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The Planets Interview

interview 0007 added 25.04.00 words Roughe 360 (Ikonoclast)

The Planets are huge balls of rock floating around space and time, they are also SonRize, Nomadic Poet and DJ Kam and incredible force of hip hop isoterics.
Their music is (as they describe), highly spiritual and uplifting. I however perceive it as futuristic and anarchical, breaking down the walls of con formality and rebuilding them in their own style. We met up in sunny Brixton and got mad SPIRITUAL! The Planets are going to be big, very big, very big indeed.....
[Rough] Tell me about the Planets.
[SonRize] Well we've been together now for about a year and a half recording as The Planets. We're about positivity, consciousness and upliftment we try and create very soulful music that hopefully people find uplifting and inspiring.
[Rough] Do you think that too much music nowadays means nothing?
[SonRize] I think music's like a cake and if one ingredients missing then it won't taste right.
[Nomadic Poet] I think music should be a reflection of your thoughts and feelings at the time and that's what we try and bring forth with The Planets, we just bring forth different ideas and spiritual tribulations we go through as individuals because our essence is spiritual, we are spiritual beings by nature so I think the spiritual aspect of our music is important to us as individuals because we're trying to be at one with our real self, our inner self.
[Rough] All the tracks on the EP are different from each other but was 'Love Not Money' a little bit of a compromise for the heads?
[SonRize] With 'The Circle Of Light' EP we tried to do something for everyone on that, so we tried to get a balance on there. I guess in one sense if we do stuff that people want to call spiritual then it probably would sound a bit out of balance, so we try to get the correct balance there by going for the physical and the spiritual.
[Nomadic] We have a lot of different sides to us, that's what we try to bring out in the music. I can be spiritual but at the same time I can be ignorant as well, I have that side to me.
[SonRize] I think if one word could sum up The Planets it would be 'SELF', You know, The Planets are about us, about who we are as individual people, our personalities and who we are is what's reflected in the music.
[Nomadic] I would say like, SonRize, he's more of your philosopher kinda guy, he's more of a ponderer whereas I would say, as my name says Nomadic Poet, The Traveller. Sometimes I could be talking to you and my mind would be somewhere completely different, that's how I've always been. I think about a lot of different things and I try and visualise a lot of things and when I write my rhymes I try to paint a picture in your mind, you can actually visualise my lyrics and what I'm trying to make you see, it's almost like a moving cinema. It's like animation.
[Rough] Where do you see your music going?
[SonRize] Well God willing, we see it going Worldwide that's the vision. What we're trying to do is spread love and the further we can do that, the better, you know.
[Rough] Do you think that the consciousness aspect of hip hop is an open forum that isn't being used enough?
[Nomadic] I don't believe that we deliberately go out of our way to be conscious, we just be ourselves and as people that's how we are. If you meet us we're like your ordinary guys but at the same time we have a certain depth to how we think.
[SonRize] We don't get together and say "let's do three conscious tracks". Like, what you hear is who we are and that's the formula.
[Rough] What is the working formula?
[Nomadic] We'd get a beat tape from various producers or I'd do some beats myself. We'd meet up and listen to the beats, whatever we're feeling, we'd just start free styling to and from there would be like a skeleton of an idea coming through and we would just build on that idea. It's like we reflect the mood of the beat in rhyme form and that's what we try to do.
[SonRize] The music sparks off certain receptors to certain parts of our personalities so we might here a certain beat and that might make us feel in a certain mood about something or that might help us to reflect upon something, we'd then monopolise on that idea and that's the concept for the track.
[Nomadic] For me, when I'm writing my lyrics, I just, you know, listen to a beat and I could be anywhere, I walk with my headset and I don't care if you think I'm crazy I'll be walking down the street rhyming to myself, whatever. After doing that for a while something just comes out of the back of my mind or the depths of my inner self or my surroundings, it just comes to me and boom! I start writing.
[Rough] What Inspires your music?
[SonRize] One of my mentors has always been KRS 1 from day one, Gang Starr. I've always been attracted to the positive elements of hip hop.I believe that hip hop is perhaps the most positive form of music on the Planet and I believe that we can use hip hop to spread a lot of love and kinda heal the Planet on a lot of different levels and what we try and do is just tap into that.
[Nomadic] I see hip hop like a blade, it can be used to peel an orange or an apple and at the same time it can be used to kill someone (Laughs). That's how I see it.
[Rough] So if you guys were actually Planets, what Planets would you be?
[SonRize] I think I'd be the Sun.
[Nomadic] I would probably be Saturn. There's many rings to Saturn and that's how I'd say I am as a person, there's many sides to me. According to what mood I'm in that's what you'll hear. You couldn't listen to a Planets track and hear me once and say that's me as a person because I try to bring a different element of myself every time and when I write my lyrics as well I try to write stuff that influenced me, because I used to read a lot of comics, graphic novels and all kinds of weird stuff so sometimes that comes through in my lyrics.
[Rough] What's Kam's input into the group?
[SonRize] Mixmaster Kam, Kam is basically the DJ and producer on some of the beats and basically he just comes in to put that final ingredient into the music just to give it that tinge. It might not look like he does a lot but if he wasn't to do that the music wouldn't sound the way it does.
[Nomadic]: Props to Kam.
The Circle Of Light EP is out now on Red Sea Entertainment.
or check out The Planets @ www.tha-real.com/redsea/