Lifesavas: Q&A with Lifesavas on the Gutterfly Album
Those who didn’t get enough of Lifesavas’ emcee Jumbo in the cover story from today’s issue of Willamette Week are in luck. Here is even more of the conversation I had with the Northeast Portland native a few weeks back at Pioneer Plaza (He’s the one lurking in the back of this photo). We were supposed to talk about his experiences growing up and his involvement in the Portland music scene. For my own curiosity, though, I had to ask him about the upcoming Lifesavas album, Gutterfly. Jumbo looked a little irked by my first question and my use of the dreaded words “concept album,” and I thought for a split second that I may have ruined the interview entirely. But I think things turned out pretty well. I’ve also included some odds and ends that didn’t fit into the Q&A from today. Oh, and this is straight transcription, so grammar nerds can go ahead and have a field day with it.
Willamette Week: So it’s a concept album? That’s what I keep reading.
Jumbo: That’s what people say. I don’t know what that means, man.
I guess every album is a concept album in some ways.
Yeah. The record was really inspired by, definitely the Blaxploitation movement. Particularly there’s this flick called Coonskin, renamed Street Fight. It’s half animated and half regular footage. Ralph Bashi is the cat who directed it. It’s kind of a cult classic, not as popularly known as Fritz the Cat. He’s the same director who did Fritz the Cat and Heavy Traffic. So that, and then, I’m into a lot of kung fu flicks as well…. So we wanted to do a story that allowed us to be more colorful and jump into character—but maybe do something that hasn’t been done in hip-hop before. There are always things that are revisited and tried, but we feel like, from people’s responses so far, they feel like we’re pulling it off real well.
Some of the strongest moments on Spirit In Stone were where you guys slipped into different characters like on “Hellohihey.”
We got such a good response from that song. We didn’t want to retread any territory but sometimes when you deliver a song or album that people embrace they kinda only view you that way. It’s kind of hard to explain to people, you shouldn’t have to as an artist, this is just a collage of paintings here. I’m not going to paint the same picture next time. I know you want to see me this way, hear me this way, but the new album, Gutterfly, is all about a new chapter. The next movement for us, and the first album was more like Lifesavas meets Quannum (Records, the group’s label), cause we had to do what we had to do to make sure that we secured that. This record, Quannum is putting it out but it’s not a Quannum record. The only Quannum presence on the album at all is really Chief Xcel contributing an interlude. He pretty much was like, what do y’all want to do this time? We told him we wanted to do just Lifesavas and brand our name home with people. That’s really what it’s about. And as well, the first record only had a few guests, this record has guest producers, some of our favorite cats that we always wanted to work with. Instead of just doing songs where we get a collab with somebody—we wanted to present myself and Vursatyl as a respected duo, not just “he’s a producer who can rhyme, he’s a lyrical emcee, but they a duo.” So we wanted to do some collabs with our favorite duos, like Smif n Wessum, we did a song with Dead Prez, we did a song with Camp Lo.
So you’re throwing it back a bit with some of those.
Yeah, and the thing about it with some of those pairings is, as soon as we say those names people are like, “Y’all did a song with Smif n Wessum? I never would have anticipated that.” or “I really don’t see y’all like Camp Lo.” But that’s a side of us that you didn’t get to check out on the first record. So you’re gonna see in the songs that we did with these cats, these are our peers. Sometimes you worry as fans, like I don’t know if I want my favorite artist rhyming with this guy that I don’t really like that much, because I don’t know if someone’s going to outshine each other or if it will come out any good. I think people are gonna realize, we really put our heads together to make these really solid songs.
So often artists want the name on their album but they don’t want to put work into the collab.
Exactly. And upon first listen with a few people who have heard it, they’re kind of blown away. You look at the range of Dead Prez, Smif n Wessum and Camp Lo, they’re all three on different pages but we gel with each of them, because we have a page of the kind of stuff that they’re on. So the different pages inform and illuminate each other. We really gel together. There are a couple of collabs where it wasn’t with a duo—we did Ish, my man Butterfly from the Digable Planets, we did a song with him that came out really well. We did a song with Fishbone that I think is going to blow people away. With Norwood and Angelo. That song is one of my favorite songs on the record.
So you’re showing respect for different aspects of hip-hop and more.
Yeah, cause I feel that Fishbone deserves to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The fact that they haven’t been nominated or mentioned is a travesty to me. So, on the record, I’m pitchin that. I’m screamin’ “Rock and Roll Hall of Famers Fishbone!”
They were one of my first shows.
They inspire us live as well as for their struggle and maintaining, at their age, such a high-level show. We built with them real tough. Angelo and I, my father passed and his father passed, so we were able to really … I was done mourning but he wasn’t by the time we did the song. So we kinda shared our experiences with each other, and it helped him get over his. It made the song, which was already really honest, you could really feel it. Sometimes when you do collaborations with cats like that, schedules don’t work out and you have to do it digitally. We actually got to go down to Norwood’s house and build with him. His daughter was there for the day, so it was kind of a family affair. Then Angelo came through. When they were here in Portland they came to our studio, and laid down some stuff as well.
That’s got to be awesome, especially if those guys were your heroes coming up.
For real. And the other one that might catch people off is the track we did with Dead Prez, we got Vernon Reid from Living Color to play guitar.
Wow, so you’re really showing some respect for all kinds of music.
Definitely, I think it’s neccesary. You got people trying to resurrect soul, once they chopped off the word neo, now everybody is into soul samples, soul music and funk. Even there, we got this cat Meganut from Weapons of Choice, and on that same song we got George Clinton, too.
Wow, that was probably a big dream come true for Meganut.
Yeah, and for me. Me and Vurs are big Funkadelic and Parliament fans. George blessed us with it. I don’t think we’re known for being a self-indulgent group really, at least people haven’t said that about us, but that’s the one song where I feel like we kind of self-indulge. We want to do something that’s just funk and not what you’d expect. Especially if you have a Blaxploitation theme. Yeah, you gotta have the funk. And not no Northern Funk, none of that, no dis, but none of that bouncy soulless funk that some people do and call it funk. The real funk, the P funk. The P Funk! Yeah.
I had no idea you had such a big scope for this album
Yeah, and then the range—we did some live musicianship as well, obviously with Vernon and such, but I really wanted to do a record with horns. I was really vibing off Mecca and the Soul Brother, how Pete Rock introduced horns. Horns were already kinda put in the mix by Tribe and a few other groups, but when Pete Rock made it okay just to spread horns all over your record. So I got Farnell Newton playing trumpet all over the record. Another friend of mind, Chris Funk, who plays with the Decemberists. He plays guitar on the record as well. And how I mentioned soul, I did a song where I flipped this cat Don Blackman, he’s an old soul artist from GRP. He worked with Dave Grusin, Bernard Wright, Marcus Miller. Originally I flipped one of his songs, and everybody was like, ah you should see if he’ll sing it. I didn’t want to change it, cause it sounded good the way it was just chopped up. I sent it to him and he heard it and he wanted to do the vocals. So I just got that, the last piece I just got. He did the vocals on the song, and his daughter is on it. We got it all over the place.
And then I talked to [WW film critic] David Walker, he said he did some stuff.
Yup, Dave did some stuff, it was really dope, added a nice twist on it.
Is he like a critical voice, like a narrator on it?
Yeah yeah, he’s critical. So, it’s not a melting pot. You would think that with all those names it would be a melting pot or a compilation but it’s not. It all works together and it’s all under the next chapter of the Lifesavas, the Gutterfly movement.
Did you have some albums you were listening to while you made it? I read somewhere that you were listening to Common’s Electric Circus album.
That was the start of it, originally I was listening to a lot of psychedelic stuff and a lot of Funkadelic. I kind of went on an excursion, but that’s a whole nother Lifesavas record. Not this one, we dug in heavy. It was more inspired by three staple records that we listened to for the blueprint to the record. [Tribe Called Quest’s] Midnight Marauders, Hard to Earn by Gang Starr, and Only Built for Cuban Links, Raekwon and Ghostface.
That’s a pretty solid blueprint.
Yeah, and also this group Chocolate Milk, the album is called Actions Speak Louder than Words. That’s the other one I listened to. We kinda banged heads, cause whenever you do a record that gets deemed a concept record, it gets a negative connotation on it that it shouldn’t. The way I look at the record, it’s a wet dream for any writer. Cause it’s not just, it’s different from Prince of Thieves, it’s different from the Who’s Tommy, and it’s a little different from Mr. Lif’s I Phantom. That record, one song led to the next in finishing a story. But there’s different stories on Gutterfly. Each song really has it’s own scene that makes it cohesive. You could take each song and write a book about it. And we’re still debating, but we might have a hidden track that revisits a kung fu track, where we play different characters. That beat is probably going to throw a lot of people off, because it’s pretty hard. It’s like DJ Premier meets Kool G Rap-ish.
You can’t go wrong with that.
Nah but a lot of people, when we’ve done that song at shows, DJs run up and say yo what’s that beat, I need that.
So the last element of it, I talked about the outside production, the majority of the producion was done by myself, Vursatyl and Rev. Shines, cause we wanted to make it as much Lifesavas as possible, but there’s a couple of tracks that we pulled in, where really, the way we pick tracks is that they have to sound like Lifesavas would have made them. It kinda makes you think that it fits as a Lifesavas track. So we got this track from Oh No, Madlib’s brother, he blessed us, that’s one of everybody’s favorites, and another track from Jake One (Seattle producer who has crafted beats for De La Soul, 50 Cent, Boom Bap Project), and there’s a track from Vitamin D that came out really phat. Really phat. There’s no other record that sounds like it out there.
What was the first group you fell in love with, where you were a huge fan?
De La. Originally everybody was trying to yell, like when LL became popular everybody was doing hard records. Public Enemy, KRS and De La made it cool to dance to a battle record. When De La did it they brought different cadences, Prince Paul sampled French records and quirky corny folk records and stuff like that, making it cool. But it was also the pulse of the street, like here you have these cats who can relate to intellectual cats and street cats as well. Gil-Scott once said that if the street poet ain’t reaching the people then he’s not speaking street poetry. De-La was complicated and had a lot of their own self-isms, but they made it okay to make a song that made people want to rewind and listen again, to get a double meaning. Some songs had choruses, some didn’t, some had missing elements of instrumentation, some of the melodies were just vocal melodies, and you’ll find a lot of that in our music. First group I fell in love with, bottom line, De La Soul. They know it. We were supposed to do a song with them for the record—our schedules just didn’t permit it.
It must be weird to be on a level where you can be considered peers with your heroes.
Yeah. It is. We’re on a collision course, I think we’re gonna do a song with them on the next record for sure.
Was it considered weird to be into De La Soul when they first hit?
Nah, Lifesavas have always been known as style junkies. Whether it’s fashion, music, the lingo or just how we get down with people and relate to people. We’re very colorful people. Which is why, with this record we are branding that it’s okay to be you with your own style, you gotta express yourself. No matter if you see yourself as dull, boring, exciting, excessive, eccentric, you know, goth punk, coffee shop, whatever you want to do. Combine all of those things and do it on blast, because we need that. In terms of fashion and wardrobe and being fly, the clothes don’t make you, you make the clothes. If the clothes make you think of a character within yourself, pull that out. If it helps you in your swagger then do it. It’ll help you in relationships and in your workspace, it’ll just help you be a happier person.
What was your first show? What group were you in then?
Reel to Reel Production crew was the name of my first group. We did the Burning Spear, we did this old club in Vancouver called the Spectrum. We actually opened for UTFO. We played with Egyptian Lover. That was the first group I was with. The second group I was with was called Crowd Control. We actually opened for Tribe, a lot of cats didn’t know that. That was right when Low End Theory was about to come out. But the first performance in Portland was probably at the Spectrum. That was a long time ago, man.
What’s the first show that really blew up hip-hop in Portland?
Run DMC and the Beastie Boys came. That was at Memorial Coliseum. It was like DJ Davy D, Run DMC and the Beastie Boys. That was the first time Portland had ever seen DJs like that—Davy D and Jam Master Jay both had their own risers, if you will, that kinda came out of the stage, rose up out of nowhere with a spotlight on em. They was one-man-banding it and just showing them how to do blend tapes and mixes and live on-the-spot instrumentation. Cutting and turntablism with just the drums and a bassline or a guitar stab—that was DJ Davy D. Then the Beastie Boys DJ was uhh … DJ Hurricane. So they were all from Queens and they had the same kinda vibe, but it was all different styles. So they showed you that you could be from the same city, but have different styles. You had the Beastie Boys who were this all-white rap group who was about college-style drinking and partying, then you had RUN DMC who was an all-black rap group representing the hardcore, just rhyming and even dropping some knowledge a little bit over hardcore breaks, guitar riffs. I think when Portland saw that, a lot of groups and emcees that I saw, their style changed quickly, trying to emulate that. Myself and Vursatyl were in different groups respectively, but when we saw that we saw that you couldn’t just have a show, you can’t just do your song and be monotone, you gotta connect with people.
And maybe moreso in hip-hop than in other genres because all you have is that mic as an emcee.
That mic, and your voice is your instrument. People come with their arms crossed because of the bravado, and you’ve got to shake em, you have to make it be an event. They’re standing there like “entertain me.” This ain’t no lecture, give me something to go home with, give me some inspiration.
So you have to either bust them up laughing, or-
Yeah a lot of people don’t know that myself and Vurs are comedians, man. They haven’t been able to see that side. On stage, you’re gonna see a lot more of that. We’re not going to do any stand-up comedy routines but we’re definitely going to have people laughing a lot more.
Because you’re having fun. How much fun are you having at this point?
This is the most fun we’ve had in a long time. We haven’t been away from home but this is kinda like a homecoming if you will—because the first record we kinda just put out and invited people to go get it. This time we’re coming slamming on your door. We’re coming to your house, and wherever your house is we’re coming there.
Well you’ve definitely got me excited about the new album.
It’s exciting, man. It feels that way. Every time I talk about it there’s electricity that runs through me because we just feel free as artists. We feel real free. This record won’t be the only thing coming out, either. We’re gonna come out with multiple releases right after that record, online and available at shows.
Cause this was how many years in the making?
Three. Yeah. And really, we’re not even going to give you the opportunity to love it or hate it, we’re just saying love it. Love it love it love it. Love for sale, love for free.
Lastly, if there’s any Portland companies that want to hit us fashion-wise, definitely hit us up, because there are a lot of people coming at us fast and furious about that, but we definitely want to represent Portland first, because of the vibe of the record. You’ll see us rocking various things from Bebe to G-Fly-G which is Gutterfly Gear which will be our exclusive line. But we’re not afraid to brand the city.
Those who didn’t get enough of Lifesavas’ emcee Jumbo in the cover story from today’s issue of Willamette Week are in luck. Here is even more of the conversation I had with the Northeast Portland native a few weeks back at Pioneer Plaza (He’s the one lurking in the back of this photo). We were supposed to talk about his experiences growing up and his involvement in the Portland music scene. For my own curiosity, though, I had to ask him about the upcoming Lifesavas album, Gutterfly. Jumbo looked a little irked by my first question and my use of the dreaded words “concept album,” and I thought for a split second that I may have ruined the interview entirely. But I think things turned out pretty well. I’ve also included some odds and ends that didn’t fit into the Q&A from today. Oh, and this is straight transcription, so grammar nerds can go ahead and have a field day with it.
Willamette Week: So it’s a concept album? That’s what I keep reading.
Jumbo: That’s what people say. I don’t know what that means, man.
I guess every album is a concept album in some ways.
Yeah. The record was really inspired by, definitely the Blaxploitation movement. Particularly there’s this flick called Coonskin, renamed Street Fight. It’s half animated and half regular footage. Ralph Bashi is the cat who directed it. It’s kind of a cult classic, not as popularly known as Fritz the Cat. He’s the same director who did Fritz the Cat and Heavy Traffic. So that, and then, I’m into a lot of kung fu flicks as well…. So we wanted to do a story that allowed us to be more colorful and jump into character—but maybe do something that hasn’t been done in hip-hop before. There are always things that are revisited and tried, but we feel like, from people’s responses so far, they feel like we’re pulling it off real well.
Some of the strongest moments on Spirit In Stone were where you guys slipped into different characters like on “Hellohihey.”
We got such a good response from that song. We didn’t want to retread any territory but sometimes when you deliver a song or album that people embrace they kinda only view you that way. It’s kind of hard to explain to people, you shouldn’t have to as an artist, this is just a collage of paintings here. I’m not going to paint the same picture next time. I know you want to see me this way, hear me this way, but the new album, Gutterfly, is all about a new chapter. The next movement for us, and the first album was more like Lifesavas meets Quannum (Records, the group’s label), cause we had to do what we had to do to make sure that we secured that. This record, Quannum is putting it out but it’s not a Quannum record. The only Quannum presence on the album at all is really Chief Xcel contributing an interlude. He pretty much was like, what do y’all want to do this time? We told him we wanted to do just Lifesavas and brand our name home with people. That’s really what it’s about. And as well, the first record only had a few guests, this record has guest producers, some of our favorite cats that we always wanted to work with. Instead of just doing songs where we get a collab with somebody—we wanted to present myself and Vursatyl as a respected duo, not just “he’s a producer who can rhyme, he’s a lyrical emcee, but they a duo.” So we wanted to do some collabs with our favorite duos, like Smif n Wessum, we did a song with Dead Prez, we did a song with Camp Lo.
So you’re throwing it back a bit with some of those.
Yeah, and the thing about it with some of those pairings is, as soon as we say those names people are like, “Y’all did a song with Smif n Wessum? I never would have anticipated that.” or “I really don’t see y’all like Camp Lo.” But that’s a side of us that you didn’t get to check out on the first record. So you’re gonna see in the songs that we did with these cats, these are our peers. Sometimes you worry as fans, like I don’t know if I want my favorite artist rhyming with this guy that I don’t really like that much, because I don’t know if someone’s going to outshine each other or if it will come out any good. I think people are gonna realize, we really put our heads together to make these really solid songs.
So often artists want the name on their album but they don’t want to put work into the collab.
Exactly. And upon first listen with a few people who have heard it, they’re kind of blown away. You look at the range of Dead Prez, Smif n Wessum and Camp Lo, they’re all three on different pages but we gel with each of them, because we have a page of the kind of stuff that they’re on. So the different pages inform and illuminate each other. We really gel together. There are a couple of collabs where it wasn’t with a duo—we did Ish, my man Butterfly from the Digable Planets, we did a song with him that came out really well. We did a song with Fishbone that I think is going to blow people away. With Norwood and Angelo. That song is one of my favorite songs on the record.
So you’re showing respect for different aspects of hip-hop and more.
Yeah, cause I feel that Fishbone deserves to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The fact that they haven’t been nominated or mentioned is a travesty to me. So, on the record, I’m pitchin that. I’m screamin’ “Rock and Roll Hall of Famers Fishbone!”
They were one of my first shows.
They inspire us live as well as for their struggle and maintaining, at their age, such a high-level show. We built with them real tough. Angelo and I, my father passed and his father passed, so we were able to really … I was done mourning but he wasn’t by the time we did the song. So we kinda shared our experiences with each other, and it helped him get over his. It made the song, which was already really honest, you could really feel it. Sometimes when you do collaborations with cats like that, schedules don’t work out and you have to do it digitally. We actually got to go down to Norwood’s house and build with him. His daughter was there for the day, so it was kind of a family affair. Then Angelo came through. When they were here in Portland they came to our studio, and laid down some stuff as well.
That’s got to be awesome, especially if those guys were your heroes coming up.
For real. And the other one that might catch people off is the track we did with Dead Prez, we got Vernon Reid from Living Color to play guitar.
Wow, so you’re really showing some respect for all kinds of music.
Definitely, I think it’s neccesary. You got people trying to resurrect soul, once they chopped off the word neo, now everybody is into soul samples, soul music and funk. Even there, we got this cat Meganut from Weapons of Choice, and on that same song we got George Clinton, too.
Wow, that was probably a big dream come true for Meganut.
Yeah, and for me. Me and Vurs are big Funkadelic and Parliament fans. George blessed us with it. I don’t think we’re known for being a self-indulgent group really, at least people haven’t said that about us, but that’s the one song where I feel like we kind of self-indulge. We want to do something that’s just funk and not what you’d expect. Especially if you have a Blaxploitation theme. Yeah, you gotta have the funk. And not no Northern Funk, none of that, no dis, but none of that bouncy soulless funk that some people do and call it funk. The real funk, the P funk. The P Funk! Yeah.
I had no idea you had such a big scope for this album
Yeah, and then the range—we did some live musicianship as well, obviously with Vernon and such, but I really wanted to do a record with horns. I was really vibing off Mecca and the Soul Brother, how Pete Rock introduced horns. Horns were already kinda put in the mix by Tribe and a few other groups, but when Pete Rock made it okay just to spread horns all over your record. So I got Farnell Newton playing trumpet all over the record. Another friend of mind, Chris Funk, who plays with the Decemberists. He plays guitar on the record as well. And how I mentioned soul, I did a song where I flipped this cat Don Blackman, he’s an old soul artist from GRP. He worked with Dave Grusin, Bernard Wright, Marcus Miller. Originally I flipped one of his songs, and everybody was like, ah you should see if he’ll sing it. I didn’t want to change it, cause it sounded good the way it was just chopped up. I sent it to him and he heard it and he wanted to do the vocals. So I just got that, the last piece I just got. He did the vocals on the song, and his daughter is on it. We got it all over the place.
And then I talked to [WW film critic] David Walker, he said he did some stuff.
Yup, Dave did some stuff, it was really dope, added a nice twist on it.
Is he like a critical voice, like a narrator on it?
Yeah yeah, he’s critical. So, it’s not a melting pot. You would think that with all those names it would be a melting pot or a compilation but it’s not. It all works together and it’s all under the next chapter of the Lifesavas, the Gutterfly movement.
Did you have some albums you were listening to while you made it? I read somewhere that you were listening to Common’s Electric Circus album.
That was the start of it, originally I was listening to a lot of psychedelic stuff and a lot of Funkadelic. I kind of went on an excursion, but that’s a whole nother Lifesavas record. Not this one, we dug in heavy. It was more inspired by three staple records that we listened to for the blueprint to the record. [Tribe Called Quest’s] Midnight Marauders, Hard to Earn by Gang Starr, and Only Built for Cuban Links, Raekwon and Ghostface.
That’s a pretty solid blueprint.
Yeah, and also this group Chocolate Milk, the album is called Actions Speak Louder than Words. That’s the other one I listened to. We kinda banged heads, cause whenever you do a record that gets deemed a concept record, it gets a negative connotation on it that it shouldn’t. The way I look at the record, it’s a wet dream for any writer. Cause it’s not just, it’s different from Prince of Thieves, it’s different from the Who’s Tommy, and it’s a little different from Mr. Lif’s I Phantom. That record, one song led to the next in finishing a story. But there’s different stories on Gutterfly. Each song really has it’s own scene that makes it cohesive. You could take each song and write a book about it. And we’re still debating, but we might have a hidden track that revisits a kung fu track, where we play different characters. That beat is probably going to throw a lot of people off, because it’s pretty hard. It’s like DJ Premier meets Kool G Rap-ish.
You can’t go wrong with that.
Nah but a lot of people, when we’ve done that song at shows, DJs run up and say yo what’s that beat, I need that.
So the last element of it, I talked about the outside production, the majority of the producion was done by myself, Vursatyl and Rev. Shines, cause we wanted to make it as much Lifesavas as possible, but there’s a couple of tracks that we pulled in, where really, the way we pick tracks is that they have to sound like Lifesavas would have made them. It kinda makes you think that it fits as a Lifesavas track. So we got this track from Oh No, Madlib’s brother, he blessed us, that’s one of everybody’s favorites, and another track from Jake One (Seattle producer who has crafted beats for De La Soul, 50 Cent, Boom Bap Project), and there’s a track from Vitamin D that came out really phat. Really phat. There’s no other record that sounds like it out there.
What was the first group you fell in love with, where you were a huge fan?
De La. Originally everybody was trying to yell, like when LL became popular everybody was doing hard records. Public Enemy, KRS and De La made it cool to dance to a battle record. When De La did it they brought different cadences, Prince Paul sampled French records and quirky corny folk records and stuff like that, making it cool. But it was also the pulse of the street, like here you have these cats who can relate to intellectual cats and street cats as well. Gil-Scott once said that if the street poet ain’t reaching the people then he’s not speaking street poetry. De-La was complicated and had a lot of their own self-isms, but they made it okay to make a song that made people want to rewind and listen again, to get a double meaning. Some songs had choruses, some didn’t, some had missing elements of instrumentation, some of the melodies were just vocal melodies, and you’ll find a lot of that in our music. First group I fell in love with, bottom line, De La Soul. They know it. We were supposed to do a song with them for the record—our schedules just didn’t permit it.
It must be weird to be on a level where you can be considered peers with your heroes.
Yeah. It is. We’re on a collision course, I think we’re gonna do a song with them on the next record for sure.
Was it considered weird to be into De La Soul when they first hit?
Nah, Lifesavas have always been known as style junkies. Whether it’s fashion, music, the lingo or just how we get down with people and relate to people. We’re very colorful people. Which is why, with this record we are branding that it’s okay to be you with your own style, you gotta express yourself. No matter if you see yourself as dull, boring, exciting, excessive, eccentric, you know, goth punk, coffee shop, whatever you want to do. Combine all of those things and do it on blast, because we need that. In terms of fashion and wardrobe and being fly, the clothes don’t make you, you make the clothes. If the clothes make you think of a character within yourself, pull that out. If it helps you in your swagger then do it. It’ll help you in relationships and in your workspace, it’ll just help you be a happier person.
What was your first show? What group were you in then?
Reel to Reel Production crew was the name of my first group. We did the Burning Spear, we did this old club in Vancouver called the Spectrum. We actually opened for UTFO. We played with Egyptian Lover. That was the first group I was with. The second group I was with was called Crowd Control. We actually opened for Tribe, a lot of cats didn’t know that. That was right when Low End Theory was about to come out. But the first performance in Portland was probably at the Spectrum. That was a long time ago, man.
What’s the first show that really blew up hip-hop in Portland?
Run DMC and the Beastie Boys came. That was at Memorial Coliseum. It was like DJ Davy D, Run DMC and the Beastie Boys. That was the first time Portland had ever seen DJs like that—Davy D and Jam Master Jay both had their own risers, if you will, that kinda came out of the stage, rose up out of nowhere with a spotlight on em. They was one-man-banding it and just showing them how to do blend tapes and mixes and live on-the-spot instrumentation. Cutting and turntablism with just the drums and a bassline or a guitar stab—that was DJ Davy D. Then the Beastie Boys DJ was uhh … DJ Hurricane. So they were all from Queens and they had the same kinda vibe, but it was all different styles. So they showed you that you could be from the same city, but have different styles. You had the Beastie Boys who were this all-white rap group who was about college-style drinking and partying, then you had RUN DMC who was an all-black rap group representing the hardcore, just rhyming and even dropping some knowledge a little bit over hardcore breaks, guitar riffs. I think when Portland saw that, a lot of groups and emcees that I saw, their style changed quickly, trying to emulate that. Myself and Vursatyl were in different groups respectively, but when we saw that we saw that you couldn’t just have a show, you can’t just do your song and be monotone, you gotta connect with people.
And maybe moreso in hip-hop than in other genres because all you have is that mic as an emcee.
That mic, and your voice is your instrument. People come with their arms crossed because of the bravado, and you’ve got to shake em, you have to make it be an event. They’re standing there like “entertain me.” This ain’t no lecture, give me something to go home with, give me some inspiration.
So you have to either bust them up laughing, or-
Yeah a lot of people don’t know that myself and Vurs are comedians, man. They haven’t been able to see that side. On stage, you’re gonna see a lot more of that. We’re not going to do any stand-up comedy routines but we’re definitely going to have people laughing a lot more.
Because you’re having fun. How much fun are you having at this point?
This is the most fun we’ve had in a long time. We haven’t been away from home but this is kinda like a homecoming if you will—because the first record we kinda just put out and invited people to go get it. This time we’re coming slamming on your door. We’re coming to your house, and wherever your house is we’re coming there.
Well you’ve definitely got me excited about the new album.
It’s exciting, man. It feels that way. Every time I talk about it there’s electricity that runs through me because we just feel free as artists. We feel real free. This record won’t be the only thing coming out, either. We’re gonna come out with multiple releases right after that record, online and available at shows.
Cause this was how many years in the making?
Three. Yeah. And really, we’re not even going to give you the opportunity to love it or hate it, we’re just saying love it. Love it love it love it. Love for sale, love for free.
Lastly, if there’s any Portland companies that want to hit us fashion-wise, definitely hit us up, because there are a lot of people coming at us fast and furious about that, but we definitely want to represent Portland first, because of the vibe of the record. You’ll see us rocking various things from Bebe to G-Fly-G which is Gutterfly Gear which will be our exclusive line. But we’re not afraid to brand the city.