Who turned out the lights?
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So getting back to the music side of things, when you decided to get back into recording, what made you choose Son Records?
Really because it was kind of new, and I didn't want to do something really major, just test the waters, and Son seemed a good place for that. Also I wanted to do something I hadn't done before, because most of the people I'd talked to who like knew Katch 22, seemed to want the same things we were doing as Katch 22. Since then though I'd worked with a lot of other musicians y'know. Before Son I'd been doing some metal stuff with this band called Banned Substance. That was really interesting, and then I left them and joined this band called Toy, and then that kind of got me back into things again, cuz I'd kind of lost my way in terms of all the new stuff that was coming out. I just couldn't get with it, apart from all the classic stuff that was coming out, the Dre, erm, maybe Mobb Deep, but most of the other stuff, specially that Southern stuff, I just wasn't feeling it, couldn't understand it… I just felt that a lot of what the guys are doing on the Southern material like… er… Master P – it seemed kindo weird it was getting mad props. I mean it's alright but it's not great. I mean I guess you can get so close to something you can't see it for what it is, so maybe from my perspective that's what it was man. But the good thing about doing the metal stuff was that it was new for me, and I love music in general, and the good thing about metal is that I find it a better release in terms of energy than a lot of the hip-hop that's around – I could go wild when I wanted to n stuff.
On the Son EP the tracks you produce are quite funky while the tracks produced by Insane Macbeth are a bit more moody. Do you prefer one style over the other to rap over?
Well I like the contrast – I prefer this contrast actually. I never know what people are going to like, and for that project I wanted to give a balance of styles. I really wanted to do a hard track, like a Limp Biscuit type track on there, but I don't think the people at Son were going to have it! The nearest I was going to get to that was with Insane. He was the one that actually brokered the deal with Son – made the initial contact n all that stuff, which was cool. So yeah – I like the contrast. Stuff that sticks to one mood is very limiting to me, and I just, well I'm making a big assumption here, but I assume it's limiting for the people who're listening to the music too. You might be feeling rowdy one day, the other day you might not. For me it's like, putting out a record, ultimately I want to sell it, I don't want it just sitting there, and from what I'd seen from some records that had really good marketing, got the records in the shops on time, produce quality material and all that stuff – I wanted to get behind something like that. Then thinking in general, if someone was going to buy my record, I want them to get quality as opposed to … y'know, if I can hit a vibe on one track then that's that track done, I'll hit another vibe on another track.
Also, the singers you use on the EP, they're more funk than RnB which for me is definitely a positive point – was that a conscious choice you made?
Yeah – there's one woman in particular I used on the track 'Miracles', basically she does drum and bass stuff. I'd done some work with her, we got on really well, and I really wanted to get her on some wax, and I was really lucky to get her too cuz she's mad busy. She's like one of these people who's massive in Japan but can walk down the street in London unrecognised, y'know. So it was a real privilege, an honour, and she's got some really nice tones.
Some classic dark tales |
You were saying that people were wanting you to do more Katch 22 stuff when you were starting to record again – do you still see much of the other members of the group?
I do actually yeah. Bizarrely I'm working on two albums at the moment. I'm working on the album for Son records called 'Spoken Herbs', and two of the tracks on there are produced by this guy called KV who was like one of the producers from Katch, and I'm trying to get Marga to produce some tracks as well. We're also doing a Katch 22 compilation, sort of a 'Best of …' thing, aiming at release for October 2001, and I'm negotiating with Marga to do two new tracks, cuz he's been like producing for loads of other people. Then there's this other producer I'm working with at the moment, Tunde Jegede, who I'm doing another album, basically a live hip-hop album. While I was recording 'Mummy's Little Soldier' I was doing some work with the metal band, with JB Rolls and her live drum n bass thing, and with this Jazz band called No Flags, and there was this composer I knew who was commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic to put together this urban piece, and he asked me to do some tracks with them. So we did some rehearsals, and it was a real kick to be performing with a real orchestra. So using some of the metal energy – it's not even about the skills it's about the energy, so applying that plus the reggae energy from the drum n bass thing, plus my hip-hop background, it was just really mad. So while I was doing the EP I was doing all this other stuff. I ended up doing about 15 gigs with the Royal Philharmonic, loads, maybe 20-30 concerts with Toy, maybe 10 concerts with JB Rolls and her thing, so by the time I'd finished doing my EP, I wanted to do something that incorporated all those things. So I started working on a live hip-hop thing basically, with some mad vibes. Trying to use new breaks, not the same old drum breaks, I was using different vocal tones, tones I don't usually use either, and it's just mad interesting. The working title for that at the moment is NoMad. It's for people to see the growth y'know. My whole shit is about evolution, trying new stuff, being on the next tip man. I'm growing with the audience y'see, for people who're into hip-hop and that but can listen to some other vibes and enjoy that. I try and do something that'll put me a bit outside what everyone else is doing. So it's like if everyone's going left I'm going right, while the whole world's moving more digital I'm getting analogue. So far, the Spoken Herb won't be out till 2002, I'm not sure at the moment, but the other one might be out before I dunno.
On the Son Records website there's a poem you've written – do you write much poetry?
I do – I write a lot of poetry. Poetry I show I got into hip-hop to be honest. I used to be a reggae MC, but I became a reggae MC because I used to want to write for other people, but people wouldn't do the stuff that I wrote. It was a bit leftfield – it wasn't kind of like my sound's better than your sound, it was more like, y'know, look at the situation, the system's got us and so on. In the end I just did it myself, and then when I got into hip-hop most of the lyrics would come from poetry y'know. Even on the first Katch 22 album, we had a track called 'Brown Clown', which was a poem I originally wrote, and I just rapped it. Then again on the second album I did another one called 'Death of the Flat Black Circle' which is like an ode to vinyl. So yeah, poetry has always been a part of everything. Usually what I do is I write first what I feel, whether if rhymes or not, then I make it rhyme or whatever. I think in a way though that whole approach made some of our stuff, not inaccessible, but seemingly complex, because it's done in this poetic prose first and then transferred into, y'know, standard hip-hop grammar I guess.
And the poem that's on the site, 'All Because…', what inspired that?
Well it's like a kind of confession of sorts, something that happens to a lot of people. I've got a lot of friends that are doing bird, who've done bird – I haven't done bird myself, knock wood – and I heard a lot of the stories. And a lot of times I myself get involved in things. Y'know, we all like to think yeah we're cool blah blah blah, but the wrong set of circumstances can really set you off. And I guess for me, that whole piece is just trying to say that beneath it all we're all just the same, y'know what I mean? And it's really cool and easy to front, act like you're hard and all this other stuff, or sometimes we walk around and we're so frightened that we'll lash out and do some really stupid stuff. So I put myself in a scenario where imagine if I'd done something, actually killed someone. What would it be like, for me, those first ten seconds after I've taken someone's life? The poem picks up from the point where I've just killed someone, what's going through my head.
I like the way you read it and it doesn't really sink in at first, it needs a second reading to get where it's coming from, where the viewpoint is…
Yeah well again, it's playing around with the form. For me writing is like one of the most exciting things in the world. The power of writing is massively understated in the modern world. They're the true historians – not the history book writers, but just the way people write, what they're writing about. Books are the only artform as far as I'm concerned that is truly involved in, is truly multi-dimensional. When you watch a film, your eyes are engaged, your ears are engaged, your mind's engaged to a certain extent, but there are triggers used where you know what's coming. In writing though, it's you that does all the work – all it is, it's you and the writer, and that's some powerful shit. So I take my poetry seriously, and I will publish a book of poetry. It's something I've always wanted to do – y'know break down some of my lyrics n stuff, even have examples of lyrics that've come out, and stuff that's never been published, cuz I must write, what, maybe fifteen times a week, and that's something new. Whether it's lyrics, entries in my journal, a short story… there're pens everywhere – come to my house there's just pens, scraps of paper all over, madness… it's in the blood.
So do you read a lot as well?
I do, but not as much as I should… two authors I like are James Baldwin who's just really really excellent, the other is an obscure, unknown Haitian writer called Dany Laferričre, who's for me probably the best writer of the twentieth century. He's a Haitian immigrant in Canada. His first book was called 'How to Make Love to a Negro Without Getting Tired' and it was basically about him being an immigrant in this bedsit in Toronto, and about the experiences that him and his room-mate, this fat guy who just used to sit on his bed and smoke spliffs and listen to John Coltrane. He wrote a couple of other books, my favourite book of his is one called 'Dining with a Dictator'. It's basically set in Haiti, with their death squad-type police. He and a friend were messing around, and the police told them to move on, but his friend got really angry and went back round the corner and actually cut off the testicles of one of the policemen. So basically the whole book is him hiding out in some girl's flat cuz the police are looking for him and his mate, it's just a mad book man, wicked. Other stuff like Bukowski, that big guy who does the talks… I haven't read many of his books but I like to go and see him talk… Henry Rollins that's it. He's a mad genius man – he's just real y'know what I mean. I'd go as far as to say that he's almost like a prophet of our time but it's hard to see because he's around at the time. But I'm sure that when we're old we'll be watching documentaries and we'll be like 'where was I when he was around?' cuz he is one serious dude man.
  
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