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Hailing from Jacksonville, North Carolina, Cesar Comanche is a man who isn’t afraid of hard work. He’s an accomplished entrepreneur who’s set up and runs a number of his own businesses. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he’s stayed independent and has consistently supplied the Hip Hop market with undiluted product. If you haven’t heard of him before, I’m sorry if I’ve misled you. Unlike your Diddy’s and Dame’s, first and foremost Cesar is an MC, and a good one to boot (yes, I have heard Diddy “rap”). Despite engineering for a number of Hip Hop’s elite, setting up his own distribution company and having a hand in a number of other ventures, he’s somehow found the time to perfect his craft and release a string of highly acclaimed albums.
Comanche is a founding member of The Justus League, the North Carolina Hip Hop collective that includes the likes of 9th Wonder, Khrysis, Little Brother and a number of other exceptionally talented artists. He’s gone from the hand-to-hand; highly sought after ‘Wooden Nickels’ to releasing his latest album ‘Squirrel and the Aces’ on world-renowned Hip Hop indie, ABB. Since the local, low-pressed release of ‘Wooden Nickels’, Cesar has catapulted into an underground favourite. With hoards of new fans, Cesar has partnered with UK label Beathut, to re-release ‘Wooden Nickels’ to a new worldwide audience, with the added bonus of a couple of extra tracks thrown in for good measure. Now that everybody’s finally able to pick up ‘Wooden Nickels’, Rish caught up with the man himself to chat about the re-release, The Justus League and what his future holds
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It wasn’t many, probably wasn’t even a thousand. When I did the original it was something more of a project that I did, just me, 9th, Dho and Yorel. And what it was, it was just like there wasn’t no stores at that point, it was just hand-to-hand you know?
I think as far as the re-release it was just like you said the first time, my fans that I’ve built since ‘Paper Gods’ and ‘Squirrel and the Aces’ and other things like that. People who pretty much became my fans since 2002 never had the opportunity to get ‘Wooden Nickels’. So it’s just something so people can have everything. The material’s old but people want to have it so they can just catalogue it and have everything.
I always knew that he had potential to do good things and go far with his career but there was no way you could foresee any of that. I knew that he deserved it and had the potential. But it’s just one of those things where you look at how things are for him now and how things were for him then and it’s just crazy.
Yorel is still part of the crew but he doesn’t really makes beats any more. At that time, Yorel was actually ahead of 9th as far as having a name goes. You know, just local you know what I’m saying? But 9th is the one that kept up, kept with it and kept making beats and it really paid off for him.
What I did was I got the original sample and looped it up and put different things in it. It was me just trying to revamp the original one. It was basically just me putting together some things just to refit the old one…
I did ‘Lamb to Lions’ on ‘Paper Gods’ and I also co-produced ‘The Downpour’ on ‘Squirrel and the Aces’ with L In Japanese.
It was probably the best part of a year, a good eight or nine months. It was very difficult, ‘cause I pretty much put the whole album together but it was just a process of me having to get with the different cats in my crew and then the other people I had on my album ‘cause everybody’s schedule is just crazy, so it was very hard to co-ordinate everything but it came together very well. And even with all the different people I had on there, it still sounds like a solid album rather than a mixtape.
I mean, there’s no telling man. I just have to see what happens next. Every obligation I‘ve had with any company, it’s always been viewed with that project in mind. I’ll just have to see. But if we do another one, it’ll just be another project that I do with them, but there’s no telling right now.
I guess it was either at the end… it might have been some time in 2002. As far as people in the League starting to work together, it probably was mid-‘98, beginning of ‘99, so I think Khrysis might have came in 2002.
They were together; really it was before I was born. My father was the leader of a band called ‘The Squirrel and the Aces’. They were like RnB, they did covers, they might have had some of their own stuff as well but that I’m not too clear on. They toured probably more just the North Carolina and South Carolina area of the United States. This was back in the late sixties / early seventies when they did that. They played with a whole lot of people that were big during that time. Your Curtis Mayfield’s and different cats of that era. They did that and it helped put food on the table and support the family. My father had a day job also but it was just something they did for the love of music.
Pretty much the way it affected my music was I got to hear a lot of old stuff, because both of them were music lovers. So whenever I was with either of them there was always some type of music getting played in the background. My sister Missie, which is the youngest child that’s older than me, she was the one that got my love for Hip Hop. That’s where my love for Hip Hop came from, through her. They pretty much just always had me around music all the time and just loving music….
NCSU, NC State University is where I went to college. That’s where I met 9th. Only 9th, Yorel, Eccentric, Floe and Median… and Burvik went to NC State and Dho, Phonte, Pooh, Chaundon… I think that’s it… they went to North Carolina Central, which is a historically predominantly black school. And that’s just fifteen minutes… twenty minutes down the road so it’s not like it’s far away. But 9th went to both. 9th first went to Central but then he transferred to State, so he still had ties to Central. So later on he met Phonte and Pooh and them. I think me, 9th and Burvick are the first three who knew each other and then everybody else came later.
Yeah, that was a dorm in NC State, sure was. Yorel was the only person who knew how to engineer. What it was, was 9th and Yorel would make beats, but they originally were trying to make beats for this other crew called “The Lower Third”. The Lower Third pretty much locally had a following. So me and 9th just came up with an idea to start a crew. We didn’t have no idea what we were going to call it, but thought lets just be the guys that come over to the dorm room and record. And it just so happened to be that by that time… I used to record there… Phonte, Pooh, Edgar Allen Floe and Median [used to record there]. But we didn’t really know each other but all of us knew Yorel and 9th. So we just thought lets make a crew with these cats, and stuff just went from there. ‘Cause none of us had obligations to any other crews or anything… ohh, Chaundon also… so we just made something happen and low and behold cats just started their own career, but we still rep that we’re originally part of the crew called The Justus League you know what I’m saying?
The Hip Hop scene is kind of diverse. As far as North Carolina goes, it’s the most organised…. I would say the most goes on here than anywhere else. Charlotte’s an even bigger city in North Carolina than Raleigh is, but it’s just the Triangle area for one, we have so many schools so there’s so many transplants here and then you know, that’s a good population of younger adults. So it’s like a lot of people who like to go to see different types of shows and things like that. I mean, there’s different types of music, different sounds... I know my crew’s had a big influence on this place and a lot to do with the scene… keeping it moving… even though we don’t really get to do a lot of shows here. But we did start off here and we got this place a lot of attention so that keeps help the interest of this place going a bit. But a lot of people are making moves and trying to break out of the Triangle and North Carolina scene so we’ll definitely see what happens and hopefully you’ll hear about other cats making moves….
I think the biggest thing that modern technology’s done is that people like even you, or people that’s not around you, it gives them an opportunity to be able to hear your music before you even have any type of deal or any company or anything like that. So therefore it empowers an artist to the point where if their music is good and it is quality and it is up to par to where it can compete in the market, you can already build a buzz for yourself before you do the whole messing with any type of label thing. And it maybe gives you some leverage to maybe start your own type of company and push your own albums, because my first two albums were all me, nobody else involved. So that gives you opportunities like that, when before you had to be on a label. Then… how were people going to know your music and how were you going to get demand unless you tour, but then how are you going to tour if you don’t have demand in a certain market where you’re not from, you know what I’m saying? I think it helps get yourself out there as far as at least getting people to hear your stuff but I think the downside is that it creates an illusion that everybody feels they need to make music or everybody wants to make music…
Oh yeah, wow, you’ve done your research! I think maybe we said every fifty, but then we were like a hundred. So I guess it’s been about twenty… I’m not much of a drinker at all so basically we just tried to find the most harsh… beer doesn’t taste very good anyway… we tried to just find the most harsh beer we could find and drink the whole thing. But yeah, it’s getting up there so it’s got to be twenty something beers now.
That’s Dho’s company. The Hall of Justus is Big Dho’s company… that’s his management company. The only thing as far as I do with Hall of Justus is anything as far as assistance… any of their business stuff where I can help out, I do that. But then my own personal company that I use to help to push my projects…. I’ve helped sell their albums through that. Basically helped get their albums in the stores, maybe in places that a lot of distributors may not have. So I help get them in to everything. It’s just trying to be real thorough with things. But now there’s not that much of a need any more as far distribution because more and more people are catching interest, so as far as getting stuff in to stores, as far as my involvement, I do that less and less. I don’t really do that much distribution any more, because the interest is getting more thorough.
As far as UK dates, the thing I know is that the booking agent was trying to get something, but it was something they couldn’t get at the time. The UK definitely is some place where I want to tour. I’ve been talking with Beathut about that and they told me they were trying to set up something. Regardless of Beathut or whoever, I’m going to figure out how to get over there ‘cause I definitely know there’s cats there that want to see a good show.
Basically, I always had an ear for music so what I would do first is, I would watch Yorel do it. Then 9th learned from Yorel and then he got better, and then I would watch them. Then what happened was ‘Paper Gods’… I was engineering a little bit of stuff. Basically what happened was, when 9th saw that I had the ability, 9th probably engineered like one or two songs on ‘Paper Gods’, he just used to let me do it myself. Basically, it was kind of a crash course and I had to learn. If you’ve ever heard ‘Paper Gods’, how it’s engineered is exactly me learning how to do it at that moment and getting better and better at it. From then till now, I’ve engineered stuff for Buckshot’s album and Sean Price and Smiff N Wessun and engineered all of ‘Squirrel and the Aces’ and I’m engineering all of Median’s album that’s going to come out probably the beginning of next year. Then there’s people you may not have heard of…. I got clients that come in and I engineer stuff for also. But none of us have a background in any of this stuff. We just somehow had a talent here to do it and we just pretty much taught ourselves.
Nah, I think its low-tech haha. What we get out of the little we have… ‘cause you know we have two main studios… the end product is just us learning how to make a lot out of a little. Our formula is still pretty much the same. All we did was get better and better at it as far as sound quality.
Yeah, putting some things together for the next joint. Working on that and then there’s another company that 9th, myself and some other individuals have started called “True School Corporation”. That deals more with parties and entertainment and music from pretty much ’87 to ’96. Then once 9th starts working on his next album again, I’ve got to do my track that I’m supposed to do for his album. I need to get out once this fall starts back up again and hopefully get back on the road again. And hopefully this year get something going in the UK because I want to do a more full European tour next year. That’s pretty much it. Just trying to keep everything going. Keep the lawn going and a whole lot of other things.
Did you say Buckshot?
Okay. Hopefully if that jumps off, hopefully that will be real dope. It’s just a lot of different things cats are doing…
Honestly I don’t know. I know different people are working on different things. As far as a Justus League album I honestly have no idea. We’ve never really talked about doing one. If one happens it will be because I guess people just really want it to. Everybody’s just really so busy with what they’re doing it’d be hard to do, but maybe one day in the future, who knows…
As you can see, Cesar’s got a lot planned for the future. In the meantime, if you’re unfamiliar with his work it’s about time you caught up with his catalogue, and for those of us not lucky enough to fall into the “probably wasn’t even a thousand”, go and pick up the re-release of ‘Wooden Nickels’ available at www.ishiphop.com
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© ukhh.com 2006
Cesar Comanche Interview
It was something that I’d planned to do… not necessarily with Beathut but it was something I’d planned to do one day, I just didn’t know when I was going to do it. They were people that showed a lot of interest in doing it and were excited about doing it so we just went from there….
The album came out on ABB. In another interview I read that you like to keep control of your own career and never let yourself get tied to one company. You have what you like to call one-night stands… Is ABB one of the companies you like to have one-night stands with or can we expect more from the two of you in future?
I never met anybody who rapped or met anybody who had songs or even heard of anybody, you know, other than legends until I was in college. The first time I actually heard a song of someone’s was like 1995, when I was a freshmen in college. I’d never heard of such a thing, ‘cause I didn’t know anybody who rapped. I just enjoyed music on my own. Up until I got into college I never really thought of pursuing music or Hip Hop professionally. It was just something that I enjoyed, something that I’d do for my own enjoyment, but I never thought that I could do it because I never saw nobody around me do it.
And now The Justus League’s a big movement. You have a massive catalogue between you, your own companies and your own message board etcetera. If I’m correct, it was you and cjb who started the lawn [The Justus League’s message board]? How important do you think modern technology and being able to keep in touch with fans via non-traditional methods is?
Nah, I don’t really do that that much either any more. The only thing I do is I’m pretty much intimately involved in my own shows but there was a time way back when I was putting together probably 90% of The Justus League shows, but now that things have gone to where cats individually can move…. I know that Dho pretty much handles Little Brother and the other Hall of Justus artists and now the Away Team is starting to do their own thing, Median’s starting to do shows now, Edgar Allen Floe is getting his thing jumped off and pretty much everybody has a good deal at different places. And that’s a good thing ‘cause that’s how I always wanted it to be. But it’s getting closer to that, where everybody has their own big fan base.
What’s the set-up like at Missie Ann? Is it high-tech, or is it more of a computer and a mic kind of thing?
9th and Buckshot are going to work on another album. I know Sean P is done with his new album now and I think pretty much 9th and Khrysis produced that. I’m not sure if Murs and 9th are working on something again.
Oh yeah man. Definitely shout out to you Rish for having the interest to do the interview man! Shout out to Beathut for putting out the project and having the interest in that. Shout out to the fans, whoever’s been supportive of me in trying to further along my name. I’m real thankful and real grateful for all that stuff. And just anybody who’s out there doing music, just try to make the best music you can make… Oh, I also want to shout out ABB records.
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