SEPTEMBER 2007/INTERVIEW/KOOL KEITH & KUTMASTA KURT

You’ve been touring Europe this summer and will be in Greece on the 22nd of September, what have been the stand-out moments?

(Keith) They’ve all been good. My fans are basically the same all around the world, I’ve got a cult following of people that make me feel at home no matter where I’m at. I could be in Australia, France, New York or Jersey. It’s just the same Kool Keith fans.


You’ve been back in the studio recently making the new Ultramagnetics album, what was it like getting back into the studio with them after all this time?

(Keith) It was cool but they haven’t been in the studio for a long time so it was cool but hard, we made some pretty good records and we liked it but people wanted us to have made a Critical Beatdown part 2. We didn’t want to do that though, we’ve changed, we’ve matured, we’re not as abrasive, the times have changed our voices have changed. We had fun doing the album and people need to look at it like that.


What for you were the stand-out tracks from the album?

(Keith) Late Nite Rumble’s good, it’s not a singles album though, it’s just all types of songs and people could pick the ones that they like best. We didn’t have a hit in mind when we made it it’s all for people to choose for themselves.


You’ve created a lot of different personas within your music over the years from Black Elvis to Dr Octagon, what was the inspiration for that?

(Keith) It was for the time but I’m getting out of that stuff now and I’m going back to the raw self of rhyming on raw beats, it’s not conceptual. People get caught up in that, but I’m going back to my b-boy essence, and the Bronx culture, a lot of people didn’t get a chance to experience that but I’m going back to that so the focus is on my rhyming not my image. I don’t care so much how I’m dressing now I’m just about the craft. I’m not letting the visual take over, back in the day a group got popular from their sound before you’d ever seen them but now it’s the other way round. I’d rather be heard first.


Who else are you listening to in hip-hop at the moment? Do you like the stuff coming out on Stone’s Throw?

(Keith) That stuff is still around, and will always be around but everybody’s got to find their own niche. I’m not trying to be like any body, everybody gotta take their own line. I gotta have a significant difference. People have a hard time understanding that we can’t all sound the same. I have to have some boundaries. It’s like this is what the media say we’ve gotta listen to, and a lot of places don’t have their own program - it’s like the whole world is synchronised now and I miss the variety. All the DJs own the same records around the world but there are a billion records out there. Everybody doesn’t dress the same so why play the same records all day, or the same video. People need some distinctive programming.


What do you think of the technological innovations in music in the last years?

(Keith) People don’t buy records, they don’t even buy cds, they’ve got a little gadget in their pocket that holds 9000 records in it and it’s taken all the fun out of the industry. I like to buy cds because of the art work, I like reading about the artist. Downloads aren’t even cool – it’s not like you’ve got the album where the artwork looks good in your cd case, the folder of cheap cds written on with magic marker don’t look good, it’s not even cool, you’re not even a total person.


Do you think that’s why a lot of artists and labels are pushing the live thing these days?

(Keith) Well even that’s getting really bad now, people come to shows and record the show on their phones and digital cameras, these little gadgets are taking away from a lot of experiences because they are destroying the global experience of music; after a while people are going to feel like they’ve seen stuff live because they’ve seen it on their computer. It’s obvious why people in the business are having problems.
Down south stuff still sells because down there they buy records, they don’t have computers down there yet they’re in a different time zone, they’re not like these cheap people who’ve downloaded it.


Do you still buy records then?

(Keith) Yeah I buy records, I buy cds, I’ve got everything from the past to the future and the present. I’ve got old stuff, new stuff, r’n’b stuff like Keith Sweat, Jodeci… I’m not like one of these people who’re like ‘Yeah I’ve downloaded Megadeth’s album and it’s in my car’.


Do you like Reggae?

(Keith) Yeah I listen to a lot of reggae, I like Beanie Man, Yellowman, Big Youth I like a lot of Jamaican dancehall, so much stuff is coming out of there.
I like the dancehall chants, and I like the innovation with the beats, they do a lot of futuristic things with the beats there. Jamaicans were also the first rappers, NY might have created the B Boy rappers and hip hop but the people who made the blueprint were the Jamaicans, New York brought the style and the image mainly.


You still live in the Bronx, what’s it like there now?

(Keith) I love the urban living, the south Bronx has come a long way with housing, development, cultural reconstruction; it’s a small city but it has so much stuff, you can buy anything you want, all the styles are here, other cities have the clothing but people don’t know how to wear it. We’ve got the Yankees, the baseball cap all that’s the Bronx – a lot of other cities didn’t know how to wear their baseball cap, copping it to the side is NY originally, our culture.


Did you ever write graffiti (guest question from Quality Not Quantity Productions)?

(Keith) No, I didn’t write graffiti but I used to go to block parties and dance, I was a dancer. I knew all the guys who were dancing.


Did you ever see Bambaataa back in the day?

(Keith) Yeah, I saw him at jams outside in the projects, all over the projects you’d hear the speakers from block to block, people would play in the park, people didn’t even use Technics back then, just old turntables with orange lights on the side. The Jamaicans were the first to jam outside in the park – Kool Herc brought that style to New York.


Can you comment on the word style what does it mean to you (guest question from Quality Not Quantity Productions)?

(Keith) Style means something crass, nobody can ‘be’ style, the rapper image came from New York the jewelry, the chains, the Cangol, the Cazal glasses, the Puma, the Adidas, the swagger of New York city, the cap turned to the side, it’s all New York.


(MOVING OVER TO KURT)
What kind of Hip Hop are you into these days?

(Kurt): There’s people doing new things in a way – Kanye West has his own different style with that sped up soul and his stuff is pretty funky sometimes, I sometimes like Dre’s production, or whoever’s producing for him I think it’s probably someone else. The Neptunes had some pretty funky beats but most of the underground guys are pretty standard, I don’t think there’s anyone doing something better than what I’m doing, no one’s set a new standard. I don’t think anyone’s doing anything like Ced Gee, Bombsquad, Marley Marl, Mantronix and even the 45 King, there’s nobody that came along in the last 15 years that’s done anything at that level.


What about J Dilla and his legacy?

(Kurt) It’s really sad, people are just exploiting the guy’s death, it’s bad enough to exploit someone when they are alive but when they are dead?
(Keith interjects) Yeah play my records when I’m alive, enjoy all my stuff when I’m alive.
(Kurt) Exactly don’t just become a Dilla fan now he’s dead. There’s a sickness in some fans, particular ones that like less commercial stuff who want to keep things for themselves, who stop liking things when they get better known, it’s like a fetish.
I don’t like small minded people and I think the rap audience has a small mind; they only want to hear one thing. I bet you’ve got rappers in Greece and I bet they’re good but I bet you’ve got haters saying people shouldn’t rap in Greek.
(Keith) – It should be like a sport, it should be competitive, like in basketball the players all bump each other hard on the court and elbow each other in the nose but at the end they all pat each other on the back.
(Kurt) – People take it too seriously
(Keith): Conscious rap is like a mutual way of rapping, people say they’re going to buy it but (to me) it lessens the value of rap, people want to hear competitive rappers saying competitive lines, you can’t have twenty groups all talking about being good, ‘hey let’s all go to school, let’s all hold hands’, it’s cool to have that for people that work everyday with a suit and tie on who want to make rap friendly but rap was never friendly from day one. Kool Herc used to go against Furious 5, that’s the bottom line, people have tried to advance rap to another genre that doesn’t exist. They took out the raw element, the competitive part, Rap is like wrestling: people go to arenas to see the Undertaker fight George the Animal. Everybody can’t be a preacher. I know people who ask ‘Is that good rap, is that conscious rap? I wanna know ‘cause I wanna buy good, clean rap’, there’s no such thing. All these kids on the street have got emotions I like that they release their emotions skillfully, everybody still don’t have to rap about ‘I got 18 machine guns and I’m murdering your brother tomorrow’, because that becomes a joke, you’re like a killer in the vocal booth and we don’t need too much of that either, but there’s another part where you can answer someone back cleverly, and they answer you cleverly.
It’s competitive, it’s like tennis, you’ve got Serena Williams and Venus Williams and they play other girls. You can’t play tennis by yourself that would not be tennis.


Who have stood the test of time since no one has grabbed you recently?

(Kurt): I didn’t say I didn’t like anything; I just don’t like small minded people... I think the rap audience has a small mind, they only want to hear one thing, the guy who only wants to hear underground hip hop is the same as the guy who only wants to hear any other single genre. When you get to travel around you see we’re all human beings, someone might like this food, or that, or whatever but it doesn’t make you any better than the next person.
(Keith): I thought the world was set up differently but it’s the same in Boston, it’s the same in Denver, same in LA, same in Amsterdam, same in Germany everywhere has a place where a pop artist performs, everywhere has a place where the underground people hang out, everywhere has a place where the middle artists go and everywhere has a place where Barbara Streisand will play, it’s not like someone can come out and play in the same venue as U2, this synchronization around the world is monotonous. You’ve got the people who go to the 3000 seat stadium to see Michael Jackson... it’s all formatted.
(Kurt): Occasionally you get something else though; we went on tour with the Red Hot Chili Peppers and they’re nothing like us so I was wondering why they wanted us to come on their tour, and it turns out that they’d had the Sex Styles cd and been listening to it on their previous tour and it was their fantasy to get us on their tour even though their fans might not have heard our stuff.


What’s your opinion on D styles? (Guest question from Quality Not Quantity Productions)

(Kurt) – he does his thing. He comes from a crew that nobody paid attention to in the late 80s I mean people like Q-bert, they couldn’t even get a gig, I was at their show the first time in New York and people were like ‘who are these guys?’ but by the end of the show they realised they had heard talent. It takes a while for people to catch on sometimes. There were really no Asian DJs before those guys, now every Asian kid wants to be a DJ.


The shift in music related technology has been significant in the past few years – how has that changed the actual music, is the medium the message in the end, especially in hip hop?

(Kurt) In the early 80s there were only a couple people even able to make tracks because they didn’t have the funding to go into the studio, an SP1200 cost over 2000 dollars in 1985, I think Ced Gee was one of the first people to get an SP12, but now everyone can buy a program or get a cracked program, for just 300 bucks you can buy Reason and make beats so in the 80s everyone was starved to hear something fresh and new, I’m not saying that those guys weren’t the most talented, but they were able to get the equipment first and pioneer a new sound, now it’s so accessible to everyone it would be hard to pioneer a new sound and get it recognized, the market’s flooded in a way, things are almost too accessible.
(Keith) There are about 50, 000 producers now, I’ll be reading a magazine and I’m like I’ve never heard of this guy, I’ve never heard of this guy, turn the page… I’ve never heard of this guy. Maybe someone’s just done a couple of tracks and they’re already getting in a magazine, but people like Marly Marl made thousands of tracks.
(Kurt): The other difference I’ve noticed from the earlier times of production is that producers used to usually be DJs whereas now they’re not always DJs and don’t have that history of DJing, and you can hear when a track hasn’t been produced by a DJ, it’s not so scientific it’s just very detectable especially for rappers. Regarding technology, everybody has got Reason now, everybody has got whatever program that the Neptunes have, the Neptunes are using the same thing as Joey in his basement... but the difference is not just about background in music and knowledge and history in music, but about how creative you can get and how you push the limits of your equipment or your program.
A lot of people would say what do the Neptunes use, they use Reason so I’m going get Reason (I’m not saying they do use Reason necessarily!) because I wanna sound like the Neptune – but that doesn’t necessarily make you like the Neptunes .. ..just because you’re using a program that they use it doesn’t mean you’ll sound like them, you could be using Fruity Loops and be making shit way hotter than they make! In my opinion it’s not the program or equipment that you have its how you use it, how you freak it, how you take advantage of it; when people ask what I use I don’t even tell them because what difference does it make? I choose to advance with technology and try new things I’m not afraid of that. There’s people out there that have good ideas but don’t know what they’re talking about, there’s also a school of thought that says you have to sample from original pressings, but the truth is the first people who were sampling old school records were doing it from Ultimate Breaks and Beats.


Do you go digging? Looking for beats?

(Kurt) Yeah I do, I always laugh when I go to people’s cities and they take me to record stores full of American records – I was in France and the guy said he was gonna take me to the best store and we got there and it was full of records I’ve already got!
(Keith) For me there’s 2 ways, there’s sampling and there’s making original records, rap is separated into two different things, Roger Troutman was a part of Hip Hop, now people are just bumping heads with samples, (you find one) and another group already used it, unless you’re finding your record from Kenya.
(Kurt): back in the 90s Pete Rock, Q Tip, Premier etc, all those guys used to all buy records at the same store- the Roosevelt in NY, and the guys selling the records had all the records marked up with ‘this has a beat on it’, ‘so and so sampled this’ etc... and they were doing this in the early 90s and selling them for like 200 bucks because they knew their clients were going to come and sample it and make serious money off it. It’s taken the sport out of digging as it’s become an exploited thing and the guys in the record shops are the ones trying to tell you what’s hot, so digging is sort of a joke now.
(Keith) You have to go to Jupiter to find a sound that’s different, people go to China and as far as Japan and find records that aren’t even out and hear funk bands in China instead of here... it’s not like if you’re looking for the Ohio Players – I mean who doesn’t have the Ohio players? That’s just part of collecting records. I don’t collect records but I still know the Stax collection, I know Freddie Hubbard, CTI all the common stuff that everybody’s probably got, it had to change you’ve got to go down to Brazil and find a record that no one’s heard.
(Kurt) – Everyone’s already doing that though, people have already gone down there and got all those records and put out compilations with that stuff.
(Keith) – So in this situation then you’ve got to go back to making your own stuff, you don’t lose points for that but in the hip hop world people think you’re cheating if you don’t use enough samples these days but it’s just as qualified. I don’t think anyone said anything when Slave were making original records or when Juice brought out ‘Catch a Groove’.
(Kurt): I’ve often incorporated more live and original music into my production.
(Keith): Yeah.