Quannum: Interview - Platform Network August 1999
Mosi Reeves talks to Quannum, the hip-hop collective that grew out of Solesides. Consisting of Chief Xcel, Gift of Gab, Lateef, and Lyrics Born, Quannum's new album is Spectrum.
The story of Solesides, the East Bay group responsible for some of the most innovative records of the last decade, is one of the more interesting tales of the independent hip-hop movement. It was founded in 1992 by UC Davis students Lateef the Truth Speaker, Asia Born (soon to become Lyrics Born), Chief Xcel and the Gift of Gab of Blackalicious, and DJ Shadow, who were motivated by frustration with the watered down mishmash that was contemporary hip-hop. Over the course of several years, Solesides would release underground classics - like Lateef's "The Wreckoning/Latyrx," DJ Shadow's "Entropy," Blackalicious' first EP Melodica, and Latyrx the Album, which was one of the most critically acclaimed hip-hop records of 1997. All of the group's records were independently released, providing a model for other West Coast labels like ABB Records (Dilated Peoples) and Stones Throw Records (Peanut Butter Wolf).
Solesides was disbanded in 1998 because, according to the label, it had accomplished everything it had set out to do. The next level, it said, was to transform into Quannum, a loose-knit collective that, similar to the Wu-Tang Clan, will produce records for distribution through several labels. To herald Quannum's arrival, it has created a compilation album, Spectrum, that will showcase the abilities of the aforementioned artists, as well as introduce Quannum members such as the Poets of Rhythm, a jazz-funk combo and songstress Joyo Velarde.
True to the album's name, Quannum's repertoire spans the spectrum of contemporary music, incorporating R&B ("People Like Me," a solo cut by Velarde) and acid jazz ("I Changed My Mind," Lyrics Born's duet with the Poets of Rhythm), as well as hardcore hip-hop. Spectrum also features collaborations with several underground kings like Souls of Mischief, Jurassic 5, Divine Styler and El-P from Company Flow. But these are not mere "guest spots." The tension between Latyrx's abstract stylings (by Lateef and Lyrics Born) and the iconoclastic, super-scientifical El-P, on "Looking Over A City," for example, creates a new variation of indie hip-hop.
"I think it's important to work with other people," Lyrics Born says of the several collaborations. "You grow artistically, you learn new methods of doing things." Throughout Spectrum, Quannum continues the Solesides tradition of fearless experimentation. Not all of Quannum's ideas work, but its determination to make music without borders, unencumbered by how hip-hop should sound, is admirable. With the eclectic Spectrum, the Quannum collective joins a select few making hip-hop that is not only relevant to the hip-hop nation but to all musicians.
Unfortunately, as of this writing, Quannum was still looking for a distributor for the album, although they had managed to release the brash lead single "Bombonyall." So what is Quannum, anyway? DJ Shadow, Lyrics Born, Chief Xcel and the Gift of Gab gathered over a raucous conference call to offer some explanations.
MOSI REEVES: So where are you guys coming from with the Quannum project?
LYRICS BORN: We're coming from a lot of different angles. We're just trying to present hip-hop in a broader context that will give people a feel for our take on hip-hop, and just try to make really good hip-hop in a variety of different styles, colors and shapes.
MOSI REEVES: It reminded me of how '70s groups used to do it - a lot of harmonizing, a lot of change-ups, a lot of lyrical styles, as opposed to just straight-up MC'ing.
LYRICS BORN: Absolutely. That's the whole point. I think one of the big problems in hip-hop right now, and most music in general, is that people really don't look outside their genre for inspiration, and they don't look to the past for information. (You like those rhymes?) And I think one of the things we try to do is give people a comprehensive, futuristic overview of hip-hop. So you're going to hear things in songs that reference old hip-hop songs, you're going to hear things that reference old soul, funk, rock, and yet we still manage to tie it together and draw upon all the music that's out there to offer. And we try to pull it together and make something that's progressive. But even though we draw upon old things, we add our own new ideas. Basically, it's a matter of using what history has taught you, and then putting your own twist on it so that it's not retro, and having your own voice. Synthesizing all of your influences and inspirations and coming out with something that's totally us, hopefully.
MOSI REEVES: It definitely sounds like something new and futuristic. There's no retro feel to it at all. It's just that, for comparison's sake, there are no other hip-hop crews that are doing anything like that. You had guys like Arrested Development that would do things like that, but there's really nobody out there now. You have R&B and hip-hop, but not just straight up hip-hop using different types of music.
LYRICS BORN: Word. To us, we make hip-hop, but all music is relevant. I think there's so much that you can do in hip-hop that hasn't been explored yet. I think, in this time period, we've hit a wall where people feel like they've done all they can do for whatever reason, and it's sort of stagnant. What we try to do is continually try to make new discoveries and try to bring a little life into hip-hop.
MOSI REEVES: So is this what we can expect from Quannum in the future, or is this a one-off project?
GIFT OF GAB: There's even more to it. Like he was saying, we're all about expanding. Listen to our stuff now, and it's a bit more diverse than it used to be, and I think it will just continue to get that way. I think you can even expect more of the same. You can expect the unexpected.
MOSI REEVES: I noticed an electro feel to a lot of the beats. DJ Shadow and Chief Xcel, what was your inspiration for putting the tracks together?
DJ SHADOW: I think, depending on who was rhyming on it, that helped form the basis of what the track was going to sound like. For example, a track like "Storm Warning": I heard it and I thought of Latyrx. So you give them the beat when it's in its rough form, and then based on what they come up with, then it takes its shape from there. But on that song, for example, there was an effort to incorporate a different style of making beats, rather than just looping a breakbeat. And then, a track like "Divine Intervention" - I had been working on a beat, and [Canadian MC] Divine Styler was somebody I'd always wanted to work with. I had a chance to meet him in LA last year, and based off of that meeting, I continued to build a track with him in mind, hoping that he would hear it and want to do it. As far as the whole '80s sound, I think there's as much '70s, '80s and '90s in equal parts, but we listen to music from all those different years, you know what I mean? So, it's kind of a natural byproduct of our listening experience.
CHIEF XCEL: I think how the Blackalicious tracks came to be on the album was sort of as a temporary hiatus from our own projects that Gab and I were working on. We wanted to take some time out to do something that was away from the concepts and themes that were on our own album, as well as the Maroons project. The Maroons is a group with Lateef from Latyrx and myself. So [the track on the album] was sort of the beginning of a brainchild that we're still developing and working on.
MOSI REEVES: So, for GIFT OF GAB and LYRICS BORN: Lyrically, you guys have been doing some different type of shit, in the way you weave your rhymes and the way you speak. It's different from what other MC's do. Where do you get your concepts from, in terms of how you develop your rhymes.
GIFT OF GAB: Just life. Life is a concept, life is a song. Go through a day, and look back at that day, and that day is a song in itself. It's all based on what you go through, what you feel, anything that you've have inside you. Latyrx, stylistically, speaks for me... I try to approach the track as if I'm an extra instrument. Sometimes the track will move me to go stylistically and conceptually in a certain direction. But it's all about how it feels when it comes out.
LYRICS BORN: I agree. I think that there's so many factors involved. But really, I think life is the chief catalyst for inspiration for writing. Also, I think it depends on what the music is it's being written to. If the music inspires a certain mood or inspires a certain topic, then I'll write something that's appropriate for that particular song, or that particular album. I think, when it comes to subject matter and style, I always take the approach of what does the world not need another song about? A lot of times, that helps guide my writing. Also, even if somebody has done a song on it before, if it's relevant to my experience, or if it's relevant to the project, or the track... If me and Lateef are writing something and that subject or style has been done before, but we're still feeling it and it's still appropriate, then we'll go ahead and do it anyway. We just try to do it in a slightly different way than other people will.
MOSI REEVES: On one of your songs, "Balcony Beach" (a single from Latyrx's self-titled debut), where you talk about being depressed and being able to come out of that, you broke it down in a way that really hadn't been done before. It seemed like (on the song) you were going into your own head, then breaking down (your problems) in different types of metaphors. Your images are very vivid, but at the same time, you're moving through a concept. A lot of times, when other MC's do it, they'll break out battle rhymes to break down a concept.
LYRICS BORN: Songs can be anything. There are songs to eat to; songs that will make you go to sleep. I think that it's important to realize that hip-hop is a limitless tool, and the only limit should be your imagination. I think it's every artist's responsibility, to his or her best ability, to write songs that are relevant.
MOSI REEVES: Quannum is the outgrowth of Solesides, right?
LYRICS BORN: We're just a growth.
DJ SHADOW: I would say that it's an ideological shift. We all got together and talked about how far we had come, what we had accomplished, what we hadn't yet accomplished, what we wanted to accomplish. Based on that, and the tenet of "build and destroy"
MOSI REEVES: What is "build and destroy"?
DJ SHADOW: "Build and destroy" is a concept that I bit off of KRS-One, which basically says, whatever you build, you have to be the one to destroy it, because if you don't someone else will. And if somebody else does, then you're left unprepared to move on to the next level. So, it's like the phoenix: you rise from the ashes of something old and create something new. We felt that Solesides had accomplished what we set out to accomplish, which was to provide a stable forum for us to release product on. It had gotten bigger and better than we ever thought it would. Based on our new ideology, which was that we want to propel ourselves as far as we can, we felt that Solesides had come to represent something that we didn't identify with that strongly anymore. So we wanted to kill that, start over (with) the same people, and, as with Solesides, Xcel came up with the name Quannum. It stuck, and it also seemed to represent our new philosophy. We weren't independent for the sake of being independent. We weren't trying to be martyrs. We weren't trying to keep it realer than anybody else does on a major label. We just wanted to be able to continue what we were doing, and Quannum represented "no limits," but No Limit was already taken, so we had to go with Quannum.
MOSI REEVES: But, to me, there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with being independent for the sake of being independent.
DJ SHADOW: Well, put it this way: I can't think of too many people that are running an independent label that, if they were offered a chance at reaching more people they wouldn't take it. In other words, there's a martyrdom within independent labels that is just as constricting as the climate within major labels. If you can never take a step to elevate yourself just for the sake of remaining independent, then I feel that's just a cop out, in the same way in the same way only being on a major label can be a cop-out. I think there's good and bad in both worlds. We preferred, for the last eight years, to remain independent, but that doesn't mean that we're wearing it on our sleeve. Situations change, and none of us are going to sit here and pretend that we wouldn't seriously consider making a major move if that's what we felt was necessary at that moment.
MOSI REEVES: You have some guest artists on this album, like El-P, Souls of Mischief, and Jurassic 5. Why did you choose to use other artists, rather than just the Quannum group?
LYRICS BORN: Because I think it's important to work with other people. You grow artistically; you learn new methods of doing things. If you always work with yourself, or with your selves, it's like you never get beyond your own limitations. (There's no doubt that) everyone here is tremendously talented, in my own opinion. But you get set in your way of doing things, and when you involve other people in the mix, you pick up on other people's tricks. You can expand your horizons, and think about making music in a way that you wouldn't necessarily have yourself. In this camp, we try to be as versatile as possible, and we try to have a musical environment where we try to work cohesively with anything that comes our way, not only with other rap crews, but bands or other genres that are outside of hip-hop.
MOSI REEVES: What do you hope people will get from this?
LYRICS BORN: I hope that we can expand people's horizons, broaden people's definition of hip-hop, and break down some barriers.
CHIEF XCEL: I think, for me, Spectrum is meant to be a sneak peek of what's to come to Quannum. The whole thing was taking everything to the next level, and expanding it.
DJ SHADOW: I hope it inspires people to come out of their own little shell, stare down the peer pressure, and come with what's really inside of their own hearts musically. If it can inspire a couple of people, then that would be really good.
Mosi Reeves talks to Quannum, the hip-hop collective that grew out of Solesides. Consisting of Chief Xcel, Gift of Gab, Lateef, and Lyrics Born, Quannum's new album is Spectrum.
The story of Solesides, the East Bay group responsible for some of the most innovative records of the last decade, is one of the more interesting tales of the independent hip-hop movement. It was founded in 1992 by UC Davis students Lateef the Truth Speaker, Asia Born (soon to become Lyrics Born), Chief Xcel and the Gift of Gab of Blackalicious, and DJ Shadow, who were motivated by frustration with the watered down mishmash that was contemporary hip-hop. Over the course of several years, Solesides would release underground classics - like Lateef's "The Wreckoning/Latyrx," DJ Shadow's "Entropy," Blackalicious' first EP Melodica, and Latyrx the Album, which was one of the most critically acclaimed hip-hop records of 1997. All of the group's records were independently released, providing a model for other West Coast labels like ABB Records (Dilated Peoples) and Stones Throw Records (Peanut Butter Wolf).
Solesides was disbanded in 1998 because, according to the label, it had accomplished everything it had set out to do. The next level, it said, was to transform into Quannum, a loose-knit collective that, similar to the Wu-Tang Clan, will produce records for distribution through several labels. To herald Quannum's arrival, it has created a compilation album, Spectrum, that will showcase the abilities of the aforementioned artists, as well as introduce Quannum members such as the Poets of Rhythm, a jazz-funk combo and songstress Joyo Velarde.
True to the album's name, Quannum's repertoire spans the spectrum of contemporary music, incorporating R&B ("People Like Me," a solo cut by Velarde) and acid jazz ("I Changed My Mind," Lyrics Born's duet with the Poets of Rhythm), as well as hardcore hip-hop. Spectrum also features collaborations with several underground kings like Souls of Mischief, Jurassic 5, Divine Styler and El-P from Company Flow. But these are not mere "guest spots." The tension between Latyrx's abstract stylings (by Lateef and Lyrics Born) and the iconoclastic, super-scientifical El-P, on "Looking Over A City," for example, creates a new variation of indie hip-hop.
"I think it's important to work with other people," Lyrics Born says of the several collaborations. "You grow artistically, you learn new methods of doing things." Throughout Spectrum, Quannum continues the Solesides tradition of fearless experimentation. Not all of Quannum's ideas work, but its determination to make music without borders, unencumbered by how hip-hop should sound, is admirable. With the eclectic Spectrum, the Quannum collective joins a select few making hip-hop that is not only relevant to the hip-hop nation but to all musicians.
Unfortunately, as of this writing, Quannum was still looking for a distributor for the album, although they had managed to release the brash lead single "Bombonyall." So what is Quannum, anyway? DJ Shadow, Lyrics Born, Chief Xcel and the Gift of Gab gathered over a raucous conference call to offer some explanations.
MOSI REEVES: So where are you guys coming from with the Quannum project?
LYRICS BORN: We're coming from a lot of different angles. We're just trying to present hip-hop in a broader context that will give people a feel for our take on hip-hop, and just try to make really good hip-hop in a variety of different styles, colors and shapes.
MOSI REEVES: It reminded me of how '70s groups used to do it - a lot of harmonizing, a lot of change-ups, a lot of lyrical styles, as opposed to just straight-up MC'ing.
LYRICS BORN: Absolutely. That's the whole point. I think one of the big problems in hip-hop right now, and most music in general, is that people really don't look outside their genre for inspiration, and they don't look to the past for information. (You like those rhymes?) And I think one of the things we try to do is give people a comprehensive, futuristic overview of hip-hop. So you're going to hear things in songs that reference old hip-hop songs, you're going to hear things that reference old soul, funk, rock, and yet we still manage to tie it together and draw upon all the music that's out there to offer. And we try to pull it together and make something that's progressive. But even though we draw upon old things, we add our own new ideas. Basically, it's a matter of using what history has taught you, and then putting your own twist on it so that it's not retro, and having your own voice. Synthesizing all of your influences and inspirations and coming out with something that's totally us, hopefully.
MOSI REEVES: It definitely sounds like something new and futuristic. There's no retro feel to it at all. It's just that, for comparison's sake, there are no other hip-hop crews that are doing anything like that. You had guys like Arrested Development that would do things like that, but there's really nobody out there now. You have R&B and hip-hop, but not just straight up hip-hop using different types of music.
LYRICS BORN: Word. To us, we make hip-hop, but all music is relevant. I think there's so much that you can do in hip-hop that hasn't been explored yet. I think, in this time period, we've hit a wall where people feel like they've done all they can do for whatever reason, and it's sort of stagnant. What we try to do is continually try to make new discoveries and try to bring a little life into hip-hop.
MOSI REEVES: So is this what we can expect from Quannum in the future, or is this a one-off project?
GIFT OF GAB: There's even more to it. Like he was saying, we're all about expanding. Listen to our stuff now, and it's a bit more diverse than it used to be, and I think it will just continue to get that way. I think you can even expect more of the same. You can expect the unexpected.
MOSI REEVES: I noticed an electro feel to a lot of the beats. DJ Shadow and Chief Xcel, what was your inspiration for putting the tracks together?
DJ SHADOW: I think, depending on who was rhyming on it, that helped form the basis of what the track was going to sound like. For example, a track like "Storm Warning": I heard it and I thought of Latyrx. So you give them the beat when it's in its rough form, and then based on what they come up with, then it takes its shape from there. But on that song, for example, there was an effort to incorporate a different style of making beats, rather than just looping a breakbeat. And then, a track like "Divine Intervention" - I had been working on a beat, and [Canadian MC] Divine Styler was somebody I'd always wanted to work with. I had a chance to meet him in LA last year, and based off of that meeting, I continued to build a track with him in mind, hoping that he would hear it and want to do it. As far as the whole '80s sound, I think there's as much '70s, '80s and '90s in equal parts, but we listen to music from all those different years, you know what I mean? So, it's kind of a natural byproduct of our listening experience.
CHIEF XCEL: I think how the Blackalicious tracks came to be on the album was sort of as a temporary hiatus from our own projects that Gab and I were working on. We wanted to take some time out to do something that was away from the concepts and themes that were on our own album, as well as the Maroons project. The Maroons is a group with Lateef from Latyrx and myself. So [the track on the album] was sort of the beginning of a brainchild that we're still developing and working on.
MOSI REEVES: So, for GIFT OF GAB and LYRICS BORN: Lyrically, you guys have been doing some different type of shit, in the way you weave your rhymes and the way you speak. It's different from what other MC's do. Where do you get your concepts from, in terms of how you develop your rhymes.
GIFT OF GAB: Just life. Life is a concept, life is a song. Go through a day, and look back at that day, and that day is a song in itself. It's all based on what you go through, what you feel, anything that you've have inside you. Latyrx, stylistically, speaks for me... I try to approach the track as if I'm an extra instrument. Sometimes the track will move me to go stylistically and conceptually in a certain direction. But it's all about how it feels when it comes out.
LYRICS BORN: I agree. I think that there's so many factors involved. But really, I think life is the chief catalyst for inspiration for writing. Also, I think it depends on what the music is it's being written to. If the music inspires a certain mood or inspires a certain topic, then I'll write something that's appropriate for that particular song, or that particular album. I think, when it comes to subject matter and style, I always take the approach of what does the world not need another song about? A lot of times, that helps guide my writing. Also, even if somebody has done a song on it before, if it's relevant to my experience, or if it's relevant to the project, or the track... If me and Lateef are writing something and that subject or style has been done before, but we're still feeling it and it's still appropriate, then we'll go ahead and do it anyway. We just try to do it in a slightly different way than other people will.
MOSI REEVES: On one of your songs, "Balcony Beach" (a single from Latyrx's self-titled debut), where you talk about being depressed and being able to come out of that, you broke it down in a way that really hadn't been done before. It seemed like (on the song) you were going into your own head, then breaking down (your problems) in different types of metaphors. Your images are very vivid, but at the same time, you're moving through a concept. A lot of times, when other MC's do it, they'll break out battle rhymes to break down a concept.
LYRICS BORN: Songs can be anything. There are songs to eat to; songs that will make you go to sleep. I think that it's important to realize that hip-hop is a limitless tool, and the only limit should be your imagination. I think it's every artist's responsibility, to his or her best ability, to write songs that are relevant.
MOSI REEVES: Quannum is the outgrowth of Solesides, right?
LYRICS BORN: We're just a growth.
DJ SHADOW: I would say that it's an ideological shift. We all got together and talked about how far we had come, what we had accomplished, what we hadn't yet accomplished, what we wanted to accomplish. Based on that, and the tenet of "build and destroy"
MOSI REEVES: What is "build and destroy"?
DJ SHADOW: "Build and destroy" is a concept that I bit off of KRS-One, which basically says, whatever you build, you have to be the one to destroy it, because if you don't someone else will. And if somebody else does, then you're left unprepared to move on to the next level. So, it's like the phoenix: you rise from the ashes of something old and create something new. We felt that Solesides had accomplished what we set out to accomplish, which was to provide a stable forum for us to release product on. It had gotten bigger and better than we ever thought it would. Based on our new ideology, which was that we want to propel ourselves as far as we can, we felt that Solesides had come to represent something that we didn't identify with that strongly anymore. So we wanted to kill that, start over (with) the same people, and, as with Solesides, Xcel came up with the name Quannum. It stuck, and it also seemed to represent our new philosophy. We weren't independent for the sake of being independent. We weren't trying to be martyrs. We weren't trying to keep it realer than anybody else does on a major label. We just wanted to be able to continue what we were doing, and Quannum represented "no limits," but No Limit was already taken, so we had to go with Quannum.
MOSI REEVES: But, to me, there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with being independent for the sake of being independent.
DJ SHADOW: Well, put it this way: I can't think of too many people that are running an independent label that, if they were offered a chance at reaching more people they wouldn't take it. In other words, there's a martyrdom within independent labels that is just as constricting as the climate within major labels. If you can never take a step to elevate yourself just for the sake of remaining independent, then I feel that's just a cop out, in the same way in the same way only being on a major label can be a cop-out. I think there's good and bad in both worlds. We preferred, for the last eight years, to remain independent, but that doesn't mean that we're wearing it on our sleeve. Situations change, and none of us are going to sit here and pretend that we wouldn't seriously consider making a major move if that's what we felt was necessary at that moment.
MOSI REEVES: You have some guest artists on this album, like El-P, Souls of Mischief, and Jurassic 5. Why did you choose to use other artists, rather than just the Quannum group?
LYRICS BORN: Because I think it's important to work with other people. You grow artistically; you learn new methods of doing things. If you always work with yourself, or with your selves, it's like you never get beyond your own limitations. (There's no doubt that) everyone here is tremendously talented, in my own opinion. But you get set in your way of doing things, and when you involve other people in the mix, you pick up on other people's tricks. You can expand your horizons, and think about making music in a way that you wouldn't necessarily have yourself. In this camp, we try to be as versatile as possible, and we try to have a musical environment where we try to work cohesively with anything that comes our way, not only with other rap crews, but bands or other genres that are outside of hip-hop.
MOSI REEVES: What do you hope people will get from this?
LYRICS BORN: I hope that we can expand people's horizons, broaden people's definition of hip-hop, and break down some barriers.
CHIEF XCEL: I think, for me, Spectrum is meant to be a sneak peek of what's to come to Quannum. The whole thing was taking everything to the next level, and expanding it.
DJ SHADOW: I hope it inspires people to come out of their own little shell, stare down the peer pressure, and come with what's really inside of their own hearts musically. If it can inspire a couple of people, then that would be really good.