Tag: Afrofuturism

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Cadence Weapon: Check the Technique

I am hereby requesting a bandwagon late-pass. Out of nowhere a few months ago, someone sent me the video for “Sharks” by Cadence Weapon (embedded below). Like many who’ve heard the track, I was instantly hooked, and started looking for more. Well, lucky me, Cadence Weapon had just put out a new disc of his glitchy Hip-hop called Afterparty Babies (Anti, 2008). It’s been in or near the top of the playlist ever since.

Cadence Weapon

I’ve been down since thirteen literally, bombing the whole system up, beautifying the scenery. — Big Juss, Company Flow

Before dropping the bubbly beats and fresh rhymes, Cadence Weapon a.k.a. Rollie Pemberton used to write reviews for a major music website, but way before that, his dad was Edmonton, Alberta’s premiere source for Hip-hop. At age thirteen, Rollie knew he wanted to rap, and his starting young is evident in the work: His records — though he’s only been making them for a few years — are those of a veteran. He’s grown up with this ish. It’s in his bloodstream.

Clever and catchy Hip-hop that doesn’t outsmart itself might be more prevalent now than ever, but it still isn’t lurking on every airwave. I’m glad to pass the name Cadence Weapon on to you. He gets respect for the rep when he speaks. Check the technique and see if you can follow it.

Roy Christopher: Tell me about the new record. What’s different this time around?

Cadence Weapon: This record is faster paced, more cohesive and tied to a connecting concept. It’s more personal and drawing from more dancefloor influences than IDM or grime.

RC: Your dad was a Hip-hop pioneer up there in Edmonton. What are your earliest impressions of Hip-hop and music?

CW: I grew up on rap music and culture so I just saw it as normal. Predictably, I was isolated not knowing many other people who were into rap music so it was just something I liked myself. I saw it as an extension of poetry or any other artistic expression, and I still do.

RC: Though Hip-hop as a genre is often innovative and rebellious, it’s also steeped in strict traditions and rules. What’s your take on this contradiction — and negotiating it as an artist?

CW: It’s one of the strangest things about the music. It’s the most open-ended genre in terms of possibilities. You can sample someone walking down the street and rap about your mom’s hat if you wanted to, because there are no constraints in rap, just the ones built by the individual. The regimented nature of rap is a response to its corporate status: People thinking you have to maintain the status quo to retain sales. It’s shitty.

RC: Comedian David Spade once said that acts spend the first part of their career looking for a hook and the rest of it trying to bury that hook. To me, this is analogous to one having a “hit” (e.g., De La Soul’s “Me, Myself, and I,” or more recently, Aesop Rock‘s “No Regrets”) Do you ever resent the attention you got from “Sharks”?

CW: The success of “Sharks” doesn’t bother me. As with any single, it’s seen as representative of who I was at the time of its release. It’s a catchy song, it’s youthful and aggressive and not necessarily who I am right now, but I accept it as a period in my life. I am not trying to get rid of the memory of that song, I feel like there are still layers to it that people haven’t necessarily uncovered.

RC: What’s next for Rollie Pemberton? And for Cadence Weapon?

CW: Next for Rollie Pemberton: making the most of my free time, playing basketball, getting back into party mode, bettering myself.

Next for Cadence Weapon: actually collaborating with people on my next album, writing about death and body image and the other side of the world, starting a band, rapping harder.

———-

Here’s the video that launched the fandom, “Sharks” from Cadence Weapon’s debut record, Breaking Kayfabe (Upper Class, 2005) (runtime :4:22):

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Sound Unbound is out!

Sound Unbound is now available! I recently served as Assistant Editor to Paul D. Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky on his essay collection, Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture. Contributors include Erik Davis, Manuel De Landa, Cory Doctorow, Chuck D, Brian Eno, Dick Hebdige, Vijay Iyer, Jaron Lanier, Jonathan Lethem, Moby, Steve Reich, Simon Reynolds, Scanner aka Robin Rimbaud, Bruce Sterling, Lucy Walker, and Saul Williams, among many others — and now it’s out. Continue reading “Sound Unbound is out!”

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Four by Two: dälek and Jesu

Looking back over the music of the year, it struck me that two of my favorite bands released both proper records and compilations this year, and that all four were among my favorites of the year. With the music industry currently shaped like a big question mark and all of the nay-saying about creative churn, I just thought these two (groups of) creators and their creations deserved an extra mention. Continue reading “Four by Two: dälek and Jesu”

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Mike Ladd: Rebel Without a Pause

Several years ago, my friend Greg Sundin gave me Mike Ladd’s Welcome to the Afterfuture (Ozone, 2000). I was instantly hooked. Ladd’s spaced-out beats and intelligent wordplay push the limits of hip-hop until they break into noisy splinters. Genre distinctions can’t hold the man. He’s been performing in every possible way since age thirteen, but his body of work reflects the very best that hip-hop can be. After digesting Afterfuture, I simply had to hear more.

Knowing that this would be the case, Greg explained that Ladd’s first record (Easy Listening 4 Armageddon [Mercury, 1997]), during which a lot of the stuff for Afterfuture was recorded) was difficult to find due to record label bullshit. Finding it became a personal mission that was finally accomplished a few years, a few states, and many record stores later (and it was well worth it). Ladd hasn’t made things much easier on me since. His records have come out on several different labels and often under one-off group names (e.g., the conceptual pair The Infesticons’ Gun Hill Road [Big Dada, 2000] and The Majesticons’ Beauty Party (Big Dada, 2003) — I wish I had the space here to tell you this story), but they’re always worth the search.

His latest outings include a collaboration with pianist Vijay Iyer called In What Language? (Pi Recordings, 2003), Nostalgialator (!K7, 2004), and Negrophilia (Thirsty Ear, 2005). Where In What Language? and Negrophilia are collaborative avant-jazz explorations (the latter includes the Blue Series Continuum, as well as Vijay Iyer), Nostalgialator is more like Ladd’s older stuff: straight ahead hip-hop, but twisted with his cerebral, poetic bent.

That said, all of Ladd’s music runs along a spectrum from head-nodding to mind-expanding, and it often sits dead in the middle, bringing your dome the best of both. Whether it’s grimy boom-bap, heady jazz, or whatever else he decides to explore next, Mike Ladd always brings it rugged and rough.

Roy Christopher: Tell me about Negrophilia. What were your aims with this record and how did it all come together?

Mike Ladd: The concept has been with me for a long time. I think in a way, all of my records have touched on this topic, especially when you are a Black artist doing stuff that doesn’t make the mainstream or is esoteric, and you have to contend with a large portion of your audience being white (especially when that wasn’t your primary intended audience). That said, when Petrine Archer-Straw’s book came around, I had to read it, and it touched on at least some of the origins of the Negrophilia phenomenon, a phenomenon that has grown beyond Elvis and is as bizarre as Michael Jackson, Eminem, and Condoleezza Rice having tea and smoking stems in a drum circle in Norway.

RC: Why is that? Why is it that when Black artists create challenging Black music, their audience ends up being mostly white folks?

ML: The answer is actually pretty easy and is more of a class issue than a race issue. “Experimental music,” alternative music, underground, whatever you want to call it — music that doesn’t sell, sometimes on purpose — is hard to access. It’s hard to find at retailers and in the media — even the internet. It takes time to find it, and it usually takes a certain amount of effort to fully enjoy it. Generally speaking the people who can afford the time to pursue music this adamantly are often middle class or richer (poor, working-class white kids don’t come out in droves to see our shit either, and there is often a proportionate amount of middle-class kids of color at the shows).

For most people sitting and listening to music — especially music that takes time — is a luxury they either can’t afford or choose not to. If you bust your ass all day like most of the world does (even if you’re a yuppie who used to dig the occasional weird shit, but now has a job and a kid and has lost touch with his art friends), the last thing you want to do is come home and listen to some music that’s gonna make your head work more. What you’re making doesn’t have to be that esoteric either: With so much shit out there being pushed, it’s work for the average person to digest great music in an unclear package. On top of that, pop is further propagated by a culture that respects capital return over content in general. The culture that appreciates art that pushes boundaries is relegated to mostly bourgeois institutions, universities, etc.

That said, however, I would like to point out the gratifying experience of meeting someone at every show I have ever played that does not fit the demographic I just described, that is from the audience I love to access; it’s just that they are in small pockets spread out all over the world. It’s like a secret army.

But I don’t think you can make music these days without a deep respect for pop and the people who listen to it (I don’t care if you see it as understanding your adversary or knowing your global terrain). I actively ignored pop all through high school and college. I discovered absolutely amazing music in the process, but I missed out on some basic sensibilities that took me time to understand.

RC: Negrophilia followed pretty closely on the heels of Nostalgialator, yet these records are very different. How did you approach these different projects?

ML: I approached them in totally different mindsets, but I can’t really explain the shit. Nostalgialator was mostly written on the road touring, and recorded in Brooklyn. I did a bunch of Negrophilia at the same time with Guillermo Brown, who is instrumental in this record — this record is as much his as it is mine. At the bidding of the record label (for reasons I still don’t know), I finished Negrophilia alone in my apartment in Paris, which was a completely different environment than I had been used to. I think the difference can really be attributed to the great players on the record: Roy Cambel, Andrew Lamb, Bruce Grant, Vijay Iyer, and my niece, Marguerite Ladd. With Guillermo as coproducer, the collaboration helped it sound so different.

The short answer is that Nostalgialator is a “Pop” record, and Negrophilia is a “Music” record.

RC: You’ve jumped around with different sounds and styles throughout your work. Do you ever wonder or worry that you make it difficult for your fans to keep up with you?

ML: Yes, I’m broke because of it. I think I probably lose fans with every record, but hopefully gain new ones too. As long as some people stick with me, I’m going to keep exploring as many facets of myself and my interests as possible.

In 2005, I think it’s pretty naive for any American to think of themselves as culturally one-dimensional. Clearly our president does, and look at how he acts. Then again, look at the skin tones of his family and it’s all shifting quickly. The racial paradoxes in Bush are predictable and Machiavellian, but they still fascinate me, and I’m interested in how they will affect the world.

Okay, that’s off the point of the question, but maybe another answer to the problem you are presenting. The thing is, if I am the package and everything you hear from me is a coherent part of that package, I am simply regurgitating the influence and experiences that have informed me for a very long time. Eight records in, I am deeply grateful to the fans that have stuck with me, for real.

RC: Is there anything you’re working on that you’d like to mention here?

ML: Doing a new band called Father Divine for ROIR Records. Very happy with the way it’s coming along. Shout out to Reg in Colorado and DJ Jun.

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dälek: Gods and Griots

dälekMusic transcends all boundaries. And where music fans are generally open for anything engaging, the music industry is constantly segregated by its own marketing terms. They draw lines, set up demographics, and distinguish target markets.

Caught somewhere in between these lines, dälek have been victims of this segregation since their inception. Their first record Negro, Necro, Nekros (1998) was on independent rock label Gern Blandsten Records (the folks who brought you the brilliant, indie avant-garde act Rye Coalition), but they do hip-hop. This put the record in a crack in the marketplace. There’s nothing normal about what dälek do but it’s hip-hop to the core. Frontman dälek’s gruff vocals grind against the gritty backdrop of scraping noise created by Oktopus and Still, the friction lending light to their dark imagery. Continue reading “dälek: Gods and Griots”

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dälek: From Filthy Tongue

It’s 5:30 am. I’m up before San Diego’s ever-shining sun (I have a 7 o’clock class to teach). I’m trying to negotiate the bodies strewn across my living room floor — in the dark. At least one has moved since lights out last night (a mere 3 hours ago).

These sleeping, dark figures scattered across my floor are Oktopus (noise, production, laptop navigation), Still (turntable destruction, attitude, Top Ramen), dälek (vocals, intimidation, spiritual leader) and Mike (merch, driving, beard). Collectively they’re known as dälek. These guys tour like the earth is on fire. They eat whatever they can scrounge from endless gigs. And right now they’re sleeping.

dälek (the group) is pure Hip-hop. Their first record Negro, Necro, Nekros was on independent rock label Gern Blandsten Records (the folks who brought you the brilliant, indie avant-garde act Rye Coalition). This put the record in an odd spot in the marketplace. There’s nothing normal about what these guys do, but it’s Hip-hop to the core. dälek’s gruff vocals grind against the gritty backdrop of scraping noise created by Oktopus and Still, the friction lending light to their dark imagery. Lyrics spit to illuminate the spirit:

Scraped knees don’t prove what you believe
Your blind faith passed to your seeds,
Killed our garden type weeds,
Turn around and blame it on Eve.
While you blame me for blemishing our family tree
I’ll uproot all of humanity.

“Negro, Necro… was recorded as kind of an experiment,” dälek explains in an earlier interview. “We had no live experience; we had no idea what we were doing… There is something amazing about that innocence. However… Looking back there is a lot about us that Negro failed to capture. Filthy Tongue… better represents our live sound, and has an air of confidence which can only come from four years of hardcore touring.”

The most innovative people in independent music are among their friends, supporters and collaborators. They’ve toured with DJ Spooky, Techno Animal (Justin Broadrick and Kevin Martin’s harsh Hip-hop outfit), Tomahawk (one of Mike Patton’s many projects, this time with guitarist Duane Denison), Isis and collaborated with the William Hooker Ensemble (the New York Jazz drummer and friends). Patton’s Ipecac label just put out their latest record, From Filthy Tongue of Gods and Griots.

“This album represents about four years of our work…” dälek continues. “Lyrically, I continued on a very personal level… Though abstract… Again I ask the listeners to find their own meaning in my personal madness. Musically this album is very aggressive… We expand on what we started on Negro… Perhaps a bit more focused this time around… with more of our own defined sound.”

Some of the beats on Filthy Tongue… recall Bomb Squad-era Public Enemy: booming, pummeling and raging with the screeching of the apocalypse in between. The comparisons end there though. The rest of dälek’s sound is all their own: A giant, scraping clamor that scares most Hip-hop fans. dälek tend to fair better touring with noisy, guitar-driven rock bands (and they’ve done split singles with both Kid606 and Techno Animal).

“First off, what is passed off as Hip-hop in the mainstream is a farce: That is POP music,” states a disgusted dälek. “It has its place but that’s a place that hasn’t been the breeding ground for acceptance of new forms and variations since perhaps the later Beatles stuff. The real problem lies in the underground, where there are really good groups, however, it seems the underground has just become an ‘on-deck circle’ where the less known musicians await their chance to fit molds of ‘real Hip-hop’ which are dictated by the corporate world. If your ultimate goal is to make money… Cool, I guess. But what is lost is the essence of what made Hip-hop the innovative force it was in the 80s and early 90s. Hip-hop was about taking all the sounds and ideas around you, and making them into your own. It was the angst-ridden voice of minority youth. Energy and angst-wise, it was the equivalent of the punk movement. I think we can safely say that the commercial music world killed both Hip-hop and punk. The formulaic remnants can’t afford to allow truly different music in because that would result in loss of sales.”

So, given the situation in the Hip-hop underground, given that these guys are sleeping on my floor (again) and given that in a few hours when Still wakes up, he’s going to make Top Ramen (again), what is it that drives dälek?

“I want to make music that moves me,” dälek concludes. “There are sounds and words I need to get out, that I myself need to hear. We are musicians… Music is what drives us.”

[SLAP Magazine, 2002]

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X-ecutioners: Turning the Tables

X-MenSunday afternoon in San Diego. I’d just woken up after a nap to try and kill a headache. I groggily checked the clock. “I have to meet Rob Swift in Solana Beach in fifteen minutes,” I thought to myself. I grabbed a Coke out of the ‘fridge, my hand-held recorder and hit the road.

On my way up I-5, chugging the Coke, I scrawled possible questions on my hand with a Sharpie. Less prepared for this interview, I could not be.

Luckily, when I arrived and Rob came down from his room to meet me, he’d just woken up as well. He got a cup of hot cocoa and we slumped on the couch, chatting sleepily.

The last time I saw Rob was five years ago. The X-Men (as they are known in un-copyrighted contexts) were playing at the Crocodile Café in Seattle. Rob, Total Eclipse, Roc Raida, Mista Sinista (who’s since left the group to pursue acting projects and solo career) and I gathered around a table in the Croc’s back bar to discuss the future of turntablism. Right then it looked as if DJs as artists were finally making headway in the competitive milieu of modern music. Om Records’ Deep Concentration tour (featuring Radar, Peanut Butter Wolf and Cut Chemist on this particular leg) had just played at the Showbox the night before. Despite the enthusiasm we all felt at the time, a breakthrough of the art of the turntable was not to be.

X-MenIn the five years since our last meeting, the DJ has remained in the background. Rarely heard on even Hip-hop compositions, some of the most talented musicians of our time still toil in the background of the underground. The Invizble Skratch Piklz (The X-men’s West Coast counterparts) disbanded — each to pursue his own projects — leaving the X-Men as the leading DJ crew still together, putting out their own records.

“In a way, I feel like we are leading the way and setting the example,” Rob says between sips from his hot cocoa. “At this point we’re the most high-profile DJ group so we kinda set the pace. That’s not to say that we’re better than anybody, or that we’re the best, or that nobody can fuck with us, but on one level, we are the leaders. We’re the first group to make it to Billboard. We made it to shows like Carson Daly and MTV’s Icon. We’re definitely knocking a lot of doors down that haven’t even been touched by other DJ crews.” True dat: The X-ecutioners second full-length Built from Scratch (Sony, 2002) debuted at number fifteen on the Billboard charts. They’ve been in a Gap commercial, on David Letterman and, thanks to a collaboration with Mike Shinoda and Mr. Hahn from Linkin Park, they’ve gotten airplay all over the place.

“I’m glad that the record has gotten the exposure that it has because it’s good for the music in general,” Rob says. “People are like ‘Why’d you do a song with Linkin Park? They’re a rock band.’ But why not? Rock and Hip-hop have had a relationship since the beginning of Hip-hop. DJs used to cut Rock records in the 70s: Aerosmith, Rush, Billy Squire, AC/DC…” By collaborating with members of Linkin Park, the X-Men were able to slip under the mainstream’s radar, and as Rob adds, “Let people hear a whole other way of making music.”

Finding this “other way of making music” has been an ongoing quest for me. In 1995, feeling that art of the DJ was disappearing from Hip-hop, I went in search of the lost art of the scratch. After a few months of digging in the crates and combing the independent Hip-hop releases in various record stores, I found Bomb Records’ first DJ Compilation, The Return of the DJ, Vol. One. It was here that I found the Skratch Piklz, Beat Junkies, Z-Trip and Radar, Cut Chemist and the X-Men and was briefly sanguine about the survival of art form. Seven years later, it’s still and underground phenomenon and one still has to search for it, save the exposure that the X-Men have garnered.

The cover of Built from Scratch pays homage to Public Enemy’s 1986 debut, Yo! Bumrush the Show (Def Jam/Columbia), featuring not only the X-Men, but the pioneers of turntablism as well.

“We’re all Public Enemy fans in the group,” Rob says explaining the cover. “I was a huge Public Enemy fan, I have pictures of myself with Chuck D. I met him in like1986 or 87 at a show he did in the Bronx. So, our manager, Peter Kang, was like, ‘It would be really cool if the cover of the album was a tribute to Yo! Bumrush the Show where it’s the same basement setting and you guys are plotting to take over Hip-hop. You guys would be like the S1Ws and Flavor Flav would be Grand Wizard Theodore…’ and so on and so forth. We have Grand Wizard Theodore, Kool Herc, Grand Mixer DST: three legends of DJing, and three different generations of DJing, and then you have us. When you look at the cover, it shows the lineage of DJing, where it’s been and where it is now.” This image puts the perfect face on a sound that is indeed bumrushing the industry, not unlike the way Public Enemy did in the late eighties. The compositions that the X-Men build with scratches are comparable to nothing else in music. Ever. The only analogy lies in the improvisation of Jazz musicians. Even then, the X-Men aren’t limited by any one instrument — they can play and manipulate any recorded sound.

Later that night at The Scene in the Clairemont-Mesa area of San Diego, the tag team crew of Total Eclipse, Roc Raida and Rob Swift manipulated many sounds live on stage. This is where the art of DJing truly manifests itself. With a row of Technics 1200s linked by various mixers and cables, the X-Men wreck shop. Blending beats, samples and their unique styles into an aural onslaught – intricately timed and improvised on the spot — these guys don’t seem to notice the limits they break on a daily basis.

“The most important thing with the next album is to figure out a way to re-invent ourselves again,” Rob stated earlier, thinking ahead. “To not come out sounding the same is the most challenging thing that we’re going to face.”

X-Men
[The X-Men check sound at the Crocodile circa 1997.]

[SLAP Magazine, 2002]

[photos by Roy Christopher]

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Paul D. Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky: Subliminal Minded

DJ SpookyIf ever there were a postmodern-day Renaissance man, he is Paul D. Miller. Painter, philosopher, social scientist, DJ, author, and producer (among others) are all hats that fit snugly on his head. He is probably best known as “DJ Spooky aka That Subliminal Kid,” but this is only one of many roles he has taken on and made a success of in a process he calls “social sculpture.” He’s also the only DJ I’ve ever seen cut up a Marshall McLuhan record, closing the loop in more ways than one. Continue reading “Paul D. Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky: Subliminal Minded”