Episode 406 - Mike Eagle
Guest:Lock the gates!
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck, buddies?
Marc:What the fuck, Knicks?
Marc:What the fucking ears?
Marc:This is Mark Maron.
Marc:This is WTF.
Marc:Welcome to the show.
Marc:I'm happy to be back.
Marc:I just got back from Seattle.
Marc:I had a great time up there.
Marc:Amazing.
Marc:Thank you, Sub Pop Records, for having me.
Marc:I did a show up there with Eugene Merman, Kristen Schaal, Kurt Braunohler.
Marc:John Benjamin, John Glazer, and Kyle Dunnigan for the Sub Pop Silver Jubilee 25th Anniversary Benefit Show.
Marc:And then the next day, it was just all rock and roll all day.
Marc:Saw some great bands.
Marc:Saw some of my favorite bands.
Marc:The old Sub Pop crew.
Marc:Saw Mudhoney for the first time live.
Marc:Saw Built to Spill.
Marc:Hung out with Jay Mascus.
Marc:Don't mean to drop names, but boy, I sort of glommed on to old Jay Mascus for a few minutes.
Marc:We wandered around and watched Tad.
Marc:Hadn't seen Tad play ever either.
Marc:Some of these guys are old, but man, they are rocking fucking hard.
Marc:It was an amazing few days and hanging out with very funny people.
Marc:John Glazer, John Benjamin, two of the funniest fucking people in the world.
Marc:Had a great time.
Marc:And I went to Jimi Hendrix's grave, which I will tell you about in a second, couple of things, couple orders of business.
Marc:Today on the show, the rapper Mike Eagle joins me and educates me about rap music.
Marc:I'm not completely out of the loop.
Marc:I'm not frightened of the rap music.
Marc:In my life, I have listened to rap music, but I have not kept up with rap music.
Marc:I mean, there were periods where I look at my iTunes.
Marc:I've got a couple of Cypress Hills in there.
Marc:I've got a KRS-One album.
Marc:I've got some NWA in there.
Marc:I've got Bushwick Bill and his guys in there.
Marc:look at me trying to justify myself i mean i listen but i don't know i don't know the history and i don't know it was not music i grew up with i came to it later i enjoyed it was a pleasure to talk to him uh what else yeah well
Marc:Bad news for America with the Zimmerman verdict.
Marc:It just, you know, at some point you have to realize that black people, brown people in general, have to operate by a different set of rules than white people.
Marc:And that is an established sadness and reality in this country that they have to walk through life both afraid of
Marc:of uh white people with guns certainly white morons with guns who shouldn't be carrying guns and have a a sort of uh fake badge and a fake uniform that enables them to think they can use that gun with impunity and in florida they can in a sort of uh his word against my word guy with the gun felt threatened by the guy with no gun it's just a different set of rules
Marc:And I don't think that any white person can really even begin to sort of put themselves in the place of a black person in this country or any person of color, just in terms of that weird position that you know, just knowing that you have to be afraid and you also have to operate with a certain amount of sort of, you know, contrition for being alive in the face of that fear, just to navigate that.
Marc:uh the world it's horrible that with with any progress this country makes within the issue of race it just becomes diminished and and and it becomes uh quite apparent that not that much progress has been made when things like this happen i don't want to get too heavy-handed about it uh it was just a it was a tragic reminder that there are definitely two sets of rules in this country when it comes to uh black people and white people
Marc:That being said, I was in Seattle and I went to Jimi Hendrix's grave.
Marc:I don't know what it is that gets into me.
Marc:Sometimes when I'm on the road, I feel I don't know what to do.
Marc:I don't know what to do.
Marc:It's either I'm going to eat myself to death with with things that I rationalize as regional cuisine or I'm going to sit in my hotel room and do nothing and masturbate and think.
Marc:thinking is not bad and masturbating is not bad either but it just depends which direction you take both of those things and how much you do both of those things and that decided upon direction but sometimes I get out in the world and some comic had put it in my head that I should go out to Jimi Hendrix's grave and I got it into my head that
Marc:Maybe that was a pilgrimage worth doing that.
Marc:Maybe I should go try to glean some mystical relevance, glean some secret super guitar power out of the tomb of Jimi Hendrix.
Marc:I didn't know what to expect.
Marc:I'd never been out there.
Marc:I was hoping it would just be an intimate situation, but they have built apparently it was maybe at one time just a gravestone, but now it is a, you know, a granite gazebo with etched panels, three panels of different Hendrix poses with some of his lyrics etched into the granite.
Marc:There is a,
Marc:a headstone in the middle of this memorial.
Marc:And there are places where people can leave things on top of the stone.
Marc:But it is the most outstanding grave in this particular town, which is Renton, which is just outside of Seattle, which is a place I've been because my ex-wife's family lived up the street from there.
Marc:It's weird.
Marc:You know you've been to a place a lot, especially in Seattle, when we could be driving out to Renton, me and Nathan Smith went.
Marc:the guy who did the original artwork for the WTF podcast is back up in Seattle.
Marc:He decided to give me a ride.
Marc:But I actually knew there was a coffee shack in the parking lot of the Safeway out there in Renton that served some pretty kick-ass espresso.
Marc:That's the interesting thing about Seattle.
Marc:One of the many interesting things is you got to know a guy.
Marc:Where do you get your coffee?
Marc:I got a guy.
Marc:He's in a shack out in Renton in the parking lot.
Marc:You got to go when he's there.
Marc:Phil, he's only there in the mornings.
Marc:You need a guy.
Marc:Yeah, for coffee.
Marc:So we decided to make this pilgrimage out to Jimi Hendrix's grave.
Marc:I didn't know what to expect.
Marc:I just I wanted to get out and I wanted to see it.
Marc:I wanted to feel it.
Marc:But the problem with the large memorial or a tomb is I don't know if this is morbid or not.
Marc:But, you know, when you go to a grave site, you can see where the headstone situated.
Marc:And sometimes you can even see where the ground itself is sort of starting to kind of indent where the casket is perhaps giving way underneath.
Marc:You can get a sense of how the body is situated and you can get a sense of the reality of remains.
Marc:Just under the ground, the proximity to those remains.
Marc:Again, I don't want to be morbid, but I like knowing where it is.
Marc:I went to this memorial and it wasn't clear.
Marc:Is Jimmy here?
Marc:Is he under this thing?
Marc:Where is he in proportion to things?
Marc:I just want to know where to stand.
Marc:I want to be respectful.
Marc:I want to know if he's under here.
Marc:I did want to know that.
Marc:Is his body even there?
Marc:Well, I wanted to know those practical things, but I also wanted to open my heart to have an experience at the grave of Hendrix.
Marc:Why does anyone go to a grave anyways?
Marc:It's about you.
Marc:Am I paying my respects?
Marc:No, I have some fascination with one of the great guitar heroes of our time.
Marc:One of the greatest guitarists, if not the greatest guitarists, who's had a profound effect on my mind and my life.
Marc:has taken me on some journeys.
Marc:I guess I wanted to pay my respect, but I think you're there for the magic.
Marc:I think you're there for the story.
Marc:And the story that day was I didn't know what to bring because someone reminded me on Twitter that you should bring something, leave an offering of some kind to the great man at the site, at the grave.
Marc:When am I going to bring Hendrix?
Marc:All I could find was a gold boomer button.
Marc:which are rare.
Marc:I didn't have a lot of them made.
Marc:It was a special thing.
Marc:So I brought the gold Boomer button to the memorial with me.
Marc:I was just going to leave it.
Marc:I figured maybe there's some sort of connection.
Marc:I've lost Boomer.
Marc:He was part of my heart.
Marc:We lost Jimmy.
Marc:Perhaps Boomer and Jimmy can hook up and maybe Boomer could perhaps spend some time with Jimmy, send a message to Jimmy.
Marc:But that's getting a little ridiculous.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:It was some circle of life thing.
Marc:It was closure.
Marc:It was Hakuna Matata.
Marc:Boomer and Jimmy, man.
Marc:No?
Marc:Is that a stretch?
Marc:I just wanted to glean a feeling.
Marc:I wanted to feel connected to whatever Jimi Hendrix was.
Marc:Not in his music.
Marc:I wanted to be next to the body.
Marc:Didn't know where it was, but I did have a couple of weird moments at the grave.
Marc:It is a functioning graveyard, a cemetery, and this memorial is obviously very popular for guys in vans to come and smoke weed or play a few tunes for Hendrix badly in the Granite Gazebo, the memorial.
Marc:I'm sure it's seen hundreds of vans drive up of...
Marc:Bands that were on the road, guys falling out of vans, half drunk from the night before that morning to come pay their respects, to come hang out, to come be close.
Marc:But then just across the way, I noticed that there was an actual funeral going on.
Marc:There was grief, real grief, immediate grief, regular working people grief just across the way.
Marc:People being let out of hearses, upset.
Marc:Congregating under a covering there as they put a body into the ground.
Marc:I just wonder how many regular people, funerals have been disrupted by the smell of weed or the noise of a van full of dudes going, Jimmy!
Marc:I wonder if someone's been just burying their Uncle Joe who was a plumber
Marc:We're sitting there grieving as a small service went on why some moron with a guitar did his version of Little Wing badly across the way.
Marc:Fly on my... Just that moment where everyone's looking over there like we're trying to have a funeral there.
Marc:It's like, oh man, Jimmy meant a lot to me.
Marc:My sweet angel.
Marc:That memory.
Marc:You remember that asshole at Uncle Joe's funeral?
Marc:Couldn't shut up for five minutes.
Marc:We're trying to put our uncle in the ground.
Marc:He's got to sing a Hendrix song.
Marc:Smoke a bone over there.
Marc:A little respect for people burying their dead.
Marc:That's the feeling I had there, which was ridiculous.
Marc:It's interesting, though, in thinking about race, and I'm about to talk to Mike.
Marc:I never thought of Jimi Hendrix as black or white.
Marc:He was just Jimi Hendrix.
Marc:That's sort of one of those things I never really thought about, but that's the way you gotta think about everybody, really.
Marc:They are who they are.
Marc:Not what color they are.
Marc:But I do enter this conversation somewhat green around rap.
Marc:It's very open to learn.
Marc:And I'm a fan of Mike's.
Marc:He sent me some of his work.
Marc:I actually, the first time, what brought him to my attention, of course, in a selfish way, was that he was featured on a song of another artist, Bus Driver.
Marc:Someone sent me the link to a video.
Marc:And they name dropped me.
Marc:They name checked me in the rap.
Marc:And I was like, well, that's never happened before.
Marc:Who's this guy?
Marc:Who's this Mike Eagle fella?
Marc:And we went back and forth.
Marc:He sent me some music.
Marc:He considers himself an alternative rapper.
Marc:And I didn't even know that existed.
Marc:And it was great to talk to him.
Marc:I will be in Nashville, Tennessee this week, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at Zany's Comedy Club.
Marc:What do you think of that?
Marc:18th, 19th, and 20th.
Marc:Come down.
Marc:So now let's enter this.
Marc:Let me play just a piece of that bus driver tune with Mike Eagle rapping.
Marc:about me for a second.
Marc:Let's play that.
Guest:No secret, I tell you I smell wiser.
Guest:I got a bunch of girls pregnant because I sell diapers.
Guest:And I'm a goddamn genius.
Guest:The Mark Mariner, dark-skinned art baron.
Guest:Smart like lucky kids to get born to smart parents.
Guest:Defeat them locally grown farmers market card carrots.
Guest:I eat fair trade cheese and fart fairness.
Guest:I go Werner Herzog.
Guest:I go Werner Herzog.
Marc:that's pretty cool right i never thought that would happen i was honored now let's talk to mike eagle
Guest:But me, just washing dishes, you know, busting sus That's what a house husband does, with or without an industry buzz There's no forks left, and I contemplated eating with some forceps I wish I had a Corvette, like a killer rapper Cause rap fables ain't happily iller after They're all still a bachelor, with gorilla stature But there's no rats, head cold to liver cancer
Guest:No clogged drains or broken dog chains.
Guest:No fog rain or blacked out ball games.
Guest:I waited all day till the time was right.
Guest:I let the sun fade now when it's shining bright.
Guest:So, all right, Mike Eagle.
Guest:That's the real name?
Guest:Michael Eagle is my given name.
Guest:Eagle.
Guest:Where'd that come from?
Guest:Supposedly some great grandparent was full-blooded something or other.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:From Michigan?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:i just talked to another guy who grew up in michigan well i grew up in chicago my dad grew up in michigan michigan eagle you're talking you're saying that there's some uh some uh indigenous american back there yeah on both sides apparently so you got some american indian quite a bit i think i actually messed up i did you know i realized i could have went to college probably very for free really yeah but i paid and i'm still paying
Marc:Because there's no retroactive process?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I'm thinking, I'm wondering if I can get some grad school money somehow now that it's occurred to me that there's so much out there.
Marc:Get the genie out.
Marc:Get the chart.
Marc:Go to the website with the thing.
Marc:You punch in your name and you get everybody.
Guest:You know what?
Guest:I'll do it.
Guest:I'll make a note right now.
Guest:This has to happen.
Guest:I need another degree for free.
Guest:For free this time.
Guest:What's your degree in?
Guest:Psychology.
Guest:I have a bachelor's in psychology.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:So what was the decision behind that?
Guest:I just had a psychology class in high school that was like the best thing ever, but it's mostly because the guy showed us one floor of the cuckoo's nest in class.
Guest:That's good, right?
Guest:So it broke my head open and then that was the thing for me.
Guest:What was it about that movie that broke your head open?
Guest:Because it's a lot of levels.
Guest:There's a lot of levels.
Guest:But you know, honestly, I think it was a cinematic experience more than anything, more than any of the themes in the movie.
Guest:I think I just hadn't really seen a movie that good yet as a teenager.
Guest:So it kind of just like, wow.
Marc:There's something about seeing movies in college or high school where you're like, what was the context?
Guest:I think they were just, I think he was, I think the excuse he gave us is that he wanted to show how treatment used to be.
Guest:So much of it was about lobotomy and shock treatment and all that.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, that was the angle that he was showing, but I think he just wanted to show it to us because he was that kind of cool guy.
Guest:He was that cool young.
Marc:Thank God for the cool young teachers.
Guest:For real.
Marc:What was the class?
Guest:It was a psychology class.
Guest:In high school?
Guest:In high school, yeah.
Guest:It was a psychology class.
Marc:And you grew up in Chicago?
Marc:Yes, Chicago.
Guest:Lay that out for me.
Guest:What does that look like?
Guest:It's weird, man, because Chicago is like a super segregated city still to this day.
Guest:I've talked to people about it, about the segregation.
Guest:It's crazy because it does something to you mentally, I think, too.
Guest:Like a lot of people just kind of stay in their own relative zones and don't usually cross over.
Guest:I mean, now things are so crazy there.
Guest:Now I grew up on the south side.
Guest:But a lot of people that I even grew up with, they move north and won't even visit south now, you know, just how violent things are.
Marc:So you're saying African-Americans who left the south side now are afraid of what's going on there because it's well recently there is the shootings are insane.
Marc:Generally, more so than other places.
Guest:I mean, yeah, it's just weekend.
Guest:Any warm weekend would be like 50 murders.
Marc:That's murder season?
Marc:When the weather gets warm, you're like, all right, well, we better not drive down.
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:But you grew up in that?
Guest:Well, you know, it wasn't quite like that then.
Guest:I grew up- How old are you?
Guest:I'll be 33 in November.
Guest:Okay, you're young.
Guest:Am I?
Guest:Yes, sir.
Guest:Well, you know, we're going to have a rap conversation, so everything's skewed in terms of age then.
Guest:Is it?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Rap is a young man's game.
Guest:Is it?
Guest:Of course.
Guest:But they say that about a lot of things.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:It's so...
Marc:image centered that i feel like more than other things it's but i i what from the music you sent me which you had to send me i did absolutely did because it wasn't uh you know wasn't on your radar well it wasn't until you know i someone showed me the link of that song do you yeah the the rap that you did that that dropped my name and my podcast and what was that called
Marc:Werner Herzog.
Marc:Right, Werner Herzog.
Marc:And I was like, wow, when I saw that, I'm like, I have done something.
Marc:Yes, you have arrived.
Marc:I've arrived somewhere in a culture that I feel alienated from.
Marc:There's somebody that recognizes what I do.
Marc:Of course.
Marc:But no, it was very flattering and I was excited about it.
Marc:You got a lot of rap fans, man.
Marc:I do.
Marc:A lot of rapper fans.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Seriously.
Marc:This is going to be the best conversation I've ever had.
Marc:That's all I've ever wanted.
Marc:This will probably be the last podcast I do.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:You're closing the door on WTF.
Marc:I've succeeded.
Marc:Rappers like me.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And I'm not even Neil Brennan or Moshe Kasher.
Marc:I don't even pretend to be black and rappers like me.
Marc:They probably like you more than both of those guys, honestly.
Marc:Ha, ha, ha.
Marc:I'm to be candid to be candid.
Marc:I always wondered what what is it now?
Marc:Obviously, I'm digressing, but it's better off.
Marc:What is the reaction to that?
Marc:To the phenomenon of, you know, insane, almost sort of obsessive white craving to to sort of be to have cred with with with rap culture or black people in general.
Guest:You know, it's tough for me.
Guest:There's a lot of...
Guest:I don't know, it's so weird, especially in this indie thing.
Guest:A lot of it is kind of weirdly journalist-powered, so it's really strange.
Guest:Rock journalist-powered.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Nerd journalist-powered.
Guest:Exactly, exactly.
Guest:And so a lot of that is just embedded in how people talk about things.
Marc:And also you're in a sort of offshoot form of what is culturally understood as rap.
Marc:Right.
Marc:The idea of alternative rap.
Marc:Let's come around to that.
Marc:Let's go back to...
Guest:where were we chicago yeah and what were we doing we were growing up oh good side we're growing up in south side of chicago during the uh the crack era it's probably the best way to categorize when you were younger yeah and um i lived like blocks away from like you know uh a big group of projects yeah and i live with my grandparents um because my mom has some issues yeah um what kind of issues
Guest:She was a wild person as a young lady.
Guest:She did a lot of stuff.
Guest:Quite a resume.
Guest:Yeah, and she had to go away for a while, actually.
Guest:She had to take a little vacation.
Marc:On the government's bill?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:How long was that vacation?
Marc:A year.
Marc:She came out and you guys talk?
Guest:Yeah, we're...
Guest:We're still a pretty close family unit.
Guest:You got brothers and sisters?
Guest:I have one of each, both younger.
Guest:And the pop?
Guest:My dad's always lived in California.
Guest:My parents were never married.
Guest:So he was a stopover situation three times?
Marc:He came through town three times?
Guest:You know, I think they both used to travel.
Guest:They worked for this company that...
Guest:And they were like basically traveling salespeople.
Guest:And, you know, I don't know where the tryst occurred.
Guest:I actually heard I might.
Guest:I was very close to being born in California, so I don't even know.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I have a lot of unanswered questions.
Guest:I'm going to go home and make some phone calls after this.
Marc:Well, I'm glad I inspired you to do that.
Marc:I thought maybe you'd do that on your own, but no.
Marc:No.
Marc:No, no.
Guest:It's all going to help with their genealogy chart, too.
Guest:It's all going to work together.
Guest:You're going to have to start there.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:I'm going to get free college money and find myself all in one evening.
Marc:Oh, man.
Marc:We're helping each other.
Marc:It's going to be incredible.
Marc:Okay, so you're growing up outside the projects at your grandma's house, and it's set the stage.
Marc:What are you walking by?
Marc:What's coming into your head?
Guest:I mean, it was in school.
Guest:I mean, because basically the school that I went to, the grade school that I went to, all of the kids were from the surrounding project buildings.
Guest:Right.
Right.
Guest:So, I mean, the element was all in there.
Guest:Like, you know, I can remember a kid like falling out in class in third grade.
Guest:He had OD'd on cocaine.
Guest:Third grade?
Guest:Third grade.
Guest:How the hell does that happen?
Guest:I guess his older brother was a dealer.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Either they were sharing it or sneaking it or whatever.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Passed out and hits his head on the wall in class.
Guest:And then for the rest of the week, basically, we're just talking about drugs.
Guest:Everything is.
Guest:And that kid.
Guest:Yeah, basically.
Guest:Did he come back to class?
Guest:No, he did not come back to class.
He did not.
Marc:never no not that i saw not in my class anyway hopefully he went to somebody's class somewhere yeah hopefully made it through that that that drug problem yes is there a rehab for third graders that were on coke i didn't even know you know what it's probably named after him now if there is he was the uh so that was the that was the environment now when when i okay look i'll be honest with you is this is what i know about rap okay
Marc:Let's just lay it out.
Marc:Let's get it out there.
Marc:I'm going to try to get it out there without being embarrassed.
Marc:And I'll just be honest with you.
Marc:I lived with some dudes back in the, let's see, like late 80s who were very into N.W.A.
Marc:There was an album there.
Marc:These are white guys.
Guest:My first question is, are these white people?
Marc:Yes, they are white people listening to N.W.A.
Marc:knowing all the lyrics.
Guest:Now, where is this?
Marc:This was in California.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:These guys were in show business.
Marc:They were struggling.
Marc:This was actually a gentleman named Pete Berg who went on to direct that movie with Will Smith as the superhero.
Marc:He directed that.
Marc:He directed Friday Night Lights.
Marc:He's a big movie director, this gentleman, Pete Berg, a good guy.
Marc:uh i liked nwa and when i listened to it a lot they'd wake me up oh fun nwa yeah fun straight out of compton in the morning that's right that's what it was that's what it was and then uh and then somehow another so i had the nwa record and then i found uh bushwick bill interesting because he was small and seemed angry about things so i had i had
Marc:a couple of those records.
Guest:I've had some obsessions like that, especially as a young rap fan.
Guest:That guy looks weird.
Guest:I want to see what he's about.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Weird looking dudes who are confident about it.
Guest:He had a video where at least one time, and I feel like maybe twice,
Guest:He jumped on top of a car in order to jump punch somebody.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You can't.
Guest:You can't.
Marc:I mean.
Marc:It's good.
Marc:It's theatrics.
Marc:It's funny.
Guest:It's fantastic.
Guest:And it's him knowing how incredible it would look for him to do this.
Guest:So he makes that his special move.
Marc:Is he still alive, that guy?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They just reunited.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They performed to South by Southwest.
Marc:now okay so the like the run dmc aerosmith matrix thing i'd not didn't do nothing for me and then uh run dmc in general i knew them but no it was a little before something i don't know what happened i interviewed one of them from run dmc yeah uh the one who's uh probably daryl huh yeah yeah dmc yeah yeah he's a good guy yeah
Marc:All right, so then we move on to Cypress Hill, two of those records, two CDs.
Marc:Listen to them a lot.
Marc:Smoking a lot of weed.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, of course.
Marc:Goes with the culture.
Marc:Then there's a big gap.
Marc:I missed the whole Biggie, Tupac.
Marc:I missed all of that.
Marc:That's not in my rap vocabulary.
Marc:Then at some point, obviously much later, Kanye West got a few of those records.
Marc:Got Jay-Z's Black record.
Marc:I got that one.
Marc:I like that record.
Marc:That's a good record.
Marc:I got a Pharrell record.
Marc:I don't know why.
Marc:I got...
Marc:but but i had that uh was every time i listen to rap i like here's one thing about me is that i'm not a huge lyric guy like i listen to music if the music moves me i'm good sometimes i listen to the lyrics sometimes there's something about rap that requires a lot of attention absolutely that that when i do it i'm like wow this is this fucking is insanely uh skillful and lyrical and there are stories and it's fun and it's fucking heavy and then i'm exhausted so that's one song in
Guest:I'm tired.
Guest:You know, I understand.
Guest:I mean, it's information dense.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:You know, you really do have to process while you're listening.
Guest:It's not a casual listen.
Marc:And that's always what has impressed me, even with people that just freestyle as a hobby.
Marc:I'm like, holy fuck.
Marc:And then, you know, there were awkward attempts, but there's never anything on stage.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:You know, but just perhaps that maybe there's a pace I could pick up, but I can't.
Marc:So these are my experiences.
Marc:There's probably a few more in there, but I just want you to know what you're dealing with.
Guest:No, I'm glad.
Guest:And you're going to have to walk me through this shit.
Guest:I know what kind of vocabulary I think to use.
Marc:No, I'm happy if you use words and phrases that are new to me.
Marc:I will try to stop you and go, can you go back?
Marc:I'll be that guy.
Marc:I'm not ashamed.
Marc:That's cool.
Marc:All right, so now you as a guy who you're you go to high school you're you're into psychology So I'm assuming that that rap was part of your life early on but I don't know what your musical influence You know what uh the first person to play rap for me was my mother She played an easy e-tape when I got in her car one so we share that there you go
Guest:But I think I was like seven and I get in her car.
Guest:She's driving like a two door Nissan or something.
Guest:And it's something about, you know, telling some girl to suck his dick.
Guest:And I'm like, what is this?
Guest:I'm like just giggling to myself.
Guest:I'm not supposed to be hearing these filthy words, but it's great.
Guest:Um, and so, you know, I heard a lot of the gangster stuff first.
Guest:I have an older stepsister who put me on to a lot of stuff too.
Guest:So, uh, she ended up getting me into this, um, a tribe called quest.
Guest:I don't know if you ever heard of tribe called quest.
Guest:So they, so the difference between that and gangster up for you was what?
Guest:What was the music?
Guest:It was the music.
Guest:Um, these guys were using, um, uh,
Guest:a lot of jazz stuff they were sampling, like really interesting.
Guest:And I ended up, you know, digging later and finding out who these players were that they were sampling.
Guest:Like a lot of, you know, real jazz greats and real funky abstract jazz fusion stuff that they were sampling.
Guest:And that kind of called to me more because I'm actually a lot like you in the sense that I tend to listen to music first.
Guest:And it's, you know, I tell people this and they're always surprised me being a rapper, but as a listener, as a consumer of music, the music always strikes me first.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Um,
Guest:And if I want to, I can focus in and try to, you know, if I'm checking out a rapper, I can just check out what he's doing.
Guest:But I'm a beat music guy first.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And so, you know, a lot of the gangster stuff was just super aggressive and hard, even in terms of the music.
Guest:So, you know, even if I thought it was cool or cute or funny or whatever, it didn't strike me the same way that A Trap Called Quest, De La Soul, you know, Prince Paul was the guy who was, you know, structuring a lot of their sound and aesthetic.
Guest:I thought their aesthetic was really awesome, too.
Guest:It was...
Guest:Kind of a pro-black Kente cloth, Africa medallion.
Marc:I had a Kente cloth scarf.
Marc:Stop it.
Marc:I'm serious.
Marc:Pictures or it didn't happen.
Marc:There is a picture of me and Louis C.K.
Marc:in 1989.
Marc:Jesus Christ.
Marc:1989.
Marc:Oh, yes.
Marc:That one that's going around the internet of the two of us in 1989.
Marc:I'm wearing a black leather jacket, Kente cloth scarf.
Marc:I am putting that on my to-do list.
Marc:I'll show it to you before you leave.
Marc:It was in New York.
Marc:I was living in New York.
Marc:I had no idea what Kente cloth.
Marc:I actually bought a medallion with Africa on it with the colors on it only because I thought, that looks cool.
Marc:I had no idea.
Marc:I didn't even know what Kwanzaa was.
Marc:Dude, we were way more hip-hop than me, dude.
Marc:yeah but but it was just me being vain i'm like that's an interesting my girl i remember my girlfriend worked at a a sort of world fashion kind of boutique okay okay and they had the kente cloth and it was like this is real kente cloth i'm like well if it's real shit and it has all these pretty colors i'm i'm on it tight and i had no idea i'll show you that picture no that's where the fucking god all right so okay yeah so i'm into that aesthetic i'm in i'm into the kente cloth do we have one
Guest:similar experiences here but um yeah so and i kind of find my place in their aesthetic um and so i was into a lot of tribe called quest de la so brand new being this is when you were in before in high school or this is this is grade school stuff okay um
Guest:Now, when I got to high school and even starting in like seventh or eighth grade, I really, really got into like alternative rock, like really hard.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because this is what happened.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So, like I said, my grandmother's she lives in an apartment, too, but it's kind of away from the projects.
Guest:It's a little insulated.
Guest:Like it's kind of this building is basically full of old people.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so it's insular and it's very safe.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:But like I said, surrounding is a lot of weird kinds of danger.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:We're in the crack era.
Guest:Like it's happening out in the streets like there's gunshots.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's going down.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And and so I was left, you know, at home with cable TV a lot.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so I started consuming MTV.
Guest:right like really consuming mtv um when they really got into doing their different alternative shows uh 120 minutes they had like this alternative nation show or something like that yeah i used kurt loader or somebody or no kennedy i think oh ken kennedy yeah i had a crush on kennedy sure you did yeah dude yeah you probably could have yeah i think she's up in seattle still i don't know she's all right she's like a republican or something ain't she
Guest:Something.
Guest:I bet.
Guest:I just thought she was cute.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Cute and smart.
Guest:My first computer had like a 2400-baud modem.
Guest:I downloaded a JPEG of her.
Guest:It took me like an hour.
Guest:It was great.
Guest:It was great.
Marc:I'm sure she'd be happy to hear that.
Guest:Oh, man.
Marc:Just waiting.
Marc:Just seeing that.
Marc:The lines go across like that.
Guest:There's the top of her glasses.
Guest:Oh, is that a thigh?
Guest:Oh, body shot.
Guest:Kind of.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She was like behind a stairwell or something.
Guest:It was weird.
Guest:Okay, so you're watching Alternative Nation with Kennedy.
Guest:And I'm just downloading, like, just, I don't know.
Guest:There was a lot of weird stuff in that era.
Guest:So I really actually got into They Might Be Giants.
Guest:well that's great yeah that's like that's my favorite band like sure to this day like you know they just dropped the record so i'm playing that non-stop really and so uh a lot of my musical aesthetic just came from how adventurous they were like i would listen to flood and lincoln i had i had one tape a tape that was flood on one side and lincoln on the other side and i listen to this constantly really constantly so they might be giants and then king missile you familiar with them sure i used to love king missile uh jesus is way cool i know that guy yes john s hall
Marc:John S. Hall is a lawyer or an agent now.
Guest:He was doing a lot.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:That's right.
Marc:I kind of know that guy.
Marc:And that first King Missile album was great.
Marc:What are the other songs on there?
Guest:Is it Mystical Shit?
Marc:Yeah, Mystical Shit.
Marc:That was produced by Kramer.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And yeah, I listened to the shit out of that record.
Guest:Fish that played the ponies and Heavy Holy Man.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Take stuff from work, all of that.
Marc:It had a real kind of funny angle, but it was also kind of psychedelic in a way.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, because the music was crazy.
Guest:His writing was just always brilliant.
Marc:What was the penis song?
Guest:Wasn't there a- Detachable Penis.
Guest:Detachable Penis.
Guest:That was like their hit, yeah.
Guest:The big novel.
Guest:novelty head which i'm sure they radio no they just did an article on spin about them talking about that and it's so funny because they all like hated it right but that was it sure sure yeah okay yeah you know um like i said that aesthetic artistically just how weird and explorative it was with language and you know especially with king missal and on the other side they might be giants as being these musical weirdos with accordions and glockenspiels and
Marc:and just two of them too and with a lot of momentum exactly did you do the um the ween thing oh i love ween i love i listened to your interview with that was tricky for me oh yeah because they just broke up or well he he wasn't saying that but he didn't want to talk about them they didn't announce it until later uh and you know that's one of those situations that i get into a musician sometimes where it's like i want to you know have a conversation but i don't know that whole catalog right
Marc:I have a sense of who they are.
Marc:I've listened to a couple of their records, but I didn't completely nerd out on the entire.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But but he was a good guy.
Marc:And I thought what was interesting about that was, you know, that people get older, man.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And, you know, what a musician does, you know, after they've arced for what they've known to do, you know, the idea that he wants to get an animation.
Marc:I thought that was kind of nice.
Marc:yeah i thought it was really cool yeah and it's definitely i could see you know them or somebody like primus like not kind of wanting to be trapped into kind of this this silly angle your primus guy too yeah i love primus you seem to like the guys that have a fairly you know uh you know insanely musical but somewhat of a tongue-in-cheek approach yeah frank zappa i just listened to zappa yesterday which album later if you're a zappa fan you'd be like oh joe's garage seriously
Marc:Wait a minute, Joe's Garage, that's the one where he's like fucking a vacuum cleaner or some shit?
Marc:Joe's Garage was a double.
Marc:There was Joe's Garage 1 and Joe's Garage 2.
Marc:It sort of had a narrative about the band, about the band that started in Joe's Garage and then got on the road.
Marc:I was listening to the song Crew Slut.
Marc:Okay, okay.
Guest:yeah yeah you'd be a cruise slut yeah no I think I like that record if it's the one I'm thinking of what's your Zappa experience you go way back or what yeah I like we're only in it for the money is the one I always come back to but I'm a huge Zappa fan I just really like somebody like him who's who's
Guest:Just went as far as he did to learn everything about the technical aspects of music.
Guest:But then it'd be that goddamn silly and irreverent.
Marc:Well, also drawing a lot from doo-wop.
Marc:I mean, the dude was sort of founded in that 50s thing.
Marc:That Reuben and the Jets record?
Marc:It's crazy.
Guest:It's crazy.
Marc:So that was your shit?
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:It still is.
Marc:It still is.
Marc:You're listening to the new They Might Be Giants album.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I'm listening to They Might Be Giants, and I'm listening to Bowie's new record.
Guest:Kind of like...
Guest:I haven't listened to that yet.
Guest:It's good, but it's mixed for old people.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:If you understand what I'm saying.
Marc:It was Tony Visconti, right?
Marc:The guy he had done... What was the other... I just listened to a Bowie album.
Marc:He had done a couple other Bowie albums.
Marc:Right.
Guest:I had read that it's mixed 80s style.
Guest:I don't even... Yeah, I guess you could call it 80s.
Guest:To me, it just seemed like it's mixed super safe.
Guest:I'm a huge Bowie fan.
Guest:Bowie's one of my top five...
Guest:Were you, you know, in high school, did this make you unusual?
Guest:Well, you know what?
Guest:It made me unusual in grade school.
Guest:Because I honestly, I used to listen to a lot of like, like I said, I was listening to They Might Be Giants.
Guest:And okay, around the fifth grade, I got transferred to like a white school, like a smart kid school or whatever.
Guest:I had to go across town.
Guest:And...
Guest:all of the young white kids are listening to nothing but rap music.
Guest:Nothing but rap music.
Guest:And so if anybody would ask me what I was listening to, I would lie.
Guest:I would say I was listening to something rap-oriented.
Guest:And sometimes I would listen to those things, but most of the time I was listening
Guest:At that time to They Might Be Giants or Frank Black's second solo record, Teenager of the Year.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great.
Guest:He's playing it all the time.
Marc:Yeah, Pixies too?
Guest:You know, I ended up getting into the Pixies later and I love them, but that Frank Black song, Headache, was like my anthem.
Marc:And so you did catch some flack or you felt uncomfortable?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:No, I got clowned.
Guest:I got clown like girls used to talk shit about because I don't know I just had I had a whole thing anyway because like I'd never really been around white people you know when you went to the school what grade are we talking fifth grade I think is when I transferred and these are like smart white kids too and so there's just like advanced political thing going on that I didn't I didn't really know how to find my place in or like you know like
Marc:Oh, the class, these were probably rich kids.
Guest:Well, yeah, definitely more well-off than me.
Guest:And I came to figure out later that that's really what the problem was, is that I was poor, and I didn't really understand a lot of the frame of reference for shit that they were into.
Guest:And I was just always trying to fit in.
Guest:Just being a young kid, I'm always trying to fit in and never really finding my place.
Marc:What was the experience like, though, as a black kid dealing with that shit, coming at you?
Marc:Did you feel that there was an expectation on their part, or were you too young still?
Yeah.
Guest:Um, I don't know if there was an expectation, but there was definitely like they sensed me being awkward and would pounce on it.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Like, so I had to really kind of figure it out.
Marc:How would they pounce on it?
Marc:What do you mean?
Guest:Um,
Guest:You know, there were some smart kids, smart mouths to really, you know, tease heavy.
Guest:It was a lot of teasing, you know.
Guest:And, you know, I guess like bullying today is crazy or whatever, but like, you know, it was a lot of teasing.
Guest:There's this one time, you remember the logo, the iconography for Jurassic Park with the dinosaur?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:This one kid had made a drawing of me.
Guest:In the logo.
Guest:So it was like a caricature of a little black kid, little afro and glasses or whatever.
Guest:And he wrote brown assic Mike.
Guest:And that was like the, you know, at that time you would have called it the meme.
Guest:That was like the meme of the week.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:It was different people drawing it and trying to get me to react emotionally in class so that I would get in trouble.
Marc:That is some very diligent and time consuming.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And that's what I mean.
Guest:Like these kids were advanced.
Guest:It sort of undermines the racism.
Guest:Almost.
Guest:It's so developed.
Guest:It's so highly advanced.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:You got to give the guy credit for the creativity.
Guest:I didn't.
Guest:And the thing was, I still didn't even take it that personally because there were kids who get it way worse than me.
Marc:yeah and you know in me trying to find my place sometimes I'd pick on other kids too you know it was just you know there was just a toxic kind of environment and we were all just in it but not it didn't sound doesn't sound like toxic hatred just sort of yeah not hatred yeah not hatred just uh making light yeah it's kids being fucked up yeah yeah yeah fucked up you know
Marc:Yeah, and so, okay, so you live with that, and you're kind of like an alt-music nerd.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:At, you know, not even junior.
Guest:Fucking 11 or 12 and shit, yeah.
Marc:And so what was the evolution?
Marc:Like, when did you start to shift into realizing that you were going to sort of, you know, claim your identity musically in the way you did?
Guest:High school, I read this book by this guy named William Upsky Wimsatt.
Guest:He was a Chicago guy as well.
Guest:He was going on to write some political books that are kind of famous.
Guest:Like No More Prisons.
Guest:You ever heard of that book?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So Upski wrote this book called Bomb the Suburbs and bomb in the sense of graffiti bombing.
Guest:And so and he was a Chicago guy from, you know, a lot of the same neighborhoods or they were mentioned in the book as, you know, where I grew up.
Marc:Was he a sociologist or what was he?
Guest:At that time, he was just a graffiti writer who knew how to write.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so that book just kind of outlined these four arts of hip hop, graffiti, rapping, breakdancing and DJing in such detail and personal experience that it really just made me want to start doing all of those things.
Guest:I had kind of started hanging out with some hip hop kids and really kind of jumped back into the music around like 94 or so.
Guest:This is when A Tribe Called Quest releases this album, Midnight Marauders.
Guest:This is kind of when Wu-Tang happens.
Guest:I really start to get back into rap.
Guest:And in the community that's based around these four arts in Chicago, these hip-hop arts, I just completely dive into that.
Guest:And so I'm doing graffiti, I'm breakdancing, we're freestyling, and I'm just completely in it.
Marc:Was there any crunking?
Guest:No, that was just LA.
Guest:Oh, damn.
Marc:It's LA only.
Marc:That's kind of scary.
Marc:Crunking?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Silly.
Marc:No, it's silly, but the movements are kind of... A little herky-jerky.
Marc:They make me a little... There's part of me that's like, I want to do that.
Marc:I think I'm looking at you right now.
Guest:It looks like you should try it.
Guest:Crunk?
Guest:I think you should watch a YouTube video.
Guest:I'm sure there's many how-tos.
Guest:How to crunk?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you should post it to YouTube after you do it.
Guest:Yeah, you're just trying to... Yeah, I see what you're doing here.
Guest:I'm trying to get you more... I'm trying to get you viral.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:More viral, because you're already viral.
Marc:The Marin Crunk video?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:You think that's going to do it?
Guest:I'm sure it is.
Guest:I'm certain of it.
Guest:I will edit it, damn it.
Marc:So by that time, though, breakdancing, that's already a resurgence of breakdancing, correct?
Marc:That's already sort of like, hey, kids used to do this with the big radios, and now we're going to bring it back out of tradition.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Respect.
Guest:But, you know, it was part of this lineage of people who had never stopped.
Guest:So there were older kids and older adults who were teaching us.
Guest:and what was it what was it these four the the four uh the graffiti rap uh djing and breakdance and breakdance so that so that was the thing and there was a scene and where was that uh chicago south side once again uh but in the couple like particular neighborhoods hyde park and kenwood is kind of where we all used to get up in a practice we right place we go called the point which is like this uh
Guest:park center that's at this lighthouse on the lake and we would all just get together and practice breaking show each other our graffiti books we decipher you know freestyle yeah you know just for hours this is what we did you did that was your day well on the weekend no that was tuesday and thursday afternoon
Guest:How many kids are we talking?
Guest:Well, it could be 50 kids in there.
Guest:My crew I rolled with in high school, all of us were kind of doing this together.
Guest:There was like five of us.
Guest:And so even when we weren't going to the point, we're on a train wrapping.
Guest:We're riding the train to the end where everybody gets off and bombing the shit out of the train.
Guest:We're just doing that shit all the time.
Marc:What was your graffiti tag?
Guest:Drone, D-R-O-N-E.
Guest:And you were good?
Guest:No, it was pretty terrible.
Guest:It was awful.
Guest:Did anyone get busted?
Guest:Everybody but me.
Guest:so that's lucky everybody but me yeah like it was like this week like everybody kept getting arrested i was like you know what i should probably stop doing this yes because my mom might not bail me out i'm not i'm not certain how that would go she's got her own problem exactly like graffiti what oh you're lightweight right you're gonna do your time exactly you're gonna spend your night that could certainly be how that went and and that's honestly that is why i stopped
Guest:out of fear yes that's why i was not ready to get arrested for my little whack tag like it wasn't good enough you know what happened there you know what happened there the law worked it did good for you not a bad law necessarily no it's cool maybe you could do it on paper you know and i did i did but really what i used to do my my thing was to scratch up bus windows with my tag
Guest:You were that guy.
Guest:I was that guy.
Guest:You're doing the deep damage.
Guest:You can't clean that off.
Guest:I'm still up in some places in Chicago to this day.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Like some train station windows that they never changed, I'm still up.
Guest:He's still there?
Guest:Still there.
Guest:Do people know you?
Guest:I mean, yeah.
Marc:12 people who were around then, yeah.
Marc:That were in that crew?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:And you're all in your 30s now.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Oh, look at that.
Guest:Remember?
Marc:So, all right.
Marc:So that's high school.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you weren't recording at all?
Guest:No, we were just freestyling.
Guest:That's all we did was freestyle.
Marc:Now, is there a trick to that?
Marc:I guess what I'm asking, as a guy who does comedy, you just watch and you learn and you listen.
Marc:How much of freestyle is actually freestyle for reals?
Guest:Most of it.
Guest:And what we did and what especially happened out here in L.A., it was a really freestyle-heavy place that we're in.
Marc:It's not like an improv comic that's got a different audience and he just does the same riff again?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:I mean, there are things that we have called crutches.
Guest:Sometimes half a bar might be this kind of thing you always go back to.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Like a hook?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:For the most part, the goal is to be completely improvisational all the time.
Guest:as as much as possible and so when me and my friends started what we would do is we would all get on the phone three-way like sometimes it'd be five of us on the call no beat we would just rap and we were all awful we would just do it and just keep encouraging you're all in each other you're at home yeah we're all in different houses we're rapping on the phone and this is when we first started really bad we were really really bad
Marc:You weren't even good enough to maybe do it.
Guest:Well, we did that, too.
Guest:Right.
Guest:We did that, but we had to go home.
Guest:Streetlights are on.
Guest:It's time to go home.
Guest:We still want to rap.
Guest:So you're excited about it.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:So excited.
Marc:And you're like, let's do it.
Marc:Let's get on the phone and continue it.
Guest:So excited.
Guest:We were so bad.
Guest:We were so bad when we started.
Guest:Really?
Guest:It was horrible.
Guest:Everybody's bad.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Because what are you, like 14?
Marc:I think I was 16.
Marc:I think I was 16.
Marc:On the phone, rapping with five guys on a conference call.
Guest:On a cordless phone with a long antenna.
Marc:So does that work?
Marc:Is it sort of like you just pick up the riff where the next dude... I try to.
Marc:And it's almost like an improv game.
Marc:It is exactly like that.
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:So when you get to... So you graduate and you're going to go to college.
Marc:And are you pursuing it?
Marc:No.
Marc:It's just what... It's just...
Marc:cultural thing it's a hobby but it's also like my identity at that point is i'm one of the hip-hop guys yeah what that meant is not just you listen to hip-hop that means you actually do these activities do you look back on hair decisions or clothing decisions from the time with any regret like yesterday even yeah no it's it's all it's all bad it's all bad yeah yeah so when you got to college what was the plan then if this was a hobby
Guest:yeah psychology to get the degree um go to grad school and do i was going to be a counseling psychologist for who for probably young black children with identity issues most likely i imagine a lot of like it's okay to like bowie yeah like who right yeah right i didn't even say that like who are the white people listening to
Marc:That was the plan?
Guest:That was it.
Marc:That was it.
Marc:That's a noble purpose.
Marc:It was cool, and I was really into it.
Marc:You wanted to do clinical psych on either a social work level or a community level.
Marc:Yeah, that was the goal.
Marc:And you've graduated from college?
Guest:Yeah, Southern Illinois University.
Marc:And what was the experience at college like?
Marc:Did things change then?
Marc:Were you, again, in a white school or no?
Guest:It was a white school, but it was like 22,000 students total.
Guest:Big.
Guest:2,000 black, though.
Guest:So we were like a black school inside of a white school.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:You know, so it was...
Marc:a lot of varied experiences i think you just explained the entire black experience of everything how about it yes we're breaking rocks here this is awesome it's just uh there are some black people surrounded by white people or the other story is there's some black people way over here right and there's the white people are over and over on this side that's it that's all that's the way it breaks down everywhere all the time it's weird right
Marc:Well, I mean, I don't know.
Marc:It's a bigger issue.
Marc:I don't think we can tackle it.
Marc:But I think, quite honestly, the most segregated city I've ever been in is Boston.
Guest:Boston.
Guest:You know, I haven't experienced a lot of Boston.
Marc:I've only been there for shows, so I haven't really... But literally, I lived there on and off for a long time, and it's one of those situations where you're like, wait, no, where are they?
You know what I'm saying?
Marc:It's like, this is weird.
Guest:It's a city.
Guest:And they're like, oh, they're, yeah.
Guest:You know, I could see somebody having a very similar experience in Chicago because you would only, I could see somebody only going on the north side, just only being there and never seeing the west side or the south side and having the same kind of experience.
Guest:Like where?
Marc:where are all the colored folks but i think in you know in the northern united states in general that you know they're in new york but outside of that i don't know what you would i mean and that's relatively you know integrated in a real way because the jobs demanded but outside of that you know it's it's all in the south it's not that those are oddly where where segregation started they're more integrated yeah
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Does that mean anything?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I mean, it sounds industrial.
Guest:It sounds like it's some type of industrial issue.
Marc:Yeah, I didn't mean to make this about this, but it is what it's about.
Marc:It's okay.
Marc:I'm not taking any hits here.
Marc:I'm handling this well.
Marc:You're a rap guy.
Marc:I is.
Marc:I is a rap dude.
Marc:Now, let's get back around to this idea that...
Marc:Because he said something.
Marc:Now, I didn't even know before you talked to me or before we exchanged emails that, and it makes perfect sense, that there is an alternative rap community and that you call yourself that.
Guest:There's an indie.
Guest:Every entertainment, I feel like,
Marc:But when did that start?
Marc:I mean, was that something that when you came, well, let's get back to college.
Marc:So you graduate college, you got your psych degree, you're ready to help troubled black kids with their identity issues and say that you don't have to do that because that guy's gonna get hurt.
Marc:All of that.
Guest:I was gonna do it all.
Marc:Yeah, and then what changes?
Guest:Okay, so up until I'd say I started rapping in 96, right?
Guest:I had my first real show, like rap show.
Guest:Somebody paid me to rap.
Guest:After college?
Guest:No, it was like 2001.
Guest:But you're still a hobbyist.
Guest:How'd that come up?
Guest:Because people used to like having me at their shows to freestyle because I was kind of good at it.
Marc:So that's the interesting thing about the rap world that I don't get is that like, how come there's 90 guys on stage?
Yeah.
Marc:What is that guy doing?
Marc:Asking the tough questions here, Mark.
Marc:What's that guy doing?
Guest:Is he just there to say that one thing?
Guest:Yeah, you know, I've never really been into that myself.
Guest:But you know what I'm talking about?
Guest:Yeah, I mean, it's part of it because everybody's got a crew or a movement or a family or a tribe.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:We do it like the label that I represent now, Hellfire Club out here.
Guest:We do that sometimes.
Guest:Like we'll do like an organized, like we're all going to be on stage while our guy raps here.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because it's good for us to occasionally show that we're part of something.
Guest:You know, we're all kind of rugged individualists anyway.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:But occasionally to just show that group energy.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But it's not a lot, but it happens.
Guest:Right.
Guest:it goes down because when you say like there's a guy you used to have me come on occasionally freestyle so you just you're that guy that just kind of like you come out you take the mic and then you hang out you do your thing and then you go but it actually it was a band though and it was a couple bands at that okay rock bands yeah um and like jazz fusion bands oh yeah but they would you know if they wanted to do something yeah and with a hip-hop beat yeah and they wanted some guys to rap they'd always call me up you know and um how'd you hook up with those guys
Guest:um they used to come to where we would freestyle we would hang out and rap you know they were just into it when you were in high school no in college so you had you said the same crew you had the same situation in college where you're like we're the guys that hang around and freestyle exactly but probably not as much break dancing because you're getting older yeah yeah a little less a little less and i you know and uh my fitness level currently shows exactly that's when it all fell apart the beer came in and the breaking went out
Guest:And that's the new single.
Guest:That's the way it might be.
Guest:Jesus.
Marc:We're writing.
Marc:The beer comes in and the break and went out.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:Because that's sort of where you I mean, that was the thing that I noticed about the stuff you sent me is that you're literally trying to integrate life as as you're living it.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:which is uh which is not the rap life it's not the hackneyed idea but it's just a guy who's getting older is dealing with family responsibilities and uh you know family questions about identity issues as a you know 30 to 40 year old dude and and you're just laying that out right i mean a lot of the guys that i that i'm grouped with uh in terms of sound i mean that's what we attempt to do is just uh
Guest:kind of elevate the art form like that sounds kind of weird to say but uh you know to me this is like there's there's a legitimacy in in like what rap music is in terms of expression right um and there's room to me to all of us there's like room for all of our individual experiences in it and so that's exactly what we're trying to do is but also like to have like to have a record
Marc:that is called Rappers Will Die of Natural Causes is, you know, it's a counterintuitive cultural idea.
Marc:Yeah, absolutely.
Marc:And that there's a conscious attempt to sort of, you know, stand alone outside of, I think, cultural expectation.
Guest:Absolutely.
Marc:And also, you know, slightly racist expectation.
Marc:Of course.
Marc:Of what, you know, rappers are supposed to be and what they're supposed to do.
Marc:100%.
Marc:So that would mean that was sort of the defining tone of what alternative rap is.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So this happens, okay, so you do the gigs with the bands that need some sort of credibility, like having a freestyling guy on stage.
Marc:Let's bring out the guy that's got the real juice.
Guest:So that was your first gig.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But then they booked me.
Guest:They wanted me to have time for myself.
Guest:They wanted to book me.
Guest:They wanted my name on the fly.
Guest:They wanted to pay me to do a show.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so I had to write some songs.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And then that's kind of- You don't do the freestyle in that situation.
Guest:No, I did not.
Guest:I chose not to.
Guest:And I surprised the shit out of a lot of people.
Guest:They were like, oh, you're going to do some songs.
Guest:It's kind of interesting.
Guest:And then that's when I really, I just got into-
Marc:the idea of really really doing that really making rap songs i've never really done writing yeah because like like me uh if i can bring it around to me which i'm sure you're familiar with that no they're they're like there's an idea that like i wouldn't say that i freestyle but you most of my stuff is built from improvisation right
Marc:And the difference between the juice and the rush of being on stage and in that moment and having to use those skills just to survive as a performer because that's where you get off.
Marc:And then to sort of say like, well, I can do that.
Marc:but now i got a real opportunity here let's try this other thing let me try to you know mold it a little bit isn't it exciting to realize like oh my god if i could have just been writing all along i could have done some real shit absolutely look i i've actually have time to make rhymes that are right kind of turn in on themselves right i can actually choose the best thing to say and not just what i'm thinking of right at that moment i'm still not great at that dude no i understand
Marc:There's something about just things being half done that make me... You like the room to roam.
Guest:And I understand.
Guest:Every set I do, I work in a freestyle.
Guest:I just have to... I feel like it's not a show if I haven't explored the energy of me interplaying with the music and this crowd in this moment.
Guest:It has to be worked in somehow.
Guest:And I know a lot of performers like that.
Guest:They never do the same rap show twice.
Guest:And it's not quite on the jazz level where they're just super technical improvisations, but...
Guest:they get bored with doing the songs.
Marc:What was the moment where, okay, so you get the opportunity to do a show, you write some songs, you surprise yourself, you surprise other people.
Marc:So now you're gonna be a rap artist and you've got your guys, you've got your Tribe Called Quest and where you come from in the heart, and then you've got Rap Expectations.
Marc:And you've got the mainstream music biz.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So where do you realize that your path is going to be different and you've got to find like-minded people?
Guest:And were you at the beginning of that?
Guest:Well, you know what?
Guest:I kind of was, but see, when I moved out here, I moved out here in 2004.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I finished my degree and I did a year of grad school because I was thinking, yeah, I'm going to do all that shit.
Guest:In psychology.
Guest:Not a grad school.
Guest:I did some other dumb program.
Guest:I didn't want to take the GRE.
Guest:So right then, I'm starting to fall apart on the academic tip because...
Guest:For me to follow that plan, I would have had to spend a year preparing for the exams to go to the next level.
Guest:I didn't do any of that shit.
Guest:And so I ended up just kind of getting in a grad program at the school I was at already that there were no requirements.
Guest:And I did it and it fucking drove me crazy.
Guest:And so...
Guest:I moved out here.
Guest:I was only supposed to be here a year, and I was supposed to do an AmeriCorps thing, and then I was going to jump back into grad school after doing that whole preparation thing and all that that I was supposed to do originally.
Guest:What's an AmeriCorps thing?
Guest:AmeriCorps is like...
Marc:you know they have peace corps yeah and they go around the world americorps the same shit but they just do community projects in america right so that's they're they're actually honest and acknowledging that many parts of this country are third world country i mean well yeah exactly basically and more coming yeah fun yes dystopian future yeah what are you gonna do i don't know i i'm reading i'm reading one of them books now and i'm like i don't want to i don't know and no
Marc:all the power could go out right now forever forever for everybody yes for everybody and then what do we do I don't know hope our neighbor doesn't kill us and take our shit I feel like the bully of the block is gonna just own everything the bully of the block man I mean like recently I've been thinking like reading this stuff where you really look at like you know if you read about the fucking Congo if you read about how quickly
Marc:You know, just because of tribal leadership, people were macheting their neighbors.
Marc:It's like, it happened within hours.
Marc:It was almost like, you know, what?
Marc:It's on?
Marc:Fuck, you know, that's it.
Marc:That's gonna happen.
Guest:And I have zero skills.
Guest:I have zero skills.
Guest:I got nothing.
Guest:I can't plant in anything.
Guest:I can barely fry a hamburger.
Marc:My biggest defense is like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Marc:Let me tell you a story.
Marc:hopefully i can entertain hopefully i can entertain someone those freestyle skills are gonna come in like you know but uh all right so so that that you got derailed on that after a year and you moved out here or you moved out here for that and you found something else yeah i moved out here and i got down with this collective this collective out here called project bloat and it's and i liken it to ucb um everything
Guest:Scale's different because there's a lot less money in indie rap.
Guest:There used to be a lot of money in music, of course.
Guest:People bought CDs.
Marc:That was the main... There's some rappers that are still doing pretty well.
Marc:I don't know if you know that.
Guest:Oh, you know what?
Marc:I'm going to give you the list.
Guest:I try to avoid them.
Guest:I cannot.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:But yeah, so...
Guest:economy shrunk down whatever but Project Blow and it's like the UCB in the sense of it's a collective that's based upon improv it's an open mic that started out here in like 94 and there's a big group of rappers that are from this collective and have always just kind of challenged each other
Guest:uh to just be better at improv and uh you do songs there like just like at ucb sometimes like i've been to there for like the comedy bang bang night and guys come out and do sets off of off of notebooks sure like a lot like that uh we'll go on a project blow people will come and workshop new songs where is this uh in leimert park which is off of like 43rd and crenshaw like right in the heart of like south la uh-huh
Marc:And now the tone of this is there is there still an awareness that, you know, we're not doing mainstream rap.
Marc:We're not doing, you know, bullshit gangster rap.
Marc:You know, we're doing this thing.
Marc:It was all about craftsmanship.
Marc:Honestly, it was all about didn't matter what they were talking about.
Guest:The content didn't.
Guest:barely mattered at all um it was all about pushing the form and uh there the thing was the emphasis on style meaning uh you know the different different rap styles and and trying to do them all in an improv fashion to be that good to master all of those styles can you tell me what those are i'm not going to pretend you know i don't like all those styles like i
Marc:no but i can listen and i you know i i can tell like you know in in the limited experience i have listening to rap that i can tell that there is a definable voice among those who we you know we are told are great right or who have made a lot of money like i forgot to mention snoop because i have listened to that but you know you you definitely there is a personality that evolves there's a style of timing exactly that that is different that
Guest:That's exactly what I'm talking about.
Marc:Whether you're working, it seems that a lot of times you're working within beats that are familiar.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:But what you do with your personal timing.
Guest:The interplay, the cadence.
Guest:Right.
Guest:The style is all based on the cadence.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Marc:And there's always some dude that's going to come along and kind of twirl things in a way where you're like, oh, that's a signature shit there.
Guest:It's a new shit.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:That's why, you know, a lot of how Eminem got really popular is because he was doing something with his cadence and like these...
Guest:three-syllable rhyming words that nobody had ever really heard used on that level um and he you know and a lot of people just kind of oh he's white or what no like he actually did something different with his style that like i listened to him too see now you're reminding me yeah but also you know the drive there too is that you know that something he brought
Marc:to it that i had not heard in in black rap was that you know i think there there's a lot of posturing and i'm being um presumptuous but i think there's a lot of posturing in the lyrics of black rappers where whereas like you know when he uh when eminem came it was like god he's talking about some raw fucking white problems here
Marc:And there was an anger to it and a level of intensity and the honesty of it that I had not heard before.
Marc:Is that possible?
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:On that level, absolutely.
Guest:On the mainstream level.
Guest:I mean, he's an incredible writer.
Guest:So writing a song, what was that song about the guy stalking him or whatever?
Yeah.
Guest:Just having a songwriter on that level in terms of mainstream rap, it hadn't been seen in a while.
Guest:So a lot of that had to do with how he got real popular.
Marc:And there's not a shitload of white rappers in general.
Marc:Yes, there are.
Guest:Millions of them.
Guest:They're everywhere.
Guest:I threw that out there.
Guest:They're everywhere.
Guest:The fuckers.
Guest:Well, you know, it's America, man.
Guest:So you know what I mean?
Guest:It really gets into population numbers after a while.
Guest:So like...
Guest:there's that many white rappers, as many as there are white people.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Marc:Once the form establishes itself.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Once it becomes the dominant mode of expression for the time, yeah, believe me.
Guest:Because I do a lot of touring, so that's mostly who I see.
Guest:I mostly see white rappers.
Marc:Yeah, but I don't see a lot of them on stage, but I'm not going to those clubs.
Marc:Well, yeah.
Marc:But they're out there.
Marc:They are.
Guest:Most of the underground is white rappers, most of them.
Marc:Well, I think that, you know, and this is like such a white middle-aged guy thing to say.
Guest:Oh, lay it on me.
Marc:No, I think that in terms of sampling and using sound textures that the Beastie Boys were fucking great.
Marc:Oh, absolutely.
Marc:Like, I think they changed the game for rap in general.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:Well, I just said that with confidence.
Marc:No, they are fucking incredible.
Marc:I mean, like, because you listen to some of the sampling they did, it was like, what the fuck?
Guest:Like, what's your favorite Beastie Boys record?
Guest:Paul's Boutique.
Guest:See, I don't really, I never liked Paul's Boutique that much.
Marc:Well, I don't like the first one that much because it was still a little rock.
Guest:I like the rock shit.
Guest:So I like Ill Communication a lot.
Guest:I like that too.
Marc:And there's that one.
Marc:Is that the one with Biz Markie and Ted Nugent samples?
Guest:I think so.
Guest:Check Your Head.
Guest:Check Your Head's great.
Marc:I listen to the fuck out of that.
Marc:Paul's Boutique, Check Your Head, and the Ill Communication I listen to.
Guest:Those are amazing records.
Marc:And, you know, if people... Check your head, I think I listen to more than any of them.
Guest:It would be really easy to say, yeah, you know, they were white.
Guest:No, those fucking records are amazing.
Guest:Those are amazing records.
Marc:On a production level.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:Well, I didn't mean to derail this into the Beastie territory.
Marc:So, all right, so you guys have got this collective, and what, you know, it seems that part of the rap community is that every rap song has a featuring.
Marc:Like...
Marc:There's a small parenthetical featuring a bunch of names I don't know.
Guest:Guess who I have rapping on my next album?
Guest:Who?
Guest:Hannibal Buress.
Guest:Got him doing his greatest verse ever.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:It's going to be all.
Guest:I can't wait.
Marc:Is he doing it like Hannibal style?
Guest:Oh, he does everything like Hannibal style.
Guest:Slow down.
Guest:Slow it down.
Guest:Hannibal beat me in a freestyle tournament when we were in college.
Guest:You went to college with Hannibal?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:He did?
Guest:Yeah, and he beat me in a freestyle tournament.
Marc:So his style must be interesting.
Marc:He must be really laid back.
Marc:Very much so.
Marc:And that must be something.
Guest:Yeah, for real.
Marc:Because as a comic, you're sort of like, oh, boy.
Marc:I'm sure I don't know what he plays to come up to, but I don't think he should play anything with.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:Because sometimes the clubs are like, are you ready for your headliner?
Marc:Better not do that.
Marc:No, no, no.
Marc:He's going to have to establish his own pace.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I think that's interesting in terms of, you know, I don't know if I'll be criticized for saying this, that...
Marc:That in the world that you're operating in, which is alternative rap, which goes against on some level from where I'm sitting, you know, cultural racial expectation.
Marc:I'm not saying racist, but that, you know, as a culture, you know, their expectation.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:And, you know, they're stereotypical.
Marc:And I think that, you know, with Hannibal as well, that, you know, Hannibal will not address race at all.
Guest:Well, he does in very specific ways.
Marc:Right, but I mean, but it's not, he is operating against cultural expectations.
Guest:And against cultural expectations in the comedy world in particular.
Guest:So he won't do the white guys do it like this, black guys do it like that.
Marc:Or any real version of that.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:And I think that's an amazing thing.
Marc:Even when, that was such a fucking, what does that even mean?
Marc:What did you just use the word amazing for?
Marc:I think it's a new thing.
Marc:It's notable, for sure.
Marc:Well, it's a new thing.
Marc:That with the world of alternative comedy and with the world of whatever anybody will call post-racial in terms of how people are expressing themselves against cultural expectation, no matter what that race is or whatever you're doing up there, is a relatively new thing.
Marc:And I think it's a comforting thing, and it's interesting.
Marc:But also what I wanted to address earlier is that idea...
Marc:That, you know, when I bring up white people who want to identify so badly with black culture that, you know, it must be annoying.
Guest:Well, you know, to me and I meant to mention this.
Guest:I think I meant to mention this point earlier is.
Guest:The journalism is so dominated by that intention that that want, you know, for a nerdy guy to feel like he's on the pulse of it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That what happens is, at least from my vantage point, it seems like they try to elevate a lot of things that are really crude to some.
Guest:They try to find art in very crude, very to me, things that aren't, you know.
Marc:Are you talking about the alternative music press in general?
Guest:Yeah, maybe even the mainstream music press too.
Guest:There's this cultural voyeurism that happens in the journalism.
Guest:It really weirds me out sometimes.
Marc:It's actually anti-journalism.
Marc:What it is, it's their version of courting controversy to get some juice, right?
Guest:I don't know, because I feel like I feel like a lot of them genuinely feel the way they do about the music.
Guest:But I think a lot of times they don't understand how those racial and cultural expectations that we talk about inform their point of view on things.
Guest:OK, they don't take that into account that they think, you know, because you'll get a guy saying that.
Guest:somebody sounds more authentic than somebody else if they sound you know like if it's more hood or more gangster i don't think they understand how dangerous that word of an assertion that is you know what i mean that like he's authentic in that he's exactly what we've always expected out of the negro exactly exactly
Guest:And, you know, you could you could put that in there and it would make it would make perfect sense.
Guest:And I think a lot of times they don't step back and realize that, like, you know, they're helping to perpetuate shit.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Do that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, they're not they're not seeing the artist as an artist.
Marc:Right.
Marc:They're they're being their their opinion is overshadowed by their own stereotype.
Marc:Right.
Guest:and they're buried they're buried in the context all you know and they don't realize they're helping to create it as well and it gets tricky that's where it gets annoying to me you know i mean that's where it gets annoying and that's why i feel like it's the obstacle between you know the guys who like i said are trying to make this a more substantial or more um uh you know trying to like i said relevant yeah you know or elevated or we're trying to make it
Guest:give it the value that art has, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You're taking what you're saying is that, you know, this is where we are now.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And these are the people that are doing this now.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And, and we found our own world here and this is, you know, this is the craft.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And, and now we want to, you know, we want to own it for who we are now.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And that is not who those guys were then or those guys that live over there or what you think we ought to be.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And, um,
Guest:And I guess in a sense, in just doing it, we're kind of, you know, we're validating it that way.
Guest:But I guess the problem is that we have to we got to sell it on the marketplace.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So that's when you run into all this other shit.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Like you run into, you know, you you're constantly reminded of how not valuable it is in that sense.
Guest:And then that gets weird, too.
Marc:Why do you think that is?
Marc:I mean, when you talk about that, be specific, because you are doing a popular music form, but what defines the sort of crew that you're involved with?
Marc:You're on a national, I'm not just talking about the five guys or whatever, but this is obviously some sort of conscious movement, and what defines it?
Guest:I mean, the simplest way I would say is like we were talking about earlier, just kind of being true to you and your experience, the individuality of your experience.
Guest:And not mythologizing.
Guest:You can mythologize your own personal legend.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But not to make any attempt to connect to those...
Guest:popular stereotypes or archetypes that you are not in order to push for rap themes exactly you know or you can take the rap themes and bend them and make them personal but the thing is not to make something that's disposable because i feel like most of you know what's put out in the mainstream
Guest:That's really my beef with a lot of it.
Guest:It's disposable.
Guest:It's so... It's disposable because it's not unique.
Marc:If it's a pop song, it's a pop song.
Marc:Whatever rap is, it doesn't matter when it comes right down to it.
Marc:As a pop song, either it's about money and women and whatever...
Marc:But not in any kind of personal way.
Guest:Just about those things.
Marc:Yeah, those are the themes.
Marc:Let's just hit them to make a pop song.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So you're saying that on some level that your life is what it is and everybody's life on some level is mundane.
Marc:But there's a value in that.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:Right.
Marc:The life that the guys were living on the South Side when they were smoking crack or cutting their teeth in that world, that may have been their life.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:And it was a menacing, exciting life.
Guest:Absolutely.
Marc:And people died and there were problems.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But, you know, you're just dealing with like, you know, the line at Starbucks or how you're going to deal with your relationship.
Marc:And this is your life.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And, you know, it doesn't have to be menacing.
Marc:I mean, there's something sort of like, you know, charming about it.
Guest:And there's menace in the mundane sometimes.
Guest:Yeah, there is.
Guest:You know, if you get into, and I think a lot of us, too, that do this kind of thing, we live in our heads a lot as well.
Guest:And so you get into the menace of like yourself versus yourself in a lot of situations, too.
Marc:And I think that's probably a unique thing.
Mm-hmm.
Marc:That I don't think, see, this is something that may indicate my own idea of stereotyping, but I have often thought that the immediacy of the urban black experience is tangible.
Marc:It's tangible in the narratives of rap, and it's tangible in the way communities work.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:And I think that, you know, I think that it might be and I could be wrong here that the cultural idea in the black community of self-awareness, self-reflection or even, you know, being heady is is somewhat unique in the creativity.
Guest:It's not that it's not fostered, but it's there.
Guest:And I would say that everybody I've ever known has had some aspect of it.
Guest:I mean, even if it just comes from smoking a lot of weed and sitting and thinking, they get the inner dialogue.
Guest:There's not a lot of conduits or encouragement to express it.
Marc:Right, because there's a language of that.
Marc:I think, and this is not just black culture, but I think that in a relatively macho culture, the idea of needing help or having those thoughts would seem insecure or weak.
Guest:Which is absolutely what you're not supposed to appear.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:So that is the obstacle.
Guest:That's why it's not fostering.
Guest:With the black audience.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:It's interesting, though.
Guest:There's there's there's ways in which it can be embraced.
Guest:There's ways in which mainstream artists do even like a lot of what Kanye does.
Guest:Like, you know, you talk about somebody who makes a song called let's make a toast to the assholes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, like I like him.
Guest:I think he's, I can typically appreciate what he does, even if I don't always like him.
Guest:I appreciate that a guy at his level takes the artistic and aesthetic risks that he does, and he continues to, you know, it pays off for him to keep taking those risks.
Guest:Because he's a little nuts.
Guest:He is.
Guest:And he explores it and expresses it, and he's very vulnerable.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:the exact thing that we're talking about that you're not supposed to be vulnerability he is vulnerable all the time yeah and and i think like that's really awesome that he's vulnerable on that level you know and so well tell me about this marketplace in the sense is is is what's the struggle uh who are you trying to find uh wow um i feel like a lot of people who listen to
Guest:indie rock like indie rock is to me a more developed industry than indie rap is um probably just because there's more money in it uh so that so you know the middleman can foster the structure a little bit better and uh things are more lubricated uh and and i feel like a lot of our audience is probably that audience as well it's just that the avenues of exposure aren't very uh
Marc:But you've got to deal with the indie audience in the sense that, you know, a lot of these kids, you know, grew up with rap.
Marc:And I just wonder.
Guest:You have to deal with their expectations as well.
Marc:Yeah, for sure.
Marc:Yeah, like I wonder if they sort of want the Wild West.
Guest:You know, they do choose that.
Guest:They do choose that quite a bit.
Guest:I mean, and that's, you know, there are some tough realities.
Guest:in this indie rap thing.
Guest:I mean, one of the main ones is this, and even Public Enemy, you listen to Chuck D talk about it.
Guest:He realized early on that it didn't matter what he said if the beats weren't making people dance.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And so everything they ever did, super pounding up-tempo, just layers of percussion.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And a lot of my guys, like the guys that I consider myself a part of, we completely as chew that.
Guest:I don't,
Guest:like dance music and so there's very little of that infused in what i do but that's a choice that i make that reflects in how far my music can go as well because rap primarily is it's it's dance driven a lot of people don't really consciously think about that but that's that's the marketplace it's also bass driven apparently oh absolutely i know that from driving the neighborhood yeah absolutely
Marc:So, okay, so this is your fight.
Marc:You know, fuck you.
Marc:You can't dance to this right away.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Or ever maybe, like, you know what I mean?
Guest:See, that's what they know is I'm the kid who was listening to Frank Black.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Who was listening to They Might Be Giants.
Guest:So I can't do anything but be true to that if I want to make what I think is the best thing I can make.
Yeah.
Marc:Okay, so you've decided your integrity.
Marc:You've decided the parameters of your art.
Marc:And so you're going to have to fight that fight.
Guest:Yeah, because I don't know.
Guest:Parameters makes it sound like...
Guest:Like it's a conscious front lobe kind of decision.
Guest:And it's not.
Guest:It's more about being true to what I respond to creatively.
Guest:And if somebody gives me a bunch of beats and they're dancing, typically that doesn't make me want to do anything.
Guest:I'm not...
Guest:I'm not encouraged to write to that.
Guest:It doesn't call anything out of me.
Marc:So I think we got the title for the next CD, I'm Not Dancing.
Guest:There you go, me and Frank Sinatra, neither one of us.
Guest:We won't dance.
Marc:No, when the beer came in, the breaking went out.
Guest:It was the first cut on I'm Not Dancing.
Guest:How about it?
Guest:You got jewels, Mark, dropping jewels over here.
Marc:Thank God I always wanted jewels.
Marc:But is your biggest fear that one day you're going to be like, all right, man, I got to.
Marc:You have a wife?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And a kid?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Okay, because I heard you talking about them or rapping about them.
Marc:So is your biggest fear that one day it's like, fuck it.
Marc:Give me that beat, the one that makes people move.
Marc:I got a thing that'll... And then that beat, that breaks you.
Marc:That's sort of like, that's a good tune.
Guest:Let's have some more of that.
Guest:I'll take it is.
Guest:I've recently discovered in myself that...
Guest:I have to stop fighting styles of rap because that's another thing that came in Chicago and the segregatedness of it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There were certain rap cadences that we said, Oh, only the gangster guys do that.
Guest:So we don't do that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We do all this weird, but like, how did they respond to dichotomy?
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:How did they respond to you?
Guest:Those, those, well, it depends.
Guest:Uh,
Guest:I used to do a lot of punchline rap, and so that was generally, people generally dug that everywhere.
Marc:Got a good turn of phrase.
Guest:Heavy analogies and all that.
Marc:They were really into that.
Marc:So you could get around the guns by having your own chops.
Marc:So what was the false dichotomy?
Guest:that there's something inherently inferior about a rap style versus another and that I shouldn't use one because only a certain type of person uses that.
Guest:And what that's done is I've been doing some experimenting where...
Guest:I'll take a style that somebody has typically only used to talk about money and women, but then I'll do some of my washing dishes raps over it in that style.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I'm like, oh, OK, this is interesting.
Guest:So, you know, I'm finding stuff that way, too.
Guest:That's great, man.
Guest:That's fucking clever.
Marc:Well, I wish you the best of luck.
Marc:I think we did good here.
Guest:Did we do good?
Guest:Man, I think we did great.
Guest:I'm sweating, man.
Guest:This is awesome.
Guest:I'm losing weight in here, man.
Guest:Did we miss anything?
Guest:I think we covered it.
Guest:I think stuff got covered.
Guest:Well, I'm glad we did it, Mike.
Guest:Thanks for having me, man.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Great talk, man.
Guest:They used to act all active and lawless.
Guest:They used to live like bachelors.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:That's our show.
Marc:Thank you for being here.
Marc:I hope we learned.
Marc:I hope we enjoyed.
Marc:I hope there's some new music for you to go find.
Marc:Mike Eagle's got some new stuff up.
Marc:You can get that at openmikeagle.bandcamp.com How's that?
Marc:Open Mike Eagle.
Marc:O-P-E-N-M-I-K-E-E-A-G-L-E dot Bandcamp dot com for the new stuff.
Marc:How would that be?
Marc:Go to WTFPod.com for all your WTFPod needs.
Marc:Get on the mailing list.
Marc:Check the episode guide before you ask me to have people on the show.
Marc:What else?
Marc:Check my schedule.
Marc:I'll be at Montreal this year at the Just for Last Festival.
Marc:I'll be at the main stage in Chicago at the end of August.
Marc:Got dates coming up.
Marc:God damn it, I feel disgusting.
Marc:I ate more food than I could ever imagine possible over this few days in Seattle.
Marc:I'm not going to sit there.
Marc:I'm not going to sit here and do this.
Marc:I'm not.
Marc:Oh my God.
Marc:Boomer lives!
Marc:Boomer lives!
you