Jay Electronica – Exhibit C

Fashawn – Boy Meets World

Mos Def – Ecstatic

Flying Lotus – Los Angeles

Blame One – Days Chasing Days

Dam-Funk – Toeachizown

Slum Village – Villa Manifesto EP

Exile – Radio

Ras G – Ghetto Sci-Fi

 J Dilla – Jay Stay Paid

-Exile

Download: “Happy Birthday, Flying Lotus!” Jam Session

L.A. visionary Flying Lotus just had a birthday, and in the true spirit of birthdays, ArtDontSleep delivers a gift in his honor to the world: the “Happy Birthday Flying Lotus!” jam session featuring Lotus, Exile, Shafiq Husayn, Computer Jay and many more. Download or listen above and more info below! (Also if you didn’t hear—Daddy Kev confirms that mixing on the new Lotus LP has already commenced!)

Flying Lotus’s birthday recently passed. In celebration of another year and many more to come, ArtDontSleep put together another heavy impromptu jam session in the Echo Park area of Los Angeles.

This 30 minute take from the jam session features some heavy hitter producers and musicians, including Flying Lotus himself, Exile, Shafiq Husayn (SA-RA), Stephen Thundercat Bruner (Erykah Badu, SA-RA, etc), Miguel Atwood-Ferguson (Suite for Ma Dukes) Computer Jay, and many others.

From all these musicians to you, enjoy the joint entitled “Happy Birthday, Flying Lotus.”

Credits:
ArtDontsSeep presents: Echo Park Jam Sessions

Track Title: “Happy Birthday, Flying Lotus”

Featuring:
Flying Lotus
Exile
Shafiq husayn
Stephen Thundercat Bruner
Miguel Atwood-Ferguson
Computer Jay
Isaac Smith
Jim Lang
Alla Koi
Andres Renteria
Matthew David

Recorded by: Benjamin Tierney and Jim Lang
Recorded at: Knob World

Mixed by: Jose Jurado

Absolutely paralyzing work from photographer Shaun Bloodworth—a year’s worth of portraits of Low End Theory regulars and live gigs. Flying Lotus, Daddy Kev, Exile, Daedelus, Gaslamp Killer, Ras G, Samiyam, Dam-Funk and more. Perfect photos that will arouse your hometown pride! Thanks for the folks at Brainfeeder for the tip!

Download: Johnson and Jonson “Radical 2″

(from Johnson and Jonson Instrumentals out Aug. 4 on iTunes)

Rapper Blu and producer Mainframe released their Johnson and Jonson album (also featuring Gaslamp Killer, Exile, Co$$, Gonja Sufi and more) last year and will release the instrumentals—as well as new instrumentals—next week on iTunes. This is one of three never-released tracks!

—Sarah Bennett

Download: Blank Blue “All The Shallow Deep”

(from Western Water Music 2 on Ubiquity)

This is the last of our archival re-releases in honor of our first SXSW showcase tonight and it’s appropriate that it goes to Blank Blue, whose founders Nobody and Niki Randa were once both workers at Long Beach record store Fingerprints and who have the kind of collections professors ask permission to photograph. This interview is from Vol. 2 No. 19 and was conducted between Sunken City and the Belmont Brewing Co. by Chris Ziegler.

Didn’t you very first start out as a rapper?
Elvin Estela (producer/various instruments/samples): Yes, there is me rapping on a cassette that came out in high school.
Do you remember any of it?
E: No.
Yes, you do.
E: I do, but I’m not gonna say them. I rap all the time when I’m being stupid—it’s all Ghostface style but hipster quotes.
Niki Randa (vocals/lyrics): You were about to do it—I felt the censor go off.
E: If you get me drunk enough, I’ll record some shit. I haven’t done it yet. But it’s gonna be the most awesome well-informed lyrics you ever heard, delivered in the most awesome Ghostface style ever.
How will it be well-informed?
E: A lot of rap is about the same shit—but there’s a whole lot of other things. My dream is to see a girl—I’m married, so this is hypothetical!—and rap about how her boyfriend’s lame because he doesn’t know these bands, so I’ll rap about all these bands I could show her. Like how once I’d play her a Can song, she’d never go back to her man.
What happened the night Project Blowed got raided?
E: That was in 1996—it was just weird. We would always be there every Thursday night in South Central, just hanging out, but one night for some reason the police came. Like a ton of fucking police. I was 19—I was with Omid and my good friend Dusk—rest in peace—and they came in and told us it was an unlawful assembly. It was fucked up! We were trying to plead with them and eventually it became a crazy stand-off—Aceyalone was up in the cops’ faces screaming at them! The cops pushed us back and next door there was a jazz café called Fifth Street Dick’s, and all the elders would play chess in front of the café, so they pushed us up into them on the sidewalk. I saw Medusa get hit by one of the cops and it turned into a full-on riot! All this bullshit! We went back next week and had a peaceful exit and the cops came back again and shut us down.
How many riots have you been in?
E: Just that one. Oh, wait, I was at the Venice B-Boy Summit. That was unreal.
Do you have any tips on running from the cops?
N: Don’t wear high heels.
How does Blank Blue fit into your discography?
E: It’s still my sound but I want it to sound like an album—with the guest vocalists, I like the idea but, it doesn’t sound uni-thematic. Having one theme—it’s something I never had before.
N: We’ve been kind of uni-brain since the get-go.
E: Sometimes I’ll have an idea and I’ll show her, and it’ll come out ten times better than I can even explain.
How did you find out Niki could sing? Did you hear her singing in the back room at Fingerprints?
N: He’s always singing in the back room at Fingerprints!
E: I just knew—I don’t know why we never worked on music together. I’m always nervous to show people new music—and I think she was probably really nervous to start working—but it came really naturally.
N: It’s a concept record—I kind of had direction.
E: It’s a record about the big earthquake that eventually sinks California into the ocean—the West Coast apocalypse, but there’s a really awesome outcome. We have to release the record so people know what happens. It’s like ‘1983… (A Merman I Should Turn To Be)’ but as an album.
Is this earthquake in 2012?
E: I don’t know, but I think it happens on a Sunday.
Do you think Pacific Drift left any kind of legacy?
E: To me, that album flopped when it came out! It was such a weird time. But maybe a lot of kids who didn’t know the Zombies or the West Coast Pop Art Ensemble or even the Monkees got to hear those songs.
Who is your favorite Monkee?
N: I danced with Davy Jones once.
Was he polite?
N: He was very nice.
E: Mine is Mickey Dolenz. He has the best high voice and a sweet hair-do. It’s both straight and curly!
How is the Blank Blue album a California album?
E: All of it—I think everything I do is very California. You know what I mean? How we live is how we listen. Stoned? I don’t know if stoned means necessarily high on pot all the time, but it’s a little murky, a little slow… that’s how music out here sounds. The world is not really mellow and slow now—that’s why people like New York—but soon they’ll come back to us.
N: There’s an underlying dark sentiment in music from California.
E: Subtly heavy.
N: Not necessarily dark—
E: Not gothy or satanic—it’s heavy-hearted. Singing with a heavy heart.
Where did that start?
E: It’s just the time right now. It’s a heavy-hearted time.
How do you think about music differently now than you did when you first started writing?
E: Now is the only time I understand what I’m doing. Literally before I just put two and two together—like ‘that kind of works!’ Now if I have an idea, I can express it musically. Before I didn’t have that.
How did you learn?
E: Just playing guitar and really trying to figure out why I liked the songs I like.
Why do you like the songs you like?
N: I like dissonant harmonies and complicated rhythms.
Can, basically?
E: Beat-y but pretty.
N: Stuff that gets us through a six-hour shift at Fingerprints.
E: The field is wide open. All the kids grew up listening to hip-hop—the bands grew up on the same records. Even the bands on Pitchfork that are more indie-rock oriented—almost everyone listened to rap when they were younger, and it’s subconsciously coming through all the music. Gnarls Barkley or anything by Dungen—it’s just a little more heavy and beat-centric.
N: There are less rules.
How else are bands different now?
E: Now you have technology that you can abuse. When I interviewed David Axelrod, he was saying you had to record the record as you heard it live, and each one had to play the part perfectly, and if you wanted an effect, you had to effect it perfectly. And now a sound is just a sound you can fuck with. That’s why records are sounding weirder and weirder—you can’t fight it anymore.
What do you miss the most?
E: The analog sound of the records. The fact they mastered music to come out on vinyl—I really think music is surviving on vinyl, and that’s how it should be! What else goes with the times? If there’s no music programs in schools, how are kids gonna learn to play music when they’re 18? When I interview old timers, I understand—we’re all hacks! But we didn’t come up the same. In the ‘40s and ‘50s, music was in the schools—but now it’s slowly changing. Younger kids understand how music can be an expression of self and a way to get out of a situation. But maybe you have to be serious and proficient about it.
What does it mean that your roots will always be in L.A. hip-hop?
E: The way I listen to music—though it’s changing now, it started my passion to keep listening to music. It was inherently different and left of center and adventurous, and I still look for those same sort of qualities in music, whether it’s old or new. There’s something about Freestyle Fellowship when you’re a young kid—it sounds like the most bizarre alien thing, and I still want to make and hear things like that.
Niki, where are your roots?
N: I was raised in choir, so for me I’ve always used my voice to compliment someone else’s project—singing harmonies or back-up.
What’s the hardest thing for you to listen to in a song?
N: I hate shitty words.
E: There’s something about the singer-songwriter genre—hasn’t this song been written about 55 million times? Yeah, but it still sells.
What lessons should people learn?
E: The hardest thing is to not just continue on but to do something different—to build on what you just did, because if you rein in some fans, you wanna please the same people. But as artists, you want to do things differently.
N: There’s still simple music that sounds pretty—but we’re over-saturated with music.
E: We’ve worked at a record store for six or seven years. When we go home, we’re getting out all the bad shit!
N: I can’t shop if there’s a bad soundtrack—I lose it!
What’s the best thing a customer ever asked?
N: ‘How does your alphabet go?’
Isn’t there only one answer to that?
N: Yeah, thank you. He was wearing a giant shirt that said ‘PORK’ on it.
What did you recommend?
N: Start at ‘A’ and wrap around to ‘Z.’

BLU AND EXILE WITH BUSDRIVER, BLANK BLUE, THE HENRY CLAY PEOPLE, VERY BE CAREFUL AND CASTLEDOOR ON THU., MAR. 19, AT THE INDEPENDENT, 501 N. I-35, AUSTIN. 8 PM / BADGED EVENT / 21+. LARECORD.COM.

Download: Busdriver “Less Yes’s, More No’s”

(from RoadkillOvercoat on Epitaph)

This is one of the most ancient interviews actually online here at L.A. RECORD—Busdriver from our 14th issue ever way back in 2005. He was absolutely a good sport at the photo shoot and he will be playing our SXSW showcase tonight at the Independent with Blu, the Henry Clay People, Blank Blue, Castledoor and Very Be Careful. This interview brought in just under deadline by Chris Ziegler.

Do you really sell more records in France?
I’m in France at this moment actually, eating crepes and burning American flags.
Which Ordre des Arts et des Lettres recipient do you relate to more: Jerry Lewis or Ornette Coleman?
The French are good to me and for this I am very thankful. I feel like an expatriate jazzman being fawned over and objectified by art aficionados. It’s great. I’ve become a negroid Jerry Lewis in the process, as embarrassing as that is.
What is the political climate like in France right now? How do people feel about the riots?
The French embrace the right to strike and riot. They act out a freedom here that is unparalleled in the states; our own convictions are muted because we are too complacent to protest what denies us our basic rights. Especially minorities, even now when we should be. But not in France: some insensitive comments made by a high-ranking politico is more than enough reason to torch this motherfucker.
What were your own expatriate years in France like? Were they as life-changing as Europe is supposed to be?
I was conceiving a child the whole time. That pretty much sums up my experience in Paris.
What kind of kid were you growing up? Did that ‘wormholes’ chorus come from a sci-fi background? Or maybe you just keep up on physics?
I aspire to be a hotch-potch of random factoids and terms. Most of my rhymes are fueled by this fact. The ‘wormholes’ chorus is rooted in my understated misunderstanding of existentialism. But I read a lot of comics as a kid as well.
What was it like going to the Good Life when you were so young? How did you get to know everyone there?
My best friend at the time lead me down to ‘Life one evening in late 1992. I didn’t really know what to expect—I had heard about Microphone Mike and strange tales of interpretive dancing in accord with freestyle rapping by the enigmatic Abstract Tribe Unique. But I had no idea what to expect. When I finally got to lay my eyes on these revered LA rap crews, I went slack-jawed. The talent level at that place surpassed any concept that I had of hip-hop. And yet it all seemed so intuitive and soulful. On my first night I think I saw Sesquibidilian, who rhymed in Spanish—backward—and Charlie Tunafish (J5) and maybe ATU. I never was the same again. My feeble efforts got me the opportunity to be adopted by the CVE—Good Life OGs—camp. I became one of their protegès, so to speak. I’ve been down with the Afterlife—CVE, Hip-Hop Kclan, Of Mexican Descent, etc.—ever since.
Is there anyone from that scene who sort of dropped out that you’d like to see performing again?
Yes. T-Spoon Iodine, Hymnal, Figures of Speech, Funky Trend—the list goes on and on.
What is the Corn Gangg and when might it be coming back to LA? And is there going to be a Corn Gangg album?
You already know more about the Corn Gangg than I do. The group is basically the brainchild of Nick and Jamie of the Islands—formerly from the Unicorns—and Subtitle. I have little to do with it. I just show up occasionally, rap, and hope that I don’t dishearten any hardcore pre-teen Unicorn fans. All our performances have been pretty much improv. Nick and Jamie craft loose templates for songs, Gino—Subtitle—manifests a silly hook from out of the darkness and then… kaos. I can’t promise much more than that in the future.
What local hip-hop/rock ‘n’ roll team-ups would you like to see? Blackbird and the Rolling Blackouts? 2MEX and the Alleged Gunmen?
2MEX and Ikey Owens—the keyboard player from Mars Volta—are finishing up an album. I think that they’re calling themselves the Look Daggers. Team-ups is what’s cracking right now. Get hip, people!
And do you consider yourself to have an AM radio- announcer voice?
I’m now looking for a job at Adult Swim because of this question.

BLU AND EXILE WITH BUSDRIVER, BLANK BLUE, THE HENRY CLAY PEOPLE, VERY BE CAREFUL AND CASTLEDOOR ON THU., MAR. 19, AT THE INDEPENDENT, 501 N. I-35, AUSTIN. 8 PM / BADGED EVENT / 21+. LARECORD.COM.

Download: Henry Clay People “Andy Sings!”

We are reposting this interview with the Henry Clay People (from Vol. 2 No. 44 back in December 2007) because they’re also playing our SXSW showcase tomorrow with Blu, Busdriver and more. They were interviewed here by Chris Ziegler between their two full-lengths.

Is it true you used to be named after something the Zodiac killer wrote?
Andy Siara (guitar/vocals): How did you know that?
Joey Siara (guitar/vocals): Yes, that’s true, but we’re not that dark of a band.
A: That was a long time ago—we were basically a party band, and we wore mustaches and leisure suits and had whole personas. But that ended three-and-a-half years ago.
What specific incident stopped you?
J: We were sick of gluing mustaches to our faces. We had to put spirit gum on and that stuff sucks—the next day you have this dirt ‘stache, and that really wasn’t worth it anymore. We’d play a show and there would be like five kids, and we’d realized we dressed all up for five kids. So we realized we might as well cut the dressing up.
What was the last time you all dressed up together?
J: Halloween.
A: We were the Ronald Reagan People.
Noah Green (bass/vocals): We played in full masks the entire set—all Reagan masks and Eric was Gorbachev—there’s a video of us online.
A: Of us covering Neil Young.
N: We wanted a Cold War theme night for Halloween.
What happened when you, Colin Stewart and Howard Bilerman were all in a room together for the first time?
A: We all shit our pants at the same time.
What kind of sound did it make?
A: A high-pitched squirting sound.
Which you recorded to tape.
J: Howard wouldn’t have it any other way.
N: We were all playing a game of Scrabble at the time, and we were all sitting in a room up at Jackpot! in Portland—and then Larry Crane [from Tape Op] came by, and they all hadn’t met before.
So you were chaperoning them.
N: We facilitated them being together. It was pretty crazy. There’s a picture floating around of us playing Scrabble, and the Scrabble letters end up saying OH WOW, and all three of them are around. We were kind of starstruck, I guess.
J: It was an awkward situation. This L.A. band from nowhere with three guys who all know what they’re doing, and they pretty much all talked for the first two hours they met.
A: On our time.
J: And we existed only in a little Scrabble game off in the corner while these guys were talking. The first few days were kind of nerve-wracking but the third day Howard took us all out to dinner and broke the ice. He bought us a nice expensive dinner. And we enjoyed each other’s company.
What records did you bring them to show the kind of ideas you had? How did you prepare?
J: We probably should have done more. I think we had the expectation that, ‘Alright, we’ve got these two guys working—obviously anything they do is gonna be a big-ass production because that’s what they’re there for.’ But they really are indie-rock purists. They’re like, ‘Let’s have you set up and play live, and what you are is what you are.’ That’s different in my mind than I thought it would be, but I think we learned a lot, and we’ve stuck to that ethic. And when we recorded—we’re recording right now, and that’s actually pretty much done—and we wanna keep that live-band-in-the-room kind of ethic. And that’s from those guys. I’ll give them that—even though they were terrifying at the beginning.
What did you think when you first heard your final playback?
A: ‘Wow, we just wasted a lot of money!’
Did you say that out loud?
J: Actually we were on a car ride with Colin Stewart, and we basically told him we had zero dollars left, and he felt really bad. He was like, ‘Aw, man, I’m sorry.’ It was this dark moment, like, ‘Yeah, these guys went a long way for this indie rock record…’
This is heartbreaking!
J: Well, we get one vacation out of the year, and so it was well-spent dicking around in Portland and Montreal, hanging with cool people in cool cities.
N: We’re still really happy how it came out—I think the experience of working with them, which really kind of helped us gell as a band—that was a great experience.
Were you really so broke you were fighting over the last $1.50 slice of pizza?
A: You really did your research. Mad props!
J: There was an incident—at a little pizza parlor in Montreal—
You were fighting over $1.50 Canadian? That’s even sadder.
A: It’d be different this year, though!
J: We didn’t have a place to stay the last day—we were staying at the studio but they had a band, and we were walking around Montreal and we bought a loaf of French bread for $1.25. And we went to the park and ate the loaf of French bread, and there was a little festival in the park, and Noah started playing hacky sack with stoner dudes. And that’s how we filled the day. And at the end of the day, we had pizza and we seriously got in a huge verbal battle over who owed who a buck-fifty Canadian.
N: I think it was my fault. I wound up owing the dollar-fifty.
J: And then we had to stop talking. Total silence. And the guy who was our manager-slash-helping pay for the record—who was a really straight-arrow nice boy scout type—he lost it, and started laughing hysterically to the point where he was crying—because he spent more money than any of us—and I think he realized what he’d done.
N: It was an amazingly cathartic moment—he was crying but laughing hysterically, and everyone realized the insanity of the situation, and we couldn’t stop laughing.
A: And we got home from that trip—and we don’t talk to him much anymore.
N: I think we broke him.
So your record destroyed a few souls.
A: It made our souls better. I think it brought us closer. We learned a lot. Jeff the manager—it destroyed his soul for sure. But it made ours better.
Have you ever heard the term ‘at what price success’?
J: Yes.
Joey, you were a history major—how does your senior thesis relate to the Henry Clay People?
J: My senior thesis was on French and U.S. relations in the ‘60s—a cliché college thesis for a history major. I feel like our older stuff—there’s a lot of historical references sprinkled through. I’ve kind of given up on that.
On history?
J: I totally gave up on history. I think there’s a fascination with writing about something in the past that has nothing to do with you personally, but is still about people at large—but at the same time, the things I like about rock ‘n’ roll are a little more immediate. More personal than I could make something historical.
What about ‘The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald’?
J: Someone else can do it. And the Band has ‘The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.’ But I’d probably choose the other side of the Mason-Dixon line.
What’s your favorite thing to write about?
J: The common thread of our recent stuff is about being poor—something at least for me and Andy and Noah, and I don’t know—Eric, you still there?
Eric Scott (drums): Yeah, I can relate to being poor. Most definitely.
J: Going from historical references all tongue-in-cheek and then having no money—like barely scraping by paying rent—that’s a pretty real thing, and the slap in the face of that kind of reality allows for more honesty. The first song that’s gonna be on the next record says, ‘We’re working part-time all the time.’ I worked two part-time jobs basically for the last two years, and I don’t think you can get much more real and pathetic than that.
Do you have any penny-saving tips?
J: I’m big on finding good deals on Craigslist and flipping it—like on that house show.
A: Trader Joe’s—that’s a penny-saving tip from me.
N: I think pilfering my record collection for eBay is mine.
How connected do you feel to the last record now? It seems like you’ve rocked things up a bit.
J: I’m pretty ADD about making music. Once we play a song two months or three months, I’m like, ‘Aw, we got something better.’ So it has been faster—a little more of a punk rock thing like we grew up listening to. I think the music is a lot more simple. 1-4-5 chords—nothing terribly complicated. I feel there was a tendency for us to show off a little bit and be like, ‘Yeah, we’re good at guitar.’ But there’s always somebody better at the technical thing, so it’s nice to play basic open chords. You can have a more fun performance when you do it.
Is this connected to Henry Clay’s leaner lives?
J: I think so! It’s punk rock, man!
Who does the band like more: John Fogerty or Bruce Springsteen?
N: Bruce Springsteen. Greetings From Asbury Park is still one of my favorite records. But Creedence is still pretty amazing.
J: It changes every day. I drive a van around and I pick up kids from after school, so Creedence and Springsteen are two bands kids can agree on. We basically go back and forth with the Boss and Creedence.
Those sound like awesome kids.
J: Well, some of them don’t like Nebraska-era Boss.
Aren’t they like ten?
J: Second to sixth grade. One kid knows every Creedence song, every Boss, every Beatles, every Stones—I put on Exile On Main Street and he knew it right away. I was like, ‘Wow, your dad trained you well.’ His dad is a corporate guy with a personalized plate like ‘BTLGUY.’
What’s the hardest you ever laughed at a live show?
A: For me, it was playing at the Scene, and the last song—a couple people knew the song—and it has a cool drum part at the end, and Joey invited everyone on stage. And they were beating the shit out of Eric’s drums, and throwing everything around, and Joey steps up on his amp and falls backward on stage and takes the P.A. monitor with him and lands on the hard concrete. He sprained his wrist or something—it was a pretty gnarly fifteen-foot fall.
And you were laughing and laughing…
J: I wasn’t laughing, man! My head hit the concrete and everybody looked all concerned, and my brother was laughing because he’s an asshole.
Through conflict comes productivity.
J: I guess.
Why is it true that you always need a Replacements album when you’re in a car?
J: Because nothing is better to drive to. Really nothing is better to drive to.
A: Rocket From The Crypt comes pretty close.
N: ‘Left Of The Dial’ is the most ultimate driving song.
But didn’t the Replacements themselves recommend having a Big Star album to drive to?
J: They did, and I have one of those in my car right now, too.

BLU AND EXILE WITH BUSDRIVER, BLANK BLUE, THE HENRY CLAY PEOPLE, VERY BE CAREFUL AND CASTLEDOOR ON THU., MAR. 19, AT THE INDEPENDENT, 501 N. I-35, AUSTIN. 8 PM / BADGED EVENT / 21+. LARECORD.COM.

Download: C.R.A.C. “Pop Dem Boyz”

(from The Piece Talks on Tres)

We’re reposting this interview (from Vol. 3 No. 2) because Blu—now signed to Warner, but interviewed here for the release of C.R.A.C.’s The Piece Talks with Ta’Raach—will be playing the L.A. RECORD showcase tomorrow in Austin and the Agency Group showcase tonight. This interview by Chris Ziegler over pasta and salad at Brite Spot.

What happened between the C.R.A.C. recording in 2005 and the C.R.A.C. release now?
Ta’Raach: The Fevers. Poverty. You sit down in front of that beat machine! I think you gotta have some money before you wanna sit and make beats. With no money, you sit there. When you have some money, you’re like, ‘I want more money!’ When you have no money, you’re like, ‘Fuck that shit! That’s how I got here to begin with.’
Blu, do you still ride that ten-speed?
Blu: That’s Exile’s. But I’m thinking about buying that off him.
When is the first episode of the C.R.A.C. cartoon?
B: It’s gonna be dope—actually, we appeared in a cartoon before.
T: Off the record.
An adult cartoon?
B: No, but it gave me the idea that we gotta do a cartoon. Then NBC wanted a reality show.
Is it true that tape only sold twenty copies?
T: Yeah, and I sold ten of them, and that’s it. Press a CD? We weren’t thinking about that. We pressed twenty tapes, and went to the club, and Dwele got ten and I got ten.
B: That’s dope—is that the one I got?
T: You ain’t got the tape. It’s what you been listening to, yeah, but you ain’t got the tape. Nobody has the tape.
When was the first time you were in the same room?
T: Because of Aloe fucking Blacc—you can quote me on that. That’s where we met. Blu was mad because I made him do his verse over. ‘Yeah, that’s dope. Say that verse.’ ‘I’m Blu, something-something…’ ‘Yeah, that’s cool—dope verse. Do it again with some more emotion.’ And he looked at me for a minute.
How did that evolve into your current level of rapport?
T: It started off like the way most relationships between men start—some bitches. We did that session and then interacted loosely. I’d be somewhere with a chick, and he’d be with a chick that knew her, and we’d interact. ‘Hey. Hi. You still doing songs? Yeah. Ok. Bye.’
B: Then I started doing my research. I used to flip his lines.
Where did the girls go?
T: They dropped out at the same point all bitches drop out: ‘This is too much! I got a life to live! No!’ And then you be like, ‘Damn, what happened to that guy Blu?’ And when did we start bumping into each other aside from that? We were like, ‘We should do a lock-in,’ and then it just happened.
B: I don’t even remember if we were trying to do an album. It was something—we filmed it all, but I haven’t watched the footage in some time.
T: I had little drinks in the fridge, snack food—they smashed that shit in the first two hours. It was supposed to last for a week. I ain’t no fucking vending machine! Show some respect—it’s gotta last. But the best part for me was on day six—I discovered how we could change the world with music. Or instead of feeling like we could, I felt like we had. With the music we recorded. We were trying to move strategically off what we’d already cut, instead of randomly—I stood back and listened and thought, ‘I have never heard anything like this ever!’ Nothing remotely similar. From there—we were just family. We walked in not knowing shit and walked out blood. Family. Friends. I talk shit to him and he laughs at me. That’s pretty much it.
B: And on day eight I went to Europe.
T: And I went to Pasadena.
Are you covering a Paul McCartney song?
B: I don’t know what that’s about.
T: I do. You don’t wanna talk about that? Where’s Paul McCartney live? I just don’t want him to be living in L.A. and think, ‘Oh, shit, I should sue for that.’
We’ll spell his name wrong online.
T: Paul McCarthany. But I really am a Paul McCartney fan. I started to get up on his music—everyone talks about the Beatles, but back to the producer copping the 99-cent records in the rock section… I was like, ‘Man, he’s got dope shit I’ve never heard anybody fuck with.’ He had open drums, so I chopped them up, and chopped up his singing and put that in there. That was quick—ten minutes! And that’s on an Erykah Badu record. But it kept sitting there—that song was so ill, so I stripped the singing and replayed the whole shit live, and Blu sang it off a dare, and off a dare I sang guitar on it. He’s like ‘I’ll do it if you do it,’ and I just did it. Kind of a one-taker.
Is that the quickest C.R.A.C. song?
T: Nah. ‘Buy Me Lunch.’
B: Everything on the spot.
T: That’s how you know it’s really good. Put this on record—
B: Unless I say no.
T: Blu had a show, and a porn star which he’s a fan of, and which is a fan of his shit, came to his show. Which happened to happen a few weeks after he decided he had a little lady friend. Life is kind of reflective—you see how ill you are by how life tests you. I’m not sure if I had a little lady and Adina Jewel comes out and is like, ‘So what’s up? We should exchange numbers—’
So what did you do?
B: Introduced her to my lady.
T: You can write ‘panic.’ That’s panic. I’d have been like, ‘Go get me a drink.’
B: I was getting her a drink. And my lady walked up.
T: First, you six-four with a big-ass afro. You can’t hide.
Did you ever pass that test?
T: I kind of did once. What’s that chick’s name? Cinnamon? I was at a Rich Medina show at the Conga Room—you know Cinnamon? Woo, she crazy! She had a breast job and it brought her down kind of a ways. Her face—it’s kind of a jalopy, like it used to be dope but it got crashed up. But I went to see Rich Medina and I didn’t realize she was there to see him—not to see him DJ but to SEE him. And I was shook! So I can relate. I never felt like a fan in my life, but right now I am the biggest fan on earth. So I did what fans do—I actually went and told her. ‘Excuse me…’ I couldn’t believe I was that close—she was looking in my eyes! Not in the camera on a screen—my eyes! I said, ‘Yo, I’m a big fan of what you do. You do your job. You’re good.’ I said it just like stumbling and fumbling, and got ready to turn away, and she was like, ‘Thank you!’ and had her hand on my shoulder. So I just had to stay. And I felt uncomfortable and got ready to leave again, and she was like, ‘Rick Medina is really good!’ And she kept saying stuff! ‘There’s an afterhours party—are you going?’ And I had to really determine—but Rich got done DJing and she ran and gave him a hug. I can’t compete with that! She followed him around the whole club. The next day I saw him walking down Melrose, and I walked down the street and like two stores down she was coming out. Ah! Caught you! He was there with her—the morning after! I still woulda did it, though.
What’s the last thing you missed out on you wish you hadn’t?
T: What do you regret? That’s a tough one.
B: I regret I didn’t get Co$$ on Below The Heavens. That’s about it.
T: I regret not making the bad-ass chick—not sticking with her when I was a kid, and I should have proposed. Well, I shouldn’t say that—somebody might read it. I regret—damn! I don’t believe in regrets.
What happened the last time you were hanging out in the Swiss Alps?
T: On the record? I was with Gilles Peterson, and I didn’t know who the fuck he was, and he was telling me about Medina Green—‘This is Mos Def’s new group—it’s really hot!’ The Montreaux Jazz Fest, and I was sitting there—‘You want a mimosa?’ ‘What’s in it?’ ‘Alcohol.’ ‘I don’t drink liquor.’ I was so clean! I just had orange juice, but in a champagne glass. He told me he discovered Incognito—but I was only into Premier, A Tribe Called Quest—he taught me a lot of shit right there at the table. I just built that relationship. You want a regret? I’m kind of a whore. Kind of. You know? A regret about something I didn’t do with a female?
B: I missed out on a threesome.
T: Tell that story—I forgot about that shit. I never fucked up that bad.
B: It was his fault.
T: Bullshit! He was in the room an hour and a half—why did nothing happen in an hour and a half? Not my fault. If you old enough to go to the club, you know after the club is the after party. There ain’t no warm up.
B: The after party is the hotel lobby. Raach was hosting, Waajeed was spinning, and these two girls in the audience were looking at me, and when the promoter walks away, they walk up. She told me that was her ex. So we went downstairs with home girl to her room and smoke and drank—I was already drunk—I was nervous because I didn’t know both of them were down, and I got really fucked up and finally started kissing them.
T: Check out the kissing part, man. Please check out the kissing part. ‘I was kissing these whores I met in Spain at the afterparty.’ Don’t say that, man! You wonder why your mind don’t work right!
B: She was sucking my fingers while I was kissing her—that’s when you knocked on the door!
T: Take out the kissing part—I have a group with him! Knocked on the door—that’s so lame!
B: He was like, ‘We got to take pictures right now,’ and I was like ‘Oh man, come on!’ and shit, and he was like ‘No.’ So I was like, ‘I’ll be back later. You gonna be here?’ They said yeah. And they wasn’t there. But I was all happy to take pictures. In all the pictures I got big-ass smiles. So wide. Niggas all tired. But I’m smiling.

BLU AND EXILE WITH BUSDRIVER, BLANK BLUE, THE HENRY CLAY PEOPLE, VERY BE CAREFUL AND CASTLEDOOR ON THU., MAR. 19, AT THE INDEPENDENT, 501 N. I-35, AUSTIN. 8 PM / BADGED EVENT / 21+. LARECORD.COM.

Download: Co$$ “Can’t I” (w. Exile)

(from Tomorrow’s Yesterday on Tres)

The West Coast has seemingly always been viewed as nothing more then the birthplace of “gangsta rap” and slept on as the hotbed of underground artists that it has been—Freestyle Fellowship, Hieroglyphics and Pharcyde come to mind. With juice from one of the best new underground MCs on the scene—Blu—Co$$ has dropped his new mixtape, 22 tracks that blend some of the best elements of both underground and gangsta—dope dirty beats and raw conscious rhymes. Announcing himself at the outset as a “young outerspacien,” all 22 tracks are soaked in purple kush that sends smoke rings traveling out through the speakers. “Homage” gives shoutouts to the West Coast underground legends, while “Undivine” addresses Co$$’ disbelief in organized religion (“Everything is tainted, ain’t it?”) and firm belief in spirituality. Throughout the 22 tracks, one thing is undeniably clear—like L.A., Co$$ is more sophisticated than outsiders might think, approachable on the surface, but revealing complexities to life in a city that contains so much beauty and strife in such an attractive package. Take a bite and you’ll taste something sweet—or lose your teeth.

—Alex Roman

Co$$’ Tomorrow’s Yesterday out now on Tres.