Category: Kool Keith

Mello Music Group producer, L’Orange, has long been a jewel in the label’s crown thanks to a string of successful collaborations, including albums with Kool Keith, Stik Figa, Mr Lif and perhaps most notably with Solemn Brigham, as the duo, Marlowe. He is about to extend that run with a new album alongside fellow Mello Music Group artist, Namir Blade. He recently spoke with Gingerslim about those collaborations, as well as working with concepts, his use of samples and a whole lot more.

How you doing, man?

I’m tired [laughs] and I’m stressed cos I’m doing a lot of shit right now. I’m moving across the country so it’s just a lot of shit to deal with. We bought a house earlier this month, so we’ve been getting it ready and then getting ready to move back to North Carolina.

Right, okay and what’s the reason behind the move? Is it just going back to your roots, so to speak?

Yeah, kinda. My wife is from the South, I’m from North Carolina and we both miss the South culturally, you know? I don’t know how much you know about The States and how much the culture switches from place to place, but yeah, we just kinda miss the people and so we want that change. And you know, I’m up in Seattle right now, up in the Northwest, and it’s a beautiful city but I don’t know anyone here. I mean I don’t know anyone there either, but if I’m going to live in one place, I’d rather it be my home turf.

Yeah that makes sense. I’ve actually just moved myself, from England over to Ireland, so I’m currently in the middle of nowhere. I’ve moved from a city – I’ve always been a city boy – and it’s just fields and mountains as far as I can see in every direction; it’s amazing. I highly recommend it.

I’ve always had a thing with small towns, they make me really anxious. I do prefer cities, but it’s not just that, you know if you’re in a big city and you wanna wear a chicken suit with a McDonald’s hat, while walking round the neighbourhood, you could do that and you may never see any of those people ever again [laughs]. So small towns have this effect that make me very anxious, everyone’s acting like they’re going to see those same people the next day. That just reminds me of family and I’m not interested in having family with like a thousand people, that just sounds so stressful [laughs].

[laughs] I can understand that.

Being by yourself in the country though, I can get down with that.

Well yeah cos I could walk around in a chicken suit and not see anyone, so it’s kinda like the exact opposite but with the same result.

[laughs] Okay yeah, you’ve gone far off in the other direction.

I’m more likely to see cows than I am people around here, it’s nice.

Yeah, see I always used to hate that idea, but the older I get the more I like it. I mean I basically do that anyway. The people in my neighbourhood, or in the city, like I don’t know those people so they’re kinda like scenery.

Yeah, totally. First off, I wanted to start with one of the things which first drew me to your music, which was your love of the old samples, which I gather are from 1940’s era radio shows. What was it that first made you decide to work with them? Is that something that interests you outside of music?

Yeah, it definitely does. The origin of that I don’t even really know necessarily. I think it came from when I was in my hometown, I would go to the only record store that had already been picked over, but a lot of the weirder stuff that I liked was still available because no one else really fucked with those kinds of samples. And so I ended up finding a lot of these weird audio cues and samples, and started using those early on. Then I started spending more time with them and I ended up really liking these stories, you know? A lot of what it is, is it’s like watching old movies, because you can suspend judgement. So it’s like if I’m watching a movie or a TV show, there are all sorts of opinions I have on what the characters are doing, what I would do, and even for ridiculous things like what I would do if I was the fucking cinematographer.

[laughs] Yeah like stuff you have no experience of.

Yeah, critiquing it with no experience, like I wouldn’t have done that. But then when you’re listening to these old things, it sort of suspends all that and so it’s sort of joyous for me, because I get to hear these people act and behave in ways that are so irrelevant to the way that I know life, that it all comes to me very pure. So, I really value that highly. And just as an audio format, it kind of amplifies that style of storytelling, because everything is so over the top, so it’s communicated in these very obvious ways. It’s all so silly and it just is the story that they want to tell. If it’s done correctly, and not all of them are, I enjoy a lot of these radio shows that, in my opinion, are not done well [laughs], like they’re very, very silly. But if it’s done well, I really think it’s… I’m going to stop myself, because I used to say I thought this was an undervalued format, but if you’ve seen in like the last 10 years, podcasts have just skyrocketed in popularity and it feels like this little fascination, this little hobby I have, is becoming so much of a shared interest.

I’m a big fan of the literary side, so I read a lot of pulp detective novels and stuff, so I think that’s what first drew me in when I heard The Night Took Us in Like Family, which I felt they added suspense to as well.

The most fun part of that for me though, is that very few of those – well maybe on The Night Took Us in Like Family – but as a greater point, a lot of the stuff I’m sampling is not about what I’m doing with the story. So, I find stuff that’s about educating people on the dangers of like kissing on the second date, and I can work that in so it creates this sort of comedic suspense, which I think probably matches something in my own personality, which is a little askew and maybe a little dark, and that’s why I find a lot of the things very funny.

Yeah, that’s cool, man. Jeremiah Jae is just one of the artists you’ve worked with over the years. How do you go about setting up the collaborations, because some of the names are more established legends like Kool Keith and Mr. Lif, while some are less well-known? Is it something you choose yourself, do people approach you?

It depends on the project. I really think every project has been different like that, so with Jeremiah Jae, I was just a big fan of his, I didn’t know him personally. I went to the label and told them that’s the dude that I really wanted to work with. So, I reached out to him and just said look you don’t know me but would you like to make an album with me? And I was really surprised he said yes. So that album just sort of came naturally like that, so he went from being a complete stranger before we worked on that, to being one of my closest musical companions. Really that guy is like inside my brain when we’re working on albums, unlike anyone else I’ve ever worked with. But with someone like Kool Keith, it was sort of mediated by the label and so Mello Music Group brought the idea of doing an album with him to my doorstep. I was really interested in the opportunity to do that, because it was very unlike anything else I had done; it remains unlike anything else I’ve done. And so I didn’t get to know Kool Keith or anything like that, I’m not chatting with him every other week, you know? So, it was sort of a distant way to make an album. I did get to talk with him throughout the project and sort of work with what he had brought to the table. Then someone like Solemn Brigham from Marlowe, he’s one of my oldest friends, and then Mr. Lif was actually put together by Adult Swim, they approached us with the idea of doing a record together, which I think we both really liked the idea of. So yeah, they all come together in different ways.

Quite a few of those albums have been concept albums, do you find that a more beneficial way of making music, because you’ve got that thematic cohesion running throughout?

For me it’s sort of my natural state of musicianship, as I think with respect to other musicians in the field, I wouldn’t count myself among the most musically advanced and I have never wanted to be really. I have always viewed myself as more of a storyteller and a sort of generally creative person, and so what I can bring to the artistry from my own experience, it helps me to create my own narrative because it makes my process more deliberate. Also, I tend to work better with limitations as well and so being able to structure my own limitations when I’m making an album, helps me differentiate what I would consider good and bad on any given album, because it’s not obvious to me. When I make a beat, I don’t have a sense of ‘oh that was a good one’, or ‘that was a bad one’, and so being able to create a map of what I envision for an album is helpful. But yeah, the stories and narratives do take shape more specifically as it goes, to the point where they have an extreme amount of detail that is not evident in the album, I wouldn’t say. I think some of it, through some sort of osmosis, does get to the audience though.

I’ve had the pleasure of hearing your forthcoming album with Namir Blade, Imaginary Everything,  and in parts it sounds a lot different to the stuff you’ve done in the past, especially tracks like “Murphy’s Law.” Is that something that’s come about because of the artist you’re working with, or was it something you wanted to challenge yourself with anyway?

Kind of the second one into the first one. I had wanted to do some things differently lately and try to take a step in some of the directions that I’ve been interested in musically. So, there’s a song on the record that barely has any drums on and the majority of the album is around 140-150 beats per minute, which is something I hadn’t done a ton of, except maybe on the Marlowe albums. But even that was about 50/50, whereas this one is almost entirely like that. I also wanted to do something that intentionally took a break from the narrative, which was more difficult for me to do. So, I needed an artist that I felt was a strong songwriter and a strong enough voice that I would feel confident making an album without steering the ship in its entirety.

I know you’ve had a lot of difficulty with your hearing over the years and that you also suffer from hyperacusis, but you still seem as prolific as ever so I was wondering how you cope with the impact on your work? Is it something you have to adapt to a lot as things progress?

Well, the hearing loss was progressive throughout my whole life, so I kind of unconsciously created some workarounds to make my process a little easier for me. But losing all the hearing in my right ear suddenly, going from maybe 65-70% to zero, yeah there were some mechanic differences. I don’t mix my albums anymore and I haven’t for some time; the last album I mixed was The Night Took Us in Like Family. But beyond that, actually making music, the process of making has hardly changed at all. The only time if affects it is when I put in headphones and I hear things that I didn’t hear before. I have to be a little more involved with the mixing, because I need people I can trust around me to make sure I’m not missing something obvious, because my ears are not as strong as they used to be. But like I alluded to earlier, if I was a traditional musician I think it may have hit me harder, but losing an ear’s worth of hearing doesn’t impact me creatively. After my brain recovered from the sensations, I was able to work around it creatively.

That’s good to hear, man. I understand that Mello Music Group have been very supportive of you in that regard. They’ve always struck me as a label who seem concerned with the personal relationships with their artists; would you say that’s a fair statement?

Oh yeah absolutely.

I think I read in an interview from a few years back, that they worked on the promo side of things when you were having difficulties, so you weren’t having to constantly work on the music.

I mean yeah, they were a tremendous support to me throughout. I think what you might be referring to is the last surgery I had before I completely lost my hearing.

Ah right yeah, this would have been about five years ago, I think.

Yeah, I handed in the album from mixing to go into mastering the night before my surgery, so they went in to doing promo within six weeks of me handing that in, so I was still recovering. So, they were extremely supportive, but I think more so than that was their willingness to be patient with me. Because my productivity really slowed down for those three years. I was kind of on pace to be doing multiple albums a year and trying to be ambitious with my collaborations, but if you look at those years, I really slowed down quite a bit and I just couldn’t maintain my workflow while I was going through all of those surgeries. There were three in four years and so during all of those it was a pretty rough time, and Mello was very supportive and patient with that. So that was very kind.

Yeah, that is kind. Now, I’m always interested in the early days of an artist’s life; was music a big part of your childhood? Did you come from a very musical household?

No not particularly… well music was a big part of my life, but I didn’t come from a musical house. It’s interesting you ask that, because I think what I’ve been telling you about how I view musicianship, very much ties into that. My mom is a writer, creative writing, and my dad was a poet growing up and a chair of creative writing at this college. So, I grew up with a lot of encouragement to write, a lot of poetry and a lot of fiction, and my mom also painted, all this stuff. And when I was very young, it was just my mom and I, and she would take me to her MFA classes and so I was just exposed to very creative people. Then I think I took way more interest in music than anyone anticipated; maybe looking back it may have been a way for me to carve out my own niche in the family, because I was the one who was always recording the radio with my tape recorder and making these little bootleg mixtapes when I was five or six. And I also took a really early interest in jazz, but I honestly couldn’t tell you why. It was just combing through stations when I was a kid, I just heard that and wanted more of it. So yeah, I appreciate that question.

I had the other experience, because I came from a family of artists and so I was convinced I was going to become an artist myself. But then when I came to do my first art exam, I realised I was terrible [laughs]. But then I ended up writing and so it is nice to find your own path.

Well, there you go [laughs], I think that’s kind of where I was too. I was a creative writing major in college and it was an emphasis on poetry, so with my dad having that sort of pedigree and my mom too, it did illuminate how good a writer I actually was, which is to say middling [laughs].

[Laughs] And so was it always going to be hip-hop for you, when you started making your own music? Did you dabble in anything else? You mentioned the jazz interest…

No, there were a lot of genres early on. I started playing bass, that was the first instrument that I was playing and that was when I was, I think, 12. I was learning a bunch of jazz riffs, learning a bunch of hip-hop riffs. The Digable Planets were my favourite hip-hop group in the entire world and so I was learning pretty much all of their songs, because the bass was so nice, so that’s what I really wanted to do. But I ended up playing with a lot of different people, because when you’re a bassist you get asked to do a lot of different things, and so I was in all sorts of genres. I think ironically, everything but jazz. I don’t think I was ever good enough at bass to play with a proper jazz band. A lot of experimental jam bands, some rock stuff, alt stuff, some live hip-hop groups, like all sorts of stuff. I probably started making beats when I was 15 and it just sort of carried on from there in the background while I was doing all this other stuff. Because I never really considered myself a musician, so I was running a recording studio and making beats, playing drums and guitar, in a band from time to time. And I really got pushed into production from all the other stuff because I discovered I really didn’t enjoy collaborating with other musicians [laughs] and the main reason for that I think is because what I bring to the table is something that I’m not going to be able to explain very easily. So I think I can create a little world where there is some value but it’s going to be really hard to explain to a John Doe, why we need to end the song halfway through the measure. I just want to pursue my instincts and I don’t want to have to have reasons for that.

Well yeah, that makes total sense.

I was working with an engineer on a song from Bushido, he was a mixing engineer I’d never worked with before, and he sent me the version back and the ending faded out, there was a nice 20 second fadeout. So, I said, “You faded that out, why did you do that?”, and he goes, “Oh it didn’t have an ending,” and I’m like, “No it did…” So he says, “The beat just ends though, kinda randomly,” and I’m like, “Yeah that’s how I end songs from time to time and this is one of them.” [laughs]

[Laughs] Just quickly going back to the collaborations, is there anyone left on your wish list who you want to work with, any dream collaborations?

Oh of course but I like to imagine that my next dream collaboration is someone I haven’t considered, or met yet. That’s how it was with Namir, I mean really it was an absolute pleasure to work with him. He’s on the opposite end of the spectrum because his musicianship is just incredible and he really finds angles for songwriting that wouldn’t occur to me, so it was really nice to work with someone like that. But I didn’t know Namir prior to a couple of years ago and I wouldn’t have thought that he and I would end up doing something together, and that’s almost kind of true of Solemn too. I never really thought that Solemn and I would work together again. And so yeah, maybe five years if you had asked me this question, I would have reeled a bunch of my favourite rappers from when I was a kid, that I was listening to at the time, but the most rewarding pieces of music I’ve contributed to or that I’ve had a very personal attachment to the origins of, like with Jeremiah Jae where you see something like that blossom into something that I’m really proud of. And the same with the Marlowe albums, you know? I’m extremely humbled and somewhat surprised by how many people continue to listen to the Marlowe records [laughs] – we didn’t see that coming.

Yeah, I remember they got a lot of love on BBC 6 Music over here, which was nice to see.

Yeah, that was pretty wild.

Okay so, just one more from me. You don’t strike me as the sort of artist who’s prone to resting, so what’s next for you after Imaginary Everything?

Oh yeah, I’m still working. I’m working right now. I would really like to get another record out this year. I’m doing a lot better, I’m feeling good and I feel like I have a lot that I can be contributing right now because I want to go in a lot of different directions musically, and so I’ll probably pursue some wild concept or something ambitious. Then I’ll finish it, listen to it and realise I just made the same thing again [laughs] but yeah hopefully it will be good and the people who like my music will like this too. Then I think Marlowe 3 is an inevitable thing that Solemn and I will be working on this year, especially because I’ll be moving back to North Carolina.

Well, that’s very good to hear, man. Now that’s it from me but thank you very much for talking with me, that was a really nice conversation, so yeah good to connect.

Yeah, I appreciate it, man.

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Imaginary Everything by L’Orange and Namir Blade is out May 7 on Mello Music Group – pre-order it here. Follow L’Orange on Twitter and Instagram. 

Gingerslim has been a hip-hop fan since 1994 and has written for various blogs and websites since around 2006. During that time he has contributed to The Wire, style43, Think Zebra, Headsknow, Front Magazine and more. His main interests in rap are UK hip-hop and the underground movement in America, with a focus on Rhymesayers Entertainment and the once mighty Def Jux label. He lives in Bristol and has a beard. All other details are sketchy at best. Read his own hip-hop blog and follow him here.