Nasa

Gemeinsam mit seinem Kumpel Cirrus betreibt Nasa seit dem Weggang von Def Jux eine eigene Plattenschmiede mit dem vielsagenden Namen Uncommon Records. Wir fragten nach der Labelphilosophie, Nasas Auffassung von sinnvoller Innovation, dem Werdegang seiner Gruppe The Presence und allem was sonst noch von Bedeutung sein könnte. Viel Lesearbeit, aber sehr lohnenswert!

You’ve been working with Def Jux – how did you experience the time at the label?

I had worked there from the time they began in late 2000, up until the summer of 2005. I enjoyed most of my time there and was a part of some classic recordings. When I started there it was at a time when getting a lot of mix credits for records I enjoyed was important to me, when that was accomplished I began to plan out a way forward, resulting in Uncommon Records. But, I think being involved with the spirit of that label when it was beginning and seeing it all come together was great for my development as a label owner myself. I’ve seen and learned what they did right and what they did wrong and it was a great experience. I’ve always modeled my label after the releases from Bobbito’s Fondle’ Em Records, early Rawkus and Definitive Jux. I think when all of those labels started out they approached hip hop in an amazingly fresh way and the artists involved with them had something to say.

What’s different in comparison to the work with your own label Uncommon Records?

Uncommon is a niche label. The only goal is to put out positive progressive hip hop music. Definitive Jux is based on the A & R taste of EL P. He listens to a lot of different kinds of hip hop and is very open minded, his label is an extension of his personal taste in certain ways and his taste is usually good, thus creating a good label. Uncommon works differently, myself and Cirrus also listen to a lot of different types of hip hop but we choose to only feature hip hop on our label that we in some way can deem ‘progressive’. In a way this may seem wrong to some, but we feel that hip hop needs a label that is run in this manner. Rock, Jazz and many other genres have seen labels that focus their A & R this way and we felt it was needed in hip hop. It is very satisfying to be involved in running label like this, it is something that I’ve always wanted to do, even before I started working for Jux.

“We Are Vol. 1″ is actually the third release on the label. What’s happening next -are you trying to get more artists signed?

The next release will be from Arcsin, who you may know from his release “Resonant Murk Tactics” that dropped on Def Jux’s Pharmacy Imprint. He also produced “Home Sickness” from Despot on Def Jux Presents 3. He’s going to be dropping his new LP “Oculus Fang” on Uncommon Records. It’s going to be like nothing you’ve ever heard from a hip hop label and like nothing you’ve ever heard from him. He was always someone who I’ve considered a phenom talent wise, but now he has truly taken his music to the next level. I would describe what I mean by that but I wouldn’t want to damage the impact of his music when heard. I was fully prepared to release another album similar to Resonant, but I’ve recently discovered that we’re sitting on something much more powerful than that now.

After that will be Centri’s album “Article 15″. Centri is going to go down as one of the best ‘story rappers’ in the underground. His album is his story creatively laid out about his good, bad and ugly experiences in the military of the United States. I will be doing a bulk of the production along with Dynamics Plus (producer of his group, The Lenzmen). The last release on the slate right now is Dig Dug’s LP, he’s another amazing producer that I was lucky enough to come upon. He’s currently putting together a concept record with many different underground emcees, that is part political, part science fiction and incredibly detailed in both ways.

The thing that I’m really excited about at the moment is our digital distribution deal with IODA. It allows us to release things 100 percent digitally that reach retailers like Itunes, Emusic, Verizon Vcast and all the other top stores online. I want Uncommon to be on the cutting edge of this movement to 100 percent online shopping for music. I think that this can really change the business and break the monopoly held by organized distributors, retail stores and labels that continue to shut the door on musical innovation because they are know longer willing to take the musical risks that were more common before the overall music industry took a downward turn. More importantly it gives us the opportunity to release more music with a quicker speed at Uncommon and continue to support great artists in what they do. We’ll be releasing a full length from Masai Bey called “The Panacea Goldmind” as well as EP from Masai and BMS. We’re also going to be putting out a new digital single from The Presence called “Who Stole New Orleans?” which will address the redistribution of land taken from the African American victims of Katrina and re releasing The Presence’s single from Def Jux, “Woke”. We hope that that’s just the beginning and that we can put out lots of stuff digitally in the future.

How did you get all these different artists together? What about your selection criteria?

To build on what I was saying earlier, we’re the kind of label that would like to do one thing really well and consistently well. We put out high quality hip hop, plain and simple. It might not fit everyone’s taste but even people that don’t get it will respect it. So with that said, that lays out our ‘selection criteria’. The fun thing about a label like this is, we have no clue what it is we’re looking for. We let the music call out to us. If it’s something we feel passionate about and we enjoy the artist or artists making it, we’ll do everything we can to get it out there, no expectations.

You’re also a member of the group The Presence which has already released two albums. Could you just give a short insight in the group’s history?

The Presence was formed in 1998 by myself, Cirrus and a third friend of ours who at the time was emceeing but has since gone on to a fairly successful ‘indie rock’ career of his own, if I may use that term to pigeon hole him some although unnecessarily, hmmm? Anyway, he went away to college and me & Cirrus carried on The Presence. In 1999 we met pawl while I was working at the old Ozone Studio as an engineer. We rolled along for a while learning how to become musicians, learning how to become rappers and lyricists. It took a while but in 2001, we finished our first collective work called “Advanced Bloodbath” which was CDR and Kinko’s copy cover. It had a limited release obviously, but some people took to it. It was a very odd record. We didn’t have much direction at the time and we mostly were apocalyptic and weird about everything on that recording. We completed it in August 2001 and released it the same month, then 9/11 happened and sadly to say, that gave us a lot of direction, and I think changed the direction of the group forever. At that point we started a slow & long process of becoming more political (not that we weren’t already) and more importantly better educated. In 2003, Definitive Jux released our 12″ single, “Woke” which was about the morning of 9/11. After that we started work on what would become “Common Man’s Anthems”. Just as that happened pawl left the group. He had served as our DJ, laying cuts but I guess aspired to be in a role as a producer, which he always had wanted realistically. After much, procrastination under obvious circumstances he left later in 2003. At that point I think me & Cirrus really focused in on becoming what I coined as a power duo. In rock there’s a term called a power trio, like Hendrix Experience or Cream (bands without anything but Gtr, Bs and Drums). We focused on our craft and came together a lot more with our wordplay and concepts. We looked up to duos like EPMD, M.O.P. and Camp Lo (among others), not as much for lyrics (although we enjoyed them) but more for the way they worked together on the mic and how they laid out song structure. Anyway, as I was saying after Woke and after pawl had departed, we started really working on “Common Man’s Anthems”, it took a while to complete, and I was still getting hit up for copies of Bloodbath so I came up with the idea to do an EP to “tide over” whatever fan base we had. That’s how the “Members Only” Ep came about. It has something related to all of our releases on it, “Pandas Killing Each Other” from Bloodbath, a remix of “Razorfund” (original was the b side to “Woke”), new songs that were exclusive to Members and the title track which of the EP which was a song off of our upcoming album (it also included a preview track of songs from the upcoming album). We actually worked on both Members and Common Man’s at the same time, some songs from Members were done after songs from Common Man’s and vice versa. Common Man’s Anthem’s represents the apex of our growth to that point as artists, we started late as ‘rappers’ and were able to develop the talents we have as we went, rather then being ‘blessed’ with natural talent as emcess (which very few are anyway). Common Man’s Anthems is just that, anthems for the common man (or woman) of today’s world that is afraid of the real terrorism that does exist and confused by the reaction given to it by their government. Our mission is to take every day topics and present them in a very uncommon way. We’re grass roots, level headed, down to Earth cats. We’re not space cadets, just because we’re progressive. We give you music you can truly associate with, I feel.

Will there be further projects with them?

Absolutely, early work has started on our next album, “Living In A Grey World”. It will be everything you liked about our most intense songs times 100. More Power! “Kool” from “We Are, Vol. 1″ is a good example of the direction the new album will go in.

The booklet of “We Are. Vol. 1” says that it’s time for this music to evolve. Do you think that it’s even possible to create something totally new?

Well, I don’t think it’s about creating something totally new. Uncommon and all of the artists associated with Uncommon have a deep respect and are rooted in context with the old school. Evolving is just that, it is to be something and then to grow into something that can better handle it’s environment while still being easily traced back to it’s original predecessor. I mean that really musically, I’m not much of a science student and don’t really believe in evolution anyway, but the analogy seemed to work. I think nowadays the environment is different then it was even 2, 4 or 8 years ago. As an ‘underground’ artist it’s simply harder to survive and we’re trying to create a means for survival.

To the one’s who haven’t heard the album yet – how does your contribution to this venture sound like?

My personal contribution (along with Cirrus) is a lot of what we’ve been talking about. Trying to collect music that reflects what we think is the next big movement in hip hop and galvanizing it into a project. On the production side I did about half of the beats give or take and I would ask the listener to determine what that sounds like, I like it myself.

Where do you see the limits of a possible sound revolution? Should there be limits anyway?

I don’t agree with limits for any form of music. I don’t think there are any limits. I would just caution cats coming up or even some cats making music, do your homework, know your history. A lot of great artists have paved your way, give them the respect they deserve and listen to their contributions and they will repay with the proper context for your art. Ornette Coleman came up as a student of BeBop before he started playing Free Jazz, don’t think just cause you’re the weirdest that your ill, your probably not. Making progressive hip hop should be more challenging for the creator, not the listener.

What’s the worst thing that happened to HipHop within the last five years?

Where should I start? The Hipsterizing and gentrification of our culture. Cats having Nike competitions after getting their first pair of real kicks at the age of 25 and going to magazine parties and calling that hip hop. The fact that we as a scene have let a bunch of scene hopping hipsters hijack our culture and remove it from the streets in the peoples hands where it belongs. Then when they finish with what hip hop is doing at the moment they move on to devour something else that is genuine. This is the state that we live in right now in hip hop, there’s no denying it. A lot of this shit is frat party shit, straight up. And nobody seems to give a damn, that’s what I’d change. I read a lot of geopolitical books so I’ll put it in this context. Uncommon is the coup of the people coming to destroy the evil empire of what people still have the nerve to call “underground hip hop”. It’s a coup to every magazine that wants you to advertise in order to get a review, it’s a coup to every hipster bullshit record released, it’s a coup to the media conglomerates controlling radio and it’s a coup to every retailer that doesn’t do anything to support indie hip hop and fronts like they do. We are coming for you all and we’re well armed.

Is there anything I forgot to ask about? Add it now…

We’ve had a lot of success with our Uncommon Radio show. It’s a monthly show that I host at Uncommon Records’ web site which is at www.uncommonmusic.net. Every month we have a guest artist, there’s a Q & A with the artist, we play joints and exclusives from the guest and it always ends with a freestyle segment. We’ve got L.I.F.E. Long and IDE on this month and we’ve had Karniege, K-the-I???, Billy Woods, Masai Bey and others in the past. You can listen to the show on the site or download the whole thing absolutely free.

Do you have any last words to our readers?

To all of our supporters, keep doing what your doing, help is on the way. Peace to Stolen Music Imprint, Backwoodz Studios, Creative Juices, Dynamica Music, Agartha Arts Collective and everyone else holding this down with us.