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Does this guy really still need an introduction? OK. He’s an intriguing legion
of well-observed characters on record, a mesmeric cult figure on stage and
always an easy and interesting interviewee on the receiving end of my questions.
It’s difficult to tell whether this seasoned beat-comber and psychological
sketch artist is ever ending one tour or beginning the next –but seeing how his
popularity with fans and established industry types alike at last month’s Lex
Records show, I was just glad of another opportunity to get a second chance of
catching a few words with the guy. Unfortunately a bout of the seasonal sniffles
prevented me from tripping across to catch his latest London gig and a few words
face to face but thankfully, Buck65 was up for a few words over the phone. So
please enjoy what he had to say when I had a quick chat with Richard Terfry
about….well oddly enough, about making music, production and performing – but
also baseball and maths….
© Copyright 2003, CD Goldie for ukhh.com
interview 0166 added
16.12.03 words
Sumo KaPlUnK
technical:
QED
Q: Hmmmm, where to start? Well
you’re living in the UK right?
Well
y’know, actually, that just changed. I just left.
Q: For good?
Well not for good - but for the time being; I had to retreat back to Canada to
Montreal – the heat was on here y’know… Heat was starting to come down on me and
so I thought the only way I was ever going to get another Sebutones record done
was to just go live next door to Sixtoo and just y’know, be a real pain in the
ass to him. So that’s what I’ve done. I had to get a place right next to him.
Q: How much of this
Sebutones project is done then?
Lots is planned and work has begun but there’s - well we’ve only really broken
the ice so there’s still a long way to go.
Q: Well I don’t know if you were on
tour at the time but did you manage to enjoy the bonfire night festivities on
November 5?
Um no. I heard lots about it and I even had a date all lined up for the big
night and I was ready to light that guy on fire y’know! I heard lots of great
things about the night and I was going to try to make it back on this current
trip that I’m here for now especially for that night but some things came up. So
yeah, I originally had plans for that night but I couldn’t make it – and I was
really disappointed - I’ve heard it’s a real fun night? What’s the guy’s name
again? Gie Fawks? Yeah I hate that bastid! Heheheh.
"...what happens after those
fifteen minutes when you’re uncool?...."
Q: But when you were over here in the
UK, did you manage to get hooked on any of the soaps?
You know a little bit. I kept myself pretty busy whilst over here but every once
in a while I would find myself lazing around and then Eastenders
or whatever would be on… You get sucked in pretty quick and easy… I was here
when there was all that fuss about Kat coming back? So I got caught up in that
hysteria for a minute. From what I could see that show really needed a good shot
in the arm that this Kat was able to deliver by coming back – stirring things up
a little.. heheheh! I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about but..
Q: I suppose you’ve already answered my
next question with your first answer but anyway…when I first heard of you you
were doing a lot of work with other artists like Josh Martinez, Governor Bolts
and of course, Sixtoo – So did you find being over in Europe more isolating?
I
sort of did a little bit. It’s a little harder to meet people here. I did make a
few connections and this has actually turned out to be a bit of a frustrating
point. I’ve made lots of plans over the period of a long time to do a song with
The Aspects – which I partly have you to thank for because you turned me onto
them in the first place - and so I’ve just been trying to work things out with
my schedule and El-Eye and it’s just been one conflict after another and I’m
hoping it’s not too late and that I get a chance to record it because I’ve
written my part for the song and everything – but I’m guessing that by now, El
Eye’s getting pretty frustrated with me and things not working out either.. One
thing that I’ve noticed – and I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I’m guessing
not - is that the one thing that strikes an outsider immediately about England
and London in particular is how little eye contact you get from people. I made
the observation that I only seem to get eye contact with children under five and
dogs. And that’s very different to France where I lived before coming over here
because people are very nosy in France. Everyone’s in your face and into your
business over there. But over here?…I dunno…
Q: but isn’t that more of an
urban/rural difference? Because – and I don’t know exactly what it’s like where
you’re from – but the image of Canada is more open country whereas London is all
like high-rise METROPOLITAN?
Well I find people in New York to be very-very friendly and in cities like
Toronto in Canada and stuff - like I say, even in France, in Paris where I
lived, everyone was looking at you and sizing you up and always asking you what
the hell you were doing and stuff.. But in London? Well I can say that London
and a lot of the UK is tougher than anywhere I’ve ever been – and that includes
New York and places like that. You know I feel completely safe walking through
any part of Manhattan at any hour whereas there’s lots of parts of the UK and
London in particular where I don’t feel safe being in the middle of the
afternoon. So maybe it’s just that people have a tougher shell over here or
something?
"...we referred to the process of
mastering as “professional turd polishing"...."
Q: I guess the most noticeable
difference between your past work and your latest album is that you’re now
working as part of a production team. How did that come about?
Well it came about kinda over a real gradual period of time because this
“Entity” thing which includes myself, Graymatter and this T.O.A.B. La Rone fella
– Well Graymatter has actually been involved with helping me out on my records
going all the way back to Vertex and that’s with just like
technical things. For example, if there was a sample that I really wanted to use
but was too long to use on the SP (because you only get two-and-a-half seconds
on the SP) then I would use his sampler but I wouldn’t know how to use it so I’d
have to get him to help out – just technical things like that y’know? That was
his contribution to this album too; very technical stuff. And then with this
TOAB character, he has actually made contributions on my albums going back to….Ummm,
The first thing that I did with him was Boy Girl Fight which never
came out and then there was material I worked on with him on Man Overboard
which was basically like him playing guitars and things – but he also owns a
studio. So the new album was completely recorded in his studio instead of my
bedroom. Once again, his contributions to the album were (a) playing some guitar
which he had been doing for me for ages – and then (b) like running the studio –
I don’t even know how to begin operating that huge board and a lot of the
outboard gear and all that stuff. So all in all, it’s still exactly the same as
the whole process before but this time around I actually had to do things more
by the book legally speaking because it’s on a major label. In the past I had no
budget, no nothing to work on so everybody was working for free because nobody
had any money but now with the record being on a major label, the contribution
that those guys make now earns them their cut if any money is ever made and so
for legal purposes you have to put down their names even if it is for purely
technical things. You have to sight them as contributors but creatively it’s
still 100% my thing. But it seems to have confused a lot of people to see and
hear these names there. They’re like “What the hell? He’s not producing his own
stuff anymore?” The fact is, I’m still making music the same way I always have.
"...So really that song is about
the hostility I felt to an audience that I felt was misunderstanding me and I
just don’t feel that way about my audience any more....."
Q: So in the process of making the
album, did anything turn out differently to how you expected?
Only in that some things turned out better than I had expected and.. We had this
album professionally mastered at one of the top mastering facilities in the
world and I never really understood what mastering was – and this album was
still fairly lo-fi – it was a very small, stinky studio that we recorded it in –
but we referred to the process of mastering as “professional turd polishing”
which is like making a piece of shit look really good – I still don’t completely
understand what mastering is but it sure made this record sound incredible. It
sounds hi fi even though we once again did it on shit gear and all that. That
blew my mind – I mean listening to the difference between the record before and
after mastering is mind boggling! So that certainly was a huge surprise. But all
in all, same with all my other records, I had some ideas exactly how I wanted
songs to sound in my head before I went to work on them and it was all pretty
much completely realised. It’s still done really organically, still lots of
mistakes left in on the album which I like..
Q: Any plans to upgrade your equipment?
Like ever thought about going wild in a keyboard shop and getting the latest MPC,
the latest Korg synth and all the rest?
Y’know,
the thought has crossed my mind once in a while - like Mr Dibbs just got that
crazy MPC4000 and he’s been telling me about the features of that and how you
plug a turntable directly into it and how it has enough memory to store you’re
entire album on there – those are some obvious benefits and pure conveniences
that would save a lot of hassle that I have now but I love my SP! Working within
confines just kinda forces my hand on a creative level on a way that I like. I
like that challenge. So all in all, I have no intention of making any change any
time soon to be honest with ya.
"...in the past, I was making
records under the understanding that nobody would hear these records....."
Q: Another striking difference between
this album and your previous LPs is how this album’s tracks stick so closely to
orthodox album structure. It’s all verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge structure –
how much was that down to label pressure?
Oh zero! That was just a challenge I set out for myself because as I have
evolved and gotten older, I’ve just learned a lot more about music in general
and I’ve tried to educate myself about theory and all those things and I’ve just
gotten to this point where I just want to make the best music that I know how to
make – not just the best hiphop music – and I would like to make a hiphop album
that people could hold up to albums from other genres without dumbing down their
expectations. Now I don’t think I’ve done that yet but that’s what I want to do.
I like the idea of earning myself the title of “songwriter” y’know? ‘cus when
you only write rap lyrics, I don’t think you can rightfully, by the textbook
definition, call yourself a “songwriter.” So I thought, if I’m going to do that,
I’ll have to (a) learn to play a little bit – and (b) I have to learn proper
song structures. And that was a challenge that I wanted to do. I think I always
need to feel that I have something to prove otherwise I think I would just start
to get lazy. So I thought on this one, I’m going to see if I can actually write
songs and for there to be chord progressions and key changes and bridges and all
those things – because to be honest, it’s that sort of musical credibility I’m
after. I want to get credibility in the eyes of other songwriters. That is
something I really want so I’m going after that. It’s funny because it’s a weird
kinda turn-off for a lot of young underground hiphop heads. It’s like they don’t
want to see you get educated musically. They would prefer it if it stayed kinda
dumb or whatever. I was listening to Weirdo Magnet yesterday for
the first time in ages and…I’ll admit to you that I still love it – but some of
that material is really old! Like there’s stuff on there dating back to when I
was in high school and that was a long time ago – and I love it, it’s really
fun! But musically its nowheresville. Like it’s really dumb; you loop something
up and rap over that loop? What’s that? That barely qualifies as music. So I was
not satisfied to just exist in this parallel universe: I want to find a place in
the world of music and I want to see hiphop be accepted by the musical
authorities and establishment y’know? I don’t want it to be seen as absurd to
talk about all those greats like Brian Wilson, Paul McCartney, Miles Davis and
Bob Marley in the same breath as a hiphop artist. Why shouldn’t that be OK? And
I’m not necessarily the person to do it but I feel like I have something to
prove by saying “OK well look this can be something a little more..” and if
making it slightly more musical is a step that I can take to set some example
then fine… That might have something to do with getting old and turning thirty
and all that kind of stuff but y’know, that’s where I’m at, just keeping myself
challenged. It would be really easy to make Vertex over and over
again – and arguably I did make Vertex over again two or three
times with the records that followed it – and I dunno, that just gets a little
too comfortable and boring after a while..
Q: But do you think you’ll return to
the Language Arts format again or do you think you’d done everything you wanted
to do with it?
I
have two things on my mind as I answer that. First of all, like I said, I
listened to Weirdo Magnet yesterday and loved it - it was really
exciting to me and it made me psyched on the idea of just gathering like a bunch
of records and putting together something like that again. And also I was just
in New York two weeks ago talking with DJ signify (who is my biggest fan and
supporter and critic ever) and his favourite record of mine is Vertex
and he was showing me some of his latest finds with records and it was just
blowing my mind some of the incredible stuff that he had dug up and I said
“Justin….I want ALL of this stuff!” And he said “OK” and I think I’m moving to
New York in March so the plan is for me to just basically hijack Signify’s
entire record collection and get a little help from him to make another record
like that at some point even if it is just kinda kept as an underground sorta
thing. I mean the fact is, to be completely honest with you, in the past, I was
making records under the understanding that nobody would hear these records. And
y’know, part of the appeal and excitement of some of that old material is that
it’s an out-and-out sample fest. I love Paul’s Boutique and
basically, all those records like Paul’s Boutique – and y’know,
I’ve never thought about it in these terms – but for all intents and purposes,
my oldest material was just my version of Paul’s Boutique. I just
wanted to make a very dense sample-heavy record… But times have changed and I’m
on a major label now and I either just couldn’t get away with that now or I
would dig myself an incredibly huge hole of debt by trying to do that. I’m still
broke and that’d just be asking for trouble. For Christ’s sake! In the last
couple years, some of my friends who are completely super-underground people
have got sued over samples and it’s scaring the shit out of a lot of people. So
I would be lying to say that hasn’t become a big concern I used to think all of
us in my circle were untouchable just because we had no money and we’re so deep
down underground but that’s absolutely not the case. That sucks. That’s tough.
We’d all love to just go bananas and sample whatever the hell we want – like I
have samples in mind that I drool over! There’s stuff that I’d love to take but
then I think “Jesus I can’t touch that!” Like there’s this John Fahey thing that
I’m dying to take…there’s the theme music from Blood Simple that
Cohen brothers film that I’d love to sample…a few years ago I rented this video
back in Halifax of a bunch of episodes of The Young Ones and at
the beginning there was this little bumper ID thing for the BBC yeh? there was
this incredible tiny little snippet of music that came on and I thought “Holy
shit! I’ve got to take that because it’d be so dope with a beat thrown over it!”
But then I thought “as if; I’d get hung for that!” So that sucks knowing you’ve
got some cool ideas that you just can’t do because you’d never get away with it.
And now there’s just way more scrutiny on me than ever so I better watch out.
But like I say, what’s even more important to me than those concerns is trying
to establish myself as a true songwriter. So writing music and learning how to
play piano and guitar a little bit and actually writing songs with structure and
all that kinda stuff is something that I want to do anyway. I mean at some point
I had to do it anyway. I figure sooner or later I was going to come to this.
Continue on to Part
2
