This article was originally published in URB Issue 141, November 2006. Edited for clarity.

Shalom/Salaam/Word Up

In one of the most polarizing regions in the world, the language of hip-hop divides and unites

by Jason Newman

“Sometimes, I used to write my lyrics when the F-16s and the Apaches in the sky were intruding on the people around me. Those things affect me so much and make me feel like there’s something big in me that’s gonna explode my inside. I can describe exactly how I feel through my lyrics.”

The words are from Mohammad F, a 21-year-old rapper born and raised in Gaza. In a part of the world where everyone, regardless of ethnicity or religion, walks the line between everyday life and potential violence, hip-hop has become the new medium for many Israeli and Palestinian youths to tell their side of the story.

The first homegrown hip-hop album came out in 1995 and, while popular, was treated much like American hip-hop back in the day. “At first, Israeli hip-hop was a gimmick. People referred to it as a joke,” says Liron Peeni, founder of “The Biz,” a decade-old hip-hop show on Israeli radio and music columnist for the daily newspaper Yediot Achronot. “It was only in the late ’90s that there were songs that meant something and were not just funny hip-hop.”

Cue 27-year-old Kobi Shimoni, aka Subliminal, who would become the first successful Israeli rapper and—not coincidentally—the most controversial.

The son of an Iranian father and Tunisian mother, Shimoni, an outspoken nationalist, has released songs titled “Divide and Conquer” and “Biladi” (Arabic for “My Land”) and has been criticized by many Palestinians for what they perceive as extremist views. But while his debut album, Light From Zion, was released in 2000 before the second intifada, many Israeli Jews looked to his fiercely nationalistic lyrics as an outward expression of their feelings.

“When we signed a distribution deal, the first rule was ‘Don’t talk about politics’ because as an Israeli, no matter what you say, half of the people won’t agree with you and won’t buy your album,” he says. “But I think nobody represents Israel as real as me. There is nothing I desire more than peace and nothing I respect more than life, no matter who. For me, it has nothing to do with race. We eat the same hummus and wipe it with the same pita bread. We’re dying, literally dying, to have peace, but there’s nobody to do peace with. They want us dead; that’s it.”

"We’re dying, literally dying, to have peace, but there’s nobody to do peace with. They want us dead; that’s it.”

—Kobi Shimoni, aka Subliminal

Clad in a baggy jersey, baseball hat, and diamond necklace, Subliminal could easily pass for an American MC. With one exception. “The second I got money,” he proudly proclaims, “I bought myself a big-ass diamond necklace with a big Jewish star.” For Subliminal, being Israeli is not just a part of his life; it is his life, and he has been widely credited as re-instilling a sense of Israeli pride among his many followers.

“He had an incredible influence on Israeli youth and brought the Star of David to the forefront of fashion,” says Harry Rubenstein, music writer for the Jerusalem Post. “He also undoubtedly made Israeli pride ‘in’ with the kids, and his Zionistic rhymes spoke to the kids in a language they could easily relate to.” A Star of David necklace was included in the first 20,000 copies of 2002’s Light and the Shadow to show his seriousness.

Among the many future MCs who looked up to Shimoni during his early years was 27-year-old Tamer Nafer. A founding member of DAM, the first and most successful Arabic rap group, Nafer was born in Israel, but, like many Arabs, his roots and heritage lie more with Palestinians than with Israelis. While only 20 minutes away, Nafer’s hometown of Lod, an impoverished city with Jews and Arabs and one of the biggest drug markets in Israel, is a world away from the sophisticated cosmopolitanism of nearby Tel Aviv. Listening to Tupac and similar politically-minded MCs, Nafer says he saw the parallel between his upbringing and American hip-hop. “Hip-hop [in America] started from a minority,” says Nafer. “We are a minority here from people who were living in ghettos. We’re living in ghettos here. From people who don’t have an identity in the USA. We don’t have an identity here.”

Formed in 1998, DAM, consisting of Nafer, his brother Suhell, and Mahmoud Jrere, released “Meen Erhabe.” (“Who’s the Terrorist?”) in 2001. The song, with this chorus: “Who’s the terrorist?/I’m the terrorist?/How am I the terrorist when you’ve taken my land?/Who’s the terrorist?/You’re the terrorist!/You’ve taken everything I own while I’m living in my homeland” immediately became a rallying cry and inspired many Arab and Palestinian youths to grab pens and paper and start spitting their thoughts. If you listen, you can hear love songs and even the occasional party jam, but for DAM and others like him, the anger and pain felt by KRS-One and Public Enemy in ‘80 and ’90s America has been channeled to a similar level here. The group is set to release IHDA’, the first official Palestinian hip-hop album, this fall.

Like DAM, many MCs involved in Palestinian hip-hop use their lyrics to reclaim and remember an identity they feel is quickly slipping away. “Our ancestors were our fathers’ pride,” rhymes Mohammad F in “History Book.” “Now we only harvest loud tears.”

“They’re losing their history, culture, and language,” says Jackie Salloum, director of SlingShot Hip Hop, the first movie to explore the lives of Palestinian rappers. “In schools, they learn Zionist history but don’t learn where they came from. What DAM tries to do within their lyrics is give shout-outs to Palestinian poets, artists, and filmmakers and try to teach the youth.”

In 2003, Salloum borrowed a camera and used various Web resources, such as Arabrap.net, to document the nascent hip-hop scenes in Gaza and the West Bank because of what she saw as a misrepresentation of Palestinians, especially young people.

“When you watch the news in America covering the Middle East, how often do you hear the youth speaking?” She explains, “Hip-hop’s roots are in expressing oneself and talking about what’s happening on the streets. I thought it was just the perfect fit that [Palestinians] took this form of music on as a form of resistance to get their voices out.”

“One of my main goals was to bring the voices out of the MCs,” says Salloum, an American of Palestinian and Syrian descent. “Most people don’t know it’s going on, and they’re talented. I thought it was an amazing way to see another side of Palestine, and music a great way to reach people.”

“When you watch the news in America covering the Middle East, how often do you hear the youth speaking?”

—Jackie Salloum, Director

At one point, Nafer and Shimoni were boys, hanging out and rhyming with each other at shows. But after a June 2001 suicide bombing, Nafer said in an interview that he could relate to the bomber (though not condone his actions). Shimoni became enraged, and the two have been on shaky ground ever since.

“The second [Nafer] got big enough to have his crowd, he started to talk bullshit in Arabic, saying they have an Israeli Zionist enemy and all types of bullshit that Arab kids wanted to hear that have nothing to do with reality,” says Shimoni.

Nafer, for his part, will still rock crowds with Israeli MCs, but Shimoni is not one of them. “In the beginning, before I went political, we were cool,” he says. “When you serve hummus and fix gardens, you are a ‘good’ Arab. But if you want to say, ‘Yeah, I want my rights,’ then it’s ‘Hey man, you’re being one of them.’”

Taking cues from MCs like Nafer, hip-hop in the Gaza Strip has rapidly grown since the first Gaza hip-hop concert in 2004. For rappers born and raised in Gaza, hip-hop is the music of choice for youths to express their side of the story, a side they feel is ignored by the media. “A lot of people don’t know anything about Palestine,” says Mohammad F. “And when they hear about Palestinians, they think we are criminals because of the Zionist media. So, I decided to start rapping to show people how the real Palestinians are. We are not criminals, and we are not bad people.”

Mahmood Shalabi, a 24-year-old rapper living in the Israeli city of Acre, echoes this statement. “We are just saying what we have been hiding inside us for years,” he says. “Using hip-hop, now is the time to tell everything because we can’t hide all the time.”

***

“At the end of the day, the pen is better than any gun. When writing songs, you may hurt people, but you’re not gonna kill them.”

—Liron Peeni

On a recent night at Tel Aviv hip-hop club The G-Spot, while hundreds dance to Subliminal’s beats, a small crowd congregates in another room as the DJ pumps Nas, Jeru the Damaja, and Gang Starr. The yang to Subliminal’s yin, the Israeli hip-hop underground, led by artists like Sagol 59 and Hadag Nahash, thrives and tries to preserve, as one rapper puts it, “the real hip-hop culture.”

“The problem overall is that 25 years of hip-hop foundation does not exist here,” says rapper Shi 360. “They went from nothing to Nelly and skipped the foundation. That’s something that bothers me as a person because the media don’t even consider it a form of music to this day.” Peeni says, “When people try to build a building here, they are starting at the penthouse. They don’t give the time to think about the beginning.”

Like any scene, the commercial vs. underground battle in Israeli hip-hop has existed virtually since the beginning of the genre. Sha’anan Street’s group, Hadag Nahash, had a massive hit with “Shirat Hasticker” (“The Sticker Song”), and he confirms many of his peers’ views about the commercial scene: “You can look at the scene and people try to imitate what they see on MTV. They try to dress and rap like they think a rapper should dress and rap, but it’s going to be removed from our everyday life here.”

“I look at things from an underground artist’s point of view,” says Sagol. “I don’t try to make hits. Sometimes, a song or two will get popular, but I’m not aiming at that. So everything that happens, I take it as a bonus.”

Regardless of aspirations, who share stages with whom gets tricky. Due to movement restrictions, it’s virtually impossible for MCs in Gaza to rock shows in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. Still, for those living outside the disputed territories, many rappers on both sides regularly perform with each other to crowds of varying diversity. It’s not uncommon, however, for political ideologies to keep some MCs away from others.

No one is naïve enough to think that hip-hop alone can solve such deep divisions between people. But its effect of opening up greater dialogue has been felt since it hit the country. “At the end of the day, the pen is better than any gun,” says Peeni. “When writing songs, you may hurt people, but you’re not gonna kill them. And it’s better to put all your anger into a good rap song that will make people think than grab a gun and kill people. It’s a kind of Middle Eastern therapy for Palestinian and Jewish rappers.”

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My criteria for this blog are simple: Can we gain insight from this piece years after it was first published? Is there a theme or prescient thought worth (re)examining? And does the hero still inspire us today?

Take a look. Drop a comment. Tell a friend. With Love, Raymond.

Published in Issue 153 May/June 2008

The Roots Stay Alive

The Illadelph Halflife has turned into a decade-plus-deep catalog of top-notch hip-hop, but where does rap’s premier band go now?

By Kevin Polowy

Photography by Phil Knott

Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson is about to set the record straight. The congenial Roots drummer with a football lineman’s frame and unmistakable ‘fro is sitting dead-center in the middle of a large leather couch in the green room of a Chelsea recording studio. “We work hard and get paid accordingly,” he says, with barely a hint of conceit. “No one’s crying that they’re in the poor house. We do extremely well for what we do.”

What they do. It was the title of the second single off their third record and the amount of play its sneakily satirical video pimped on a popular reality TV channel that once upon a time aired music programming helped elevate The Roots from niche alt-rap group to hip-hop mainstay. It’s what they’ve done—and done extremely well—that’s gotten them here. They’ve defied the odds and far surpassed hip-hop’s short life expectancy rate. They haven’t just survived; they’ve flourished. And with April’s Rising Down, they’ve now released an astounding ten albums. (Or is it only eight? More on that later.)

“The secret to longevity is us being able to achieve some sort of fluidic chemistry,” says Black Thought, né Tariq Trotter, the Illadelphia, Pennsylvania outfit’s other charter member. It’s an hour later, and the 35-year-old wordsmith is beat, blunted, and slouched in the corner of the same couch, tired eyes atypically visible sans trademark shades and Yankees cap tipped low. “We have an understanding of each others’ boundaries and each others’ limits.”

“As you get older, there’s definitely the fear of the unknown, of what the future holds for you.”

—?uestlove

?uestlove attributes their success to following the Tao of Chuck D. While The Roots were on tour with Public Enemy in 1998, just prior to the release of Things Fall Apart, the revolutionary MC laid out for them his two-part equation for bringing the noise well into the future: Take it one day at a time, but also think in terms of chess moves. “While the average rapper thinks in terms of six months from now what they’ll be doing, they don’t really want to think, ‘What am I doing in 2011?’” explains ?uestlove. “Especially for us. Do we really want to think, ‘Is there going to be room for us in this game when we’re 40?’ There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. But as you get older, there’s definitely the fear of the unknown, of what the future holds for you.” (For the record, Public Enemy has released 11 albums.)

While longtime fans probably look back and assume The Roots were just getting into the groove in ‘98, in truth, they were at a crossroads. They had popped onto the scene five years prior, riding their homegrown hero status in the 2-1-5 and year-long European residency (fueled by their first release, Organix) into a contract with Geffen Records. They proceeded to drop the jazztastic hip-hop classic Do You Want More?!!!??! in early 1995, and Native Tongue listeners swallowed it right up. They brought the jazz-like A Tribe Called Quest and fused it with poetics à la Digable Planets but with a decidedly harder Gang Starr-like edge. They were the natural descendants of blossoming sound. Or at least that’s how we saw them. “We thought we were included in the first round of alternative hip-hop music,” admits ?uestlove. “We thought we were part of the Jungle Brother-De La-Tribe-Arrested Development-Gang Starr train. But in reality, we got to the station just a little bit too late, and the train went off the platform.”

“We thought we were included in the first round of alternative hip-hop music. We thought we were part of the Jungle Brother-De La-Tribe-Arrested Development-Gang Starr train. But in reality, we got to the station just a little bit too late.”

—?uestlove

That train’s departure gave life to the next movement. ?uestlove says they realized it about halfway through making 1996’s Illadelph Halflife: “There’s no such thing as individual success in music unless it’s part of a movement. Philadelphia International. The disco sound. The G-Funk West Coast sound...The Down South crunk...Snap music.” In 1997, with the help of Geffen and MCA, The Roots very deliberately scoured the waivers and label rosters, setting the wheels in motion to eventually lure like-minded free agents into their fold. They began with Common, who they pried from Relativity. They went after Mos Def, Talib Kweli, and Pharoahe Monch. They attempted to get Slum Village and lost them, but still signed J Dilla.

“We pretty much just built the left-of-center roster around us,” says ?uestlove. Around the turn of the century, the movement expanded to neo-soul. There was Erykah Badu, who crooned the Jill Scott-penned hook on “You Got Me,” the lead single on their fourth LP, 1999’s Things Fall Apart, helping the group land a Grammy. But there was also D’Angelo, Alicia Keys, Scott, N’Dea Davenport, Musiq Soulchild, Bilal, and Floetry—all became intertwined with The Roots crew. It was the movement. “That’s why all of a sudden, Common and artists who only sold 200,000 units previously can now sell a million units,” ?uestlove says.

?uestlove is downplaying the impact of a certain Chicago superstar dropout in referencing the success of Common’s chart-topping last effort, Finding Forever, to make his point. And though the movement has certainly paid dividends for The Roots, there’s still a prevalent notion that the paper chase is harder on them than it is on their contemporaries (thus the drummer’s earlier clarification). And that’s understandable. The Roots have watched as act after act they’ve grown with blows up. First, there was The Fugees. Then OutKast. Then, Lauryn Hill as a solo artist. Then the Black Eyed Peas. Then Cee-Lo with Gnarls Barkley. It’s liked every act that headlined a Smokin’ Grooves tour with them found greener pastures. And don’t forget Kanye West. Or Eve or Beanie Siegel, two Illy Philly residents who used guest spots on Roots records as launch pads to lucrative commercial careers.

“But I kinda get the feeling that if we were awarded that amount of success, I don’t think we’d be here,” says ?uestlove. Here, at the moment, is the aforementioned Battery Studios in Manhattan. ?uestlove and Black Thought, along with their Def Jam and Okayplayer reps, have just hosted a Rising Down listening party for a tightly packed room full of journalists, industry types, and fellow musicians and friends like J.Period and Jazzyfatnastees’ vocalist Tracey Moore. Talib Kweli dipped in just in time to hear his guest verse.

“I think the struggle and the hunger and the absolute molasses-like process that our career has taken is the only reason why [we’re here],”

—?uestlove

“I think the struggle and the hunger and the absolute molasses-like process that our career has taken is the only reason why [we’re here],” ?uestlove continues later. “This album is past hunger. This album was starvation.”

This album draws nothin’ but love from the listening partygoers. And it’s surely an accomplishment, both strikingly alike and vastly different from Roots records past. Thematically, the general consensus is that it’s their darkest record yet, which says a lot coming on the heels of their previous release, 2006’s divisive Game Theory. If things didn’t “Feel Right” in ‘06, how are they feeling now? “Yeah, I think things are becoming worse in the world, at breakneck speed,” says Black Thought, who makes like Gore and addresses inconvenient truths on his very first verse. “What I write is just the result of what I’m dealing with. And if greenhouse gases and global warming wasn’t directly affecting me, then I wouldn’t be putting that out there.”

Yet, the Euro-release ends with The Roots’ poppiest, most radio-friendly track yet—and just the name gives that away, “Birthday Girl”—featuring vocals from Fall Out Boy frontman Patrick Stump. Their first single, the song is sure to draw comparisons to The Gym Class Heroes—and destined to provoke drunk white girl dance parties in unwitting Irish bars everywhere.

Sonically, the album’s driving force is synth, yet there’s a far wider range of styles at work than we’ve seen from the group over their past three efforts, from the Fela-inspired Afrobeat of “I Will Not Apologize” to the wild, upbeat style they refuse to call go-go (per the insistence of guest Wale) on “Rising Up.”

Lyrically, the album is flooded with guest spots, a far cry from the court Black Thought’s been holding down across Phrenology, Tipping Point, and Game Theory. Mos Def kicks things off along with Styles P on the title track. Extended family members Dice Raw (who Black Thought credits for writing 80 percent of the hooks) and Peedi Peedi (aka Peedi Crakk) drop knowledge on “Get Busy,” a cut reminiscent of Illadelph Halflife. Roots protégé Porn (warning: a Google search can be distracting) and Dice Raw coat the next-level “I Will Not Apologize.” Malik B responds to the Phrenology number “Water” on “I Can’t Help It.” Common spits harder than he did through most of Forever on “The Show.” Truck North and Saigon also appear, and Lupe Fiasco and Q-Tip were both supposed to (the former got pneumonia the day they were set to record) but don’t.

And then there’s that fella by the name of Patrick Stump. While a Roots-Fall Out Boy collabo may sound like the stuff of derivative major-label manufacturing, that’s actually just our cynical presumption. The song was actually birthed during sessions for their 2004 record The Tipping Point but deemed too far right (or is it too far left?) to make what they considered a “ground zero” LP. And ?uestlove met Stump years ago and instantly bonded with him: “I never met anyone that outdoes me on any type of musical trivia,” he says. Like the 1984 Prince concerts.

?uestlove is prepared for the potential—ahem, fallout. He’s prepared for the “judge and jury,” “the floggers” that turn out every so often to rag on crossover success stories (some prefer the term “sellouts”) like the Black Eyed Peas. But he makes a damn good point: “If you look at the hip-hop marketplace, shit is totally pop! What is your position on ‘Throw Some D’s’? Or ‘Superman’? If you’re gonna ride all the way and start taking people to court, then I don’t want to catch you singing ‘Good Life’ and then turn around say ‘I hate pop hip-hop.’”

The “floggers” also got on ?uestlove’s case last year when the drummer announced The Roots would be releasing Rising Down, “their 10th album.” Do the math, count the propers, and you’ll end up with eight studio outputs. Fans, of course, will realize the group also considers 1999’s The Roots Come Alive and 2005’s Home Grown! The Beginner’s Guide to Understanding the Roots (released in part to satisfy contract obligations with Geffen before leaving for Def Jam) as unique entities and part of the official Roots repertoire. “For me, it’s a new album if at least 60 percent or more of the material is unheard new stuff,” ?uestlove says, adding that their live arrangements evolve so much over the course of 240 shows a year that they’re essentially new versions on Come Alive, while Home Grown! is stocked with remixes, B-sides and live cuts.

…

The storied history of The Legendary Roots Crew—with all of its various incarnations—rivals some of rock’s greatest shape-shifters. Of the collective that asked Do You Want More?!!!??!, only founding fathers ?uestlove and Black Thought remain, though Malik B was welcomed back into the family with the release of Game Theory. Original keyboardist Scott Storch left after the seminal sophomore release and eventually manifested himself into a super-producer. Human beatbox machine Rahzel was always a fleeting presence, but few expected vocal turntablist Scratch (2001) and longtime bassist Leonard Hubbard (2007) to bolt. A guitarist named Ben Kenney left almost as soon as he arrived to join Incubus. Now, keyboardist Kamal Gray sits as the third most tenured member, while guitarist Captain Kirk Douglas, bassist Owen Biddle, sousaphonist Tuba Gooding Jr. (no relation), and percussionist F. Knuckles are still in the familiarizing phase with their fan base.

Though many credit Stetasonic as hip-hop’s first live band, the “100 percent organic,” live instrumentation of Do You Want More?!!!??! solidified The Roots as not only the most successful but also the most visionary and influential. Through the mid-to-late-‘90s, it seemed as though live rap bands would start blossoming from every angle. The seeds were surely planted, but the results often led to just another wannabe dismissed as a Roots clone. Today, there are extremely few true live hip-hop collectives drawing national attention. The Bay Area’s Crown City Rockers, for one. And then...?

Black Thought looks at it from another angle. He says live musicians have thrived in hip-hop, dating back to the mid-‘90s with groups like The Fugees and Black Eyed Peas. But can anyone name the drummer for either of those groups? “That’s more politics within bands,” he says. “The contractual agreement between the performers.” He’s clearly proud of his group’s influence on today’s standard, though. “In this modern day that we’re in, no one that’s at that level, your Kanyes, your Lupes, your Jay-Zs, you don’t see any of them go out and perform without a band. Not at any performance that they want to be taken seriously. And we’re highly responsible for that.”

The Roots should know about Jay-Z shows. They’ve been Jigga’s house band for years now, backing him for his legendary 2001 Unplugged, again in 2003 at his Madison Square Garden “retirement” show, and then again in 2006 at the 10th-anniversary performance of Reasonable Doubt at Radio City Music Hall. Look beyond The Roots crew, and Black Thought is right: Everybody is rocking with a live band, be it Wu-Tang Clan (with El Michels Band) or Slick Rick (with The Eclectic Collective or The Adam Deitch Project). Even Lil’ Wayne’s gotten into the live act.

Many hip-hop heads, though, have long speculated that The Roots’ one-for-all bandstand has claimed casualty the rank of its rhyme spitter in the eternal debate over rap’s best MCs. It’s indisputable that Black Thought lived in the shadows of solo MCs like Talib Kweli and Pharoahe Monch, and it didn’t help matters that his long-awaited, ill-fated solo album got shelved (rumors that it was put to bed because of shoddy quality mostly subsided after a few of the tracks ended up on Phrenology).

It surely can’t be a coincidence that somewhere around or between the release of Phrenology and The Tipping Point, the tide began to turn, and suddenly, the hip-hop community began to speak out on behalf of a long-underrated MC. It had to help that those albums, along with the subsequent Game Theory, all seem to put more emphasis on “showcase” tracks for Black Thought’s fiercely raw lyricism, songs like “Thought @ Work,” “Web,” and “Here I Come.” Rising Down’s merciless “75 Bars” should take the argument even further. But if you insist on pinpointing one song that catapulted Black Thought into “Top 5” discussions, look no further than The Tipping Point’s brilliant “Boom,” “featuring” Big Daddy Kane and Kool G Rap. The lyricist’s second- and third-verse imitations of those hip-hop icons were so spot-on (Kool G lisp and all) that a handful of music reviewers actually reported them as guest spots.

“A lot of my shit was ahead of time ‘cause I modeled my shit after people that was so ahead of their time.”

—Black Thought

“I do, but I don’t,” Black Thought says when asked if he pays mind to the hoopla over Most Dominant MCs. “I feel like times is changing. I feel like when I’m dead and gone, just like Biggie and ‘Pac and whoever else, people will maybe dig deeper and start to understand what it is that I’ve accomplished and really dissect my legacy. A lot of my shit was ahead of time ‘cause I modeled my shit after people that was so ahead of their time. I feel like people may not understand it yet.”

So do The Roots have any regrets? Black Thought still shows visible remorse over the controversy surrounding “You Got Me,” not only for handing off Jill Scott’s beautifully penned chorus to Erykah Badu but also for standing dormant as higher powers cast an actress to rap the then-unknown Eve’s bars in the video.

?uestlove talks about the bigger picture. Getting paid accordingly. What Chuck D told them. Watching year by year, everybody else getting the brass ring. The struggle and the hunger and the “absolute molasses-like process” that’s turned to starvation. “I think the reason you hear the hunger [on Rising Down], why you hear the starvation... could possibly be the fear setting in,” he says. “Will we have a future or not?’”

History says they damn sure do.

Edited for clarity

ENCORE: This is such a great interview with Questlove, Black Thought, and LL COOL J on staying power, hip-hop’s history and legacy after 50 years, and so much more. Also, LL drops some gold, as he has got to be one of the most quotable people in the culture. Enjoy.

And if you needed a reminder…

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Westside Connection

Photography by Michael Schreiber

Interview by Pat Canale

Styling by Roman Alexander Diaz for Beauty and Photo Assistant styling by Asha Mines

Grooming by Melanie Inglessis for Mercury Artists Shot at Photofighter Studios, LA

Editor’s note: This originally appeared in URB issue 119 (Beastie Boys cover) in September 2004. Edited for length.

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Living Legends: Sunspot Jonz, The Grouch, Luckyiam.PSC

Most embarrassing item in your closet:

Sunspot Jonz: A couple of people I let stay there.

The Grouch: No-name shoes.

Luckyiam: A plaid suit jacket I wore on the cover of the Creative Differences album.

Worst hip-hop fashion trend:

L: Trucker hats.

SJ: The big long jerseys that look like a dress, matched with the flat-brim bobblehead hats.

G: Yeah, definitely the hats with the flat bills and all the space on the sides that make kids look like bobblehead toys.

Best hip-hop fashion trend:

L: Dog tags.

G: Air Force Ones. Keep it classic.

SJ: Seedless pants, ’cause they got the inside pocket for your little stash of weed. You can get pulled over, and they’ll never know.

Style icon:

L: Kanye West — he stylin’. I like the way Jay-Z dresses.

G: The UPS man.

SJ: Myself.

Biggest misconception about LA hip-hop:

L: That there’s a lot of support for it.

G: That it’s all gangsta music.

SJ: That Dilated Peoples is the only underground hip-hop act out of LA.

Road-rage confession:

L: I threw D batteries at another car that just cut me off.

G: I don’t inflict road rage. I think I’m more the cause.

SJ: I got into an accident, a little fender bender. But I can’t talk about it; there’s a case going on right now with my insurance company.

The Diesel Truckers: Kool Keith and Kutmasta Kurt

Worst hip-hop fashion trend:

Keith: Von Dutch hats.

Kurt: Swinging your T-shirt around over your head, Petey Pablo-style.

Best hip-hop fashion trend:

Keith: I like the one that I started way back in the day, the blazer with the jeans.

Kurt: The best has to be gold teeth.

Style icon:

Keith: Myself — there’s really nobody else out there.

Kurt: Slick Rick.

Best thing about LA:

Keith: The weather and the chicks that are always looking for stars.

Kurt: The weather.

Favorite song about LA:

Keith: “California Girls” by David Lee Roth.

Kurt: “Batter Ram” by Toddy T.

Biggest misconception about LA hip-hop:

Keith: That it’s only one style of rap here. They think it’s just G Funk.

Kurt: That it’s all Dr. Dre — that it’s only one certain sound.

Road-rage confession:

Keith: I was riding in a car, and I just threw an egg in this lady’s ride and kept going.

Kurt: I might’ve flipped someone off, but you’ve got to be careful because you don’t know who has a gun in their car.

Subtitle and Thavius Beck

Most embarrassing item in your closet:

S: A pink Nike Dri-Fit zip-up shirt made of lycra.

TB: A mesh fatigue rasta wifebeater.

Worst hip-hop fashion trend:

TB: All the underground hip-hoppers and indie rockers are now like one and the same. Hip-hoppers wearing studded bracelets and stuff.

S: The bike messenger fashion — rolling the one pant leg up.

Best hip-hop fashion trend:

TB: Same thing — all the indie hip-hoppers and rockers getting together. If it can expose more people to music, they wouldn’t normally get into, that’s cool.

S: Gray hair. I got that.

Best thing about LA:

TB: All the people and opportunities.

S: Shannyn Sossamon.

Worst thing about LA:

S: The miles you have to cover to get from one end to the other.

TB: The fact that the fuckin’ Lakers lost.

Biggest misconception about LA hip-hop:

S: There are two. One is that we’re all a nurturing, peaceful scene. Two, that we’re just a hardcore gangster scene.

TB: That the underground is a big, happy family. People don’t get along that well, but we’re not all gangsters, either.

Road-rage confession:

S: I don’t drive, but in Barcelona, I choked out this guy for roadblocking our van.

TB: This dude hit my Geo Metro, and I spun around and ran into this bakery. He came out all drunk, like, “Oh, I’m so sorry.” I didn’t actually do anything about it, but that was fucked up.

Omid and Busdriver

Most embarrassing item in your closet:

O: A Coolin’ In Compton concert T-shirt with a black Bart Simpson in a Compton hat.

B: A Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf shirt I had to throw out because it left a painful mark. I didn’t enjoy working there.

Worst hip-hop fashion trend:

O: Jheri curl.

B: Throwback jerseys with the caps that are too big, that fit down over your ears. It makes your head look like a little peanut.

Best hip-hop fashion trend:

B: The best hip-hop trend is just showin’ up.

O: Fat laces.

Style icon:

O: Dapper Dan.

B: Bobby McFerrin.

Best thing about LA:

O: All the talented musicians.

B: The traffic jams. I look forward to those.

Worst thing about LA:

B: All the talented people. It’s horrible. So much talent you can’t deal with it.

O: Not enough people that live in LA know about music coming out of LA.

Favorite song about LA:

O: “We’re All In The Same Gang” by West Coast Rap All-Stars.

B: NWA’s “Straight Outta Compton.”

Biggest misconception about LA hip-hop:

B: That it’s all gangsta rap.

O: People don’t know the history of the underground movement.

Road-rage confession:

B: I was so mad out of road rage that I wasn’t paying attention and hit a dog. It scarred me.

O: Shit, I get mad, but I don’t kill anything.

Pigeon John

Most embarrassing item in your closet:

My wife’s vibrator.

Worst hip-hop fashion trend:

Big, extra-long T-shirts that cover your whole thighs. The dress shirt, literally.

Best hip-hop fashion trend:

Crotchless Diesel jeans coming out in 2006 (2023 editor’s note: Sadly, this prediction failed to materialize).

Style icon:

The young David Bowie.

Favorite song about LA:

“California” by Phantom Planet.

Biggest misconception about LA hip-hop:

That we’re all a bunch of punks, and we don’t really carry guns. But come, and you’ll see, punk.

Road-rage confession:

I flipped someone off, and they retaliated by throwing a full water bottle at my car.

Wildchild and Medaphoar

Best hip-hop fashion trend:

W: The Puma line. I still like the old-school jumpsuits ’cause I started as a B-boy.

M: White tees, creased jeans, white shoes. The clean look. Just some plain shit.

Style icon:

W: Common. He’s taking risks; he’s trying to be different. That’s dope.

M: Puffy. Nigga got stuff in his closet for every event.

Best thing about LA:

W: The nightlife — straight-up clubbin’ Hollywood lifestyle.

M: The people, the diversity — there’s so many different cultures.

Favorite song about LA:

W: “Los Angeles Times” by Xzibit.

Biggest misconception about LA hip-hop:

W: That West Coast music is on the gangster mode. M: That it’s gangsta rap.

Road-rage confession:

W: This guy cut me off when I was driving with my daughter in the car. I followed him for a good 40 minutes.

M: I threw a cassette through somebody’s car window and hit ’em.

Styles of Beyond: Ryu, Takbir, DJ Cheapshot

Most embarrassing item in your closet:

C: I don’t have a closet. That’s embarrassing.

T: I just wear T-shirts and jeans, man. I don’t really have shit that could be embarrassing.

R: My Lakers jersey since we lost in the finals.

Worst hip-hop fashion trend:

R: Von Dutch hats. I don’t know if it’s hip-hop, but it’s bad.

T: Just jerseys, period.

C: T-Mobile Sidekick on the belt and the Gumby haircut.

Style icon:

R: Fat Joe! Don Cartagena.

T: Puff Daddy. Fucker’s got style, every style.

C: Marky Mark.

Worst thing about LA:

T: Burgers. Bad burgers in LA.

R: LA hip-hop fans, ’cause they’re fuckin’ bored all the time.

C: Styles of Beyond.

Biggest misconception about LA hip-hop:

R: That’s everything’s gangsta.

T: Or that everything’s not gangsta. It could go both ways.

C: If you didn’t live in LA, you’d think it’s all gangsta, which it’s not.

Road-rage confession:

T: I threw a water bottle at someone’s windshield.

R: I chased a car down with my baby in the back seat, then pulled over and hit their car with a Megadeth CD.

C: I totally flipped someone off once, but they didn’t even see it.

The End…

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Hip-hop’s relationship with its sexuality has come a long way. Sixteen years ago, there were almost no out gay rappers, much less ones on horseback in rhinestone chaps. Presidential hopeful Barrack Obama had yet to endorse same-sex marriage. Gen Z was only about 11 years old and hadn’t yet scrambled their parents’ brains with talk of sexual fluidity and non-binary. And Jay-Z was years away from walking his mom down the aisle with another woman. But in the mid-2000s, there were signs of change, including Michael K. Williams’ portrayal of onscreen gay gangsta Omar Little in “The Wire,” whose haunting whistling of “The Farmer in the Dell” inspired our title.

The article below, published in June 2007, is a glimpse behind the curtains of an LA club night catering to gay and predominately black hip-hop fans. It was written by our own Brandon Perkins and, at the time, stood relatively alone among the day’s music magazines in its celebration of queer hip-hop culture. And not to give us more credit than we’re due, but validation that we’d at least handled the subject well came in the form of a GLAAD media award nomination. And not to take anything away from our writer, upon reflection on the story’s authorship, I have to ask if we could have been more inclusive.

Like most genres, hip-hop has a long and complicated relationship with queerness. In the early days of this magazine, I called out the contradictions of the early Five Percenter group Poor Righteous Teachers for being conscious while also spitting homophobic lyrics. They were hardly alone in that era. Years later, when Frank Ocean came out lyrically, I’m sure URB would’ve loudly celebrated this milestone had we been still publishing.

Hip-hop and black society are also often wrongfully accused of having an outsized role in America’s stubborn resistance to full LGBTQ equity. In 2008, after Prop 8 in California made same-sex marriage illegal, I wrote a HuffPo piece defending California’s Black voters, who were accused of abandoning gays after the LGBTQ vote helped to elect Obama that same year.

Ultimately, as much as I’d love to see more allyship in hip-hop, it isn’t the sole responsibility of any genre to affirm or support LGBTQ rights. Still, it’s always saddened me that the music that has defined so much of my life struggles to embrace its full humanity. Of course, hip-hop remains only a reflection of a greater society that has yet to.

P.S. Who would have imagined that our “Gay and Gangsta” headline wouldn’t become the most controversial aspect of our cover? We still love you, Maya.

This story originally appeared in URB Issue 147, June 2007

Farmers in the Dell

Behind the closed door of Hollywood’s gay hip-hop club

By Brandon Perkins

Illustration by Martha Rich

The club is obviously bumping when the sweat-stained stench of sex is thick enough to fog the glasses of even the most cold-faced patrons. It’s not just the nearly naked dancers freaking on a shin-high stage surrounded by lustful stares or the overflowing crunch at the bar, but whatever it is, it’s almost tangible. Urban streetwear brands mark the night’s dress code; glasses are filled with Hynotiq, Hennessy, and Grey Goose, and hyphy tunes from the Bay rhythmically further the frantic pace. “It’s like any other hip-hop booty club,” says the evening’s bartender, “except the girls are also played by guys.”

First Fridayz LA is a moving party throughout the Los Angeles area that has provided its hip-hop crowd of gay black men with a truly unique monthly gathering for five years. Promoted by Ivan Daniel—who also runs the more traditional gay night Club Metro in LA—First Fridayz LA routinely draws between 600 and 700 partiers at various clubs such as Larchmont and Fais Do Do.

“It’s like any other hip-hop booty club, except the girls are also played by guys.”

—Anonymous

“It’s a hot party. It’s a party that’s alternative and caters to all walks of life, but it’s definitely hip-hop,” says Daniel. “Most clubs have kind of a clubby atmosphere. [FFLA] is more of a party, a gathering, social networking, and dancing to hip-hop music. We do it at non-traditional gay clubs so someone who is not in the life or [someone who is] in the life can come and experience this without being intimidated. It’s not a traditional gay club.”

Traditional, it is not, but the crowd at FFLA has one unavoidable similarity to the typical heterosexual hip-hop night: the assertiveness of its patrons. Male-on-male wrestling graces large flat screens, and it’s certainly not what Vince McMahon had in mind. Getting from one end of the club to the other involves circumventing barricades of tightly gripped hands, which create quite the maze, and it’s common to hear strong sexual advances.

“The vibe is very direct, aggressive, macking,” says the bartender (who chose to remain anonymous), “like, ‘What’s up, dog? You ready to get with this dick?’ It’s a little traumatizing even for a non-homophobic fly on the wall.”

As villainous as the black male has been painted in the mainstream media and popular culture, the gay black male has probably had it worse. From the portrayals of prison rape (often for comedic effect) to the ridicule retired NBA player John Amaechi received from Tim Hardaway and others once Amaechi left the closet, gay black men have been painted as walking sex machines like no other demographic. Even the San Francisco bath-houses of the mid-’80s were seen in a better light.

“Within the homophobic Black and Latino communities, gays have to pick and choose where they’re out.”

—Ivan Daniel, Promoter

“We have to worry about the electronic lynching of the black male,” says Daniel, who is very careful of the publicity he gives to FFLA. “I think that there is a significant [down-low] group here, but when you start talking about being in the closet, there are definitely levels. Within the homophobic Black and Latino communities, gays have to pick and choose where they’re out. Some are out to their families. Some are out to their jobs. Some are out to friends. . . There’s a lot of homophobia in those particular communities and in the hip-hop community, especially.”

Although white gay people have had public heroes for more than a decade (Daniel name-checks Will & Grace and Ellen DeGeneres), their black and hip-hop counterpart had no one to turn to until The Wire’s Omar Little. Played by Michael K. Williams on the critically acclaimed (and hip-hop-approved) HBO series, Little is one of the most likable bad dudes in television history. Universally feared and respected, he robs drug dealers, sticks to a strict code, charmingly whistles “The Farmer in the Dell,” and, least notably (due to the superb writing and acting), is gay. Little isn’t a gay character; his character just happens to be gay.

“When you begin to see images of yourself, you begin to start liking yourself more—and that’s in anything,” Daniel says. “When you see similarities in other people, it begins to make you feel a little bit more comfortable because you can say, ‘Oh, there’s someone else like me.’ It creates a comfort zone. We have a lot of [men who look like Little] at First Fridayz.”

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Creating a comfortable atmosphere at FFLA— one ripe for the distribution of information—has always been of the utmost importance to Daniel. “The basis of First Fridayz really came about because there was a bunch of brothas and people of a different lifestyle who were unable to meet, connect, and network,” he says. “And because there’s only really one black publication that caters to this genre, information is not readily available. I was a health educator for a couple years, so that was part of the whole concept.”

Much of the information Daniel speaks about revolves around HIV/AIDS awareness, a problem that remains tantamount in the black community—regardless of sexuality. FFLA is careful in its presentation of awareness, making sure that the presence of organizations such as Minority AIDS Project and At the Beach Los Angeles Black Pride are assertive without being overwhelming.

“We are consistently giving prevention messages over the microphone,” Daniel says. “We try to integrate it into the party so it becomes more edible. We will say things like, ‘Wrap it up,’ or ‘No glove, no love.’ We make sure that condoms are on the tables, that there’s prevention messages and programs around.”

That’s certainly something to get hyphy about.

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For me, the seeds of streetwear culture on Los Angeles' now-storied Fairfax Avenue were planted during my time at Fairfax High in the 1980s. While I only attended the legendary school on the corner of Melrose Avenue and Fairfax for 12th grade, I had grown up in the streets surrounding it since my pre-teen years. My friends and I would bomb the streets and alleys on our Powell-Peralta and Alva skateboards, leaving our mark through graffiti and shoplifting, infuriating residents and business owners.

We wore tapered Dickies, slip-on checkerboard Vans, Iron Maiden T-shirts (before that was a trend), and scribed our "Skate & Destroy" placas on a green number 217 bus bench before grabbing to-go slices from Damiano's Mr. Pizza. We were the Odd Future misfits of our day, decidedly anti-establishment, fiercely creative, and unapologetic.

For those who experienced that pre-Internet era, witnessing Fairfax Avenue rise to prominence in the fashion world, rivaling the streets of Paris, may seem weird. However, by the middle of the last decade, inspired by local retail giants like Supreme and Stussy Union, along with the 90s-era boutiques Funkessentials and Triple Five Soul, the once-sleepy Fairfax District found itself thrust onto the global stage. Brands like The Hundreds and Diamond Supply would signal the new era of blogs and celebrity endorsements.

Today, the remaining elderly residents who once populated the area have faded into the background, while streetwear’s multi-billion dollar industry shares the block with a smattering of Jewish delis and thrift shops. And despite the reports, young people from all corners of the globe still make the pilgrimage to pay in gold for a sip at this cultural fountain.

In 2007, our dear friends Jessica Haye and Clark Hsiao assisted us in documenting the early stages of this explosion for URB's “150 Things We Love” issue. This has always been one of my favorite photographic essays, as it perfectly illustrates the subtle dichotomy of the area’s heritage and renaissance. I'm fairly certain this was one of the earliest print pieces to capture the district's burgeoning swagger. As always, if you appreciate what we're doing here, feel free to share with a friend, like, or comment.

Fresh for ’88,

Raymond Leon Roker

Founder, URB

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This story originally appeared in URB Issue 150, Nov/Dec 2007

Fair Facts

Photographed on Fairfax Avenue between Melrose and Oakwood Avenues, Los Angeles, CA—October 2-4, 2007

Photography by Clark Hsiao and Jessica Haye

Editor’s note: I’ve been stewing in the guilt of not posting anything for over a week as I emerge from a bit of writer’s block. In truth, this was less of a block than perhaps an affliction of clogged creative arteries brought on by a host of mental rabbit holing. Turns out, creating new life out of two decades and literally millions of words and images is a bit daunting. The fact is, I love the act of writing — and amplifying the myriad voices URB celebrated for 20 years. But the process is not without its ability to get me stuck, analyzing, and unsure as to where to spend my limited time and energy. So, please continue to hit that like button, drop a comment, and leave a note about what you want to see here. I truly appreciate every piece of input.

[Update: I went back and counted just now, and I’ve actually posted 24x times since our launch 11 weeks ago, which is about 2x per week. So, some of this “guilt” is perception more than reality. Going forward, I’m planning to post 1x per week but will aim for a second post on most weeks. As always, I appreciate you.]

To help unblock things this week, I was glad to enlist a little help from a longtime friend and colleague, URB’s former editor (2006-2010), Joshua Glazer. Josh runs a great Substack called which summarizes and editorializes ideas and evolutions across music, tech, and brands. During URB’s tumultuous late-aughts period, Josh guided and debated (he’s especially good at that part) the magazine’s direction from staunch hip-hop and electronic outpost to hold a special place in indie (and blog era) culture. Under his tenure, we spilled copious ink on artists like LCD Soundsystem, Mark Ronson, and The Rapture, along with the first national magazine covers for Kid Cudi, Gnarls Barkley, and Janelle Monáe.

Josh was kind enough to record a few words of introduction below on his time with September/October 2007 cover stars Perez Hilton and Beth Ditto for “The D.I.Y. Issue” no. 149. He reflects on the very different political/social era these creators were challenging and how they represented a new DIY renaissance resistance. The wonderful photos are by Tony Stamolis and shot on location in Atlantic City with the help of our photo editor Leila Baboi. In the same issue, we also covered the Afro Punk Festival, Liars, Gaslamp Killer, Hot Dollar, No Age, and Flosstradamus. Lastly, let me know what you think of adding audio to future posts or who you’d want to hear from. Enjoy.

—Raymond

Our September/October 2007 Cover Story

Watch Out for the Big Girls

By Joshua Glazer

Photography by Tony Stamolis / Produced by Leila Baboi

Beth Ditto and Perez Hilton are BFF forever. These two “fat,” “gay,” “freaks” are invading the culture with new school technology and a good old-fashioned punk rock ethos. And if that’s not D.I.Y., we don’t know what is...

Beth Ditto: Plus Size Punk Princess

Beth Ditto’s band, The Gossip, might not be a household name. But the openly gay girl from Arkansas and then Olympia, WA, has become a celebrity in her own right, dominating the UK tabloids while hanging out with friends like Kate Moss as her band slowly climbs the music industry ladder with hit remixes and sold-out shows. But this notoriety has come at a cost. While BFF Perez Hilton has championed Ditto’s fierce on-stage performances, much of the tabloid media has focused on her weight and her lifestyle more than her music. It’s a situation not helped by her tendency to undress in public. Which leaves Ditto facing the ultimate challenge, can her D.I.Y. punk credo protect her from the trappings of infamy? URB caught up with Ditto after a manic few days, enjoying a bath in her Pacific Northwest home.

URB: Are you working, or are you enjoying some time off?

Beth Ditto: I don’t really know what time off is, basically. I don’t sit down ever, ever, ever, ever.

Is that a new development from what’s been going on with the band?

I’ve always been a busy person with a lot of projects going on. Something like a zine. But now, I write a column for The Guardian in London. I have to get that done every two weeks, so I’m constantly working. So I’m not just writing for me anymore, I’m writing for money and other people.

It’s funny when you mention the zine thing. There seems to be a real home for it in the Pacific Northwest.

Absolutely. I have a friend who pretty much lives off her zine. She does workshops for the elderly, and she does workshops for kids. I don’t think you could do that anywhere else. Do magazine workshops and actually live off it. I’m really glad. I really enjoy zine culture for the most part because some of these are huge in the punk world. Like Punk Planet.

Punk Planet just closed, didn’t it?

I didn’t even know that! Well, that’s weird.

At the same time, someone like Perez Hilton, his site is really a zine for the most part.

Everybody says the blogs have taken over the zines. My sister, she’s 15, and she knows about bands immediately, and it’s really crazy to see that happen. It took so much to get Punk Planet to Arkansas, and that was only 10 years ago. And now it’s just like at the touch of a finger. Which is crazy.

Do you think a blog like Perez’s is punk?

Definitely. What I love about Perez is even if some people think he’s shady, he reminds me of all the fags I went to high school with. And who absolutely made my high school experience a wonderful thing. You know, that’s what I think is great about him. Just hanging out with him and feeling, “Oh my god, I already know you. I know you five times.” Not to say he’s not an original, but I have always felt a strong kinship with people like him. I think that the reason he gets hated on is his site isn’t always nice. It’s not always the sweetest thing. But you know Perez would never say anything completely fucked up or racist. I think that’s what it boils down to for me.

“That’s the thing about punk. If you did it right, you got made fun of a lot in your life.” — Beth Ditto

Perez might seem mean, but find a Johnny Rotten interview that wasn’t nasty.

Think about how much shit Siouxie Sioux got walking down the street before she got famous. That’s the thing about punk. If you did it right, you got made fun of a lot in your life. So when it comes to the mainstream getting made fun of, it’s like, “Yeah, so?” People love to hate. I met Yoko Ono, and she asked me, “Who is better off, the person who was nurtured, the person who was hated, or the person who was ignored?” I guessed the one who was nurtured, but she said, “No, the one that was hated.” Yoko fucking Ono said that! After that, I don’t give a fuck about anybody anymore. I have the people I love. I have the people I like. I have my reasons, and I don’t have to justify it.

You have this extraordinary situation where that attitude gained you notoriety.

One of the hardest things about it is that you can never convince people that you didn’t set out to do these things. Because to me, the ideal for me, career-wise, was Sleater-Kinney. Those were the people that we looked up to 15 years ago.

Very few bands sustain that sort of career.

Me and [The Gossip guitarist] Nathan [Howdeshell] were staying in a hotel room together. And he was like, “I get lonely on tour. And I feel like there’s no bands like us.” When you’re playing festivals in Europe, you’re around a lot of bands. But if you’re a woman in the band or if you’re Nathan, straight boys do not understand him. They’re there to play guitar and snort coke and fuck girls. And Nathan’s so far from that. When you’re walking backstage, there are all these different trailers that belong to every band. And there’s shitloads of bands just hanging out. But there’s certain dudes that won’t even look you in
the fucking eye. They are so unnerving. You can’t prepare yourself for that. I always think about Kurt Cobain — and I’m not saying we’re anywhere near the level of Nirvana — but I think that I know exactly what Kurt felt like now. I can’t imagine the fucking fuck-offs that tried to hang out with him and talk to him about shit. Not even the crowd, but certain people you meet, it’s like, you’re so scared. Everybody’s backstage talking about getting signed. Who cares!?!? That’s not how you start a band.

Do you think it’s less important to be signed now because there are so many other routes to get your music heard?

I think it depends on you and what your needs are. Other than to not have a fuckin’ day job. How many times can you work at the Subway for six months and hope they’ll let you back cuz you’ve been gone on tour for two months? Come back and work at Burger King for two weeks, then leave again. All we wanted was to not have to do that anymore. One day people were like, “If you did this, you can have this,” and money came up. And I said, “Wait a minute, does this mean I can save some money to go to beauty school? Fuck yeah, I’ll take it.” I have no qualms about that at all.

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“I think that I know exactly what Kurt Cobain felt like now.” — Beth Ditto

PEREZ HILTON: Big Mouth Strikes Again

Perez Hilton isn’t just a celebrity blogger. He’s a serious cultural force. Love him or hate him, at 7 million clicks a day, his infiltration into people’s daily lives is something most media outlets would die for. And more impressive is the fact that he does it all from a Wi-Fi connection in a West Hollywood coffee shop. Perez’s bread and butter might be the glossy celebs that get stripped bare on his sometimes scathing, occasionally sweet, and always amusing site. But his championing of underdogs such as Beth Ditto stems from a true support for the underground and a kinship for “loud, obnoxious, and openly gay” individuals, like the blogger himself.

URB: When we first reached out to you, you said you sent resumés to URB at some point. Did you want to be a music journalist?

Perez Hilton: I was working as a journalist but mainly freelancing for a lot of the gay publications. And it wasn’t floating my boat. Some of it was cool. I would actively pitch stories — “I want to talk to this person or that person.” I would occasionally have the opportunity to speak to Peaches or speak to Rufus Wainwright, but a lot of the time, they were like, “No. Go interview this local gay businessman or that politician.” My interest has always been entertainment, specifically music, so I would’ve been really happy pursuing a career in music journalism. And now I’m able to be somewhat involved in music and hopefully more involved, and it’s kind of all come full circle.

What was it about Beth that made you go, “She’s awesome. I want to put her on my site,” even though she’s not necessarily the traffic-driving celebrity?

The great thing about what I do is I can write about whomever I want. I don’t have an editor telling me what I can or cannot say. That’s really liberating. I’m just drawn to naturally talented people, and she’s ferociously talented. I’ve always been drawn to the outsiders because I consider myself the freak. I think she is, too. It’s really inspiring to me to know that she and I, in our own ways, have managed to infiltrate the mainstream while still being true to ourselves.

Tell me about when you were a kid. You were raised in Miami.

The Cuban ghetto. I’ve always loved music. My first concert, when I was six, was Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine. She’s like Cuban royalty. And for the final encore, she did “Conga,” and she invited people onstage. I went running up and did the conga with her at six years old. And it was at that time that I knew I wanted to be an entertainer — I entertain people online.

You probably entertain more people during the day than any of the celebrity entertainers you deal with.

I have a very special relationship with my readers. I love them. I appreciate. I respect my readers. I don’t look down upon them. We talk in shorthand. They’re smart.

That direct communication is really what people expect these days.

Do it yourself. I never could have imagined that any of this would be possible. When I first started, it was my little blog. I did it for fun because it seemed easy. If it would have seemed really difficult, I probably wouldn’t have done it. Anyone can sign up, click a few buttons, customize your template, and, within minutes, you’re online communicating to the rest of the world. That was so inspiring to me and creative and liberating and great. I just did it for fun, but I was always really committed and took it seriously. Even from the very beginning, I was always consistent, and I updated my Web site every single day. And mine was different. Before me, a lot of blogs were very first person. I didn’t want to talk about myself because I’m boring. I wanted to talk about celebrities because they’re crazy.

“If blogging would have seemed really difficult, I probably wouldn’t have done it.” — Perez Hilton

Do you remember what your first post was?

My very first post was about Howard Stern. I was driving into work that day, and I was listening to him, and he said something that pissed me off, and I reacted to it. The second post was about Melissa Etheridge getting a TV deal to do a sitcom, and I was offering up my suggestions on what it should be instead of what it actually was. But then it never came to be; she got cancer shortly after... It never happened. And then, that’s that.

What does the job of PerezHilton.com entail?

It entails getting very little sleep and working very hard. I usually get up around 4:30 AM because I have to be on East Coast time, and I just start scouring the Internet to see what’s out there, what interests me, while following up on emails and text messages and calls and IMs that I get from friends and sources — just producing a lot of content. One of the reasons for my success in the most basic of levels is that I work harder than anyone else. I produce more content than any of the other blogs out there. Even some of the big websites that are owned by corporations that have a staff of dozens of people. I do it all myself. And this week, I set a new record. On Tuesday, I had 7.1 million page views on my site.

Technology evolves so fast. Does it concern you that in five years, people are gonna say, “Oh, yeah, that old blog,” when they hear of Perez Hilton?

I will hopefully change with the times and adapt and grow. My three-year plan is to have a staff. I already update it enough as it is, but then I could update it even more, constantly update the site 24 hours a day. It’ll be insane. I already have a global audience, and I appreciate the fact that my readers come from all over the world. So no matter where you are, at some point, there’s always people on my site, and they can just keep coming back constantly.

Will you be running it? I’m sure you’ve gotten offers to sell.

No, I haven’t gotten a single offer. Maybe they’re afraid to buy me. I dunno.

Originally published in issue 149, Sep/Oct 2007. Edited for clarity.

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Joshua Glazer is a Detroit-bred writer and raver who served as editor-in-chief of URB from 2006-2010. He is now the founder of the Content Curious creative agency and co-founder of The Cadence, a weekly Substack that covers the intersection of Music x Tech x Brands.

By Nicole Powers

Illustrations by Jeremy Lindenmeir

With more permits and fewer fliers, the DIY spirit of rave lives on in Los Angeles. Promoters from two generations compare today to back in the day.

At Age 15, Stephen Haupfner started throwing raves before that four-letter word was even invented. Known as DJ Kool-Aide, at the height of his early-’90s career, Haupfner’s “underground” parties attracted crowds of 30,000 people. He has since parlayed his renegade ways into a successful career, throwing events for corporate clients such as Ridley Scott, Hugo Boss, and Jaguar while keeping one foot in the underground with his mini-warehouse events in Downtown LA. Mo Samad, the owner of IT Promotions, throws raves today—complete with sci-fi fliers and hardcore rooms—that can still attract crowds of up to 10,000. We thought bringing these two generations of rave promoters together would shed some light on throwing your own party 15 years after the rave explosion.

URB: When you both started out, it was possible to throw parties in a very underground, unpermitted way, which isn’t so open to people now. What are your thoughts on the climate today?

Mo Samad: I think it’s harder. I think you have to have more money now.

Stephen Haupfner: It’s kind of the opposite, to tell you the truth. When you have huge events going on that are such high dollars and high production, that’s what creates the underground. That opens the door for someone to come in and do something that’s really lowkey and smaller.

So what would you do if you had to start out now?

SH: I wouldn’t even know. We do parties now, but we have fire marshals; we have ABC [Alcoholic Beverage Control] permits, everything. It’s not remotely worthwhile doing anything that’s illegal just for my own reputation.

MS: If you’re doing a show that’s going to pull 3,000 or 30,000 people, it is a big responsibility. I think it’s better to do it a bit safer and pay a little bit more.

Because legitimate promotion is more complex these days, would you recommend working for more experienced promoters to learn the ropes?

SH: I do, yes.

MS: If I had somebody tell me not to do a few little things here and there, it would have saved me a lot of money, a lot of heartache. I think with the underground, you have more risks, and when it comes to business, less risk is better.

What are the biggest lessons you’ve learned along the way?

SH: There were no rules when we started out. There was no one doing what we were doing before us, so by default, what we were doing became the definition of what you’re supposed to do. So everyone who came after followed what we were doing—good or bad. They’re still doing it, so I guess, in some respects, it was fairly good. You’ve got to start with basic things like how much money you have. What do you have to work with? And if you can only do a party for 400 or 500 people, well, then that’s what you can afford.

MS: You have to lose money. You’ve got to hurt a little bit so you learn.

Going back to the basics, what are the first things you take care of?

MS: The first thing is always the venue. After that, you’re working with budget, talent, and production. But I would say the major thing would have to be the venue.

What are the rules of thumb for your budget?

SH: It depends on the event. If you don’t have your own following, then you have to spend more on talent. If there’s someone brand new, they’re going to have to spend a lot of money on talent. But the irony is then they’re creating something that’s only based on the talent, so they’ve got to do something to make people believe in a name, too. It sounds cheesy, but you have to brand something that people identify with. You have to build a reputation.

MS: Every show you do, you have to better it. That’s the way I look at it.

What promotional tools are you using? Have things gone paperless yet?

SH: To be honest, I’m just learning the Internet aspect of promotion, and it helps a lot.

MS: I haven’t created a flier in seven or eight years. It’s email. Especially in the last year or two, it’s blogs and MySpace. It’s so instantaneous. I have friends that have never played anywhere but my parties, and they’re getting flown to Australia because someone put them on their blog.

How do you know if people will come?

SH: When we were doing huge events, we’d gauge how the pre-sales were going. If we have 10,000 pre-sales, we’d figure there’d be 15- to 20,000 people showing up.

MS: If I pre-sell 100 tickets, I’ll get about 1,000 people. On fliers, we do the same thing. It’s 10 percent.

SH: If you hand out fifty thousand fliers, you should get 5,000 people. It got kind of ridiculous at the end. We were printing up to 300,000 fliers. We just said there’s got to be some better way to do it because it’s just a heinous amount of crap on the ground. It’s so horrible for so many different reasons.

So a better way is through email lists?

SH: Yes. I mean, we scaled right down. We’re not doing 30,000 people.

MS: What do you pull with your email lists?

SH: It depends on the event. I have eight different lists that are all broken up into different categories. If I do a huge event, I’ll send out everything. If I’m doing a smaller thing, I’ll send out to specific lists. But we usually get about 75 percent of our list, in the sense of if I have 2,000 people RSVP, they’ll probably be about 1,500 people that show up.

If you get 2,000 people to RSVP, how many people are you emailing out to?

SH: The majority of my list, which I would guess is somewhere around 15- to 20,000. But those 2,000 people don’t pay to get in. It’s all guest list; RSVP only. It’s strictly a private event.

Then how are you making money?

SH: Off the bar.

MS: We go for ticket sales and water sales. If you pull a crowd of 4,000 people, you can make a good amount just off the water. But ticket sales are primarily where we make our money.

Where do you see the future going?

MS: We’re trying to keep it to a couple of big shows a year. We’re trying to do a club right now, as well. We did a fundraiser in 2001 that we’re trying to bring back, too.

SH: You know, there’s the whole new-rave tag, which is ironic in so many different ways. But we are ramping up to do bigger things again. It just depends on how it goes. Whether it’s fun or not will really determine how far we go with it.

Writer, editor, photographer, videographer, social media consultant, and tactivist (tactical activist) Nicole Powers uses art and technology to share ideas that make the world a better place.

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Our October 2005 Cover Story

For the Love of Hip-Hop

By Scott T. Sterling

Photography by Dan Monick

The phenomenon known as Atmosphere is one of those legends that will be talked about years from now when kids remember how this one dude from Minneapolis, of all places, loved rap so much that he started a label and a band that was unlike anything else in hip-hop. How he and his friends got their grind on until they were buying buildings in their hometown and selling out more local shows than the Replacements.

Slug is among the most intriguing figures in hip-hop today, having built a new model army of disenfranchised suburban kids longing for something real and raw and meaningful to them right now. Watching his public maturation is awesome, as he evolves from metaphorical rhymes about girls to now addressing very real issues, like the horrific events in New Mexico where a young female Atmosphere fan was murdered by a convicted child sex offender who was incredulously working at the club as a janitor. Throughout a two-hour conversation, Slug pulls no punches when addressing the world around him. He’s got some real shit to spit, so listen up.

URB: So what up, Slug?

Slug: There ain’t no coffee in this fucking house, man. I got my earpiece in, so I might just walk your ass over to the little coffee shop around the corner.

Do you mean Muddy Waters?

No, that’s like two or three blocks away. Don’t go to Muddy Waters. Boycott that bitch.

Why?

My ex runs the place (laughs). The infamous “Lucy.” Everybody’s like, “Who is she?” I say she’s not a real girl, that Lucy is really hip-hop, or that she’s my cat. No, Lucy runs fucking Muddy Waters. So anyway, what’s the deal with this being a phone [interview]?

I know, I know. But there’s so much going on with Rhymesayers and Atmosphere right now that we’ll have plenty to talk about.

Holy shit, you think?

Yeah, I think.

Well, you’re about to convince me. Let’s do it.

I’ve been digging into the new record, and I’m feeling it so far.

Do you like it?

I really like it.

Whoa! Why would you say that?

For one, I think Ant’s beats are brilliant. He’s definitely turning up the heat down in the production lab.

I think he has stepped up and taken over. Soon he’ll be taking a lot of pressure off me, always being the guy that has to talk the shit. To me, he’s always been dope, but now it’s to a point that his personality is starting to come out. That’s gonna help to balance the one-sided- ness that’s been going on with Atmosphere and the imagery.

He’s cool with being in the public eye more?

He’s still not where I am, but he’s gotten a little more comfortable with it.

I also like the lyrical content on this one. You mention BDP and Public Enemy as inspirations on the album, and I can hear it in the words.

I’m glad you say that. When we were making it, we intended the first half to be a throwback to PE and the second half a throwback to BDP. In our heads, anyway. Nobody else will get it.

You’re talking about more than just girls on this album.

That girl shit wasn’t very serious. It was a fun and interesting part of my life. I can look back in ten years and be like, “Wow, I slept with how many women?”

That’s kind of where the Felt album comes in. It’s much more of a fun party record.

That’s our Wilt Chamberlain record.

And he claims to have slept with 20,000 women!

I don’t think 5000 people bought the first Felt record, but that’s hot.

“The experiences, days and evenings that led to these songs were not fun. The last two years in the life of Atmosphere has not been a big party.”

Would you say there’s a link between the new Felt and Atmosphere albums, with you and Ant all over both?

I think they are definitely separate from each other. I allowed myself to be a clown on the Felt record. I didn’t give myself any clown room on the Atmosphere record. To people that know me, they’ll probably see them as companion pieces. They know me well enough to know that half of me is a clown. I don’t know if your average fifteen-year-old white girl with her first lip piercing is gonna pick up both records and be able to see that. I guess that kind of makes me arrogant to think that people take my records and dissect them enough to figure shit out. Most people are just, “I like track four.”

What’s the concept behind the title You Can’t Imagine How Much Fun We’re Having and the somber cover image?

The experiences that led to these songs were not fun. The last two years in the life of Atmosphere has not been a big party. At the same time, I’ve done a decent job of keeping a smile on my face and just being in people’s faces, shaking babies, and kissing hands (laughs). Giving people the idea that this is a great job and that I’m having a great time. When this record started coming together, I realized that it was completely opposite of how I’ve been portraying myself. I wanted to show people that it ain’t really been all good without necessarily going into complaints. I don’t want to be one of those whiny-ass artists. I’m not even talking about that. I’m talking about actual life, aside from the artistry and rap. I’ve never been one to shy away from talking about the shit that really bothers me. At the same time, I’ve yet to fully develop into the one that talks about the big things in the world that bother me. This record is a baby step in that direction.

So should we expect a more serious Slug in the future?

I don’t know if it’s me getting older or what, but I see myself as more and more responsible to say things that really do matter to more than just myself.

The list of inspirations on the album’s liner notes is interesting and varied, to say the least. It goes from TV on the Radio to Alopecia.

Did you know Alopecia, or did you have to Google it?

I Googled it.

Cool. It’s a condition I came down with around November of last year while I was recording this album. The version that I got was alopecia areata, which in my case, was temporary. It was simple. It came as a result of a tooth infection that I had. The white T-cells went to my head to fight the infection and left their posts in my head, which made my hair fall out. So rather than have a patchy head, I just shaved it like Mr. Dibbs. But when it started growing back, I just said fuck it and got a Mohawk.

Another inspiration listed is “the women’s bathroom at the Empty Bottle (club) in Chicago.” What happened there?

That was a phone call I got from a now ex-girlfriend about something written about me on the bathroom wall there (laughs). The original message boards! It was so… you can’t say the word “retarded” anymore. It was so ridiculous that I was getting a phone call about something somebody had written about me on a wall, especially since me and the girl that was calling me on it wasn’t even together anymore. It brought me back to when I was 17 and reminded me of why I am the way I am when it comes to relationships with women, even now at 32 years old.

How hard was it to write “That Night” about the girl killed at an Atmosphere show in New Mexico in 2003?

I’ve been very cautious when even talking about that situation. There’s a line you’ve gotta be careful not to cross out of respect for her and her family. I don’t think that my opinions would offend them. If anything, it’s important that I have an opinion since I have something of a public voice. I can’t just come out and call for the execution of people who commit these types of crimes. That’s not helping push a negative situation to a positive. I’m just a rapper, so the power I do hold is based on entertainment and people wanting to have something to inspire them. We have to be careful because these 15-year-olds take it a little too seriously. When I was 15, KRS-1 could’ve said anything, and I would’ve been like, “That’s the law.” That was a difficult song to finally write. I was very neurotic about it. I think I was able to finally write that song from my point of view without it coming across like how I feel about it is the way everyone should feel about it.

Right now, my favorite song on the record is “Get Fly.” So how’d Atmosphere come to do a gospel track?

That was Ant all the way. The original version of that song was a lullaby. It was sunny but moody. I felt like it was right, but not for people to hear. Ant and I make a lot of music that nobody will ever hear. He liked the words to [the song] “Get Fly” so much that he kept pushing me to keep working with it. He thought we should take a risk with it. It’s not a risk in the sense of pushing the envelope of music like Radiohead, but a risk for Atmosphere. The first time we did it on four-track, it blew my mind. It is so different from the original version. I think the gospel sample brought out something in me. I felt like I was actually part of that choir. It gets my point across better. My whole take on it now is, “I’ve been hollering this for a minute, but now I really feel it.” I’m sick of preaching to the choir; those same kids are just gonna validate me. It’s time to focus on taking this to kids that don’t know what’s up and might not agree with me so that I can attempt to help them become like-minded with us.

Was that idea behind Atmosphere doing the Warped tour two summers in a row?

It was, but it wasn’t as focused for me. The Warped Tour was on some rah-rah shit. That was me thinking that if I jump around and yell at these kids, they’ll like it too. Now, I’m realizing that’s not me. I’m not that dude that wants to jump at you anymore. I want something different. I’m not Sage Francis, either. I’m not trying to present myself as having the most important things to say. I don’t. Sage does. Everything that dude says, I’m like, “How do you know this already?” He’s under 30 but already so aware, so all props to that dude. I’ve never been that smart. But I realize I don’t have to be that smart. It’s not about me anyway. It’s the bigger cause and introducing kids to all these other MCs. I have been given that opportunity to get in front of kids that otherwise wouldn’t even fuck with hip-hop. They come up to me and say how they’d given up on hip-hop and then got a copy of Lucy Ford, and then they went on to discover this and that. I get to be a doorway for these fools. Am I making sense right now?

Yeah, it’s coming together.

Awesome. I used to just be excited about the opportunity. Now it’s more a matter of wanting to know what (the audience) is thinking. What about me is dragging you in? Is it the fact that me and Dibbs were jumping around and making y’all push each other? Is it the lyrics? Is it the way I say things that make you think maybe if you knew me, we’d probably get along because we think similarly? Is it the beats? I have a hard time accepting that our popularity has anything to do with the way I sound. I know that I am not the tightest MC. I have to think it’s got more to do with the writing and how it works with Ant’s beats, the rah-rah shit, and of course, a little bit about how I fucking smile. What can I do to make it about more than that, the greater cause? I have a hard time identifying with it on a national or international level. Locally, it’s easy. We played a show four years ago for this many kids; I play a show now for a bunch more kids. A lot of these new kids came from places like Minnetonka and Burnsville, and other distant suburbs. How did they find out about me? They don’t come to see all the other local rappers, but they show up for my shit. What can I do to make sure they leave with more than just me but all these other cats, too? Does that make sense?

Totally. It’s the kind of responsibility I don’t see nearly enough artists taking.

But I can still only grasp it on a local level.

But given communication technology, especially regarding your audience, that locality goes global faster than you might think.

I’m fully aware that a lot of my audience is a bunch of little white kids with money. And these kids ain’t going to see the Beatnuts when they come to town. I don’t want these huge crowds if it’s not like that for Blackalicious, too. But I’m sure Gift of Gab is as bummed as me that it’s just a bunch of white kids. While a lot of indie rappers talk about it, I don’t hear so many of the white MCs bringing it up. They want to think it’s because they’re so dope (laughs). This audience is white right now because these college kids are identifying with the fact that somebody is saying something in their music. It’s no different than when college kids were getting into Bad Religion’s first record. They were saying something when those kids were in a phase of life where that’s what they needed. A lot of them are coming from the indie rock scene, which is another part of it. Lots of these white rappers, myself included, get props just for being indie. But above all, they’ve gotta realize that a lot of it comes from being white, and these white kids can relate to them better than someone like Freddie Foxx. Jean Grae should have an audience as large as mine. Where are the young black children? There have to be 200,000 young Black kids in America that would love her and buy her records.

“I’m fully aware that a lot of my audience is a bunch of little white kids with money.”

Absolutely. But how is the average black kid on the street even going to hear Jean Grae? Isn’t that the problem?

I never thought there was a way to reach 200,000 white kids that think outside of the box. I always felt that way because when I looked at those kids, they seemed so misidentified and didn’t even understand themselves enough to ever become a target market for anybody to tap into. It’s gotta be even harder for young black kids when the only reinforcements they’re seeing are hardcore shit. If you don’t feel that way and trying to see something else, where do you turn? Back in the day, you had BDP and Brand Nubian saying things that would have us out trying to find that book being talked about in their songs, you know? How come that’s not happening now, especially with the internet? It doesn’t help that these writers, the same ones that bashed Eminem for being homophobic and misogynistic, are now sucking off Cam’Ron and Dipset. These dudes would dis other writers for not covering Aesop Rock, and now they’re all about the Diplomats? Come on. It’s saying it’s OK for black men to be savages, but not white guys.

That’s what I’m talking about.

The stereotyping in the media has been going on forever, so we can’t blame that. Is it hoop dreams, the idea that if you want to be something, you better learn to rap or play ball? I can’t call it. Acts like De La and Ultramagnetic MCs were at least pushing something different. You had to decipher what the fuck Kool Keith was even talking about! It made you think. If TI would come out and do that, I’d totally holler at TI. Just come out and confuse us. Do something different. That’s why Outkast and Busta Rhymes are always going to be the shit. They bring something unique to the game.

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And now Atmosphere brings something unique.

In the early ’90s, I made the conscious decision not to just rap about dumb shit. Why would I want to talk about some street shit when I don’t do or know street shit? The reason I don’t know street shit is because of hip-hop. It’s because KRS-1 and Big Daddy Kane convinced me that some of my friends were not tight (laughs).

“I made the conscious decision not to just rap about dumb shit. Why would I want to talk about some street shit when I don’t do or know street shit?”

So what’s next?

By structure, we should be moving into a whole new renaissance, a new version of the haves and the have-nots. This is all just my high-ass thinking about shit too much. I think the next big war will be over information, not oil or drugs. Who controls the information? In that kind of climate, we should be seeing new art full blast. Sex, full blast. There should be a rise in all of the things that the have-nots do to get over depression. But even the brokest of broke kids have a PlayStation. Everyone’s sedated and complacent. I don’t know what to think. Where are the revolutionaries and the orgies, other than on the TV and your iBook?

How profound is all of this as a father?

Extremely. Having [my son] Jacob became a big part of all decision-making. I could never really understand rap cats with kids that make shit their kids can’t listen to.

Any parting shots?

I don’t want to come off as negative because things are good. Rhymesayers just bought a building for the label, the record store (Fifth Element), and even haters around here are proud. For the most part, we kept it real. They’re like, “You still can’t rap, but we’re proud of you.” We stayed here, and that means a lot. They can’t front on what we’ve done for the community.

Originally published in issue 130, October 2005. Edited for clarity.

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Our July/August 2005 Cover Story

B-Boy for Life

By Oliver Wang

Photography by Michael Schreiber

True story: I flew down to Los Angeles to interview Common, and when I boarded my Southwest flight, I sat next to someone who looked much like actor Taye Diggs. Then I realized it was Taye Diggs. My first thought was, “Taye Diggs flies Southwest? Like whoa.” The second thought was how serendipitous it was to sit next to the star of Brown Sugar, a movie that’s practically a cinematic interpretation of Common’s 1994 single, “I Used to Love H.E.R.”

The enduring legacy of that song, even 11 years later, has been both a blessing and curse for Common. Though it and his 1994 Resurrection album helped propel the Chicago native into the inner sanctum of post-New School MCs, alongside A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Nas, et al., it also created unrealistic expectations by fans who wanted him to take up the post as hip-hop’s moral authority and enforcer. Common had other ideas, though.

His next three albums — One Day It Will All Make Sense, Like Water For Chocolate, and Electric Circus — each revealed more layers to Common’s personality: his evolving spirituality, emotional struggles, narrative imagination, etc., all the while reminding folks that he was, at heart, just another “hungry hip-hop junkie in the city.”

Fans grew with him throughout, but the ambitiously experimental (and vastly underrated) Electric Circus (2002) left more folks scratching their heads than nodding them. With Be, his sixth album, Common returns to the corners as a crossroads, finding his footing again and recording what’s already been heralded as one of the best albums of the year. (Just don’t call it another Resurrection — he’s been here for years).

Nowadays, Common splits his time between Chicago, New York, and now Los Angeles, where he shares an apartment with producer Jay Dee. URB met with Common in West LA to talk about his new album, raising kids on hip-hop, and whether he’s the last real conscious rapper alive that’s official.

“Kanye called me to come to the studio. I got there, and he was making this beat and looking at me like, ‘Man, you know this beat is dope right here.‘ He asked me did I want it… That became ’The Food.‘”

URB: You’ve been in LA for over a year now. What prompted you to get a place here?

Common: I was out here a lot and really loved it: the sun, the mountains, the water, the friends that I have. I loved how free it made me feel when I was creating. I would be working, but I still felt like I was on vacation. So I drift a little more; I get the energy of this place. I just let my imagination go when I’m out here.

Your housemate happens to be Jay Dee. I imagine that must be a rather interesting experience.

It’s like waking up to dreams. This dude’s beats, his music, when he’s just playing records, it’s just incredible. So spiritual and soulful. Waking up and getting to hear some of that music is like the food that I need for the day. I give him his space, but then at the same time, he’s my brother. It’s like an artist’s dream to have Jay Dee in the crib, making beats. I’d always have to fly to Detroit to make sure everything was straight. Can you imagine some days waking up and hearing him making beats?

You started working on this album while in LA, right?

I was riding around in LA just before I moved out here. Kanye called me to come to the studio. I got there, and he was making this beat and looking at me like, “Man, you know this beat is dope right here.” He asked me did I want it — I said, “Yeah,” That song became “The Food.”

At that early point, did you know that you’d be working so closely with Kanye for the album?

I didn’t know he would be an executive producer or producing nine out of the eleven tracks. We just knew that we wanted to create [together]. Not only did we start creating together, but then we talked about me being on his label. It’s really been a great growth period, a growing relationship, creatively. Everything came about right, like the timing of it, me hooking up with Kanye. I had to get Electric Circus out of my system; that was part of my evolution.

What do you mean by “getting Electric Circus out of your system?”

With Electric Circus, I knew that I wanted to take it out there.[I was] listening to Jimi, Pink Floyd. I wanted to take it out there . . . and I went there. I’m very grateful that I did Electric Circus because it’s part of my inspiration, part of my body of work and creativity. Sometimes when you learn new music, you’re going to experiment and try new things.

Electric Circus took hard knocks from the critics, and more importantly, a lot of your fans say it’s their least favorite of your albums. Do you think you were unfairly judged on that album?

I don’t think it was unfairly judged. People have their opinions, and they’re going to feel what they feel. I think it was a case of me coming through the door with a certain look and a certain feel. I think I took a big jump. And what’s funny is people say to me, “Why did Ahmir [aka the Roots’ Questlove] and them give you that music?” And I be like, “Look, they don’t give me nothing that I don’t already ask for.” Ahmir used to ask me, “You sure you want to go this far? You’re taking them all the way to the end.” But I guess I wanted to because I knew this was a new beginning. I had to get to this new beginning. That was the end of that chapter, and I don’t apologize. I won’t say it’s the perfect record, but I feel like it was some good work.

I also think the album went over the heads of kids who are still clamoring for you to make Resurrection: The Sequel.

What’s so funny is when I came out with Resurrection, I didn’t know people liked it. They [now] say, “Yo, we want another Resurrection.” Where was ya’ll when the record sales were going on? I’m not mad at ‘em. I just didn’t know people were into that album like that.

I think it’s interesting that both you and Nas share similar kinds of fans. They’re stuck on Illmatic and Resurrection, respectively, and are disappointed when you don’t “go back” to that sound or style.

It’s like those albums represent a certain point and time for those people. They want to grab that time and never let it go. I don’t feel like I’m going to do another Resurrection. I can’t go back in time. How can you do that? I think [hip-hop] would get redundant. Because it changes every so often and evolves so much, it keeps fresh.

On the other hand, you had something to prove with Resurrection, and you’re back in that situation again with Be.

With Can I Borrow A Dollar? people didn’t really know who the hell I was. I wasn’t dead but didn’t nobody know me, so I came to life with Resurrection. I think the hunger [with Be] came about from the lack of response to Electric Circus and just people looking like “Aww, [ex-girlfriend] Erykah [Badu] changed dude.” That was the first time I had gotten ridiculed in magazines, so it was a challenge for me.

Something must have worked – more than a few publications have already anointed Be an instant classic. I know this is a loaded question, but do you truly think Be achieves that?

I felt it once we finished all the songs. I felt that it was going to be a classic. Everyone around us did too, and we don’t just have all head-nodding friends. A lot of my homies would let me know, “Yo, that’s wack. Why you got this going on?” They give you all their true feelings. I felt more than anything, this is some of my best work ever. My favorite album of mine is Like Water For Chocolate, and now it’s between Like Water... and Be.

One thing that jumps out at you about Be is how compact it is: 11 songs, less than 45 minutes. The last album I remember that short was Illmatic.

I felt in those eleven songs, I could say what I needed to say. I wanted to keep the best of the best songs; I didn’t want to put out anything that I was iffy about. I was doing everything that felt right. Eleven songs felt right. Honestly, I definitely felt like Illmatic was something I looked at. Illmatic, D’angelo’s Brown Sugar, Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On? — classic albums that didn’t have so many songs.

You also only worked with two producers – Kanye does all but two songs, Jay Dee does the rest. That’s very unusual in an age where rap albums all seem like they’re produced by an ensemble.

Even If you look at Electric Circus, it’s basically focused on the Soulquarians, which is Questlove, James Poysner, and Jay Dee. They were producing as one unit. I ended up having the Neptunes do something on it too. Then with Like Water for Chocolate, it was the same thing: Jay Dee, Questlove, and Primo. That was my goal. This time, it turned out so fabulous too. I got two of the best dudes you could ever have. These dudes will go down in history.

I’m sure people will ask: you room with Jay Dee, yet he only did two of the tracks?

Jay Dee was going through a sickness, so he couldn’t produce at the rate that he usually did. I wanted Jay Dee for more. I worked out to some Jay Dee tracks, but whatever songs stuck with me [regardless of who produced them], I used.

It’s interesting to me that your two main collaborators on Be, as well as yourself, are all from the Midwest.

Definitely. We share a similar mentality. There’s a certain soul that you’re born with, coming from that place. Growing up in these blue-collar cities where there’s a rich history of jazz and blues and soul music. [Also], we don’t have the entertainment industries there. We don’t have cars come to pick us up in Chicago. We don’t see KRS-One walking down the street or Denzel Washington.

There’s something about being between spaces that resonates in your work. You have this line on Black Star’s “Respiration”: “My circumstance is between Cabrini and Love Jones” — even in Chicago, you see yourself in the middle.

I really found myself, so many times, in between those walks of life ’cause I grew up in a black middle-class part of Chicago. I grew up where my homies were gangbanging. Some of their parents were on dope, and some of them lost their parents to dope . . . struggles that I hadn’t even been through, but I was connected with them because they were my friends. I also got to be around private school honor students that went to the Jack and Jill parties, which is an upper-middle-class organization that is very bourgeoisie. So seeing all that, I got a sincere connection to both of those walks of life. I can be in between that and exist and be comfortable because I know each person’s struggle. That’s what I’m talking about with [Be’s] “It’s Your World.”

It’s now more than 10 years since you recorded “I Used To Love H.E.R.” What’s your relationship to hip-hop these days?

I don’t listen to it with the enjoyment the way I did [when I was younger]. It was so new, and I didn’t know about the business, it was just the dream of seeing people like me enjoying and expressing themselves. I do love certain things about it more. From a musical standpoint, I love the fact that we expanded it. I just love the fact that it has grown. Just from another perspective, I love that we can travel the world and the influence it has on the world. From a business person’s perspective, I love how it employs a lot of people from the community. From a creative perspective, I do like some of the quotes, but I definitely listened to it with more enjoyment [in the past]. Some of the only albums that made me feel the way I enjoyed it in the early days was College Dropout and The Black Album. I also love the song “Why?” by Jadakiss because of the words of the song. I was grateful [to be on the remix].

Speaking of The Black Album, what did you think when Jay-Z gave you that shout-out on “Moment of Clarity.”

I was honored. That was the ultimate shout-out, the ultimate love. He dropped a gem for me like, “Here this is for you, you better take it and go with it.”

But what do you think about the point he was making: that he couldn’t sell as many records if he rhymed like you?

Maybe that was true at that time. Maybe that time is changing. I don’t want to act like just because you talk about conscious things, it’s the reason you’re not selling. Sometimes music has to be extra good and universal. I think Kanye was a perfect example of that because in “All Falls Down,” he says some stuff on there. He says some conscious things on there.

“I’m proud to be called [conscious]. You’re looking at Bob Marley, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, KRS-ONE... When you look back in history, it’s going to mean something.”

These days, it seems like most rappers treat the label “conscious” like a kiss of death. They want to distance themselves from it.

When they started saying that to me, I was defensive the first time, like, “Why do they have to label me that?” Then I started looking more throughout music history at the artists they call conscious, and I’m proud to be called that. You’re looking at Bob Marley, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, KRS-ONE, that lineage right there? Okay, call me conscious. When you look back in history, if I’m labeled as a conscious rapper, it’s going to mean something. More than the booty-shake rappers.

It’s not like you don’t want to sell albums, though.

I would like to sell multi-platinum, but the majority of the reason is for survival and to be able to live. I also know that I can live doing other things, but I would like to secure some finances in this industry. I also want to say that I want millions of people to hear my music. I create this music so that the world can hear it. I gotta say — I want to create music forever. I don’t want to have to create music to make a living, but I want to create music.

You are branching out into other things, though, right? You have a new hat company called Soji. You’re acting. I saw you’re writing children’s books, too.

I’ve written three and started a fourth one. It deals a lot with self-esteem, self-love, and taking care of yourself from a child’s perspective. I was approached first by Scholastic because they did this thing called Hip-Kid-Hop. They had me, LL [Cool J], and Posdnuos from De La Soul all writing. I ended up writing one, but they never released it, so I ended up writing different ones. That’s how it began. I realized that not only would it be fun, it was going to be another way for me to really reach the kids in an authentic way. I’m not trying to sit up there and be the kids’ clown or nothing. Talking to them for real, the way I would talk.

I assume the fact that you have a seven-year-old daughter yourself factors in, too. I’m curious — does she listen to hip-hop? And are you concerned about what she listens to?

I care, but I just try to remind her of who she is and listen to her about what she wants to do. Talk to her about loving herself and that everything she hears ain’t literal. [I try] to explain, as much as possible, “Look, all this music is bullshit. You can dance to it if you want but don’t take it to heed. But, I ain’t going to tell you not to like it.”

Do you think she understands that?

Yeah, I think she does. She still sings the songs, but I don’t think she understands every lyric she sings. I told her about [Lil Jon’s] “Get Low.” I was like, “Okay, you singing this, but you know what this is, right? I just want you to know.” So she thought about it before she started singing it again. I’ve got to also remember: I was singing Rakim hooks, but I didn’t know everything he was talking about. I eventually learned and grew to understand more stuff. I want my lyrics to be like that - when a child can grow up and be like, “damn, he was saying that?”

Originally published in Issue No. 128, July/August 2005. Edited for clarity.

Our September 2001 Björk Cover Story

A Different Sort of Bird

Under the prying eye of Hollywood and the superficial glare of the mainstream pop world, Björk has quietly hatched songs with some of the most creative talents in electronic music. But, while everyone thinks they know what she's about, few see Björk’s true nature as a devoted music nerd and electro-acoustic composer who spends countless hours talking about snare sounds and editing noises on her laptop.

By Tamara Palmer

Photography by Joseph Cultice

Bjork is so unequivocally underground; she knew the discography of some of electronic music's most innovative producers before you even dropped the needle on one of their records. She's so incredibly above ground that immigrant cab drivers, dentists, construction workers, and Joan Rivers all have an opinion on her looks and style. Her musical art, which has sold well over 10 million units worldwide between her solo albums, springs out of intersections and contrasts between her public and private hemispheres. She travels along an electro-acoustic axis fueled by an intense passion held by only the most dedicated audiophiles. And if you're only looking and not listening, you could easily miss it all.

"Bjork is obsessed with music," confirms Drew Daniel, one half of Matmos, the Bay Area duo who are frequent Bjork collaborators, "and when she loves a piece of music, she becomes a pretty fiery advocate for it. She once rang me up from Iceland to play me a Hans Reichel daxophone piece [i.e., German avant-garde guitarist playing an experimental wooden in- strumen_t] over the phone. We were hanging out with her in LA in her hotel room, and she started to DJ for us on her little stereo, playing us Cylob, Tomita, Opiate, Ensemble, Arovane, and Mortiis one after the other, very excitedly. So however glamorous she might be, she's also a big music geek."

The electronic sound palette has held a magnetism for Björk for well over 20 years. As a young teenager, she often listened to the serene ambiance of Tangerine Dream and Brian Eno in her communal household in Iceland (where she was already a famous vocalist by age 13). She then progressed to the more complex, industrialized sounds of German bands OAF and Einstlirzende Neubauten. The latter she discovered as an 18-year-old scruff visiting Berlin on tour with her punk band KUKL (predecessors to her latterly famous band, The Sugarcubes, who introduced the world to the concept of credible modern music in Iceland in the course of their three-album career). After breaking from The Sugarcubes in 1990, one of her first projects was creating the song "Ooops" for Manchester, England dance unit 808 State's second album, Ex:El, in 1991, which began her long working relationship with band member Graham Massey. Since her solo career began to blossom in the early '90s, she has consistently relied on electronic music arrangements (provided early on by producers like Massey, Howie Band former LFO member Mark Bell) to complement her most amazing acoustic instrument: her voice.

Bjork succinctly explains her preference for digital sounds and how they work in her organic schematic. "I'm interested in blending electronic music with our everyday life to prove that's actually how we're living," she says. "I guess my attempt is to take just the life we lead daily and make magic out of that. But, to be honest, those are the sounds [of life]; it's what we hear all the time... I like extremes; I guess very raw acoustic things and then very pure electronic beats. To me, electricity comes from nature. Like acupuncture - something several thousand years old triggers the electricity inside us within our nerve system.”

“My biggest challenge is to create a song on my own, and that's kind of where I'm going to be headed," Bjork told me in a 1995 interview, just after the release of Post. "I think the next album will be when I've learned all the things I can do on my own." She's released two albums since then, Homogenic and Selmasongs, the soundtrack to her startling, heart-wrenching, first-and-last acting role in last year's Dancer in the Dark. Yet six years later, as we pop vitamins, sip herbally enriched drinks, and discuss her fourth solo album Vespertine at an all-night diner near her Manhattan loft/work space, she seems resolutely closer to her goal.

“It was a strange album, this one, because there are almost no tunes on the album that I did completely with someone," she says. "Some songs are like nine people making beats on them. I never planned it that way, but that"s sort of how it went. I think, in my ideal world, I'm more of an organic person. Like, I work with one person, and we do everything together; we complete each other in every way. But I think it’s also important to be truthful about where you are at... Me and Mark Bell had been working together for three years, and he got offered to do Depeche Mode (on their new album Exiter). So he went off to do that in a completely amicable way. And so I guess I was more stubborn on this album, too. I knew from day one what I wanted.”

Vespertine refers to vespers, an open-ended word that generally relates to an element that blooms at night, whether a plant, animal or an introspective prayer. The original working title for the album was Domestika, and both names suggest a comforting sort of privacy so private, in fact, that it is difficult to conceive of the idea of commercial radio ever daring to blare any of these pieces.

All of the songs have a soothing quality achieved with the deft merging of instruments like harp and music box and the gritty digital filters of laptop software. This provides the soft padding on which Björk’s lyrical lullabies can safely land. If an instrumental-only version of this album were available, you'd be forgiven for mistaking it for a release on envelope-pushing electronic labels like Warp or Rephlex.

Björk wrote all of the words on Vespertine, with two notable exceptions: “Sun in My Mouth” (a poem/song written by e.e. cummings in 1925) and “Harm of Will” (penned by screenwriter Harmony Karine, best known for the movie Kids). Between her lyrics and the spontaneous vocal intonations of breath and growl that appear between lines, it sometimes feels like the aural equivalent of walking in on Björk naked. It's an awkward moment: You're seeing something you might've wanted to, but you know you're not supposed to have that much access. On “Cocoon,” when she sweetly allows the listener in on some clear intimacy — “from the mouth of a girl like me/to a boy” — in a tone, we haven't quite heard before, there's at least the illusion that Björk is revealing something of her private persona.

She's always been known for left-of-center, evocative lyrics that take a simple twist on daily operations. “I wake up and the day feels broken/I tilt my head and try to get an angle,” she sings on “It's Not Up to You.” But speaking to her leaves the impression that her true emotions are better expressed through machines’ sounds. The warm, full synthesizer melodies that sweep up a song and carry it along might communicate her ideas more directly than the words they surround.

Björk straddles the vast hazy continuum of organic versus automated sound. At press time, she hoped to book mainly opera houses for her fall live tour to sing in a naturally amplified environment without microphones (but, of course, with the assistance of laptops and other digital gear). This is all for purely audiophile reasons, she insists. “Not because I’m posh.”

Amid the organized chaos, with people dropping in and out. Of the mix, a few names appear consistently throughout Vespertine in rotating roles of programming, arranging, and engineering. These include a quartet of veteran Björk collaborators — Jake Davies, Marius de Vries, Valgeir Sigurdsson, and Guy Sigsworth — and cutting-edge electronicists Matmos and Thomas Knak, Vince Mendoza (who arranged Selmasongs) and harpist Zeena Parkins.

“It seemed that the way [Vespertine] worked was very truthful to how my life was anyway," she says. “I was working on my laptop with a Pro Tools engineer who would help me set up my system wherever I was because I was traveling quite a lot.”

During the three years she worked on Vespertine (initially as a hobby amid the strain of filming Dancer in the Dark), Bjork took advantage of time spent in transit, mainly on trains and airplanes. With her laptop and classical music editing software, she would tirelessly sift through sounds, creating music box and harp arrangements and laying down preliminary song structures to take back into the home studio. “And then someone would pop by for an evening, and we'd eat or get drunk or whatever, and they'd add a little thing on, and then they'd leave,” she explains.

“So, if you read the credits, it seems problematic but wasn’t. It was just me, working in my house mostly daily, with an engineer on and off and sometimes on my own, with people popping by with suggestions. I hope when I say this, I'm not underestimating how much work a lot of people put into it, but overall that was kind of more how this album was made [more] than my other albums.”

As she concludes, a middle-aged, grinning yuppie walks up to her. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” he stammers, thrusting a crumpled postcard onto the table. “My girlfriend loves your music and...” She smiles politely, scrawls her tag on the card, and begins again.

“I had problems doing the credits on the album,” she reiterates. “It was kinda tricky because I was getting my favorite artists of today all together on one song, and it was a bit crazy. I had to write what they did, and it was kinda complicated... There was a period when someone like Joni Mitchell would get the cream of musicians together in the same song. One would play drums, the next would play percussion, another bass, another guitar, and another keyboard. So it’d be very obvious — you'd just write on the album ‘keyboards, bass [by a specific musician].’ But now, what are you gonna do?” She makes strange noises with her mouth to illustrate the futility of crediting sounds without ready semantic descriptions to each contributor.

For example, pal Matthew Herbert, an accomplished producer currently celebrating the reception of his latest album, Bodily Functions, contributed a rhythmic movement of about 32 beats in the middle eighth of the first single, “Hidden Place.” Herbert manages with a few scant beats to open up a world of possibilities of future work for these two — if they could sync up their schedules to spend quality time together in the studio.

“She's completely involved in the process,” says Matmos’ Daniel. “She's very trusting with her collaborators and will try to suggest the emotion of a track while respecting their freedom to interpret how to turn that emotion into sound. But there was always a point at which each sound and pattern would come under very close scrutiny, and she would let you know what was working, what wasn't, what needed to be stronger or more delicate, or shifted slightly.”

One of Matmos’ great strengths, as witnessed on their recent LP, A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure, is their ability to extract and dissect minute sound ideas and spit them out into new songs with wit and humor. In Björk, they have found a partner who can keep up with their level of detail. “On a board with over 150 tracks going, she would always have an ear for what was necessary and what she could do without,” notes Daniel. “Sometimes five different mixes at a given song would be made with only minute differences, maybe just a slightly different kick drum sound. But to her, there was always a clear sense of what she was going for and how close or far away a given mix was from that goal.”

Another producer Björk worked with for the first time was the ultra-prolific Bogdan Raczynski, who has released several obnoxiously witty albums on Aphex Twin’s Rephlex label that push the boundaries of experimentation even for those who trumpet the philosophy. “We did a tune together, and I was gonna put it on the album, but then it was so different,” she says of Raczynski. “We might have it separate. We might do more stuff. We're not sure what we will do, but it seems to be a different thing... He's incredible; I think he's a really special person. He's good proof that there's passion in computers.” Both plan to post free MP3 downloads at some of the fruits of their collaborations on their Web sites, bjork.com and bogdanraczynski.com.

Ultimately, Raczynski dishes up the tastiest metaphor for Björk's confident and creative work ethic. “[Engineer] Jake Davies, Björk, and I were cutting up oranges and 200 BPM beats in New York City,” he recalls. "And she would always silently and carefully make sure that things fit together like a chef who knew what the final taste was but didn't know what the ingredients were.”

Björk is a perfectionist in her musical kitchen, to be sure, but that doesn't mean she's precious about her art. Quite the reverse, as it turns out. Her attitude toward digital downloading, in particular, is refreshing, given her stature and attention to detail:

URB: You've said that Vespertine was partly influenced by the idea of Napster, being able to download songs before their release, and how acoustic sounds would fare after they were downloaded and processed on laptops. Lo and behold, Vespertine was available for download online long before it hit the streets. Do you mind?

BJÖRK: I’m not too upset about it. It was bound to happen. You’ve got the record company who don't want it to happen, and then you've got the people who want it to happen. And then you've got me. I guess I'm quite flattered by the enthusiasm. I'm quite curious about what's gonna happen in the next few years. I think it'll change. I mean, it already has. But I like all that stuff, obviously, being a punk. And I made a conscious decision that I would be part of the system and try to change it from the inside... If you don't take part in anything and are kind of pure and isolated in your corner, nothing will change for you. You need to get in there and get involved if you care. So that's what I'm doing.

So obviously, a lot of people don't necessarily agree with how I feel and vice versa, but that's okay. Something like this always reminds me of going to Prague 10 years ago. It was still communist, and someone handed me a novel by Milan Kundera, which was illegal. Somebody had typed it on thin paper, and so many people had read it that you could see through the pages. It was like 1990, and people knew that they could be put in jail if they read it, yet everybody still read it. I think it's very often that music is thought of as being a luxury item. I like it when a situation in a country goes that way that it becomes a necessity.

People are willing to make an effort, and I quite like that... It seems natural — like the little creatures, they wanna crawl on all fours, sneak, and download. They are curious enough to take it for what it is.

Some artists take issue with the fact that what often ends up online are out-takes or not the final version of a song.

If you look at the whole percentage of Björk tracks available online, 80 percent of them I didn't do. I've been hearing hilarious songs, [even one] with German lyrics! So I think if you took the overall picture, I think people who download stuff are prepared that ifs 50/50 gonna be what it says it is... It’s the sort of sneaky element I like; it’s pretty secretive. What we did was when we heard the first track, which I think was sung in German and was funny, we saw this conversation going on [online]: “This isn't the new Matmos/Björk track. I don't know what this is. This is an odd duck.” So we've started doing really crap versions of our tunes, putting them up, calling them “odd ducks!”

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I think there's a biological reason why guys provide beats and girls provide soul.

Speaking of odd ducks, the fact of the marketplace is that Björk is a minority as a female involved in creating and arranging electronic music. As a tomboy who was not only good at math in school but on the chess team as well, it’s clear she never let stereotypes of gender limit her field of interest. She seems perplexed when asked about the imbalance of the sexes in electronic music production.

I’ve found it’s very abstract sometimes what's called production,” she says after a considered silence. “A lot of people seem to think with electronic music that people who bring the beats are producers, but that's not true. You can compare it to the ’70s. Do you know if you wrote a song in the ’70s and got a drummer to come in and play drums? Even though he'd do exactly what he wanted — you wouldn't tell him what to do — he would not be the song's producer. He wouldn't. And now, if somebody makes a beat, he's a producer. But then again, I know a lot of beatmakers that are producers. I'm not taking [anything] away from them for one minute. I think doing beats — maybe I should shut my mouth because this is a really cliche thing to say — but doing beats, it’s quite a male thing. It’s quite a, you know, ‘Gimme a beat!’” she giggles. “I’m not surprised if that's related to gender; that doesn’t surprise me. The fact that women supply feelings or a heart — I'm not saying guys don't have a heart — but I think there's a biological reason why guys provide beats and girls provide soul.”

Edited for clarity

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Our August 2003 Björk Cover Story

I Sing the Body Electric

After a decade of stunning solo audio-visual work, the artist reflects on an unstoppable career

By Tamara Palmer

Photography by Warren Du Preez and Nick Thornton Jones

The bright sun is beginning to think about packing it in on this lovely summer evening in Venice, Italy. Or so we hear from Björk, who phones in the report from her mobile phone as she walks across a bridge towards her hotel, happily greeting people shouting her name as she passes.

It’s a picturesque image none of us have any trouble conjuring up. However, our specific portrait of the artist will vary infinitely according to which default image of this visual chameleon is set in us internally. Perhaps she’s resplendent in a gauzy white cocoon of a dress with multiple knots in her hair, as we know her from her early days establishing her career independent from The Sugarcubes, the band she and her friends started as rebellious teenagers in Iceland laughing. Or maybe your particularly twisted mind prefers to see her as one of the androgynous robots that Chris Cunningham immortalized in his video for her song “All is Full of Love.” That our impressions will run such a large gamut is a testament to the mutable nature of the visual component of Björk’s multi-disciplined art. Still, one fact we might be able to all agree upon is the unwavering force of her voice.

Ten years after her proper solo launch with the 1993 album Debut, Björk’s British label One Little Indian celebrates her milestone with
a massive selection of releases. The Live Box Set collects four discs of live performances (selected by Björk herself) of her four core solo albums — Debut, Post, Homogenic, and Vespertine- and a DVD of live songs. And then there are no less than seven additional DVDs.

This lot includes a live performance of the Vespertine tour at London’s Royal Opera House, a documentary of the tour itself called Minuscule, the revealing documentary Inside Björk and a series of performances from the BBC television program Later with Jools Holland. There are also DVD issues of collections previously available on video: Vessel (performances and silliness from the Debut tour) and the music video collection Greatest Hits: Volumen 1993- 2003 (and the new companion, Volumen Plus, which contains extra videos).

Björk is also on a live tour in North America for nine unique shows in August. Venues range from the elegant environs of the Hollywood Bowl in California to the considerably grittier backdrop of New York’s Coney Island.

All of this Björk activity has two instant consequences: Her considerable posse of ardent fans have a ridiculous amount of quality material to be excited about, and those programmed to be cynical of record label machinations and the egos of pop stars will naturally question if it’s all necessary. But only one woman on the planet could definitively answer this — and other riddles in the stunningly beautiful enigma known as Björk.

I find it very tedious to listen to old stuff of mine

URB: Why are you releasing so much material now, all at once?

BJÖRK: I guess I find it very tedious to listen to old stuff of mine. I’d much rather move ahead and do new stuff. But people had been telling me off because there were all of these horrible bootlegs out there, and what a shame it was that the good stuff wasn’t available. So I chose from live concerts — a few hundred hours of material. I’m funny like that. I kind of have to do it myself, you know? Basically, I got pregnant and postponed last summer’s tour until this summer. Then I just used the nesting energy of being pregnant to listen to all this stuff and clean my attic, if you want, going through boxes and throwing out rubbish. I ended up with four live albums: Greatest Hits and The Family Tree. It’s not the most exciting part of what I do, but it was necessary.

You say you find this process tedious, but did you find any unexpected joy in compiling these projects?

I find it very uncomfortable to listen to myself. So I kept putting it off. Overall, it was tedious while doing it, but I learned a lot from the whole thing after it was done. As much fun as it is just to go, go, go and never look back, it was good that I made myself do this. It sort of gives me a clean start now.

Do you feel like there’s a new door opening?

Yeah, there’s no luggage. It just definitely feels like new. It’s a good feeling.

There is a natural question that everyone has at this point: What can you tell us about what comes next? Do you have a plan?

When I did Homogenic, around ’95-’96, I knew I would first do an album with nature and me in my mountain boots walking and eruptions and patriarchic violins. Then I wanted to do an opposite version of me, which is me inside my house, alone in the middle of the night, reading a book or listening to my favorite tune or something sort of introspective.

So that was Vespertine, and that came out in 2001. So I guess I had five or six years of always knowing what was gonna come next. So I’m enjoying my work now, sort of not knowing. I’m just writing a lot of stuff, and I’m enjoying the freedom of that because it can just be any way I want it.

So you would say it’s the first time in a while you don’t have a plan?

Yeah, it’s kind of nice to get an idea and do it that day, and then in a week, get another idea and do that one. It’s more spontaneous, working with the moment. I like both — I don’t prefer one to the other. I think that it’s important that when you feel like you want to have a long-term idea and you want to work in the most pragmatic way — piece by piece by piece — you should. And when you feel like you need to be spontaneous, you should. I think it’s important to act according to how you feel.

If you want to do things well, you must do just one thing at a time and ignore the rest. So if I want to do a Vespertine kind of album, which is full of micro-details and tiny stuff, it’s going to be time-consuming, and it will be a lot of work, and you just have to ignore everything else while you’re doing that. I guess it’s a question of prioritizing what’s most important for you at each moment.

It seems that it would be difficult to prioritize when your creativity is active. How do you focus when those types of creative distractions come up?

There’s no method, you just take it as it comes, and you have to deal with it differently each time. I don’t know what you’re like, but I’m like this: If
I figure out a method of how to do something, I cannot do it again that way. [laughs] So it’s sort of like improvised, you know? Since I was a kid, people with really great ideas have surrounded me. They always found it sad when people didn’t finish things. So I guess I learned a lot from them in trying to take things to the end, even though sometimes you’d rather move on. I guess I’m quite stubborn like that. I’ve never walked out of a movie cinema, for example. If I walk in and in the first five minutes, I know it’s horrible, I still have to see it through to the end.

The Vespertine tour played venues that boost the room's natural acoustics, such as symphony halls and opera houses. Once you have that kind of quality of sound, does it make you not want to perform in situations where it’s not like that?

No, I always like extremes. I like a sweaty club with all the bass and bottom, exaggerated distortion, and everybody rolling over each other sweaty and having an amazing time. And then I like to have a good shower, put a peacock dress on, and sit outside and hear someone play the harp. I think it’s fun — to go from one style to another and do it forever. I think human nature
is far more complex than that. No one likes the same thing forever.

I like a sweaty club with all the bass and bottom, exaggerated distortion, and everybody rolling over each other sweaty and having an amazing time. And then I like to have a good shower, put a peacock dress on, and sit outside and hear someone play the harp

The Vespertine tour was more in a way about honing my style as a singer. I was always in rock bands playing clubs where everyone would smoke, and my voice would get hoarse in five minutes. There are many elements in a room, and I always loved singing acoustically without any microphone to hear the room's echo. It was great to do the Vespertine tour because I wanted to do it for almost 20 years. But you kind of get it out of your system and move on.

People are lazy, they see a situation that works really well — say, a sweaty room with good bass and great music and everything’s incredible
— and they say, “Okay, we’ve worked out the formula.” And then you go back to that place, and it’s overrun with hideous music. So I think it’s important to stay on your toes and keep discovering what music is. Because it isn’t one thing — it isn’t a harp, and it isn’t a virgin singing somewhere. Or it isn’t a rock band. It’s not about the circumstances or the setup. It’s about the heart of the music. And it’s important that people don’t forget that.

When did you begin to use your body to engage its full capacity to sing and use body language and physical expression in performance?

There’s a side of me that’s very academic, I guess from music school, that’s constantly concerned with arrangements and all that stuff. But there’s also a side of me that tries not to think about it all because of my voice and probably my body too, I want it to do its own thing, something that’s more spontaneous and surprising.

So you’re not actively engaging your body?

No, otherwise, I’d die of boredom. So it’s kind of nice when I do a show, especially now with this tour. I’ve got all the more up, sort of physical tunes up front, which is the opposite of Vespertine. It’s kind of fun to go on stage, and you don’t know how you’re going to react to yourself. You can still surprise yourself. I think that’s quite an important element — so many shows are planned, so it’s nice to have that unknown factor. I never know; it’s like the weather, and I quite enjoy that.

But I have to say I’m a very physical person and I really enjoy that part of it. I go into the studio and record, arrange, and use all these techniques to be spontaneous in my voice and body. It’s almost as if you do all this hard work to prepare and set up a gun, and it’s all about exploding.

Edited for clarity

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Our May 2007 Björk Feature Story

Violently Happy

The eccentric living legend continues to create and inspire

By Giselle Zado Wasfie

Photography by Jennifer Haskins

Does this lady even need an introduction? Certainly, the Icelandic Wonder Woman is sweeter than you think, and maybe it has something to do with the fact that she considers herself a “rural person.” She’s also a fan of Bat for Lashes and is set to release her 10th solo album, Volta, on May 7. Incidentally, she’s one of the greatest artists of our time. How’s that, for starters?

URB: How does your creative process work?

BJÖRK: It’s been different things for different albums. I try to be sort of quiet, truthful to where I’m at, at any given time, because I’ve sort of always felt from the beginning that, emotionally, humans go up and down and to the left and the right, all over the place. And I’ve always felt the demand on a musician is just to be in one place, like an aggressive musician is aggressive all the time, and somebody who’s really poetic and calm—if he does an album like that, he has to do albums like that for a lifetime. So that was one of the things I set out at the start, not to follow that oppression but rather be run by emotion. So, at the beginning of every album, it sort of depends on where I’m at and where I’m coming from, and with this album, because probably I’ve done a couple of albums that were quite introverted, I was sort of in the mood to do something extroverted and kind of fun. So I started off sort of programming beats, and they were quite up… I guess, emotionally, on this album. Yeah, I was just really, really up for doing something sort of like a celebration. 

Do your albums mark a moment in your life?

Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think every person obviously has different ears when you feel a different way, and I think what’s amazing with music is that music can actually go there where many other things can’t. That’s sort of what music is best at because sometimes it’s impossible to describe something in words or in any way except music. Obviously, with the Sugarcubes, I was just one of six, and that was more our group spirit, kind of what we did when we met, and we would maybe leave other stuff at home. Whereas, when I started doing my own albums, it was kind of more room for all the different moods of me: Some albums are quite introverted, sort of what I would do when I’m at home alone, and other albums may be more what I would do after a few drinks in a bar. 

I guess this album it’s got both sides. I mean, there are definitely tracks where it’s sort of, you know, dancing on the table, but there are also tracks that are more reflective and kind of,
I guess, more serious. 

Well, it’s true to life.

Yeah, right. You’ve got to live with both, right?

That’s what music is best at — because sometimes it’s impossible to describe something in words or in any way except music.

You split time between New York and Iceland. What’s a normal day like for you in those places?

Um, I don’t know, I mean, I’m not really into routines, but I can imagine there are certain things I always do when I’m in Iceland. Obviously, I would hook up with my friends, and I love swimming, so that’s a big thing in Iceland because of the hot springs. There are swimming pools in every neighborhood, and they’re all outdoors, so even though it’s snowing and stuff, that’s sort of the place where people meet. They kind of hang out in steam baths and catch up on the latest gossip, so I’ll probably do a bit of that.

My house in Manhattan is actually not in Manhattan; it’s half an hour up north— so it’s sort of in the forest. Because of that, I’m actually quite a rural person. But I also come a couple of times a week into town and go to concerts, restaurants, or whatever. I kind of like the fact that it’s the opposite, and I do like urban stuff.

What are some shows you’ve seen lately?

I saw Antony [from Antony and the Johnsons] sing two days ago. It was a birthday party, though; it wasn’t exactly a concert. I saw Bat For Lashes in England; she was amazing.

What’s it like playing Coachella?

I have always liked extremes, like either a 500-seated venue that is really intimate or the outdoors. I have always played outdoors, even though I started doing that a long time ago, and even though many people—my friends in bands—thought it was a bit of a sell-out to play a huge festival; I never felt that way. I mean, the good thing about festivals is that [they’re] outdoors, and I love nature, obviously. There is something that happens when you listen to music outside.

I sometimes listen to classical concerts outside, and nature programs are one of my favorite things. In London, you can go to a park and sit, and there is a huge screen showing nature programs, a symphony orchestra playing live music under it, and everybody gathers with picnic baskets. The thing is, in Europe, there is such a tradition for this, and when you are playing at European festivals, you are playing, like, by the ocean in 2,000-year-old amphitheaters and in perfect locations. You can tell when you are playing there that they have been playing music there for thousands of years. So everybody arrives with picnic baskets and bottles of wine, and it’s not even a posh thing—it’s just what everybody does.

How does it compare to the States?

I don’t feel this so much in the States, like here is sort of more a rave-hedonist kind of drug fest. But I think it’s changing, especially with Coachella and other events, it’s becoming an actual thing. And sometimes people get humbled by a beautiful sunset…

When you are playing outside, do you get the sense that you are connected to something bigger?

You are just kind of there for the music, not the worship.

Edited for clarity

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Sixteen years ago, long before the festival became the cultural juggernaut it is today, URB published what we’re pretty sure was the first Coachella festival cover story and oral history. We’ve dug out the entire article for your scrolling and pinch-zooming pleasure (below).

By 2007, URB Magazine had been a special guest on the legendary polo field— as fans, DJs, and promoters—since the festival’s birth in 1999. We even hosted some of the earliest secret after-parties, steps from the Sahara stage! But the notoriously protective team at Goldenvoice was not keen on allowing unfettered access so we could spill the festival tea in print. Only after some convincing trust falls was our writer Richard Thomas allowed time with the founders and an all-star lineup of artists and collaborators.

A quick note on unboxing the archive

Recreating our print magazine on Substack is a new experience. We’re sharing pages from our archive in their original form for today's post.

Scrolling through layouts on a phone may sometimes not be ideal. In future posts, we’ll experiment with other ways to present design, text, photos, and artwork, to see what works best.

We want to respect the original print work and creators. And at times, we may make small edits for length or clarity. If we get something wrong, please comment or email us at info@urb.com.

Over time, how we share the archive will evolve with your feedback, so let us know in the comments what you think.

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From the Archive: Our 2007 Oral History of the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival

by Richard Thomas • Cover photo by Danna Kinsky • Illustration by Nick Taylor

P.S. Check out the 2020 Coachella documentary 20 Years in the Desert.

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