Category: Industry

Interview: Elucid

GingerSlim checks in with Elucid to talk about his work with billy woods and Milo, religion, musical influences and more. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity and context.

Let’s start with the Nostrum Grocers collaboration with Milo from 2018 and how that come about; had you guys been planning on working on something together for a while? 

No it was a really spontaneous thing. From the moment I met Milo, we had an instant connection and then one day we were like, “Yo we should do an album…”. He was in New York for a couple of shows, we went to Willie Green’s studio and did the album, like that was it [laughs]. And we just put out a single not so long ago and that was the same thing – I went up to Maine, did the song, liked the song, did the video – 24 hours that was it! I mean that’s kinda like our process, we communicate back and forth through emails and texts, see each other when we’re in the right city; so yeah, it’s pretty natural.

And is that often your approach to collaborations, or is this set apart from the rest? 

I don’t tend to work on a lot of collaboration. I have done in the past, but I’ve been trying to narrow it down and now I’m only creating with people who genuinely inspire me. Milo was one of those dudes and of course billy woods is one of those dudes. So if either of them ever say to me we should work on something together, the answer is always yes, no question. I do wanna collab more, so there are a couple of people I’m going to be working on some things with. They haven’t come to fruition yet cos it’s moving a little slower, but yeah there’s a couple of things in the pipeline.

As I understand it, you had been putting out mixtapes for about 10 years before you released Save Yourself, and that was all self-released material. What was it that eventually prompted you to start working with a label? 

They just asked me if I wanted to put a record out. I did a show and (billy) woods was there. He said he was doing an album and wanted me to be on it, so that became “Freedmen’s Bureau” on History Will Absolve Me. Then from there we just stayed in contact, until Backwoodz said, “You wanna put an album out?”. I said okay cool, but it’s gotta be on vinyl though. They agreed and that’s it, there’s Save Yourself.

You and woods seem to have found a very good formula for working together. Have you noticed any changes in your creative approach since you two started collaborating? 

I think I’ve grown as an artist in general, as a solo artist. But then thinking about working as a team player, working with woods, how we might make a song is we’ll get a whole batch of beats, each have the same batch, and then he’ll demo his favorites and I’ll demo mine, then we’ll link up, play them and be like, “That’s cool, that’s not cool”, whatever. But then if he’s got something that’s really fire, then it’s like well how do I counter that? You know what I mean? Like I could come in the exact same way, but that doesn’t make it an interesting song. So I think maybe thinking like a team player, like what I can contribute, rather than what I can come up with all on my own, is easier; yeah it’s easier for sure [laughs]. So yeah, as a team player is where I’ve probably grown most.

I read that your parents were religious, and you were involved with the church in your youth, but you didn’t particularly enjoy being there. What sort of impact, if any, do you think that upbringing had on your music? 

Well I feel like you can never really run away from your past, that’s your default. The way that you were raised from zero to the age you leave your care-giver, that’s all you know, and that was a strong 18 years for me, right? And then from 18 to now, is just me forging my own path. I already had inklings of who I was, and things I believed, and things I disagreed with how I was raised, while I was there. So, at 14 being super conscious, like no I don’t want to go that way, I’m going to go this way. It’s still in the music though, it’s an immediate reference cos I know a lot of The Bible, a LOT. It’s also one of the greatest books ever written, if you remove the religiosity from it. You don’t have to believe, but there are some amazing fucking stories in that book, with super ill language, and I’m just drawn to how things are presented in that way. I like the idea of parables, I think that’s a really slick way to teach, you know? I can’t get away from it, but I’ve gotten away from it, if that makes sense?

And is that interest limited to Catholicism? 

It’s not Catholic…

Oh my bad, sorry I meant Christianity. 

Yeah so it’s Pentecostal, like a Black American spin on Catholicism or Protestantism, it’s a little different. Like I know Catholicism is super big, but like usually there’s no instruments there. My church was super lively; they had an amazing band, with musicians who played with some of the top 90’s RnB and soul acts worldwide. These guys were so talented and the choirs were amazing, so just growing up and seeing that, I didn’t want to be a performer at the time, but I was exposed to that kind of life, you know?

So do you think that’s where it all stems from? 

I don’t know, I just knew I was a writer, and then the writing and the poetry spawned into this rap thing, and then all of a sudden, I find myself on stage. And then like learning to be comfortable on stage, learning to be able to present my work to a room full of people; a rap show is very different from a poetry reading [laughs].

And does that interest extend into other religious and philosophical areas? 

Oh for sure. That was the thing with Christianity, it was super limiting and it didn’t provide all the answers I wanted. It also left out many other schools of thought about philosophy and spirituality that I was interested in. I guess I don’t subscribe to any religion right now, but I respect a lot of them and there are jewels to be learned in all of them. And lowkey they’re all very similar, they come from very similar origins. You can even go beyond the three main world religions – Christianity, Islam and Judaism – you can go beyond that and start reading things in Ancient Egypt and be like, “Oh that’s where those stories originally came from!”. The story of Jesus is not an original story, it was told thousands of years before he ‘walked the planet’. So that’s when I started getting into this universalist approach to spirituality and thought.

Now for me, one of your most intriguing releases was Valley of Grace, which had the accompanying film. What was the inspiration behind that project? 

Ah, man, basically being in South Africa. I went to Johannesburg and Cape Town in the summer of 2015, maybe ‘16, and my wife was there, she was still my girlfriend then, and she was working at a law centre, working towards protecting sex workers in South Africa. So being there, she’s at work for at least 8 hours a day, and I’m in the flat just hanging out, you know? So I go out, I get lost; I find weed, I go back; I drink a lot of coffee, I make music. The she comes home, I cook dinner, we hang out – do the same shit over and over. So I was felt like super free, like super, super free. I love that feeling of like being in a place where I don’t speak any of the five languages that are spoken there, that real alien feeling. Yeah I really like that, and so I started dipping my toes in and that’s really what became Valley of Grace; everything in South Africa, when I came back to New York at the end of the summer and I recorded it all in my house, that’s what became the record.

And is that audiovisual medium something you would like to experiment with further? I know you were involved with the Paraffin video too. 

Oh yeah totally. That’s the latest thing for me, definitely. I didn’t have anything to do with the filming for Paraffin, that was all Joseph, but I did all the music and the little cuts, so I’m very interested in scoring. So I think on the next project I’ll have a greater hand in the score, and also like the visual side of it. I really liked how that Paraffin video turned out.

Yeah it blends with the music perfectly. 

Joseph just really gets our vision, he really gets it. He did the video for “Barbarians” too. He really gets what the fuck we’re trying to do out here.

What’s next for you? Any projects lined up? 

I’ve been working on things, but nothing as a project. You’ll see it though, you’ll know [laughs]. Yeah, I don’t really work around projects like that; even with Valley of Grace I was just making songs and then when I got back to The States, woods was like, “So what you been doing over there?”, so we’re talking about the music and he said I should let him hear it sometime, so I did and then he was like, “Oh this is a record, you should put this out.”. Then we cut probably six or seven songs, put the rest on a record and that was Valley of Grace.

That’s cool though because normally if someone is working on a project, they will be looking for some sort of cohesion, but you’re doing it purely organically and more spontaneously. 

Yeah, I don’t believe in that, I don’t look for that. It all came from my mind, so however cohesive, or not, that’s who I am; that’s what my mind was going through at that exact time. If it doesn’t sound cohesive that means I was fucking crazy [laughs]. And that’s okay! That’s where I was at that particular time. That’s what I love about albums. It’s a clear definition of who you are, what you were thinking, what you were going through in this particular place in time. It’s so pure, it’s such an ill caption to me. That’s why I can’t wait to actually put out the second record, you know? I don’t know when it will be, but I know it’s going to be really ill. The new Armand Hammer album is coming too and I think that’s going to be a nice surprise; people are going to be very surprised by that.

Okay so aside from the church’s influence, what were your earliest musical memories?

Oh man. Well both my parents are musicians and they weren’t always super churchy, that happened when I was a kid, so there was a shift, you know? But even after that they still played a lot of things. They had a crazy vinyl collection and in that collection you had things like Sly & The Family Stone, Funkadelic, Al Green, James Brown, Denise Williams, Stevie Wonder; like just very ‘from the soil’, black American soul music, funk music, RnB music. So I grew up on all that shit on vinyl and then my uncle was a DJ, so that was my first experience of rap as a child, like 5 or 6 years old. There are videos of my breakdancing at people’s weddings as a child, so rap has always been here, you know what I mean? So yeah, he got me into Rakim, Public Enemy, BDP, De La Soul, all that era; he was there putting me onto it when I was super young. And then as well I am just the sort of person to venture out and explore beyond these genres, these boundaries; so when the internet came along, like much later on, it was like oh shit, now there’s stuff like Bad Brains, just things outside of rap. Or even getting deeper into regional rap. Growing up in New York City, but being a fan of things like Outkast and Goodie Mob, before they were like these established names, when they were still on the come up. Like those first albums, I was a big fan of them when they dropped.

And do you remember the point you realized that’s what you wanted to do?  

I still don’t feel like I’ve made that decision. Things just kinda come along and I do them. If someone asks, I do it. But I’ve never sat down and thought right this is what I want to do, I’ve never had that conversation with myself, it’s just sort of presented itself. I do what I do, I never actively pursued rap that way. Like I have a whole other life outside of the music thing. That’s why it’s a blessing that people recognize what the fuck I do out here, you know? I’ve got a song on Shit Don’t Rhyme No More called “1010 Wins” and it goes like, “I’m the man who the man say is the man”; I did that song every night on the last run and that shit has never felt more true, honestly. And that’s not even gassing myself up, it’s actually true. Like some of your favorites out here text me my own lyrics and be like, “Yo you’re fucking dope”, like the world’s favorites, and it just feels good that people are out here seeing me. And the past few years, those records we’ve put out, the Armand Hammer shit went off, the Nostrum shit went off, so I’m very curious to see what’s going to happen in the next 365 days. Yeah, it feels good man [laughs].

Yeah man, I bet. 

Well you out here, man! I see you on Twitter, you’ve been supporting for the longest time, so it feels dope to be here and like see you in the flesh, and know that this person has been checking for what I do, that shit is ill, thank you.

No, thank you man, and that’s me done anyway, so that’s a good point to end on [both laugh]. 

***

Buy Elucid’s music here, and 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 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. Follow him here. 

 

 

Nobody Beats The Baz

Words by Dave Waller.

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: Uncommon Nasa on ‘City as School’

We catch up with Uncommon Nasa to talk about the excellent new album with producer Kount Fif, City as School. 

In one of our previous interviews, we talked about your poetry, and whether there is a difference between your rap lyrics versus the written prose in your poetry/short story book, Withering. The City as School CD comes with a full lyric book. Do you consider the album to be a bridge between both art forms?

I wouldn’t take the lyric book as a bridge being gapped per se, I just think my lyrics lend themselves to the page for some people and when offered the chance to have a book like that by the label, I jumped on it.  I thought considering the theme of the record and the art layout we came up with it also made perfect sense to have a lyric book included conceptually as well. I think my lyrics holding their own in written form is important to me as well, it’s not just how I say something, it’s exactly what I’m saying word for word that I want to get across a lot of times. And there’s no better way to get that across then someone reading your stuff.

As with most of your music, New York City is a big influence on City as School. This time the focus is mostly on your formative years, growing up. Can you tell us more about the concept?

The theme grew naturally out of the songs I started to put together for this project. This is the case on all my records, I start working, I find a thread that ties the music together after the first few songs and then I push that theme through to the end of the project. I’ve focused on mortality and the future on a lot of my recent work, and this time out I really wanted to focus on life and what makes it worth living. A lot of that for me takes me back to my formative years and how thankful I am for a lot of my experiences. This record was a thank you note to all the good choices I made, I wasn’t exclusive to good choices, but I am thankful for them in particular.

The album reminds me of Masta Ace’s concept albums about coming of age in New York, especially A Long Hot Summer and The Falling Season. Did you draw any inspiration from Ace or other sources?

I have a lot of respect for Masta Ace, I was really happy to open for him and Marco Polo with Kount Fif down in DC this past Summer. “Music Man” and Slaughterhouse were High School anthems for me. But to be honest, I am aware of, but have not heard either of those records you mentioned from him. I think I’m just a sucker for coming of age stories, a lot of my favorite books and films fit that mold too.

Some of the story takes place in your high school years. What was school like for you in New York?

As I said in one of the interludes on the album, I grew up (and still live) on Staten Island. These days I live footsteps from the Ferry, so I’m basically in any other boro, but as a kid, I was raised way further south. My folks brought me up in side-door apartments. I have a unique experience of knowing what suburban life is like, knowing what small-town life is like while still being broke as fuck. Then also being able to immediately interact with the big city and with urban environments as well. It’s something only Staten Island provides. Don’t get it twisted, Staten may be the bastard child of NYC, but it is very much a New Yawky place. I say all that to say, my High School was even deeper south than where I lived during those years, it was a huge public school that had oddity classes like Auto Shop, Marine Biology, Law and Dental. Not sure if any of that is still true. I rapped in high school, but not physically in my high school, it was extracurricular. Most of my friends dropped out by the time I was taking rap at all seriously, or attended other schools on the Island. By my Junior year, I had 1-2 friends in the whole place, I had a pretty solitary experience. In Junior High, I was the typical “harrassed outcast” that you’d expect me to be, but by High School I was writing graff and knew most of the right people in the right crews to come off as somewhat intimidating. People largely didn’t fuck with me by that age, but they didn’t fuck with me by the positive definition of that term either. I had my sights set on mixing records as early as 16 and was interning in Manhattan at 17. I was just happy to get out of there, I was never one for traditional education in those years. I never for a moment had an interest in College, which with my economic and grade situation would have equated to 4 more years of bullshit High School lessons. So I was off to recording school and off we go.  The rest is history, city as school.

You have features from several icons on the new album, including Sadat X and Tek (Smif-N-Wessun). What’s interesting though is that, for a record about your upbringing in NYC, you also feature legends from outside of the five boroughs: Guilty Simpson (Detroit) and Pep Love (Oakland). Other than being classic artists, was there also a sense they’d bring a different, non-NYC perspective to the story?

I think for me personally the record is about New York, but as you can hear on the interludes, for Fif he relates to the album from his perspective of growing up just outside of DC. So the album is universal, whatever city your from, if that city educated you through life experience then City As School is about you. With Pep Love I knew that beat would fit his flow perfectly, especially after I dropped my verse and knowing he was from the Bay Area I knew we could connect on the subject of gentrification or whatever you want to call that phenomenon of changing landscapes. With Guilty, that whole song is about the struggles of life and being appreciative of what you’ve got and outside of New York and Detroit, what cities represent that better?

Returning to your written prose versus music, “Best Laid Plans” in particular sounds a lot like a short story. I’m still intrigued about how you take an idea or experience, and decide if you want to communicate it through song or as written word?

At this stage in my career I’d say most of what I’m writing in prose and short stories is fiction and most of what I’m writing for my songs is autobiographical to some degree. So that’s really how that flow chart works with ideas. I’ve taken stabs at writing non-fiction before and that exercise actually helped me become a better fiction writer and like any fiction writer I’ve worked real-life experiences into my characters. I know I’ve also played roles on songs that aren’t me speaking from a personal perspective, but representing the point of view of a villain, etc. But yeah, mostly the music is about me, the writing is a work of fiction right now. For “Best Laid Plans” that’s all true, me and some friends really did all that shit and tried to start a record selling business in the analog pre-internet era.  We were young entrepreneurs and shit, haha. But to me, I wrote that because I’m hoping that when people hear it they are not just entertained by my story but can relate it to some shit they tried to do to get money that in retrospect makes very little sense. I think we’ve all been there.

City As School is produced by Kount Fif. In some ways its quite a different sound to a lot of your previous work, synth and keyboard heavy in parts. How did you connect with Fif, and what’s your working process like?

I connected with Fif through Man Bites Dog Records, they put out Written At Night and City As School. Working with Fif was pretty smooth because he really had an ear for what beats to feed me. I’d say what’s on this record is about 60-70% of the beats I was presented with. So obviously I took to his production pretty easily. The challenge for me is always about compromise and collaboration, finding where my vision ends and his begins is the puzzle to solve. I think we landed in a really good place and the blending of our philosophies created an album that I couldn’t have made with anyone else, including myself. Every collaboration with a producer is different, because of my background a lot of producers give me a lot of autonomy over the final product, but Fif had a clear vision he wanted to see in addition to mine. I respect that and I think in this particular case the album succeeded as a piece due to that.

Lastly, you quit Twitter in 2018. It’s a decision I have a lot of respect for, and we could all do with time out from social media. What made you stop using it, and why Twitter specifically (you are still active on Instagram)?

I recently recorded an episode of my podcast (Dope Sh!t Podcast) about this with Samurai Banana. Shameless plug in case anyone wants to do a deep dive with me. But in brief, to recap that, it’s all the obvious shit. Twitter really makes us into the lowest common denominator of ourselves. I worked in radio for a while and I came to know the term “schtick”, it’s what hosts do on air. They oversell particular aspects of themselves, so the talented hosts are able to remain authentic to some degree, but ultimately it’s pomp and bullshit to get ratings. I think that’s what Twitter is, at least what it was for me. I never said anything I didn’t believe at the time, but who really needs my fucking opinion? Even if I’m positive about something, it’s just comment, comment, comment. It’s a time suck. Just because someone likes New York Telephone, now they need to know my opinion on the Washington Nationals World Series championship? Nah, they don’t. It’s irrelevant, I’ve become a firm believer in making myself, as a person, scarce but making my art readily available. That should be the goal of any artist. Punditry isn’t art.  Some people might be thinking, “you don’t have to use twitter that way”, but I did, I only had one speed. There are many other reasons I got off there too, including being more prolific and focused in all aspects of my life and in having real connections with people again – like actually getting lunch with a friend and speaking….I get into a lot more detail on the podcast. I also quit Facebook in the same calendar year, for what it’s worth. Fuck em all.  I’m on IG for now, and I’m kind of active on it currently because I’m promoting this record. But my normal stee is to post a picture of a cool building or a cat about once a week and I don’t follow any motherfuckers on there. I keep it pretty low key. We’ll see how long I hang around on it, it’s mostly just pictures, so it’s really a different vibe then other forms of social media.

***

City as School by Uncommon Nasa and Kount Fif is out now. Follow Uncommon Nasa at his official site and on Instagram. Interview by Grown Up Rap Editor Ben Pedroche. 

Interview: Rodney P

Rodney P has been a major presence on the UK hip-hop scene since the mid-80s, first finding success as part of the London Posse, and through the 90s and beyond as an acclaimed solo artist. He’s spent most of 2019 making music and touring as part of the super group KingDem, alongside fellow UK rap icons Blak Twang and Ty. GingerSlim spoke to him about that and more.

You’ve recently been on the KingDem tour. How did it feel to have it finally out on the road?

Yeah man it’s good, it’s always good. I mean I do a lot of shows over the course of the year anyway, but this one feels a bit special. We’ve never done it before, the audience has never seen it before and the response has been amazing so far, so yeah it feels good.

 Yeah I mean in my memory, it’s a pretty monumental line-up.

Yeah I think as far as UK hip hop goes, it’s not bad at all [laughs].

Does it take much to plan something like this?

Yeah, in a word [laughs] but no, honestly we wanted to do it and we pooled together, so with that in mind it’s been pretty easy. The logistics can be a bit hard, like getting everyone in the same place at the same time, all being on the same page, working out show times; all of that stuff takes organising. But we’ve all been willing so it hasn’t been that hard, it’s all been doable.

You guys have all been friends for a long time, what made you decide to do this now?

I was asked! Tony (Blak Twang) and Ty had already been having a conversation about it because they shared an agent, so they came and asked how I’d feel about going on tour with them. Now we weren’t KingDem then, we didn’t have the name or anything, it was just going to be a UK hip hop tour. It showed a unified strength all of us going out there together and it just felt like a good idea and a good time for us to do it. As the sort of elders of the scene too, it was kind of a way for us to support the artists that are coming up behind us and also help to reinvigorate the sort of hip hop that we like. And that’s not to take away from anyone else, or take away from the grime scene or the drill scene or the trap scene, or whatever name you give it, but there is a style of hip hop that we come from that hasn’t really been getting much light or much credit. So this was a way for us to show some love for where we come from and what we do, and for the kind of artists who are coming up now too. And that is all part of a long-term plan cos at the moment this is just us three out on the road, but in the future we definitely intend to highlight more of the stuff we like and the kind of artists we like, who we’d like to help promote.

That’s really good to hear, because I was actually going to ask what your feelings are on the current state of hip hop as a whole, not just in the UK?

For a start there is hip hop and there is rap music, which I don’t think are necessarily the same thing. But I do think it’s in a very healthy space, there are lots of really good creative artists out there doing work, trying to get themselves seen and heard, and as I said this is definitely a way for us to try and be a part of that. I mean rap music in the UK is going to No. 1 independently, so whether you personally like those songs, you can’t knock the hustle and dispute the success that these young guys are having, and the doorways and pathways that they’re opening up. And all this is done independently too, they’re not being dragged to the water, these guys are finding their own way to the water and you’re going to have to follow them. So I think it’s fantastic, I think the scene right now is probably the strongest and healthiest it’s ever been, and that says a lot coming from someone who’s been here practically since the beginning.

Now when you and Bionic first started making music, it was very rare to hear people rapping in an English accent. What made you guys decide to take that risk?

We just thought it was necessary. Plus we came from a more dancehall and reggae background where that conversation was already happening – let’s stop pretending we’re Jamaican, we’re from England, you know? So within sound system culture it was quite normal, well maybe not normal, but it had been broached. Then we took that mentality and applied it to hip hop; we didn’t reinvent the wheel but we were the first within the hip hop scene to start doing that consistently.

And did you experience much of a backlash at the time because of that approach?

Yeah absolutely. I mean look at how many years it took for it become the norm, we put out our first record in ’87. All through the 90’s there were still British rappers rapping with fake American accents. And the push back was from in the scene too, a lot of London Posse’s early audience weren’t hip hop fans. It was kids who were into Madness, The Specials and The Beat, and had an understanding of punk rock. That was our first real fanbase. I took a while for us to convince the UK hip hop scene that this was the way forward, everyone was like “Well it’s hip hop music, it’s supposed to sound American”; that was their argument. So it took a while, but we were right and our argument won, now here we are. You get laughed out of the club if you come out with a silly American accent now.

Good.

Yeah good [laughs].

As someone who has managed to maintain their longevity in a scene that does tend to swallow artists up quite easily, what do you think is the key to remaining relevant?

I think for me it was always about being brave enough to do other stuff and also having that passion. I’m passionate about the scene, I’m passionate about hip hop, about hip hop culture. I was a breakdancer and a body popper, I did graffiti, I did all of that shit. So regardless of whether I was having success doing it, I’d still be involved in it. A lot of people got their heart broke because they didn’t find the success they were looking for, you know? I was lucky enough to be able to make a living and also have this passion that has stayed with me. And plus I like to think I’m quite good, so… [laughs].

Do you think it has anything to do with working with different producers and branching out into other genres? I know you and Die worked together, for example.

Absolutely, that’s part of it. Like I said, it’s about being brave enough to do other stuff. I think for a lot of people they get quite insular and nerdy like, “Oh hip hop has to be this way, or that way”, but for me hip hop has to be about self-expression. You can take it wherever you want to go with it, as long as your heart is true to it and I’ve always done that. Plus I’m a Londoner and a raver – I like garage, I like DnB, I like house, I like the experimental shit – so when I’m making the kind of hip hop I like,I want to throw all of that in the mix and see how it comes out. You know, I’ve had amazing times working with the Dub Pistols, working with (DJ) Die, working with Skitz, working with The Herbaliser, all this other kind of stuff I do that keeps it entertaining for me, first and foremost. So yeah, fuck anyone else, I do what I like [laughs].

You’ve been involved with a couple of documentaries over the years, including The Hip Hop World News and Beast, Bass & Bars; are there any other subjects you would like to tackle in the future?

We also did one about pirate radio, The Past Pirates. But yeah we have some other things in the pipeline. I definitely want to get more into archiving and telling the story. I’ve got another documentary in production at the minute, which is a lot more UK hip hop based. Then also I want to try to do some stuff outside of the music as well, to help tell the story or the narrative from within the culture generally, not just musically. So yeah, look for me! I’m also hoping to do a book as well, so I stay busy, I hustle, bruv [laughs].

Well that’s it from me, man, but thank you very much for talking to me.

All good, man, it was a pleasure.

***

The KingDem album from Rodney P, Ty and Blak Twang is out now. Follow Rodney P 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: Frank Nitt

Following the release of the new Frank N Dank album, St. Louis, we spoke to Detroit legend Frank Nitt about the new project, working with J Dilla, and more. Interview by Matt Horowitz.

In your opinion, what are the primary differences between the original/bootlegged 2003 MCA version of 48 Hrs/48 Hours and the widely-released 2013 Delicious Vinyl edition? 

The Delicious Vinyl version was the actual album as we intended. The 2003 version had extra songs and bad mixes.

Is it true J Dilla (then still known as Jay Dee) had to go back in and make more synth-driven beats, after MCA rejected the original sampled-based version of 48 Hours?

[laughs] No it was actually the opposite. We turned in the same version of the album that we put out via Delicious Vinyl, and the executive at the time said we love it but we need something more for the club and radio, and that is where “Take Ya Clothes Off” and “Off Ya Chest” came from. Unfortunately that executive left and went and signed Chingy to Capital, and the new exec, who was also the president, told Dilla he wanted more of his sampled driven beats because that’s what he knew him for. The original 48 Hours was recorded to more sample-driven beats but about seven songs in, Jay decided to strip all those beats and keep the vocals, and that’s where all the synth joints came from. Side note: he decided to change all the music after going to the studio while Dr. Dre was working on a D12 record in Detroit. After that he said “I’m about to play everything”. 48 Hours is the only sample-free J Dilla produced full album.

What’s the current status of your group, The Joint Chiefs, with DJ Rhettmatic? Do you fellas have any immediate plans to record and release a proper follow-up to your 2013 FWMJ/RIK EP, The Smoke Musik?

Ahh man, Rhett is my brother. Incredible dj/producer, better person! We have kicked around the idea of doing another joint., but Rhett is like a head of state, lol. He has a school, gigs, touring and still goes to lunch with his mom on sundays. It’s not easy to lock him down. If he reads this tho, I’m ready let’s gooooooo!

What’s one of your personal favorite J Dilla stories or moments from your time spent recording, hanging out, touring, etc. together that most people might not have ever heard about before?

One of the things that standout is a conversation we had one day sitting in his Lexus 450 outside the Nevada house. He told me “I wish I had a nigga like me when I was you”. At the time I didn’t get it, but later on, it’s like that old saying “Those who can’t do teach”. I had a teacher who was doing.. he not only showed me the game but showed me the pitfalls and traps in real time because he was still living it as he showed me.

How did yourself and Dankery Harv (AKA Dank, your partner in Frank-N-Dank) get involved in recording “McNasty Filth” from J Dilla & Madlib’s beloved album together as Jaylib, Champion Sounds?

At the time we were in the studio and hanging all the time anyway, so when he decided to do the LP and got a batch of beats from Madlib, we sat in the studio and went thru beats. We vibed to all of them but me and Dank didn’t vibe quite as hard to the “Mcnasty Filth” beat as we did to some of the others, and Dilla was like “ohhh y’all gotta write to this” [laughs]. He put the beat up and went upstairs for the night so we could record. I don’t think he thought we would be done by the a.m., but when he came back with the morning blunt we had our parts done. He actually put us out after that [laughs], because now he had to sit and write his parts.

What’s the current status of The F.D.R. Project featuring yourself, Dank, and Young RJ? Are there any plans for a proper follow-up to F.D.R. from Frank-N-Dank & J Dilla’s 2007 European Vacation CD+DVD set?

At this point we don’t have any plans to do anything new, but you never know.

Who did yourself and Dank recruit to submit production work for Frank-N-Dank’s latest effort, St. Louis? 

It started wwith King Michael Coy (Her, Dr. Dre, Anderson Paak). He did three joints, and we went to guys we worked with before like ToneMason, Lancecape and of course a Dilla joint (“Young Buck 1995”, made in 1995). And for that newness we went to Cazal Organism (son of Mellow Man Ace) and Japanese producer Mitsu The Beats, for that fire.

Do you ever see Frank-N-Dank’s J Dilla-produced stand-alone/non-album singles, such as “Move,” “Pause,” and “Push” ever being packaged together and re-released as a more full-length, widely-available project?

Maybe, but those are all on different labels. We would need a great level of cooperation to make that pop [laughs].

Have you spoken to Madlib since the release of your collaborative album, Madlib Medicine Show #9: Channel 85 Presents NITTYVILLE? Any chance of you guys reuniting for a follow-up? I would personally LOVE to hear you rhymin’ alongside Guilty Simpson again?

Madlib is my dude. We haven’t spoke about that but would I be down. Shit yea! And Guilty is a no brainer. I’m waiting on him to send me a joint for one of his projects now!

What was it like getting to work with more non-traditional Hip-Hop producers, such as DJ Sepalot for Fracture’s Outrageous EP and Dutch producers I.N.T. Kid Sublime, Wouda, Elsas, Y’skid & Kid Sundance on Frank-N-Dank’s The EP?

It was dope. I’m all for a little musical exploration., and all those guys have their own approach to making music and its fun for me to try to meld my style to theirs.

Who are the current artists signed to your imprint, Digipop’s roster and what’s your next planned label release?

We have Serious and my son Joz B (you can hear them on a few of my solo/group projects) – they both should be working as we speak. I gotta send em some beats though.

Aside from what we’ve already discussed thus far, do you have any additional high-profile collaborations, all-star team-ups, long-vaulted gems, etc. that have yet to be released unto the terribly unsuspecting masses?

We have a few things coming in 2020. And when I say we I mean the whole fam. I’ll be playing more of an executive role but bars a cometh as well as some new beats. Maybe a beat album. Stay tuned.

***

St. Louis by Frank N Dank is out now. Follow Frank Nitt on Twitter and Instagram.

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.

Interview: SadhuGold

Heads over a certain age will have noticed right away that the latest album from producer SadhuGold, The Gold Room, is themed around The Shining. We caught up with him to talk about the inspiration behind that, his work with Ohbliv on his other new album, The Ra(w) Material, and more.

You’ve described your music as “the soundtrack to the subconscious of the space-time continuum”. Break that down for us. 

If reality had a working mind, as we know it, then my music would be the music that gets stuck in its head, that it listens to calm itself down, or that it tells its friends about.

The Gold Room is themed around one of the most iconic movies of all time, The Shining. Can you elaborate on the concept and why the film inspired you? 

The film inspired me because it’s kind of isolated in what feels like a snow globe in a forgotten pocket of reality. The gold room specifically was such an abstraction from just simple isolation into a self-lead descent of madness. As dark as that may seem, it’s extremely artistic to me, a feeling I’ve always wanted to replicate. Look at The Gold Room as a sonic prequel, the first party where something went wrong.

You also just dropped The Ra(W) Materials with Ohbliv, as Czardust. Considering you are both producers, how was the album put together, as in who did what? 

The Album was put together mostly by Ohbliv making chops/loops and sending them to me. I would then work with them for a few days to kind of rework them into what was heard on the final product. Kind of akin to alchemy in the sense of working with raw materials and putting them through the process of making gold.

The Ra(W) Materials has you emceeing on several tracks. What made you choose this album to step out from behind the board a lot more?

All of that music is older than it seems. I was rapping well before I took up producing full time, so I was more or less getting out stuff that the world should have been heard.

Will we get to hear more of you on the mic on future projects? 

Only if I get to make it into a cartoon, like the Gorillaz.

You’ve worked with a varied group of emcees, from straight-up street rappers like Westside Gunn, to more abstract artists like Mach-Hommy, and stream-of-consciousness lyricists like Your Old Droog. Do you tend to make different kinds of beats for specific artists in mind, or just provide them with beats to choose from?

I definitely try to hit the mark as far as style matching goes. I actually have a bad habit of making beats to be rapped on instead of just making beats, but that may be because I’m an MC at heart, who knows.

I’ve heard DJ Muggs talk about how sometimes an artist will pick a beat he’d had never envisioned them on, and he’s always pleasantly surprised. Is that something you find?

Not often, most rappers are predictable. But when that does happen, it hits way differently, really resonates on a deeper level. Estee Nack did that to me. Sent son a batch, and the first beat he picked was the last one I expected (“EL BLABLAZO” on our joint album SURFINGONGOLD.WAV). And not only that, but I had never imagined that anyone would have thought to use that style on a beat like that. But now I can’t imagine any other style working any better, or at all for that matter.

Who’d be on your ultimate bucket list of people to produce for?

MF DOOM, Yasiin, Ghostface, Cappadonna, Roc Marci, Black Thought, Homeboy Sandman, and fucking Alchemist man, that nigga can RAP, ok?

What’s next in the pipeline from you?

Deez nuts. Lol just kidding. Me and Nature Sounds are going to be releasing my favorite beat tape I ever made, its called Golden Joe. And in the mean time I may be dropping small collabs here and there, I need to stop surprise releasing lol.

Lastly, returning to The Shining, will you be checking the new Doctor Sleep movie?

Yea I’m gonna for sure check it out. I was afraid of it being weird and bad, but I actually intentionally watch bad movies, I find them highly entertaining lol. So if it sucks, I get a laugh, if it’s fire I’ll pay to see it again.

***

The Gold Room is out now on Nature Sounds. Get it here. The Ra(W) Materials is also out now – purchase from Fat Beats. Follow SadhuGold on Twitter and Instagram. Interview by Grown Up Rap Editor Ben Pedroche.

Interview: Chris Schwartz

As the co-founder of Ruffhouse Records, Chris Schwartz has sold millions of units working with many of the biggest hip-hop artists of the 90s, including Lauryn Hill, Cypress Hill and countless more. His recently-released memoir, Ruffhouse: From the Streets of Philly to the Top of the 90s Hip Hop Charts, lifts the lid on the inner workings of the music business, alongside Chris’ personal stories of working with everyone from Schoolly D and Steady B to Nas and Wyclef Jean. We caught up with him to find out more. 

You’ve launched a lot of artists from your hometown of Philly: Schoolly D, giving a young Questlove help early in his career, and later Beanie Sigel. Has it always been important to you to make sure you gave local artists a platform?

I did an interview with Ebro on Hot 97 in NYC and he pointed out something very interesting. He said Philly “incubates” its artists. I thought about that for a minute and the truth is “historically”, in Philly, when it comes to R&B,  doo-wop, jazz, soul and hip-hop, there is definitely something in the fabric, a kind of incubation that brings the best of an artist into the public eye. The only artists from Philly between 1986 and 2004 where Schoolly D, Maja Figgas. Every other artist out of the 40 plus were from other cities and this is not because we went looking for them, it was more so because of the success of Schoolly everybody was coming to us. In the new 2019 Ruffnation, the hip-hop scene in Philly has evolved to a point to where we do not need to look very far, and on top of that I absolutely do feel a loyalty to Philly and the city has been good to us on many levels.

I’d like to talk more about Schoolly D. He’s always seemed like a mysterious enigma to me, and I loved the bit in the book about how your first meeting had you knocking on the door of his mother’s house, Schoolly answering in a towel and leaving you out in the cold until he’d finished his shower! I get the sense that story nicely sums up what he was like to work with?

No, actually he was cool as shit! The thing with him was when I met him, I was still fairly new to the game and he was kind of quite and reserved. But the truth is, he is a very animated guy  funny and fun to be around. After I started Ruffhouse, he was off touring, doing movie soundtracks for King of New York and Bad Lieutenant, etc. and other projects like the  Aqua Teen Hunger Force. We rarely saw each other for a very long time (4-5 years) and our wives had met and became friends and they would come over to go swimming with his son. They ended up buying the house next door to me, our daughters were born the same year, grew up together and graduated high school together so it has been really fabulous. Now I am doing Schoolly’s new album “That N#gg#’s Crazy!” and it was produced in analog using all 1980’s production techniques. I am very proud of it and I will say anybody who liked the first record two records (Schoolly D and Saturday Night! – The Album) will love this record because it is the BEST ALBUM he has made since!

Something I noticed looking at the incredible number of artists you worked with is how many of them later suffered tragedy and heartache: Chris Kelly dying young from a drug overdose, the drama before and surrounding Tim Dog’s death, Beanie Sigel going to prison just after This Time came out, the fate of Steady B and Cool C. It feels like a lot of these artists suffered from how shitty the music business is, and you talk a lot in the book about how cut-throat and unscrupulous it is. It must have been sad on a personal level to see what became of these people? 

It absolutely was sad on so many levels. I can tell you this: signing to a record label, the costs above and beyond the recording advance (which has nothing to do with a labels’ commitment) during the era of physical product was immense and there was sometimes where you just had to cut bait but it is a human endeavor and in human affairs, you must constantly deal with awkward, sad, and sometimes tragic narratives. But we try our best.

The Steady B and Cool C story is a particularly tragic one. What are your thoughts on what happened?

I think they did something incredibly stupid and, what can I say, the “pull of the bling” was the reason. I think they thought they were doing something one time and probably thought they could do it, who knows. It was not a very smart thing to do and I was actually shocked.

You’ve also worked with another artist who is something of a mystery in the same vein as Schoolly D; Kool Keith. I know the release of Black Elvis/Lost In Space wasn’t exactly a smooth process, but in general what was it like working with someone like Keith?

Kool Keith, as you prob saw me tweeting recently, is the unsung creative genius innovator of hip-hop. I had tried to do the Dr Octogan record but I could not really enlist Sony’s support and I was convinced it would be the same audience as the kids who bought Cypress Hill. The Black Elvis/Lost In Space album was basically me wanting to be in business with Keith. Keith had the kid who managed him who, for lack of a better way for me to describe, just rubbed everybody the wrong way. He was a younger kid and he just had this very abrasive attitude and I am not sure why he felt he needed to go this route in his dealings with us at Ruffhouse because we were really laid back but it did cause some issues and the other issue as I recall was centered around label copy, but I could be wrong. I am also going to venture a guess in saying we as a label probably must have overlooked something as well.

Perhaps the most mysterious and reclusive artist of all those you’ve worked with is Lauren Hill. The media has built an image of her as cold, aloof and unreliable. But few seem to know her as deeply as you. As a close friend, what’s the real Lauren Hill like? 

Media is TOTALLY WRONG – SHE IS NOT RACIST. She is the most wonderful, incredibly compassionate woman I have ever met and I will say this: all of that BS was because of something a Howard Stern fan had said. Howard repeated back the comment and for some reason, the words were attributed to her.

I’m hesitant to talk too much about Nas, purely because his story has been told so many times before. Does he feel a little like the one that got away though? It feels like you deserved to play a bigger part in his career than you eventually did.

No. We sold the contract to Columbia. He was brought to them first. They passed but said if you want to shop him to Ruffhouse we would support the signing. We signed him, I gave 5 songs to John Shecter and and Dave Mays from the Source, and told Columbia that Nas was going to blow up and they were going to really support him. So Columbia President Don Ienner was in trouble for allowing us to sign and he was in hot water with Tommy Mottola, so we as a favor to Don Ienner allowed Columbia to buy us out of contract. They thought originally the record would fail and if it did they could just absorb the loss through the pipeline revenues they owed us and if it was successful, then they would get half the revenues. But, since it was going to blow up, then they decide they made a mistake.

Someone I do want to talk about is DJ Muggs. You and he go way back to the early years of Cypress Hill, but Muggs is currently having one of the most creative periods of his career, dropping a lot of excellent independent albums with people like Roc Marciano plus several acclaimed underground emcees (Mach-Hommy, Crimeapple, Eto). Have you checked much of this recent output?

Yes. Roc Marciano, and also let’s not forget that Cypress Hill’s Black Monday is one of the greatest Cypress Hill records ever. I play it in my car NON stop!

I know there are plans to re-establish Ruffhouse. Considering how different the landscape of the music industry is compared to the 90s, have you had to adjust much or even re-learn what it’s like to run a label in the digital and streaming era?

Ruffnation is the label even though I own the name. It is a completely different landscape and I am dong an unscripted episodic TV  show, “Occupational – Follow” which is a way I am looking to establish a market for these artist.

Lastly, as someone who has experienced the industry from many different angles, what are your thoughts on the Universal fire, the cover-up and the way artists have responded?

I am not so sure it was a cover-up, but rather something they chose not to advertise [laughs].

***

Ruffhouse: From the Streets of Philly to the Top of the 90s Hip Hop Charts is out now. Purchase here. Follow Chris Schwartz  on Twitter. Interview by Grown Up Rap Editor Ben Pedroche.

Classic Rap Demos

Words by John Morrison.

In the years since the emergence of the internet, the means by which music is produced, administered and distributed has been radically altered. Not only did the introduction of peer-to-peer file sharing, streaming and social media change the way music found its way to listeners, these new technologies have also changed the way artists would gain the attention of labels.

Today, aspiring artists have the tools to connect with listeners and build their own autonomous fan bases, with or without major record labels. Years ago, this was not the case. During the Golden Era of Rap, a relationship with a major label was almost mandatory if a budding artist wanted to secure consistent radio play and make an impression on millions of potential fans. For many artists, recording and shopping a demo tape was the first step toward securing that relationship.

Whether recorded in professional studios or in grandma’s basement, on Tascam 4tracks, ancient reel-to-reels or Ampex DATs, a tight demo tape was often times the key to an artist getting on and being heard. Mostly unheard in their own era, a wealth of homemade demos from future rap greats have now found a home on YouTube. John Morrison breaks down a few of the best and most significant.

1. Biggie Smalls – Unsigned Hype Demo: Recorded in the basement of his friend DJ Hitman 50 Grand, future GOAT Christopher Wallace’s first demo tape is a brilliant look at a rough but gifted young MC. Biggie shows off his trademark polysyllabic flow while 50 Grand cuts up classics like The Emotions’ “Blind Alley” break. The tape was so good, it won a feature in The Source Magazine’s coveted Unsigned Hype in March 1992.

2. Organized Konfusion Demo: When Queens New York duo Organized Konfusion first arrived on the scene under the name Simply II Positive MCs, it was clear that Prince Po and Pharoahe Monch were already standing at the vanguard of the science of rhyming. Forward-thinking and fully developed, a few songs on this demo made it to O.K’s mind-bending eponymous debut album. “Prisoners Of War” is a stark, dramatic barrage of words delivered at rapid fire clip, while “Mind Over Matter” is intense, funky and avant-garde.

3. S.B.I. (Timbaland & Pharrell Demo): A true gem of a demo that’s been floating around for the past few years, S.B.I. (Surrounded By Idiots) is the teenage rap crew made up of future super-producers Pharrell Williams, Timbaland and his partner in rhyme, Magoo. Colorful, creative and full of soulful, jazzy samples, the S.B.I. demo tape is deeply indebted to the lighthearted Black Bohemia that A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul was mining during this era. Despite being noticeably derivative of the Native Tongues aesthetic, the S.B.I. demo is full of some refreshingly forward-thinking moments. “Skull Caps & Stripe Shirts” is a fun, uptempo “Human Nature” flip, while the quirky, skating vocal sample and dramatic piano stabs of “Uh Uh Uh”  are like looking into a magic 8-ball that reveals the production steez that Timbaland would use to completely transform the musical landscape in the not-so distant future.

4. DJ Quik – Red Tape/Underground Tape: While there is some discrepancy around the true-title of this tape unloaded by the Underground Dope YouTube page in 2015, this cassette demo of Los Angeles legend DJ Quik is one of the best of its kind available. Expertly produced and featuring young Quik’s x-rated lyrics and high-pitched delivery, this demo contains many West Coast classics like “Underground Terror” and “Born And Raised In Compton.”

5. Nas – Pre-illmatic Demo: By the time his landmark debut Illmatic was released, Nas had already made noise with show-stealing appearances on “Live At The Barbeque”, “Back To The Grill Again” and pre-Illmatic singles like “Halftime”. Before his debut would change the course of rap music, the young Queensbridge MC found himself in the studio crafting demos that showcase Nas as a gifted, blossoming wordsmith. In recent years, a treasure chest of Nas’ pre-illmatic demos have been archived on YouTube. The best of these demos include a rough and dreamy demo version of “It Ain’t Hard To Tell” entitled “Nas Will Prevail”.

Bonus Beats:

1. Jay-Z – Pre-Reasonable Doubt Demo

2. Wu-Tang Clan Demo Tape 1992

3. Juggaknots – Baby Pictures 1989-1993

4. T.I. – T.I.P. Demo

5. Artifacts – 4Track Demo

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John Morrison is a Philadelphia based DJ, producer, and music journalist (Red Bull Music Academy, Jazz Right Now, Bandcamp Daily etc.) His debut instrumental Hip Hop album Southwest Psychedelphia is a psychedelic trip through a day in the life in his Southwest Philadelphia neighborhood, and available now on Deadverse Recordings. Follow John on Twitter and Instagram.

Playlist: Best New Music – August 2019

Another month, another stellar set of new releases, proving once again that 2019 has been pretty damn amazing for decent hip-hop. August’s playlist includes the return of Little Brother, new product from DJ Muggs & Mach-Hommy, and dope new tracks from Blu, Kev Brown, Inspectah Deck, Vic Spencer, Pete Rock & Skyzoo, Chali 2na, Rapsody and more.

Listen to the playlist below, and then go support the artists with a purchase from wherever you buy your music. Check us on Spotify for more curated playlists.

25 Years of Fat Beats: Behind the Scenes

In the final part of our series celebrating 25 years of Fat Beats, we take a look behind the scenes by talking with some of the key figures in the business about how the company has evolved as a chain of physical stores, online, and as a distribution arm that has proven to be a vital outlet for independent hip-hop. Read below, and if you missed them, read our other Fat Beats anniversary articles here: DJ Eclipse interview, Ill Bill, Q-Unique and J57 interview.

Joseph “DJ Jab” Abajian: Fat Beats Owner/Founder

Firstly, congratulations on 25 years! Could you ever have imagined a quarter of a century ago that what you created would endure for so long and have such an impact on hip-hop?

Thank you. When I first opened I didn’t know what to expect but after the first six months I felt I had something special and was planning on major expansions. It all started in 1996 and we were on our way to blow up until I had a life changing experience in 2001 and had a change of course in life. I know we had and continue to have a big impact in the music industry and the Hip-Hop culture. I attest today’s independent rap music scene to a lot of work Fat Beats Distribution has done. We’ve paved the way for artist to do different types of deals for their art/product and showed a whole industry of independent artist how to be independent.

It felt like Fat Beats was always destined to be more than just a record shop. Was the New York store becoming a cultural hub for Hip-Hop something you envisioned from the start and therefore nurtured, or did it happen more organically?

The store becoming a Hip-Hop hub happened organically and was planned but not on purpose. My initial plan was to open a store for deejay’s, graph writers, B-boys and emcees. The logo and motto, “The Last Stop for Hip Hop” was specifically designed for the Hip-Hop nation. But, the first location in the East village attracted everyone that would go to the village which included every other alternative type of lifestyle to your everyday average 9 to 5 worker. In 1994 the commercial world started hearing about Hip-Hop a whole lot more than prior years but there was still a lot of fear of the culture from non-participants. Fat Beats was a place where these people can come and experience Hip-Hop without actually being part of the culture or doing any of the elements.

Last year saw Fat Beats return to physical retail with the reopening of a store in L.A. It’s an incredible achievement considering the fate of most record shops. What was behind the decision to take a dive back into having an actual store?

Initially we were planning on opening a small office in L.A., because we felt we were losing out on meetings and deals because a lot of people didn’t want to take the drive to Canoga Park where our office is due to LA traffic. One of my former employees who ran the website wanted to come back and open a Fat Beats boutique. We thought this would work with the idea of an LA office. Since Fat Beats Dot Com had it’s own space we figured it would make sense to put that operation in the new store location because I wasn’t convinced that there would be enough foot traffic to cover the expenses of a retail operation. Plus most of the employees do not live in the valley and have to deal with the excess traffic in LA. This is another location they can work out off. So far it has paid off. Our online business saw an increase, we got some foot traffic and have been able to throw events again and we’ve had dozen’s of meeting there.

If you had to pick your absolute best moment from the last 25 years, what would that be?

I’d have to say the closing of the initial retails stores in NY & LA. We had week long celebrations and so many artist and fans came through during that week. It was like seeing every artist we impacted come back to pay homage and it was cool hearing what they had to say about Fat Beats and how they felt from artist and fans. It took a huge weight off my shoulder and allowed me to concentrate on what was actually making money in the company. The distribution center and website took off after the stores closed and we made big moves moving out west.

Bert Haine: E-Commerce & Retail Manager

Fat Beats moving from a bricks and mortar operation to a mostly online one a few years back was inevitable considering how much the industry has changed since the first store opened 25 years ago. Tell me how the company went about building an online presence.


When our stores closed, we doubled down on our online efforts as we knew that would be the central way we could still directly interact with our customers. From there we took advantage of our already well-known brand and artist connections and utilized our position as a vinyl distributor to develop direct exclusives and other limited-edition releases and grow our following and online business.


We’ve talked in our other recent Fat Beats interviews about how the physical stores had an aesthetic quality that went beyond the music. How do you capture a sense of that in an online store? Obviously, you want a website that’s professional and works well, but at the same time you still need something authentically hip-hop, right?

To a certain extent we still try to keep things authentically Hip-Hop, obviously with respect to many of the releases and in-stores we focus on, but overall we keep our goals the same as any other business that cares about its customers; we constantly aim to improve user experience, keep our customers educated to all the new music available and strive to offer the best possible human customer service, which I think makes us stand out from other big box chains and web-stores like Amazon etc.

We sell a wide variety of records in our store and our website now that, ten years ago, would be pretty unexpected from a business like Fat Beats, but trends have changed and streaming has broadened musical tastes dramatically and our aim now is simply to offer great music on physical format, namely vinyl, with of course a deep understanding, love and focus on Hip-Hop.

The “vinyl resurgence” has been driven a lot by re-issue packages of classic records and limited edition runs of new music, which sell well as collector’s items. Presumably these are the types of products that bring in the most revenue these days? 


Definitely, catalog releases and new exclusive limited edition runs of records drive much of the revenue but, whenever there is a hotly anticipated record, an LP like Freddie Gibbs & Madlib’s Bandana, or the first instrumental solo work by Daringer (Griselda Records’ go-to producer) we’ll do really well as has always been the case. On the whole there has just been a broadening of the base of people that consistently buy and listen to records over the last ten years, which has helped us gain back some of the ground we lost after DJs stopped really needing to buy records due to all of the controller/interface innovations.


What records are some of Fat Beats absolute top-sellers online since the e-commerce site opened?

I don’t have data over the lifetime of the business to know what have been some of our best sellers since we opened for business online way back in 2001, but I know when records like Madvillainy and Donuts dropped we were selling thousands of copies from the online store. But as of the last decade a few that have really sold above and beyond expectations have been; Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly, Rev Shines & Conway’s recent exclusive 12”, JPEGMAFIA’s Veteran, and Blu & Exile’s classic, Below The Heavens.

Joe Dent: General Manager at Fat Beats Distribution

Outside of the physical stores and online retail, Fat Beats’ distribution arm has been hugely influential to the hip-hop scene over the last couple of decades. Tell me about how the service has evolved over the years.

Oddly enough, distribution is the largest division of our business and may be the one that is the least known to the average Fat Beats customer. Over the last decade we’ve seen major changes in the industry at large (the vinyl “resurgence” you often hear about) but as a company that has catered to the vinyl consumer since day one, we’ve strived to remain a go-to distribution option as more and more competitors have realized the viability of the format. In that sense, our evolution is ongoing.

By moving our headquarters from New York to Los Angeles five years ago, we’ve positioned ourselves in a great location not only by working with some of our favorite artists on a more face to face basis, but also within the vinyl manufacturing community in having several major pressing plants within 30 miles of our facility (right next door, in the case of Rainbo Records). Above all else, our goal is to be an extremely artist-friendly business in an industry that too often isn’t.

Of the many records Fat Beats has distributed, which are some of the ones you are especially proud of?

For me personally, the projects I recall most vividly are due to the people that were involved and the packaging or timeline challenges that may have been overcome in bringing them to life. That includes not only the artists or labels behind the releases themselves, but the pressing plants and printers as well.

Blu & Exile’s Give Me My Flowers While I Can Still Smell Them, the box set reissue of Black Moon’s Enta Da Stage, and most recently Masta Ace & Marco Polo’s A Breukelen Story are some of my favorites.


You offer pretty much a full service to get an artist’s music created, marketed and available. That said, has the relative ease at which anyone can now get their records/tapes/cds manufactured and then self-distributed via their own site, or Bandcamp, made distribution less of a viable business?


Generally speaking, it hasn’t. But the distribution model is not a one size fits all approach and there are plenty of artists who are successfully selling exclusive releases in their own webstores and are satisfied with that. As a company born out of brick and mortar retail, we still wholeheartedly believe in the value of the independent record store on a worldwide basis in addition to various exclusive projects. And because in many cases we are absorbing the roles of a traditional record label, manager, designer, and PR team in additional to simply packing and shipping, we feel our value will always be there if we are willing to adapt to an artist’s specific needs.


Speaking of Bandcamp, a couple of months ago they started offering manufacture and fulfillment to artists. Is this something you see Fat Beats moving into?



Pressing, wholesale distribution and D2C fulfillment are among the core services we currently offer to our partners. But because we are a true independent distributor, we are focused on offering personalized attention to our growing artist and label roster rather than an open-door crowd funded service. But we’ll always have our ear to the ground as times change.

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Follow Fat Beats on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Interview by Grown Up Rap Editor Ben Pedroche.