Our second part of the series we were telling you about, part two delves into an interview with Aloe Blacc who amongst other things discusses his latest solo offering and the legacy Dilla has left.
Aloe Blacc Interview with Andres Reyes
For anyone that might not be familiar with you, can you give us a brief introduction?
Aloe Blacc: I started out in '95, met up with Exile. He was looking for an MC for a mixtape he was doing. He had a pretty ingenious idea on how to do mixtapes, on the A side Exile would mix the tape, with whatever was hot at the moment, and on the B side we would do basically an album, I would rap on his beats. So when we would go out and sell the tapes, at B Boy Summit or wherever we would go to sell the tapes, people would hear on one side music they were already familiar with and on the other side they would have another 45 minutes to listen to us, till the tape got back to the A side. That's a really good idea.
Aloe Blacc: That shit ended up really working for us. The music got out all over the world, from Europe to Japan to Australia, everywhere. Eventually one of our fans got in contact with us through a radio station we went to a lot and was just like, yo, here's a thousand bucks, I want to put out your first twelve inch. What??
Aloe Blacc: Yeah, just a fan. What twelve inch was this?
Aloe Blacc: PSI and Outside Looking In. What year was this again?
Aloe Blacc: This was in '96, and then we released it in '97, right when I graduated from High School in '97. Since then, that record made it all over the world, just kept putting out EP's and singles, did some work on compilations and stuff till ten years later we finally decided to actually drop an album. I guess you could say we had been dropping albums, every mixtape, like the three mixtapes we did, 45 minutes on one side was pretty much an album. It was all four-track, low quality shit that ultimately didn't make it too far. First mixtape was Stretch Marks, second was Imaginary Friends, the third one was Dawn Second Coming, and there might have been a fourth but I don't remember what it was. That was when I was in college and I wasn't really paying much attention.
Where did you attend college?
Aloe Blacc: USC. I wrestled freshman year. When I came from Jr. High, my older friends, friends that I was cool with, were on the wrestling team but they only wrestled for one year. So when I went to High School I had already done soccer, basketball, wasn't too much into baseball, didn't give a fuck about football, I wasn't already into sports at all, nothing that had to do with teams because every team that I was ever on lost. I realized that whatever I do by myself I do really well and I'd win. I ended up wrestling and freshman year I was MVP so I was like, fuck it, I did what I needed to do here, and just focused on academics after that.
Word, so how do you look back on The Waiting Room now?
Aloe Blacc: I look at it like a stepping-stone. The Waiting Room was long awaited; it took us a while to get to a point where we felt comfortable with our music and our development that we could actually put out an album. The way I look at it now is like that shit is ancient history, leagues and leagues beyond that at this point in terms of our musical growth and our abilities to write song and write music and make Hip Hop something bigger than what it was when we did The Waiting Room. Latest solo thing, musically stands out. Conscious?
Aloe Blacc: It just wasn't something I could do with Emanon because Exile was making the beats for Emanon and I was just writing the verbal landscape on top of the music. But when I do my solo shit it's a lot more freedom because I make whatever I want, however I want and Stones Throw's a good label because they give me that freedom to release whatever I want. The music that came out in Shine Through was stuff that I'd been experimenting for a while. Fucking with the piano and guitar, acapella shit, stuff that never came out, I kept it to myself. Alotta shit Exile hasn't even heard. I have hundreds of songs that nobody's heard but me, but I just keep them because it's kinda like an artist that doodles on his little black book or whatever, or doodles on little pieces of paper that get thrown away except mine don't get thrown away, I keep them. Reservations, eclectic-
Aloe Blacc: Nah, I wasn't but everyone around me was.
Laughs
Aloe Blacc: Exile was trippin, Blu was talking about, you should just rap don't do that, everybody was trippin, but I never listen to anyone's opinion anyways, I don't give a fuck. Everybody's got an opinion and no one man's opinion is more valid than another. Everyone's gonna have something to say. Honestly what it comes down to is just going with your gut, if you feel like it's right then you do it. I know what I want out of life and I know where I'm going. This album is a direct result of me making that planning, making that step. I want the marketplace to know that I'm a songwriter, a producer, a lyricist and I want other artists to recognize that. Not only my fans, but other artists so that way I can start writingI don't want be an artist on stage forever, traveling Europe, sucking in fuckin' second-hand smoke all day
Laughs
Aloe Blacc: I wanna stay home and write the songs so somebody else
(House Shoes cuts in interview): MY NAME IS HOUSE SHOES AND I SMOKE CIGARETTES, MOTHERFUCKER, DEAL WITH IT!
So you wouldn't want to be defined as just a hip hop artist, you would want to be an artists period?
Aloe Blacc: Just a musician, I don't mind being defined as a hip hop artist, that's the root, that's where I came from. But before I got into Hip Hop heavily, I was learning symphonic music and orchestra music, playing the trumpet, classical shit. So it's not like it's my only influence. I don't mind it at all, because everything I do now is definitely informed from what I learned through hip hop; stage performance, song structure, all that.
Anything else musically?
Aloe Blacc: I would like to start adding more strings to my music, so I'm either gonna take my niece's violin and learn that shit, or just, I got a lot of musicians friends around me, just have someone come through and play that shit. I don't mind learning it myself though.
Do you learn instruments easily?
Aloe Blacc: It seems like yeah, but I don't practice enough to keep the chops up. Like I'll come up with a song idea, I'll go to the piano and I'll learn it, record it and then I'll forget it. I was just rehearsing with this band for this show I'm doing in Berlin, and I could tell they were playing one of my chords wrong and I went to the piano, I was like, fuck. It took me a while to figure out, to remember what it was that I played, but then when I did it I realized yeah, they were playing a wrong chord. Or when it comes to guitar, I'll just pick it up and fuck around and make something. The Spanish speaking part of your music, where does that come from? I'm guessing it comes from your background.
Aloe Blacc: Yea, my parents are from Panama, and basically my whole family. Everybody in my family is from Panama.
Were you born in Panama?
Aloe Blacc: I was born in the States. Grew up listening to all kinds of Latin music and Caribbean music because black Panamanians are a mixture of Jamaican, Barbadian, Dominican and they also learned Spanish when they came to Panama to work on the Canal. That's kinda my heritage. Having those influences and growing up listening to that music, makes me want to make it, you know what I mean, makes me want to experiment with it. And hopefully, what I really would like to do is figure out how to get the Latin swing of Salsa into Hip Hop and how to make it work really, really well. Because when I listen to Salsa, that shit is so vibrant, so beautiful.
Like even if you don't dance, it makes you want to dance.
Aloe Blacc: Yea, it makes you want to move, and I want to be able to introduce that, in someway connect it. I think I'll be able to, I just got to work at it, you know.
Flipping it to this tour, how has the tour been for you so far?
Aloe Blacc: The tour has been really, really good. It's good to be on tour with Houseshoes and Illa Jay and Exile and get some more bonding experience with some cats that, you know, I see them is LA, but I don't go out that often to be around, and there's the shit that I don't do that adds to bonding experience for other people, you know that I just cant get to, I don't go out to bars to drink, I don't smoke weed, I don't play videogames, you know what I'm saying. So there's a lot of shit that I just can't be out throwing down with people that I really want to. This is a good tour, aside from that, the shows have been great. You know, even when there's only a handful of people, you still just gotta give them the show. They came through to see this, and they came through to learn about Dilla, and they came through to reminisce and celebrate Dilla.
That was my very next question, the tour is called J Dilla Changed My Life. What's the purpose of the tour?
Aloe Blacc: The purpose of the tour is to be sure that his memory lives forever. That people learn about him, that people remember him, and get to see and feel a live show. Because, you know, a lot of folks never got to see a live show. And the only person that I can see fit to do that would be Illa Jay. I was chilln' with the cats at House Shoes' place, we did, I guess it was a listening party for Ruff Draft, and Illa was on the MPC just making beats and I went up to him and was like 'Yo what do you think about going to Europe, on a tour and doing some of your brother's songs'. And he was cool with it, and I asked House Shoes and he was cool. So, I was already planning to come to Europe, and I just wanted to maybe build a tour around it. That's what ended up happening.
When the name Dilla comes up, what comes to your mind?
Aloe Blacc: From a dancers perspective, Dilla created music that made me and all of my homies move in a different way on the dance floor. In LA, we had this club called Unity, and it was popping through the 90's. It was the dopest Hip Hop venue you could go to, seeing Mobb Deep, Xzibit, Nas, Biggie Smalls was there, Wu-Tang, anybody you could see, we saw for 5 to 12 dollars at Unity in LA. And the music, I could tell, there was a point in time where the music started to gradually get to a point where like all of us really, like the dancers, the heads that really could bust, we would wait for a certain sound, a certain type of beat. And I started realizing over the years that it ended up being like Dilla shit that we'd wait for. We let all the wack toys just have the circle, but then there were certain beats that make you dance better, make you look better, we were usually waiting for Dilla. That was the first thing, that I think what it was, that changed my life. The next point was in terms of how he made the music, of how he created the music, you know, and how it sounded. That shit was just ridiculous, and totally gave me an appreciation for production, you know what I'm saying. I really started to get more heavily into production after listening to Dilla music.
Really quick, your top 5 Dilla beats?
Aloe Blacc: My top 5?
I mean, I don't know if you could pick 5
Aloe Blacc: Nah, I could probably pick 5, a lot of them would proably be on, ah shit, so ok, so for Fantastic, we're talking Players, on Welcome 2 Detriot we're talking, Give It Up, on Donuts we're talking, I don't even know what it's called, what's the Dionne Warwick sample Shoes? Stop, and the De La shit, Stakes Is High, that song is ridiculous.
Also, is there another Emanon album?
Aloe Blacc: Exile and I are trying to plan it out right now. I'm coming up with, I don't feel like making a Hip Hop or Rap album the way we did before. I don't feel like doing it, following the same rudimentary, systematic way for here's a beat, write a rhyme, make a hook, you know. I kinda want to organize this new album a completely different way from the get go to direct the way that I write. I've been talking to Exile about it, he's kinda iffy about it, but I usually get my way.
So you like more of less of the formulaic type stuff?
Aloe Blacc: Less formulaic, that's right, definitely.
Yea, I think it's obvious from your music.
Aloe Blacc: Definitely. I mean, if you listen to the new, what is it that I put out, Happy Now, the Chrome Children something.
Oh, The Chrome Children album joint.
Aloe Blacc: Yea, you listen to this shit and the structure is completely different now. I don't follow any particular kinda structure. I used to be the kinda guy that would always write a real catchy hook, and I don't feel like writing catching hooks anymore. I feel like there's something else that can be catchy about the song, but doesn't have to be this repetitive ass hook. So its just different things that I'm gonna be doing, and hopefully it will translate well with the audience.
Cool, that's pretty much all I really had planned. Is there anything else you want to say before we cut it?
Aloe Blacc: Buy every Dilla product that you don't have, go get it. Every dollar that you can spend on Dilla, spend it.
That's a good outgoing statement. Cool, thanks a lot for the interview, thanks a lot for everything.