Myka Nyne

Im Gespräch mit Myka Nyne, seines Zeichens Gründungsmitglied von Freestyle Fellowship, Mit-Initiator des berühmten Good Life Café, mirakulöse Freestyle-Ikone und heute mehr denn je arbeitsame Raplegende aus Los Angeles. Wir danken ugrap.de-Forummitglied daabl für die Abschrift.

Let’s talk about your current situation first: What are you working on right now?

Establishing a good distribution for my music and new projects. I just did a new album called “Citrus Sessions” and I’m giving it away at the moment for free. You can download it from my website. And promoting the new Myka-starting-over-vibe. What I mean by starting over is acknowledging what I’ve accomplished in my career and reaping benefits of that.

How do you rate your career up to this point?

Fantastic, because it’s been a gradual incline that continues to climb. So I keep getting higher and higher and higher. It hasn’t peaked off, sky’s the limit.

Which one of your albums do you like the most?

Which one of mine?

 

Yeah.

I guess the ones to come.

So what’s to come? Tell me about it.

No, the ones in the future, the ones that I haven’t even done yet. I mean, I love everything that I’ve done and they capsulate where I was at at that time. Yes, I think that there’s still more that I wanna say to the world.

What can we expect from these future albums?

Future albums will contain Myka styles but obviously attempting to take on different challenges of the form as well as different forms of music.

I collected some questions from fans in our forum and they wanted to know if you’ll ever work with Daddy Kev again?

Oh yeah, because even if I choose to redo a song on a beat that we’ve already worked on together or remixed or sampled. Something that we’ve already done together in and of itself is us working together. But, I’d love to work with Daddy Kev because I’ve grown musically, he’s grown musically. So it would be interesting to see what we could come up with now.

Ok, are there also any unreleased records you plan to release in the further future?

Yes, “Grammophone”, which is basically more of Myka Nyne’s underground rapid fire rap style and “Mykology” which is either going to be an anthology just to keep people up to speed with what I’ve been doing or the anthology will again be another album comprising different songs that I’ve done.

And will these be professionally pressed CDs or CD-Rs?

Well, right now labels… A very special label has approached me to do a Jazz project, where it’s me and the band. That’s gonna be some progressive modernist Jazz sort of rap album or Jazz Myka album. That’s definitely coming in the future with a very special label behind it. And I do have my imprint M9 records where I intent to release “Mykology”. But I don’t wanna compete with any other projects that I release because I don’t want other labels to feel bad about putting something out on me that I put out something else at the same time, you know?

Will there be another project of Haiku D’Etat?

There will be another Haiku D’Etat project, because the demand is gonna be so great. Abstract and Acey and I would more than likely just to satisfy the fans… We’re almost forced to come together to do it. Now, will there be another Haiku project on Project Blowed Recordings? That could be a question.

Ok, will there be?

There’s nothing in the works right now but I believe it would be good to do another Haiku project with Project Blowed Recordings because Project Blowed Recordings is like our grassroot operation that’s grown now. And so I’d love it if we could do another Haiku project on Project Blowed Recordings.

One last question from the fans: Somebody read that there might be a second part of “A Book Of Human Language”. Is that true?

That would be a question you’d wanna ask Aceyalone.

You don’t know nothing about it?

Well, I know there could be a reissue of “A Book Of Human Language”. But I know that right now he has an album out with RJD2 and that album is incredible so he’s gonna get a lot of good reviews for that.

Back to your music. What’s happening with the Freestyle Fellowship lately? Are there any news concerning the group?

Well, Acey wants to do another Freestyle Fellowship album. Everyone’s to wait until the demand is so great that we end up cashing on some of our past endeavours as well. He wants to wait for Jupiter to come back up.

Think back to the early days in the Goodlife Cafe. Have you ever dreamed of gaining national and international success?

Oh yeah, I knew it would because, number one: we helped get the world to freestyle, we helped kids realize they can have their own individual approach to the HipHop form, we helped people realize that you don’t necessarily have to be signed to a label to make a living doing HipHop. That would catch on fast. The first time we did the Goodlife, it was me, Acey and Jupiter, nobody else. Then the next week, it was like maybe 12 people. And after that, 50. So it exponentially grew so quickly that we knew we ought to set a new trend in culture and saving lives hopefully, giving kids something else to do with their free time.

Can you still remember the first time you realized that you also have fans over here in europe?

My first time there in the early 90’s like ’93, we did our tour, Freestyle Fellowship without Jupiter, with Ronnie Jordan and our rebirth of cool type of vibe. And it was great as we were touring with Max Beasley and all these different people that were in the band. The musicians were in the front of the bus and then all the rappers were in the back and then somewhere in the middle I was hanging out with Max Beasley and Ron Jordan because I was into that music stuff too like them. It was great, we were well received, we had good turnouts. Mainly, it was almost like mania. We did a show somewhere in UK I think and girls were chasing the van that we were in, jumping on the van. We had groupies! I remember man, it was love out there.

Which countries did you travel?

I don’t even remember, but it was about three or four at that time. I think back then it might has just been kinda like a north-east tour. But I love the culture, I love the vibe that I get. I wish I had a better command of these languages. When I go to Japan or even if I’m in Mexico I wish I’d be able to talk to my fans there.

The Goodlife Café – Do you still hang around there today?

I go by whenever I drive down Crenshaw, go over there pay a little mental tribute but the project established there has gone and I don’t think they do any more Open Mic things over there. It’s familiar at the Project Blowed workshop, I get my grasroots of HipHop growing at the Project Blowed camp network.

Now various Project Blowdians have worked with german artists. What about you, do you plan to?

Oh, I definitely plan to. Number one: the artists there cater their style even though I don’t know the language I’m convinced that they are just as passionate about it as I am. From what I’ve heard with Busdriver, what I’ve heard with Ellay Khule, what I’ve heard with Riddlore? and even some stuff that Acey told me. He like: I am convinced that I would be at home there. It would be a good music home.

Could you just drop some words about Power Tongue and Wreek One? They were both featured on the anniversary album. I haven’t heard anything of them before.

Power Tongue and Wreek One are brothers. I stumbled across them when I lived in Corea Town. They were fans and they wanted to learn how to take their career to the next level and I recorded an album and I mainly made them freestyle the whole album. And I think they have even another album now. Very young cats with good heart. When they were over my house at my studio I recorded that song and I originally was gonna use it but then Acey asked me if I had any material. So instead of giving him a song on me, I introduce the collabo through the feature.

Your rap style is near perfection. Is there anything that you’d like to improve about it?

For me it’s like communicate one level and then… well no, no. There’s always room for improvement… I guess maintaining, you keep whatever you got going on… Like, there’s always room for improvement and I’d be a fool to think that there wasn’t because that’s when I could get caught slipping.

Where do you take your musical inspiration from?

The musical inspiration comes from the environment, it comes from previous artists, old and new, records, CDs, music I hear on television, commercials, crossword puzzles, works, media, computer, internet surfing, hearing other rappers and other performers in general. Even, you know, by birds and stuff like that. Just animal sounds in general.

Animal sounds?

You know, the rhythm of a dogs bark or cats miaow or something like that. I’m not even interpreted into what I am doing but it inspired me to do this or that. I pretty much get inspired by everything.

I know that this is almost impossible, but can you describe your character in a few words?

I’m a musical character like positive and creative kinda. Like, to describe my character is… hm…bold, noble, exploratory, you know I’m exploring, discovering I guess. An alpha-male rapper, vibe leadership and also honest and trustworthy.

Your life had many ups and downs. How do you manage to keep your music that positive? What keeps you up?

My friend said I need to listen more to what I say in my songs for the most part. I need more reminders merely to me making music itself is a positive thing. So, you know, of course positivity is gonna come in a positive act like I know better I should do better.

Have you ever endeavoured to get a major deal? How do you assess the pros and cons of being signed to a major?

Well, I don’t think there’s any cons to being signed to a major label. I mean, from what I’ve experienced now, from having my own label for what it’s worth or working with independent and underground labels. Majors don’t think so bad especially when they work in different departments, they really care about the artists. Now, you can get signed to a major label and they won’t do anything for you and then treat you like something… But these days I don’t think anyone’s in the business of signing an artist if they don’t really have the premeditated intent to promote that artist.

How does your life look besides making music?

Oh, it’s grand man. Right now, I’m enjoying the sunshine where I live at and I’m enjoying the good weather here and I’m gonna get on my bike later and ride and finish this song that I’m working on and eating good food, eating good and staying healthy. Sometimes I party too hard and then have to replenish my body.

A friend of mine asked me this question: do women inspirate you?

Yes, from time to time. Especially in the past. But now I think it comes down to the music and so whatever concepts or whatever ideas are going into my music that’s really what interests me now because the ladies come and go in my life but the music has always been there.

Do you have any shoutouts or announcements at the end of this interview?

Yes, go to mykanyne.com and download my new album “Citrus Sessions” for free. And look out for me cause I’m gonna go over there in about a month and a half, two months on a tour with Abstract Rude. That’s what I’ve heard before. So that’s gonna be a big deal. And also I wanna produce and work with other artists and I don’t charge that much. I don’t charge that much.