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.”

He has surprising influences for an Alabama rapper. “I got a cousin named Gerald Wilson. He is the most countriest person you will ever meet, but he knows his hip-hop and he used to have me listen to like Wu-Tang,” said Chico, hence his love of East Coast lyricism. He proceeded to namedrop every member of the Wu as well as LL Cool J, KRS-One, Black Thought, and Biggie. He also cites Jay-Z as his favorite and rattles off Rick Ross, Kanye, and J. Cole.

Starting in 2005, he served five and half years of his six year sentence for trafficking cocaine, having just turned 25. “Around the time I lost my job, it was just me and my moms and my sister. I was like, ‘Man I gotta do something, this is around Christmas time,’” he said with a laugh. “Somebody stopped me eventually. Got set up and then had to go through that process.”

He wrote the entirety The HomeComing in jail. “It’s crazy that you can see so much in a confined area, in a controlled environment, because that’s what jail is,” he said. “That’s the irony of it. I found freedom in jail.” He wrote to the beat of his friends banging pencils on desks and to Master P, Young Jeezy, Outkast, and Lil Wayne CDs. The facility also had a band room where six or seven inmates would gather around a bass player and a drummer and write rhymes. Chico kept up on music by listening to the radio and watching BET.

The HomeComing is an entirely in-house affair. Production and guest appearances are restricted to artists from The Route, a local record label, and Chico’s inner circle of producers. He courts darker, simpler beats than his city is known for with the help of P.T. PrimeTime who Chico credits with the album’s overall sound. “I call him ‘P.T. The Modem’ because that’s my little computer, that’s my homie.” Subject-wise, Chico largely follows trap rap conventions, but he’s calmer than the shout-rappers and finds time for pop culture references and punchlines.

It’s a true rap debut: blunt, unified, raw, and local. An obscure release, The HomeComing will likely be remembered as a gem in the formative catalog of Huntsville hip-hop.

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.

ML: You talk about faith a lot. What attracts you to that topic?

Co$$: I grew up in a Catholic church, so I went to private Catholic school my whole life. Transfiguration in Leimert Park and then I went to St. Monica’s and just having a lot of religion imposed on me. People trying to impose their subjectivity onto me and trying to make me feel as if faith is equivalent to fact. So a lot of times, I just question it because I feel like growing up, a lot of people don’t question what they’re told, they just believe and they project those beliefs as fact as if there is no other forms of belief that are valid. It’s just the way I was raised. A lot of times when you’re immersed in religion, it causes a form of rebellion towards it, because you’re so overwhelmed by it and by all the judgement that’s involved with it. That’s where it comes from.

ML: Are you religious?

Co$$: I’m spiritual. I’m a agnostic, so it’s hard for me to sound religious because I think religion is one of the big dividers in human society. Not just America, not just any country, I think religion is very divisive, but I’m not anti-religion in the sense that if you’re a Muslim or you’re a Christian, I’m not trying to get in the debate and take validity away from your beliefs. I’m very spiritual, but I’m definitely not religious.

ML: The only typical West Coast sound I heard on the album was the high-pitched synth on “Spaceman.” Do you purposefully avoid sounds like that?

Co$$: No, I actually love that. If you listen to “Khakis & Taylors,” that sounds very-

ML: Yeah-

Co$$: And then if you listen to “In the Wind,” for me that’s very West Coast. And then “Da Meanest,” it’s not typically West Coast sound-wise, but the lyrics – I say some shit in that song that’ll piss some niggas off [laughs]. But I just do me organically. I actually like that question, because a lot of times people peg me as like, ‘Oh he got that West Coast swag’ and I’m like ‘Where is that in my music?’ I appreciate people saying I have West Coast swag, but I just don’t understand how people peg me as a typical West Coast artist. I think I’m the furthest thing from it. But I don’t do it on purpose, I just let it flow. I’m more worried about the cohesiveness of the album sound-wise. I just want each song to flow into the next, for each song to sound like it belongs as opposed to embodying a West Coast or a East Coast or a Midwest or a Down South sound.

ML: How do you decide what you’re going to talk about on each song?

Co$$: See, that’s funny because I used to have that conversation with Blu. I never pick a topic, I just let it flow organically. My only objective is to not be repetitive. A lot of times I find I talk about fake MCs a lot. I try to suppress that. A lot of times I’m like, ‘Alright, you already did four songs about fake MCs. You don’t want your whole catalog to be about how all the other rappers are fake.’ I try to diversify my content. Like when I wrote “No Allah,” when I first heard that beat, I planned to do some West Coast cruising shit and it flowed out where it became very spiritual and the topic was anything but casual West Coast. I feel like a lot of rappers, they sit down, they hear a beat, and they go, ‘OK, what can I do to appease other people?’ When I sit down and I hear a beat and I go ‘How can I get over this beat the most genuine depiction of the way I feel right now?’ I do keep in mind what people are going to like and dislike when I pick beats and I write hooks, but when I’m actually writing the subject, I don’t go, ‘OK, this beat sounds like this kind of song,’ because I feel like that’s what makes a lot of music generic.

ML: You get compared to Ras Kass a lot. Does that bother you?

Co$$: No, actually a lot of my influence as far as being lyrical came from Ras. The only mistruth that’s put out there is that he’s my favorite MC. I just feel like it’s not accurate because I can’t name ten Ras Kass songs. I was more influenced by his style than his actual catalog of work. My favorite MC is probably Tupac Shakur. But yeah, I have no problem with that. The biggest difference between us is flow. Ras Kass was a lot more content based and I’m very focused on content, but also I’m big on flow. I feel like Ras Kass didn’t limit himself as far as flow or schematically.

ML: What is your proximity to gangs?

Co$$: I grew up in the gang culture in LA. Most of my homeboys are either directly members of gangs or have close affiliation to ‘em, but my whole angle is that – one of my biggest influences came from Nas. Nas gave you a clear portrait of Queensbridge without feeling the need to interject himself in the first person and that’s what I do. I’m not a Crip, I’m not a Blood, I’m not a gangsta, I’m not a thug, and I’m not going to exaggerate my persona. And in the same sense, you get a lot of street dudes that’ll say, [mock street dude voice] ‘Oh that nigga, he wasn’t in the hood, he can’t speak on that.’ That’s bullshit nigga, you can’t tell me I didn’t go through the shit I went through, I didn’t lose the homies that I lost. I’m gonna speak on the shit because I grew up in it. That’s how I feel about it. It’s like, I’m not going to hold back. I remember what 2Pac said, ‘You can’t always be worried that what you’re saying is going to offend somebody. You just need to speak from the heart and let it do what it does once it’s out there.’ Yeah, I got close affiliation to gangs. I grew up in a Crip culture. I grew up in a Crip neighborhood. All my friends are Crips. If anything, through my message, I want people to hear that I’m telling you the real about this shit. And that’s not to disrespect anybody’s lifestyle, because gangbanging in Chicago and LA and a lot of urban communities is a way of life. I’m not going to say, ‘Oh it’s stupid, it’s ignorant.’ It’s deeper than what’s stupid and what’s ignorant. If you grew up in that culture, that’s how you live and that’s how you live. Through my music, I want people to take from it that this is something that’s real. It’s not a game when you see Lil Wayne or you see one of your favorite rappers on MTV waving around a red bandana. That’s not what it is. You will get your head blown off in LA if you take this shit for a joke. That’s how I feel about it. I don’t even like to say I’m affiliated. I just happen to have a connection to that because if you grow up in LA and you live in a middle class to lower middle class community or a lower class community, you’re going to be exposed to gangbanging.

ML: What’s your favorite 2Pac album?

Co$$: Me Against the World. I think his most advanced album lyrically was Makavelli. A lot of people criticize Pac for being a simplistic lyricist. I don’t think 2Pac’s angle was to be the illest. Comparing 2Pac and Biggie is like comparing a point guard to a center. Biggie was more lyrically focused, 2Pac was more focused on the message. But yeah, Me Against the World just because I can probably rap every lyric off of every song on that album, but Makavelli, I think, was his most advanced lyrically.

ML: “Pot Ash” is amazing.

Co$$: That’s my favorite song on the album.

ML: Do you read any magazines or websites?

Co$$: I’m a 2dopeboy addict. I’m a political junkie so I pretty much sit around listening to political talk radio. I’m a addict for politics both conservative and progressive. I’m probably listening to Thom Hartmann, I listen to Mike Gallagher, I listen to Michael Medved, I listen to Mike Malloy, I’m just big on politics. My favorite show is Rachel Maddow. Every day I’m in front of the TV watching MSNBC. I just like to be influenced on what’s going on with our government, what’s going on in our communities, and that kind of thing. I’m not as big of a reader as I want to be.

ML: You said you really wanted to do an album with Flying Lotus. Do you think that’s any closer to reality?

Co$$: I’m just going to keep it real, because that’s the only way that I know how to keep it. I had a song on my album called “Palm Trees” that I had to remove. It was probably one of my favorite songs. I had personally played the song for Lotus face to face, not like I sent him the song via email. I thought I had the thumbs up for the record. Push comes to shove, I don’t know if there was a misunderstanding. Around the time I was turning in the album I was just trying to get all the publishing information verified, he told me I couldn’t use the song. Artistically, I’m a big Lotus fan. I feel like if I came together with him, I could really do my ideal West Coast album. Like when we talk about futuristic West Coast, that was my dream. Link up with Lotus and kind of do what Blu did with his last release – electric hip-hop but more g-funk. I just felt like if I took Lotus’ sound and put that West Coast stamp on it, it could be an incredible project. But after that, to keep it real, much respect to Lotus, much respect to his sound, there’s no ill will on a personal level, but professionally that really burnt me. I was just like, ‘It was one song.’ To my knowledge, Lotus has not released the beat. To be blunt, I thought that was an asshole move on his part. Now my desire to work with him has really been diminished. But still much respect to Lotus. I’m still a big fan of what he does, but as far as working with dude, I’m just the kind of artist where I value the way we interact personally as much as I value the way we interact on a business level. I don’t like the way dude treated me. I don’t mean to sound like a bitch-made nigga, but I don’t like the way he dealt with the situation. So I’m good on working with Lotus.

ML: What was the last thing you bought?

Co$$: I bought a button down from the Five Four store at Fox Hill. I bought a button down for the “Pot Ash” video. To be honest with you, the last thing I bought was herb from the herb store yesterday. OG kush.

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.

ML: Which are more natural for you, bangers like “Country Shit” or more humble songs like “Dreamin’”?

K.R.I.T.: It’s really an emotional thing, like how I feel that day. Normally, it takes from me maybe being stupid excited about a situation and finding a sample that really draws to me. Like, I was chilling and drinking earlier with my folk and just like, ‘Man, I’m finna go make something that we just ride around bumping in the whip with the sub up.’ Or I might have a down day or I’m dealing with a personal experience or something may have happened and I really want to get it off my chest. I really try to treat music as more therapy, if anything, nowadays.

ML: Where does your creative process start, with the beat or with the rhymes?

K.R.I.T.: Normally with the beat. Then I kind of go from beat to topic and then from topic to kind of trying to figure out how I’ma format the hook. And then the hook and then the verses, because I feel that it’s important that it all be cohesive.

ML: How do you start a beat?

K.R.I.T.: Normally with a instrument or maybe a drum kit or something of that nature. I’m really into sampling and digging in the crates, so for the most part maybe something on the radio that I may have heard that really struck me a little bit and I’m like ‘I’m finna sample that.’ Or I get the opportunity to actually go through some of the vinyl I got, or just on iTunes, listening to oldies. It really starts from there.

ML: What’s your favorite soul or funk album?

K.R.I.T.: Wow. My favorite soul or funk album would definitely have to- The Mack soundtrack by Willie Hutch would definitely be in my top five. Curtis Mayfield Superfly is definitely an amazing album. Let me think, let me think, let me think, what else? Damn, that’s a dope question, I haven’t had anybody ask me that. I’m trying to think Bobby Womack with the album that had “Across 110th Street” on it, I just can’t mentally picture it right now. Definitely whatever album that was on. Definitely those three are my favorite. New Birth! For those who don’t know who New Birth is, they’re an amazing group. I can’t think of the name of that one either, but it’s the album that got “let the rain fall down,” which is called “Wild Flower.” “Dream Merchant.” I can’t think of the name of that album either, but those are probably the vinyl records that I got that I play a lot.

ML: So you’re more into the heavy 60s, 70s soul like Willie Hutch, Curtis Mayfield, and Isaac Hayes-

K.R.I.T.: Yeah

ML: -than like the Motown stuff.

K.R.I.T.: Yeah, I go back, but it’s like the swing of the music. The 60s and 70s came, they were still doing more 4/4 time measurements and if you think about more in the 50s, early 60s, they were still doing 2/4, which is a kind of different swing, it’s kind of hard to sample the music, because of just how the tempos were.

ML: Are there any soul or R&B artists that you like now?

K.R.I.T.: Adele is amazing. Sharon Jones is amazing. Those are primarily the newer soul singers that I actually would listen to. Anytime Jill Scott drops something, I definitely go listen to it. I actually went back and picked up the old Floetry albums, which were dope.

ML: What about Raphael Saadiq?

K.R.I.T.: Oh yeah. Oh man, I totally forgot. Raphael Saadiq Vintage, Tony! Toni! Toné! Definitely.

ML: On the Yours Truly compilation where you talk about the K.R.I.T. Wuz Here samples, I was surprised to hear you mention J Dilla.

K.R.I.T.: Yeah, no doubt. Amazing man, producer. When you’re talking about production and people that understood and knew how to sample and chop up samples to the point where you didn’t know where it came from – J Dilla, 9th Wonder, DJ Premier, and Pete Rock are definitely the type of producers that I really paid attention to and definitely listened to when it comes to music. I’m really just trying to be a part of those type of producers where when I sample something– all these songs, the samples are out here to recreate, but I wanted mine to be different. I think J Dilla did a “Dollar Circulate” remake and so did 9th Wonder, but they’re two totally different renditions of the song. I kind of want to be that kind of producer that if I got a sample and Just Blaze or somebody actually did it, when I sampled it, that I could chop it up in a totally different way.

ML: Do you think vintage music has a limited appeal?

K.R.I.T.: Nah, not really. I think it gives longevity to the artist because you starting at a point that’s it just raw, it’s not cleaned up, it’s not pristine, the 808 may be a little too loud, the snare may be a little too low. Hip-hop, in the very beginning, wasn’t – the computers weren’t so involved. You didn’t have so many different presets and things of that nature. It was kind of like just off ear. Just, ‘Man, this feels right.’ That’s where I’m trying look, like, I’m just going to try to turn this sub up to the point where that feels right to me, not necessarily on a frequency level or whether it’s compressed properly. At the end of the day, I want you to feel the music, so I’m just doing it off my ear and how I feel it should sound. And then it’ll give me a chance to grow more as a musician, as a producer, to the point where I’m working with orchestras and things of that nature instead of starting right with the more professional aspect and then where do you go from there?

ML: Do you have a concept for your album yet?

K.R.I.T.: Nah, not per se. Just really gonna keep it country, organic, pretty much produce it all. But I really want to incorporate more live instrumentation, choirs if I can, R&B singers, really just take it there as if it’s my last album.

ML: Where do you go when you’re in NY?

K.R.I.T.: If I’m not chilling out with Shipes, I’m chilling out with Smoke DZA, but I definitely dig Flight Club. I go to Prohibit. I go to Coat of Arms, they sell mad vintage shit, I dig they clothing line. I get a fresh cut. Other than that I’m just chilling. There was this restaurant that I dug at one point called Half King. And Carmine’s is dope on some Italian food.

ML: Where’s the best food in Meridian, Mississippi?

K.R.I.T.: At my momma’s house. Literally at my mom’s house. They got some soul food spots, but I don’t really have to go to them because ma dukes take care of all that.

ML: What was the last thing you bought?

K.R.I.T.: Dominoes. I got one of them Italian subs and I got me a deep dish pizza, banana peppers pepperoni, and that was it.

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Big K.R.I.T. Return Of 4eva Tour

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.

ML: Has Alabama hip-hop ever had this much attention before?

ST: No, not Alabama hip-hop as a whole. You had a couple Alabama artists who got a lot of attention, but it doesn’t seem like when they got their attention they were necessarily repping for the whole Alabama movement. I’d like to think that when you see us or when you see Yelawolf, we’re representatives of Alabama hip-hop and that’s how you see us instead of us just being representatives for ourselves. Anytime you hear Slow Motion Soundz, we want it to be synonymous with Alabama hip-hop.

ML: How has this increased attention affected you guys?

ST: It’s given us work, pretty much. Since people are looking at Huntsville and looking at Alabama, they look and they see us. And it’s given us a chance to get out, network, and hit these different places and we pretty much learned the game from a whole different angle.

Clova: It pretty much turned our dream into a career.

ML: I feel like The Cohesive has gotten more attention from mainstream press – New York Times, NPR, Pitchfork – than straight up hip-hop blogs. Do you think that’s true?

ST: It is and I think since Starshipz & Rocketz, we didn’t really put out an album. Huntsville International wasn’t a themed album. We didn’t approach it as an album. It was more of a collection of songs. And I think all of the fans and people that supported us were waiting for us to drop one cohesive project and when we dropped it, I think they were all ready to support it and put it on blast and tell a friend to tell a friend.

ML: But why do you think you’ve gotten more attention from mainstream press than hip-hop blogs?

ST: I think just because the type of music we make — it’s not really traditional. Like I said, we don’t really make club records. It’s hard to classify. It’s not Odd Future rap, it’s not necessarily Big K.R.I.T., it’s just it’s own sound. And I guess the people that have picked up on that sound just happen to be those other media outlets instead of XXL or The Source.

Clova: I think a lot of people just want to see us be consistent. Is the quality going to be consistent?’ Can we do it again? They want to see, can we do it again, do it again.

ML: Do you guys feel like you have a cult following?

ST: Yeah, I think that’s pretty much the best way to explain it. It’s not huge, but the people who do follow us that support us hold it. We have good turnouts at the shows, so I think so, and I it can just build bigger and bigger. We just gotta keep working and keep grinding at it.

Clova: This is pretty much the first year we got a chance to really just build our fan base too, so we’re learning how to build fan base at every show we do. Last year we were just rookies in the game, just doing our songs. This year we’re actually trying to grab these crowds and make them fans.

ML: What does the crowd look like at your shows?

ST: Pretty much a bunch of hipsters and weirdos. You’d love it.

ML: The album has a really consistent sound, but you have a few different producers on there, so what was the beat selection process?

ST: In our facility — its a 5,500 square foot facility with about eight or nine different studios, so that’s about eight or nine different producers. You go room to room and hear what he’s got or hear what he’s got. Everybody knew that we were working on the G-Side album. It was a cohesive effort, so everybody was pretty much in the same mind state and that’s how some of the records came out together. It’s not that we just selected them, more like they would make them for us. They were tailor made with us in mind. They would make the records and then go back and tweak ‘em and make everything sound dope.

Clova: That’s even with the outside producers. They pretty much did the same thing when they sent them in. They were making them just for us.

ST: Or the Clams Casino record that he sent in. Him and Mali [Boi]. He sent in the sketch of it and Mali went in and made it grand.

ML: ST, I was really surprised to hear you channel Jay-Z’s verse on “Where I’m From” on “Bass!!” How available was East Coast rap in Huntsville in 1997?

ST: Not at all. I got put up on Jay-Z late as hell. I was in Texas, it was around 2001, 2002 when I really became a fan and I had to go back and research on all the Hard Knock Lifes and that’s when I became a huge fan.

ML: Today, who are your influences as far as MCs?

Clova: I don’t know, I just got put up on Kanye in the van a couple days ago. He killed it. We mess with Wiz, we mess with Yela, Curren$y.

ST: As far as inspiration goes, I don’t listen to a lot of hip-hop. My Pandora station is like a Jimi Hendrix station or Anita Baker station, Marvin Gaye or some shit like that and I just see what kind of jams I can find in there. But for the most part, I don’t listen to a whole lot of rap. I listen to a lot of Huntsville rap. I guess that’s because that’s where I’m at everyday and I hear everything that comes out of our facility. You gotta make sure nobody in the city is going harder than you, because it’s such a big scene down here right now.

ML: What are your favorite East Coast rap albums, if you have any?

ST: I want to say Jay-Z American Gangster is probably my favorite of all time. It killed Reasonable Doubt. It was Jay-Z’s best work to me, overall. Unless you go with Pac albums, but Pac is not East Coast, per se.

ML: What’s the best Huntsville cuisine?

ST: Oh man, pork chops fried, fried chicken-

Clova: Hot wings.

ST: Hot wings fried. Soul food, man. We actually don’t have a lot of soul food restaurants, so the best food is what you get at home, or what your girl cooks, or your family.

Clova: Unless you go somewhere like Applebees. I’m not tryna show out, fuck Applebees.

ML: Yeah, fuck Applebees.

ST & Clova: [laughter]

ML: So what are you guys working on right now?

ST: Me and him both got solo tapes we’re gonna try to drop this Summer and then there’ll be a new G-Side album at the end of the year.

ML: Do you have a concept for that yet?

ST: We do, but we’re gonna keep it under wraps. On July 4, we’re gonna drop a-

Clova: Single?

ST: Yeah, we’ll probably drop a single and announce the title and all that.

Clova: Since we’re an independent label, they thought they’d go Independence Day.

ST: We’re gonna act bad on Independence Day.

ML: What’s the last thing each of you bought?

ST: Weed.

Clova: For me, clothes. Some shoes. I actually got them on now.

ST: I’m high off the weed I bought a little bit earlier now.

Clova: He’s the weed head, I’m the sneaker head.

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.

ML: So you fit in better with the younger generation?

Curren$y: Nah, I fit in with myself. What it is is, the newer music, they already don’t have to be the studio gangsters and all that shit to get in position. There’s already a lane for a cool person. So now, it’s OK. That’s all. It’s easier. It’s a lane carved out for you to be able to just chill, maybe smoke your weed, watch some TV and only rap about that. It’s a more receptive climate now. So had it been, you would’ve known what I was doing at that point. I would’ve been younger doing it. There would have been more of a stage for me. I had to wait until it was ready. I had to do my shit.

I was trying to do that in every instance I been in and that’s what took so long. I was on No Limit Records rapping about original Jordans in the midst of still talking about whatever they were talking about, which could entail a gun or some drugs or something else that I wasn’t even into. People had to wait and it’s a blessing. I’m happy for that work being done, because it’s great to see motherfuckers just coming in early. I think the Odd Future shit is amazing, because I’m like, they got time to run, they don’t have to wait for motherfuckers to stop calling them strange and shit. Because it’s OK now. Motherfuckers are receptive to shit being original. Original’s not making you shy away. Because all the music sounds the same now, so as soon as something sounds original, people like, ‘Let me have some of that.’ Because it’s all fucked up. It’s so fucked that it’s perfect now for motherfuckers that stay in they own lane.

ML: But people don’t realize you’ve been in the game for awhile. You’re a veteran. How old were you in the “Choppa Style” video?

Curren$y: Fuck. I don’t know. I saw that video and I looked like a little fat-faced baby and I had a doo rag on. What was that video, like in the 80s? [laughs] I’m fuckin’ with you, man. I had a doo rag on and a backwards jersey. Not even a Emmit Smith jersey, it was a backwards No Limit jersey that had my name.

ML: And you were on the screen for like one second, right?

Curren$y: Yeah because I was like the new little dude. They sprinkled me in. [talks to Mousa, his manager] [back to me] They kicked me out of my hotel for smoking pot this morning.

ML: Which hotel?

Curren$y: The Flatotel. It’s a nice one, but they’re not fuckin’ with me. It’s a good joint.

ML: Did they kick you out in the middle of the night?

Curren$y: Nah, they waited until I got here. [laughs] They waited until I got here to notify me of that shit.

ML: Usually, the so-called Internet rappers are overnight sensations. They get ten million YouTube views in three months and then they get signed the next week.

Curren$y: Yeah, I don’t like that.

ML: You’re the only one I can think of who’s really slowly built himself up.

Curren$y: It’s a slow burn, man.

ML: So what was your approach? Was that something you did on purpose?

Curren$y: Yeah, because you want to be in it for a minute and anything that get big that fast, it pops like it’s a bubble. You start off small, you get super big, and then you’re no more. That’s just the nature of it anyway. I want this process to take longer. You hurry up and get to this, it’s over for you. So the slow burn is the better deal. You gotta come into this knowing that it’s not for you forever. There’s no way that you can do it. Motherfuckers are so in a rush to get here that they pop. You gotta stretch this time out and make this time the most enjoyable time. Right now, I’m living and loving it. It’s just the best shit in the world right now.

ML: Over this really slow burn, did you ever feel hopeless? Did you feel like the career was stagnant?

Curren$y: Nah, because it didn’t take long. I left Cash Money in 2007 and I was putting tapes out every month. I put one out — I pressed that one up physically. I pressed Independence Day up, because I hadn’t had a grasp of the blogs and shit and what I could really do, what could happen. So I just pressed up 3,000 copies myself and I sent some to a few stores I know in Miami and then I put out the second one and that’s when somebody sent me a link. Like, ‘Yo, read this,’ and it was a write-up about the tape. And then that made me start googling the tape title and then I found all this shit. I found all the sites and shit like that.

ML: Do you remember what tape it was?

Curren$y: It was Higher than 30,000 Feet. I want to say I read about it on 2dopeboyz or OnSMASH. And then after that, I found all the blogs. As shit was heating up and I was putting tapes out every month, I would notice all the blogs would pick them up, but I started to go to the blogs to see which ones I fuck with. I’m trying to see what kind of music you posting, what else you posting as far as fashion and all this kind of shit, and then I found out my favorite ones. Then I really started recording more because I was seeing my work. The Internet was like instant gratification because you put the record out and within minutes it’s like, ‘it’s hot’ or ‘it fuckin’ sucks.’ That’s really what you need to keep going. Everybody like, ‘Yo just hear me out, hear me out.’ The Internet is the perfect ‘hear me out,’ if a motherfucker wants to hear you.

ML: It’s like market research.

Curren$y: Yeah. So, that was the motivation for me to keep going. I couldn’t feel hopeless, because every time I did something, a real person would grab it and take their time to put it on their site. They’re up until 5:00 AM putting shit on their site and they give a fuck about my shit enough to put the zip file, the artwork, all that shit on their site — in the midst of putting a Raekwon record. That’s what was tripping me up. The Internet shit was blowing me away at that. I was like ‘What the fuck?’ because that was like magazines to me. That’s the TV, that’s it. The Internet rearranged everything. Internet killed the video star. You could do whatever you want to do. You go find whatever videos you want. You don’t have to deal with program directors or anything.

ML: I think the first one I posted was Welcome to the Winner’s Circle.

Curren$y: I know, I know. I know a DJ in my city, he sent me the link when y’all did that, because he fucks with y’all site tough tough tough tough tough. And, yo, I don’t know. It was like– you posted it?

ML: Yeah.

Curren$y: Did you start it off with– [I start smiling] Yeah.

ML: Yeah. [Ed. note: I knocked the tape's artwork and his previous tape. Read the post here.]

Curren$y: Yeah, alright. Because I was like, ‘How am I supposed to feel about that?’ Yeah, absolutely, I remember. Cool, cool. [We shake hands] That’s good money right there.

ML: You’ve been on No Limit and Cash Money/Young Money. What did you take away from each of those?

Curren$y: Just empire building skills. Honestly, from [Master P], I saw what he did with branding in the beginning. What people bought into. What sold the whole No Limit thing. It wasn’t so much the raps. People want to see a successful move. Just anything, a collection of something and it’s all good, everybody’s cool. So I saw that and I saw how important it was to use your company name. He kept his company name. As opposed to individuals, it’s more about your company. Because if your company stays strong, no matter what you bring in and funnel through that, it’s going to do well, because it’s a good company, it’s right. As opposed to you focusing on you, because once they don’t like me no more, it’s ‘Fuck the Jets’ and then that’s fucked up for [Young Roddy] and [Trademark da Skydiver] and everybody else. If the brand is strong, you have to listen to Curren$y. ‘That’s cool, these guys are awesome, listen to that.’ You push that.

What I got from the Young Money shit, I saw how much music was being recorded. It just doesn’t hurt to record a gang of shit, because it’s only what you do.

ML: You’ve released a lot of music in a short period of time. Do you worry about over-saturating?

Curren$y: Nah, because the people who could feel like I’m over-saturating the scene or whatever are people who aren’t fans of mine anyway. I like Max B. There’s no such thing as too much. I have 3,000 Max Bsongs  in my iTunes. If he put a song out everyday when he was popping, I would’ve downloaded it and don’t give a fuck. You won’t get burnt out if it’s what you like. My music is only for the people that I fuck with. It’s only for my friends, people that really listen to me. I know how they feel about it. It’s like free weed. ‘Oh no, don’t give me more. I’m over-saturated with the weed, stop giving me free pot.’ Nobody gonna do that.

ML: Meet anyone cool at SXSW?

Curren$y: Puff Daddy. Diddy was chillin’, that was cool.

ML: Is Puff up on your stuff?

Curren$y: Yeah, he was at my set just hanging out. I was shocked, it was cool.

ML: What happened to Center Edge Territory?

Curren$y: Yo, there is no album-

ML: But is there more music?

Curren$y: Yeah, that’s the whole thing. I’ve said it. It’s not an album, it’s music that will be released when the game is in despair. See, we gave ‘em a record. People still listen to it. So it’s OK. When it’s all the way needed, when it’s like 30 days of night and people are dying in the street, I’ll be like, ‘Alright, my bad.’

ML: How many more songs are there?

Curren$y: I don’t know. We’re friends, so we’re recording. It’s an infinite amount of songs as long as we’re buddies.

ML: I want to read you a quote from our last interview. I asked you about major labels and you said, “Nobody is really prepared to understand that I’m not going to make the radio single.” And you also said, “I can’t force that on the labels. I can’t force them to put me on. Rather than even trying to compromise with the labels or take a lowball, I just decided to do it independent.” So what made you comfortable with WMG?

Curren$y: Everything that I just said, they weren’t worrying about it. They weren’t worrying about the shiny radio record. They were just like, ‘Yo, do that shit.’ So that was it. That was my whole thing. I was like, ‘I don’t want to do anything. I don’t want to sit in anything. I just want to keep doing what I’m doing. And if anybody believes in that enough to write me a check for a million dollars, then let em go.’ Because they saw it how I see it. They were like, ‘You can be just as big as you want to be and not change shit. You just need certain things.’ I needed to be able to do a gang of interviews and all that kind of shit. You need to be accessible and shit that they can help me do. We just hustling together.

ML: [You and Alchemist] kind of clash because you’re laid back and he’s all about hardbody beats. Where was the middle ground? What is this going to sound like?

Curren$y: [snakes hand through the air] It’s gonna sound like that. It sounds like smoke trails like that, because it changes.

ML: You and Alch are the funniest rappers I know, so what’s the atmosphere in the studio?

Curren$y: Just a few jokes and a gang of weed. It’s a good time. We did the whole project in, what, four days? I did three days in LA and then one day I caught up with him out here and did two more records and that was it. It’s done, he’s mixing it right now.

ML: Last night you said, “New York like a muh fugga… Adventure time…” Where’d you go?

Curren$y: I tried to go to B.B. Kings. Got there at the last minute. I went to the hotel. Found my vegetation dealer guy [taps bag of weed]. Scrambled for menus. Got a $30 hamburger brought to my room. That was insane. Ate half of it. Watched Adult Swim. I smoked a joint out my window. Then I went to sleep. I woke up, I smoked half a joint in the bathroom with the window open and then an hour and a half later, I left to head over here and a security guard dude walks past me and he smells my jacket and he’s like ‘OK, you smoked weed. We’re gonna double lock his doors.’ So, I don’t know. Adventure time.

ML: What was the last thing you bought?

Curren$y: A rosary.

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.

Record Collection and radio

I don’t think Record Collection fits in anywhere, to be honest. I don’t mean that like I’m wearing it as a proud flag, I’d more than fucking happy to have my records on the radio. But I just think that– obviously we’re on the radio in other countries. “Bang Bang Bang,” it was a hit in England obviously, but it was my first hit in Australia and Germany and New Zealand and Japan and places like that, which is quite strange because kind of a left field single. It’s got a weird form, and it’s got a sing and then a rap and then a chorus and then a rap and then a sing, do you know what I mean? But anyway, I think people like it just because it’s a good record, it’s got a good beat, whatever, I don’t want to get too into it.

But I don’t listen to the radio. I can’t listen to it. I mean, I listen to Hot 97 occasionally if [Funkmaster] Flex is playing and I just want to hear what’s going on. Flex and Enuff, Peter Rosenberg. There are people that are really good DJs on there.

But the music

But the music, it’s gotten to the point where it’s so watered down on the radio that a song like “You Be Killin Em” by Fabolous sounds like fucking “Come Clean” by Jeru the Damaja. It sounds like the most hip-hop thing that was ever made because in context, what else is being played? It’s just such a fucking oasis.

And I’m not like a grumpy hater, somebody who doesn’t like stuff that’s popular at all. It’s just that when I started DJing in clubs in kind of like my peak, it was in a really amazing place at the most commercial hip-hop was arguably the best. The stuff that was the most accessible was Jay, Dre, Snoop, even the beginning of Fabolous and that New York era up to T.I. and Outkast and stuff.

And then–

And then there was a dumb down takeover that happened about three or four years ago and I was DJing the tail end of that, going to Vegas and playing a one and a half hour string of songs that sound good in the club and I didn’t really mind playing if you have a good way to put them together in a set that’s clever. But you’d never want to hear them sitting at home on a Sunday. There’s not much depth or soul to the music.

It’s basically what disco was in the late 70s. Soul music evolved into disco and then people found a formula. They’re like, ‘Oh, people like this, it sounds good in the club, and then they want to listen to it the next day, so we have the formula.’ And all of the soul music became, for the most part, 120 beats per minute with the same strings and the same cheesy hooks about dance routines and stuff. Back in the 70s, no one was suddenly like, ‘Oh, we’re in the disco era now, cool! It’s Tuesday, now it’s disco era!’ It took five, six years for people to revisit that era and see what it was just like it would take six years after the war to make a Vietnam movie or a Desert Storm film.

Prognosis

I think ten years from now when we write the book on music, or we start to write it, on this era, I think this will be looked at as the time when we don’t call it hip-hop anymore, it will probably get its own name. I know we’ve kind of flirted with names like snap music and other stuff, but I really think most of this stuff isn’t really hip-hop anymore. It’s just it’s own form of something.

I was listening to the 80s station on Sirius the other day and I was like — even the songs we kind of laugh at because the 80s was a bit easy to make fun of because visually it was a little ridiculous and whatnot — the songs were still pretty good and there was some substance to it. And I was thinking, who the fuck is going to want to listen to the 2010 channel twenty years from now to hear these records back to back? I don’t think that many people.

One of the harbingers of that to me was when the industry word turned from good to hot. ‘That’s a hot record’ instead of ‘that’s a good record.’ You could see the sea change happening there.

The minute you start doing house club versions of “The Time of My Life” and then rapping over it, I might as well be DJing a Bar Mitzvah with a drum machine in my pocket.

Optimism

Obviously, there’s things like Jay Electronica that are still beams of hope. I’m optimistic because whenever the ship stays around too long and gets super stale, it just kind of comes back around.

I play with Q-Tip. He does a party on Friday at the Ace Hotel, so whenever I’m in town I do that. I enjoy that. But the thing with the band is, we did a couple of shows in New York and a couple in LA with Miike Snow, but it’s such a big band and it’s pretty expensive that unless we really started moving some major fucking units, it would be hard to justify the expense of bringing the band, but I’ll probably do some DJ stuff. Me and Q-Tip are talking about maybe touring together as a DJ team or some kind of entity and I’ll be touring a lot overseas in Australia and stuff a lot [in 2011].

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.

ML: Which song gets the biggest response at shows?

Yelawolf: “Good to Go,” always.

ML: Why do you think that is?

Yelawolf: Synths. Synth line, 808s, you don’t have to know the record at all to bounce to it. Its just got the energy of a good show record. And I think mainly that’s because I’m doing shows at this point, while I was on tour with Wiz Khalifa, for a crowd that’s not familiar with my music. So when they hear that, it’s just got the energy that makes them wanna bounce and have fun. But “I Wish” never fails. All hands go up, back and forth, it’s always a good participation record.

ML: Have you ever performed that with Raekwon?

Yelawolf: No, never, unfortunately, but I’m sure one day we’ll get to it.

ML: Some popular rappers have demonstrated that people aren’t that particular about lyrics anymore. Are you worried that the mainstream audience won’t be able to stomach your flow?

Yelawolf: Nah man, shit. I’ve had thoughts like that before until I was in Louisiana and I jumped off in the crowd and this dude right next to me, this Asian dude, spit every line of “I Just Wanna Party.” I gave him the mic. I mean like, Jet Li looking dude. He spit every word of it. It just made me realize that when you’re a fan, you’re gonna learn it. Eminem is prolific. His wordplay is crazy, but his fans know every line. It’s not about that at all. It’s about melody. People are attracted to melody. It’s all about melody and cadence. It’s not about what you say, it’s how you say what you say.

ML: How has the Interscope deal paid off so far?

Yelawolf: Things like affording me to sit in a room with y’all and critique an album. Putting me on the road and packaging an album and putting it out in stores all over the country. They’re giving me an outlet to be heard by millions of people that otherwise I wouldn’t have. They’re giving me an opportunity to be what I’ve always dreamed of being and that is an artist that rocks stadiums. I wanna rock stadiums. It’s what I wanna do, and I’m gonna do it.

ML: When is the K.R.I.T. mixtape dropping?

Yelawolf: Trunk Muzik Wuz Here, the Big K.R.I.T. Yelawolf collaboration mixtape. We’re working on it. We’re four deep right now and he’s on tour. He got on tour the day I got off tour. On the same tour. It’s just about scheduling. Not to be corny but, fuck, it’s just what it is. We would be done with it if we could right now, but we’re probably going to have to end up tossing back and forth mp3s, which is wack. I wanted to be in the studio with him, but we might have to do that. We might have to toss back and forth shit. There’s no date for it, but it’s at the top of the list for mixtapes.

ML: Is Radioactive your real debut?

Yelawolf: Yes. March.

ML: Is that also going to be mostly your inner circle of producers or are you going to venture out more?

Yelawolf: Basically, we’ve had records we’ve been sitting on for three or four years for this album. So there’s going to be producers from all over, but the album will still have a flow. It’s not going to sound like jambalaya, like everything mixed up, spices from all over the fuckin’ place.

ML: Is there a concept or is it just you?

Yelawolf: No, no. All of my albums are going to be concept. They always have been, there’s always a meaning behind and a direction. For one, it helps for me to create a consistent project and it helps me also to write in a direction, to see the album. All of my projects have had the title first. You come up with the name of the album, and then you write around that.

ML: So what’s the concept for–

Yelawolf: Radioactive. I came up with Radioactive when I was doing the Big Boi verse and wrote it as a metaphor for being dangerous and bomb-like, and toxic, and to use caution. And that’s one meaning of it, the darker side of it. The other meaning to Radioactive is to literally be active on radio, period. It’s my take on radio records. It’s my take on being a mainstream industry artist. It’s my spin on it. It’s intended to be a worldwide record.

ML: Over the past year, we’ve heard about or seen you rubbing shoulders with people like Game, Busta Rhymes, Eminem, Premo, Bieber-

Yelawolf: Bieber.

ML: How often do these meetings actually turn into music?

Yelawolf: Well, there’s only a couple of those that were meetings– oh, you mean introductions, not sit-down meetings. Well the Bieber shit, I’m not sure if Bieber fans are ready for Uncle Yeller, the drunken uncle.

ML: He did Kanye and Rakewon.

Yelawolf: Yeah, Kanye and Raekwon, yeah you’re right, I guess he did bend the rules there, but I’m not exactly the role model for the Bieber fans, so unless Bieb wants to underage drink or some shit.

ML: It’s about time.

Yelawolf: Bieber’s down to party. For me, it’s about the vibe. I’ve met so many people so far, so many artists, and if it happens, it happens. It’s all about the music. When I met Travis Barker, we caught a real vibe and we made really dope music together, music that is yet to be heard, but we’ve got some in the bag already. Big Boi too. Big Boi’s another dude I caught a real vibe with, so it’s all about vibe.

ML: What’s been your favorite album of 2010?

Yelawolf: Mark Ronson. Hands down my favorite album.

ML: Which song on there?

Yelawolf: The Cee Lo record. Don’t remember titles, but the Cee Lo record.

ML: You mean the D’Angelo record?

Yelawolf: It’s not Cee Lo?

ML: “Glass Mountain Trust.” Are you thinking about that one? [plays song off iPod] This one?

Yelawolf: Yeah.

ML: That’s D’Angelo.

Yelawolf: Wow. I was actually with Amanda Lunt from Interscope Records and we were going out for a company dinner and she started playing it I was just like, ‘What the fuck?’ We listened to it front to back and I think it’s brilliant. I think Diplo is putting out crazy music, but Mark Ronson holds it down. He’s the king of good albums right now, but I hear Kanye West has got something super stupid ready.

ML: What’s your beer, whiskey or beverage of choice?

Yelawolf: Jack Daniels, Coors Light, PBRs. I like Johnnie Walker too.

ML: What’s the last thing you bought?

Yelawolf: A number two from McDonald’s. Large. Only ate one of the burgers and it made me sick. I ate that earler today.

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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.

ML: Were you surprised when Madlib sampled “Experience”?

Daedelus: I was more surprised that they asked. [laughs]

ML: You had to clear it.

Daedelus: Yeah, exactly. I’m more surprised that they decided to clear it with me. Of course, no money, nothing like that. I just wanted my name in that book, because I heard little bits of the album before then. I’m a big fan of Doom and a big fan of Madlib and just to be part of that universe now and to have the ability to tour with them and things was such an honor at the time that I was happy to have my name in those liner notes. I was, from what I understand, the only sample that was given credit to in that record.

ML: Do you know Madlib personally now?

Daedelus: Just a bit. We’ve played plenty of shows together and I see him around LA every once in awhile. He is a very unique musical person. Unless you’re in the studio with him, you’re not likely to see him. He has one of the best work aesthetics I’ve ever witnessed. He’s always living and breathing music. The only person I ever met out of any genre who was more dedicated to music is Dilla. J Dilla was always thinking music. Maybe he had a few other distractions here and there, but at least for the time he was in LA, he was living and breathing music on a constant.

ML: When did you meet Dilla?

Daedelus: After Madvillaliny came out, I was invited to play accordion with them for the LA and SF dates. They actually invited me to play accordion for more shows than that, but I wasn’t able to at the time. I had other commitments which was to my detriment. I should have broken those commitments and gone on the road with them. But still, it was what it was. I got a chance to travel with this touring group that was Doom, Madlib, Dilla, J-Rocc, and others, which was an amazing group to tour with.

ML: Do hip-hop artists ever approach you for beats?

Daedelus: Yeah.

ML: Any far-flung inquiries?

Daedelus: I’ve done some funny ones here and there. That accordion joint made some interesting rounds. There’s a freestyle out there with Drake on it, but this was before Drake was Drake. This was more when he was the kid in the wheelchair from Degrassi High.

This is the thing that constantly amazes me. It’s how incredibly small the music world is. You think about these people who are earning millions of dollars from multinational corporations and how small it feels to be in this living room in LA on this kind of gray day that we’re having and any moment, anything can happen. Everyone’s so confused about everything. Everyone’s so up in the air. Just circling back to the show thing, making beats and making music and stuff — that just isn’t where people’s minds are right now in the music industry. Everyone’s about the show, but everyone’s super confused about how to get people into the door because they lost a whole generation of kids. There’s a whole generation of kids who don’t go out and party, these 25 to 30 year-olds. They do certain things, but they don’t really go out to clubs, they don’t have a scene offered to them. Unless you’re a hipster and you’re trying really hard as some of those kids do. If you’re in New York you must know, you’re kind of left outside of things. And so there’s all these other scenes that have been cropping up, a lot of them having to with electronic music and some of them having to do with underground hip-hop and stuff in different markets and stuff. It’s like, they’re very much appealing to people who were left behind by all these different commercial scenes and some of this hipster stuff. And then this kind of general crossover. You have these huge musicians, these Jay-Zs and whatnot, they’re just trying to figure out who they’re audience is. And then in some ways people in the underground have it easy, so there is this crossover. Kid Cudi had a Nosaj Thing track on his first record. That was a big success too, that was like the title track of his record was this underground electronic producer’s music.

ML: Where’s the most unlikely place your music has been used? Any commercials or movies or anything like that?

Daedelus: Some video games and stuff, but that makes more sense. It’s seems this whole scene has gotten co-opted in all kinds of strange places. There was a Nosaj Thing remix of FlyLo that got used for a McDonald’s French commercial, which is pretty funny. They try to make the burger all sexy so they use this silky sweet Nosaj remix. I’ve gotten some placements here and there, but it’s all too logical. I wish it was more strange films and stuff. I like the fact that a lot of times, for some reason, my music has been used quite a bit in people’s YouTube videos of their travel stories. You see people doing these kind of random videos of them riding the Shinkansen in Japan or walking around New York. I appreciate the fact that people maybe think of my music as being like soundtracks. That’s the way I mean it.

ML: Is that actually how you intend it?

Daedelus: Some of my favorite music to listen to is film soundtracks, especially from the 50s and 60s.

ML: What is Invention a soundtrack for?

Daedelus: I kind of alternate between daytime records and nighttime records and that’s my first nighttime record for sure. To me, it’s a soundtrack to a winter’s afternoon evening morning. That’s me, the thing about it is, you can’t say this stuff too much, or else you might color people’s vision towards what the record is for them. I have a song called “Dreamt of Drowning” which seems pretty literal towards drowning. I’ve had people approach me saying ‘Oh this is the song that me and my now-Wife fell in love over.’ I’m not one to tell them, ‘Well you guys are wrong because you fell in love over a song that’s about death.’ I’m not here to do that, but at the same time, there has to be a reason why you make the song and put it out there in this crazy world of music. There’s just way too much music.

There’s a very chilling fact that you get as a DJ or anyone that digs through records. You pick up these records — and you know how incredibly hard it is to put out a record, it’s not easy, it takes months of promotion. There’s millions of records in these bins and you could go through a lifetime of never seeing the same record twice. There’s just so much music matter out there. Each record represents someone’s lifetime of work, possibly. And it’s chilling because inevitably, what we’re putting out is going to end up in these used bins to be sold for a penny.

ML: Can you explain the direction of your new record with Teebs?

Daedelus: That series, the LA Series, it’s for a label called All City. I’m a firm believer that every label has their own contour, their own shape. All City is like a celebration of beats, it really is. It’s like loving that place where the beats kind of knock. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that phrase, but it causes your head to move. It doesn’t ask your head to move, it forces it. Teebs is an amazing musician, but the LA series is kind of random. I didn’t know who I was going to be paired with necessarily, but Teebs is a perfect foil. I think he’s a really exciting young voice out of LA who does really beautiful music. Between those kind of things, I wanted to make something that both expresses my joy for these kind of beats but also for beauty. So that was the attempt on that record: to say something without saying too much. Not tipping the hand, but at the same time to let things ride and rock a little bit more than I’m usually allowed to by my other labels.

ML: How do you think the LA beat scene fits into the larger legacy of West Coast production?

Daedelus: It’s a snug fit, it really is. I think there was a lost tradition of producers — that are still going, I mean you have all the electro stuff, the popping and locking in the early 80s. There was a period where somebody like Dr. Dre was part of the World Class Record Crew. It wasn’t about him being a solo artist, he was just a producer, he was about the scene. I think we’ve returned to that. We’ve returned to the fundamentals. And sure, there’s a lot of personality. It isn’t like these are formless or faceless individuals. These are people who are really performing their music and really getting in front of it, but it’s nice, it’s reclaiming the fact that Motown was here, the fact that you had Parliament Funkadelic as an outpost here. These are traditions that are very strong and I think people forget about that, they don’t think about that.

ML: How do you approach a remix?

Daedelus: It’s funny, because you want to be very careful. It’s like you want to be in a clean room and you want to really respect the original, but at the same time you want to totally transform it to your purpose. One of my rules that I keep for myself — because it’s almost like a game, it’s like a puzzle, in some ways, so I have rules that I set on myself to keep it honest. Honesty is a big part of what I like to express to people — I don’t use splits at all when I remix, I only use the whole track. That way, even if for some reason part of the song isn’t totally calling out to me, I can’t just eliminate everything except for the hi-hat, which is a common thing that people do, or a kick drum and a hi-hat. That isn’t a remix, that’s just sampling. I really enjoy having to try to wrestle with the whole song and use the parts that appeal to me, but it’s still the holisticness of it. So when you start to solve that, then you start to put your own personality on it, something kind of comes about that’s outside of yourself, which is fun, but also outside of the original. That’s where the excitement is.

ML: Do you think it’s a problem that [beat music] is hard to classify?

Daedelus: No, it’s great. That’s the gift. As soon as you start to really classify it, it starts to die.

ML: What are you working on at the moment?

Daedelus: I did a record with my wife some time ago called The Long Lost. We’re working on more material now, some covers as well as some new originals. So that will hopefully come out some day soon. Another full length from Ninja Tune. That record is called Bespoke and it’s in process. A lot of guest vocalists and stuff. And then, just trying to be out there. Trying to be in front of people playing original music and playing other people’s music and twisting it to my preferences and seeing how it impacts people.

ML: What was the last thing you bought?

Daedelus: I got a sweater, actually. I was in the UK and it was cold. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t prepared. I was like a true Californian, just not prepared for cold weather. I bought this crazy sweater by this brand called Humör and I have to admit, it’s been my daily wear now since I got back. Wearing a sweater in LA feels weird, but it feels pretty right right now as long as it stays this temperature.

Tour dates:

10/26 – W Lounge, Salt Lake City, Utah w/ 12th Planet & Teebs
10/27- Bluebird Theater, Denver, CO w/ 12th Planet & Teebs
10/29 – Double Door, Chicago, IL w/ 12th Planet & Teebs
10/30 – Sound Academy, Toronto, ON w/ 12th Planet & Teebs
10/31 – Grog Shop, Cleveland, OH w/ 12th Planet & Teebs
11/2 – Le Belmont, Montreal, QC w/ Samiyam & Teebs
11/3 – Harpers Ferry, Allston, MA w/ Samiyam & Teebs
11/4 – Le Poisson Rogue, NYC, w/ Free the Robots & Samiyam
11/6 – Bourbon Street, Baltimore, MD w/ Free the Robots & Samiyam
11/7 – DC9, Washington, DC w/ Free the Robots & Samiyam
11/9- Club 828, Asheville, NC w/ Free the Robots & Samiyam
11/12 – The Masquerade, Atlanta, GA w/ Free the Robots & Samiyam
11/13 – The Howlin’ Wolf, New Orleans, LA w/ Free the Robots & Samiyam
11/14 – Barcelona, Austin, TX w/ Free the Robots & Samiyam
11/16 – Trees, Dallas, TX w/ Free the Robots & Samiyam
11/17 – Ground Hall, Houston, TX w/ Free the Robots & Samiyam
11/18 – Club 101, El Paso, TX w/ Free the Robots & Samiyam
11/19 – Club Red, Tempe, AZ w/ Free the Robots & Samiyam
11/20 – House Of Blues, Los Angeles, CA w/ Free the Robots, Samiyam & Teebs

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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.

What’s the story behind the “Poker Face” remix that you did?

PR: Same one deal. We got a opportunity to do a remix and I jumped on the opp and did it.

Who presented you with the opportunity?

PR: Interscope Records. We ended up putting it out in Japan. It didn’t come out commercially out here in the States, but in Japan is a Pete Rock remix.

I think you did Black Eyed Peas in 2006 also. Do you like doing a pop track every once in awhile?

PR: Yeah, every once in awhile you gotta show people different talent. You can’t pigeonhole yourself just to one sound, you gotta show people you can do it all. will.i.am has always been a great friend of mine for years, so we did a song that never came out a couple years back, but I jumped at the opportunity to do this for iTunes. James Brown was on it, who’s my favorite musician of all time.

Sometimes when “T.R.O.Y.” comes on, I hear people say, ‘That’s the song from NBA Street.’ Does that bother you?

PR: Nah, not at all. Some kids that are young, they’re introduced to it through things like that. A lot of young kids say ‘Oh that’s the song on NBA Street blah blah blah.’ Because everyone plays NBA Street. At least all the young kids and even certain 20 year olds and 30 year olds play. It’s just a classic song no matter how it’s remembered. It’s already in the history books.

Do you feel like that’s the capstone of your career?

PR: One of ‘em.

What else would you put up there?

PR: Working with Public Enemy.

Has Puff ever acknowledged that you produced “Juicy?”

PR: [laughs] Don’t even ask me that. I don’t even want to get into that. It was just some of the things that come with the game if you’re not on top of your business and it is what it is. I’m not gonna speak bad on Puffy, I just gotta say that I didn’t receive the credit I was — it was an idea that I came up with. It’s all good. No big deal. It’s over with. That’s done and over with.

There’s an unconfirmed track list for Kanye’s album floating around online. Is your song called “Devil in a New Dress?”

PR: I don’t even know what beats are matched to what titles on his album. He picked beats from me and he really liked three out of like eight and I don’t know what is what.

What is ‘Ye trying to do? He has RZA and you and Premier and Q-Tip — is he trying to do early 90s boom bap?

PR: He could be. I mean, what does it tell you if he’s using cats like that. Everyone wants to really recapture that Ilmatic feel. The same producers were involved minus Large Professor. So he may be aiming for that whole 90s Tribe Called Quest, Nas, Pete Rock/CL Smooth — that type of thing.

How much of the album have you heard?

PR: Oh, I’ve heard it all. It’s dope too. Really dope.

What happened to your album with Smif-n-Wessun?

PR: It’s being mixed down right now.

When is that coming out?

PR: I have no idea but it should be September, October, somewhere around there, November release.

You have an unreleased project with Oh No. Will that ever come out?

PR: I don’t even know, but we have to talk about it and see. Roc C was up here, but I didn’t get to mess with him because I’ve been busy.

How did you connect with Oh No? That sounds like a strange collaboration.

PR: From taking frequent trips to California. J Rocc is my homie from Beat Junkies and that’s Madlib’s homie, so that’s how the connection came about. We didn’t seek and sort each other out, we just happened to bump into each other. And then we got to talking and I gave them a couple of beats and they gave me back an album. But some of the beats were used, so you know.

What’s 80 Blocks from Tiffany’s?

PR: That’s the new Camp Lo album.

You’re doing the whole thing?

PR: Yeah.

How did that happen?

PR: One day I was in Manhattan and those guys were in the studio. I bumped into [Geechi] Suede and they were telling me they were in the studio upstairs in some facility. I went up there, I heard a beat they was rhyming on, I jumped on it with them, and that’s how that started.

As a fan, I feel like they haven’t topped Uptown Saturday Night. Do you feel like this will be the album to do it?

PR: I don’t know. All I know is I’m a fan as well and that’s why I’m doing it.

What else do you have coming up?

PR: Styles P and Raekwon.

Raekwon for his Shaolin Vs. Wu-Tang project?

PR: Nah, this is something that I talked to him about me and him doing personally. So it’s gonna be a Raekwon solo joint. I’ve always wanted to do something like that.

How was reuniting with CL at the Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival?

PR: It was cool. It’s nothing but at thing, man. The fans want to see a show, so give ‘em a show.

Do you think that will turn into a new project?

PR: I can’t really answer that. That’s not really in talks or in the works, we’re just doing a couple shows here and there.

Who’s reached out to you recently?

PR: Joell Ortiz. We bumped heads in the studio and we talked sometimes on Twitter. His album, I think, is done already, so I think I missed the boat on that one, but maybe on the next one we’ll do something. Lots of people reached out to me but hasn’t did anything with me. Jay Electronica. Couple of other heads. I got a couple of those new young dudes. Like Mims, I think we’re gonna do something.

Do you feel like there’s a big difference between working with newer artists like Torae and Termanology and Mims versus the old established artists like Camp Lo and Smif-n-Wessun?

PR: Nah, because Torae, you’re mentioning him, he’s doing what we did. He’s perfect for a person like me and DJ Premier to work with. He’s perfect. And those other artists you mentioned, same thing. Mims, I think is probably the youngest, or maybe Term, but Term loves the real hip-hop and so does Mims.

But the work ethic, is it the same between the older cats and the younger cats?

PR: Nah, of course not. The work ethic is a little different from how we did it. A lot of stuff was done in person back in the day, but now you just got cats two tracking stuff. You send them a beat through the email and they send them back a song. It’s not like you get a vibe with the person in the studio and make a really great song, but you make satisfactory songs.

So you miss the personal process from back in the day?

PR: I thought it made the music better when you vibe with the person. ‘Cause you get a vibe on the person, what that person is, his movement, his walk, his talk — everything. you gotta incorporate all that.

You’ve likely scrunched up your face to one of MoSS’ beats at some point. His grungy, rasping backdrops have found their way into the hands of Ghostface Killah, Raekwon, Joell Ortiz, and Sean Price; and as DJ Premier’s right hand, higher profile placements are in the cards. MoSS’ ear for the obscure and his heavy metal upbringing serve him well on his new album where he provides a uniquely discordant rock-inspired stage for an explosive Eternia.

In our interview, MoSS discusses his musical roots, the circumstances that kept him from getting credited for a placement on Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… Pt. II, and what it’s like being DJ Premier’s right hand man.

Eternia & MoSS – At Last is out now.

ML: What kind of music did you grow up on?

Moss: I don’t know how old you are, but I’m in my thirties, so I grew up probably in the early stages of hip-hop. It just so happened that my neighbor was Roxanne [Shanté]‘s cousin. So he kind of introduced me to hip-hop at the time. So he bought me Whodini’s Open Sesame album for my birthday. That was grade school days, I was dubbing stuff off the radio, and I remember that’s when Juice Crew was dropping and I think [MC] Shan was dropping and LL [Cool J] was gonna drop Radio a little after that. I grew up on that, but I was also a big rock guy. I played hockey living in Canada, so a lot of the guys I was playing hockey with, in the dressing room, we were listing to Iron Maiden, Metallica, ACDC. I’d make my own little tapes and I’d have Juice Crew, and then I’d have Metallica, and the next song after that would be a Whodini song, and then it would be Iron Maiden, and then it would be Newcleus “Jam On It.” “Jam On It” was one of my joints back in the day. I’d say, primarily that’s what I grew up on as a child. And now I’m just really open all fronts of music. I just really enjoy music.

ML: As a producer, what do you look for in an MC and specifically, what drew you to Eternia?

MoSS: Obviously, lyrics and content are important. But I think more so, I look at an MC like an instrument. For me, an MC could have the greatest lyrics and this and that, but if they don’t have a hand on the music, it’s not going to work. For someone to work with, I look for someone that’s going to sound right over my music and will be able to use their voice as an additional instrument to my music and keep the emotion that my music has. And in general, if I listen to anybody, even if I don’t work with them, that’s usually what I look for. When you listen to a song and it sounds like somebody remixed, it’s just not fitting. I like music with synergy. What drew me to Eternia was I saw her perform live. I was on tour with Masta Ace, eMC, Marco Polo and Torae and Mr. Attic. I was doing a beat show with Marco and she opened up for us in one of the cities and when I saw her perform, I saw her energy. Right away, I knew that if I did the right type of backdrop for her, that she would fit over my music. The best feedback I get is from MCs that go hard on songs or spit with a lot of emotion. I got a lot of credit for stuff I did with Ghost[face Killah] and stuff I did with Obie [Trice] and a lot of those guys are just spitting. I heard kind of a female version of that and that’s what attracted me to her.

ML: What do you think has been your biggest placement to date?

MoSS: Probably [Ghostface Killah's] “Kilo.” I think in general, journalists and DJs and everyone in the industry and fans in general — people respect Ghostface. I did “Have Mercy” on Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… 2 but the problem with that was I gave that beat to Raekwon back when he was on Universal like five or six years ago. And so there was confusion leading up to the album and by the time they figured out I did the music and they contacted me to do the paperwork, the artwork had already been submitted and so my name didn’t get in the credits, but I got my money and I got my publishing and all that, but I guess that placement didn’t necessarily help me. I’d say “Kilo” and the stuff I did with Obie [Trice]. Even though I didn’t get placements through Shady Records, what that did was, it introduced me to my current manager, which in turn basically got me where I am today.

ML: What does a cosign from DJ Premier mean for a producer?

MoSS: It’s interesting because now whenever I’m in New York and I’m around Premier, automatically, people want to hear my music — where before I had to pull their arm. So I think that’s obviously when Premier approaches somebody and I ask them to listen to my music, they’ll do it just out of respect for Premier which is huge. I’ve been very lucky getting some of the placements I have and I know this is going to sound really cliche, but I really got into the music industry because I just liked making music and I enjoy it. I never actually had any aspirations to be some major label big pop producer. I never thought that would be feasible. I’ve been doing it for awhile, I’m a bit older. So sometimes you sit there and you think to yourself, ‘what I am I doing?’ It’s not like I was doubting myself, but now and again you just have to look in the mirror. And when Premier came along and said some of the things he said to me and took me under his wind and befriended me the way he did — just as someone who grew up listening to him and watching Premier take off himself — it was just surreal. I don’t know how else to put it. It was just kind of surreal. Now it’s Chris to me, it’s my boy, but it’s one of those things where at the time, it just blew my mind. This is gonna sound really corny, man, but in some ways I looked at it like when it’s all said and done, in the back of my mind, I know that I’ve achieved something. When I get credit from my peers and credit from A&Rs and journalists — and I’m not taking anything away from a fan or a music enthusiast — for one reason or another, it hits home a lot more because someone who’s competing with me is telling me that they appreciate what I’m doing, so that means a lot.

ML: Everyone likes to complain about New York hip-hop. When I think of East Coast hip-hop and the sample-based sound, a few of the producers that come to mind for me are you, you’re from Tornoto; Marco Polo from Toronto; and Statik Selektah, from Boston. These are three white guys who are not from New York. Why do you think that is?

MoSS: Interesting question. It’s hard for me to say for Boston. Just in Canada, we didn’t get BET til late. Stuff like BET and MTV, that was kind of suppressed from us for awhile because of television restrictions in Canada. Our radio had controlled — when I say controlled, I don’t say that disrespectfully — we had similar DJs for a long period of time and they were really really focused on New York hip-hop. So when Outkast and 2Pac and a lot of that stuff emerged, we just weren’t really exposed to it. We kind of grasped to that 90s sound and we still do. It’s one of those things where we just didn’t have everything else thrown in our faces. That might explain myself and Marco, but for Statik it doesn’t help you there. At least for me, I always perceived hip-hop to be something that was a movement, a form of expression. Back in the 80s and the early 90s, it was mostly independent. There were some majors, but it was really the voice of the artist being heard before the marketing came into it. For me, that’s what I wanted to do.

ML: What exactly is Works of Mart and what does it mean to be signed to it?

MoSS: I’ll explain how Premier explained to me. Obviously, he tours and travels a lot and he has his own imprint and he’s producing all his artists, but one of the things a lot of people don’t know is Premier does a lot of stuff for TV commercials. He might do stuff for Walmart or Nike. There was a Walmart commercial where Premier did it and Big Shug was the voiceover and he was like, ‘Back to school!’ and people don’t even realize that was Shug and Premier, because it doesn’t even sound like a typical Premier beat. I was dying when I heard that one. He does stuff like that and he gets offers to do albums and sometimes he just gets busy. So he approached me and literally his words to me were, ‘I’m feeling your music, I really like what you’re doing, I’ve got to know you, I can talk to you, you’re a good guy, I really think that you deserve more than what you’ve gotten so far.’ That’s what he said to me. So he was like, ‘I want to sign you to Works of Mart and what I can do is I can try to get you placements, I can use my name to help you get heard.’ For example, Nike had approached Premier one year and asked him to do some commercials. They asked him to do X amount of commercials he called me and he was like, ‘Get these commercials done and you’ll get this percentage of the money.’ I did them, he liked them, and that was that. For example, when Kanye came up for beats, he played Kanye my music. Now granted, Kanye didn’t take anything, but the fact is, I would never have any other way to approach Kanye. So it’s one of those things where I am getting opportunities. I almost got on a [Ludacris] album when Premier pushed my stuff to Luda. I’ve been very close a few times. It’s kind of frustrating, but he’s definitely looking out for me. But that’s what it means. When someone asks me if I’m ghost-producing, I’m like, ‘Holy crap.’ That would never happen. He’s trying to get me placements and they would go under his production company.

ML: With these placements, would it appear under your name or would it appear under Works of Mart?

MoSS: It would say “Produced by MoSS for Works of Mart.” I don’t want to say the name, but there’s an artist that just approached Premier and wants Premier to do the entire record, so he called me immediately and he’s like, ‘Get stuff ready.’ He’s always looking out for me. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if Jay-Z, Premier, or [manager] Dan Green is pushing my music. Sometimes it just comes down to luck, timing, the right beats for the right artist. At least now I’m getting the opportunity.

ML: The artist that came to Premier — it’s not Nas is it?

MoSS: Actually it’s not even a hip-hop artist. It’s an artist that a lot of people would be surprised about. I don’t want to give too much away, but it’s a well known artist who made a lot of big music, let’s say, before this decade.

ML: Is it Chaka Khan?

MoSS: [laughs] Uh, no comment. [Ed. note: Readers of our Plastic Lungies Tumblr already know it's Chaka.]

ML: I didn’t notice any soul samples on At Last. Maybe I just missed them, but what kind of samples were you using? What genre, if you don’t want to reveal specifically?

MoSS: I’ll sample anything from rock to soul to reggae to jazz, but I think what happens subconsciously is, because — I mean, I’m a big rock collector. Like I said, I grew up on that stuff. Even when I sample a soul record, I tend to sample the parts of the music that resemble rock patterns. There are soul samples on there, but it’s not like I’m taking the horn section or the section with the ‘ooh’s or the voices; I happen to be taking the part with the drum breakdown or a couple guitar riffs or something like that.

ML: What projects do you have lined up?

MoSS: I’m on the Joell Ortiz album. I’m on the AZ album. I’m pretty sure I’m on the Cormega album. I’ve got some other placements here or there, some of them I just haven’t done the paperwork yet. The one thing I’m focused on heavy now is my album. I’m doing a producer album. I’m going to do like twelve on there. I’ve got half the album recorded and the other half I’m doing all the beats and I’m going to try to get all the vocals knocked out in a short period. On that album, I’m going to have [Joe] Budden, M.O.P., Ortiz, AZ, ‘Mega, get Elzhi on there, Termanology, Slaine, I’m going to put a few Toronto guys on there, Eternia’s gonna get on there, Skyzoo, probably Smif-N-Wessun, I’ve got Red Cafe. The biggest problem for me so far has been that I really really really want to make it, for good reason, a MoSS record and every time I approach an artist to spit, they’re always looking for their kind of sound and I don’t want this to be, ‘Here’s a bunch of songs I did that sound like those artists.’ I want them to adapt to me and that’s been difficult, so that’s why it’s taking so long.