Session Transcript:
Hymnal
Red Bull Music Academy, Melbourne 2006

The video stream for this lecture can be watched here.

In this session the former Jurassic 5 DJ Cut Chemist talks about his friendship with rapper Hymnal and their memories of the early L.A. rap scene. From breakdancing in the streets to hanging at The Good Life, we hear about how it went down on the Left Coast. More pertinently to today’s producers, Cut Chemist talks in detail about sampling laws, the best way to negotiate your path through the minefield. Check the latter part of the session for the story of how he almost landed himself and Apple with a mighty lawsuit.

RBMA: »A warm welcome for Cut Chemist and Hymnal (applause). Why don’t you start by explaining your relationship?«

Cut Chemist: »Hymnal and I met in seventh grade - what was it, Mrs Merson’s history class or something? – and we butted heads over something, we had a custody battle over some Run DMC song. The friendship blossomed after that. You didn’t start rapping till about ’91?«

Hymnal: »Probably about ’88. Still in high school.«

Cut Chemist: »’88? Then you were a closet rapper because I didn’t hear you about till ’91.«

RBMA: »When did you meet and where in the world?«

Cut Chemist: »’84-ish, in Los Angeles in middle school. Actually, it was middle and high school. I stayed and he left, went to L.A. High. That was ’84.«

RBMA: »And you have collaborated before this?«

Cut Chemist: »Just doing math homework, nothing creative.«

RBMA: »Talk a little about then. You just mentioned fighting over custody of a Run DMC song.«

Cut Chemist: »Yeah, probably the social impact of what the song meant. “It’s about that.” “It’s nothing to do with that, it’s about this.”«

RBMA: »Describe for everyone the environment of Los Angeles at the time, what was going on?«

Cut Chemist: »Anybody see that show Fame? It was like Fame. Everybody spinning on their head in the street. Just to give you an example, I’d go up to Carl’s, which is a fast food joint, in my windbreaker because I was into breakdancing and some dude would see me walking, and he’s got a radio and his friends are with him, and he’d bumrush me: “Yo, dude, break out some cardboard.” Right in front of Carl’s we’d just battle. Dude, this is some really surreal shit, you just dance at the drop of a hat. And it was like that. People would be walking around on Hollywood Boulevard and Mike and I would be battling people, rapping. Back then people would be rapping on the street and dancing, like a Lionel Richie video, it was crazy. Run DMC was out and rap was just crossing over with all the other elements of hip hop, so all the kids were into it.«

RBMA: »Anyone who knows about the early history of hip hop in L.A. will have heard about electro. Do you want to tell us of your experience of that?«

Cut Chemist: »L.A. is so spread out, the cultural dynamic is really interesting. It’s pretty mysterious to me, even though I’ve lived there for 34 years, I think that’s what keeps me there, because I can’t figure the place out. But there was a huge electro scene, I think because of the mobile DJ scene, which is different from the East Coast, which is more about house parties and block parties. In L.A. people had to drive because it’s so spread out, even in the Bay you had the same thing. Not that that has anything to do with electro, but all the mobile DJs were playing electro, like It’s Time and Cybotron, things like that. I think it came from the pop-lock era, just r&b getting more progressive.«

RBMA: »Speaking of Fellowship, do you want to mention something of the live scenes that catapulted those guys and how that was inspirational to you?«

Cut Chemist: »There’s a health food store in L.A. called The Good Life and every Thursday night they had an open mic night. Freestyle Fellowship were one of the main groups that would show up. Others were Kurupt from Dogg Pound and Pharcyde, Pigeon John, there were so many people who built careers from that place and it was just great. You couldn’t curse on the mic so you had to be careful what you said. It was right around the time of the riots and the Rodney King beating, so it was a really fragile, volatile time in that area. I thought I was rolling deep, it got a little abrasive sometimes for me. I had really long dreadlocks at the time, which was just adding fuel to the fire.«

RBMA: »There were encounters with Nation Of Islam security.«

Cut Chemist: »Exactly (laughs). But it was cool, everybody respected what I did because the beats were tight. Chali 2na and the rest of the crew were cool, too, so it was a good time. He formed a crew called Darkleaf and they would come up there with us and we would just roll this big posse, Native Tongues-style and it was cool; bright fluorescent lights, fresh produce and rappers. It was weird.«

RBMA: »So what was your recollection of that era, how profound an impact did it have on you?«

Hymnal: »It was big because, like Lucas was saying, the East Coast influence on West Coast rap, underground rap, was really big. From my afrocentric point of view it was an academic philosophy that came from the East Coast, came from the Nation of Islam, the Zulu Nation. Everybody listening to K-Day, by the time they were rapping, consciousness was pretty much the main way to advance your skills. It was talking about a life philosophy and it blended well with the scene at the Good Life, which was a health food store, about positive vibes and being positive in the community. It was run by a lady called B Hall and that was her goal, an educational thing, getting the neighbourhood kids to stay out of trouble. That was a big piece of it, so I was just happy to be a part of it, week after week, everybody not only practicing their skills but also talking about the latest books, the latest philosophy, the latest esoteric religious ideas that would influence the next rap they were going to write. It was a far cry from the aesthetic of gangsta rap, which had a completely different motivation to it, different words.«

Cut Chemist: »It was almost reactionary to the gangsta rap scene. There was so much of that going on we were all sick of it, so we all rendezvoused every Thursday.«

RBMA: »Not being from L.A., being from the East Coast, we always thought that’s what L.A. and California stuff was. But you say Kurupt from the Dogg Pound was there. What sort of interaction was there?«

Cut Chemist: »Gangster rappers would show up and they would do their gangster shit and we weren’t mad at that. If you had skills that was cool, you just couldn’t curse. So people did their gangster shit and it was cool if it was entertaining, but a big part of what was going on wasn’t gangster, it was ‘hang your gangster up on the door and come on in’.«

RBMA: »Do you want to drop in any music?«

Cut Chemist: »Let’s play a little something from the album, or is that jumping the gun?«

RBMA: »No, that’s a good thing.«

Cut Chemist: »Maybe we should start with a rap song because we’re talking about rap music. And it’s the new single so I can plug it. This is from The Audience’s Listening, which is my new album that came out a couple of months ago. (scratches) Shit, sorry. We’re about to hear The Storm. Edan and Mr Lif are rapping on it.«

(music: Cut Chemist - The Storm)

»The cool thing about that is it encompasses everything we’ve been talking about. There’s a big influence of ‘84 music, obviously, then you have the East Coast MCs. I thought that was appropriate.«

RBMA: »Let’s talk a little bit about some of the challenges of playing out a record like this, speaking of breaks and samples, on a major label. This is the kind of thing that drove you to get into the music and…«

Cut Chemist: »Now it’s taboo.«

RBMA: »Now it’s a little more difficult.«

Cut Chemist: »Especially, since about a year ago there was a new law. There’s no law about sampling, you just can’t do it. I guess, that’s the law. There’s nothing that says if you take this much you owe this much, there’s no graph as far as the relative proportions, which is a crime in itself, there ought to be. If you take a snare drum and somebody catches you they can take 100% of your publishing. That didn’t stop me, because that’s what I do. It took me over a year to clear the samples on the record. I had to take some off because there were quotes that were outrageous. I sampled one word, ‘listen’, off Rick Rubin’s first record, It’s Yours, and he wanted 50% of my publishing and $15.000. Can you copyright one word? No, but since it’s titled the master you can claim publishing. So I took that off. But I did pretty well, I negotiated a lot of things with people and approached them like a fan instead of my lawyer contacting their lawyer. A lot of the artists that I sampled are really obscure and don’t have a career anymore anyway. I think they were really flattered when I’d call them up and say: “I’m a big fan and used a portion of your song to make my song.” Send it to them, and if it was nothing that was overtly offensive that would turn them off, they weren’t like a born again christian or something and it had the word ‘fuck’ in it, then we were good.«

RBMA: »Was it demoralising if you hit a snag and had to change something? Obviously, you’ve made decision that you put ‘listen’ in.«

Cut Chemist: »‘Listen’ was a big one and it’s tough because you spent all this time making this song and you’ve got to change it at the last minute. But you’ve just got to find another ‘listen’.«

RBMA: »Now you said you approached a couple of people you sampled as a fan. I think you mentioned you had a situation like that with a particular record of the album. Why don’t you explain something about that?«

Cut Chemist: »This is an interesting one. I refused to clear a sample because we had trouble finding it and we needed to get the record out. So I just said: “There’s no sample on this song, all instruments are played by me.“ As luck would have it, that’s the one song Apple chose to be on their new iPod commercial. Swell! $3.000.000 dollar campaign. I’ve got to clear this sample, because if these guys see it, they’re going to sue Apple and Apple are going to sue Warner Brothers and Warner are going to sue me. No commercial and so on. So we found them, and it was the Boogie Boys on Mike & Dave records, which is an out-of-the-trunk operation.«

RBMA: »It’s a great old school record, but very small distribution.«

Cut Chemist: »My manager contacted Mike Gee from the Jungle Brothers to contact Red Alert to contact this guy Yoda or something to contact Disco Dave from the Crash Crew and he had to contact his brother, but his brother’s agoraphobic or something, so he had to slide all the paperwork under the door. It was really weird, $200 or something. Anyway, Apple has no clue, they’re going, moving forward with this commercial. I’ve got to clear the sample, time’s ticking, they’re going to launch this thing in a week. I’m on my tour in England getting phone calls, “We’re totally screwed.” I was like: “Just roll with it, we can’t let this slide.” They wanted $150.000 because they’re mad that the record was out and we didn’t clear it. “I’m mad because Jay-Z used it on Girls, Girls, Girls and we got nothing for it, so you’re going to pay.” Great! So my lawyer said: “They’re demanding you write this letter.” So I’m at a soundcheck in Belfast writing this letter: “Dear Mr Disco Dave, I sampled your record because I’m a huge fan of your record and ‘yadda yadda yadda’ and I sampled it because it means a lot to me.” And this is all true but that didn’t stop them from wanting $150.000. I don’t think they even read the letter, or maybe they did. Anyway, it worked out, I think the day that we talked them way down - I owe my lawyer so much. It worked out that all the money I made from the commercial I had to give to them, but that’s OK because at least I had a commercial out there – and I think the day we signed the contract was the day it aired, it was crazy, it couldn’t have been any closer. Those are the kinds of weird things. You’ve got be careful, if you don’t clear samples and it’s licensed to a movie or something, then people see it, they’re going to come back and bite you in the ass. I know why Warner Brothers are so diligent at looking over my shoulder about the status reports on the samples because there’s a bigger picture than just the record. That’s all music is, it’s all marketing now, it’s not really just music anymore. It’s ringtones and movies and commercials and stuff. I have to remember that.«

RBMA: »Do you think the awareness of all that is much higher than it was a few years ago with all the Jurassic albums?«

Cut Chemist: »The thing with the Jurassic albums is there were all these vocalists on it, so it was much easier to slide all these uncleared things under the table because we had MCs rapping. But here it’s instrumental, so: “Who’s the vocal? You don’t credit anybody and we need to pay them union session money.” Everything is so mathematical. “No, you’ve got to pay them.” Anyway, it’s almost too much information, because I know you guys work for Warner’s, giving up on my trip (laughs). No, there’s always a way around it, if you need to put something out, you find a way.«

RBMA: »But the trade off is worth it for you to reach out to a broader audience because you could come out on a smaller label who don’t clear things?«

Cut Chemist: »I thought it was quite a bold statement to come out on a label like Warner's, who’ve never put out a record like this one, I don’t think. Back in the day they had Cold Chillin’ and Jungle Brothers, which was great, but I don’t see any DJ records. That, I think, is a bold statement and I think people are reacting to it because the sample clearance is a big issue. But, you know, all samples cleared - wink wink, nudge, nudge.«

RBMA: »You’ve got a bunch of records here, is there anything you want to play?«

Cut Chemist: »I was going to play the Apple song. This is called The Audience’s Listening Theme Song.«

(music: Cut Chemist - The Audience’s Listening Theme Song)

»The sample in question was the “listen to the music”, so it was like the main part of the song, so I had to show my cards.«

RBMA: »It wasn’t like something you could’ve changed.«

Hymnal: »Or I could’ve done it.«

Cut Chemist: »That came up. My management said: “Why don’t you just re-do it?” This is going to change the entire song and they won’t want it any more.«

RBMA: »I guess, you must use a lot of different genres of music in your own music. Is there anything you have to give us an idea?«

Cut Chemist: »Some Polish progressive jazz perhaps? I’m heavily influenced by African music, particularly Ethiopian, and I can play one of the more famous Ethiopian songs because it was featured in a Jim Jarmusch movie, Broken Flowers. Now we’re totally changing trajectory, but this is a good song and you need to hear it. This is Mulatu and Yegelle Tezeta. I’m probably butchering the pronounciation because it’s Ethiopian.«

(music: Mulatu Astatke - Yegelle Tezeta)

»You guys need to find that guy - he’s around, Mulatu - and bring him to [the] Red Bull [Music Academy]; and when you do, call me. I’m a huge fan of his music, particularly because of the five scale method and diminishing chord changes and everything. It’s dark, but at the same time it’s really soulful. I think culturally and musically Ethiopia is one of the most isolated places in the world. They don’t really export their type of music. The closest thing to western culture, besides Mulatu going to New York and studying music, was probably Duke Ellington going there and playing. But other than that it was completely isolated.«

RBMA: »How did you first start getting into this stuff, because you did a party in New York this last summer and you played a lot of this kind of stuff?«

Cut Chemist: »The first time I heard Mulatu was probably the first time all of us did, when Sean Ritchie put out Vinyl Dogs compilation that had the drum break. His shit just sounded like it was recorded on Mars. It effects a lot of people the same way. Then meeting people like Quantic – he’s a really great DJ and music producer – he and a guy called Miles Claret run a label called Soundway, which reissues African and Caribbean records. They took a trip to Ethiopia with Brian Cross, a friend of mine, and they turned up loads of Ethiopian music and kept going back there, turning it up. I was just buying it off them, trading it off them, and they were just schooling me on it. So a lot of my knowledge of it comes from them. Then I was meeting people around the world that did the same thing. I actually met a guy – this is a trip – a flight lieutenant with Lufthansa and he flies around the world, particularly Africa, goes in and buys records. This is a hustle and when he comes in here on a stopover I’m like: “What did you bring?” And he dishes it out and it’s beautiful, man.«

RBMA: »It’s a good connect.«

Cut Chemist: »Yeah.«

RBMA: »Isn’t Mulatu’s Ethiopian stuff on Ethiopian Airlines or something?«

Cut Chemist: »Ethiopian Airlines sponsored a lot of the recordings of the US stuff. But the Ethiopian pressings are all like… I think there’s only five labels that were made in Ethiopia: Phillips, Amha, Kaifa. I can nerd out all day, but anyway, there’s five labels.«

RBMA: »You mentioned…«

Cut Chemist: »When we play the song we did together you’ll see how that scale structure fits together.«

RBMA: »Well, do you want to play that?«

Cut Chemist: »I’d rather play something else.«

RBMA: »You’ve got some cued up?«

Cut Chemist: »Yeah, this is Indian, this is awesome.«

(music: The Black Beats - The Mod Trade)

»That’s by The Black Beats and that’s a song called The Mod Trade. I’m into all that kind of mod-dy '60s kitschy Americana-sounding stuff; mixed with a little ethnicity is always nice. That one comes from India and that’s more on the psychedelic vibe. Me and him (points to Hymnal), I’m bringing all this ethnic stuff and he’s bringing all this psychedelic, psych-folk and we just sit there for hours playing each other records. “Ok, here’s Maluke & Malessi from Addis.” And he’s, “Here’s Collie Ryan from Santa Barbara.” It’s kind of a trip and it makes for a really interesting dynamic and I think we meet somewhere in the middle on this one, it bridges the gap between the two genres.«

RBMA: »Is that more or less the process? “Go ahead and check this out.” That’s how the tracks start?«

Cut Chemist: »Pretty much. I think we just do it to diffuse our mind state from the day. We won’t sample any of those records but they’ll be swimming in our subconscious when we talk about the song that we’re going to do. In some cases we will sample it, but not all the time.«

Hymnal: »This tune is called What’s The Altitude and like Luke says, it’s pretty much a convergence of all his esoteric world beats that he’s coming with and from a vocal standpoint. I wanted to tell a story. It’s basically a boy/girl story, but the elements that it has in it are of garage rock. You’ll see that it has that sort of White Stripes-ish sound in terms of the beat. In terms of the vocal you’ll hear some of the Native Tongues, the abstract lyricism, and the phrase “it’s alright” came from listening to the Velvet Underground a lot. If you know Velvet Underground, you’ll know Lou Reed sings “it’s gonna be alright” in just about every song he sings, because he’s coming down from something at that time. Rock ‘n' roll. Take a listen, you’ll hear all those influences and I hope you like it.«

Cut Chemist: »This is as if Mulatu Astatke joined a punk band.«

(music: Cut Chemist and Hymnal - What’s The Altitude)

Hymnal: »Surprisingly, or not so surprisingly, that song was also featured on a More Cowbell website.«

Cut Chemist: »Really? Awesome.«

Hymnal: »Listening to that song you should hear a lot of influences. A phrase like “better living through chemistry” was a tagline I used from the Eli Lilly Chemical Company. The hippies flipped it to use as a catchphrase to encourage people to use LSD. I dropped subtle things in there that are cues to that time; that was an inspirational time for me and I like digging for music during that period. In a lot of ways, psychedelic music comes from the same place conscious rap comes from; a desire to transcend adversity, to dig into the darkest parts of yourself and go down into the darkest parts and bring something up from that. It’s like the symbol of the lotus, the root of the lotus being down in the dark mud but yet the flower is up and open to the air. That kind of music brings it out in the people who listen to it. The way in which it seems to flash forward to today is contemporary neo-tribalism or neo-paganism. A lot of you out there probably make electronic music, hip hop music or techno music. The scene and the people that you’re entertaining, they’re often there with their psyches enhanced in some way, whether it’s alcohol or marijuana or acid or X, or nothing at all. Most of the time they’re coming together to hear the music we’re playing it’s to transcend whatever adversity they’re going through at the time and find a new place, come together in a union at that place. You can see the remnants of psychedelic culture offshoot into rave culture. If you look at the philosophy of Timothy Leary, for example, he exposed a kind of conservative religious – if you can use the word conservative in the same sentence with Timothy Leary – he had more of a conservative view of dropping out, this religious kind of demeanour around the psychedelics. Whereas Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters had more of a freak-out philosophy, which is: drop your acid, play your music really loud, do it all at once, play your visuals, show the gel slides, go to town. See what actually happens. If you want to read more about that stuff there’s Tom Wolfe - Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test will tell you all about that time. Timothy Leary wrote many psychedelic prayers, along with records. The Merry Pranksters also had records with The Grateful Dead, tripping and all that stuff. All of that is very, very well documented, but if you look at the modern dance culture you’ll see both those vibes in that culture: the sacred spirit, spiritual symbols and the freak-out balls-to-the-wall experience. Where that fits in as regards creating music, we try to take these pieces whether they’re samples or synth patches of sounds, we try to take them from one source, combine them together and ultimately try to create something that’s a third thing, that’s new, unique and different, that’s apart from the songs we used to put the thing together. In my opinion, that’s how that music has definitely influenced me. If you want to know more about creation from that standpoint, there are books by Carl Jung on Creativity And The Active Imagination that I would definitely recommend checking out. His idea of the transcendent function is top notch, because it involved pulling something from your conscious to your subconscious to create a third thing that’s different and distinct, because if we all just pull from our sound modules and our samples and left things as they are today then all music would sound alike. But somehow we all take these things; you could give any one of us the same set of samples and we would all create something new.«

Cut Chemist: »Every country has its own form of that. Brazil has Tropicalia, which follows the same philosophies and I’m sure people like Pierre Henry in France and Jean-Jacques Perrey and Kingsley were doing something similar. All relatively around the same time as well, so that should be stated, too.«

Hymnal: »There were a lot of artists who came out to North Africa around the same time. Everybody was into this new consciousness, the new way things would become, new age philosophy and Electronic music culture. Luke has a sample here of one of those records that came out of those sessions. I didn’t know any of those things were recorded, but he found a Nathan Davis record from his time in Turkey.«

Cut Chemist: »When he went out with Burroughs and all those guys. But there’s nothing that really has any evidence of electronic and cut and pasting, it’s all just straight jazz.«

Hymnal: »It’s just free and consciousness.«

Cut Chemist: »They all just went there at the same point.«

RBMA: »Is there anything you want to throw on or does anyone have any questions at this point?«

Cut Chemist: »I’ve pretty much run out of stuff, but if anyone has any questions.«

Participant: »I’ve just given Cut Chemist one of my mixtapes and the very last track of it is actually a cut up of William Burroughs and Timothy Leary. It is just 60 seconds but it is a good illustration.«

Cut Chemist: »You want me to play it?«

Participant: »Yeah, play it, everybody will understand the words, so…«

Cut Chemist: »I like your packaging by the way.«

Participant: »Thanks. Basically, they were just discussing for about an hour, so I took their words and made them say something else.«

Cut Chemist: »Track 27?«

(music: participant’s mixtape)

»That’s awesome.«

(applause)

»Thanks for that, I’m going to have fun listening to that one, man.«

Participant: »Sometimes you use a sample and you cannot find the source or the people, so you just go for it. And if someone appears they take the benefit. Is this how it works?

Cut Chemist: »Yeah, it’s weird. If you sample from the record there are two issues: sampling and publishing. If you remake someone else’s music then that’s a publishing issue. “Oh, you ripped off the chords of my song, it sounds a lot like my song.” Usually, you can fight this because there are so many notes it takes to make a composition copyright-able, but if you take something off a master and they can place it, “Oh, I know that’s off my record that I put out”, then you really don’t have a case at all. They can get you for whatever they want.«

Participant: »In the Arab world we often have old singers and very old records, and sometimes we sample but there is no way we can find the people. The system there, you buy a song from a composer and then he gives up the rights.«

Cut Chemist: »Where is this?«

Participant: »In the Middle East and in Ethiopia and in Africa. I was wondering, we sample old songs and we want to sample them because we are reviving them. But we don’t know where to search. What happens when they appear? They can stop the record?«

Cut Chemist: »When you fight it in court sometimes they say: “Your claim is too outrageous, you only deserve this much.” That happens quite a lot. If someone wants $1.000.000 dollars, then they have to calculate how much the record really made and make a reasonable deduction based on how much it made. That’s usually what will happen, but then again I can’t make you any promises.«

Participant: »So you recommend that we go for it anyway.«

Cut Chemist: »Oh, hell yeah!«

Hymnal: »Are you recording this (laughter)?«

Cut Chemist: »You can’t stop art. I think as much as the industry tries to set rules, we’re an untamed beast. You can’t stop people from trying to make art. I’m going to keep sampling forever. Fuck anybody that says I can’t do it. I can and I will. Everybody should do the same, so go for it.«

Participant: »About this Ethiopian music. It has been reissued by some French guy and he has dedicated his life to this music.«

Cut Chemist: »The Ethiopiques series. Is his name Francois?«

Participant: »I don’t remember his name.«

Cut Chemist: »The Ethiopiques series is a wealth of information. Not everything is reissued on there, though, he missed a few good ones. What volume are they up to now, is it 38?«

Participant: »34.«

Cut Chemist: »34 volumes of Ethiopian music, it’s a series called Ethiopiques out of France. I would suggest if you’re into this type of music to go and pick them all up. They range from everything from Ethiopian soul to traditional. It’s a good place to start.«

Participant: »And they are remastered.«

Cut Chemist: »And they are remastered, sometimes off the tapes rather than the records so they sound better.«

Participant: »This is getting back to the sample side of things. A lot of musicians I’ve worked with over the years have taken samples and either pitched them up really high or really down to obscure the sample. That’s the way they believe they can avoid potential copyright issues. In your experience has that been the case?«

Cut Chemist: »No. They employ music specialists and they can subpoena your sessions to do away-file analysis because everything is recorded on a computer now, which is visual as well as audio. Now it’s not your ear. You can match the file by looking at it, so if it’s the same, they’ve got you. I haven’t heard of any cases of that actually happening, but that’s the talk in the rumour mill. If you slowed it down they can go in and see what you did, the plug-in you used. So it’s a mess, I wouldn’t get away with stuff by slowing it down or speeding it up.«

Participant: »So if they want to get you, they can basically do it.«

Cut Chemist: »Yes. It may cause somebody to be distracted from recognising their work, but if they still recognise it they can go in and fuck you up.«

Hymnal: »The popularity of the record matters as well. If you’re doing an underground release you can pretty much go for it as you need to. The unfortunate side of that is if something happens and the record becomes popular then everybody wants to capitalise on the samples that you used.«

Cut Chemist: »I think they said something like, if you’re under 50.000 units sold, then don’t even worry about it. It’s not generating enough income for them to trip. I think there was a Stones Throw record that came out on vinyl only, so it probably sold about five copies or something, but it got licensed to a movie and the guy saw it. How much money does a movie make? So he went after them, he went after Stones Throw. That’s when you’ve got to worry, when it’s in some kind of marketing campaign.«

Participant: »Do you ever use live stuff?«

Cut Chemist: »Yeah, there’s a lot of live playing around the samples, it’s just disguised, you can’t really discern which is which. It’s probably half and half. I used a few people. I used Breakestra, who maybe some of you have heard of, he’s a friend of mine from Los Angeles, a guy called Miles [Tackett]. He’s very gifted, he can play any instrument you can throw at him. He played guitar and bass, I had my engineer play a lot of bass on it and this kid named David Stromberg played a Cuban guitar called a tres on one of the songs. Then I had a complete Samba band in Brazil record for the song The Garden. So there’s quite a bit. Going once, going twice, ah, that one.«

Participant: »I was just wondering, over the period of time that you’ve been into music and collecting and whatnot, how much rap from outside the obvious places, L.A. and New York, did you get to hear? I’m aware that KDAY did used to play a bit, but I’m not sure how much. Did you hear stuff from Paris, the UK, Japan?«

Cut Chemist: »Only when I started touring with Jurassic 5, I started going to those places and buying rap from there. I think I got into English stuff because my friend went to England and brought back Tim Westwood tapes, which is their big mix show. Squeezed in between Tribe and whatever would be Demon Boyz and Hijack and what was that other one?«

Participant: »The London Posse?«

Cut Chemist: »Nah, the really good one, but never mind. So I was like: “It’s down to the Cookie Crew.” She-Rockers, then in France I heard Shurik’n, then there was a really great Dutch rapper I bought once.«

Participant: »I’ve noticed a lot of people only get to hear it when they reach that country. It’s a shame because they talk about how hip hop’s this worldwide community, this worldwide movement, but it’s not actually worldwide in itself. You’ve still got that insular thing, people who are just on their New York shit. I understand that everybody’s got to rep their hoods, their ends, whatever. But I’m still waiting for somebody to work with… KRS, Chuck D have spoken about this unified 5.000 leaders by 1990 or 2000 working together, but it still hasn’t happened, it happens in small pockets. There’s no outreach from a big platinum mainstream American rapper to someone in, say, Denmark, because hip hop is in Denmark. Do you see a time when that happens, or do you yourself plan to do it?«

Cut Chemist: »Kind of a We’re All In The Same Gang worldwide version, a posse cut?«

Participant: »Yeah, a better record than that, though.«

Cut Chemist: »Self-Destruction.«

Participant: »Yeah.«

Cut Chemist: »…Same Gang was made in L.A., man. Have I thought of it? No, I haven’t, but I think it would be a good idea. Something like that would probably happen here. You have people from all over the world, you have gear, so that’s your task should you choose to accept it, you should all make a record together.«

Participant: »I want to know what kind of software do you use for your production?«

Cut Chemist: »Pro Tools. There’s a permanent version of Pro Tools, which is like TDN56 - what is it? I don’t know. Yeah, I use Pro Tools for no other reason than that’s what somebody turned me onto. If they’d shown me Vegas or Reason, then I probably would have done that. It was just what the last guy was doing, so I was like, “OK, that sounds cool.” For some of it I used an 8-track reel-to-reel. I ditched my drummachine, I used to use an MPC2000 to make beats. Not any more. I use a CDJ sometimes for pitch shifting, which is cool. Then I realised I can do that on Pro Tools anyway, so what’s the point?«

Participant: »Do you cut and edit after you record your scratch?«

Cut Chemist: »Yeah. That’s a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question, right? Do I edit my scratching, is that what you’re asking?«

Participant: »I don’t know if I’m right, but I think Kid Koala records a lot of times until he gets it exactly right.«

Cut Chemist: »I get what you’re saying. So if I record a scratch and it’s kind of offbeat do I fudge it a bit by using Pro Tools? Am I cheating? Is that what you want to know (laughter)? Because Kid Koala doesn’t cheat! He does, lady, he cheats big time.«

Participant: »Sorry.«

Cut Chemist: »No, it depends. I do cheat a little bit. My only justification is, can I recreate it live later? Yes, every scratch I do I can recreate in my show. Maybe when I’m recording it I’m not quite there yet. I need to put my arrangement hat on first, and I need to do that in the computer, I can’t really improvise. I’ll do a scratch and then I’ll think how interesting can I make it in the computer. Sometimes I won’t, I’ll just leave it as it is, knowing I can do it in a show if somebody asks me to. Whatever works, I don’t really have any rules about how I do it. There’s this turntablists mentality sometimes about, “No, you can’t do that”. I think it was Premier, he started it. He does all his cuts live. They’re razor sharp and really funky. Did he do it live? I don’t fucking care if he did or he didn’t, it sounds great and I’ve seen him do it live, so show and prove, it’s all good. But Kid Koala is great, he’s one of my favourites.«

Participant: »You said before you’ve moved away from using your drummachine.«

Cut Chemist: »Why? The bit-rate. I was using the MPC2000 and it’s 16-bit. Why not go 24? I did a little taste test of a sample of my record on the drummachine on the computer and the high end, there was something about the crispiness of the drums that the MPC didn’t get that the computer did. I’m really sensitive to the crack of a snare, the high-end sizzly texture on my drums and I’m not going to lose that resolution on my shit, I’m going to go straight to the computer. Plus the sequencing on the drummachine is fallible. Every twelve reps you can hear it jump or skip, ever so slightly, but just enough to annoy the shit out of me. Pro Tools is exact, you can put it in grid mode and boom! The fact that I can see it, although it’s deceiving to use your eyes for music, I just like it. So, for all those different reasons, that’s why I ditched it.«

Participant: »Are you still hands-on, do you still use pads to trigger stuff with Pro Tools?«

Cut Chemist: »No, it’s really geeky, it’s me with a mouse, it’s not appealing at all. It’s funny because the music I make tries to sound very handmade, like it’s manual. No computers. I think that’s what takes a lot of time, to make it not sound like it was done on a computer. My album is a series of repetitions, being taken out, put back in, a series of repetitions. That sounds cold as ice, not very human, so I spent a lot of time making it not sound like that.«

Participant: »Hymnal, you spoke about the line that gets blurred between performer and audience and I was wondering if you can recommend some authors, you mentioned Carl Jung , who explore those concepts. Or if you yourself have some thoughts?«

Hymnal: »Those are two distinct subjects. When I was talking about that line between artist and audience, things that come to mind are some of those anthemic rock albums like Pink Floyd - The Wall. That’s exclusively about that exact phenomenon and how the artist can lose his place by his ego becoming so enlarged by being a star, or a musician, that they lose their perspective. In that movie, as many of you will know if you’ve seen it, the rock star becomes literally a fascist dictator and the audience becomes a faceless sea of followers. In the sense of working with Cut on this record – and this is just me, I can’t speak for him – the idea of doing a solo record, having come from a group like J5, and what is the impact of that. What’s going to be his own audience when he strikes out on his own? We work on some of those things in the record. As far as books, one thing I didn’t mention as far as conscious rap in the States, there’s a guy named Noble Drew Ali who wrote a book called The Circle Seven. That book, to be succinct about it, was based on a lot of freemasonic teaching and Eastern teaching that he put together as a remedy for African-Americans to benefit themselves. One of the students of Drew Ali was Elijah Mohammed who was the founder of the Nation Of Islam, and the Nation of Islam and the ideas that came out of the East Coast were the dominant philosophical ideas behind the Zulu Nation and were through them disseminated by Jungle Brothers, Tribe, De La, X Clan, Public Enemy and so forth. So if you’re a hip hop connoisseur and interested in where that stuff came from philosophically, then you want to look up information on Drew Ali. Another guy who’s a little more esoteric but also influenced African-American spiritual consciousness is Sun Ra, the jazz musician. I think he came from Chicago also (Chicago is where Elijah Mohammed came from) and Sun Ra, believe it or not, some of his influences started when he was eight and in the club scouts. If you recall some of their early literature they talk about a god that is in nature and that comes from a freemasonic idea, that god is internal. The idea that god is internal really fits in with the neo-pagan idea that ecstasy can be achieved through your own bodily acts, not necessarily through grace from above, but one that you can find living and existing inside yourself. That’s a predominant idea inside music and if you’re interested in more information on him there’s a book on Sun Ra called Space Is The Place: The Life And Times Of Sun Ra.«

RBMA: »Thank you Hymnal, Cut Chemist.«

(applause)

Cut Chemist: »Give it up for Hymnal. Now go make that posse cut everybody, right now.«