You might have seen Nobody holding down his residency at Low End Theory; failing that, you might have caught him playing in Blank Blue or Songodsuns. Nobody is a busy guy, so when he took time to tell us about his Top Ten of 2011, we were pretty excited, and so should you be! Behold-Nobody’s Top Ten of 2011 (plus one from a couple from ’09 and ’10 that he only recently became to appreciate) below!

THE WEEKND -HOUSE OF BALLOONS

This is hands down my favorite record of the year and “Wicked Games” is the song that I became obsessed with after being drawn in by “Comin’ Down.” The production on the record is perfect and dude sings about the most depraved stuff like an angel.

DRAKE-TAKE CARE

Worth it for “Crew Love” and “HYFR” alone!

JAMES BLAKE- JAMES BLAKE

I listened to this album non-stop for months when it came out especially Measurements and The Wilhelm Scream. It’s the perfect balance of dope beats and songwriting.

SUFJAN STEVENS-THE AGE OF ADZ

“Now That I’m Older” is some of the most warped psychedelia ever made. Since The Mars Volta didn’t make a new record this year, I had to settle for the awesome album 25 minute album closer Impossible Soul on repeat.

SONNYMOON-GOLDEN AGE

Although this album came out at the end of 2009, I didn’t really get to hear it until this year after spending the previous year playing their version of Drake’s Houstatlantavegas. This along with their cover of Beyonce’s Up and their one off single Blast Off is some of my favorite music of the year!

WIZ KHALIFA – KUSH AND ORANGE JUICE

Also late to this party with this coming out last year but damn I really loved listening to this record this past year. There are some annoying skits and things you have to delete off your playlist but The Kid Frankie is worth the download alone! I wanna’ hear Wiz rap over more boogie beats!!!

WEEKND-THURSDAY

The difficult second record. If I hadn’t listened to some of the best songs from this album, i.e. Rolling Stone and The Birds Part 1, over 400 times months before this came out I think I would have had a different listening experience.

NASTYNASTY – EVERYTHING HE’S PUT OUT!!

Everything he’s put out this year is killing shit and I play at least one of his songs in my sets at Low End Theory.

JONWAYNE- EVERYTHING HE’S PUT OUT THIS YEAR!

Ditto with this kid. Like 5 Low End classics at 21 years old. Jerk.

STROKES – ANGELS

Holy shit the only album on my top 10 by a band is The Strokes. The 2001 me would never believe that. Anyways, this album is as good as power pop gets.

Friday, April 22nd

BLAZING 45′s presented by FUZZ and DUBLAB:

A one-off event in celebration of Holloway’s birthday. Twenty dj’s spin 15 minute sets of their favorite 45′s. Included are:

B+, DAM FUNK, SHINEHEAD, PB WOLF, FROSTY, NOBODY, RHETTMATIC, DUB CLUB
TOM, TURQUOISE WISDOM, NANNY CANTALOUPE, DANNY HOLLOWAY, DESTROYER,
MONALISA, EXPO, BYZE, BELSON, SCOTT CRAIG, DINA J, HYMNL, IMI & JOHN TRIPP.

FREE / 21+ / 9pm-2am

THE HYPERION TAVERN
1941 Hyperion Ave
Los Angeles CA 90027

Part of dublab’s Weekly Sound Expansion series at the Hyperion Tavern.

In honor of Low End Theory’s Japan benefit show tomorrow, we are posting VJ/artist/electronic musician Strangeloop’s guide to sci-fi, avant-garde anime and films that feel like DMT trips. He brings the psychedelic visuals that accompany the sonic landscapes of Flying Lotus, who he met in college. His favorite film may or may not exist in full and we might never know because its creator is an internet-phobic lunatic. This interview by Lainna Fader.

FANTASTIC PLANET (RENÉ LALOUX, 1973)

“Fantastic Planet is an animated science fiction film directed by René Laloux. I think Flying Lotus was the first person to show it to me when we were going to college together. I love the artist and I strive for a lot of his aesthetics in my drawings. I really like the alien worlds he makes. It’s totally idiosyncratic and unique and doesn’t have any counterparts. There’s nothing like it.”

TEKKONKINKREET (MICHAEL ARIAS, 2006)

“It’s from an animation studio called Studio 4°C and they’re probably my favorite animation studio today. I sample more clips from them than anyone else, like Tekkonkinkreet, Mind Game, Noiseman Sound Insect. Very avant-garde Japanese animation. Pretty consistently when I play shows people come up to me and ask about the clip with the nuclear explosion and it’s always either Tekkonkinkreet or another Studio 4°C film. In the last few decades there’s been a handful of really incredible animated sci-fi films like Ghost in the Shell and Miyazaki stuff, and in the last ten years, in this century, the champions have been Studio 4°C. Philosophically they’re dealing with a lot of stuff we’re dealing with as a species.”

AKIRA (KATSUHIRO OTOMO, 1988)

“There’s a handful of quintessential sci-fi from the last few decades. If someone tells me they’re interested in anime but don’t know where to start, this is the film I tell them to see. I still don’t think it’s been topped. It’s all hand-drawn. The amount of work that went into making that epic is phenomenal and it’s prophetic on certain levels. As far as the philosophy they get into, it’s pretty heavy. I love that film a lot.”

NAQOYQATSI (GODFREY REGGIO, 2002)

“In a way I could say Koyaanisqatsi—it’s kind of a better film, but I put Naqoyquatsi on this list because I’ve sampled it more, and I was more influenced by its aesthetics primarily because there are sequences in the film that are like downloads. It’s not a narrative film at all. It’s this download of history and imagery and I was influenced by that notion that in media you can move away from narrative into this place where you give people bursts of information and association. And since I’m a total fractal geek, it’s one of the first films that I know of that has a full-on fractal sequence in it—a mathematical visualization.”

ENTER THE VOID (GASPAR NOÉ, 2009)

“Dopest fucking film of the last five years. Everyone’s talking about it right now for good reason. It’s historical because it’s a film which brought DMT and mystical experiences into a more mainstream form and from a mythological standpoint it manages to capture the look and feel of altered states, like the DMT trance or other hallucinatory states. It’s the first film I saw where I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s it.’ Trippy sequences in film aren’t always cohesive–they can be confusing and weird and they don’t capture the sort of cohesiveness and complexity and visuals on altered states.”

PI (DARREN ARONOFSKY, 1998)

“Pi was one of the first films to put the computer nerd in this punk rock protagonist position. The main character is this software engineer on a search for God in the computer. It’s an exciting pursuit and it’s one of the first films to successfully make the software geek someone exciting and interesting. I want to highlight the idea of people using technology to search for God and the divine. When I was really young that blew me away. Even though the main character is pretty schizophrenic, on some levels I kind of wanted to be him.”

STALKER (ANDREY TARKOVSKY, 1979)

“Tarkovsky is probably my favorite filmmaker if I’m thinking of the whole spectrum of a filmmaker’s work. Stalker is great because it’s kind of a sci-fi film but it’s also not. Tarkovsky managed with Solaris and Stalker to make a totally unique branch of sci-fi where nature is the alien element and civilized human life is what is keeping us from that alien element. In Stalker, he manages to make normal nature landscapes these foreboding, mystical places. Very few sci-fi films get to that more interesting, deeply philosophical territory.”

THE HOLY MOUNTAIN (ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY, 1973)

“There’s nothing like this film. I love that it’s become this default video put on at events. Holy Mountain playing at music events is almost a cliché at this point, but for good reason. It’s a truly psychedelic film but it’s also deeply rooted in mystical symbolism and is intelligently constructed. It’s silly and ridiculous. You don’t see that much effort and time and money put toward those kinds of ideas that often. It’s kind of a unique thing that that film could even be made.”

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (STANLEY KUBRICK, 1968)

“It blew the lid off so early. It was maybe the first film to try to reach so far in scope—from the birth of man to the transcendence of man—and it manages to take the viewer on that whole journey. It also has this narrative structure I love where the third act is like the undoing of the narrative. In a way it’s the quintessential narrative of the mystical state. At a certain point the ego, time and space go out the window, and 2001 did that for a lot of people. It’s still one of the most important films ever made.”

SAMIZDAT (ROBERT DAWD, ?)

[video clips do not exist!]

“I’m not sure anyone’s ever heard of this film. I’m still trying to get a hold of a full copy. I was at Burning Man four or five years ago tripping on acid and I saw this VJ performing on a dome and doing the craziest things I’ve ever seen by far. I’ve based a lot of my imagery off his stuff. I talked to him and he showed me a film he was working on. He had all these crazy ideas about making films that could hypnotize people to the point where they would literally lose themselves completely into the film and forget about their lives and basically have a mystical experience. He had a lot of cool ideas but he seemed kind of crazy and I was coming off acid so that exaggerated it. The film was unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. Really sophisticated fractal imagery all perfectly synched to sound. It was mind-blowing. He was attempting to finish it and showed me twenty minutes of it. It was going to be about an hour long. I’ve been in communication with him for a while over e-mail but he’s totally enigmatic. I can’t find any information on him anywhere. I think while being a total lunatic VJ he’s also internet-phobic—the total real deal. I’ll be collaborating with him at some point hopefully on some sort of film. That’s my favorite film. My friend told me ‘samizdat’ is something in a sci-fi novel. There’s this sci-fi novel called Infinite Jest and it describes this piece of media that sounds like what the dude was trying to create. It’s a piece of media someone starts watching in Los Angeles in 2010 that’s so mind-blowing, so entertaining, that people die from it. They stop eating, they stop drinking, they just sit and home and watch it till they die. I don’t know if he read that and was trying to make that piece of media, but it’s all pretty interesting.”

STRANGELOOP WITH Z TRIP, DADDY KEV, NOBODY, THE GASLAMP KILLER, D-STYLES, NOCANDO, JONWAYNE, RAS_G, AUSTIN PERALTA AND SAM XL PLUS LIVE SCREENPRINTING BY HIT + RUN ON THUR., MAR. 31, AT THE LOW END LOVES JAPAN BENEFIT AT THE ECHOPLEX, 1154 GLENDALE BLVD., ECHO PARK. 9 PM / $10-$12 / 18+. ATTHEECHO.COM. 100% OF DOOR TO JAPANESE RED CROSS SOCIETY. VISIT STRANGELOOP AT MYSPACE.COM/STRANGELOOPTV.

TOP 25 RELEASES OF 2010

Flying Lotus – Cosmogramma (Warp)

Four Tet – There is Love in You (Domino)

– Lainna Fader

Download: Nocando “Hurry Up And Wait”

(from Jimmy The Lock out Jan. 26 on Alpha Pup)

Low End Theory’s resident MC Nocando maimed a generation as a battle rapper but that was a little bit back, and now after two promising EPs, he will release his debut, Jimmy the Lock, this month on Alpha Pup. He now commutes to Low End Theory weekly from Oakland and he speaks now while riding the bus. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

In the song ‘Flight Risk’ from Jimmy the Lock, is the lyric ‘sitting on a bathroom floor with a gun in my hand/masturbating while I’m staring at a picture of you’ based on a true story?
Nocando: I plead the fifth.
You’ve done interviews before, I can tell.
Nocando: I have done interviews before but I didn’t think that question would ever come up.
Why does that song go right into ‘Skankophilia’? That’s amazing sequencing—suicidal heartbreak into dating ‘community college homegirls’ that like ‘older guys who act mature … and deodorize.’
Nocando: I just wanted to weird people out a bit more. Coming from the whole battle rapper thing, I know how to manipulate emotions on a really crude scale. Like—I don’t know how to make you feel happy, but I fucking pride myself on those emotions and hopefully you might get that feeling. I knew some people, in that section of the record, get a little weirded out.
It definitely gets heavier as you go through it.
Nocando: That is the journey you’re supposed to be taking with Jimmy the Lock. I did that intentionally. Battle rappers can’t make music, but furthermore, battle rappers can’t make a record. There’s battle rappers that can’t make songs and then there’s ones who can’t make records—that’s the stigma, and on both I wanted to fucking smash both of those theories. From the first song on it’s like, ‘Oh, that’s a good song.’ OK—I proved that wrong and you can take it through the first half of what I think are modern L.A. underground hits and then after that, if you had any thought that this was a pop record or something shallow, then I just give you really real stuff after that.
Do you feel like you have to prove something against being a battle rapper?
Nocando: I really don’t think that I have to move through it in the public’s eyes. I feel like if you’re a fan of Nocando it might just be because of the songs or the records—it might be because of freestyles or nights at Low End—it’s probably not just for one thing. I don’t think for the public or my fans I have to prove to them that I am a good songwriter. It’s just for me and my circle of friends and all the L.A. underground rappers; it’s like I’m doing what I believe we all can do—what we’ve all been doing—and I’m doing it as hard as I possibly can so that fucking stigma can knock off of all of us. I do feel that I’m the spearhead of L.A. underground rapping, right now, for this generation. Cuz there’s a lot of us—a lot of guys that are really, really dope. L.A. guys who don’t sound like they’re from Detroit or don’t sound like they’re from New York—they aren’t punch-line-based, they are these street characters that if you grew up in L.A. that you would see. There’s no archetype of us anywhere in the country than here. And once one does it—which is going to be me because my record is coming out first—I feel like that might open the door for the rest of us. I’m thinking more like Kail, Intuition and VerBS, Dumbfoundead, myself—those guys you know. There’s more to be named. Open Mike Eagle. Sahtyre.
Low End is really starting to get attention and you’ve been at Low End since day one. Do you feel like you’re the connection between beatmakers and street-level rap?
Nocando: These producers have no idea the talent that is sitting right next to them—MC-wise—and these rappers have no idea the kind of talent that is sitting next to them beat-making-wise. It’s snobbery on both parts and it’s politics on other parts, but honestly—and I consider the beat scene hip-hop, whether people want to call it dubstep or whatever—but I don’t think that great hip-hop records are going to come out of Los Angeles … I mean great hip-hop records that get radar beyond niche counter-culture things aren’t going to come out of Los Angeles until these producers and these MCs sit down, look at each other eye-to-eye and criticize each other and make their record. Bottom line. It’s a great spot to be—it’s like the spot right before critical mass. Which is most exciting.
How does Jimmy The Lock fit into this? You have Nosaj Thing, who’s known for pure instrumentals, alongside people like Thavius Beck and Maestroe, who’ve done great work with you before.
Nocando: I think out of all those producers—all those beat heads—Nosaj’s instrumentals are the most hip-hop-y to me. They have this fat thing in the mid that rappers—a lot of rappers—feel intimidated by. But when I play his beats for my mom, my mom is like, ‘This reminds me of skating at World on Wheels!’ These are just funky-ass beats. I also have some stuff with Free the Robots—I’ve worked with Free the Robots since like 2003 or 2002. My first demo, the Impatient EP, he made the beat to the song called ‘Deep Sea Diver.’ A song about drinking.
What does your mom think of the other producers you work with?
Nocando: Oh, my mom—she really thinks that I need more negrismo in my music.
She said that?
Nocando: She doesn’t say that outwardly but she’s like, ‘Oh, I can kinda get with it, but it’s kind of electronic-y …’ It’s not jamming enough for her.
Your mom’s not fucking around.
Nocando: She gave me a good critique but I’m not going for her demographic anyway. So I got stuff by Free the Robots—DJ Nobody gave me a good hand. When me and Elvin came back from Japan, we had some really great stuff. Every Wednesday when I come out here, I get off the plane and go to his house—he smokes some weed and plays a beat and I write a song and I record it. We’ve recorded some amazing stuff and it’s really intelligent and it’s bordering pop-sounding except … you know, it’s what you would imagine Nocando and DJ Nobody doing a pop record would sound like. It sounds like ‘Hurry Up and Wait’ on Jimmy the Lock, but it gets way more funky. I don’t smoke weed—it slows me down. It doesn’t slow me down but … not until I’m on vacation. But we get along so well because Nobody likes ’90s rock and modern pop rap and I like ’90s rock and modern pop rap. We can talk about fucking the Toadies and T.I. in the same conversation.
Have you actually had that conversation?
Nocando: Yes. Local H and Rick Ross and Drake. By the way, my favorite rapper right now is Rick Ross because he is an excellent liar. Everybody hates him because he’s an excellent liar but I love him because he’s an excellent liar.
That’s hard to do. Not just anybody can lie.
Nocando: Not just anybody can. In his lie he is the coke drug warlord of the world and he was rolling around in that lie and he loved it and it makes me love it.
I know you wrote ‘I Never Lie,’ but are there any Nocando lies we can reveal here?
Nocando: Any Nocando lies? No, not really. I used to get smacked for lying when I was a little kid so I have a Pavlovian dog flinch whenever I do—I can’t do it.
Is that because of your mom?
Nocando: From a myriad of elders. On that whole record, my biggest tool is honesty and observation. I really don’t have the attention span to think up imaginary things now. I’ve read too many comic books in my life and watched too much Japanese anime. A lot of it is really new to people because it’s about me and the good part of it is I’m just like everybody else. So if I have a song about my girl ready to go or my pops dying or I just found a thousand dollars—well, not a thousand dollars—or something like that, then everybody relates to it. Or the people that I give it to relate to it—if you can’t relate to it, then maybe it’ll happen for you later on in life.
Joan Miró said that the more an artist truly represents themselves, the more universal the work will be.
Nocando: I agree with you 100 percent that it connects with people. My grandmother’s weird—she listens to right-wing radio and Dennis Prager was on this morning.
Congratulations on the second-ever Dennis Prager reference in the paper.
Nocando: He had this chick who was writing a book about how the voice tells what you are and it’s the most honest thing about you. And I feel like when I’m coming from a really honest place when I’m recording, it always comes out right. When somebody tells me to write a story about me feeling like I’m the best rapper in the world, it comes out a little pompous. I can pull it off but it’s an act. When I don’t have to fucking act and I can just be in a good mood and make a song about being in a good mood—or if I just won a battle, make a song about being a dope rapper—things where I don’t have to act, performance- and recording-wise, obviously I’m more proud of it and I’m more willing to let people hear it and it gets out quicker and people end up responding the right way after it comes out. When I’m honest. Very few times have I recorded something that was not totally honest or was filtered a little and have not gotten a good reaction from it. You pretty much know when you write it, if it’s honest and sound musically and creatively. You pretty much know when you write it that people are going to like it.
At this point, is there anything that you wouldn’t let yourself talk about? Like that song about your father dying, ‘98’—is anything off limits?
Nocando: Naw, I don’t think anything should be off-limits. Not for me. And it kind of scares me with my relationships. I have a song that’s yet to be released and it’s supposed to be on this Canadian producer Factor’s upcoming record. It’s to the point that it’s super honest and it’s a really great song. It’s about me—well, a whole raging thug thing that I went through in the summer that’s not really me, but just happened to be me at the time. I turned into a raging thug and choked a guy out. I’ve never done anything like that before but I was just so fucking angry. I played it for my girlfriend—who’s still my girlfriend now—and she was like, ‘I hate this. It’s a great song, but I hate you.’ And then we didn’t talk for a week.
That’s a great compliment.
Nocando: Yeah. It is. But if it comes up, I’m going to try my best to put it out. What I learned in ‘98’ when I was in my early twenties—and with everything else I’ve done—is that it’s in my benefit to be as honest as possible. I’d be doing myself as an artist and people who run across my music an injustice because I’ve had people personally—and I didn’t even know how to reply to it—I’ve had people hit me up on MySpace and Facebook and Twitter and say, ‘Hey, I’m going through that right now, man—I listened to that song and it gets me through.’ I haven’t gone through that since I was 14 so I don’t know what to tell you, but I’m glad I wrote that song and that’s bigger than that rapper feeling of, ‘Oh, I’m being lyrical! This is the best punch line ever!’ For somebody to say, ‘After visiting my mother at the hospital I put on your song and it’s good for me to know that you dealt with the same thing and you didn’t break down.’ That’s bigger than any fucking punch line that I ever spat in my life. That’s better than any hundred guys who ever wrote to impress a room full of anybody.
You were talking once about the Impatient EP and said, ‘It’s funny on that EP because I was super, super smart but I was living like a dumbass—it was the dumbest period of my life. And now I don’t have much drama and I’m a smarter dude but I rap dumb things.’ What happened?
Nocando: Back then, I was fresh out of two years of community college and high school and I was constantly learning new things and getting new words and my vocab was out of this world, and I knew the least about music and I was making stupid decisions. I had a daughter when I was 19, me and my baby’s mother—my current fiancée now. But we broke up for a year and I had another girlfriend and I worked on a mountain farming medical marijuana. I lived in a tent for like four months and slept with like three guns. I would wake up and yell and hear a mountain lion and yell and it would yell back. I would do that like once a week. It was right there. But me and my friends were getting into a lot of drama in the street and I was a little dumbass—I didn’t know what I wanted to do with myself. And as I got older and more focused and I actually learned more, I found that I didn’t have to project this image of a smartass all the time and I could talk about the dumbass that I like to be some times.
Do you feel like you’ve grown into any of your songs? Something where you were artistically more ahead of where you were personally?
Nocando: ‘Paint Me Impatient.’ I’ve always been a hurry-up-and-wait kind of guy and thought about the plight of people that are like me. I don’t think that I’ve grown that much—I wouldn’t be able to show you if I have because I’m too busy living my life. That song, I haven’t grown into that guy but I’ve always been that—and I still am that. And then ‘Hurry Up and Wait’ is the common man’s version of that song. It’s how the 26-year-old version of me would describe how I was feeling when I wrote ‘Paint Me Impatient’—when I was 19.
What are some of the hardest things you’ve done as a musician? Things that really could have gone the other way?
Nocando: In terms of battling, I went to this place called The Pit—where everybody wanted to hear rap about guns—and I won those battles and I wasn’t in my element. I wasn’t in backpacker land anymore. And I went in there with the mindset of ‘these guys are talking about guns and the street and shit and I know; I’ve always lived in the hood my whole life and all my friends and family are fucking in jail and these guys don’t look like the people that I knew from the hood but they do put on a pretty good act.’ And so I went in there—this was on the west side of L.A. Me and my friends hang out in Leimert Park. People have been shot at our rap spot and these guys are on the Westside, by the Westside Pavilion and the 4 Play strip club and a Best Buy. And then there’s the individual battles with old L.A. legends like Dotted Line and Otherwize and things that I didn’t win but that brought the most growth out in me.
What kind of things made you grow?
Nocando: Usually it was the losses. The first time I went up against Otherwize I was 18 and I don’t know if you know Otherwize but he won the ’97 Rap Olympics when he was like 18. He’s a genius. He was heavily intoxicated at the time and he was pretty much trying to establish dominance on everyone there and I was a young kid who wouldn’t shut up. And me and him went like ten rounds at each other—and ten rounds of freestyle, that’s amazing. I won like Iron Man battles where I was the first one up and it’s kind of like last-man-standing and then I went through like 22 other competitors.
What are you thinking at competitor 21?
Nocando: I just take each one as a specific problem. This guy, he’s a crowd favorite. This guy, he’s a pushover. This guy, he’s a tough guy. Every person is a specific situation. This guy’s just like me—how would I beat me? This guy, I’ve battled him before and he really wants to win—what should I do? Twenty-two different people, there’s 22 different way to beat them.
How would you beat you?
Nocando: How would I beat me? I mean really, I’ve only ever lost when I was unprepared or unmotivated so the best thing to do is to catch me on one of those days. That’s like the name of the game—when you’re in the final four, and you’ve got those four players who are exactly like each other but slightly different. That’s what’s so dope about all that battle stuff—it’s a gamble. Which one of you guys is gonna slip? Who’s slippin’? All you gotta do is catch that guy slippin’ and you just won $5,000.
Now everybody is going to be waiting for the day when you didn’t get a good breakfast.
Nocando: Well, I don’t battle anymore. Well, I haven’t battled in a year and a half, so I lied—I do battle. On New Year’s I’m battling and on the 30th I’m battling somebody. It’s just to see if I can still do it. I don’t feel the expression that I used to have when I was younger. I’m not really focused on it anymore. What I’d really love to do is write songs right now. I’m trying to master the idea of writing songs and creating records. After Jimmy the Lock and that feeling you get when you’re done—I haven’t gotten that feeling ever in my life. I want to make that feeling happen for me like five more times! I love performing my songs. I feel like I have really good projection and really good stage presence but I wanna add to my live show. My new obsession is going pro as a rapper and performer and a musician. It’s not about finding the most clever way I can call somebody an overweight homosexual in a green shirt.
Who’s out there now that you’d like to knock out of their spot?
Nocando: Well, let’s be serious about this. I’m way more handsome than Drake is, so if he’s a fucking heartthrob … I might not know how to pander to women, but I’m more handsome. Off the top. Secondly, anybody who’s in that ‘cool black nerd’ niche or whatnot, they can get the fuck out of my way. That’s the thing—the battling has made me … or I probably was before it, too, but I’m hella competitive. I may not be able to do what you do, but don’t think that I’m not going to be able to do what you do. I’m not really playing the game of trying to fill somebody’s niche by writing songs or being the kind of rapper that they are—I don’t think that works anyway. It just so happens that I’m surrounded by all these instrumentalists so there’s not rappers to make look bad. But ever since I was a wee lad, there are very few guys who I can share a stage with. I shared stages with a lot of my legends.
What’s the first time you tasted blood?
Nocando: I don’t want to talk about the battle thing anymore—tasted blood? Come on, man.
I don’t mean battle-rapping. I mean life.
Nocando: I don’t really know—I wasn’t too good. I played baseball as a kid—I was all right. I played left field. I was kind of starting. My competitive thing just came … honestly, I remember freestyling with my friend Terry in his bedroom when we were in high school. We all did it and I was great at it and I wanted to do it all the time. And I kept doing it all the time. I never wrote a rap down for like three years. The whole taste of blood thing, it just came because I thought I was great at it. It really wasn’t a taste for blood—it was more like, ‘Why don’t you think the way I think about me? I’m going to shove it down your throat!’ And then the battling started.
You were talking about the nerd thing—what are the four elements of being a nerd?
Nocando: If comics, video games and anime are three of the four elements then I’ve already got it. I was a video game tester for like four years for EA. With the video game thing, I’m super into 2-D fighting games since I was a little kid. Street Fighter II Champion Edition, King of Fighters, Fatal Fury, Guilty Gear. And comic books—I’ve been into comics since I was a kid. $1.25 a week fed my addiction and got me 52 issues every year. Anime—before Blockbuster had the age restrictions I was watching animated breasts when I was like 10. The fourth element? What is the fourth element of being a nerd? Having nerdy-ass friends.
That’s kind of a sweet answer—the friendship of other nerds.
Nocando: It’s like, ‘Wow, nobody else understands me but me and you.’ And you can have conversations with these guys about things that aren’t even important in the video games like, ‘Well, the hat changed color in Fatal Fury 2—it went from a blood red to more of a Target red!’ I’ve had these conversations with people.
I appreciate the detail there.
Nocando: I try.
There’s a line at the end of ‘Exploits and Glitches’ where you say, ‘What the fuck—is this the future?’ What do you think is missing?
Nocando: The only thing I wish was here is a really healthy American economy. Or things blowing up, like I’m surrounded by these rappers that are really bubblegummy rappers and I just thought that would be dead by now. You can make a party song without being a fucking coon. But honestly, away from the rap thing, what I expected was—especially being younger—I thought that things would flourish now, and if I put out a great record it wouldn’t get lost in a sea of wack records. I am happy that I got my relationship with my girl—I’m like Superdad now and a husband and I’m really happy I got my shit together and I took responsibility to do that. I’m really happy that we have a global economy and we get to go to Japan and Europe and trade and learn all these things as musicians. I’m really happy that L.A. music is thriving with this unlikely hero, which is this experimental music. And I’m happy that I put out the best rap record that L.A. has put out in—I don’t know—ten years?

NOCANDO WITH DADDY KEV, THE GASLAMP KILLER, NOBODY AND D-STYLES PLUS GUESTS EVERY WEDNESDAY AT LOW END THEORY AT THE AIRLINER, 2419 N. BROADWAY, LOS ANGELES. 10 PM / $5-$10 / 18+. LOWENDTHEORYCLUB.COM. NOCANDO’S JIMMY THE LOCK IS OUT TUE., JAN. 26, ON ALPHA PUP. VISIT NOCANDO AT MYSPACE.COM/NOCANDO.

The Mars Volta – Deloused in the Comatorium

Radiohead – In Rainbows

Sigur Ros – Agaetis Byrjun 

Animal Collective – Sung Tongs

The Shins – Oh, Inverted World

Radiohead – Amnesiac

The Strokes – Is This It?

Radiohead - Hail to the Thief

The Clipse – Lord Willin’

The Mars Volta – Amputechture

-DJ Nobody

Download: Nocando “Hurry Up And Wait”

(from Jimmy The Lock out Jan. 26 on Alpha Pup)

Low End Theory resident MC Nocando’s single “Hurry Up and Wait” from his debut album Jimmy The Lock, produced by fellow Low End-er Nobody. Elsewhere on this record: Free The Robots, Nosaj Thing, Daedelus, Maestroe (on “Never Lie” also seen on The Patient) and Thavius Beck!

Stream: Zackey Force Funk “The Split”

Not to get all Hallmark about it, but Zackey Force Funk is proof that music can do some good in the world. This funk maestro has been through some serious shit, and now his life mission is to get you bumping to his hybrid of electronic dance music, with a little help from his brother’s Gameboy. You haven’t heard something quite like this. This interview by Daiana Feuer.

Kutmah brought you to us via Stones Throw and Peanut Butter Wolf, but how did you find Kutmah?
Zack: After I got out of prison, I spent some time trying to change my life and eventually got back into graffiti and started making music. One day I heard a podcast where Kutmah was mixing Nancy Sinatra to Bad Brains so I went to Myspace and looked him up. I didn’t know that guy knew a bunch of people. Suddenly Peanut Butter Wolf calls me from Stones Throw asking me to do something. And I’m like, ‘Who is this Kutmah kid? He knows everybody?!’ When I met him he turned me on to Brandy Flower of the Hit + Run crew and they released this mixtape of mine and a bunch of old stuff and people liked it so I got to come out there in August and did some shows at different venues and got to finally meet everyone. I can’t believe how nice and basically unselfish they are. They hooked me up so much. They made me t-shirts, stickers, CDs. I’m like, ‘Yo, I’m just a dude from South Tucson!’ You know?
Have you been in Tucson all your life?
Zack: I used to live back East with my father. My father is from NY and my mother is Mexican from South Tucson. They divorced so we used to go back and forth between Tucson and Syracuse. That’s how come my music is all over the place. Me and my brother would always go out East and be all about Egyptian Lover and Cameo and Zapp and out there it was all Grandmaster Flash and Run DMC. Out there in ‘82-‘83. It always stuck with us. The graffiti and everything was a part of our lives. Now that I’m creating stuff, it’s just pouring out big time. Thirty years of shit just trying to come out. I’m kind of spiritual so I defInitely think things are going to change. They have to.
What’s life like in Tucson?
Zack: Hot! It’s hot. It’s got a scenester thing going on. That got me involved in going out again and playing. You can go to a small bar and everyone will dance. That’s just how it is in Tucson. People want to move. When I was in L.A. at that small little place Hyperion Tavern and doing all this uptempo stuff, everyone was into it and they were studying me, but nobody was dancing. I gotta learn the L.A. thing, as far as what scenes go where and how people react to music at different locations. I’m going to play at the Echoplex now and I’ve never been there. Hopefully there will be some dancing.
When did you start singing?
Zack: I started singing two years ago. I started when I was 32! What happened is I was making beats just to stress-relieve at the end of the day. I was putting them online and then I started talking to my brother—who is an engineer and I really respect his ear—and I was like, ‘How come you’re not bumping my instrumentals or even anyone famous’s instrumental music?’ And he was like, ‘Me and my friends, we really can’t listen to just a beat. I can’t put it in my ipod and bump it all day. It’s really cool but I gotta have words—I got to have a story.’ And that really stuck with me so I decided to try writing lyrics. I tried to rap on my first song. And he was like, ‘No, you should definitely not do that! Just sing!’ So it’s been two years in the making. It was pretty nerve-wracking the first time I sang in front of people. Every set gets better. Now we jam out—no stops for at least a half hour or so. My little brother Nathan, he and his friends do 4-bit music in their band Crime. When I perform I need people to do some engineering type stuff and background vocals and my little brother does it all. They’re geniuses—tons of style.
Is Prince an influence?
Zack: Without a doubt. The whole Minneapolis—Prince, Morris Day, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis—that’s probably my favorite stuff. The stars are lining up and funk’s making a comeback and I’m glad. It’s definitely a way of life. I think it’s here to stay. You just have to tweak it out for the kids. They want the more electronic grungier feel, and that’s where my brother comes in with the Gameboy. We’re trying to do funk on a Gameboy. I don’t think too many people on the planet are doing that. There’s a whole Gameboy 4-bit scene. This one guy Covox out in Europe covered the Kraftwerk song ‘Computer Love’ and it’s unreal. It kind of gives you insight on what you can do with 4-bit and how complex it can really get.
How long have you been doing graffiti?
Zack: I spent a lot of time in prison. And that helped me get through time. I’ve always been involved in B-Boy stuff—always wanted to be like Ramos from Beat Street. When you’re locked up, you got a lot of time on your hands to draw. When I got out the first time, I ran into a bunch of graffiti writers. It really taught me a lot about being original and coming up with my own letters, and that’s helped me with music. I never did too much illegal stuff like bombing trains. Some when I was younger. I am really just into style, breaking down letters. I got to paint with some L.A. writers last year like Revok and them. But I’m telling you—it really helped me with my music. When I sit down to compose a song, I think about it as a graffiti piece. Is it original? Is anyone else doing it? Am I biting? Is anyone biting me? I gotta do something different every time. When you paint a graffiti piece, you always want to burn your last one. That’s the ultimate goal—to do better than anything you’ve done before. My next song has to be better than the one before. No matter what. It’s always a small battle. You have to come original. You have to jam out harder to open up people’s eyes.
Why were you imprisoned?
Zack: It was all these drug charges. Here in Tucson there’s an abundance of wholesale drugs. You can get wholesale marijuana here super cheap and take it out to your cousins in Syracuse and triple your money. By the time I was 19 I was making $100,000 and you figure you do it ten times you can be a millionaire. It just didn’t work out that way. It never did. The last time I got out it was 2001, and I was very very lucky. If I lived in L.A., I would be doing life in prison. You guys have that three strikes, you’re out law. Luckily we don’t have that in Arizona. It was just insane. I really changed my life in 2001. Life started getting monotonous around 2005. I was like, ‘Something’s got to change.’ I’m not used to being a dad and just settling down. Which was cool, but I started making music and painting graffiti again to get my mind off shit, and here I am—talking to you on the phone, talking to Peanut Butter Wolf and going to L.A. I can’t fucking believe it.
Do you believe in destiny or controlling your own fate?
Zack: I believe in controlling your own fate. I think you definitely co-create. You pretty much manifest everything you do. If you say you’re sick, you’re going to get sick. If you think you’re going to get cancer, you’re going to get cancer. If you know you’re better than other people at music, you’re going to be better than other people at music. Whether you can sing or not, that’s really how I feel about it. I’ve seen it happen. Definitely some crazy things have happened to me in and out of prison. It’s opened my eyes spiritually.
Lots of time sitting and thinking?
Zack: Yeah—this last time it was my third offense. I had already done a bunch of time in prison for minor offenses. And this time U.S. Customs came in and raided me and they caught me red-handed with tons of stuff and it was a major, major case. I went back in. They told me I wasn’t going to get less than 15 years. My mom kept getting me tons of different lawyers and they’d come to jail and tell me, ‘We can’t get you less than 15, take these pleas. You’ve already done prison sentences for less offenses and if you were in California, you’d be doing life.’ But I just knew—something inside me, I just knew I wasn’t going away. Things started happening. We got one of the greatest lawyers. He heard about the case and started stepping in and got like aerial photos of my house and found out the Customs agent had lied to get search warrants and other huge cases with Russian ammunitions—anyway, it was a huge deal. They ended up giving me a plea bargain for two years. And I was in tears of joy. The day I went to sentencing, I knew something else was going to happen, and, sure enough, the judge was like, ‘You know what? I’ll give you five years IPS.’ Which is house arrest—and I had took four years for a minor offense before!—so basically, I was like, ‘Ok, wow, this is it—now you got to do something with your life.’ Back to the spiritual thing—I just knew I wasn’t going away. And ever since then I could see smaller minor miracles happening. Have you heard of Dr. Masaru Emoto? He’s done all kinds of experiments with water. And I did it with my son. You can do it. Get two glasses of water and put rice in the water. On one glass, write ‘love,’ ‘life,’ ‘happiness,’ nice things. And on the other glass write ‘hate,’ ‘kill,’ just evil things. Every day pray to the good glass with love, put all your love in it, and yell at the bad glass, talk shit to it, just be evil to it. And see what happens in two weeks. For me it took two days. I could see a difference. The good glass will be fine and the bad glass, you won’t even want to keep it in the house, it’ll be so nasty. And that kind of shows you a physical proof that your thoughts and prayers do manifest—they become physical. This has helped me and my kids. They’ve seen me prosper and change my life around. My daughter is going to school, and this music thing is starting to pop off and it really wasn’t supposed to.
What’s your life motto?
Zack: When all else fails and you don’t know what’s happening, just remember love. Put yourself in a happy place and do good to others. Sacrifice. Even die. Trust me—there’s more to life out there than what you see and you’ll thank yourself later for it, even if it’s in the afterlife. Have love and show love to everybody. I should maybe show that in my music more. My spiritual friends get kinda mad and say I should make more spiritual music. But I live in South Tucson and I been locked up half my life so it’s kind of like I let my stress out in this music. My friends in NY like hardcore music that’s all about beating people up and getting crazy. I wouldn’t want anyone to listen to my song and go beat someone up after. Sometimes to get the people you live around’s attention, you gotta be street—you got to be ghetto just to wake them up and get their attention. I would hate for someone to take my music and go do something bad with it. That’s terrible. Like these Metallica songs in the ‘80s—people killing themselves over it. That wasn’t their intent maybe when they wrote it. I just want to relieve stress. Don’t do anything evil with this.

ZACKEY FORCE FUNK WITH KUTMAH, MATTHEWDAVID AND SODAPOP ON FRI., DEC. 11, AT CALLING ALL KIDS AT HYPERION TAVERN, 1941 HYPERION AVE., SILVERLAKE. 9:30 PM / FREE / 21+. AND WITH GASLAMP KILLER, CRIME, KUTMAH, DAM-FUNK, NOBODY, ABCNT AND MORE ON SAT., DEC. 12, AT REPEAT OFFENDER: THE HIT + RUN FOUR-YEAR ANNIVERSARY PARTY AT THE ECHOPLEX, 1154 GLENDALE AVE., ECHO PARK. 9 PM / $10 / FREE IF WEARING HIT + RUN T-SHIRT / 21+. THEHITANDRUN.COM. VISIT ZACKEY FORCE FUNK AT MYSPACE.COM/ZAC0NE.

L.A. RECORD has been lucky enough to watch Low End Theory grow into one of the most exciting and vital music communities in Los Angeles, and some of our favorite interviews (and memories!) come from Low End Theory artists and residents like Flying Lotus, Gaslamp Killer, Nobody, Daedelus, Nosaj Thing, Samiyam, Dibia$e, Thavius Beck, Gangi, Crystal Antlers, the Entrance band and of course Daddy Kev, who holds the distinction of being the first person (but definitely not the last person) to get naked on an L.A. RECORD cover. (Pictured above—issue 21 from volume 1, lovingly assembled on Charlie’s futon.)

Tonight’s celebration will be the eleventh Unreleased Beat Invitational, featuring a destroying line-up of Flying Lotus, Jneiro Jarel, Free The Robots, Samiyam, Dibi$se and Matthewdavid with opening sets by L.A. RECORD contributors Kutmah and Nobody plus My Hollow Drum, Nocando and Daddy Kev. In honor of this birthday, we’ve linked the entire Low End Theory Podcast Series, and below we’re re-publishing this ancient Daddy Kev interview from the archives—done months before Low End even started. Congratulations and thanks to Kev and everyone who makes Low End Theory happen!

Download: Low End Theory Podcast Vol. 1: Daddy Kev + Samiyam

Download: Low End Theory Podcast Vol. 2: Nobody + Mike Slott

Download: Low End Theory Podcast Vol. 3: Gaslamp Killer + Ras G

Download: Low End Theory Podcast Vol. 4: D-Styles + Nosaj Thing

Download: Low End Theory Podcast Vol. 5: Daddy Kev + Daedelus

Download: Low End Theory Podcast Vol. 6: Nobody + Mono/Poly

Download: Low End Theory Podcast Vol. 7: Gaslamp Killer + Mary Anne Hobbs

Download: Low End Theory Podcast Vol. 8: D-Styles + Glitch Mob

DADDY KEV: PURE AUDIO PLEASURE (FEB. 2006 INTERVIEW)

Harbor City madman Daddy Kev came into music as an intern for Urb during high school and began producing beats with an Akai sampler and some ideas for 8-bar loops. Now he runs Alpha Pup records (between Myspace requests to DJ house parties) and has produced tracks for everyone from Sage Francis and Shapeshifters to his own Alpha Pup alums like Awol One and Busdriver. He speaks while watching a mugging in downtown Los Angeles. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

What makes a beat work for a certain artist—like how do you decide which is a Busdriver beat and which is an Awol beat?
Daddy Kev: Usually, it’s pretty obvious to me who’s gonna sound best over a particular song—and you’d be surprised how often I’m wrong about that. My stuff is pretty much custom-made, but what ends up happening is I’ll be all hyped—‘They’re gonna love it!’—and they hear it and they’re just like, ‘What? Aw, naw.’ So what happens is the beat gets reused. Usually I don’t let people know—‘Hey, this is a beat three guys passed on!’—but I don’t make like a big deal that it’s custom-made, either. Strangely enough, some of my more popular songs have been like that. My song on the Sage Francis record—like seven or eight people passed on that beat.
Is Sage gonna read this and be bummed?
Daddy Kev: Yeah, right? I sent him the CD and didn’t hear back for months—figured he passed on it. Then I got a call six months later: ‘Dude, that beat’s insane—lemme rap over it!’ And that was one of my bigger blow-up songs of last year.
How can you tell when a beat by itself is going to be good?
Daddy Kev: I never conceptualize myself as a by-themselves type of musical artist—I don’t think of it until it’s got a vocal on it and it’s taken to the next phase. People over the years ask many times: ‘Where’s the Daddy Kev solo album? Where’s the instrumentals?’ Maybe it’s even set my career back. But I love the collaborative aspect of music—that’s what keeps it fresh and interesting to me. I don’t like the idea of being in my own little world, not being checked by other people. When I was a kid listening, I’d wonder: ‘How did they make this? What was it like?’ The whole industry has fascinated me forever. To be honest, I think the age of music we’re living in now—the music industry being revolutionized by the digital world—is perhaps one of the most exciting times to be involved in music.
Alpha Pup has really jumped on the digital thing, too.
Daddy Kev: We’re phasing out CDs. And some people look at me like I’m crazy. But to anyone looking objectively, it’s pretty damn clear. The whole thing is moving to another plateau. I love it because we’re truly looking at the final frontier of how music is going to be distributed and consumed—the only step past digital is people injecting music into their veins. For the next hundred years, how our kids and their kids will be buying music—all the rules are being written right now. It’s so fascinating for a great many ways. And it can really liberate artists and a label, by not having to deal with manufacturing and costs—we can be more daring. We can drop whatever we think is good.
Do you still sample off the radio?
Daddy Kev: I sure do. One of the advantages of being in Los Angeles is there’s such variety in the radio programs. It reached a point with sampling where I felt like everybody had everything—albeit that isn’t the case, but it started bothering me a little bit. It started bothering me that some of the bigger things I’ve done were samples that people could now easily get. So the next level is I gotta start sampling stuff that isn’t available—that you can’t buy. Maybe it just broadcasts once; maybe never before. I try and capture those. On the jazz stations, they do regular shows where guys come out and bust out the old quarter-inch tape and they’re even telling you: ‘I’ve never even played this for anybody before!’ And I have a DAT and let it roll, then go back and review. If I find one thing for every ten hours—one thing that can be made into something—then it’s all worth it.
What’s the next level after that?
Daddy Kev: What I’m seeing for the next couple years is a combination of the real outlandish rare sampling combined with electronic layering and drum machines. At least in hip-hop, those have been different camps—you’ve got the synth cats and the hardcore sample cats, but not many people try and go in between. Daedelus is a great embodiment, and it’s something I’ve been trying to improve on. I’ve been layering my beats with electronic kick drums and 808s for years—people say ‘you got that organic sound,’ and sure, but by the same token, I layer it with the rap drums to give it that kick out. I don’t think of music as competition in that there’s a first and second place, but being in a town in LA, there are a lot of people out there that this is their dream, and that alone keeps me on my toes. I feel like I consistently have to do better than I’ve done before—at least to be able to look in the mirror in the morning!
What records will always have something there for you to use, no matter how many times you go back to them?
Daddy Kev: Funkadelic—either by myself or in the car or in the DJ booth, those songs will always remain timeless. It’s music I consider to be perfect, if you will.
How about records that you save just for listening for fun—that you know you can’t use in your own work?
Daddy Kev: A lot of rock stuff—when I listen to the Unicorns, I’m definitely not listening to listen to production values or mix quality. To me that’s pure audio pleasure. And I love reggae music, but there’s very little reggae element in any of the music I’ve ever done. Steel Pulse, Black Uhuru—when I listen to that, my mind is the furthest it could be from thinking of work. But then listening to someone like Lee “Scratch” Perry is when the lightbulb flips on again. With records that are overly engineered, I go into dissection mode—or ones that are completely poorly done, thinking ‘This is what I could have done…’
What records would you remix if you could go back and get in the studio?
Daddy Kev: That’s a loaded question—‘Whose record have you worked on that’s wack?’ It’s gonna sound terrible, but groups that fell off—A Tribe Called Quest or De La Soul, where you hear their later records and think ‘Oh my God, who said yes to this? Who was the guy in the room who was like, “Yeah, that’s perfect!”?’ I’m definitely at a point where I will retire before I start making wack shit—granted, a lot of people tell themselves that, but then go on to make terrible albums. I try to look at stuff as objectively as possible—if I made a beat wack, I’m the first to admit it. A lot of people keep going—it’s hard to think about going back. ‘That job doing data entry in Irvine is sounding good right now.’ But when the day comes where I got nothing left in in me, I’ll recognize it.
What’s a career you’d like to follow?
Daddy Kev: Rick Rubin. He has label success, he’s able to stay current, and he continues to produce albums and music that are astonishing. You gotta walk that line carefully: between creating music and marketing music. But one thing that will never change is my fundamental respect for the art.
Even if you grow a giant Rick Rubin beard?
Daddy Kev: When I’m in a Jay Z video, I know I’ve made it.