DJ Shadow: One Week To Live Magazine
DJ SHADOW Interview by The Patchwork Pirates,30/08/06, On the set of ‘You Made It’ video, London.
So what have you been up to before last night’s gig at Koko?
I’ve been on the road for two months, through Europe, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, Korea… last night’s gig was the only UK show on the run. I’m back late November.
Was it a strange situation whether or not to play the new album before it’s dropped, there was a lot of old material, it was like a “fan’s” gig?
Actually, I was talking to somebody from the label last night and I casually mentioned to them that I was home for two week and I finally get time to tweak the set. They asked what I meant by that. When I get home, it will be the first time I get to change anything about the set since I started touring in June. When I started touring in June there was a lot of concern about playing too much of the new record because no-one would have heard it yet. And you know how people are nowadays; they’ve got your whole life on their cell-phone. And they’re downloading it… I didn’t want to reveal too much of the album that soon. Also the songs that I did play, I didn’t want to mess with too much because nobody would have heard them yet. Like ‘Seein Thangs’ (featuring David Banner), that was played unchanged except for the intro. I play part of ‘The Tiger’. I do a fair amount but there is a lot I want to add. But essentially, that’s why. I didn’t want to reveal too much of the album that soon.
Is there a lot of room to adlib your set?
It always evolves a little each night, just a teeny bit. And by the end of the tour, like last time I toured, I toured for nine months. That was in 2002, going into 2003. The difference between the very first show and the very last show was probably 40%, so it evolves considerably over a large period of time. The big changes occur when I have these little two week breaks, I’ll be adding a couple of songs, taking out a couple of songs, I’ll be making a few parts more complicated. What always happens is when I start a show, until I get into the rhythm of it, everything seems hard and complicated. I barely have enough time to get to it. But once you do 20, 30 shows, you realise there are two minute blocks where I’m not doing much, a minute here, there. That changes when I get home and want to add bits. I don’t like not doing anything, I want to be doing something all the time. It keeps it fun for me as well.
Your shows are surprisingly vocal, some people might not expect that, do you always talk at your shows?
Yeah, I’ve tried not talking and it doesn’t work as well. I found years ago, like, when I first did my own tour of Europe in 1999. (I’d done tours before, but mainly as a DJ.) In 99 all of a sudden, (I also did shows for ‘Endtroducing…’ but not really on a tour level), I realised that the crowd would be like… I don’t know… ‘Endtroducing…’ came out and UNKLE came out and suddenly there was a lot of music that I had made that had affected a lot of people in a deep way. I was just thinking I would get up onto stage and just do what I do. But a lot of people were sort of, “Oh my god, what is he going to do?” In general I found that by grabbing the mic and talking a little bit, it sort of relaxed everybody and made them go, “Oh okay, he’s not gonna do something very attention focused…” You know what I mean? Some people like to cast a certain atmosphere and I like to put everyone at ease. I don’t want people to feel that more is going to be demanded of them than just merely enjoying themselves. Even on this tour… like my manager will say why don’t you just do the next show and get right into it. I hear what you’re saying and I don’t try and talk too much. On the occasions that I don’t, I just feel like it doesn't work as well.
When did you start on ‘The Outsider’? And what were the initial goals and ambitions with the record?
The earliest I would say was (‘Private Press’ wrapped in April 2002, started touring in May, toured into March of the next year….) The first thing I did when I came back off tour was to do ‘Triplicate/Something Happened That Day’, and I always do that, I come home and instantly make something that I end up liking three years later. I didn’t know what that was for, whether it was going to make the album or anything like that. I did it because I wanted to work with samples but not on the MPC. The first decision I ever made was I didn’t want to do another album in the MPC. Because I felt the ‘Private Press’ was the best sample based album I could ever make. I had exhausted the possibilities on the MPC, I wasn’t interested anymore. I love it, great, I used it for 11, 12 years but it’s done. In order for my music to progress and for me to progress as an artist I needed to wean myself off it, which is not an easy thing to do. For that length of time and of course I was well aware of the music I made on that machine.
Did it ever bother you, the association?
Not really, I started to also become aware of, once you've been making records for a while, I think generally it’s human nature for people to want to compartmentalize people. I think people had started to compartmentalize me. “This is my DJ Shadow box and I put him in here, and what this box says is he’s a sample based guy and he only likes old rap records and old funk records and he’ll never make a better record than ‘Endtroducing…’ Okay, that’s DJ Shadow. Onto the next, here’s this box…” And as an artist you kind of sit there and go, well I’m just getting started, you now what I mean? It’s like, well that’s incorrect and that’s a little inaccurate and yeah I know I said that 12 years ago, but you kind of grow over time. And that’s why the album’s called ‘The Outsider’, because I wanted to get outside of that. I knew I wanted the album to not just be samples, I knew I wanted the album to not just be instrumental, I knew I wanted it to be not just on the MPC, partially because those are all the elements that people attribute to me and I knew if I didn’t define who I am and what I represent now, other people would try and do it on my behalf. It was a tactical move, as well as an artistic move. I don’t do anything simply as just a reaction to what peoples say. There were times working on the ‘Private Press’. I remember in ‘Fixed Income’, I wrote a really nice bassline, but prohibited myself from using it because it wasn’t a sample. That’s when I said, okay, I’m going to see this album through, but then I’m not going to do this anymore. I don’t think it’s healthy to have/create some arbitrary technical reason why you can’t use a certain thing.
With ‘The Outsider’ was it always an aim to support the local community, or were you listening to this stuff and simply lovin’ it?
It was a combination of a lot of things. I started listening to hyphy music and getting back into what the Bay was doing in late 2002, early 2003, which coincided with a lot of fortunate things. Such as the local boycott on KMEL, forcing Clear Channel to play local artists, which coincided with the emergence of Rick Rock’s production and Mac Dre getting radio play for the first time, which coincided with me commuting for the first time. Because I moved my studio. All these things coincided. And in the same way I don’t think I would have done the Banner track if I hadn't spent a good part of 2003 driving around the South with a friend of mine hearing Lil Jon coming out of cars. I mean we had been into crunk for some time but being in the South… It’s the same as if… you can be a fan of bounce music without having never being to New Orleans, but it really helps your understanding of the music if you’ve been there. You can understand what DJ Screw contributed to the Houston scene but it helps to have been to Houston. The same thing as hyphy. So initially I was just a fan of the music, and started going to the store and buying records and tapes. It was so localised. You couldn’t find any of the music outside of a 30 square mile radius. It just was like bounce music. I was in New Orleans in ‘93, I was in this little Mom & Pop black music shop and just one person after another was coming in asking for DJ Jimmy, give me the DJ Jimmy tape. And that’s all I heard playing on loop… Juvenile was the rapper. And my initial impression was this is really amateur, what is this? The beats are kind of weak. But then you start getting into the culture of it, the way people are geeked to get the tape, and you’re like, DJ Jimmy, who knew… you know what I mean? And then you go on with your life, but it never really leaves you, it’s the same with the hyphy stuff. I’ll never forget when I saw a news report on slang and understanding your kids, in late 2003. When the Federation track ‘Hyphy’ had just come out and these kids were like, “it’s hyphy!” they were poppin their collar and blah blah blah. And I was like, whoa, cos that reminds me of ‘83 when I saw a report on The Disco Three and explaining what beatboxing was on the news. When you see stuff that is literally street level, standing on the street corner, that’s when you know that something’s happening. Like the first time I ever heard drum and bass, spring ‘95 walking around London. Car after car with the (hums the breaks) and the ragga muffin samples going through it… And I kept asking people, what is this, jungle right? And everybody was all dismissive, like oh it’s just this trend, blah blah blah and I was like… mmmm if you hear it coming out of cars on the street that’s a good sign, not a bad thing.
It’s impossible to pick up hyphy records here in the UK…
It’s hard to find on vinyl in the Bay, I remember when the 12” for ‘Super Hyphy’ was there for about three weeks. I mean the original, it’s probably bootlegged by now.
How big is it on the west coast, because I’ve interviewed other artists and had a word and they have no idea?
It depends on where your ear is directed. I personally didn’t care about Mobb Music, which was the hardcore rap coming out of the Bay in late ‘90s. For whatever reason, it just didn’t have what I was looking for. Whereas hyphy is just a completely different energy. I remember hearing groups like 8 Ball & MJG in the early ‘90s, but it just didn’t feel like it was there yet. And suddenly it’s there, it works. Hyphy is definitely a genre and it’s moving so quick right now. Things that are 104bpm you just can’t play, because it keeps speeding up a little bit more. Like ‘18 Dummy’, The Federation keeps speeding it up. And Trackademics is considered underground rap, it’s not even hyphy.
Even after E-40 remix?
I brought FAB over here and Trackademics and him are really close, and I met them a few times, but the last time I met them was at E-40 record launch… out in the parking lot, Emeryville, when he was signing… E-40 is like the pied piper of the Bay. Where he goes, people follow. His first record ‘MVP’ was ‘88, I don’t know if you’re aware, but there’s a whole lineage with his family. His uncle, Charles Thurman, put out one of the best funk 45’s from the Bay Area and Droop-E. I actually recorded that 45 for Droop E and he said, “to me it sounds like old dead people”, Droop’E’s 17, 18, to him that was recorded ten years before he was even born.
Your hyphy tracks aren’t a carbon copy of Rick Rock or a particularly straight up hyphy sound. You can always hear Shadow nuances, was this intentional?
Even on ‘3 Freaks’, well ‘Dats My Part’ and ‘3 Freaks’ are probably the most straight ahead hyphy things that I’ve done and ‘3 Freaks’ is like, really weird. If you listen to any RnB or rap or hyphy record on the radio you do not stray from the 2 or the 4 with the clap or the snare or the snap. That’s just it. You can do what ever you want with the kicks but it has to be on the 2 and the 4 and then to come out with a record that has no 4, initially Turf (Talk) and Keak (Da Sneak) were like okay… we’ll write to it, blah blah blah, it wasn’t until two hours later when we were wrapping it up, Turf Talk was like, oh shit, this is going to be a hit. It’s like with anything, to do something a little bit different if it doesn’t work, it’s not going to work at all. If you’re lucky you can get a way with little tweaks here and there. I though ‘Turf Dancing’ was going to be the one. I took it to a lot of hyphy DJs and a couple of them were like, oh it’s cool, shit this is hot. A couple of others were like, it’s little busy man, it’s a little too busy. There’s a couple of extra snares. Even Shep from the Animaniacs, when we were recording, he was like, you’ve got extra beats in there, huh? I was like, what do you mean, (beat boxes out the pattern)… people are like. If it’s not on the 2 or the 4 it’s a foreign language. But when you have a broader palette. For me it comes from funk... even when I try to do it right down the middle, it doesn’t usually hit the mark. But that’s my part which seems to work. ‘Keep Em Close’, even though Nump is a hyphy rapper, it wasn’t intentional to make a hyphy song. I was like, I’m going to give you a beat that’s really different, are you cool with that, he was like, yeah yeah yeah , lets do it and we wanted to do it as a pushing ‘6’N The Morning’, Ice-T sort of story rap vibe. Even some of the songs with hyphy rappers aren’t hyphy. And the David Banner track isn’t crunk. We did that in 2004, the first verse, the second verse we did after Katrina. To me it still sounds like me.
Could your early career move happened on any other label than Mo’Wax?
The thing I’d say with James, is his timing was really good. I’d been doing things with Hollywood Basic, primarily rap label run by Dave Funken Klein, although within the rap scene he was known as having a pretty broad view of things. Lifers Group, Organized Konfusion, Boo-Yaa TRIBE at one point. It was a good label. That was where all my output was going because he was a real advocate of what I was doing. He heard my stuff when I sent my stuff to The Source and got into Unsigned Hype and all that stuff. I really respected his opinions. He was Def Jam’s promo guy in Def Jam’s hey day. Working with Slick Rick and Public Enemy etc. And he was known as being really opinionated and that’s why people listened to him, because he wasn’t afraid to rip into people he thought was bad. Which was not really done back then as rap was such a community that everybody felt that everybody deserved a shot, but he was like, if it’s weak, fuck it. Dave Funken Klein had tumours on his spine and was within a year of his life and ultimately passed. I was doing demos for Tommy Boy, Profile, Funkmaster Flex, he kinda A&R’d me for a little while at Profile, I was supposed to do some things for Wild Pitch. The feedback I kept getting from people was - why do you keep using these weird samples, you need to be using familiar, cos what was popular back then was the Kenny Dope, Nubian Crackers, just looping recent hits. Yeah that’s cool, but I liked Large Professor, Pete Rock and Premier, they used samples that people don’t know. Lavelle came along and was the first person since Funken Klein who said, no, I want you to go as far as you can in this direction and take it there. Go as far as you want to go. That was really fortunate. Some people give James all the credit in the world and some people give him none. I think he deserves, I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Certainly his concept of having a label with a really strong visual identity, a really strong musical identity, a really strong, label identity, sometimes to the detriment of the artists, early on in a way. Was all really, really important and was all James. Him getting people like Futura in there and all that stuff, he cared, he wanted to build a label identity that was… I give him a lot of credit, so yeah. There weren’t really any other labels doing what he was doing. He was one part Talkin’ Loud, one part Ninja Tune, one part Wild Pitch, or some classic New York label, he was one part future labels like Warp. He was out on a limb a little bit and it was a unique combination of influences.
The hyphy community seems strong, is this how it is?
I think it’s still that way for the most part. I’m really looking forward to getting home because I haven’t really been home for three months and things are moving so quickly in the Bay I want to see if that unity is still there. Right when I was leaving I was hearing some people say like – you know the only people who are really coming up of this whole hyphy movement is the same old people. What about… Hoodstar’s still unsigned, The Team still isn't signed... people are thinking what’s really going on here, how do we get paid off of this. That’s a natural and understandable, but it’s still a little divisive. It will be interesting to see, because I don’t feel very connected at the moment.
Do you think the attention on the Wolfpack and ‘Vans’ will help or hinder hyphy’s movement?
It just really depends on people’s attitude. I guess as an analogy, I took Turf and FAB overseas and they were all very different in terms of like understanding the opportunity that was being given to them. Some people in the scene really get how to get to the next level, I think FAB is one of those people. I think FAB can go as far as he wants to go. I also think there’s a hood mentality that comes into it and the hood mentality is very - what can I get now? Fuck tomorrow, what can I get right now. It’s really hard to break that. I encounter it constantly, it’s a little bit sad because you want to tell them that they aren’t getting the bigger picture. To a lot of guys in the scene it’s if it doesn’t work out, it’s back to the corner. Because it’s “what ever I gotto do to get by”. If rap is the hustle today, fine, I’ll work that angle until it dries up. I grew up in an era where rap was a passion and a culture and to a lot of people that’s a foreign concept. To a lot of people rap is a hustle, it’s a means of getting by. It took me a while to readjust my way of thinking, to not be surprised or offended at that type of mentality. But you know, there are bigger social structures at work than just hip hop. If I have to work with people I can’t ride in on some high horse and tell them how to act or view life. I have to meet people half way, that’s a long way of saying, in terms of the Wolfpack… they got signed pretty quickly, they’re riding with Too $hort, it’s hard to say if they will be able to maintain the kind of connection they had to, literally their high school, that’s what blew them up. If you get 500 kids to call KMEL everyday you’re gonna get a pretty good chart position. Because there’s nothing going on. California is getting violent again, all people have to do is go well if the President’s not going to obey the law, why should I, fuck this. If the cops aren’t going to obey the law, why should I.
What happened wit the proposed Hyphy Movement show at Fabric?
It was basically because we found out so late that Keak couldn't get his passport, we had to get a hold of FAB, he had to do a few things so that he could do the shows and get his passport in time. So we just knew we had to miss the first few. We were able to salvage the end of it.
Was the response good? I think so. It was weird. I remember in Brussels, I always have this rule, if I go out to talk to the crowd at the beginning and people are conversing with their back to me, whilst I’m talking to them. Like to talking to buddies and that, in the front. It’s not a good sign. It makes me go, why are you here? The show is starting and you are not even listening. So Brussels was weird all night. I thought it went cool, I thought Sonar was fun, everyone seemed to have a good time. But I don’t know if it was an example of like, “I thought he was gonna play ‘Midnight’…” But you have to do it. If I don’t articulate and what I was saying before, if I don’t show people what I’m about then they try and lock you into one mode.
DJ SHADOW Interview by The Patchwork Pirates,30/08/06, On the set of ‘You Made It’ video, London.
So what have you been up to before last night’s gig at Koko?
I’ve been on the road for two months, through Europe, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, Korea… last night’s gig was the only UK show on the run. I’m back late November.
Was it a strange situation whether or not to play the new album before it’s dropped, there was a lot of old material, it was like a “fan’s” gig?
Actually, I was talking to somebody from the label last night and I casually mentioned to them that I was home for two week and I finally get time to tweak the set. They asked what I meant by that. When I get home, it will be the first time I get to change anything about the set since I started touring in June. When I started touring in June there was a lot of concern about playing too much of the new record because no-one would have heard it yet. And you know how people are nowadays; they’ve got your whole life on their cell-phone. And they’re downloading it… I didn’t want to reveal too much of the album that soon. Also the songs that I did play, I didn’t want to mess with too much because nobody would have heard them yet. Like ‘Seein Thangs’ (featuring David Banner), that was played unchanged except for the intro. I play part of ‘The Tiger’. I do a fair amount but there is a lot I want to add. But essentially, that’s why. I didn’t want to reveal too much of the album that soon.
Is there a lot of room to adlib your set?
It always evolves a little each night, just a teeny bit. And by the end of the tour, like last time I toured, I toured for nine months. That was in 2002, going into 2003. The difference between the very first show and the very last show was probably 40%, so it evolves considerably over a large period of time. The big changes occur when I have these little two week breaks, I’ll be adding a couple of songs, taking out a couple of songs, I’ll be making a few parts more complicated. What always happens is when I start a show, until I get into the rhythm of it, everything seems hard and complicated. I barely have enough time to get to it. But once you do 20, 30 shows, you realise there are two minute blocks where I’m not doing much, a minute here, there. That changes when I get home and want to add bits. I don’t like not doing anything, I want to be doing something all the time. It keeps it fun for me as well.
Your shows are surprisingly vocal, some people might not expect that, do you always talk at your shows?
Yeah, I’ve tried not talking and it doesn’t work as well. I found years ago, like, when I first did my own tour of Europe in 1999. (I’d done tours before, but mainly as a DJ.) In 99 all of a sudden, (I also did shows for ‘Endtroducing…’ but not really on a tour level), I realised that the crowd would be like… I don’t know… ‘Endtroducing…’ came out and UNKLE came out and suddenly there was a lot of music that I had made that had affected a lot of people in a deep way. I was just thinking I would get up onto stage and just do what I do. But a lot of people were sort of, “Oh my god, what is he going to do?” In general I found that by grabbing the mic and talking a little bit, it sort of relaxed everybody and made them go, “Oh okay, he’s not gonna do something very attention focused…” You know what I mean? Some people like to cast a certain atmosphere and I like to put everyone at ease. I don’t want people to feel that more is going to be demanded of them than just merely enjoying themselves. Even on this tour… like my manager will say why don’t you just do the next show and get right into it. I hear what you’re saying and I don’t try and talk too much. On the occasions that I don’t, I just feel like it doesn't work as well.
When did you start on ‘The Outsider’? And what were the initial goals and ambitions with the record?
The earliest I would say was (‘Private Press’ wrapped in April 2002, started touring in May, toured into March of the next year….) The first thing I did when I came back off tour was to do ‘Triplicate/Something Happened That Day’, and I always do that, I come home and instantly make something that I end up liking three years later. I didn’t know what that was for, whether it was going to make the album or anything like that. I did it because I wanted to work with samples but not on the MPC. The first decision I ever made was I didn’t want to do another album in the MPC. Because I felt the ‘Private Press’ was the best sample based album I could ever make. I had exhausted the possibilities on the MPC, I wasn’t interested anymore. I love it, great, I used it for 11, 12 years but it’s done. In order for my music to progress and for me to progress as an artist I needed to wean myself off it, which is not an easy thing to do. For that length of time and of course I was well aware of the music I made on that machine.
Did it ever bother you, the association?
Not really, I started to also become aware of, once you've been making records for a while, I think generally it’s human nature for people to want to compartmentalize people. I think people had started to compartmentalize me. “This is my DJ Shadow box and I put him in here, and what this box says is he’s a sample based guy and he only likes old rap records and old funk records and he’ll never make a better record than ‘Endtroducing…’ Okay, that’s DJ Shadow. Onto the next, here’s this box…” And as an artist you kind of sit there and go, well I’m just getting started, you now what I mean? It’s like, well that’s incorrect and that’s a little inaccurate and yeah I know I said that 12 years ago, but you kind of grow over time. And that’s why the album’s called ‘The Outsider’, because I wanted to get outside of that. I knew I wanted the album to not just be samples, I knew I wanted the album to not just be instrumental, I knew I wanted it to be not just on the MPC, partially because those are all the elements that people attribute to me and I knew if I didn’t define who I am and what I represent now, other people would try and do it on my behalf. It was a tactical move, as well as an artistic move. I don’t do anything simply as just a reaction to what peoples say. There were times working on the ‘Private Press’. I remember in ‘Fixed Income’, I wrote a really nice bassline, but prohibited myself from using it because it wasn’t a sample. That’s when I said, okay, I’m going to see this album through, but then I’m not going to do this anymore. I don’t think it’s healthy to have/create some arbitrary technical reason why you can’t use a certain thing.
With ‘The Outsider’ was it always an aim to support the local community, or were you listening to this stuff and simply lovin’ it?
It was a combination of a lot of things. I started listening to hyphy music and getting back into what the Bay was doing in late 2002, early 2003, which coincided with a lot of fortunate things. Such as the local boycott on KMEL, forcing Clear Channel to play local artists, which coincided with the emergence of Rick Rock’s production and Mac Dre getting radio play for the first time, which coincided with me commuting for the first time. Because I moved my studio. All these things coincided. And in the same way I don’t think I would have done the Banner track if I hadn't spent a good part of 2003 driving around the South with a friend of mine hearing Lil Jon coming out of cars. I mean we had been into crunk for some time but being in the South… It’s the same as if… you can be a fan of bounce music without having never being to New Orleans, but it really helps your understanding of the music if you’ve been there. You can understand what DJ Screw contributed to the Houston scene but it helps to have been to Houston. The same thing as hyphy. So initially I was just a fan of the music, and started going to the store and buying records and tapes. It was so localised. You couldn’t find any of the music outside of a 30 square mile radius. It just was like bounce music. I was in New Orleans in ‘93, I was in this little Mom & Pop black music shop and just one person after another was coming in asking for DJ Jimmy, give me the DJ Jimmy tape. And that’s all I heard playing on loop… Juvenile was the rapper. And my initial impression was this is really amateur, what is this? The beats are kind of weak. But then you start getting into the culture of it, the way people are geeked to get the tape, and you’re like, DJ Jimmy, who knew… you know what I mean? And then you go on with your life, but it never really leaves you, it’s the same with the hyphy stuff. I’ll never forget when I saw a news report on slang and understanding your kids, in late 2003. When the Federation track ‘Hyphy’ had just come out and these kids were like, “it’s hyphy!” they were poppin their collar and blah blah blah. And I was like, whoa, cos that reminds me of ‘83 when I saw a report on The Disco Three and explaining what beatboxing was on the news. When you see stuff that is literally street level, standing on the street corner, that’s when you know that something’s happening. Like the first time I ever heard drum and bass, spring ‘95 walking around London. Car after car with the (hums the breaks) and the ragga muffin samples going through it… And I kept asking people, what is this, jungle right? And everybody was all dismissive, like oh it’s just this trend, blah blah blah and I was like… mmmm if you hear it coming out of cars on the street that’s a good sign, not a bad thing.
It’s impossible to pick up hyphy records here in the UK…
It’s hard to find on vinyl in the Bay, I remember when the 12” for ‘Super Hyphy’ was there for about three weeks. I mean the original, it’s probably bootlegged by now.
How big is it on the west coast, because I’ve interviewed other artists and had a word and they have no idea?
It depends on where your ear is directed. I personally didn’t care about Mobb Music, which was the hardcore rap coming out of the Bay in late ‘90s. For whatever reason, it just didn’t have what I was looking for. Whereas hyphy is just a completely different energy. I remember hearing groups like 8 Ball & MJG in the early ‘90s, but it just didn’t feel like it was there yet. And suddenly it’s there, it works. Hyphy is definitely a genre and it’s moving so quick right now. Things that are 104bpm you just can’t play, because it keeps speeding up a little bit more. Like ‘18 Dummy’, The Federation keeps speeding it up. And Trackademics is considered underground rap, it’s not even hyphy.
Even after E-40 remix?
I brought FAB over here and Trackademics and him are really close, and I met them a few times, but the last time I met them was at E-40 record launch… out in the parking lot, Emeryville, when he was signing… E-40 is like the pied piper of the Bay. Where he goes, people follow. His first record ‘MVP’ was ‘88, I don’t know if you’re aware, but there’s a whole lineage with his family. His uncle, Charles Thurman, put out one of the best funk 45’s from the Bay Area and Droop-E. I actually recorded that 45 for Droop E and he said, “to me it sounds like old dead people”, Droop’E’s 17, 18, to him that was recorded ten years before he was even born.
Your hyphy tracks aren’t a carbon copy of Rick Rock or a particularly straight up hyphy sound. You can always hear Shadow nuances, was this intentional?
Even on ‘3 Freaks’, well ‘Dats My Part’ and ‘3 Freaks’ are probably the most straight ahead hyphy things that I’ve done and ‘3 Freaks’ is like, really weird. If you listen to any RnB or rap or hyphy record on the radio you do not stray from the 2 or the 4 with the clap or the snare or the snap. That’s just it. You can do what ever you want with the kicks but it has to be on the 2 and the 4 and then to come out with a record that has no 4, initially Turf (Talk) and Keak (Da Sneak) were like okay… we’ll write to it, blah blah blah, it wasn’t until two hours later when we were wrapping it up, Turf Talk was like, oh shit, this is going to be a hit. It’s like with anything, to do something a little bit different if it doesn’t work, it’s not going to work at all. If you’re lucky you can get a way with little tweaks here and there. I though ‘Turf Dancing’ was going to be the one. I took it to a lot of hyphy DJs and a couple of them were like, oh it’s cool, shit this is hot. A couple of others were like, it’s little busy man, it’s a little too busy. There’s a couple of extra snares. Even Shep from the Animaniacs, when we were recording, he was like, you’ve got extra beats in there, huh? I was like, what do you mean, (beat boxes out the pattern)… people are like. If it’s not on the 2 or the 4 it’s a foreign language. But when you have a broader palette. For me it comes from funk... even when I try to do it right down the middle, it doesn’t usually hit the mark. But that’s my part which seems to work. ‘Keep Em Close’, even though Nump is a hyphy rapper, it wasn’t intentional to make a hyphy song. I was like, I’m going to give you a beat that’s really different, are you cool with that, he was like, yeah yeah yeah , lets do it and we wanted to do it as a pushing ‘6’N The Morning’, Ice-T sort of story rap vibe. Even some of the songs with hyphy rappers aren’t hyphy. And the David Banner track isn’t crunk. We did that in 2004, the first verse, the second verse we did after Katrina. To me it still sounds like me.
Could your early career move happened on any other label than Mo’Wax?
The thing I’d say with James, is his timing was really good. I’d been doing things with Hollywood Basic, primarily rap label run by Dave Funken Klein, although within the rap scene he was known as having a pretty broad view of things. Lifers Group, Organized Konfusion, Boo-Yaa TRIBE at one point. It was a good label. That was where all my output was going because he was a real advocate of what I was doing. He heard my stuff when I sent my stuff to The Source and got into Unsigned Hype and all that stuff. I really respected his opinions. He was Def Jam’s promo guy in Def Jam’s hey day. Working with Slick Rick and Public Enemy etc. And he was known as being really opinionated and that’s why people listened to him, because he wasn’t afraid to rip into people he thought was bad. Which was not really done back then as rap was such a community that everybody felt that everybody deserved a shot, but he was like, if it’s weak, fuck it. Dave Funken Klein had tumours on his spine and was within a year of his life and ultimately passed. I was doing demos for Tommy Boy, Profile, Funkmaster Flex, he kinda A&R’d me for a little while at Profile, I was supposed to do some things for Wild Pitch. The feedback I kept getting from people was - why do you keep using these weird samples, you need to be using familiar, cos what was popular back then was the Kenny Dope, Nubian Crackers, just looping recent hits. Yeah that’s cool, but I liked Large Professor, Pete Rock and Premier, they used samples that people don’t know. Lavelle came along and was the first person since Funken Klein who said, no, I want you to go as far as you can in this direction and take it there. Go as far as you want to go. That was really fortunate. Some people give James all the credit in the world and some people give him none. I think he deserves, I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Certainly his concept of having a label with a really strong visual identity, a really strong musical identity, a really strong, label identity, sometimes to the detriment of the artists, early on in a way. Was all really, really important and was all James. Him getting people like Futura in there and all that stuff, he cared, he wanted to build a label identity that was… I give him a lot of credit, so yeah. There weren’t really any other labels doing what he was doing. He was one part Talkin’ Loud, one part Ninja Tune, one part Wild Pitch, or some classic New York label, he was one part future labels like Warp. He was out on a limb a little bit and it was a unique combination of influences.
The hyphy community seems strong, is this how it is?
I think it’s still that way for the most part. I’m really looking forward to getting home because I haven’t really been home for three months and things are moving so quickly in the Bay I want to see if that unity is still there. Right when I was leaving I was hearing some people say like – you know the only people who are really coming up of this whole hyphy movement is the same old people. What about… Hoodstar’s still unsigned, The Team still isn't signed... people are thinking what’s really going on here, how do we get paid off of this. That’s a natural and understandable, but it’s still a little divisive. It will be interesting to see, because I don’t feel very connected at the moment.
Do you think the attention on the Wolfpack and ‘Vans’ will help or hinder hyphy’s movement?
It just really depends on people’s attitude. I guess as an analogy, I took Turf and FAB overseas and they were all very different in terms of like understanding the opportunity that was being given to them. Some people in the scene really get how to get to the next level, I think FAB is one of those people. I think FAB can go as far as he wants to go. I also think there’s a hood mentality that comes into it and the hood mentality is very - what can I get now? Fuck tomorrow, what can I get right now. It’s really hard to break that. I encounter it constantly, it’s a little bit sad because you want to tell them that they aren’t getting the bigger picture. To a lot of guys in the scene it’s if it doesn’t work out, it’s back to the corner. Because it’s “what ever I gotto do to get by”. If rap is the hustle today, fine, I’ll work that angle until it dries up. I grew up in an era where rap was a passion and a culture and to a lot of people that’s a foreign concept. To a lot of people rap is a hustle, it’s a means of getting by. It took me a while to readjust my way of thinking, to not be surprised or offended at that type of mentality. But you know, there are bigger social structures at work than just hip hop. If I have to work with people I can’t ride in on some high horse and tell them how to act or view life. I have to meet people half way, that’s a long way of saying, in terms of the Wolfpack… they got signed pretty quickly, they’re riding with Too $hort, it’s hard to say if they will be able to maintain the kind of connection they had to, literally their high school, that’s what blew them up. If you get 500 kids to call KMEL everyday you’re gonna get a pretty good chart position. Because there’s nothing going on. California is getting violent again, all people have to do is go well if the President’s not going to obey the law, why should I, fuck this. If the cops aren’t going to obey the law, why should I.
What happened wit the proposed Hyphy Movement show at Fabric?
It was basically because we found out so late that Keak couldn't get his passport, we had to get a hold of FAB, he had to do a few things so that he could do the shows and get his passport in time. So we just knew we had to miss the first few. We were able to salvage the end of it.
Was the response good? I think so. It was weird. I remember in Brussels, I always have this rule, if I go out to talk to the crowd at the beginning and people are conversing with their back to me, whilst I’m talking to them. Like to talking to buddies and that, in the front. It’s not a good sign. It makes me go, why are you here? The show is starting and you are not even listening. So Brussels was weird all night. I thought it went cool, I thought Sonar was fun, everyone seemed to have a good time. But I don’t know if it was an example of like, “I thought he was gonna play ‘Midnight’…” But you have to do it. If I don’t articulate and what I was saying before, if I don’t show people what I’m about then they try and lock you into one mode.