Let’s talk also about Francine.
R: [Laughs] Awesome.
I like the ironic twist at the end, because this song works well in that so much music on the radio today is this hyper-sexualized, and you’re going in like that, but then at the end…
R: That is my ode, honestly, it’s my ode to Biggie, [Kool] G Rap, Nas, the story, and so I just wanted to tell a dope street story. I wanted to throw a twist to it, so the whole thing was just coming up with a cool concept, a story where I’m not the superhero and I don’t win, because a lot of the street stories is how you killed a million niggas and, “Then I flew out the window and the car skid upside down / Police kept coming, then I shot the helicopter down.”
It reminds me of Slick Rick’s “Children’s Story” in that sense. At the end, your character gets what was coming to him.
R: Yeah, because I’m kind of popping shit off like, “Niggas ain’t worried about nothing, I ain’t trippin’, I ain’t trippin’,” and then it’s like, “Oh, hold up.” So, thank you, I like that song a lot, and I hope that the Ghostfaces and Nas’s and G Raps at some point get a chance to check it out, because it’s really a dedication to them, Biggie, Slick Rick.
Apollo, you’ve produced albums for Hassan Mackey, Boog Brown, Guilty Simpson, OC, and now Ras Kass. You’ve also got the groups The Left and Ugly Heroes. It seems like in all these cases you’re cultivating your beats for the artists and, whenever possible, actually producing a record. Hip-hop and music in general kind of moved away from that model, but now it’s coming back—
A: I never left that. It’s really important to me when I’m making an album, and especially a full-length LP, that I get into the studio with the person I’m making the album with. We’ve got to feel that vibe. I need to see that artist’s face when I start playing this beat. I need them to see my face after [they] spit a 16, because tonal inflection is very important. I could text you, “Yo I like the verse,” but you don’t know I LIKE THE VERSE. It’s different when we get in the studio, and he comes out the booth, and I’m like, “Yoooo.” I like to build with the person I’m doing a record with, and I need to know them personally. We need to get beyond the music thing. I need to know who you are and who I’m putting on a beat of mine. It’s an intimate thing for me. My beats are intimate. My music is intimate. I make this with all my heart and soul, and my feelings are shoved into these drums and into this music, so I’m not just going to put anybody on it. I’m not just going to send anybody a beat and be like, “Yo, rock this.” No, I need to be a fan of you and I need to know that I’m not babysitting you. I give the artist like Ras something, and I’m like, “Yo, do what you do.” He kept trying to send me stuff and show me stuff, and I’m the type of dude who will listen to it when we record it, because I trust you, I have faith in you. I know it’s going to be dope, because I’m a fan and I’m a fan for a reason. But yeah, I love producing full albums. I love holding my own on an album from top to bottom. It’s something I enjoy, the consistency, and when you’ve got somebody you can build with and know personally, it’s easy, it’s organic, it’s natural, and to me, personally, I think it’s easy to make a classic when you’ve got those ingredients.
Do you still make beat tapes apart from your instrumental albums?
A: Beat tapes? Like a beat tape to shop?
Not necessarily to shop to different people, but to send to Ras Kass, for example.
A: Nah, because when I make an album I like to keep a certain sound, and I’m not just going to send an artist a tape with like 30 beats and be like, “Yo, listen to this, let me know what you want.” I’ll [send] small batches.
I love holding my own on an album from top to bottom. It’s something I enjoy, the consistency, and when you’ve got somebody you can build with and know personally, it’s easy, it’s organic, it’s natural, and to me, personally, I think it’s easy to make a classic when you’ve got those ingredients.
R: I like that better too.
A: I don’t want to overwhelm you.
R: Yeah, because you’ll fry a person’s brain.
A: I want you to really know what you’re listening to. If you listen to 30 beats in a row, you’re not going to remember number 1 and 2. You’re not going to remember number 17. A batch of four or five, you can listen to over and over and over and point out, “I don’t like that one, I don’t like that one, [but] 2, 3, and 4.” But I don’t do beat tapes like that. I do instrumental albums.
I was going to ask what determines if a track ends up on an instrumental album?
A: Because that’s just what it is: it’s an album; it’s not a just bunch of beats thrown together on a CD and given to people. They’re ordered, they’re arranged a certain way for a certain reason. I put a lot into the arrangement, it’s important to me. Also Clouds is themed, Thirty Eight is themed. There’s a certain sound, a certain feeling. I’m taking you on a roller coaster. There’s a reason why this song comes after this song. It’s all strategic, but as far as a regular beat tape just to send out to artists? I don’t do that. Me and artists work on an individual basis, so if somebody hits me up like, “I need a beat for the album,” I’ll send what I feel is right, or I’ll ask him, “What do you have on the album now, and what kind of sound are you looking for to cap it off?” No beat tapes though.
I’ve heard you talk several times about making beats using Cool Edit. You got that Peter Quistgard crack?
A: Nah, nah, I have no idea what you’re talking about.
For a long time, everybody using Cool Edit had the same bootlegged copy. Peter Quistgard was the User ID.
A: Oh, no, no, mine was uh, Marco Hardmeyer. That’s who mine was. But yeah, I use Cool Edit, I’ve been using Cool Edit since 97 and never switched over, never did the Adobe Audition.
I know that you say it’s because that’s where your comfort level lies, but do you also think that there’s something more organic or authentic about the limitations of Cool Edit?
A: I mean that software is very limited: there’s no plug-ins, there’s no multi-track. You’re literally painting on an all-white canvas and starting from scratch, so I like it like that. It is a comfort level, it’s where I started and I know it like the back of my hand. I don’t like change. That’s what it is, and Windows XP is the last operating system that it’s compatible on. That was like four or five operating systems ago, so I’ve always got to keep buying computers, because I keep crashing, so it’s starting to get a little scary, but I got a Maschine too. I’m going to start messing with that. Native Instruments presented me with a Maschine a couple years ago, and I don’t really use it, but—
R: They got an app too, for your phone. I seen somebody kind of killing it.
A: I’m not a pad-hitter, man. I don’t like hitting pads. I’m precise. I can make a beat without listening to it. I look at a beat and know what it’s going to sound like, and how loud it’s going to be and the levels. I’ve made beats for people just playing around and not listening to it, just putting it together and listening to it afterward and seeing what it sounds like.
That’s ill.
A: Because I know how to look at the beat; I’ve been doing it for years.
What’s crazy about that to me is you always hear about these old-school cats who didn’t want to make the switch from analogue to digital, but you work in digital, yet with this older digital platform, and you don’t want to use analog stuff. You do use analog in that you’re ripping records, but it’s kind of this older, basic digital [application]. It’s the same concept in a way.
A: Yeah, yeah, definitely. No doubt.
There are two other songs we’ve got to talk about. On “Animal Sacrifice,” you [Ras] call yourself, “the West Coast’s lyricist, they Hendrix/…Kendrick before Kendrick.” Who were some West Coast lyricists you came up listening to?
R: Oh man, some people may not call him one, but I feel like Ice Cube and Ren were going at it, and if you listen to all those old N.W.A. albums or solo albums — D.O.C., technically he’s Southwest, he’s from Texas but D.O.C. comes out through Dr. Dre with “The Formula” — but if you listen to those albums, every last song on those albums they would bar up. You know, “Grand Finale,” it was a posse cut and niggas was going in.
A: “Grand finale, yo it’s my turn to bust/ So let weak motherfuckers turn to dust/ If you’re weak it ain’t your fault/ Just take a kick in the ass and get turned into a pillar of salt.”
R: See? He knows bars. “Picture a nigga that’s raw.”
A: “Motherfuckers I’ll slaughter…”
Apollo & Ras: …”blow ‘em out the water/ Word to me, fuck the father.”
R: Niggas was going in.
That’s kind of what I was trying to get at, because people say “West Coast lyricist” as if “West Coast” and ‘lyricist’ don’t go together, but clearly, anybody who knows what they’re talking about knows that’s not the case.
R: Right, right, you know, Hiero[glyphics] going in, styling up; Del’s first album. I think the grandfather of all L.A. slang really is E-40, and if you put him over a hip-hop beat it’d be like ODB. It’s still lyrical. He said some great shit. Jayo Felony; there’s a lot of dope MCs that came out before me; Saafir. Specifically for L.A., there were the gangsta rappers and then there were the [rappers who had] a bit of a Native Tongue influence.
Project Blowed?
R: Yeah.
A: A lot of rappers on the West Coast had style. It was just more about style and telling a story. I loved the West Coast, especially in the early 90s.
R: We had our lyricists. There were people who didn’t really quite get heard but paved the [way] for me.
When you ask a bunch of people what’s your favorite song on the album, everybody has a different favorite, and when you can do that you’re doing something right. You don’t want everybody to gravitate toward one song.
Apollo, from listening to your past interviews and looking at your catalog, it seems like you’re at least conscious of, if not heavily concerned with, building a complete discography, looking to build a complete body of work that will stand the test of time, so who are some producers in and out of hip-hop, or just musicians in general, who you feel have achieved that?
A: Oh my God.
I mean a full body of work. Everybody’s got that one [flawed] album. Who do you think has a flawless discography?
A: Isaac Hayes, Barry White, David Axelrod—
Who you [Ras] have worked with.
R: Yeah.
A: Bob James…
Ras Kass: Bob James is a beast.
A: …Who I saw in concert about three or four months ago.
You think Bob James’s discography is flawless?
A: I think Bob James is fucking amazing, yeah. We’re talking about composers; Galt MacDermot. But then I’m a big Preem fan. I’m a big DJ Muggs fan. Muggs influenced my sound greatly. He’s one of my top-three producers of all time; great, great discography. A lot of people don’t know his discography and they don’t know the work that he’s put in, so they kind of discount him when it comes to their top producers. Dre has an amazing body of work. You can’t discount anything he’s ever done. I’ll stop right there.
Good list. Lastly, Ras, there’s a religious overtone throughout the album, but it’s not the first time you’ve touched on these topics. Would you talk about “How to Kill God” as a continuation of “Interview With a Vampire”?
R: It’s not a continuation of “Interview With a Vampire,” really. I’ve done other songs [that touched on these topics], I’ve done a song called “B.I.B.L.E.” with a gospel that’s on Institutionalized [Volume 2]. I’m a philosopher. Probably, at the end of the day, I’m an urban philosopher. I’m always investigating how religion affects people, their belief system — be it atheist, Catholic, Protestant, Judaism, whatever people choose to believe — I’m always investigating those things and why they affect the world I live in so much. I’m always curious about that. I mean look at Sunnis and Shiites. They chop off each other’s heads and they’re supposed to believe in the same religion. They’re both Muslim and they kill kids over that. What drives the human psyche to say, “My god wears a beard and yours doesn’t, so I’m going to kill you for it”? That’s weird to me because I’ve stepped outside of religion, but it still drives the world, the culture, the politics of the world that I live in, so I’m always playing with those notions no matter what.
Like I say in “How To Kill God,” “I just ask the questions the preacher can’t answer,” which is why I left organized religion. I said, “OK, we’re Christians and Jews say Amen too and that’s Amun-Ra, the Egyptian god of sun, sun god, son of god, Jesus… Why don’t we just practice Egyptian Mysticism if we’re still denoting their god?” [My preacher] was like, “Fuck out of here, we don’t want to answer it.” And I was like, “Oh, well, I don’t need to be here.” So, yeah, I always play with those things. We know how similar human beings are. Why do we feel the need to specify between blacks and whites, and da-da-das and da-da-das? Because people need to feel they’re better than someone else. If you put twins on two sides of a lake, 50 years from now one’s going to say, “I’m the right-side laker and y’all suck over there,” and then go kill them, because people are divisive by nature.
More about: Apollo Brown, Ras Kass
