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i talked to ed piskor about his comic “hip hop family tree: a look into the viral propagation of a culture” for shepard fairey’s obey blog.
we ended up discussing furry culture and how if he gets rich one day, he’ll fund a psychological study of how furries first associate sex with stuffed animals. but i decided to leave that out.
click the photo to read.
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The-Dream told me I could call him “baby.”
Basically.
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You have a veneer of having seen it all, but in person you’re just so ebullient.
I had to be like that. Everybody tells you no! No, no, no, no, no, no, NO so much. It makes you … not tough like you have a knife in your pocket, but just more like a man. People always said I just should model. And they hadn’t even heard my music! Mind you, it was shit at the time, but fuck, give me a chance.So you’re prepared for all the inevitable hate.
It sucks—no one wants to be hated. But I’m used to it. I’m sure I’ll get booed many more times in life but I’ll also get love letters, too.I did this interview with Iggy in early October, but it was for L.A. Record and just went online. In person, she was self-deprecating, and the images of power in the video for “My World” are derived from a very real place. But in retrospect, her comments on controlling the way she’s projected seem a little naive. Would that she retains that mindset, but Jimmy Iovine telling her she’s the next Tupac sounds an awful lot like a man buttering up a woman to get her in bed.
Let’s hope her resolve and bullshit detector are stronger than the often-lethal combination of industry pressure and the desire to be praised.
Click photo to read the pretty damn extensive interview.
Photo by Funaki.
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Schoolboy Q Is a Smart Rapper Who Also Can Predict the Future
A little over a year ago, I went to Carson to interview Kendrick Lamar for this piece. We did the photo shoot at a nearby basketball court, and two of his friends ended up in the shot used for LA Weekly. One of them approached me as I was leaving. “You’re gonna be interviewing me next. Watch out for me. My album’s dropping soon,” he said.
Well, I did watch out for him, and a year and three days later, I drove back to Carson to hang out with Schoolboy Q.
You can read my feature here, and outtakes from the interview — including how rappers influence kids to gangbang — are pretty incredible.
Photo by Jennie Warren.
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Anything you want to know about Iggy Azalea is probably in the interview I did for the issue of L.A. Record that just hit the streets. Those copies go quick. Hurry.
Photo by Funaki for L.A. Record.
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Murs on Why He Moved to Arizona: “I wouldn’t feel comfortable living here without a firearm”
Nobody is more L.A. than Murs. But he doesn’t even live here anymore.
He’s now based out of Tucson, Arizona, where he says he doesn’t stand out. That’s for a few reasons. For one, gone are the thick ropes of dreadlocks that formerly sprouted from his head. Also, he drives a Prius. And he likes watching SEC football on Saturdays.
But he’s back in his Mid-City hood today, where he’s recognized even without his signature hair. Dressed in green Adidas pants and a black t-shirt, the rapper sits at a table in his mom’s house on a quiet, pretty block. He’s arrived only an hour ago, but he’s already made the rounds to see friends and family.
His latest album, Love & Rockets Vol. 1, was released today on Damon Dash’s label DD172/Bluroc. Over a take-out breakfast from his grandmother’s new restaurant A Taste Of Chi Bas, Murs talks about the shooting of his two friends, why he can’t live in L.A., and what it’s like to be handed the keys to Dame’s house.
Continue reading here …
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Blu Interview: L.A.’s Patron Saint of Lyricism
Blu soundlessly materializes in Silverlake’s La Mill coffee boutique. The rapper’s aura is so serene it forms a barrier against the sounds of jittery fingertips flitting across keyboards and conversations that seem to be in fast forward. I think of a line from “Down to Earth,” a song from his just-released latest album, NoYork!: “My feet stay planted so you shouldn’t have to ask what I stand for.”
Other rappers with the 28-year-old San Pedro native’s resume—he turned down both Interscope and Death Row in the early aughts, appeared on The Roots’ last album How I Got Over, and is at the forefront of “best rapper alive” blogosphere debates—might have long been breathing the rarefied air of superstardom. Although Blu sealed his place as one of the greatest lyricists in hip hop with his 2007 album produced by Exile, Below the Heavens, he prefers his underground fame and rabid fans. “I never saw myself as a Nelly,” he says. “Common and Mos Def get their videos played, but never [excessively]. That’s always what I aspired to be. I never thought Below would catapult us like it did.”
Ahead of his show tonight at The Airliner, the emcee, now signed to Warner Bros. Records, discusses being sick of Below the Heavens, making his exit from rap, and why Lil B should be as big as Kanye.
Continue reading …
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Meet OverDoz: L.A.’s Freakiest, Cheekiest Collective
The small army splayed around a table on the patio of Inglewood’s Simply Wholesome is focused on the black Range Rover parked just outside the door. Stevie Wonder’s in the passenger seat. The eight members of Los Angeles collective OverDoz, who open for Dom Kennedy tonight at the Glass House in Pomona, stare—“Go look! It’s not like he can see you,” they say—but suddenly a girl exits, and as producer Iman Omari hollers at her, they’re distracted.
Of course they are. Their latest album, Live For Die For, teeters between sexy and (sexily) raunchy, the bedroom-eyed lyrics sprinkled with hash before being rolled in big, spacey blunts of beats. Oh, and it’s funny: The chorus of “You’re Blowin’ It”? “The only time you please me is when you’re on your knees.”
Interviewing OverDoz has less to do with asking questions than with nudging a little here and there and listening as they gallop off.
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Thurz on Reinventing Himself, U-N-I’s Break-Up, and Why West Coast Hip Hop Hasn’t Gone Mainstream (Yet)
In “Los Angeles,” the first single from Inglewood rapper Thurz’s debut solo project, L.A. Riot— out yesterday —a girl chirps, “To me, L.A. means home, sunny skies, and happy people.” But in Thurz’s next verse, he flips the city over to examine its underbelly, “Cats would raise a gun before they raise a kid/I guess we forefathers of warfare, bullets go platinum every year.”
A couple of years ago, as one half of U-N-I, the easygoing, colorful duo who led the early charge of the independent “New West,” Thurz was promoting the same fun-in-the-sun travel brochure. The video for “Beautiful Day” captures a much more idyllic day than Ice Cube’s—kids hula hoop in the street, a pretty girl hands out cups of Kool-Aid, and the guys ride off into a white-bright sky.
But rumors of U-N-I dissolving finally were confirmed in June, and on L.A. Riot Thurz, 26, has gone beneath the shiny surface of the city to find inspiration in its dark, not-so-distant past. Though his tone has completely changed, the foreshadowing was always there: U-N-I’s videos and lyrics were sunny, but constantly referenced the late ’80s and early ’90s, the era that saw dark clouds roll in over the West Coast. Call U-N-I the calm before Thurz’s storm.
Ahead of the album’s release, Thurz talked to us about what happened to U-N-I, how recruiting fans to add their memories of L.A. to the single “Los Angeles” led to the Riotproject, and why the spirit of 1992 is so important to him.
Continue reading on LA Weekly …
