Iller Than Theirs

Wie um alles in der Welt man auf einen Namen wie Iller Than Theirs kommt, warum Kritikermeinungen nicht so wichtig sind und wie es sich anfühlt, endlich sein erstes Album in den Läden stehen zu sehen – darüber sprachen wir mit Tone Tank und Krayon von Iller Than Theirs.

To be honest with you – I never heard of Iller Than Theirs before you sent me your album. So could you just give me a short introduction of who you are and where you come from?

Tone Tank: Iller Than Theirs is a two-men-group, we’re out of a bigger group – or a camp if you will – called Nuclear Family which is made of seven people. Five emcees, one guy that sings and makes the beats and a DJ. Some people do both, produce and rap. Inside of that group, we have Scott Thourough from a group called The Boys And Girls Club, we have Probe Cellsplitter, N.E.M.C. and we have Iller Than Theirs – which is Tone Tank and Kray, myself and the other man on the line. And then we have Junk Science which you may have heard of, which is Baje One and Snafu, who is also the DJ of the Nuclear Family.

So when did you decide to make a start into the rap game under the name Iller Than Theirs?

Krayon: Like Tone said, we’re part of that group in Brooklyn called Nuclear Family. We’re making music together for a long time. But me and Tone decided to make a record together. And how we came up with the name … one day our neighbours were making alot of noise, talking shit and that. We didn’t have a name for the group or the album then. We had like three or four songs. So when the neighbours next door were making alot of noise, we started laughing and tried to make more noise, we started banging on the walls, we started screaming and yelling… *laughs*

Tone: … punching the walls! Because we can! *laughs*

Krayon: Yeah, because we’re iller than them. So we started yelling out: Iller than theirs! Iller than theirs! We were screaming at them like we were iller than them because we can make more noise. And so, while we were screaming, we started laughing because it was so funny. So we said: that should be the name of the album – and we ended up by making it the name of the group.

So it seems that you have a more humoristic approach to music. How serious do you take the whole thing?

Krayon: We take music serious but we don’t take ourselves too serious…

Tone: Yeah, exactly, I like that.

So what in particular do you make fun of?

Tone Tank: I would say we make fun of everything.

Krayon: We make fun of ourselves. But especially we make fun of people who act like they are really really cool. All these popstars…

Tone Tank: .. all these shiny-sunglasses-at-night-type-characters…

Krayon: Yeah, I would just say I know for the fact that they are regular human beings. That they go home and and sit there in the house and think of things and have to go to bathroom and everything like that, you know. *laughs*

One of you guys did the cover artwork, is that right?

Tone Tank: Yeah, that was actually me.

Could you decode it to me? I didn’t get the point.

Tone Tank: Which part of it do you want to have decoded? There are so many codes, there are codes inside the code.

Just the whole thing in a nuthshell…

Tone Tank: Well, we’re the brother group of Junk Science. I kinda thought that it was funny how it worked out that on Junk Science’s last album, “Feeding Einstein”, they were feeding Einstein all this weird stuff. Like a dummy of a puppet of Albert Einstein, and he was eating all this stuff. And on our album, we have a guy throwing up a bunch of stuff. Throwing up all the shit he was fed. Everything that you consume and absorp everday – he is throwing it all up. He can’t handle it. Each of the little characters refer to particular rhymes for the most part, rhymes from the record itself. So have actually have to listen to the record to really get alot of the references. I had it all done on pen and paper. The only thing a computer was used for in that was to get it in the computer to send it out to print. But it was all done by hand.

Did you already get any feedback for the album?

Tone Tank: Yeah, my mother really likes it. My dad is really proud of it.

And what’s the most important comment you received on the album so far?

Tone Tank: I think the most important comment on the album was when DJ Ese from Embedded Records said that he would put it out. Man, if he didnt’t make that comment…

Krayon: Since we been getting creds in alot of reviews or alot of people sayings things or whatever – I don’t know which one is the most important. But what I like more in general and what I value more like what the journals, magazines or websites say, is when we get messages from actual kids on like myspace or something…

Tone Tank: .. yeah, because it’s not their business to let us know what they think, thy’re not getting paid to let us know their opinion…

Krayon: .. a real kid, a real human being that just heard the music and is somehow feeling connected to it or were moved by it and then decides to write us…

Tone Tank: .. rather than the ones that just regurgitate our bios and then put their two cents on it. We do it for the kids.

Did you send one copy out to Masta Ace, who’s featured on the album?

Tone Tank: Actually we got to get our people right on that. He didn’t say anything about it yet. But, nah, he did! I just saw him at the Crooklyn Dodgers Reunion party and I said: Hey, remember that song, blah blah? And he said: Oh really? Nice to meet you! That’s really what he said. *laughs*

So what are your expectations relating to the record sales?

Tone Tank: Well, I was stressing out about money the other day. And DJ Ese told Krayon: Wow, Tone seems really stressed about money! I hope he doesn’t pick any money off for this. *laughs* You know, it’s our first album. We had our little projects before, they get around, we definately created a decent amount of buzz with the Nuclear Family. And it was great when Junk Science had their record out and everything. I was on that. But I never had something that I really felt like it was my own album in stores. You know, that is something that has never happened to me before. So we’ll have to see. Whatever happens, happens. It’s cool.

Krayon: I expect it to be ill. It will be out their on the world and it will be ill.

Will there be another group project from the Nuclear Fam?

Tone Tank: Yeah, it’s a major-mega-spectacular-top-secret-project. Everybody is living in a undisclosed location right now, with major companies backing it. I’m not even allowed to talk about it.