|
|
|
S: First I sex-wee'd but then I pissed my pants - and what's more, I actually liked it! It did feel warm and good. That warm trickle felt good. Next time I'll shit my pants and see how that feels.
EE: Nah man, I'll talk about tracks.
© 2003, CD Goldie for ukhh.com
interview 0142 added 05.05.03 words Sumo KaPlUnK
technical:
QED
S: It's quite nerve-wracking to be truthful.
EE: I don't actually like it at festivals or whatever because you can't talk to individual people - it's like we played with De la Soul at the Astoria and I think that was the most soulless gig I think I've ever done. I went out there and there's two and a half thousand people staring back at me and then there's kids rapping along to every single word - that's the mad thing. You always get kids trying to rap along with your words which really used to put me off. But then again, I'd rather have two hundred hardcore Aspects fans in a small venue because then you can really communicate with them. A show is about you and them. You're not there to show them how clever you are, you're there to entertain them and the best way to do that is to make it their show.
PM: Once you receive that energy from them it sets you off -
EE: They're as important as you are. Every individual person at a gig is as important as you are and if they're fucking cold, you're going to be cold.
PM: It also works full circle so if you can get them charged, then you'll be charged up yourself and you perform better. But for the pure buzz of it, doing a big capacity venue is nuts!
S: I think that if we got used to it because it's something we're not yet used to. We're still affected by it even before we've done it. Even before we've got out the car we're nervous just thinking about it. Whereas still doing more small gigs, they're more fun but…
EE: A 500 capacity gig, you wouldn't even bat an eye-lid doing it nerve-wise but if you're doing a 2000 to 5000 sort of show, I think it's the fact that you're not communicating as directly with as many people and that there's this big gap between you and the audience. And that's what I don't like - it's too impersonal.
S: We will get used to it but it's something we've still got to do a few more times. It's daunting at the time when you just walk out and there's all these people looking at you - especially when you've got a hard-on - it's hard!
EE: When you go out with boners it's no good.
S: It turns me on…One time I did it and I did a wee -
What a sex wee?
PM: Did you know man, soldiers in battle in this country and elsewhere used to have suits of armour with this huge dome over their genitals because if you were on the front line looking at all these savages a few hundred yards opposite you -
EE: What so you'd get a boner? See I wouldn't -
PM: Nah, the adrenaline is so severe that it causes it -
EE: Do you get erections on stage?
PM: I don't get erections on stage. But if you were in a war with your axe and about to be attacked, they used to get full-on hardons so that's what that bit of armour was for -
S: So the axe was to hack it off?
PM: They could try.
EE: Give an axe to that Mr Muscle man in the advert and he's more likely to be able to hack one off than you Specify.
PM: Nah I ain't gonna find nothing funny in war -
EE: Fuck wars man!
S: But if there was a war, like an ocean of me and an ocean of you, I'm going to kill you - I'm going to absolutely muller you!
PM: As in a game of chess, my knowledge of strategy would definitely persevere.
"...I think the press was good but the understanding was poor..."
Are you working on a stage show or will you stick to two emcees and a deejay behind the decks with
Monkey Moo every now and then?
S: I'm looking to trying to dance a bit more on stage. I think it does warm the crowd up a lot more.
PM: We've been making him watch a lot of Michael Jackson videos
EE: What we're trying to do is get him in a leotard to do a hype dance routine but he's not really into it and we can't get him drunk enough fast enough.
S: Nah I think our stage show can and will get better. I think what holds us back is we haven't got the money to spend on equipment and stuff to be able to have things the way we want.
EE: We are already full on mad with it. At the moment we go on stage with four decks, a beatboxer and two rhymers, the beatboxer jumps around and cuts tunes between beatboxing, we freestyle over the records and the beatboxing - so the show we do is already probably madder than anyone else's show.
EE: We want live drummers -
S: But we're always breaking it down and thinking how we can get it more - I think it's going to come to a point where we do a whole show where the beatboxer is doing like all the drums, where we've got someone on a sampler doing all the music -
EE: Like a band where everybody is doing something or playing for all the songs. But we can't do that because (a) we can't take the time off work to figure it all out and (b) we all struggle to pay our rent anyway.
S: But it will be sorted and we will get our way eventually and it will be like a proper full on show.
EE: It's full on now - well it's more than anyone else does. Most people just walk on shouting "Run da DAT bredrin!" Then the DAT comes in and they rhyme about "Bredrin" for ten minutes but then he fucks up and you've got to rewind the DAT to the beginning. And then they can't keep the act up "Hey my Breadbin! Will you please rewind the DAT for me?" No you prick. "Please run it back for me, I want to rhyme"
Christ. "What-ho! I live on da streetz, life is hard ya get me?!"
What did put me off about that Esential thing was that they had one tent especially for rap but instead of only having one warm-up crowd-participation set at 2pm, every single set had its own warm-up routine. Everybody wasted about twenty minutes of their set doing the same "people on the left…you're not loud enough" fraff
PM: I hate that shit, that's true.
S: It's a waste of time.
PM: Time management man. They didn't look at the thing as a whole. Everybody was putting on their own individual gig and then it would go dead after each one and they'd have to try and get the people back in again and start up all over again. Festivals should be run like a big show where you can watch it all from start to finish.
EE: Man, at festivals they should have bands that relate. Man, I'd rather be in a funk tent than a rap tent. If you play to a funk crowd they're going to get what we're doing more and if you play to a Jigga crowd…forget it. The problem with
Hip Hop is it's become so inflexible in its old way. It's got all these stupid rules that don't really exist and everybody is expected to adhere to them.
Are you currently in a position to demand a rider for gigs?
All: Yeah, we have done.
S: We actually demand Sandwiches before…peanuts too - but Probe Mantis for some reason, he always gets rubber titties before going on stage?
Rubber titties? So is that a medical condition?
PM: Nah it's more for relaxation, I caress them before and after a show. It really relaxes me -
EE: And it stopped him caressing our balls so that was all good really. Some shows you're going to be treated like a cock and then at some shows you ain't - one thing I am getting at every show is paid. And I'd like to say this as a warning to any promoters thinking of booking us without ever paying us, we have been known to cordon off areas of the club and turn tables over and take on bouncers.
PM: We're not the sort of group that is so desperate for the leg up from some poxy, tiny little club somewhere that we're prepared to take shit.
EE: Promoters should have to qualify for their license to promote. The thing is, any old twat can print some flyers out -
PM: We've got a bit of a chip on our shoulders about this already and maybe we're sounding a bit big-headed but we're already doing contracted tours, we're doing good shows and we're getting the money so we don't need any low-level shit anymore. That wont get us anywhere anymore. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with "Underground" because that's where I'm from and that's where I'll fucking end up probably but we're elevating right now and getting bigger and better the whole time so why shoot ourselves in the foot? It'd be stupid to devote ourselves to small shit.
EE: If someone put on a UK Rap show, we find that we come on and do this massive epic show with beatboxing and dropping things off a drum machine and doing all these mad things, kids don't know what the fuck's going on. If we go and play a gig to kids who are into just general music, they'll totally expect you to be a proper band and put on a proper show. If you came on stage and rapped over a DAT, those kids would spit at you, possibly even piss at you.
Yeah and you'd video it.
EE: Yeah well, I take my own bottles of jizz on stage with me.
PM: I don't.
S: It's funny though the standards at certain nights and that's the norm. We've been to places and clubs and stuff and we've said "we've got to have four decks yeah? All our shows have four decks." We turn up for the show and there's two decks.
EE: And one of them only plays 78s.
S: So we're like "no, we want four decks. There's got to be four decks or else there's no show." It's like they want us to do only an average show. We were doing this thing and we spent most of the night trying to get this man to give us four decks "but can't you just have two decks?" No! We've got to have four decks!
PM: If you want an average night with a mediocre performance then fine, but you shouldn't have called us.
What's the worst night you've ever had.
S: Tonight I think, you're getting right on my nerves.
EE: I'd have to say that my worst night was playing in Camden doing that Jazz Fudge night 'cus I had pneumonia, the sound was really fucked up - plus it was a "real UK Rap" show, everyone else who was performing that night formed the bulk of the audience.
S: And plus we had loads of good press before going on. That really annoyed people and they thought we thought we were better than them.
EE: They were pissed off that we were more popular than them -
S: Because we were better than them - our record got four stars instead of…one.
EE: [in dodgy London twang] Listen bredrin, I don't get it mang. Noone in London's feelin' chu." Mate, you're from "oop North" and you've just adopted that accent in about five days. Yeah it was all that vibe and I was ill anyway. And I was gutted because we did have a bad show in front of all the people who did want to bring us down and then I was hospitalised days later.
OK, Speaking of accents, have you ever tried to tone it down or play up to it even?
S: Jeezerce Chrizt, We ain't even gots no accent, its pathetic heheheh.
EE: Basically, in the band, Bubber had a strong West Country accent, I've got a slight
twang but Ben's originally from fucking Essex man! Noone even thinks he's from the West Country man. West Country kids don't think of any of us as being "West Country." It's just cus we don't sound like other people. Whenever you break the mould it scares journalists and it scares other
Hip Hop groups and they try to work you out and pin you down - hence the "Cider rap" moniker that plagued us for a while.
S: Hence he was working out in a jelly mould?
EE: What? I was working out?
S: Yeah he's no longer a fat cunt -
EE: Well I did get those cock-bellbars and worked out like fuck on that on my cock so my accent turned into
[in very squeaky London twang] "Listin bredrin! Ya get me!" It actually went higher and more rudeboy the more I worked out on my cock.
PM: It is annoying that - people do put on that accent a lot whereas I don't have a specific accent myself at all.
EE: I grew up listening to rappers that all sounded different and all rapped in their own regional accent and it was better then and a lot more natural.
PM: Thing is, a lot of people adopt the same accent no matter which city they're from. You've just got to be yourself and you'll get ahead more if you sound different to the nextman. Use your own voice, your own style -
EE: I can remember when all rappers sounded different and nobody batted an eyelid but now you have to sound the same?
How do you feel about the people who've written you off as a comedy or novelty act?
PM: I don't feel happy about it but I can see how it happened though. I guess we let that happen.
EE: To be honest with you, it ain't that funny. If you actually LISTEN to
We Get Fowl, which is really funny to people, but it's actually about rape. So that ain't too funny to us. We wrote it to see how stupid people were - man people are fucking dumb! There was like one girl in Oxford who reviewed our record, and she said "But this is fucking sexist bullshit" she actually understood what we were saying. So every time we here the "comedy" label I'm just like "Fuck! Does nobody even listen on any level to music." That woman deserves respect and if she reads this, biggup yourself!
PM: There is a lot of sexist nonsense in that song but we didn't set out to offend. We did it very tongue in cheek -
EE: We didn't do it to be sexist, we did it to see if people would get it. Radio 1's playing it saying "yeah! Listen to these funny crazy rappers!" And we're talking about some dark shit on it.
PM: We did it in an amusing characterised context so the thing is, the first LP had a very quirky sound so I think a lot of people were just seduced by that and labelled it straight away. It didn't sound like some dark, murky moody shit
EE: [in self-pity fake-yank emcee mode] "My life is so hard, I sit and cry on the floor, my girlfriend hates me, you know what's more? I got sores on my bellpiece, from jacking off over Jay-Z!" Yeah, we come off SLIGHTLY humorous - and we always will because humour is like the one English trait worth clinging on to and yet everybody discards it because it's not cool. And without humour what've you got then? Just a nation of horrible, ugly unhappy people.
S: Cling on!
PM: The problem is when we get reviewed by the Hip Hop press. The Hip Hop press say things like "Hmmm, don't worry, this isn't a novelty record even though you might think it is." When we got reviewed by bigger more credible press outside the
Hip Hop thing, they were actually more understanding.
EE: The problem is, the infrastructure of UK Hip Hop doesn't understand what it's like outside UK
Hip Hop. Cus it's all in London and all controlled within a circle of about two hundred people who all suck each others' dicks and set one standard for themselves and another completely different standard for everybody everywhere else. Unfortunately, all the
Hip Hop press is based around that circle. Outside of that, the music press is all based up north but it's not only indy bands from up north that they make big do you get me?
"...I'm not up for being big in London for two minutes before disappearing up my own arse all because I refuse to look outside of where I
am..."
D'ya get me? Hahahah!
EE: D'ya get me bredrin! I keep saying it man! Aaargh!
S: I noticed that -
EE: You probably noted it down in your little fucking note book to cuss me out about it later you prick. Anyway, you see my point? We try to operate in terms of music, not this "UK
Hip Hop." We make music to sell via the music industry not some old boys' network. It is fucking disconcerting and discouraging when you've got some supposedly underground rap magazine trying to diss you and yet you've got some Indy magazine totally understanding us.
PM: We've had to develop a very thick skin and that's what I've got so I don't get phased by it now. I certainly don't look on the net as opinions worth paying any attention to - Don't get me wrong, I'll read this and I read properly written stuff but - If I lived out in the sticks I would be a lot more into it I would.
EE: Man! But the thing is, I've seen kids - and these are obviously all very computer literate, well-off, well-spoken kids giving it the whole "Bredrin" fraff on the ukhh.com forums trying to diss us. I read this shit and some of them invest so much energy to diss us - and yeah, they diss us in such a real literate sense that I could never write like but if I ever run into you, I'm going to knock your nerdy head off. It amuses me in a way but then it annoys me in another way that these geeks can get away with saying shit against me on their computers. At the end of the day I'm a battler, I'm a battle rapper and if they had any balls, I'd gladly battle them in the real world. If you want to come and cuss me, do it in a battle or shut up.
PM: The way I see it, these people don't exist beyond their favourite message board.
EE: I reckon 90% of them are just artists that have got beef with us and want it to look like popular opinion.
PM: 90% of them are probably naked with a bone on and just stumbled across the site after watching porn mpegs of their mothers.
EE: They come to your site after thumbing themselves off to our album cover. They're digging the graf -
PM: A lot of them are dudes, 14-15 years old, beating their loaf 4, 5 or 6 times a day. I don't care what they say.
EE: I find it hard to explain myself nowa days because I'm so fucked off with explaining myself. I know what i've done in my heart. I know how long I've been rhyming and how many battles I've had. I know I've done what I need to do - and if I want to do music, I don't see why not.
Hip Hop's the only music with all these rules. "YOU MUST NOT.." - but all the Hip Hop
classics don't adhere to those rules and people not realising that is what fucking bugs me!
OK, We've talked about past and present so where are you headed in the future?
S: Well I'm going home ha! I'm going home and then to bed and tomorrow I'll get up and do the same thing again.
PM: NO we haven't signed anything yet at the moment. We have spoken with some labels and there has been some interest but as El-Eye was saying earlier on, it was possible for us to have signed something a little while ago but peanuts! Not interested! If we are going to be able to do it as a full time career, well then we're going to need a wage and advances that will allow us to do that.
EE: A&Rs are funny like that. They'll come up to you and love you and come to all your shows and they're quite willing to hang around with you as much as possible but when they put what they're offering on the table, it's actually quite laughable.
PM: They actually behave in a very professional manner it seems and act the big shot and then you read what they're offering you and you think "You're a fucking amateur." Jamie Hombre, just through all the blood sweat and tears he put in for us via his label -
EE: He did work his arse off for us!
PM: He got us further than any of these A&Rs will ever get us. Some of these small labels coming up now, they might put their back into more than Hombre but they still wouldn't have got us any further.
EE: Basically what we've done is, we've nearly finished an albums that's
S: Well it's gonna smash any other album that comes from this country in the genre and literally will strangle and murder it. Any album.
EE: What we did before was every track within one day, everything rushed, not thought about, everything done quickly - we just wanted to make a rap album. We got as far as we did just off of raw energy: now we know what the fuck we're doing.
S: The beauty of all this is, since we've been looking for the right deal, it's given us time to keep making tracks and to get them more and more honed. Now this gives us time to really master every track.
PM: Also test them live which is always a big thing for an artist.
S: And to go back and make decisions like "this ain't good" or "this is good but it's not good enough."
EE: We reject a lot of tracks.
S: So this way we're getting this album together now, which is absolutely going to kill it and nobody's going to know what hit them.
PM: Before, we were putting out everything we did.
EE: Mate, if people think we fucked them off with
Correct English we will fuck them right off this time because we're not going halfway. We've taken this on and we've written the songs as complete songs. We've spent months on songs. We've written lyrics that mean stuff. It's been a really dark time, I'm not going to go into it but a lot of dark shit has happened to us individually -
S: On the album it's all going to come out. It's not happy - there's still a lot of that quirky funk on it but not "happy" funk; it's just good funk.
PM: And that is a very natural progression.
S: There's that, there's like songs - and REAL songs, these are songs which properly develop -
PM: I didn't expect it to reflect our personal lives as much as it does.
EE: Nothing on
Correct English was written as a song - this whole album we've written like songs. On
Correct English, I listen to it now, and to me it sounds awful. I can understand and appreciate it in terms of when it came out and what it did though and it is a piece of its time. It was going against what everyone else was doing and I'm glad we fucking did it, fuck 'em! I'm glad we did it but when we come out now, I'm not even looking to get sold for the sake of it. I don't want somebody to feel they have to by our record because it's "the latest UK
Hip Hop album" - I don't want them to feel they have to buy the latest London thing and an Aspects album. I want kids to be buying a Red Hot Chillies record and The Aspects' album.
S: Just good music.
EE: Yeah! 'cus it's good music. I think it's going to talk to more people because there's a darker undercurrent to it. I think there's a lot more of
Lost Soul on it and a lot less of
We Get Fowl on it.
D'ya want to talk about the album or do you want to keep it all under wraps?
S: There's a lot of tracks that we've recorded which need re-recording because we're not
entirely happy with the first versions so we've got to go back and redo them. I'd say there's a lot of really strong potential singles - and I mean singles that'll do a lot of damage in all quarters. Tunes which you wont have heard of before, styles which you can link in with other tracks but which people just ain't going to get it at first because it all sounds so unique.
EE: If people found it hard to describe us the first time around, they're going to be fucked this time around. In a way it was lucky we were rejected that first time. Who in UK
Hip Hop supported us? Who turned round and said "yeah, Aspects are dope?" Nobody. Everybody in London turned their back on us - I couldn't give a rat's fucking arse yeah. But that was good because it made us work harder.
PM: We don't begrudge hard work. And as you can hear, El-Eye's got that anger simmering away there -
EE: I'm an anger-powered rapper. The more people fuck me off, the better. Fuck me off and I'll write another verse about you. Fuck me off and you'll give me more to write about which'll fuck you off.
PM: Thing is about London, there's a hell of a lot of groups that I respect so much for doing some of the best music in the country but it's a really extreme thing because I love some of the groups there but I hate most of them.
S: The album will probably have like fourteen tracks, that's fourteen solid tracks. None of them are weak in any way. It would be very hard to say "this is my favourite track and this is my least favourite track" because they're all going to be of the same high quality throughout the solid album. No fillers, very few skits; just straight tracks - quite short, three to four minutes, four minutes being the longest - just basically nuggets of straight up quality.
EE: Basically, it's like
Illmatic. They made millions of tracks -
PM: But then they put down only nine of them. Nine Bangers.
EE: We are making millions of tracks but we're also sacking off most of them.
S: But instead of doing a sureshot of like nine tracks, it's going to be fourteen tracks.
EE: We've disappeared for over a year and a half.
Correct English came out over two years ago. What the fuck do you think we've been doing? Sitting around with our fingers up our asses? - Well Probe Mantis has actually! But yeah, we've worked fucking hard throughout this time. When I look back on it and it's all good and the album's out and I can relax, I'll be glad we went through the hardships we went through because it's made us write better music.
PM: It's been such hard work to get where we are -
EE: And being ignored by the rest of the scene has made us write better music.
"...There's groups like All Creatures, The Lowercase Kids, there's a lot of kids in Exeter that are
dope!..."
Do you have a working title at the moment?
PM: There's a couple of working titles -
EE: But we don't want to say at the moment -
PM: Thing is, last time we did do that. We did an interview and we gave away a working title but this time I reckon it's best to keep that secret and let it develop.
S: We've got a few which we've thought about but they're more kinda like words that sound good on paper.
EE: But no - really you've got to hear the whole finished album and then we'll know. Like last time, we were listening to the album and Specify was like "Correct English?" and we were like "yeah!" We knew straight away, it clicked like that and we knew that had to be the title.
S: We're really still waiting for the right words to coincide. Someone could say something in a conversation -
EE: It could happen any minute…you could say it, nobody knows. All the tracks on the album so far are tracks we're all feeling. Like so far, for me, one of Probe Mantis's solo cuts
My World is like definitely my favourite -
PM: But it's not really a solo cut because -
EE: Yeah I know I do the chorus. But yeah, lyrically it's saying a lot. My favourite track that I've done is the
Self Help song. It started off as an angry diss rap but then I realised that most rappers in their disses, do what they say is wrong anyway -
You mean like Canibus having a go at LL Cool J for "trying to make a living off a
dissing?"
EE: But that happens a lot, that's true and you end up dissing yourself. So what I did was I started taking all the character flaws in myself and put them in as well on top of everything else. It's a three verse self-help song and every rapper will think it's about them. There's elements of me I've put in there and nobody's done that before.
PM: It's all new territory man. Again, we've each done these personal tracks - like El-Eye's done this
Self Help song and my personal solo track is called off the lift -
EE: I think that's my favourite cut.
S: They will hate - people will hate
EE: "Rap" kids will hate it - it's like
My Genre - well there's nothing like
My Genre on the album but it'll probably get the same response from them kids.
PM: It's a natural progression, musically, from that I guess.
EE: It's with The Bees - we met with those guys on the
Dazed & Confused tour and we were basically surrounded by crackheads who were bugging everyone and most of the other bands were like crackheads and so us and them were like the only normal kids on the tour. They're deep kids who know what they're doing. If you listen to those kids deejay
Hip Hop sets you can hear they know what they're doing. They're deep on their music. There's a real connection with us and them so it's a bit of a shocker to put them on a UK
Hip Hop CD.
S: The only people we are prepared to do collaborations with are those people who are fully into music and understand it. In terms of all genres. We don't just want to work with the latest hottest rapper who don't know fuck all about anything. We all know music inside out so - that's one of our greatest strengths is that we're so strong on music.
EE: We're all deep into music. We're not just…your average rap listeners.
S: We're not just like "Hey! We like David Axelrod because y'know, he's kinda Hip Hopy!"
EE: But mate, it's worse than that - it's not even that level, we're talking about people who make a point of saying "I love 50 Cent and that's it."
But that's because Jiggy pop rap has become the new fixation - it's like Jiggy is this decade's backpacker fodder. It's become the height of coolness to like P Diddy and 50 Cent or whatever.
EE: Yeah! It fucking has! I'll tell you what's fucking mad yeah? I was chatting to Juicealeem at The Deadbeat Festival about this and he was like "look at how many people there are who claim to listen to 50 Cent and Dose one?" Y'know, hopefully Jiggy will become the new nerdy backpacker and then everything will come full circle and collapse back in on itself because all that Backpack V Jiggy thing is bullshit. You should be able to listen to whatever the fuck you want to listen to.
PM: These kids only listen to one sub genre but if they listen to a bit of the opposite genre within
Hip Hop, hopefully it will all go back to how it used to be with a rich medley of styles.
EE: I think it will. I think you should be able to listen to both 50 Cent and to Aspects. You should be able to listen to Jehst and you should be able to listen to Flaming Lips. You should be able to listen to whatever. I'd rather people went back to being more open about music.
Continue on to Part
3
