Metallungies Hollers @ DJ Babu, Interview.

I chopped it up with DJ Babu of Dilated Peoples recently about his new album Duck Season 3. Dude was forthcoming and humble. Much respect to Babu!

ML: You were in town for CMJ, right?

Babu: Yeah, I was there all last week.

ML: I meant to see you at the Santo’s for the Meet n Greet thing. I missed you at Fat Beats also.

Babu: It’s all good. Do you want me to be honest with you? CMJ was great, but there was like four things going on every afternoon or evening. But I am a bit of an old cat these days. Like I said, ‘I’m going to these four things tonight’ and I was lucky if I made it to one and a half of them. The Santo’s thing was really dope though, that was one of my favorite things of the whole week.

ML: Album’s great, did you produce the whole album?

Babu: I did produce the whole album. I’m glad you liked it, thanks a lot.

ML: How many beats did you make for the whole album?

Babu: Including the eighteen that are on there, songwise I think I have about twenty five or twenty six. There were a bunch that didn’t make the album which is gonna be part of this Duck Season 3.5 I’m gonna be releasing top of the new year. As far as beats, I make beats all the time. I always like to have a big arsenal of beats to always show people. I’m always ready to bang on the spot if someone wants to get together and startfrom scratch, but where I am in the production game, it’s like more the merrier as far as the ammo I have and the range of people that I want to mess with. A lot of my free time is spent on just stacking new beats whenever I can whenever I’m not DJing or on the road or even while I’m on the road, I’m always just chopping up samples and just putting beats away.

ML: Why did you format it like a mixtape?

Babu: I knew for this third one, I wanted to make a full evolution. I felt as if my beats were at a different point, my production, my engineering. Everything was just at a way higher level and I knew I wanted to take the challenge upon myself to do the whole thing production-wise. The new one really is my production album disguised as a mixtape and I still do that to continue the vibe of the series. And I can never turn my back on my DJing foundations. For that reason alone, I still love presenting my album like that. I’m definitely gonna make the album available on vinyl. It’ll be separated for a lot of the DJs that do the mp3 thing and the leaks and the record pools. I’ll have instrumentals and unmixed versions definitely out there, because I’d love the for DJs to play them also. But yeah, that’s kind of the reason I stuck to that format.

ML: Probably my favorite song on the album was the A.G. song. How’d you hook up with him?

Babu: I’ve known A.G. for years. Put it on the record, I’m a huge D.I.T.C. fan. Show & A.G.’s Runaway Slave is like one of my top five albums of all time. A few years ago with Dilated, we were able to play at a Fat Beats anniversary in Amsterdam. We were lucky enough to be sharing the bill with A.G. and rest in peace, Big L and ever since then we’ve kind of kept in touch. I luckily caught him in LA, he was out doing a show. We went to the Dilated studio. He’s such a raw MC and he really comes from that school of like – he’s gonna do his job. A lot of times, MCs these days, they’re very much like – especially if they’re paying you to work – they’re expecting a hook and a chorus and a song idea, everything’s built in. He’s one of those MC’s that just takes pride in doing everything themselves. He made it real easy for me. We talked about the idea, I played him three or four beats and it all just happened like in a half an hour. Before I knew it, he was in the booth spittin’ fire again. But, that was a dream come true, man. Like I said, Andre the Giant is just so raw to me. I’m glad you liked that song, that’s a sleeper on the album, I love that one.

ML: The Amsterdam show you were talking about, is that the one that they made into an album? Like Live from Amsterdam?

Babu: Yeah, I believe so, because it was Big L’s last show. It was literally months before he passed away. That was a real blessing to physically run into Big L before he actually passed, because I was huge fan of him from early on, just hearing him on Show & A.G. records and D.I.T.C. records. It was an incredible time. Amsterdam alone was great, but that show was just us and Roc Raida and a bunch of the homies. That was a real early time for Dilated too, so for us to meet someone like Big L and A.G., it was very humbling. But it was great, because they were really down to earth motherfuckers who actually heard our music and were into us too. It’s really dope to meet your idols and find out they’re fans of your shit. There’s nothing better.

ML: I have to ask you about Big L. What kind of person was he?

Babu: To be honest with you, it was really hard to break the ice with him. He wasn’t as outgoing, as friendly as A.G. was and on top of that, I was a little disappointed to find out that he wasn’t much of a bud-smoker. I really broke the ice with A.G. really easily, because we were up there handling the same type of business. Over that trip, I must have gotten much tighter with A.G.  Big L was very cool and very friendly, but I didn’t really ever get to really one-on-one break the ice with him. I got enough time to tell him how much of a fan I was and we got some pictures or whatever. But I have to really be honest, that’s why A.G. is on my record ten years later, because we hit it off like long lost cousins or some shit. Every time I see  A.G. now it’s like ‘Yo! It’s been too long since the last time.” But I wish there was more time.  I would’ve loved to have met Big L one more time to see if he remembered me from Amsterdam and maybe actually got some raps from him. We’ll see in the next life.

ML: Do you have a favorite verse on the whole album?

Babu: That’s a tough one. Lately, I’ve really been into the Doom and Sean P song. Both of their first verses I think are bananas. In a perfect world, I get to be physically in the studio with whoever I’m working with, but due to geography, budgets, etcetera, a lot of times I was grateful to even have technology now and send files to each other and work from coast to coast. That was one of those songs where I sent the track to Doom and he set it off, he left me with like two verses with open spaces. And for a long time I was working really hard to get Madlib, one of my homies. I was trying to get Madlib on there and make it a Madvillain song. But to be honest with you, Madlib raps sometimes because he feels like it, but he’s really all about his music these days, so it was like pulling teeth. I was getting down to the wire and Sean was supposed to be on my album and he had been lagging on getting something done. I was just liked, ‘I’m gonna kill two birds with one stone, I’ve never heard Sean and Doom together, that would be fuckin’ crazy.’  So I kicked it by Sean. I wasn’t even sure if he was a fan of Doom, I assumed he was, but I was like ‘How about doing a song with Doom’ and he was just like through the roof, ‘Oh what! How did you even get a hold of him? Are you sure, you’ve got a hold of him? I’ve been trying to get at that dude for years.’ I was like ‘I’ll send you the track right now.’ He heard it, went through the roof and it’s just incredible how the song came out without us being in the room together. Those two first verses, I could’ve sworn fools were in the room politicking with each other and building before they bounced off each other. Just the way their voices contrast and the way Sean grabbed that vibe from Doom and what he laid. Those two verses just made me crack up. I loved the comedy aspect of those raps.

ML: What’s the secret to making a good compilation album? Because honestly, a lot of the compilation albums I hear today aren’t that good.

Babu: It’s not one thing, but if anything, I think in general you have to able to step up out of your own shoes or step a little farther away from the picture and see the grander scheme as you’re putting it together and it’s something I constantly did as I was making the records. Part of the reason it took so long, I have to stuff on there that’s as old as a year and a half, two years, I have stuff as new as I made that shit a month before I mastered. As I’d complete songs, I really made it a point to sit with them awhile after I mixed them and ride with them in the car and start thinking like ‘OK, I covered that chamber, what am I gonna do?’ In general too, you have to have that attitude and understanding that you can’t make everyone fuckin’ happy. But at the same time, if you can make at least one song that someone can like out of the eighteen, then blessings, ’cause people are so finicky and there so fast-forward about listening to albums right now. It’s a really weird market to try and sell music to, man.

I studied a lot of great records too man, from like Pete Rock Soul Survivor — that one really moved me a lot though. That’s when I was just getting into production and listening to Pete Rock and how he got with so many different rappers and revamped his sound at that time, really really inspired me. Shoot, even like Peanut Butter Wolf, My Uzi Weighs a Ton was a big record that influence me. I don’t know, I’m still a student, I’m still learning man. I’m learning the formula as a I go too, man. There’s a lot of compilation records now, it’s crazy, right?

ML: Too many if you ask me.

Babu: I was definitely worried about it, to be honest with you. When we set our date months ago and then I started seeing ads about who else was coming out at the same time, I got real nervous, to be honest with you. I was just like, ‘Fuck, man. There’s a good chance my shit’s just gonna get lost in the sea of all the stuff coming out.’ A lot of the people are my homies and I know their caliber and what they’re capable of doing. But after seeing the flurry of stuff that came out, getting a lot of the stuff over the last few weeks, going to CMJ and seeing a lot of the guys firsthand and hearing the music more, I feel even more confident about my record. I really just made it a point to make everything sound like a single, no filler.

From doing this though, I’m definitely looking forward to finding a new artist, getting into Likwit Junkies versus myself. I really get to get into it with one person. I think that’s what needs to come back now, because a lot of days the new rapper style is to get five or six different producers and cover your basis and you follow the blueprint and you’re supposed to have a hit record. What I really think it’s about, like get with that one fool and really let him steer the boat and you guys have a meeting of the minds and an honest collab, catch a vibe. What Premo would do with Jeru, what Premo would do with Group Home. Just take somebody and really put your sound out there. And I think that’s coming back, you see it now, you see 9th Wonder gettin’ with fools and like, do a whole Murs album, do a whole Buckshot album. I love that, you really get to see a side of a producer, really explore their sound and get to know him. Producers a lot of the time don’t really have a voice, we just speak through the beats.

I really think it’s that time where producers really gotta take control and don’t run around to these labels so much and and these A&Rs and ‘Please sign a publishing deal for me’. I mean, do that, but don’t be scared to have your own group, don’t be scared to have your own lane, don’t be scared to find some new talent and try to create something yourself instead of always having your hands out begging and being at the mercy of what these labels or big rappers say what’s in or not. We have all this technology now, man, it’s sky’s the limit, man. So do it all.

ML: You said there’s the Duck Season 3.5 coming. Who’s on that?

Babu: That one, like I said, that’s a lot of tracks that didn’t make the album. I’ve got 40 Glocc, I’ve got this group out of Florida Red Rock, I’ve got Shawn Boog and Khrysis on there, I’ve got Trek Life. I’ve got some new joints this group out of Canada Notes to Self. I’m working on Black Milk and Elzhi right now, every time I see Hex and that whole crew, I’ve been trying to get Black Milk and Elzhi on a joint, maybe Royce. I was blessed enough to have Guilty. Me and Gulity have a good rapport, he took one for his record, I did one for his LP, “Kill ‘Em.” and then he did “Frozen” on mine. But I love what’s going on in the D right now, I’d love to do a track with one of those guys. But I’m also having some cool shit on there like remixes of stuff from Duck Season 3, Evidence is gonna remix his own joint, gettin’ that remix of the MOP song by the Alchemist, working on gettin’ a remix of the Bishop Lamont joint by DJ Khalil. But it’s going to be like forty five minutes of a whole bunch of shit that shoulda coulda woulda have been on Duck Season 3. I’m not sure if I’m gonna sell it or if it’s gonna be a giveaway or if it’s gonna be a download or a hard copy, I’m not quite sure yet. I’m definitely just trying to put more shit out in any way I can, just give give give to the people.

ML: What was the last thing you bought?

Babu: Thing? Anything?

ML: Yeah.

Babu: I was at Target this morning and I bought an Incredible Hulk toy for my boy.