’t going to keep doing it. I believe that’s a spiritual practice too, even if people don’t think that they’re religious. Like you listen to someone like James Baldwin talk about what it really means to create from a true place – it’s a death. So I think with musicians, maybe they did that once or twice and everyone celebrates them for it, but it’s hard to keep doing it. You know you can make a living off the spiritual war you fought 20 years ago and so you could just keep touring that album, people still like it so you can make a living doing that and honestly I feel like a lot of those people go to Europe, but it’s not fair to Europe and the UK because the artists from over there can’t do that. They gotta keep creating cos they’re basically being ignored on the global stage. How come everybody all over the world doesn’t know Akala, or doesn’t know Lowkey? Everybody should. There’s a million of these artists and I probably don’t even know most of them, but I really think it’s unfair because European people know what real music is. So I think it’s unfair that a lot of old skool hip hop artists just keep going over there and doing the same old songs over and over again. I mean I’m glad they’re making money, people seem to like it, that’s cool but it’s like they’re still living, they’re still learning, they’re still being a human being, what’s going on? We want to hear that, we want to hear what it feels like to be 55 year old and trying to figure out how long you can keep rapping.

Now speaking about Europe, you’re about to touch down over here for your tour. Do you feel any sort of different connection with the fans here, compared to those back home?

I don’t think that they’re different, but when we go round Europe and the UK, or around the world in general, there’s an understanding that our experiences aren’t identical and so like the interviews I do with journalists over there are always the best. Because they’re thinking I don’t really know what this person is about so let me really pay attention and listen to them, where as in the US there is this familiarity that I think can make us a little complacent and can make use feel like yeah I know what you’re about, we’re part of the same group and you’re probably saying the same things that someone else is saying, so it’s just a different level of attention. And artists are driven by a few different motivations, so some of them want control, control of their life and environment, they want to be able to do what they want to do, not what someone else is making them do. Some artists want power and that’s different cos power is the ability to be able to control other people.

Some artists, and it’s true with people too not just artists, some of them just want fame, they just want to be known. It doesn’t matter what they’re known for, it doesn’t matter if it’s true to them or not, they just want a lot of people to know who they are. For me – and again none of these are necessarily good or bad, it’s about what you do with them – fame is the one I respect the least. For me it’s about connecting and it’s about being understood, like I want to genuinely communicate and exchange with people. I want to listen and be listened to, so going to Europe there are smaller crowds than anywhere in the States and I don’t make much money, so the main reason for me wanting to go is because I know that people are listening! [laughs] You know what I mean? And ultimately I’m going to care more about that than making money.

So you’ve got the tour and then you’re working on the album; is there anything else on the horizon?

So my wife and I teach Islamic spirituality at home in Minneapolis, we have a weekly gathering that we do. I basically split my time between writing, recording and performing music on the one hand, then studying and teaching the spiritual path on the other and I’m really fortunate that we live a really simple life. Slug gave me really good advice when I bought my house, he said buy a house that you can afford to keep up even in a slow year, so you’re never a slave to your living expenses. So my family and I live in a small, simple house and I make enough off music so I can do the spirituality thing half the time and I don’t have to worry about getting paid to do that. I don’t have to try get donations or something like that, not at this stage and so it’s a really good life, man. I’m really happy.

Yeah that sounds very fulfilling, man. Well I know we’re running out of time so I’m going to leave it there, but it’s a pleasure to talk to you.

It’s a real pleasure to talk to you too, man.

I’ll be at the Bristol show next week, so maybe I’ll see you then.

Yeah that’d be great, I’d love to say hello to you in person.

Okay, man, well take care.

Thank you, brother, peace.

***

Brother Ali is on tour across Europe until the end of March. Follow him 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 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. Follow him here.

Interview: Alaska (Words Hurt, Hangar 18)

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.

***

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.

Native Tongues: Accents in UK Hip-hop

It might be 2016, but take a trip around the message boards and comments sections and you will still find confused, angry UK rap fans screaming for authenticity in one breath, and then shooting down artists who rap in their native accents, with the next. With labels like Blah, Bad Taste, AssociatedMinds and EatGood coming to the fore in recent years and bringing their regional accents with them, you could be forgiven for thinking that this was never an issue, but the reality is far different. Writer Gingerslim looks back through his own memories of UK hip-hop, and also speaks to a couple of artists, about their own recollections of who paved the way outside London, and what personal struggles they have had to deal with.

I got into hip-hop back in 1994, when I was 14, but my first memory of UK hip-hop was hearing London Posse’s Money Mad in about 1996 (which had been released way back in 1988). At the time I couldn’t believe there were people in this country making the same style of music I had grown to love, and hearing these people rapping in a British accent was an enlightening experience for me.

But that was still a London accent, albeit with a heavy Jamaican twang. It was also pre-internet, so I remained blissfully unaware of the acts up and down the country, who had been trying to make a break with their own accents for years. Crews like Krispy 3 in Chorley, Ruthless Rap Assassins in Manchester, Suspekt in Derby and II Tone Committee in Glasgow, were bringing out records as far back as the late 80s and early 90s, and helped give rise to the Britcore movement, as it became known. This movement was the first time since hip-hop arrived on our shores where we actually had our own identity, and although the critical success of releases like Ruthless’ Killer Album in 1990 and II Tone’s Beings from a Word Struck Surface in 1991, never generated the same response on a commercial scale, the scene was strong enough to have piqued the interest of up and coming MCs from all over the country.

I asked Konny Kon (Broke N English/Microdisiacs/Children of Zeus), who hails from Manchester, about his early memories of UK rap and he said that although a lot of local rappers chose to affect other accents, hearing people come through with the local dialect was his main inspiration:

“In Manchester when people stopped rapping in American accents a lot of them rapped in a ‘London accent’. But after we heard Krispy 3, Ruthless Rap Assassins, MC Buzz Bee and such like, there was really no excuse. I think for me what really opened my eyes, when we started putting out records, were the Nottingham MCs. There was a wave of really nice MCs who had an accent I wasn’t familiar with at all. At first a lot of us laughed but in the end that was the best accent in the UK to rap with.”

That last comment resonated a lot with me because when I first heard rappers from the Midlands and other places outside London, my first reaction was to laugh, because to me it just did not sound ‘right’. I guess I already classed the ‘right’ sound as London lingo and I think that was the problem for a lot of people. However, my view changed quickly when I heard the level these guys were rapping at and also when I came to realise that different accents allowed for the different pronunciation of words, ultimately allowing for lyrical flows to vary greatly, even when the same words were being used. It also heralded the emergence of different slang words from across the country and all of this helped to shape the scene we know and love today. But what about the backlash, if there was one? Were artists being slated for trying to keep it real? I asked Bubber Loui from Bristol crew Aspects for his view.

“I can’t remember ever being held back by our accents, but I do think we may have been pigeon-holed to some extent. We always included a strong sense of humor in the stuff we did and that coupled with what some deem to be a bumpkin accent, doesn’t help you to be viewed seriously.”

I would argue that the Bristol scene and Aspects in particular, were the catalyst for the change in people’s perceptions as to how UK hip-hop should sound, as the West Country is home to some of the heavier regional accents in the country. This is evident in Aspects receiving critical acclaim for their releases, from the likes of Radio One and MTV, despite making their accents even stronger, as Bubber explains:

“Someone recently linked me to a video of a very early show at Ashton Court Festival in around ’97 that me and Ian (El Eye) performed at. What strikes me now looking at the performance, is that I really pushed up my accent in truth. I was so militant about repping the south west I actually emphasized and accentuated what I wanted to be heard.”

That ties in with what Jamie Hombre, head of Bristol’s Hombre Records, had touched on in Peter Webb’s Youth Cultures: Scenes, Subcultures and Tribes book, published in 2007. Peter writes that in the 90s Jamie had recognized the importance of the accent in UK hip-hop and that labels like Hombre had promoted the Bristol accent as a mark of authenticity, ultimately changing people’s attitudes as to how hip-hop should sound in this country.

Now I think we are now in a time when the majority of genuine rap fans understand the importance of being true to your roots on the mic and not settling for an adopted accent, simply to try to break into the charts, like many accuse Iggy Azalea of doing. But even then, it seems to be one rule for one, as Mike Skinner (The Streets) the Birmingham native, sounded like he never set foot in the Midlands in his life. There are arguments which hold weight on both sides of this debate, because as I have found myself from moving round the country, accents are one thing that can subconsciously be adopted by a person, just by getting on well with the people they are conversing with. But then consciously choosing to adopt an accent, to me seems like deception and a definite two fingers up at your heritage. Only they will really know if their affectation was conscious or unconscious though.

For me personally, I welcome all these accents and regional lingos with open arms/ears, because they are a signal that the UK is now at a point where lyrical skill, clarity and strength of production are the key factors in determining what is good hip-hop.

***

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.

The Elephunk in the Room: We need to talk About The Black Eyed Peas

A couple of weeks ago, The Black Eyed Peas released a new video. The same The Black Eyes Peas that many moons ago was a genuine hip-hop group, before changing beyond all recognition into a pop act that polarized rap fans.

Nothing strange about that so far. But on closer inspection the new song is without Fergie, references and covers many hip-hop classics, and has a throwback video to match. Oh, and it also happens to be awesome. We let it sit there for a while, but we can’t ignore what just happened any longer.

Here’s the dilemma. As fans of what we all like to call ‘real’ hip-hop (however ridiculous that makes us sound), we can’t possibly like a The Black Eyed Peas song, can we? Of course we can. We’ll just take a bit of time to admit it.

Its easy to blame everything on the evil Fergie, but in reality, the driving force behind the move towards pop has been will.i.am, an artist at times so unbelievably pretentious its a wonder he hasn’t yet disappeared up his own back passage.

But the hark back to their hip-hop roots, and even further back to Golden Era rap, is a curious one. Its difficult to tell if this is a new (or old) direction for the group, sans Fergie, although its hard to imagine they’d turn down further mainstream success just to keep it real for a small section of hip-hop heads. It may also just be part of the celebrations for their 20-years-in-the-game anniversary.

Only time will tell. But one thing can’t be denied: Yesterday is a good record, and its ok to admit it.

If you haven’t seen it yet, watch it here.

Why Ice Cube being back in N.W.A. is equal parts dope and awkward

The recent BET Awards saw N.W.A. reunite on stage for the first time in years, as part of the promotional grind for new film Straight Outta Compton.

Dr Dre was absent, and with Eazy-E long since passed, and Yella never having been the most charismatic of performers, it was a cut-price N.W.A, left to just Ice Cube and MC Ren to carry the entire legacy. From the videos that emerged online, it was largely disappointing, but not a bad effort considering what they had to work with.

What stands out most is how weird it is to see Ice Cube performing those old gangsta tracks in 2015.

Like LL Cool J, Cube is now so far removed from who he was in the N.W.A. days, and that’s not a bad thing. He’s now a family man making family films. Shit, he even hangs out with Elmo. Switching from that back to the man who rapped so aggressively and explicitly on classics like Fuck Tha Police, Straight Outta Compton and Gangsta Gangsta, is a giant leap.

That’s not to say that the likes of Cube and LL should hide from who they once were. These are two of the greatest hip-hop artists of all time (LL arguably the greatest, at least in terms of longevity), and for hip-hop fans they will always be emcees first, actors second.

But perhaps spare a thought for little Elmo when he watches the BET awards and sees his buddy kicking rhymes about AK-47s and bitches in biker shorts. No one wants the kids putting on Sesame Street and finding that the word of the day is Gangbang.

As for the no-show from Dre? Too busy counting them billions. Its a shame though, because that really could have been something special. We should probably just be glad they avoided bringing Eazy back with one of those tacky hologram joints.

Straight Outta Compton hits cinemas August.

Slept-on albums in retrospect: Raekwon’s – ‘Immobilarity’

Only Built 4 Cuban Linx was always going to be difficult to top, even for one of the best artists amongst the nine men that made up the Wu-Tang Clan. By 1999, the world had already been blessed not just with Raekwon’s classic debut some four years previously, but also superior albums from Ghostface Killah, GZA, Old Dirty Bastard, Method Man and Cappadonna. The pressure on Rae to turn-in something as good as his debut must have been thick, even if no one dared to mention it.

When Immobilarity did drop, it was given something of a lukewarm reception from fans and critics alike. Listen again in 2015 however, and its actually a pretty good album, and arguably better than the genuinely disappointing proper sequel to the classic debut, 2009’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx II.

What seemed to bug people most at the time was how little this seemed like the other Wu-Tang solo albums so far. There are no guest spots from Ghostface, and in fact Method Man and Masta Killa are the only two official clansmen to appear. And perhaps most noticeably of all, there are no beats by RZA.

Looking back, this was actually a good thing. A lack of guests gave Rae the space needed to focus, and write with enough confidence and weight to carry entire tracks on his own, the way that Ghost has always been able to.

Moving from RZA production also added some variety, away from the occasionally stale beats that he was sometimes guilty of making, even if the little-known producers on the album were usually just trying to ape his style. Its no coincidence that the nicest beat is the Pete Rock produced Sneakers, hinting for the first time just how good Rae sounded over beats from skilled beatmakers outside of RZA. By Only Built 4 Cuban Linx II, the line-up of producers had become diverse enough to include everyone from Dr Dre to J Dilla, via Erick Sermon, Alchemist, Marley Marl and more.

Other standout tracks include Friday, My Favorite Dred and Live From NY, each of them filled with the same vivid imagery that helped maintain Rae’s reputation as one of the best storytellers in the game.

If you slept on this album in 2009, dust it off and have another listen. You’ll be surprised at how good it sounds.

The best hip-hop writing from last week

Its been another good week for hip-hop writing and journalism, with many of the usual suspects writing the best material. Here’s a round-up.

DJ Screw: A Fast Life in Slow Motion by Lance Scott Walker

Whether you are a fan of his music or not, the impact DJ Screw had on rap in his all-too-short life is huge. In this well-researched and extensive article, the writer pays proper tribute, telling the full story of Screw’s come-up, without focusing too much on his abuse of Lean and subsequent death. Read here.

The Selective Memory of Rap Fans by Robbie Ettelson (Unkut)

At a time when a lot of classic albums are celebrating their 20th or so anniversaries, Unkut points out how others are being forgotten. He singles out the X Clan album To The East, Blackwards as a prime example, and how it was a project of way more significance than most care to remember. Read here.

GZA Speaks: The Lost Art of Lyricism by GZA

He may be pointing out what most of us already know, but its interesting to have a first-hand opinion about the state of rap lyrics from one of the best rappers still working today. The highlight comes at the point where GZA explains how two different artists would interpret the same simple subject matter. Read here.

The best hip-hop writing from last week

Its been another good week for qualify hip-hop journalism and long-form articles. Here’s our top picks from the last seven days:

Origin Stories: The Neptunes by Chris Williams

This article for Red Bull Music Academy looks at the history of Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo, and how they came up in the Virginia music scene before changing the commercial forever rap game as production powerhouse The Neptunes. Read in full here. If you also haven’t yet seen the incredible Revolutions On Air: The Golden Era of New York Radio 1980-1988 documentary, watch it here.

Gettin Kinda Hectic: Snap and Chill Rob G’s Epic Power Struggle by Robbie Ettelson

Robbie Ettelson is one of the best writers documenting the history of hip-hop, and here breaks down the troublesome making of monster dance hit Power, which included vocals from Chill Rob G. It appears on the always brilliant Cuepoint, and you can read it in full here.

Why the Term ‘Jazz-Rap’ Needs to be Deleted from the Internet by Seve Chambers

Sparked from a recent twitter debate by 9th Wonder, the article looks at the pointless need for some critics and writers to pigeonhole music into sub-genres, and how ultimately, none of it really matters. Read in full here.

The Evolution of Jaime Meline by Ben Pedroche

Lastly, we’ve gone and included one of our own long-form articles from last week, by our editor. It tracks the many different chapters in the career of El-P, and how he’s one of the few hip-hop artists to stay relevant for so long. Read in full here.

The Evolution of Jaime Meline

A good artist moves with the times. The signature sound remains, but evolves and adapts just enough to stay relevant as the years go by. Get stuck in a time warp and your followers will move on without you, no matter how perfect your best years were. That thing about Madonna ‘constantly reinventing’ herself is one of the most clichéd lines in music journalism for sure, but there is some truth in it, and it’s the reason she’s been successful since the early 80s.

Hip-hop is a genre sometimes more reluctant to change than others. Complacency can set in fast, with many artists happy to ride their legacy for as long as they can, refusing to switch lanes and find the next generation of listeners. It works for a small few, but explains why many of the most gifted rappers have faded into obscurity. Those that are still active can just about carve out a living from past glory, but it’s a hard grind.

If you evolve with the music, you can have a long and fruitful career full of financial and critical success, and not many rappers over the last 20 years have done that better than Jaime Meline, aka El-P.

Moving with the times is one thing, but the really creative artists are those who challenge us by taking a gamble each time they move. Madonna has no doubt achieved longevity, but these days, her way of reinventing herself seems to be to merely follow what is successful at the time. Lady Gaga and Rihanna were obviously inspired by Madonna, but Madonna is now more likely to be found copying what they do. To be considered truly exceptional, making a few tweaks is not enough; you must get ahead of the times too.

Artists like Bob Dylan and David Bowie have stayed critically acclaimed for years by always moving on, but at the same time by taking risks with their music. Some have been misfires, others successful, but each one has helped maintain their relevance to older fans while also introducing them to new ones.

And this is exactly how El-P has managed to elevate himself to the status of hip-hop legend, with distinct chapters to his career. First came the Company Flow era, where, as part of the three-man crew, El helped to shape a phenomenal era of hip-hop music in the late 90s. Their Funcrusher Plus album stands today as one of the genre’s best, driven by Meline’s dusty beats and intricate flow. It was angry and raw, with a healthy distain towards the mainstream music business that matched the movement independent labels like Rawkus and Fondle’em were creating.

When the wind changed and the end came for Rawkus, the rest of the labels and for Company Flow as a group, El-P changed things up again, starting a new chapter as the head of his own Indy label. Def Jux picked up the pieces left over from Fondle’em and others, but this time the music seemed to be coming from a place even further beyond the fringes of the mainstream, heading towards a territory that would soon be labeled as ‘alternative hip-hop’.

The unnecessary pigeon-holing by the critics was largely irrelevant though. The music was fresh, exciting, and hip-hop to the bone, with classic material by a diverse group of artists that included Cannibal Ox, Mr Lif, MURS, Aesop Rock, and El-P himself.

When Def Jux suffered the same fate as the labels that had come before, Meline moved with the times again by starting a new chapter, this time forming a coalition with an unlikely partner, Atlanta rapper Killer Mike. The success of Run the Jewels has again been due at least in part thanks to a willingness to take risks, and it seems to be paying off again. Even financially this time.

The El-P of 2015 seems contempt, but not complacent. There are no doubt other chapters to come, but for now at least he seems to have found a place to stay for a while. Age also helps, and now he’s reached 40, what we are seeing is an older, wiser El-P. In 2013 he appeared on the brilliant Rhythm Roulette series from Mass Appeal, just as Run the Jewels were starting to make some noise. What we got then was an older chapter of Jaime Meline: pissed-off and sweary, smoking cigarettes and drinking beer, all while working his magic in the studio. It was what you’d imagine a Co Flow session would have been like, some 15 years earlier.

Twelve months later, now promoting Run the Jewels, the El-P we saw and heard in videos, magazine interviews and on podcasts was a new, more mature and eloquent man. Neither persona is fake, but instead simply two different chapters of the same person. The man in the Mass Appeal video was still angry with the industry, but the man a year later was less so, and happy to be considered an elder statesman in a music genre as fickle as they come.