The Clipse x Jose Canseco x Rob Dibble

On their newest album, Pusha and Malice of The Clipse upgraded their heartless drug raps to more responsible, introspective drug raps. The Clipse outdid themselves on Til The Casket Drops by successfully expanding their subject matter without abandoning the style that got them here.

Malice joined us to talk about coke rap, fried chicken, Jews, and money. Pusha must have been too busy moving keys.

ML: You’ve said this album is about redemption. Why did you need to redeem yourself. Were you feeling guilty about all the coke rap?

Malice: Nah, it’s not that I was feeling guilty about the coke rap, because that’s very much a real subject matter for The Clipse. I think I took on a responsibility, not just for myself, but just for music in general and I think that we just need to paint the full picture. And I think you should always paint yourself to be victorious and always come out on top. If anybody know the story about The Clipse, you know that we lost a lot of our family in ‘09 to the drug game. And when I say our family, I mean like people that we were with every day. Our entourage. Wherever you seen The Clipse, you seen them from our manager to entourages, everybody. We used to roll so deep, now it’s just four of us. We had a responsibility to share with our fans or anybody that aspire to be like The Clipse out there doing whatever they do to paint the other side of it, because we do have a pretty strong voice.

ML: Have you guys had any contact with Popeyes about a sponsorship?

Malice: Nah, from what we heard they don’t like us. They wanted to endorse us until they listened to the lyrics, then they was like ‘No, get these dudes away from us.’

ML: What kind of reception do you get when you roll up at a Popeyes?

Malice: Well at home, I don’t know if it’s Popeyes or it’s just the fact that they know us, but they’ll always sing the song every time we go in there. ‘Back by popular demand!’

ML: Where’s the best fried chicken in VA?

Malice: The best fried chicken in VA. I’m gonna have to give it up to Feather & Fin, man. Feather & Fin hands down. You must stop there anytime you’re in VA. Ask somebody about Feather & Fin.

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“Somebody else wanna tell this part? I always do this,” said Audible Doctor. Soul Khan reluctantly spoke up. “So a bunch of people worked at Fat Beats and that bunch of people would be us. And often, we would drink together. And when we would drink together, we would go around the corner.”

“You’re butchering it,” interrupted J57.

“I’m not butchering it, I’m giving the facts and the facts that matter, you douchebag,” retorted Soul Khan. “Right now, we are at 6^th Avenue between 8^th and 9^th Street where Fat Beats is located.”

“Come find us,” said Koncept.

“We’ll make it worth your time. Pause.” said Soul Khan. “On 6^th Avenue, there is a store with alcohol in it and we buy it from there. The owner–the proprietor of that establishment insisted that each beverage be placed in a brown bag, which I guess you could say is the etymology of ‘Brown Bag AllStar.’”

Six employees of Fat Beats, a New York-based record store, comprise Brown Bag AllStars, an indie rap group with an old school slant and a disdain for tired trends. Of the six of them, there are two DJs, two producers, and four MCs. After closing on a Wednesday night, Soul Khan, Koncept, The Audible Doctor, and J57 sat around in a circle, while DeeJay Element and E-Holla stood behind the store’s turntables.

“Brown Bag AllStars was a crew of people who would hang out here, drink and play music and that’s it. It was people who interned here, worked here and just friends of that really knew music,” said J57. One night, they went to a friend’s studio to record some music.

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Boston-born New York-based boom bap producer extraordinaire Statik Selektah took some time off to talk to us about The Pre-Game EP, his album 100 Proof (The Hangover), and the 5,000 other projects he’s working on.

Statik talks about his album’s dark sound, his record collection, and his upcoming single with Wale, Bun B, and Colin Munroe.

ML: Why did you decide to release an EP in advance of the album?

Statik: Originally, the album was supposed to come out in November and it got pushed back to February. I just really wanted to get something out this year for everyone’s that’s been waiting for it. So I took a couple songs off the album and did a couple new songs and came up with an EP so there’s something out at Christmas time.

ML: Why was the album delayed?

Statik: ‘Cause of the bullshit that goes on in this industry. There’s all these new processes with all this digital shit now where like certain distributors can’t get it in time. The way retail is now, there’s so much music being distributed that if you put out CDs on certain days, like, Best Buy won’t take it. There’s so much politics in it. And basically February 2 was the first date I could have that I knew my project was gonna get pushed the right way. ‘Cause, we could’ve put it out this year, but it would’ve got swept under the rug with everything coming out. Retail wasn’t gonna support it the way I need it to.

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Congrats to YelaWolf on earning himself a blurb and a big ol’ picture in the New York Times on Friday:

Doing the nasal Dylan impression on the hook, which turns “Subterranean Homesick Blues” more druggy, is YelaWolf, a white rapper from Alabama with a classic rock jones and a glorious, tinny drawl, as heard on last year’s mixtape “Stereo.” On his forthcoming mixtape, “Trunk Muzik,” he boasts, “Trashed off the glue you build an airplane model with/In the gutter like an empty PBR bottle is.”

But since everybody knows Metal Lungies has ten times the clout of the New York Times, YelaWolf called me from Juelz Santana’s video shoot for “Mixing Up the Medicine” to talk about his career thus far and his artistic direction. Not the bum ass Times.

ML: I heard a rumor that you signed to a major. What is your label situation?

YelaWolf: Nah, just Ghet-O-Vision right now. We aren’t signed with any major.

ML: Is anything on the table?

YelaWolf: I don’t know, man. I don’t even ask questions. I don’t deal with that shit after being at Columbia. I just kinda trust [A&R, producer] KP and [my manager] J Dot. They’ll let me know if something serious comes across the table, or else it’s usually just a bunch of talk and a bunch of letdowns.

ML: So you were at Columbia originally?

YelaWolf: Yeah, ‘07 going in to ‘08 we signed with Columbia and we were there for a real short time before Rick Rubin came in and fuckin’ shut everything down. So me and KP and J Dot left as a unit and started grinding for the last couple of years on the street as Ghet-O-Vision.

ML: Killer Mike described you as a cross between Dungeon Family and Lynyrd Skynyrd. How would you describe your sound?

YelaWolf: That’s pretty good. That pretty much hits the nail on the head. I definitely derive a lot of melody from classic rock and as far as content goes, I derive a lot of my inspiration from MCs out the Dungeon Family of course. West Coast, Hieroglyphics and East Coast, BIG, Jay-Z, Mobb Deep, Group Home. Lyrics and beats, man.

My classic rock – I was born into that. That was just where I was at. I had a single mom, 15, 16, and she was really heavy into classic rock, so I was surrounded with that, but hip-hop came through– my mom’s boyfriend was touring with Aersosmith doing lights during the Walk This Way tour and when I was a kid they bought me a Run DMC t-shirt, a “My Adidas” CD and some Beastie Boys shit and that’s how a I found it. And then fast-forward, I just really fell into it along with skateboarding and shit, I just soaked up all this pop culture.

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I recently had the pleasure to speak with two of my favourite rappers, Masta Ace and Edo G., about their upcoming collaboration album, A&E. Ace and Edo spoke about hip-hop’s generation gap, how they’ve changed over the years and their opinions on Blueprint 3. It took a bit for Ace to join the conversation, so the first few questions are me talking to Edo.

ML: What’s the difference between working in a group dynamic and working as a solo artist?

EG: We’ve done the group thing before and I’m comfortable in the setting. It’s a little easier working with Ace because we’ve experienced a lot of the same things in the business. So we can really relate to each other on certain things. There’s no complications, we just do it organically. It’s less rhymes, you know? Less work. [laughs] With [Special Teamz], those guys aren’t that much younger than me. Just younger in the game. They were a little more unknown at the time, when we started. A lot of the earlier stuff with those guys, I was taking on the full weight of just using my connections to make stuff happen.

[A&E] was a lot easier because we had a whole team. Ace’s people, my people, combined. It was a smooth transition. We knew what direction we wanted to go with, we got signed.

ML: What does it mean for someone who’s been representing your city for so long to reach out to these younger cats?

EG: With the Special Teamz, it was something me and [Teamz member] Jaysaun had been working with for a while. We did two other groups that never came out. Special Teamz was originally called The Last Word, it had another guy. Then me, him, and Krumbsnatcha did a whole album which never came out. We ended up enlisting Slaine, we came across someone who knew him. We said, Let’s try something different.  We tried albums with two other artists that didn’t work out. Even though we came up with great material, we couldn’t all see on the same wavelength. So we tried Slaine, changed the name and that clicked from the first time we went to the studio. It was something that was in the works and it just took a while to find the right combination. I think it worked out well.

It’s tough to find the chemistry because you’re going to be with these people for months, if not years recording and touring and doing stuff together.

ML: After Roxbury 02119 came out in 1993, there was a really long gap – you were doing guest appearances and the like- but you didn’t put out another album until the 2000s (The Truth Hurts).

EG: That period…That was me finding myself, and going through transitions with different labels. It was me jumping on a bunch of different projects. A lot of compilation albums, a lot of features, so people could be like, “Oh, I heard that. That was dope.” I was doing these so I could get to the point of putting out another album.

ML: What was it like working on My Own Worst Enemy with Pete Rock (who produced 7 of the 10 tracks), as opposed to A&E and Stereotypez, where you used diverse cast of producers?

EG: It was good. It was tough…it took a couple years to get it done, with Pete living in New York and me living in Boston. At the time we were recording it, ’02 to ’03, the technology wasn’t as advanced as it is now. He wasn’t sending me mp3s online. Now it could get done much quicker, but we were literally going to New York and listening to beats. Every few weeks, going to his house and picking out beats then recording. It was a back and forth project. [Most important] was making sure the vibe was right. You can go and pick 10 beats from Pete Rock but I wanted to get the best stuff I could possibly get from him. It was a good experience, man.

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Co$$ (or Cashus King) is a rapper from South LA whose name first began to circulate last year alongside more well-known underground artists like Blu & Exile and Shawn Jackson. Since dropping his mixtape Tomorrow’s Yesterday in February, Co$$ has begun to step out of his crew’s shadow and carve out a niche for himself on the West Coast. His debut album Before I Awoke, coming this Winter, features production from Exile, but is based around and a host of exotic unknowns from as far as Rotterdam and Finland.

ML: How would you describe your sound?

Co$$: As far as my style, I haven’t taken much influence from many artists. It might be subconsciously, like I’m rapping like artists but I just consciously don’t recognize it. I’m really doing me. It’s 100% me. One of my favorite lyricists is Ras Kass and another one is 2Pac and another one is Black Thought, but I don’t think I rap like any of those MCs. A lot of people say I sound like Ras Kass as far as my cadence. I don’t think I rap like him schematically or flow-wise.

ML: How would you describe your production? [AaronM] called it a “futuristic thump.” I called it a psychedelic-type sound.

Co$$: I was blessed to link with a producer out of Finland named Fonetik Simbol. He’s kind of like the Premo to my Guru, but when you hear my solo project, the foundation of it is going to be this production team out of Rotterdam called Spaceship Status. They’re really on some spacey-meets-Dr. Dre-spacey type shit. I don’t think I put too much of the Spaceship out there, so you guys haven’t gotten a taste of that sound, but you guys got a nice taste of the Fonetik sound, which is similar to the Spaceship sound. It’s kinda like eclectic in a way, but it can gel in with the commercial sound. Like they bang hard but they’re also very soulful. I’m big on soulful. Anyone that knows me as an artist will tell you that. I love soul samples, I love live-instrumentation, but then I like that West Coast flavor too. So I would describe it as a mixture of soul, what I call outer-space, and the West Coast, the G-funk vibe. My goal is to do the next project with Flying Lotus. I think he has the sound that I’m looking for. Or Exile. I’m supposed to do my next album with Exile

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On his rainy album release day, Blaq Poet dwarfed the ragtag Fat Beats crowd, which consisted of sun-starved rap nerds, basement producers and rambling old-heads — all in tow to get their CDs signed or just catch a glimpse of a Queens-bred rapper who braved the bridge wars when he was 16. Low-key, businesslike, and perhaps even a little bored, Blaq Poet spoke to Metal Lungies about his career, his musical tastes, and his newest album Tha Blaqprint, which is produced almost entirely by DJ Premier.

ML: Who are your all-time favorite Queens rappers?

BP: Queens rappers? Run DMC, LL, Mikey D – he’s a old school dude, people don’t really know about him too much – The Rhymin’ Wizard Sudan – it’s a lot, but I don’t remember ‘em right now.

ML: Is there anybody in Queens we should be checking for? Newcomers?

BP: Coming out of Queensbridge, you know, The Mighty SSR, Little Young Boys, Crime Fam, they coming up – there’s whole lot of little dudes coming up, you just gotta check for them real hard.

ML: You were in the Bridge Wars, the most legendary battle ever. Do you think beef today is dead? I haven’t heard a good diss track in a long time.

BP: Nah man, beef today is not dead. But, you know, it’s more serious, it can get realer faster. You know you got the Internet, so you can have beef with anybody. Instant beef. Before you had to earn beef, but now it’s instant beef.

ML: But do you think diss records are dead?

BP: Well, no no no. Everybody’s got something to say. If you have beef, you have something to say, you gonna say it and that’s gonna always be interesting to hear.

ML: You’ve worked with Pete Rock and Marley Marl. What’s unique about working with Premier?

BP: Everybody’s different, they got their own different shit. I learned different techniques from all of them. Everybody’s real different. Premier, he’s more of a magician with records. His instruments are the records.

ML: What are your favorite Premier beats of all time? [Read more]

From dropping last year’s best mixtape, to cavorting with Alex Ovechkin and ML’s very own DJ01 at a Washington Capitals game, Wale has been overdue for a conversation with ML. The DC rapper turned MVP touches on his relevance to hip-hop, progress on his upcoming album Attention Deficit, the status of the Back to the Feature mixtape, and whether or not he’ll still like us after he goes eleven times platinum.

ML: A lot of people see you as a new breed of rapper because you’re the first rapper to come up on the rap blogs. Do you feel like you’re setting a precedent?

Wale: In a lot of ways. Even from touring 40 cities and doing an hour a night. That’s roughly two days on stage with no album out. That’s somewhat of a precedent. I’d like to think so.

ML: Do you feel like there’s a lot riding on you? Do you feel a lot of pressure?

Wale: Not really. You gotta understand, I’ve managed to have a consistent fan-base and be consistent with the music without having a hit record like a lot of my peers. Mine is more of a being the brand. As long as I continue to be the artist that I am and the person that I am, everything will work out. A lot of my other peers have got big records that are larger than life right now. That’s where I could see pressure. I’ve been maintaining fans and selling out shows in major markets with no album. What’s gonna happen when I give ‘em the album? That’s when it’s gonna be like, ‘Wow, and his album is great?’ Hopefully.

ML: What would you say is the biggest difference between being signed to an indie label and a major?

Wale: Indie, you can do more. Independent is a gift and a curse — you get less help, but sometimes you don’t want help. Sometimes you wanna do things yourself. Like, you don’t somebody telling you what or how to do what you’re doing.

ML: How’s the relationship with Interscope? How involved are they from a creative standpoint?

Wale: That’s why I went there, ‘cause they let me be the artist and they be the label and we work well together. I don’t play for a coach that wants to play in the game and I’m not trying to coach. It’s a great situation. If you can remember, a year and a half ago, I could’ve went to any label I wanted at that point. So I went to the place that I felt would let me be the person I want to be.

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From the first time I saw his refrigerator video, I constantly wondered whether Mr. Chi-City was playing a character or if he was just a naturally hilarious person who had the good sense to videotape himself. As it turns out, Mr. Chi City is a little of both.

Even though Mr. Chi-City lets the world into his life via his autobiographical videos, he doesn’t strike me as someone who craves attention. As you’ll see from reading this interview, the fast-talking, ass-chasing Internet legend is an introvert who enjoys his peace and quiet. But ayo, fuck that shit! CHI-CITY MAYNE IN THIS BITCH!!!!!

ML: What’d you do today?

C-C: Went to work, worked too damn hard. Basically I’ve been at Buffalo Wild Wings damn near for the past three hours and I came in here and I’m trying to answer all these messages. I remember back in the day I used to get three messages. Dude, I got 489 messages, I’m trying to answer every single one!

ML: You’re famous now.

C-C: But that’s the crazy thing, ’cause I’m really not though. Dude I can go anywhere at anytime. Don’t nobody know me. A few people know me here and there, but I personally don’t feel like I’m famous. I ain’t even in the top biggest people on YouTube or any part of any Internet man, I’m just a smalltime dude that a few people like to watch.

ML: So you don’t feel famous?

C-C: Hell nah! Hell motherfuckin’ nah. When I go to work, they don’t treat me like I’m famous, my relatives don’t treat me like I’m famous and when I step outside the crib, ain’t nobody askin’ for autographs or nothing like that.

ML: You never get recognized?

C-C: Hell nah. The only way you could recognize me — you have to really watch my videos and you really have to know my voice and when I’m out in public I don’t really talk that much. It depends on where I’m at, I may not even be speaking, which is cool about my situation: I can do my thing and still just be undercover with it.

ML: What does Mr. Chi-City aka Mr. 7.63 do for a living?

C-C: Well, I do it like this because a lot of people ask that question because everyone’s trying to figure out like, ‘Damn, you say you make x amount of dollars but you seem to have things that a person who would have to make more can afford,’ right? But people not understanding, truth be told, I get money for these videos now. YouTube — they cut checks. I can honestly say this: no matter what I do right now, like in terms of wake up in the morning and go to work, I make more money on YouTube than anything I’ve ever done in life.

ML: How do you make money on YouTube?

C-C: Aw, you never heard of the partnership program?

ML: Oh, that’s what it is.

C-C: Yeah, mayne.

ML: They pay you for your views, right?

C-C: Views, videos, it’s a whole long list of ways for you to get that dough, but the funny thing for me is, if you look at anybody on there — and a lot of people don’t know this — behind the scenes, when it comes to YouTube, dude, when you in that top 100, or every time you drop a video and you was ranked high or whatever, yo it’s big business, man. Real talk, it’s money over there. But the difference between me and those people is, those people do it strictly for the money, so that’s why you seem them post a video every other day, or once a day, or they advertise other people stuff, or they giving stuff away. And if you look at me, dude, I’ve only posted 22 videos and I’ve been on there for a year. I mean it’s cool, the money come in, but at the same time, the money doesn’t motivate me, because if that was the case, if I was about that dough, dog I would post every day.

ML: You put your heart into it.

C-C: Yeah, but I feel like for me to be posting every day, it would really be garbage because, I gotta be honest dog, shit don’t happen to me every day. Some days I just wake up in the morning, go to work and come home and nothing happens and I can’t really post nothing on that. I only post when something pops off.

ML: Has anyone ever not taken kindly to being videotaped?

C-C: Maybe the one dude at McDonald’s, after the fact though. At first, you could see him in the video he was all excited to be on camera, but after he saw how it turned out, like he hates my guts to this day and shit.

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I had been waiting in the lobby of the W hotel with one of our unpaid interns for half an hour when Capone-N-Noreaga walked out an elevator and sat down by the bar. They had with them a strange bottle of a drink they called Tiger Bone. Before the interview could start, Capone asked a waiter for two more shot glasses so that we could take shots. Not being much of a drinker, I declined. Capone insisted.

Curious, I looked at the bottle’s label, which did not put me at ease. There were no nutrition facts; rather, it was mostly in Chinese and read, “A traditional Chinese herbal formula used in the orient for thousands of years. Recommended usage: take 2 teaspoons (approx. 10 ML) twice daily.” The label also cautioned that Tiger Bone is 130 proof and that “it should not be used by pregnant women.”

Seeing no way out, I reluctantly took a shot. I slammed down the glass halfway through coughing and pounding my chest. When I could breathe again, all I could bring myself to say was, “What the fuck is Tiger Bone?” Capone answered, “It’s real.”

And that’s the best way to describe CNN. For better or worse, they’re “real.”

ML: What’s poppin in Queens in 2009?

Capone: Everything.

Nore: Same thing that was poppin in Queens in ‘96.

ML: Who’s hot?

Capone: Everything in Queens is still the same. You still got the same beefs, still got the same whores, still got the same crackheads. But you got Capone and Nore back together so that’s the only thing different. But a new album.

ML: Channel 10 has been called your comeback album. What would you say is your goal with the album?

Nore: Just for people to listen to it high volume and love it.

ML: Just to put CNN in the streets again, right.

Capone: Yeah, we’re not really giving a fuck about radio and video right now. We are, but at the end of the day, we want to give the people that made us back. And that’s the street. And right now they holdin’ us down. They held us down for ten years. So at the end of the day you gotta appreciate that we giving back to them. ‘Cause they didn’t play CNN videos. You never seen mad CNN videos, or CNN all over the radio. So we’re not geared toward commercial records. We’re geared toward getting back to our core.

ML: I’m gonna call you out on the commercial thing.

Capone: OK, go ahead, call me out baby. You gotta take a shot though when you call me out so we play fair.

ML: The Ron Browz record — isn’t that a commercial record?

Capone: Music today — they censor music so much that you have to make the thuggest record commercial to some extent. To get your albums in certain stores, your shit gotta be squeaky clean, because that’s just where music is at right now. If you look at Ron Browz, he’s not on nobody’s record that’s not a gangsta. It’s not like he’s on a Ne-Yo record, it’s not like he’s on a Chris Brown record and we’re doing a record with him. He’s on fuckin’ Jim Jones’ record, he’s on Busta Rhymes’ record, he’s on CNN record, Fat Joe. So you look at all these people who record he on-

Nore: Nobody soft.

Capone: That shit is hard

Nore: Nobody wears bowties there. [Read more]