Jacked straight from http://cocaineblunts.com/new
Five albums and 15 years deep, The Coup are perhaps the most consistant (and consistantly underrated) politcal minded rap groups of all time. But you probably already know this from the few occasions that this blog slipped into full scale Coup fan site mode. I had a chance to talk to Boots about the groups history, from their involvement in the near-infamous Dope Lika Pound or a Key compilation to their lastest album Pick A Bigger Weapon, which just so happens to drop today on Epitaph (Needless to say it's a must cop).
Noz: What are your earliest memories from both political and musical standpoints?
Boots: Musical would have to be you know um listening to records that my sister and my parents had. My favorite records... I remember I would always play "Funky Worm" by Ohio Players, the 45, I would always play that. My sister would always be throwin parties at the house. Until I was six I lived in detroit and there was this dance people would do that was kinda like... it was called the Errol Flynn and you made your arms like swords. The Errol Flynns were a gang in the neighborhood that we lived in and that was the dance everybody did. I remember music being played at parties my parents were having but I realized later that those weren't supposed to just be parties those were [political] meetings that would then turn into a party. There was very little line between community and political activity and partying and music. I have a lot of memories like that. I know that later on when I was like 11 I was really hyped on Prince. I wanted to play guitar on stage or something like what Prince did.
N: Yeah I can hear the Prince influence in the new album.
B: Yeah Definitely.
N: At what point did you start rapping?
B: In high school we all rapped. And my first raps would be a combination of my own corny stuff and stolen lines from Schooly D who I thought not that many people knew at my school. We would just rap back and forth at lunch or at break or in art class. All those sorts of things. It was something the way people pounded on the table and rapped, but it wasn't really nothing serious.
N: When did you think about pursuing it as a serious thing?
B: I think a lot later, like when I was maybe 18 or 19 that I really think it hit me something serious because I didn't see the connection between what I wanted to do politically [and rapping]. Because I had already been an organizer, from the time that I was 15. When I was 15 I joined the Progressive Labor Party which was a revolutionary organization. And by that year I had already been part of leading this walk out at Oakland High and it was 2000 of the 2200 students, we all walked out and marched down about two or three miles to the school board and won our struggle right there. So it propelled me into a leadership position and I was doing all kinds of stuff, going all around the country, helping out with youth organizations and it pretty much set me into what I thought was going to be my life's path - being an organizer, helping to build a movement. But I didn't see how my other interest, which was in in music, because up until then I had also taken piano, guitar and trumpet at various times, and I didn't see how my other interests could combine with that until an incident where we was doing work later on in the Double Rock Projects in San Fransicsco and there was an incident that I talk about on the song "I Know You", about an incident where this woman Rossi Hawkins and her two twin sons that were eight years old got beat down out there by the police and the whole neighborhood came out and stopped them from dragging her into the car afterwards. They were concerned with what they were going to do with them - were they gonna beat them more? Were they gonna take them to the hospital? Or what? So they rushed down there and the police started shooting into the air and everybody ran away from them. And at some point they turned back and by the end of the night there were police cars turned over, [with] the police running away, running out of there on foot with their guns taken away from them. And when the story was told to me some days later by many different people that were there what happened, you know there were a lot of different details, but there was one thing that was constant, and that was that when the police started shooting in the air and everybody ran away in fear of their lives, somebody started chanting "Fight The Power! Fight the Power" and this was the summer of 1989 when this song was big, when it was on the radio, all over the place. Public Enemy's "Fight the Power" was out and that song gave people what they needed, it helped them understand that they were all on the same page as far as what they needed to do. It helped them make the decision to go back and take their place in history. Now, when I say take their place in history, none of this got in the newspaper the next day or anything, but when I heard that I realized that's what music does. It allows you to feel a general unity of thought with thousands of people. It is able to be an anthem for the fight and anthems are important because you're not singing that anthem by yourself, you're singing it with other folks. And I saw right then what music, in particular hip hop, could be used for in a struggle, in a movement. That was when I figured out what I was doing, when I heard that story a few days afterward from everyone involved.
N: So after this did you form The Coup?
B: Yeah, I guess, around that time, there were some variations of things. Like just before that we had a group called Underground Funk. Back then you could have twelve different groups with different people and it's like half hearted. The idea of even getting into a studio and recording a song just seemed like a dream. Like something you'd talk about but will it ever happen you don't know. And that was different because studios weren't all over the place then. It was just that idea of the studio, there was some mysticism behind going to the studio. But yeah, shortly after that the beginnings of what would be The Coup formed.
N: And you guys all linked up with Spice 1 and them for Dope Lika Pound Or a Key?
B: Yeah what happened was me E-Roc, Spice 1, G-Nut, who ended up in 187 Faculty, and another dude that went by the name of Point Blank that we helped put out something from, was in there too, we all worked at UPS, at the airport. And we would be all unloading the packages and stuff like that. And the first way that I knew Spice 1 rapped, i mean, well that he was serious about it, cause we would all be in there rappin and alot of times we'd purposely take a long time unloading the belly's of the plane, so we'd crawl up into the bellys of the plane to put the stuff on, but we'd all be rapping. Spice 1, interestingly enough was always talking about his partner Del, like Del was his best friend or something like that. "He's Ice Cubes cousin, we rap together." They were doing shows, they were in a group together called TDK and we would all be rapping. And at one point seperate from that I was at a ralley at UC Berkley for something and I got up and I rapped at the ralley and this dude Pizzo the Beat Fixer, who was Too Short's DJ was in the crowd. And he came up and was like "Yeah man, that's the type of shit that could make some money now." And it turns out that me and Spice ended up all being on his compilation together, Dope Lika Pound or a Key. What was funny is that that was the first time I heard my music bumping out of cars, but I didn't say my name in there I don't think and Spice 1 had more songs on there, so people just thought that I was somebody else in 187 Faculty. So it didn't do a whole lot, although it did something in the sense that it allowed me to actually hear somebody bumpin it or whatever. I didn't even know it was out and I stopped somebody at the gas station and I was like "yeah that's me" and they were like "no I thought that was Spice 1"
N: There wasn't really information on the tape.
B: Yeah and he sold like 20 somethin thousand of those. What was funny is that he had us on there. He had Spice 1 and he had a dude by the name of Mocades who at the time, his only claim to fame was that he had been on Toni Tony Tone's song "Feels Good" [recites verse] - "Mocades / the mellow / friday night fellow"... but he had a little brother that really wanted to be on that compilation, And we were all supposed to be on that label Wax Dat Azz, but Mocades was the one that was more famous from the Toni Tony Tone song for some reason Pizzo wasn't trying to sign his little brother. His little brother was 2 Pac and Mocades was really Mopreme from Thug Life, so there's a whole bunch of connections there. So Pizzo could've had a label with all of us on there, but he was just kickin it, smokin weed, partying, telling stories and not really on his job about making it happen. So Spice ended up signing with Triad, and in a little while we put out our own EP.
N: So you went on with your own label [Polemic] after that?
B: Yeah we did our thing. We put it out and we just happened to be... We were postering up the whole bay area, puttin up paste late at night, putting posters all over the place and it just so happened that, I guess when there was a Gavin Convention over here, every label had to have somebody from the bay area and every week we just happened to be selling the most or something like that at Leopolds in the local section. And so I think Wild Pitch just went and said "oh give us your top sellers." I think it was us, E-40 and Dangerous Dame and they were trying to figure out [which to sign]. E-40 he obviously had some bigger plans and Dangerous Dame was just getting out of his deal with Atlantic and they needed a whole lot of money. He had that one song that came right after Atlantic - "Same Ole Dame." And us, I was just like "put it out" I didn't care, you know, a deal was a chance for me to move out of my fathers house.
N: Do you regret that you ended up going with Wild Pitch at that time?
B: No because there would've been nobody else crazy enough to sign us. This was before The Fugees, this was before anything else, so if you weren't fitting into a strict category that was already there, there was no selling [?]. People in the industry always talk about this, in hindsight, that they feel like they should've marketed us like they did The Fugees, but the reality is that the [lyrics were] supposedly political, as far as they were concerned, but the music didn't sound like east coast or public enemy, so that threw people off. It sounded too west coast for the people that thought they were buying conscious music and at the time, too, the idea was that what they call political rap was already outdated. So there was no easy way to market it. The thing we lucked out on was when "Not Yet Free," the single came out, the only reviews we got must've only listened to the music and not to the lyrics because they said "Oh this is more gangsta rap from Oakland," and we were mad like "They didn't even listen to it, did they look at the logo even? What?" But people looked at the reviews and said "More gangsta rap from Oakland? Cool!"
N: So it helped you sell in Oakland?
B: Not just in Oakland, because at that time the bay area sales were not just oakland but it was the south and the midwest. I had heard of e-40 already, but the first time I heard that music was when we went on a promotional tour for that album. All over the south, all over Houston - Houston was a big thing for The Click - and in the midwest and people in Oakland hadn't even heard 40. And when they heard it they was like, and this is to be real, I did some work with a producer that was a famous Oakland producer that ended up later working with E-40 a lot, right? And being known for working with E-40 a lot. But when he saw "Practice Lookin' Hard" come on the video, I was at his studio, and he was like "That's some weird shit. This dude is weird. He don't rap right." And a lot of people in oakland that was there thing, they weren't open to something new. And E-40 sold so much all over the place that people started listening here in Oakland. E-40 was from Vallejo and that made a big difference at the time.
N: It's weird for me because, growing up in Jersey everybody waslistening to Black Moon or whatever and that shit wasn't even on our radar. And everything else was local music. But it seems like the east was stuck in our region while 40 was selling all over thecountry.
B: Like I said, I hadn't even heard his stuff, but then we were in St. Louis and somebody came mad into the record store like "Y'ALL GOT B-LEGIT IN YET?! Y'ALL GOT THAT B-LEGIT THE SAVAGE?" and they were like "naw, it's supposed to be in here..." and they was mad as hell. I was like "wow, they're selling all over the place." But Oakland was slow to pick up on it. But Bay Area stuff was all over at all kinds of other places. Like the whole idea that you could sell 40,000 in the bay area, that wasn't true. Bay area groups could sell 40,000 but those sales would be all over the place. But then the Bay area suffered when those areas got their own sound.
N: Yeah, southern rap is completely influenced by 40's sound.
B: Oh definitely, definitely. And even some of the Frisco [acts], a lot of the south is influenced by JT The Bigga Figga and stuff like that. There definitely is an influence - of course, Too Short. So yeah, our stuff was not fitting into any one category, which made it harder to market at the time. Now they have different ways, different ideas of how they do that. But at the time it just wasn't really happening. And Wild Pitch was always good, the dude there he signed a lot of groups that were innovative or strong in their areas. They signed Main Source, Gang Starr, OC, Chill Rob G. You know they weren't good at marketing. Chill Rob G had one of the biggest hits in hip hop music but not on Wild Pitch. Somebody else had to take his song [The Power]...
N: And made it a hit
B: You know, with Snap. So they weren't really good at the marketing aspect of it. They were good at finding some good groups. At the time I think we did the right thing, because any other label we wouldn't have even gotten to make a second album. Our first album, in the end, I think it ended up selling like 100,000 but before Genocide and Juice came out, it was only at like 70,000. And that's not enough for most major labels. So we wouldn't have been able to keep going and getting to where we are. And us being able to get on BET and MTV helped carry us through to Steal This Album and so on, so we got a big base of people that were listening to us.
N: So what were you anticipating a with the release of Genocide & Juice?
B: When Genocide & Juice came out we were under the same management with E-40, Spice 1, Master P, this dude Chaz Hayes and it was real interesting. Chaz used to just talk a lot of stuff that really wasn't real. So instead of doing a promotional tour with Genocide & Juice, Chaz was like "Naw, you don't need a promotional tour, I'm gonna put them on tour with MC Eiht and they'll get paid for it, so keep that money for somethin else." And that money isn't coming back to you and that tour wasn't really happening he was just talking a lot of stuff. And they [Wild Pitch] would be like "What's going on with that tour?" and he just really didn't know what he was he was talking about. So then that all got messed up, "Takin These, which was the single from Genocide & Juice, got banned [by The Box], so we didn't have the video support that we thought we were gonna have. We weren't out there tourin', we didn't have a video for support and then Chaz was like "Yeah I think we need to call this a wrap and move on to the next album." And we were like "Hell, no" and we got away from him and hooked up with some other people and I ended up convincing the label to do a video for "Fat Cats and Bigger Fish." Then it actually started, we actually started getting radio play in LA and Chicago. You know, a lot of crazy stuff started happening. And we were selling, just in LA and Chicago each, 5,000 a week. It just showed me that when our stuff got on the radio so many people were open to it, they could hear it. We were always accepted, there were people that liked us. So every place that we got any access to people like that we were selling a lot of units very quickly. And so our stuff was jumpin up the billboard charts and our popularity was rising very quickly. And all of the sudden EMI, who was distributing Wild Pitch decided that they would buy our album, just that album, not our whole contract, from Wild Pitch for $500,000, of which we didn't get to see any of it, obviously. The point is that they bought that and we thought "OK, since it's climbing up the charts and they're spending that kind of loot on it that means that they're really gonna try and put it out there. But the very next week after that deal went down they said "Oh we had a meeting and we're not working that album anymore."
N: So they just threw that money away?
B: Yeah. Maybe it had something to do with [the fact] that they were getting rid of Wild Pitch just shortly, they got rid of Wild Pitch period because they were losing money on Wild Pitch overall. And I think it could've been that they didn't want Wild Pitch to be able to be able to walk to somebody else with the one record that was climbing the charts and work the deal with someone else. Because when that sort of thing happens, if some other label were to have a hit with a record that they used to have, everybody would've been fired. That happens constantly in the music industry. So that could've been that sacrifice there. But I was just like, I put my heart into a project and really didn't want to see it go. It can just be thwarted that quickly.
N: How long had the record been out at this point?
B: Let's see, for about five months, but like I said it was kinda like a false run because the first time, also the first version of the album had the George Benson thing, "Give Me The Night" on "Takin' These" and that had been printed up. And I even told the label about it, "you gotta clear this" and they waited until things were already printed up and in the stores to try to clear it. And the dude that wrote it, he had been saved and shit. And he said "no, you can't, you can't use any of that. it doesn't matter how much you pay me" and all this type of shit. So they had to take the records off the shelves and send them back and reprint them. So we had all kind of shit. And then there was a whole stopping of it for a second because the cover of it has the Absolute [Vodka bottle] so their lawyer sent a letter saying don't print up any more past what you already had printed up. The label got scared for a second, but they were just saying before they printed up any more then they already printed up. So it was kinda like a toothless threat. So we got to keep selling. the album. So there was a few glitches there, but it had been out for about five months at that point all together. But it'd only been a month and a half since the video had been out for "Fat Cats, Bigga Fish", which is the thing that turned people on to Genocide & Juice. 'Cause like I said "Takin' These" had beenbanned and we had a little commercial on The Box for the album earlier on.
N: There was all kinds of legal trouble with that record.
B: Yeah, well "Taking These" wasn't legal problems, it was just them banning it. First BET played it a couple times, but when The Box said "well, hey we think that they lyrics to this would cause unrest in the streets" BET said "they might be right" and they stopped playing the video. They didn't put an official thing on that but that's what the person working the video said.
N: Did you split with Wild Pitch shortly after that.
B: Well, what happened was that Wild Pitch had worked out something else with us, because they still had us as an artist for the next album, they just didn't have Genocide & Juice, but they had worked out something for us to do something with Geffen, but we had to record a couple songs for them. That's where "Breathing Apparatus" came out of, but I was just so depressed and disillusioned with the whole music scene I just quit at that time, I said I'm gonna go back to organizing and that's when me and some friends started the Young Comrades. I went back to organizing [with] that group. So I was putting out ideas and not really doing anything [and I realized] I could do that better with music, and then I went back and did Steal This Album with Dogday, basically because they were around.
N: Did Dogday approach you to do that Steal This Album.
B: Yeah, because they used to work with Music People, which was a one-stop distributer and they used to run In A Minute, who put out Master P as well as a whole bunch of other people. And they actually got most of their money to do Dogday from doing retail promotion for Master P and had a lot to do with his upsurge in sales, so they were getting a lot of money from Master P. And so they did Dogday, which had already put out 11/5 and some other groups from the bay. And they had an independent idea of how to do it and we just did a 50/50 deal, so it was cut and dry like that. We did Steal this Album, which, the only royalties they sold off that, even though it sold 60,000... I mean they owe me tens of thousands of dollars. And they owe a lot of people and they like, escaped and went somewhere. And the only way I was able to get some money is, when they put out Steal This Double Album, they even went so far as to, they sold them COD to Revolver [distribution], so we had to put a cease and desist and collect some of the money off of Steal this Double Album, after going in and forcing the distributer to give us the money.
And then I did Party Music with 75 Ark, who were an internet upstart, and they actually had some money at the beginning. They basically straight payed for a house for me. They had that whole thing, but on the other hand, there was a lot of potential that they didn't catch up on. They had all all this money, they were really overspending on the other stuff, they spent a gang load of money on Deltron 3030, they were doing stuff like, somebody in New York would have a meeting with somebody in San Fransisco but instead of meeting at one of those places, they'd go to France and have a meeting and check retail. So they were spending a lot of money. It was an internet start up that had a lot of money and they were using other peoples investments, that's how the whole internet world was working at the time. And I wish they had told me at the ship was going down They went bankrupt in like the summer of 2001, they just didn't tell me because, here's what they said to me later, they were afraid that I'd jump ship. Everything was going down, it was also embezzlement happening. So because of all the controversy with the album cover there were way more orders than there were before but because so much money had been lost and embezzled that they didn't even have the credit to print up the records by then. It was a situation where basically, like we had done this tour and they had promised to pay for it and we had to go in there and take computers instead of payment in cash. I had to pay my band in G4 computers. So it was all kinda shit, so our record didn't really come out until a few months after it was supposed to come out. It came out in a few places in November when it was supposed to come out, but most places it didn't come out until Feburary.
N: It was just another in long line of bad record deals huh?
B: So this is why I'm kinda excited about this one [Epitaph], because this is going to be the first one where it's actually in the stores all over the country, all over the world on the same day. We actually have a label that has as sense how to promote a record.
N: Do you think they'll be able to promote rap records like that though [being a primarily punk label]?
B: I don't know because even if we're on a hip hop label they don't know how to promote us. You know we've been on the most pure hip hop of hip hop labels and they didn't know how to market us. We've been on a label that was known for quote-unquote gangsta rap and they didn't know how to market us. Our stuff is so different that, um, who knows? They did good with the Atmosphere record. And there's a lot more talk about this album before it comes out, than there has been with the other albums before they came out. And usually, our album gets in the stores after a whole bunch of struggle and then gets heard by people and then gets talked about. And that makes it harder because it's been in the stores for a few months already so by the time people hear about they go and the records are old and the store doesn't really have any copies left. So we'll see what happens with this.
N: I noticed before that you said "quote-unquote gangsta rap" and that reminded me of, I was listening to that round table at Stanford where krs got into it with that one reporter and i felt like you made some good points in that regard.
B: Whatever the perception is that the black folks listen to at the time is always called the ignorant music. If it's blues it's low brow. You know like when bebop came out they really considered it low brow.
One time a hero of mine, Hugh Masekela, I walked up to him and I asked him about playing on a record and there's kinda two issues - one the way that he discredited hip hop, he said "oh rap music? hip hop? oh I hate that shit, it reminds me of the twist in the 50s, that shits everywhere, it's disgusting." So now the twist, the way that I remember it, my parents liked it and they danced to it and it was black music and people listened to it. But to hear the twist talked about the same way someone might talk about Britney Spears or even the same way that somebody might talk about Ludacris or whatever is really kinda strange in the sense that blues and rhythm and blues was thought of by many jazz musicians to be not as advanced and to represent ignorance. What that is connected to is just the idea that's being sold to not connect with the black community. Even black folks connecting with and feeling united with the black community means that there's an understanding of oppression and exploitation and some analysis of the system. And if white people or other people that aren't black also identify in some way with the black community and what they're going through it could make someone think about the causes of exploitation and oppression. So the idea is to make it seem like there's this culture that is so totally useless and there's this culture that is so evil almost that it causes black people to act in a certain way. And in order to come up with that idea you have to really not listen to the lyrics of anything in the same way that our first song was called "gangsta rap from oakland."
Things are way more complicated today. Yeah, all kinds of different people have misogony in their lyrics, all kinds of different people have reactionary things in their lyrics. But there are so many good things that you can overlook if you take the attitude that all of one kind of music has no value. In the stuff that's called gangsta rap people are talking about the trials and tribulations that they had to go through just to survive in the system. And there are many times where the analysis in there is a lot more pointedly anti-authority than some songs that are considered conscious. There are many songs that are considered conscious that are basically just telling people that are listening that they don't have their head right. And there are many songs considered conscious in which people are talking about the fact that the system mistreats us. To me, those two things are very different. Some songs that are considered conscious could be made by the Sergeant on Soldier Story where he's like "all these niggers... they're backwards and they're bringing the race backwards" and there's a lot of people with that theme throughout their music that are considered conscious and it's not conscious at all. That's very much like a black republican.
TI has a song "Just Doin' My Job" that might not be considered conscious by people but he's breaking down the simple idea that in the system people are trying to have jobs [selling drugs] to survive and feed their families and that doesn't mean that you're a monster because you're doing that. You still have a love for life, but somehow you figure that you still have to do this job.
What's crazy is that throughout the time that we've been around I get all kind of rappers that come up to me that would be wrongly put into the gansgta category, but they're all saying "Yeah we talk about the same shit, we breaking that science down so they know what's goin on." What in their hearts, what they're doing is saying "This is how the world works, I am going to tell you something that makes it easier to survive." What that's coming from is a general love for the people. Some people will be like "your main problem is to watch out for some scandalous dude trying to steal your bike," but other people may have more information that tells them that it's deeper than that. The common denomonator is that when people are rapping, many times they feel that they're doing it for the listener. If people want that dialogue, what they add into the general dialouge to be more revolutionary, what we have to do is get some movements out there that are actually addressing some of these material issues. You're never gonna get somebody into a study group and teach them all kinds of stuff and then they start rapping different. Because they then won't be connected to reality.
We always hear stuff about songs like Marvin Gaye's "What's Goin On?" and James Brown's "I'm Black and I'm Proud" and stuff like that, but that stuff came after there was already twenty years of big movements going on - civil rights movement, black power movement, anti-war movement - all sorts of movements going on and revolutions happening all around the world. And what people point to is that there were a few songs made in the 60's and early 70's that kinda said something. The Panthers had been asking James Brown, who, you know, was the P Diddy of the day, and they had been asking James Brown for years to do something for the people. It was only after H. Rap Brown basically hemmed him up that he made "I'm Black and I'm Proud." And this is after this big movement. And Marvin Gaye, after all of that stuff, he came back and his strongest statement was "What's Goin' On?" It was a question, it wasn't even telling people anything. It was just asking a question. So this is in the midst of this big movement, but now there is no big movement happening and people are still putting stuff into their songs. Let's say if someone is saying "this is how you make crack," they're not doing it just to make a hit record, because they know what makes a hit record - to have Mary J singing the hook or something like that - they're doing that because they think that they're giving people something. And that wasn't really around in the 60's and 70's for the most part. People were like "I need to make this kinda song cause it's gonna make some money" - "Why Do Fools Fall In Love?" and all that type of stuff. Or let's say it like this, It wasn't happening as much as it is now, people are putting stuff into their raps that they think people need. Unfortunetly the movement hasn't been addressing people's needs enough so that there are more artists out there who have the idea that what people need is to make a movement.
N: It seems to me that music nowadays, as far as rap goes at least, it's almost more locally based. Everybody is doing it for their local community and then they'll worry about trying to sell nationally.
B: Yeah I think that's true and that's only natural because the only people you're going to get a reaction from are the people around you. You can only do that and base your music on the culture that surrounds you.
N: Speaking on your community, you know I gotta mention the hyphy shit. If you look at more of the bay records from the past twenty years there seems to be more musicality to the more, where the hyphy producers have a more sparse sound. And you're new record it seems like you've gone in the opposite going for the completely musical p-funk/prince thing.
B: But the big dogs in the hyphy movement, let's say Mac Dre, I wouldn't say that it was sparse at all, because you listen to Genie of the Lamp, Thizzelle Washington, it's got guitars, bass, all that sort of thing. I think the sparse sound is more related to that Louisiana second line stuff, kinda a harder version of that. Like you listen to that one Droop-E produced that has Mister Fab and E-40 on it ["Super Sick Wid It"], that's like some New Orleans second line stuff. And it's really just part of the same funk tradition, it's just breaking it down a little bit more. And then one of the things that started it off to be on the radio is [Keak The Sneak's] "T-Shirt, Blue Jeans & Nikes" that's the regular bass stuff [hums bassline]. I think it is what it is and it's all funk. It's just that everybody has their different brands of it. On peoples albums some have more or less musicality. Some are more based on the rhythm and the drums and some are based on the music. On this [record] our music is based on something punching it up under the music. I mean I always liked basslines, basslines is my thing. I always want my records to be known for their basslines. I think that that's always gonna be a constant. You can listen to stuff that's filled with music a lot more times than the sparser stuff. And that's just my own personal feeling for my own stuff. I love the sparse stuff still. I don't like it for me rapping over it, but i like it for itself and I like the general aggressiveness that comes out from it. And there's always been that kind of music. What they're doing is ripping off of parts of black music that have always been there too. It's definitely in the same funk tradition that the bay area has. Hyphy is and so is my music. Different sides of the same coin. The thing is I'm always gonna do whatever I feel. And maybe that's worked against us.
I've been in the studio with people and they're like, you know, the Neptunes were big and people were like "oh we gotta make one of them Neptunes sounding tracks" and when Timbaland was big "oh we gotta make one of those timbaland sounding tracks." [But] I'm not gonna make my tracks sound like I don't feel in myself, but most likely since I like that music it's gonna influence what I do, but I'm never going to copy anybody, it's always gonna end up sounding like me. Because ten years down the line it's not like, you got one album that sounds like Timbaland was doing it and another was like Dre was doing it, and another one was like all reggaeton.
N: So you're not gonna drop a reggaeton album on us?
B: [Laughs] nah I'm always experimenting and I'm always gonna do remixes and stuff, but my albums are definitely something that are crafted to be something that I can listen to later on and I don't have to cringe like "why did I do that?"
So have you heard the new album, do any particular songs stand out?
So far I'm really liking "Get That Monkey off My Back"
What's really interesting is that that was supposed to be Keak on the chorus. If we do it as a single or something then we'll probably have him on there. But I had to get some stuff done and I had to change up some stuff. Keak and them, when they had Dual Committee they used to come perform at our Hip Hop Edutainment concerts when we had the Mau Mau Rhythm Collective and we've been runnin' into each other a lot over the last decade.
It's crazy to think how everybody seems to be intertwined out in the bay
Oh yeah definitely. It's not that big of an area first of all. And there's a lot more support people give here than I see in other areas. Because even when hella people were listening to bay area music, everyone has always felt that sort of underdog status, that we needed to help each other out.
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Five albums and 15 years deep, The Coup are perhaps the most consistant (and consistantly underrated) politcal minded rap groups of all time. But you probably already know this from the few occasions that this blog slipped into full scale Coup fan site mode. I had a chance to talk to Boots about the groups history, from their involvement in the near-infamous Dope Lika Pound or a Key compilation to their lastest album Pick A Bigger Weapon, which just so happens to drop today on Epitaph (Needless to say it's a must cop).
Noz: What are your earliest memories from both political and musical standpoints?
Boots: Musical would have to be you know um listening to records that my sister and my parents had. My favorite records... I remember I would always play "Funky Worm" by Ohio Players, the 45, I would always play that. My sister would always be throwin parties at the house. Until I was six I lived in detroit and there was this dance people would do that was kinda like... it was called the Errol Flynn and you made your arms like swords. The Errol Flynns were a gang in the neighborhood that we lived in and that was the dance everybody did. I remember music being played at parties my parents were having but I realized later that those weren't supposed to just be parties those were [political] meetings that would then turn into a party. There was very little line between community and political activity and partying and music. I have a lot of memories like that. I know that later on when I was like 11 I was really hyped on Prince. I wanted to play guitar on stage or something like what Prince did.
N: Yeah I can hear the Prince influence in the new album.
B: Yeah Definitely.
N: At what point did you start rapping?
B: In high school we all rapped. And my first raps would be a combination of my own corny stuff and stolen lines from Schooly D who I thought not that many people knew at my school. We would just rap back and forth at lunch or at break or in art class. All those sorts of things. It was something the way people pounded on the table and rapped, but it wasn't really nothing serious.
N: When did you think about pursuing it as a serious thing?
B: I think a lot later, like when I was maybe 18 or 19 that I really think it hit me something serious because I didn't see the connection between what I wanted to do politically [and rapping]. Because I had already been an organizer, from the time that I was 15. When I was 15 I joined the Progressive Labor Party which was a revolutionary organization. And by that year I had already been part of leading this walk out at Oakland High and it was 2000 of the 2200 students, we all walked out and marched down about two or three miles to the school board and won our struggle right there. So it propelled me into a leadership position and I was doing all kinds of stuff, going all around the country, helping out with youth organizations and it pretty much set me into what I thought was going to be my life's path - being an organizer, helping to build a movement. But I didn't see how my other interest, which was in in music, because up until then I had also taken piano, guitar and trumpet at various times, and I didn't see how my other interests could combine with that until an incident where we was doing work later on in the Double Rock Projects in San Fransicsco and there was an incident that I talk about on the song "I Know You", about an incident where this woman Rossi Hawkins and her two twin sons that were eight years old got beat down out there by the police and the whole neighborhood came out and stopped them from dragging her into the car afterwards. They were concerned with what they were going to do with them - were they gonna beat them more? Were they gonna take them to the hospital? Or what? So they rushed down there and the police started shooting into the air and everybody ran away from them. And at some point they turned back and by the end of the night there were police cars turned over, [with] the police running away, running out of there on foot with their guns taken away from them. And when the story was told to me some days later by many different people that were there what happened, you know there were a lot of different details, but there was one thing that was constant, and that was that when the police started shooting in the air and everybody ran away in fear of their lives, somebody started chanting "Fight The Power! Fight the Power" and this was the summer of 1989 when this song was big, when it was on the radio, all over the place. Public Enemy's "Fight the Power" was out and that song gave people what they needed, it helped them understand that they were all on the same page as far as what they needed to do. It helped them make the decision to go back and take their place in history. Now, when I say take their place in history, none of this got in the newspaper the next day or anything, but when I heard that I realized that's what music does. It allows you to feel a general unity of thought with thousands of people. It is able to be an anthem for the fight and anthems are important because you're not singing that anthem by yourself, you're singing it with other folks. And I saw right then what music, in particular hip hop, could be used for in a struggle, in a movement. That was when I figured out what I was doing, when I heard that story a few days afterward from everyone involved.
N: So after this did you form The Coup?
B: Yeah, I guess, around that time, there were some variations of things. Like just before that we had a group called Underground Funk. Back then you could have twelve different groups with different people and it's like half hearted. The idea of even getting into a studio and recording a song just seemed like a dream. Like something you'd talk about but will it ever happen you don't know. And that was different because studios weren't all over the place then. It was just that idea of the studio, there was some mysticism behind going to the studio. But yeah, shortly after that the beginnings of what would be The Coup formed.
N: And you guys all linked up with Spice 1 and them for Dope Lika Pound Or a Key?
B: Yeah what happened was me E-Roc, Spice 1, G-Nut, who ended up in 187 Faculty, and another dude that went by the name of Point Blank that we helped put out something from, was in there too, we all worked at UPS, at the airport. And we would be all unloading the packages and stuff like that. And the first way that I knew Spice 1 rapped, i mean, well that he was serious about it, cause we would all be in there rappin and alot of times we'd purposely take a long time unloading the belly's of the plane, so we'd crawl up into the bellys of the plane to put the stuff on, but we'd all be rapping. Spice 1, interestingly enough was always talking about his partner Del, like Del was his best friend or something like that. "He's Ice Cubes cousin, we rap together." They were doing shows, they were in a group together called TDK and we would all be rapping. And at one point seperate from that I was at a ralley at UC Berkley for something and I got up and I rapped at the ralley and this dude Pizzo the Beat Fixer, who was Too Short's DJ was in the crowd. And he came up and was like "Yeah man, that's the type of shit that could make some money now." And it turns out that me and Spice ended up all being on his compilation together, Dope Lika Pound or a Key. What was funny is that that was the first time I heard my music bumping out of cars, but I didn't say my name in there I don't think and Spice 1 had more songs on there, so people just thought that I was somebody else in 187 Faculty. So it didn't do a whole lot, although it did something in the sense that it allowed me to actually hear somebody bumpin it or whatever. I didn't even know it was out and I stopped somebody at the gas station and I was like "yeah that's me" and they were like "no I thought that was Spice 1"
N: There wasn't really information on the tape.
B: Yeah and he sold like 20 somethin thousand of those. What was funny is that he had us on there. He had Spice 1 and he had a dude by the name of Mocades who at the time, his only claim to fame was that he had been on Toni Tony Tone's song "Feels Good" [recites verse] - "Mocades / the mellow / friday night fellow"... but he had a little brother that really wanted to be on that compilation, And we were all supposed to be on that label Wax Dat Azz, but Mocades was the one that was more famous from the Toni Tony Tone song for some reason Pizzo wasn't trying to sign his little brother. His little brother was 2 Pac and Mocades was really Mopreme from Thug Life, so there's a whole bunch of connections there. So Pizzo could've had a label with all of us on there, but he was just kickin it, smokin weed, partying, telling stories and not really on his job about making it happen. So Spice ended up signing with Triad, and in a little while we put out our own EP.
N: So you went on with your own label [Polemic] after that?
B: Yeah we did our thing. We put it out and we just happened to be... We were postering up the whole bay area, puttin up paste late at night, putting posters all over the place and it just so happened that, I guess when there was a Gavin Convention over here, every label had to have somebody from the bay area and every week we just happened to be selling the most or something like that at Leopolds in the local section. And so I think Wild Pitch just went and said "oh give us your top sellers." I think it was us, E-40 and Dangerous Dame and they were trying to figure out [which to sign]. E-40 he obviously had some bigger plans and Dangerous Dame was just getting out of his deal with Atlantic and they needed a whole lot of money. He had that one song that came right after Atlantic - "Same Ole Dame." And us, I was just like "put it out" I didn't care, you know, a deal was a chance for me to move out of my fathers house.
N: Do you regret that you ended up going with Wild Pitch at that time?
B: No because there would've been nobody else crazy enough to sign us. This was before The Fugees, this was before anything else, so if you weren't fitting into a strict category that was already there, there was no selling [?]. People in the industry always talk about this, in hindsight, that they feel like they should've marketed us like they did The Fugees, but the reality is that the [lyrics were] supposedly political, as far as they were concerned, but the music didn't sound like east coast or public enemy, so that threw people off. It sounded too west coast for the people that thought they were buying conscious music and at the time, too, the idea was that what they call political rap was already outdated. So there was no easy way to market it. The thing we lucked out on was when "Not Yet Free," the single came out, the only reviews we got must've only listened to the music and not to the lyrics because they said "Oh this is more gangsta rap from Oakland," and we were mad like "They didn't even listen to it, did they look at the logo even? What?" But people looked at the reviews and said "More gangsta rap from Oakland? Cool!"
N: So it helped you sell in Oakland?
B: Not just in Oakland, because at that time the bay area sales were not just oakland but it was the south and the midwest. I had heard of e-40 already, but the first time I heard that music was when we went on a promotional tour for that album. All over the south, all over Houston - Houston was a big thing for The Click - and in the midwest and people in Oakland hadn't even heard 40. And when they heard it they was like, and this is to be real, I did some work with a producer that was a famous Oakland producer that ended up later working with E-40 a lot, right? And being known for working with E-40 a lot. But when he saw "Practice Lookin' Hard" come on the video, I was at his studio, and he was like "That's some weird shit. This dude is weird. He don't rap right." And a lot of people in oakland that was there thing, they weren't open to something new. And E-40 sold so much all over the place that people started listening here in Oakland. E-40 was from Vallejo and that made a big difference at the time.
N: It's weird for me because, growing up in Jersey everybody waslistening to Black Moon or whatever and that shit wasn't even on our radar. And everything else was local music. But it seems like the east was stuck in our region while 40 was selling all over thecountry.
B: Like I said, I hadn't even heard his stuff, but then we were in St. Louis and somebody came mad into the record store like "Y'ALL GOT B-LEGIT IN YET?! Y'ALL GOT THAT B-LEGIT THE SAVAGE?" and they were like "naw, it's supposed to be in here..." and they was mad as hell. I was like "wow, they're selling all over the place." But Oakland was slow to pick up on it. But Bay Area stuff was all over at all kinds of other places. Like the whole idea that you could sell 40,000 in the bay area, that wasn't true. Bay area groups could sell 40,000 but those sales would be all over the place. But then the Bay area suffered when those areas got their own sound.
N: Yeah, southern rap is completely influenced by 40's sound.
B: Oh definitely, definitely. And even some of the Frisco [acts], a lot of the south is influenced by JT The Bigga Figga and stuff like that. There definitely is an influence - of course, Too Short. So yeah, our stuff was not fitting into any one category, which made it harder to market at the time. Now they have different ways, different ideas of how they do that. But at the time it just wasn't really happening. And Wild Pitch was always good, the dude there he signed a lot of groups that were innovative or strong in their areas. They signed Main Source, Gang Starr, OC, Chill Rob G. You know they weren't good at marketing. Chill Rob G had one of the biggest hits in hip hop music but not on Wild Pitch. Somebody else had to take his song [The Power]...
N: And made it a hit
B: You know, with Snap. So they weren't really good at the marketing aspect of it. They were good at finding some good groups. At the time I think we did the right thing, because any other label we wouldn't have even gotten to make a second album. Our first album, in the end, I think it ended up selling like 100,000 but before Genocide and Juice came out, it was only at like 70,000. And that's not enough for most major labels. So we wouldn't have been able to keep going and getting to where we are. And us being able to get on BET and MTV helped carry us through to Steal This Album and so on, so we got a big base of people that were listening to us.
N: So what were you anticipating a with the release of Genocide & Juice?
B: When Genocide & Juice came out we were under the same management with E-40, Spice 1, Master P, this dude Chaz Hayes and it was real interesting. Chaz used to just talk a lot of stuff that really wasn't real. So instead of doing a promotional tour with Genocide & Juice, Chaz was like "Naw, you don't need a promotional tour, I'm gonna put them on tour with MC Eiht and they'll get paid for it, so keep that money for somethin else." And that money isn't coming back to you and that tour wasn't really happening he was just talking a lot of stuff. And they [Wild Pitch] would be like "What's going on with that tour?" and he just really didn't know what he was he was talking about. So then that all got messed up, "Takin These, which was the single from Genocide & Juice, got banned [by The Box], so we didn't have the video support that we thought we were gonna have. We weren't out there tourin', we didn't have a video for support and then Chaz was like "Yeah I think we need to call this a wrap and move on to the next album." And we were like "Hell, no" and we got away from him and hooked up with some other people and I ended up convincing the label to do a video for "Fat Cats and Bigger Fish." Then it actually started, we actually started getting radio play in LA and Chicago. You know, a lot of crazy stuff started happening. And we were selling, just in LA and Chicago each, 5,000 a week. It just showed me that when our stuff got on the radio so many people were open to it, they could hear it. We were always accepted, there were people that liked us. So every place that we got any access to people like that we were selling a lot of units very quickly. And so our stuff was jumpin up the billboard charts and our popularity was rising very quickly. And all of the sudden EMI, who was distributing Wild Pitch decided that they would buy our album, just that album, not our whole contract, from Wild Pitch for $500,000, of which we didn't get to see any of it, obviously. The point is that they bought that and we thought "OK, since it's climbing up the charts and they're spending that kind of loot on it that means that they're really gonna try and put it out there. But the very next week after that deal went down they said "Oh we had a meeting and we're not working that album anymore."
N: So they just threw that money away?
B: Yeah. Maybe it had something to do with [the fact] that they were getting rid of Wild Pitch just shortly, they got rid of Wild Pitch period because they were losing money on Wild Pitch overall. And I think it could've been that they didn't want Wild Pitch to be able to be able to walk to somebody else with the one record that was climbing the charts and work the deal with someone else. Because when that sort of thing happens, if some other label were to have a hit with a record that they used to have, everybody would've been fired. That happens constantly in the music industry. So that could've been that sacrifice there. But I was just like, I put my heart into a project and really didn't want to see it go. It can just be thwarted that quickly.
N: How long had the record been out at this point?
B: Let's see, for about five months, but like I said it was kinda like a false run because the first time, also the first version of the album had the George Benson thing, "Give Me The Night" on "Takin' These" and that had been printed up. And I even told the label about it, "you gotta clear this" and they waited until things were already printed up and in the stores to try to clear it. And the dude that wrote it, he had been saved and shit. And he said "no, you can't, you can't use any of that. it doesn't matter how much you pay me" and all this type of shit. So they had to take the records off the shelves and send them back and reprint them. So we had all kind of shit. And then there was a whole stopping of it for a second because the cover of it has the Absolute [Vodka bottle] so their lawyer sent a letter saying don't print up any more past what you already had printed up. The label got scared for a second, but they were just saying before they printed up any more then they already printed up. So it was kinda like a toothless threat. So we got to keep selling. the album. So there was a few glitches there, but it had been out for about five months at that point all together. But it'd only been a month and a half since the video had been out for "Fat Cats, Bigga Fish", which is the thing that turned people on to Genocide & Juice. 'Cause like I said "Takin' These" had beenbanned and we had a little commercial on The Box for the album earlier on.
N: There was all kinds of legal trouble with that record.
B: Yeah, well "Taking These" wasn't legal problems, it was just them banning it. First BET played it a couple times, but when The Box said "well, hey we think that they lyrics to this would cause unrest in the streets" BET said "they might be right" and they stopped playing the video. They didn't put an official thing on that but that's what the person working the video said.
N: Did you split with Wild Pitch shortly after that.
B: Well, what happened was that Wild Pitch had worked out something else with us, because they still had us as an artist for the next album, they just didn't have Genocide & Juice, but they had worked out something for us to do something with Geffen, but we had to record a couple songs for them. That's where "Breathing Apparatus" came out of, but I was just so depressed and disillusioned with the whole music scene I just quit at that time, I said I'm gonna go back to organizing and that's when me and some friends started the Young Comrades. I went back to organizing [with] that group. So I was putting out ideas and not really doing anything [and I realized] I could do that better with music, and then I went back and did Steal This Album with Dogday, basically because they were around.
N: Did Dogday approach you to do that Steal This Album.
B: Yeah, because they used to work with Music People, which was a one-stop distributer and they used to run In A Minute, who put out Master P as well as a whole bunch of other people. And they actually got most of their money to do Dogday from doing retail promotion for Master P and had a lot to do with his upsurge in sales, so they were getting a lot of money from Master P. And so they did Dogday, which had already put out 11/5 and some other groups from the bay. And they had an independent idea of how to do it and we just did a 50/50 deal, so it was cut and dry like that. We did Steal this Album, which, the only royalties they sold off that, even though it sold 60,000... I mean they owe me tens of thousands of dollars. And they owe a lot of people and they like, escaped and went somewhere. And the only way I was able to get some money is, when they put out Steal This Double Album, they even went so far as to, they sold them COD to Revolver [distribution], so we had to put a cease and desist and collect some of the money off of Steal this Double Album, after going in and forcing the distributer to give us the money.
And then I did Party Music with 75 Ark, who were an internet upstart, and they actually had some money at the beginning. They basically straight payed for a house for me. They had that whole thing, but on the other hand, there was a lot of potential that they didn't catch up on. They had all all this money, they were really overspending on the other stuff, they spent a gang load of money on Deltron 3030, they were doing stuff like, somebody in New York would have a meeting with somebody in San Fransisco but instead of meeting at one of those places, they'd go to France and have a meeting and check retail. So they were spending a lot of money. It was an internet start up that had a lot of money and they were using other peoples investments, that's how the whole internet world was working at the time. And I wish they had told me at the ship was going down They went bankrupt in like the summer of 2001, they just didn't tell me because, here's what they said to me later, they were afraid that I'd jump ship. Everything was going down, it was also embezzlement happening. So because of all the controversy with the album cover there were way more orders than there were before but because so much money had been lost and embezzled that they didn't even have the credit to print up the records by then. It was a situation where basically, like we had done this tour and they had promised to pay for it and we had to go in there and take computers instead of payment in cash. I had to pay my band in G4 computers. So it was all kinda shit, so our record didn't really come out until a few months after it was supposed to come out. It came out in a few places in November when it was supposed to come out, but most places it didn't come out until Feburary.
N: It was just another in long line of bad record deals huh?
B: So this is why I'm kinda excited about this one [Epitaph], because this is going to be the first one where it's actually in the stores all over the country, all over the world on the same day. We actually have a label that has as sense how to promote a record.
N: Do you think they'll be able to promote rap records like that though [being a primarily punk label]?
B: I don't know because even if we're on a hip hop label they don't know how to promote us. You know we've been on the most pure hip hop of hip hop labels and they didn't know how to market us. We've been on a label that was known for quote-unquote gangsta rap and they didn't know how to market us. Our stuff is so different that, um, who knows? They did good with the Atmosphere record. And there's a lot more talk about this album before it comes out, than there has been with the other albums before they came out. And usually, our album gets in the stores after a whole bunch of struggle and then gets heard by people and then gets talked about. And that makes it harder because it's been in the stores for a few months already so by the time people hear about they go and the records are old and the store doesn't really have any copies left. So we'll see what happens with this.
N: I noticed before that you said "quote-unquote gangsta rap" and that reminded me of, I was listening to that round table at Stanford where krs got into it with that one reporter and i felt like you made some good points in that regard.
B: Whatever the perception is that the black folks listen to at the time is always called the ignorant music. If it's blues it's low brow. You know like when bebop came out they really considered it low brow.
One time a hero of mine, Hugh Masekela, I walked up to him and I asked him about playing on a record and there's kinda two issues - one the way that he discredited hip hop, he said "oh rap music? hip hop? oh I hate that shit, it reminds me of the twist in the 50s, that shits everywhere, it's disgusting." So now the twist, the way that I remember it, my parents liked it and they danced to it and it was black music and people listened to it. But to hear the twist talked about the same way someone might talk about Britney Spears or even the same way that somebody might talk about Ludacris or whatever is really kinda strange in the sense that blues and rhythm and blues was thought of by many jazz musicians to be not as advanced and to represent ignorance. What that is connected to is just the idea that's being sold to not connect with the black community. Even black folks connecting with and feeling united with the black community means that there's an understanding of oppression and exploitation and some analysis of the system. And if white people or other people that aren't black also identify in some way with the black community and what they're going through it could make someone think about the causes of exploitation and oppression. So the idea is to make it seem like there's this culture that is so totally useless and there's this culture that is so evil almost that it causes black people to act in a certain way. And in order to come up with that idea you have to really not listen to the lyrics of anything in the same way that our first song was called "gangsta rap from oakland."
Things are way more complicated today. Yeah, all kinds of different people have misogony in their lyrics, all kinds of different people have reactionary things in their lyrics. But there are so many good things that you can overlook if you take the attitude that all of one kind of music has no value. In the stuff that's called gangsta rap people are talking about the trials and tribulations that they had to go through just to survive in the system. And there are many times where the analysis in there is a lot more pointedly anti-authority than some songs that are considered conscious. There are many songs that are considered conscious that are basically just telling people that are listening that they don't have their head right. And there are many songs considered conscious in which people are talking about the fact that the system mistreats us. To me, those two things are very different. Some songs that are considered conscious could be made by the Sergeant on Soldier Story where he's like "all these niggers... they're backwards and they're bringing the race backwards" and there's a lot of people with that theme throughout their music that are considered conscious and it's not conscious at all. That's very much like a black republican.
TI has a song "Just Doin' My Job" that might not be considered conscious by people but he's breaking down the simple idea that in the system people are trying to have jobs [selling drugs] to survive and feed their families and that doesn't mean that you're a monster because you're doing that. You still have a love for life, but somehow you figure that you still have to do this job.
What's crazy is that throughout the time that we've been around I get all kind of rappers that come up to me that would be wrongly put into the gansgta category, but they're all saying "Yeah we talk about the same shit, we breaking that science down so they know what's goin on." What in their hearts, what they're doing is saying "This is how the world works, I am going to tell you something that makes it easier to survive." What that's coming from is a general love for the people. Some people will be like "your main problem is to watch out for some scandalous dude trying to steal your bike," but other people may have more information that tells them that it's deeper than that. The common denomonator is that when people are rapping, many times they feel that they're doing it for the listener. If people want that dialogue, what they add into the general dialouge to be more revolutionary, what we have to do is get some movements out there that are actually addressing some of these material issues. You're never gonna get somebody into a study group and teach them all kinds of stuff and then they start rapping different. Because they then won't be connected to reality.
We always hear stuff about songs like Marvin Gaye's "What's Goin On?" and James Brown's "I'm Black and I'm Proud" and stuff like that, but that stuff came after there was already twenty years of big movements going on - civil rights movement, black power movement, anti-war movement - all sorts of movements going on and revolutions happening all around the world. And what people point to is that there were a few songs made in the 60's and early 70's that kinda said something. The Panthers had been asking James Brown, who, you know, was the P Diddy of the day, and they had been asking James Brown for years to do something for the people. It was only after H. Rap Brown basically hemmed him up that he made "I'm Black and I'm Proud." And this is after this big movement. And Marvin Gaye, after all of that stuff, he came back and his strongest statement was "What's Goin' On?" It was a question, it wasn't even telling people anything. It was just asking a question. So this is in the midst of this big movement, but now there is no big movement happening and people are still putting stuff into their songs. Let's say if someone is saying "this is how you make crack," they're not doing it just to make a hit record, because they know what makes a hit record - to have Mary J singing the hook or something like that - they're doing that because they think that they're giving people something. And that wasn't really around in the 60's and 70's for the most part. People were like "I need to make this kinda song cause it's gonna make some money" - "Why Do Fools Fall In Love?" and all that type of stuff. Or let's say it like this, It wasn't happening as much as it is now, people are putting stuff into their raps that they think people need. Unfortunetly the movement hasn't been addressing people's needs enough so that there are more artists out there who have the idea that what people need is to make a movement.
N: It seems to me that music nowadays, as far as rap goes at least, it's almost more locally based. Everybody is doing it for their local community and then they'll worry about trying to sell nationally.
B: Yeah I think that's true and that's only natural because the only people you're going to get a reaction from are the people around you. You can only do that and base your music on the culture that surrounds you.
N: Speaking on your community, you know I gotta mention the hyphy shit. If you look at more of the bay records from the past twenty years there seems to be more musicality to the more, where the hyphy producers have a more sparse sound. And you're new record it seems like you've gone in the opposite going for the completely musical p-funk/prince thing.
B: But the big dogs in the hyphy movement, let's say Mac Dre, I wouldn't say that it was sparse at all, because you listen to Genie of the Lamp, Thizzelle Washington, it's got guitars, bass, all that sort of thing. I think the sparse sound is more related to that Louisiana second line stuff, kinda a harder version of that. Like you listen to that one Droop-E produced that has Mister Fab and E-40 on it ["Super Sick Wid It"], that's like some New Orleans second line stuff. And it's really just part of the same funk tradition, it's just breaking it down a little bit more. And then one of the things that started it off to be on the radio is [Keak The Sneak's] "T-Shirt, Blue Jeans & Nikes" that's the regular bass stuff [hums bassline]. I think it is what it is and it's all funk. It's just that everybody has their different brands of it. On peoples albums some have more or less musicality. Some are more based on the rhythm and the drums and some are based on the music. On this [record] our music is based on something punching it up under the music. I mean I always liked basslines, basslines is my thing. I always want my records to be known for their basslines. I think that that's always gonna be a constant. You can listen to stuff that's filled with music a lot more times than the sparser stuff. And that's just my own personal feeling for my own stuff. I love the sparse stuff still. I don't like it for me rapping over it, but i like it for itself and I like the general aggressiveness that comes out from it. And there's always been that kind of music. What they're doing is ripping off of parts of black music that have always been there too. It's definitely in the same funk tradition that the bay area has. Hyphy is and so is my music. Different sides of the same coin. The thing is I'm always gonna do whatever I feel. And maybe that's worked against us.
I've been in the studio with people and they're like, you know, the Neptunes were big and people were like "oh we gotta make one of them Neptunes sounding tracks" and when Timbaland was big "oh we gotta make one of those timbaland sounding tracks." [But] I'm not gonna make my tracks sound like I don't feel in myself, but most likely since I like that music it's gonna influence what I do, but I'm never going to copy anybody, it's always gonna end up sounding like me. Because ten years down the line it's not like, you got one album that sounds like Timbaland was doing it and another was like Dre was doing it, and another one was like all reggaeton.
N: So you're not gonna drop a reggaeton album on us?
B: [Laughs] nah I'm always experimenting and I'm always gonna do remixes and stuff, but my albums are definitely something that are crafted to be something that I can listen to later on and I don't have to cringe like "why did I do that?"
So have you heard the new album, do any particular songs stand out?
So far I'm really liking "Get That Monkey off My Back"
What's really interesting is that that was supposed to be Keak on the chorus. If we do it as a single or something then we'll probably have him on there. But I had to get some stuff done and I had to change up some stuff. Keak and them, when they had Dual Committee they used to come perform at our Hip Hop Edutainment concerts when we had the Mau Mau Rhythm Collective and we've been runnin' into each other a lot over the last decade.
It's crazy to think how everybody seems to be intertwined out in the bay
Oh yeah definitely. It's not that big of an area first of all. And there's a lot more support people give here than I see in other areas. Because even when hella people were listening to bay area music, everyone has always felt that sort of underdog status, that we needed to help each other out.
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