...:: a couple of weeks ago, emanon, dj houseshoes and illa j visit budapest and had a gig. i had the chance of talking to dj exile and aloe blacc of emanon fame.
JG: Could you tell a little bit about your background? How did you grow up, how did you meet each other?
Exile: I grew up in Orange County, California, I was doing hiphop on my own and I met up with Aloe in ’94, and I always wanted his boy on a mixtape of mine and he was always like, "nah, you should hook up with this MC" and it was Aloe. One day we met at Denise, I kicked a beatbox, he started rhyming and we been doing music ever since.
JG: Could you tell how and when you started Emanon and what the name stands for?
Exile: Emanon, first it was originally just a visual thing, you know, just a strange name but it had a visual meaning to it. Emanon stands for No Name if you read it backwards. It just kind of represents us, just being us. One of the meanings as far as in my eyes, or one of the meanings I like to use is, no name, its just really not about us, it’s just all about the music.
JG: The other day I was listening to your EP, Anon & On, and there is this song, What Can I Do. It sounds really personal, but at the same time, I think Aloe, you had a pretty strong message there, which does not necessarily stick to the regular. I mean it sounds like a song which cries for change, but I wouldn’t put it in the usual category of - if I can use that as a label – protest songs. Aloe could you elaborate a bit on that song?
Aloe: The song is about the frustration that I felt with the idea about grassroots movements. At the time a lot of my friends were joining the bandwagon of a lot of movements that seemed like effortless in a lot of ways. Cause it was more of lip service, a lot of talking without actions. It seemed like, everybody just sit around and do a lot of talking about what we want to do and how we want to change things and complain about the things that were as they were. And nobody was doing actually anything. So I just said fuck it, I personally would rather just do songs and live my life and do what I want to do, the way that I can and not talk about the changes I want to see. Instead if there ever going to be a change it’s just going to be me doing it. Not joining a group just so I can have a false hallucination of being in a group, because it’s not real. A lot of people seem like, they just want to get together, so they can have a fellowship and a community [where] they can get together to talk about change, but nobody is doing anything, so it just hurts. And it hurts to change things, you know what I mean? You can get fucked up, you can get hit by cops, thrown into jail or whatever. A lot of people are not serious about change. The song is like, you know, what can I do as one person in a group of many who just talk and talk and talk. What can I do to make anything change? So all I can do is change myself, so that’s all I’m going to worry about, myself. And if everybody worries about changing themselves than things could possibly get better.
JG: I wanto ask you about The Waiting Room, your debut album. What I really like about is that it feels like a whole. What I mean is, it seems that in hiphop these days the art of the full album has disappeared. Most albums are like a string of songs instead of one long player.
Exile: You know what’s funny is that a lot of the songs that were on the EP, Anon & On were supposed to be on the album. Then the EP ended up [being] just a bunch of songs which represented our skills and our mind at the time, it was a long time in the making and then we just put it out.
Aloe: We put it together as not just one song after the next, we wanted to make sure [that] there are interludes and transitions. Because when you listen to it, we wanted you to feel like you don’t want to stop; almost in a way that you can’t stop, because it’s like, when one song ends it just flows into the next one and it’s just that way, and by the end of the album it feels like it came too soon and you just want to start over. You know it’s just when you put together an album you should put together an entire piece of work, just like a song. You know when you put together a song, you don’t start putting together a song and then stop for the chorus and then start again for the verse and then stop, chorus. And an album is the same way, it’s an entire story, it’s a story in one piece. It’s not a sitcom, not "to be continued" tomorrow, it’s one project, it’s the art piece.
JG: So the album is one cohesive piece of work, however, you have this skit at the end of the song ’The world don’t sing no more’, where you put together a speech by George W. Bush, from snippets of his actual speeches, where among other things he says every country should beware and that the Bush administraiton will give four nuclear missiles to every children in America. It is pretty hilarious, but sounds quite real and scary at the same time.
Exile: As far as what Bush has been doing to the world, his lies to get things his way, we felt like we expose what he really is, and who better to say how he really is, than the President himself.
JG: Your solo album, Shine Through came out on Stonethrow Records, how did you hook up with them?
Aloe: I hooked up with them through Oh No. He’s been my main connection. We met while on tour throughout Europe in 2002 and when we came off the tour we kept working together, made some songs, and I eventually recorded an album with Oh No. Stonethrow heard the album and they liked the singing I was doing a lot on there. They asked me to do a single, on the soul tip, vocal tip. So I did the single and then eventually it evolved into an album.
JG: Was singing always in you? Did you make vocal songs before MCing or did that come later?
Aloe: You know I was always singing little songs. And I always did a few singy songs, even on the
early Emanon stuff. On Anon & On, there is Runaway, and on The Waiting Room, I did a lot of singing: Farewell, She Thinks, The World Don’t Sing No More, and I had some other songs I was singing on which we never released, but then for Shine Through, my solo, I really wanted to do the whole singing thing.
JG: I heard you are working on the follow-up to The Waiting Room.
Aloe: Yes even though we are just conceptualizing what’s it going to be. I have some things I want to do, Exile has some things, but we’ll start 100 % fresh.
JG: As I see your early songs and the EP were more straight hiphop, while the LP is more diverse, touching different genres. Will the new album go towards that direction?
Aloe: I think it’s going to be more like The Waiting Room, but at the same time it’s going to have a very direct and specific hiphop presence. While it’s going to have a good deed of hiphop presence, at the same time it’s going to be more aware of other genres.
JG: You been touring in Europe for a while now and a lot of American artists say that the European hiphop crowd is quite different than in the States. What’s your take on that?
Exile: In America we have our niche states, where we do well, we definitely have cities where they appreciate us the same, but I mean, we get sandwiches over here! (laughing)
Aloe: I don’t think it’s only hiphop, it’s the appreciation of life, it’s different [in Europe]. A lot of the countries we go through here, people are more politically active from an early age...
Exile: The radio and television is more prominent upon U.S. citizens, more than out here, and it really controls their taste and their artistic taste, whereas here you guys are more open, cause you allow a lot of crazy shit.
Aloe: I think people in the States are more influenced and controlled by the media and sedate because of it, they are very calm and not so active about life, more spectators than participators. But in Europe you find more participators than spectators.
JG: When I was in the States what I felt is that people are not really critical, they just take whatever is in front of them, they take everything by face value. They don’t really question things...
Aloe: That is true. But why it got that way, I don’t know. I guess people feel comfortable enough, feel life’s simple enough, so they don’t need to make changes. But there hasn’t been a big change since the 50s, 60s. Since the Civil Rights Movement. The problem now, well, I think there should be a big movement against the media, and against the socialization caused by media. There needs to be an entire movement, but it’s much more difficult, because now we are not dealing with governmental issues, but corporate issues, we are led by corporations.
Exile: Corporations are bigger than fucking government, I mean money is bigger than anything. Government is ain’t shit ’cause people are just giving in to the evils of money.
JG: But don’t you think that unfortunately hiphop is the same way now as opposed to its beginnings? What I mean is in the early days and even after that for a log time it was also critical, kind of in the outside looking in with a very critical eye. Do you think it will eventually get back to what it used to be in this sense?
Aloe: Yes, once it gets out of the hands of the industry. And I think it slowly gets back to that. Even though I don’t think its mandatory, though. I think we can find other topics. I think what is important is that within the hiphop community we are critical, our music doesn’t necessarily have to be. And have whatever critical dialog we have outside of the recordings, if possible. It doesn’t neccesarily have to be what hiphop is. It’s still the CNN or the news reporting of what’s going on in our community, but I think we can move pass that, we can get into other ideas and other topics.
JG: Let’s get back to your music, you said you’re conceptualizing the new album, do you have any idea when it’s going to come out?
Aloe: I’d like to have it out by September, but it depends on a lot of things. We might release Exile’s album first or Emanon first.
Exile: Yeah, I’m working on an album which will be all samples, the title's gonna be Radio. I’ll sample everything from the radio and tv, the drums, the base, the dude yelling in the back, everything! So go and check for that!
JG: Thank you for the interview!
Aloe & Exile: Thank You and Peace!
JG: Could you tell a little bit about your background? How did you grow up, how did you meet each other?
Exile: I grew up in Orange County, California, I was doing hiphop on my own and I met up with Aloe in ’94, and I always wanted his boy on a mixtape of mine and he was always like, "nah, you should hook up with this MC" and it was Aloe. One day we met at Denise, I kicked a beatbox, he started rhyming and we been doing music ever since.
JG: Could you tell how and when you started Emanon and what the name stands for?
Exile: Emanon, first it was originally just a visual thing, you know, just a strange name but it had a visual meaning to it. Emanon stands for No Name if you read it backwards. It just kind of represents us, just being us. One of the meanings as far as in my eyes, or one of the meanings I like to use is, no name, its just really not about us, it’s just all about the music.
JG: The other day I was listening to your EP, Anon & On, and there is this song, What Can I Do. It sounds really personal, but at the same time, I think Aloe, you had a pretty strong message there, which does not necessarily stick to the regular. I mean it sounds like a song which cries for change, but I wouldn’t put it in the usual category of - if I can use that as a label – protest songs. Aloe could you elaborate a bit on that song?
Aloe: The song is about the frustration that I felt with the idea about grassroots movements. At the time a lot of my friends were joining the bandwagon of a lot of movements that seemed like effortless in a lot of ways. Cause it was more of lip service, a lot of talking without actions. It seemed like, everybody just sit around and do a lot of talking about what we want to do and how we want to change things and complain about the things that were as they were. And nobody was doing actually anything. So I just said fuck it, I personally would rather just do songs and live my life and do what I want to do, the way that I can and not talk about the changes I want to see. Instead if there ever going to be a change it’s just going to be me doing it. Not joining a group just so I can have a false hallucination of being in a group, because it’s not real. A lot of people seem like, they just want to get together, so they can have a fellowship and a community [where] they can get together to talk about change, but nobody is doing anything, so it just hurts. And it hurts to change things, you know what I mean? You can get fucked up, you can get hit by cops, thrown into jail or whatever. A lot of people are not serious about change. The song is like, you know, what can I do as one person in a group of many who just talk and talk and talk. What can I do to make anything change? So all I can do is change myself, so that’s all I’m going to worry about, myself. And if everybody worries about changing themselves than things could possibly get better.
JG: I wanto ask you about The Waiting Room, your debut album. What I really like about is that it feels like a whole. What I mean is, it seems that in hiphop these days the art of the full album has disappeared. Most albums are like a string of songs instead of one long player.
Exile: You know what’s funny is that a lot of the songs that were on the EP, Anon & On were supposed to be on the album. Then the EP ended up [being] just a bunch of songs which represented our skills and our mind at the time, it was a long time in the making and then we just put it out.
Aloe: We put it together as not just one song after the next, we wanted to make sure [that] there are interludes and transitions. Because when you listen to it, we wanted you to feel like you don’t want to stop; almost in a way that you can’t stop, because it’s like, when one song ends it just flows into the next one and it’s just that way, and by the end of the album it feels like it came too soon and you just want to start over. You know it’s just when you put together an album you should put together an entire piece of work, just like a song. You know when you put together a song, you don’t start putting together a song and then stop for the chorus and then start again for the verse and then stop, chorus. And an album is the same way, it’s an entire story, it’s a story in one piece. It’s not a sitcom, not "to be continued" tomorrow, it’s one project, it’s the art piece.
JG: So the album is one cohesive piece of work, however, you have this skit at the end of the song ’The world don’t sing no more’, where you put together a speech by George W. Bush, from snippets of his actual speeches, where among other things he says every country should beware and that the Bush administraiton will give four nuclear missiles to every children in America. It is pretty hilarious, but sounds quite real and scary at the same time.
Exile: As far as what Bush has been doing to the world, his lies to get things his way, we felt like we expose what he really is, and who better to say how he really is, than the President himself.
JG: Your solo album, Shine Through came out on Stonethrow Records, how did you hook up with them?
Aloe: I hooked up with them through Oh No. He’s been my main connection. We met while on tour throughout Europe in 2002 and when we came off the tour we kept working together, made some songs, and I eventually recorded an album with Oh No. Stonethrow heard the album and they liked the singing I was doing a lot on there. They asked me to do a single, on the soul tip, vocal tip. So I did the single and then eventually it evolved into an album.
JG: Was singing always in you? Did you make vocal songs before MCing or did that come later?
Aloe: You know I was always singing little songs. And I always did a few singy songs, even on the
early Emanon stuff. On Anon & On, there is Runaway, and on The Waiting Room, I did a lot of singing: Farewell, She Thinks, The World Don’t Sing No More, and I had some other songs I was singing on which we never released, but then for Shine Through, my solo, I really wanted to do the whole singing thing.
JG: I heard you are working on the follow-up to The Waiting Room.
Aloe: Yes even though we are just conceptualizing what’s it going to be. I have some things I want to do, Exile has some things, but we’ll start 100 % fresh.
JG: As I see your early songs and the EP were more straight hiphop, while the LP is more diverse, touching different genres. Will the new album go towards that direction?
Aloe: I think it’s going to be more like The Waiting Room, but at the same time it’s going to have a very direct and specific hiphop presence. While it’s going to have a good deed of hiphop presence, at the same time it’s going to be more aware of other genres.
JG: You been touring in Europe for a while now and a lot of American artists say that the European hiphop crowd is quite different than in the States. What’s your take on that?
Exile: In America we have our niche states, where we do well, we definitely have cities where they appreciate us the same, but I mean, we get sandwiches over here! (laughing)
Aloe: I don’t think it’s only hiphop, it’s the appreciation of life, it’s different [in Europe]. A lot of the countries we go through here, people are more politically active from an early age...
Exile: The radio and television is more prominent upon U.S. citizens, more than out here, and it really controls their taste and their artistic taste, whereas here you guys are more open, cause you allow a lot of crazy shit.
Aloe: I think people in the States are more influenced and controlled by the media and sedate because of it, they are very calm and not so active about life, more spectators than participators. But in Europe you find more participators than spectators.
JG: When I was in the States what I felt is that people are not really critical, they just take whatever is in front of them, they take everything by face value. They don’t really question things...
Aloe: That is true. But why it got that way, I don’t know. I guess people feel comfortable enough, feel life’s simple enough, so they don’t need to make changes. But there hasn’t been a big change since the 50s, 60s. Since the Civil Rights Movement. The problem now, well, I think there should be a big movement against the media, and against the socialization caused by media. There needs to be an entire movement, but it’s much more difficult, because now we are not dealing with governmental issues, but corporate issues, we are led by corporations.
Exile: Corporations are bigger than fucking government, I mean money is bigger than anything. Government is ain’t shit ’cause people are just giving in to the evils of money.
JG: But don’t you think that unfortunately hiphop is the same way now as opposed to its beginnings? What I mean is in the early days and even after that for a log time it was also critical, kind of in the outside looking in with a very critical eye. Do you think it will eventually get back to what it used to be in this sense?
Aloe: Yes, once it gets out of the hands of the industry. And I think it slowly gets back to that. Even though I don’t think its mandatory, though. I think we can find other topics. I think what is important is that within the hiphop community we are critical, our music doesn’t necessarily have to be. And have whatever critical dialog we have outside of the recordings, if possible. It doesn’t neccesarily have to be what hiphop is. It’s still the CNN or the news reporting of what’s going on in our community, but I think we can move pass that, we can get into other ideas and other topics.
JG: Let’s get back to your music, you said you’re conceptualizing the new album, do you have any idea when it’s going to come out?
Aloe: I’d like to have it out by September, but it depends on a lot of things. We might release Exile’s album first or Emanon first.
Exile: Yeah, I’m working on an album which will be all samples, the title's gonna be Radio. I’ll sample everything from the radio and tv, the drums, the base, the dude yelling in the back, everything! So go and check for that!
JG: Thank you for the interview!
Aloe & Exile: Thank You and Peace!
..
↕
..
↕
the waiting room review @ pitchforkmedia.com
interview with emanon, houseshoes and illa j @ wordcup tv - look for chapter 3
No comments:
Post a Comment