Metal Lungies

Outside of the Cinema Tent at Bonnaroo, director Jeremy Konner sat down with us, burger in hand, to discuss Season Two of Comedy Central’s Drunk History which debuts July 1st at 10 P.M.

What are your plans for Bonnaroo?

We’re doing this live thing, showing clips from our new season, that [co-creator] Derek [Waters] will be hosting. We’re really excited because this season is good, man, I am thrilled about it. Drunk History is fun because as a director I feel like I’m allowed to say shit like that because the narrators are really the ones that are doing everything. The stories that they’re telling and the way they’re telling things is so good that I feel like that it’s ok that I get to be like “wait until you see [Jen] Kirkman’s Edith Wilson story”.

I know the Detroit episode was one of your favorites during Season One. Going into Season Two, is the Edith Wilson story your favorite?

Ugh, I LOVE the First Ladies episode. I think Jen Kirkman is the queen of Drunk History at this point. Molly McAleer is telling a story about Francis Cleveland, which is so funny, and then Jenny Johnson tells a story of Dolly Madison saving the fucking White House. It’s so good! Casey Wilson plays her and I mean… it’s the story that the White House is burning and she’s saving fucking George Washington and the Declaration of Independence!

It sounds like you’re changing the format a bit this season.

Just a tiny bit. Last season the Wild West was our only themed episode. We had these stories that you just couldn’t smash into a city because so many of them are a little funky when you sit back and think about it. Like… wait, Detroit is Houdini? He never lived there but he did die there. Actually, he got punched in Montreal, I think, and then he ended up in Detroit where he finally died but it’s really tough to call that a Detroit story. I don’t think that’s an issue to me, honestly, he died in Detroit so it fucking happened in Detroit. But the themed [episodes] really open things up.

Have you had any sort of fact-checker fans jump in with comments on the show?

Absolutely! We get that all the time. Not trying to be a braggart but we get historians being like “Yeah man, that actually did happen, they told the truth!”. Usually we’re going off of the most recently believed thing and we don’t do too many topics that are controversial. We do have a staff of fact checkers, if the narrator says the date and it’s wrong then we just don’t have them say it and we put the real date up on the screen.

You know, we’re not trying to tell wrong history, we’re trying to tell drunk history.

When you have [a narrator] saying “Lincoln was like ‘fuck you’” it’s actually pretty historically accurate. Yes, it was like a 30 page speech but essentially it was a ‘fuck you’.

Is there anything from Season One that didn’t air?

We had some [stories] that were about murderers that we couldn’t quite figure out how to make funny. We filmed somebody talking about H.H. Holmes from the Chicago World’s Fair who was just super grisly. We toyed around with the idea of putting that into a Halloween episode and making it really campy to try and lighten it up a bit. But, yeah, we’ve found that when there are stories that are just a little too real and end with very little hope… it’s hard.

So, these unaired bits, are these the same narrators that have done other stories? How many stories does one narrator typically tell you?

In Season One we were really figuring out what the show was and how we were going to do it. How it was going to translate from web series to television. We thought at first that we were just going to focus on quantity. We were having every narrator come to us with, or learn, two stories. Each would take about three hours [to film] and then we would film two narrators in a night which meant physically going to two people’s houses.

That’s a grind.

Yeah, we would end up going to bed at like 5 AM and the crew was just in pain. Derek, while he’s not getting wasted, he’s drinking with the narrators… it’s part of the camaraderie and nature of the show. So, we realized we couldn’t keep doing this. In Season Two we were much smarter about honing in on one story that we’re going to tell. We have one thing to do today and that’s to get this story from this person no matter what. If they don’t know a part of the story, we will sit with them and learn it. We’re not going to walk away having half a story.

Last thing, you’ve had musicians as narrators in the past, are there any rappers in Season Two?

I would love to have some rappers on the show. I’d be lying if I said we didn’t approach some rappers this season. Depending on time in the show we do today we might be showing the story of ‘Rapper’s Delight’ that we shot for our American Music episode [in Season Two]. Which will be very cool.

Check out Season Two of Drunk History, airing on Comedy Central, on July 1st, 2014 at 10 P.M.

I heard about Chico 2Triple in January when Traps N Trunks posted “6 Year Grudge,” a loud and bullish self-introduction over stuttering hi-hats and a chipmunked vocal sample. Chico’s provided bio would make an A&R salivate: he had just been released from a six year stint in federal prison. In July, I spoke to Chico on the phone about his album The HomeComing, which was released online two weeks ago.

Chico was born in Columbus, Ohio, then moved to Detroit, “But I might as well be from Huntsville, Alabama,” he said. The city’s hip-hop scene has treated him well. “Before the rap thing, I was a real drug dealer. I was a real hustler. So they got respect for somebody who go off, do they time, don’t talk, and come back, and live what he really talk about.” Laughing, he added, “I can’t tell you how much free beats I done got and how much love I got.”

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Co$$ is alternately cerebral and street level, but always candid. With a cadre of obscure producers he met on the Internet, Co$$ delivers a vivid debut album that seamlessly blends astral musings and lyrical smack downs. He’s a hip-hop head in the first degree who claims to know the lyrics to every song on Me Against the World and gushes over the finer points of rhyming styles used by Ras Kass, Black Thought, and Nas. In our interview, the Leimert Park, CA rapper talks about his creative process, religion, and the Flying Lotus collaboration that never was. Before I Awoke is out today and you can listen to it here.

ML: What was the concept behind Before I Awoke?

Co$$: Basically it just represents self-consciousness, like knowing oneself. I called it Before I Awoke because I tie in the concept of sleep which is being fully conscious, fully aware of who I am as a man. At the time when I started working on this I was 22, 23, so it was just being in my early twenties and not having a full understanding of who I am or exactly what kind of direction I want to go in and that kind of thing.

ML: We last talked in August 2009. What’s been the biggest change for you since then?

Co$$: Having a complete product. Around that time, I hadn’t actually finished the album. I couldn’t actually tell you what the cohesive sound of the project was, because there was no cohesiveness, because I didn’t have a full product. Finally having a record that’s complete and like the anticipation of having a release and feeling like, ‘OK, once this album drops, then things change and maybe it’ll increase the awareness.’ So just the excitement of knowing I have a product out there, knowing in a small amount of time, people are finally going to be introduced to me and my full sound. I always get criticism on the blogs that I just drop songs or I drop mixtapes or I never drop an album, so I’m just excited about finally having a product coming out.

ML: Are you still getting used to that artist lifestyle and promoting yourself?

Co$$: Yeah just in the way that I have to adjust who I am as a person just because being an artist is a big, big – maybe almost equal to the music – is a social aspect of hip-hop. It’s basically a community of artists all making money together. So if you want to flourish in the rap game, you have to get out and network with people. Even negative energy is good. Sometimes beef helps an artist out. Any kind of socializing, negative or positive, in the rap game is better than none at all. So yeah, I have to alter my personality a little bit to get out the house and really start shaking hands and networking.

ML: I know LA is very cliquish. You, as far as I can tell, don’t have a clique. You have the Tres Records guys and you have your own team of producers. Why is that?

Co$$: Just because I kind of stand on my own. I feel like a lot of artists in LA, they run with each other for the whole face value of it, the way it appears, but these niggas ain’t really friends. I’m not going to call them fake. I don’t know what their reasons are, I can’t read their minds, but I’m not gonna run with niggas that I don’t have a personal rapport with. I consider my circle of rappers Shawn Jackson, Blu, Ta’Raach, Sene. I have MCs that I feel like I’m very close with. Almost any project that I put out has Sene on it. And it does disappoint me that I’m not closer with LA-based artists. I’m such a West Side dude. I’m so loyal to this West Coast shit, but if you look at my projects, it’s almost like I’m making it a point not to fuck with anybody in LA and that’s not my intention. It’s just I’m not gonna fuck with you if I don’t fuck with you. And a lot of these dudes I have reached out to, they’ve rejected features, requests, they act funny. And I don’t have time for that. I’m a real dude. If you wanna work, let’s work, if you wanna be an asshole, then be a asshole. I’m only gonna get burnt once. That’s pretty much the reason.

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Meridian, Mississippi artist Big K.R.I.T. has his big raucous choruses, but his delivery is acutely measured and refined. Sometimes he raps just above a whisper, on a solemn account his career (“Dreamin'”) or an admonition about the thorns of success (“Lions and Lambs”). ReturnOf4Eva, released for free online in March, has a consistently rich vintage sound thanks to K.R.I.T.’s defiant sample-based production. Even though he signed to Def Jam last year, he hasn’t shown any sign of mainstream pandering.

As a producer, he sounds like a dedicated student of Organized Noize, so it was surprising to hear him fawn over the different ways J Dilla and 9th Wonder flipped Billy Paul’s “Let the Dollar Circulate” in our interview. He also picks out his favorite classic records, breaks down his creative process, and states his ambitions for his debut album.

ML: Why release an album quality mixtape for free?

K.R.I.T.: Mainly because I felt like I needed to do another solid project before I dropped an album. We dropped K.R.I.T. Wuz Here last year, but we dropped ReturnOf4Eva, and it’s to prove to people that K.R.I.T. Wuz Here wasn’t a fluke, that I could put together another solid body of music, all-produced again, and to be able to work with other artists, I thought was more important. Kind of building up the confidence for the consumer to actually go to the store and buy my album. So I didn’t really mind. It did definitely help at the end of the day to just build a buzz up more and build up people’s faith in my music and that I’m not going to change just because I’m signed. But for the most part, we really don’t be trying to call them mixtapes anymore just because they’re all original.

ML: Southern rap is focused on Lex Luger and trap music right now. How does that affect you as a Southern producer?

K.R.I.T.: I don’t really think it’s primarily just focused on trap music. Lex Luger definitely, as a producer, is working with a lot of artists aside from being what would be considered trap music. It really don’t affect me per se because I make music based off how I feel and as far as my life is concerned and I think everybody respects that, but I respect every art form of music. Everybody paints the pictures that they see and write about the environment that they’re around, so I just do what I can as far as hip-hop is concerned.

ML: So you don’t feel sidelined at all?

K.R.I.T.: No, not at all. I managed to put my music out, build my fan base organically. Obviously, everybody’s not going to like your music. My music, I make for a certain kind of people, I guess or just everybody in general I’m shooting for, to Lord willing be able to put music out and globally, everybody listen to and take something from it. But for the most part, it’s growth. In the beginning, everybody might not get it, but as long as I stay focused and keep putting out quality music, in time, my fan base will grow and it really won’t matter. Even now, it kind of doesn’t matter. It takes time. A lot of people just came out last year. I’ve been around since 2005, so I understand that it’s not overnight and I’m not really in a crazy rush. I take my time and just put out good music.

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Photos by Helen Pearson.

The crowd at the G-Side show on March 27, 2011 in New York City looked like an NYU creative writing class. Pasty white hipsters and tiny Asian girls packed into a basement in the East Village to watch ST 2 Lettaz and Yung Clova perform country rap bangers from their newest album The ONE…COHESIVE. G-Side is at the forefront of Huntsville, Alabama’s bubbling hip-hop scene, one of the most exciting in the country. They called up Metal Lungies earlier that day to share insight on their creative process, their business model, and future projects.

ML: What is Slow Motion Soundz? Because I’ve heard it called a few different things.

ST: It’s just a small business. You can’t really say it’s a record company. I guess you could say it’s a production company. We produce for other artists, but we actually produce G-Side records and press up records and stuff like that, so I mean, multimedia company, how about that?

ML: What makes the Slow Motion approach unique?

Clova: Our sound. Our sound is what makes us unique. You can’t get no other sound from nowhere else but our facility.

ML: But a lot of what you talked about on The Cohesive was about your approach to music. Can you talk about that a little bit?

ST: We were pretty much forced into the position that we’re in now. We tried to do it the old fashioned way. We tried to blend in and fit in and make club records, but it just wasn’t us. And really like he said, it was the music. We made good music and the people who picked up on it and latched onto it. We would talk to them, network with them, and then we just built a huge network and that’s pretty much what we work off of now. We just keep trying to expand it. We’re pretty much pioneering a whole new business model as we see it, because we’re totally indie but we travel all over the States and all over to different countries and stuff with no outside help at all. It’s pretty much just us and the network of people we built through blogs like yours or Pitchfork or Southern Hospitality, Baller’s Eve. We just use our friends.

Clova: Steady Bloggin’ and Southern Hospitality.

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My conversation with Curren$y last Wednesday (March 23) never strayed far from weed. We sat down in a makeshift den at a Warner Music Group office in New York and he immediately snatched up a plastic bag of weed from the glass coffee table, delighted that no one took it. He implored his publicist to make sure their driver wouldn’t mind his smoking on their way to lunch, “Please, just ask him to be cool and I will roll a window down, I will buy a Lysol from Duane Reade if he want me to, I will Scotchgard his shit. Please.”

Curren$y’s career includes chapters with Master P, Lil Wayne, and Dame Dash as well as an independent run that included eight free mixtapes and two albums on Amalgam Digital. He released Pilot Talk and Pilot Talk II, which were distributed by Def Jam, with Dash. He also did a mixtape with Wiz Khalifa. Despite a career worthy of a three hour documentary, Curren$y is as nonchalant as a college kid and his music reflects that.

His new project is another sharp career turn. He’s teaming up with Alchemist to release Covert Coupe for free on April 20 through WMG. In our interview, he talks about leveraging hip-hop blogs, his group with Mos Def and Jay Electronica, and the “Choppa Style” video.

ML: You’ve come a long way since [the 2008 XXL Freshmen cover], right?

Curren$y: I guess. I’m still on the grind though. I still feel like that just happened even though clearly it didn’t. They just had the Freshmen cover concert yesterday.

ML: Were you there?

Curren$y: I got there at the last minute. It was like the end of Yelawolf’s set. Everybody was coming out when I was about to walk in. So I was like, ‘Well, shit.’ I just high fived a couple people and got back in the car.

ML: You often get lumped in with the younger generation of rappers. Why do you think that is?

Curren$y: Because it took a minute for that lane to be carved. That groundwork of that took years of waiting even for the game to be ready for something like that. And now, all the music doesn’t have to be the drug music, the gun music to make it. You can kind of just be chillin’. So, it’s easier now. But that time – 19, 20, 21, all that – there was no lane for me at that point. All of that time, it was me carving the lane and waiting for the world to even be receptive.

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I got in touch with producer Mark Ronson (Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen, Daniel Merriweather, Duran Duran) three weeks ago to talk about his favorite beats of the year. After he thoroughly educated me (I’ve listened to “Katy on a Mission” 40+ times), Mark was nice enough to field some questions. I was surprised to find out the Grammy winning, actress dating musician is just as disillusioned with pop music and celebrity antics as us normal people.

Twitter

I have a really hard time with celebrities or famous musicians sending each other tweets across the thing when they could just get each other’s phone number. I always accuse Wale of being guilty of that. Like ‘Yo Diddy, what are we doing tonight?’ which I just think is like, ‘OK, you have his phone number, you could text him.’

Yelawolf

I would listen to [Trunk Muzik: 0-60] over the new Eminem album fucking any day of the week and I’m not comparing [Yelawolf and Eminem] because they’re white. It’s got the same rebel spirit and a lot of the same pain and passion, all that thing, but it’s got such a better– it’s light and he’s got a sense of humor about things and he has clever lines and stuff like that. Eminem’s just become this moan-y, whiny like, ‘me, me, me’ thing. It’s like, ‘dude, you’ve fucking got 50 million in the bank, what is still so horribly wrong?’ But anyway, that’s not for me to say.

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Alabama’s Yelawolf probably has a deer head mounted on his wall. He eats at Sizzler. He doesn’t fit the profile of a stadium-status rapper, but that’s where he’s headed. “Fuck underground,” he told a room of DJs and writers. “I did underground for ten years.” Yelawolf has the air of an artist on the cusp of fame. He puts on an amazing live show and his classic rock/country rap is like nothing you’ve ever heard before.

His EP Trunk Muzik: 0-60 comes out this week, positioned as a prelude to his proper Interscope debut coming in March. The EP features new music in addition to tracks from his breakout mixtape of the same name. In our second interview with Yelawolf (for a proper introduction, see our first), we talked about his real Interscope debut, his mixtape with Big K.R.I.T., and his stadium-sized aspirations.

ML: We last spoke almost exactly a year ago when you were shooting the video for “Mixin’ Up the Medicine” with Juelz. What’s been the most significant milestone since then?

Yelawolf: Two specific milestones. One, the BET Hip-Hop Awards where I performed with Big Boi.

ML: Why exactly?

Yelawolf: First of all, I’m a die-hard Outkast fan, so artistically, it was an accomplishment. I met Big Boi five years ago on the streets here in New York. Randomly, him and his mom were asking me for directions. I was like, ‘I’m not from here’ and I said I’m on their way and I didn’t even introduce myself as an artist, but I remember at that moment thinking I want to meet him the right way. And I had a backpack full of my own music. I didn’t even give it to him, because I wanted to meet him the right way. Hustle and grind and build on my network. I met him and out came a record produced by Andre 3000, so it was one of the biggest cosigns of my career. Not only just because he’s a legend, but because I’m a huge fan, so it was personal. And doing the BET Hip-Hop Awards with him live — it just changed everything, because television’s still powerful. On top of doing the cypher with Wiz Khalifa, Bones, and Raekwon.

ML: And Premo.

Yelawolf: And Premo. Exactly. It was just history for me. It was something that my grandkids will go back and look at that. That’s something that will last forever.

ML: What’s the other milestone?

Yelawolf: The other milestone is this tour I just got off with Wiz Khalifa. The Waken Baken tour changed the way I see myself as a performer, the way I approach shows. It’s crazy, you think you got it, but you learn and learn and learn. When I did South by Southwest last year, I felt like I was hitting the nail on the head, but when I got on this tour, I started seeing cracks, I started seeing flaws in my performances. And it’s just using this whole tour, all 45 days, to get better better better better better. So it changed everything. It really made me realize my own potential.

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It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Los Angeles electronic producer Daedelus once went on tour with Madvillain and J Dilla. His idea of a guilty pleasure is music from the 1930s. Every other picture of him shows him hunched over a monome (look it up). He’ll go on a tangent about Persian wedding bands or the Beijing opera. Yeah, Daedelus is one of those producers. The kind of guy whose knowledge of music belongs on a hard drive under lock and key at the Smithsonian. His last album was an EP with his wife Laura Darling based on a 19th century passage in Chinese history. And what’s an underground bohemian beat-head without his quirks? Mutton chops worthy of a Civil War general and a propensity for Victorian fashion and give the experimental musician a suitably odd appearance. Yeah, Daedelus is definitely one of those producers.

Daedelus recently called us from his Los Angeles home to talk about getting sampled by Madlib, the LA beat scene, and articulating his ever-twisting discography. Dates for the Magical Properties Tour below.

ML: You have a pretty daunting discography. For someone who’s unfamiliar with your music, what would be a good starting point?

Daedelus: I always hope that people have an in, some kind of gateway drug into my music. Be it somebody telling them personally what their favorite is and then being walked into things, because to my detriment, I haven’t stayed very solid release to release. It kind of flirts around different styles and ideas. Usually, if I have even the possibility of talking with somebody about what they like, I like to kind of like, ‘Oh, maybe you come from a hip-hop background. You’ll like this record called Exquisite Corpse that features people like MF Doom.’ Maybe that’s an in. If people are coming from more of an instrumental electronic place, I usually recommend Denies The Day’s Demise. Or if they’re more dance-y, I have this record Love To Make Music To which is a little more on the dance tip. There’s no easy answer, sadly. I find it amazing and wonderful that anybody is even willing to listen record to record. I find it incredible that fans are willing to make these jumps. I’m very grateful for that.

ML: Considering how many styles you jump into, maybe you should’ve adopted twenty different monikers like Madlib.

Daedelus: It’s true. My history with this kind of music is looking to these people like Madlib, but also people like Aphex Twin and electronic and hip-hop producers who tend to flirt around with different identities. At the time, I know a lot of these rappers and these people assumed different identities just to get out of contracts and whatnot, but I also think it’s belittling the audience to a degree. Because, it’s telling them that there’s this obscurity you’re not supposed to know about. That you’re assuming that people aren’t going to be into something, maybe. To a small degree. I know a lot of people don’t intend it this way, but it comes across that way to a degree. It comes across as being ego and that’s one thing I try to rally against as much as possible. I think listeners should be respected. Half the people in these audiences are other beatmakers and I was that person six years ago. I was just some kid in the audience with a demo in my pocket. I definitely still feel that to a huge degree. I still am that, it doesn’t change. I’m just trying really hard and I have a few records under my belt. We’re all in the same game. I think assuming that listeners need to be marginalized or segmented — maybe five, ten years ago it was more the case, but nowadays, most of the hip-hop kids I meet that maybe know me through Madvillain or something, they’re listening to dance music, they’re listening to electronic music. It’s all crossed over now. There’s no separation.

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Pete Rock is usually one of the first three names mentioned on any top five producers list. During that hallowed era known as the 90s, when classic albums came out every other week, Pete Rock provided a triumphant and raucously funky answer to his East Coast counterparts whose sound rarely strayed from project hallways and back alleys. Soul Brother Number One hit us up one Sunday afternoon to talk about working with artists as disparate as Kanye West and Oh No as well as upcoming projects with DJ Premier, Smif-n-Wessun, Camp Lo, Styles P, and maybe even Raekwon.

First thing’s first, what was this Pete Rock/DJ Premier album you tweeted about awhile ago?

PR: Oh yeah, we’re working on that right now.

You’re both producing?

PR: We’re doing an album together where he does one half and I do the other.

Who’s gonna rap on it?

PR: All kinda people. Like, underground MCs, whatever.

How much progress have you made so far?

PR: My side of the album is done. It’s just getting the rappers in. But me and him have to come together and be OK with the beats and then we’re good.

How did this idea come about?

PR: On tour. We were in Japan together and we did a Pete Rock vs. Premier show. It was supposed to be a tour. It started in Cali and it ended up in Japan. And we talked about it in Japan and I think it’s something we should do because it hasn’t been done. None of these artists or producers get together, in a sense, to do something incredible like that, so we want to be the first in hip-hop to do that.

Do you have a title yet?

PR: Nah. It’s just called Pete Rock vs. Premier. That’s the name of it.

Is there a secret to flipping a horn sample?

PR: Not really. It was just something I did. It wasn’t no science to it. I just did it. I didn’t say in my mind, ‘Oh, I’m gonna be the horn producer.’ No. I just did what sounded good and I did something people didn’t do enough or never did.

Melvin Bliss just passed away–

PR: Yeah, I know man. I was thinking about that for the past couple of days. I saw that Bernard Purdie played the drums and I bugged out and it still got me fucked up, even right now. Like, wow. All this time I knew about that record from Ultramagnetic [MCs] and it’s fuckin’ Bernard Purdie? Playing the drums? The shit just fucks me up. ‘Cause I got enough of Bernard Purdie albums from his jazz to his soul ones to the 60s to his 70s. I got it all and I didn’t realize that looking at other artists, that there’s infamous people behind the music but you don’t see it on the record credits. ‘Cause, the first time I ever seen that record was a 45. He never made an album, that was his single. That was his one single he made. He was just trying to figure out what he was going to do for a B-side record and actually the [“Synthetic] Substitution” record was bigger than the A-side. Yeah, that’s a great, interesting story.

Did you ever meet him?

PR: Nah, I wish I would’ve.

Why do you think “Synthetic Substitution” is such a classic break?

PR: Because the drums are incredible. It’s just a funky record. And the guy Herb Rooney who came up with the music is the one who should get all the credit musically. And of course Bernard Purdie, he stands on his own, he’s worked with everyone. But you would never think — because Melvin Bliss, he wasn’t that famous as an artist like a James Brown or an Isaac Hayes or anything like that, but he had a dope record. He’s like an unsung hero. He was great. He was a great singer, he had a great subject title, and came across with great music. If you think about it, it’s like, wow, this is the most infamous drum break in hip-hop. Just to believe Bernard Purdie is the one.

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