Session Transcript:
Nicolay
Red Bull Music Academy, Barcelona 2008

The video stream for this lecture can be watched here.

While the music industry fretted about the impact of the internet, Nicolay was one of the first people in music to fully exploit its potential. The Dutchman with a background in funk and soul bands began posting beats on the Okayplayer message board, where he found Phonte, rapper with Little Brother. Within weeks they were exchanging beats and rhymes and a transcontinental partnership was born. Here Nicolay talks about how it all came about, why he prefers to work that way, even though he’s now living in the same state, and why it’s important to create your own brand - hip hop producers included.


RBMA: »I hope you had a good night at the studio and still have some energy left for this man here. He might have his problems with sitting in the middle seat of a plane, and doing his sneaker shopping, which isn’t the best thing for a hip hop producer with global ambitions. But still he managed to impress a lot of people with his unique take on traditional boom bap music, so give it up for Nicolay.«

(applause)

Nicolay: »Thank you.«

RBMA: »So just to get it off the table right away, is it true that you and Phonte didn’t meet until after the Foreign Exchange album came out?«

Nicolay: »We did meet before it came out, but not until after it was finished. We met in April of 2004, we wrapped the album up in December the year before and the record came out in August. So we met four months before the album dropped.«

RBMA: »So just give us a quick rundown of how it happened.«

Nicolay: »I’d quit music, ironically – I don’t urge anybody to do so – I’d played in bands a long time, wasn’t making any money. You know how it goes, long nights, Chinese food. I thought, ‘I’m turning 30’ – this was a while back – ‘and I need to get a job and pay my bills, rent, because I need to be a man about it.’ So that’s what I did, and I considered this music thing pretty much done with. But, you know, blood creeps, so I started making beats at night and a year in I was hanging out on a message board called Okayplayer – you may know that, it’s the website The Roots own, Common, D’Angelo are all affiliated with that. And I was on the message board talking about music with like-minded folks and Phonte was one of the people I’d find in the same discussions usually. And at some point I thought, ‘You know what? I’ve been making all these beats and I’d really like to hear what someone outside of my family thinks about them.’ And so one day I just said: “You know what? Screw it, I’m posting my stuff online.” That’s what I did and people took to them instantly and Phonte was one of the cats who said: “This is really cool.” I put two or three up and he emailed me and said: “I don’t know what you’re doing with these tracks but I’d love to do something with it.” I wasn’t planning anything to begin with so I said: “Go ahead and give it a go.” Nic’s Groove and Light It Up from the Connected record were the first two tracks he did. That was February of ’02, so we worked for two years after that until there was an album.«

RBMA: »So let’s start with the Chinese food times. From ’92 to ’99 you were studying musicology in Amsterdam, right?«

Nicolay: »Yeah. When I got out of high school I was like a lot of kids, I didn’t want to go to business school because I was like: “I’m an artist, I don’t wanna know about business.” So I went to the university to do musicology and studied that for seven years. I didn’t graduate, unfortunately, due to a difference of opinion between myself and the staff over there, but it all came out pretty good anyway.«

RBMA: »What was the difference of opinion?«

Nicolay: »My problem was with them theorising and analysing until there was no feeling left in the listening experience. I wanted to do something with stuff like Frank Zappa and they weren’t ready for that at that time. I think you could do it now, Frank Zappa is recognised as a “serious” composer, but this whole thesis thing became a huge hurdle and I just said: “I’m not gonna go there.”«

RBMA: »So you might have pulled a Kanye back then, but do you think the things you learnt there influenced you at any point?«

Nicolay: »Yeah, some of the stuff is very analytical. I learnt counterpoint, harmonic stuff, but to be honest, I use it a lot more than I thought I would. I really owe a lot of my musical knowledge to that time, for sure.«

RBMA: »Which instrument do you play?«

Nicolay: »I started playing guitar, wanted to play in high school, pick up girls hopefully and look cool, so I picked up the acoustic guitar. I wanted to play in this band, but they already had guitars, so I was forced to play bass, which I eventually grew to love but at the time I was: “Man, I’ve got to play bass and stand at the back.” But really I grew to love that instrument for its specifics, I picked up keyboards and drums after that. That’s how I rolled into playing instruments.«

RBMA: »When did you realise you could pick up girls better by producing hip hop beats?«

Nicolay: »Hip hop is one of my big influences. I started listening to hip hop in ’88, ’89 with 3 Feet High And Rising and Paul’s Boutique, all the sample-heavy records. I come from soul and funk, so hip hop was the logical next step for me. I didn’t really produce until later because I wasn’t a DJ at that time and I considered hip hop to be something an MC did with a DJ. I never felt I had any business doing that because I was a musician. It wasn’t until I heard Dilla that I said: “Wait a minute, you mean you can be hip hop and musical? Maybe I’ve got a shout with this.”«

RBMA: »So at this time you were playing in a band?«

Nicolay: »Yes.«

RBMA: »What kind of bands?«

Nicolay: »I started out playing in P-Funk bands. I’m a big soul and funk fan and Funkadelic and Parliament are one of my favourite groups, and we just wanted to emulate the vibe, so we wore the crazy costumes and the wigs. We started out with covers and opened up for a lot of P-Funk greats, like George and Bootsy and Larry Graham, so we really had something going. But it was a nine-piece band and you’ve got to split the money nine ways, ten including the driver. While it was a lot of fun, I couldn’t justify living my life that way and being broke.«

RBMA: »I know you don’t really want to mention it, but there was this brief project called Bastian that had a top 40 hit in the Netherlands. What was your role in that?«

Nicolay: »It’s not that I don’t want to talk about it, but I wasn’t involved in it from the writing perspective. Bastian is a buddy of mine from Amsterdam. He’s actually blowing up right now with a group called De Jeugd van Tegenwoordig which means Today’s Kids, I guess.«

RBMA: »Could you spell that?«

Nicolay: »People can look that up online, we’ll put it in the transcript. They scored a couple of hits later, but at the time it was based on French house, filter disco. We were very influenced by Alex Gopher, Daft Punk, even Jacques Lu Cont, his group name escapes me. But the premise was that it was house done in the studio by Bastian, the frontman of the group, but live we were a 12-piece monster funk band. So it didn’t translate because people who liked the records liked them for their house vibe and we’d show at all these dance festivals with three guitar players with overdrive pedals. It didn’t translate as much. I had a great time playing internationally, but because I wasn’t fully in control I had to bow out.«

RBMA: »So talking about the house influence, when I first heard your beats, although they were in the tradition of the J Dillas and Pete Rocks and Primos of this world, there was also this trance vibe to it. Was that an influence?«

Nicolay: »Oh, definitely. I would say most Europeans have some sort of dance influence because it’s been big here for a while, certainly house. I’m always confused by the genre names, I’m not really sure if I even know the difference between house and techno. I’m not that deep into it, but I do love certain band’s tracks and it’s definitely a big part of it.«

RBMA: »Is that something you try to incorporate consciously? Maybe not in 2004, but for a while most European hip hop producers were trying to sound like their big idols in the US and it took them a while to develop their own language. Is that something you tried to do or was it more of an unconscious thing?«

Nicolay: »I guess it happened by accident, it found its way in there without me really trying. When Connected came out people were saying they really loved its European ambient type [of thing] and I was like: “What are you talking about?” But I guess it did find its way into the material.«

RBMA: »So what do you think of the current trend for hip hop producers to be as European as possible? Obviously, most of them listen to the wrong kind of dance music, but what do you think of it?«

Nicolay: »I’m not the kind of person to knock anybody’s hustle and if they make a living from music I applaud them no matter how great or otherwise it is. Personally, I do feel some of that misses the point, but there are so many people doing great things when it comes to that who are bubbling under. Obviously, what you see on television or hear on the radio paints a distorted picture. But I’m not really sure if I’m bothered by it at all, I think the good stuff will eventually always filter through.«

RBMA: »So when you hooked up with Phonte and the rest of the North Carolina clique, do you think they appreciated your beats because you had this European vibe that was unique and actually not trying to copy 9th Wonder? Or was it because you were really good and you just happened to be from Europe?«

Nicolay: »At first they just thought it was really cool, regardless of where I was from. They had all these jokes about me, because they didn’t know who I was, had never met me, and they were making up these crazy stories about how I was running a sweatshop of beatmakers. They didn’t really know where it came from, but they knew I had something they could relate to. Part of that was that it wasn’t what they could find in other people from the States.«

RBMA: »So we’ve been talking about his music for a while now, but some people aren’t familiar with the album. Maybe you could play one or two tracks.«

Nicolay: »I’ll play something from Connected, which is where it all started. This is one of my favourite tracks.«

(music: Foreign Exchange – Raw Life)

»This is an example of something that’s “really hip hop sounding”, but obviously the record was a combination of that and other things that were really different sounding.«

RBMA: »So maybe another track, one of those that sounds different.«

Nicolay: »This was the other track that came out of that first batch that we ever did together.«

(music: Foreign Exchange – Nic’s Groove)

»This comes close to four to the floor in a way, although it’s slower. I always respectfully fade out instead of cutting it out.«

RBMA: »So how does it feel posting your music on the internet and getting a response back from someone you’ve never met in your life?«

Nicolay: »Dude, I was running around the house screaming. When it comes to hip hop, number one, I’m a huge Tribe Called Quest fan. For me, they’re the point where it all came together in terms of MCing, lyrics, concepts, beats, album artwork. When I got this back, this was literally the first thing I heard them do over my tracks, so I couldn’t believe it, because to me it sounded very much like something I’d always hoped to hear over it. It took me a couple of weeks to recover.«

RBMA: »Did you do any hip hop production before? Obviously, you made your beats, but are there any other songs with rappers on your tracks?«

Nicolay: »No, it was really something that came out of the blue. Looking back it sounds deliberate and planned, but it really wasn’t. I really just wanted to hear from anybody, any kind of authority, what they thought of my beats. That was the only thing I was looking for and the fact they wanted to collaborate was a new experience. I wasn’t part of any hip hop scene in Holland, so it was really all just a mistake, a lucky mistake.«

RBMA: »Do you think that’s a good thing, not being part of any hip hop scene?«

Nicolay: »Yeah, I think being in a collective is great, but scenes in general have a tendency to deal with things that music isn’t about. They have a lot to do with politics. I’ve always been my own person in that sense and didn’t feel like I wanted to fit in, I’d rather have other people fit in with what I wanted to do. So I didn’t really express myself like that until this happened.«

RBMA: »You were living in Utrecht at the time, right? So when did you decide to move to the US and why did you do it?«

Nicolay: »Good question. America for me, and I think most Europeans will understand this, combines everything that I love and everything that I hate into one big fiery pot. Being a soul, funk, hip hop and jazz dude America is obviously the land where it all comes from. At the same time you have all these other things that as a European I can’t really relate to and understand. What’s going on? Why are you doing that? It was a tough decision, outside of leaving behind your friends and family, I had to figure out if I really wanted to live in that country. But I thought, if I don’t try it, then I’ll never know. So I signed myself out and I left. I mainly did it because I wanted to see if I could develop my career further that way and see if I could “make it” in America.«

RBMA: »If I was a hip hop producer and I was sensing an opportunity, I think I’d move to New York, the place where everyone lives. What in the world made you choose Wilmington?«

Nicolay: »I’m from Holland, one of the smallest countries in Europe. I figured if I ended up in New York or L.A. I was gonna drown, or just end up doing something really stupid.«

RBMA: »But Wilmington?«

Nicolay: »I figured I needed to be in a place where I can work eight hours a day and not be distracted by any cool stuff out there. And when I met my wife – she’s now my wife – and it turned out she’s also from North Carolina where Phonte and most of the cats are from, so it made sense to just go there, outside of the big music centres. I’d always worked on the internet anyway, so if I could work in Utrecht in Holland I could work there as well. I preferred that to a bigger city.«

RBMA: »So after the Foreign Exchange album you released a producer album called Here. When did you start working on that? Was it beats you’d already made?«

Nicolay: »No, I really sat down with the label guy from BBE and started talking about what I wanted to do. And at that point we decided we weren’t going to do something that had been done a lot, to make a producer’s album and just have a lot of people on there that you hear on other albums as well. So we decided on something a little more personal, featuring all these people that at that time hadn’t been heard of and showcased them instead of going with some of the bigger names. What I liked about that it remained a very independent underground album, it didn’t reach any charts, but it helped a lot of those people further their careers.«

RBMA: »What do you mean by personal? How could a producer album be personal with other people rapping on there?«

Nicolay: »It can be as personal as you want to make it. As a producer you can almost guide the subject matter by what you do on the beat. This is something I just figured out over time, that if you have a certain mindstate and create a certain track, I find a lot of the time what I get back is exactly what I was hoping for. I just learnt over time to emphasise personal elements that I wanted to put into the music. I’m not the type of producer that talks about subject matter with MCs necessarily because I’m not a writer in terms of lyrics, so I leave that up to the discretion of the artists I work with, but when it doesn’t fit I let them know. It was a way for me to say goodbye to where I came from and to say here I come, and in that sense it ended up being a very personal album, even though some of the subject matter is obviously more personal to some of the MCs on it.«

RBMA: »How did you find the artists on the album, the internet again?«

Nicolay: »Some were suggested to me by the label, like [former Academy participant] Black Spade. If there are any of you who don’t know who Black Spade is, look him up, this dude is ridiculous. He’s a great MC, a great singer, and also gives me a run for my money when it comes to the beats.«

RBMA: »Also a participant in Red Bull Music Academy.«

Nicolay: »There you go, Black Spade. He was someone I got in contact with because of BBE, also some of the others like Kay and Sy Smith, people I’d gotten to know by way of the internet.«

RBMA: »Can we hear a record?«

Nicolay: »I guess it’s one of my favourite tracks because I got to pay homage to one of my favourite musicians.«

(music: Nicolay feat. Kay & Sy Smith – My Story)

»I don’t know if any of you are Jaco Pastorius fans, but as a bass player, he was someone I could identify with. This is actually using a little bit of a motif he played on bass originally, I played it on Rhodes. But that’s my Jaco homage right there.«

RBMA: »So talking about bass and replayed stuff, how many samples were on these two albums? You say you come from a samples point of view, but obviously you play a lot of instruments, so how did you work on the albums?«

Nicolay: »I always used the two as a mix, because I never want to just sample. To a degree, I’ve felt as if it’s almost cheating. Not necessarily, because there are a lot of things you can do to a loop to chop it or reorder it, but I always liked to do is to add additional instrumentation to whatever’s in a sample. So I’ll play bass over it, keyboards, just to mask it, not give it away. As time progressed, from a business point of view I started finding out, if you use samples you basically have a limited amount of things you can do with your product after it comes out. In music right now, licensing is becoming the biggest thing overall, not record sales, so at that point it’s very important that you have all the rights. Either you need to clear the sample or it’s got to be 100% original. So after I realised I had all these great tracks, but I wouldn’t be able to use them because they’ve got samples in them, I slowly but surely began letting go of those samples and tried to see if I could just start from scratch and just build the whole track up until there were no samples in it. It’s hard, I’m not trying to be like the RZA – “I’m not sampling” – but I just found out you can do so much more with your product if it’s 100% original. Since I started learning that I slowly gave up on samples.«

RBMA: »We’ll talk about the business aspect later on, but one thing that’s clear is that all the records have a certain vibe, a moody vibe, the harmonies, and you were mentioning that it was important for you that A Tribe Called Quest had this visual aspect as well. When I first got a CD, a promo copy, and I saw the cover, I hated it. The sunset.«

Nicolay: »Some sissy shit!«

RBMA: »Sort of. Was that something that reflects you as a personality or something you did to sell better?«

Nicolay: »For those who haven’t seen it, Connected features a boy and a girl hugging and kissing. So there’s a hip hop album and there’s a boy and a girl hugging and kissing, so you know people are gonna say: “What?” We knew we were taking a risk, we just wanted to have something positive, but people really picked up on it. So if you go into Fat Beats in New York, you see all these people posing in front of their cars, wearing their chains and looking all hard. And then there’s us. We weren’t even on the cover, in fact we had a young couple looking all pretty and kissing. It represented us trying to do something different and positive. Album art is a huge thing for us, and it still is to this day.«

RBMA: »How important is it for an artist like you to sell an image? It’s quite common for the major artists, like 50 Cent, to be selling an image. For an independent artist like yourself, could it be that it’s even more important to sell an image, so people can relate to it, buy into it?«

Nicolay: »I don’t think it’s necessarily an image, but rather a feeling. If you look at 50 Cent, I’m not nearly as buff as he is for one, so that’s already out. I think it’s very important for independent artists to establish themselves as a brand almost. So it doesn’t just mean you’ve got great music, but every facet; your artwork, your MySpace page, your website, stickers, t-shirts. It’s very important you don’t just look at yourself as a guy that makes music, but look at yourself as a brand. Even for producers, they normally think of themselves as the guy in the background, just making the beats. But even for producers it’s important to establish a strong presence for yourself on the web and look at yourself as a brand. That’s what I try to do.«

RBMA: »So if you had to sell your brand to me in a couple of words, what would they be?«

Nicolay: »I’d probably be really bold and say it’s the best stuff you’ve never heard. For me – and it’s funny staying this in a talk about music – but talking about music can only go so far and at some point you’ve got to let the music do the talking to whatever degree. So I don’t try to hype it all up with flashy bios, like: “Nicolay is changing…,” whatever. I usually just let people hear it and some people really respond to it, some don’t, but I prefer to let the music do the talking and I’ll just say we’re trying to do something with hip hop, that instead of focussing on negativity, we’re trying to flip that and have a largely positive message.«

RBMA: »So what does positivity mean to you? Is it a musical thing or a lyrical thing?«

Nicolay: »For me, it means I don’t want to represent anything I don’t support. So whatever it is, whether it’s violence or addressing women in a derogatory way, that’s something that being from my background, I can’t put myself behind. Part of it is talking about how everyday people live their lives. We’re not stars, we’re not rich, we don’t have big cars that shine. If there’s a lesson at all, it’s that we do it for the love of music.«

RBMA: »You told me yesterday the new Foreign Exchange album is coming out next week. So on the whole album there are virtually no samples on there?«

Nicolay: »I used two. But it’s the same story in a way. We’ve always heard from people that our music is really cinematic, it would be great in movies, it would be great in TV shows. There’s no way in hell [that’s going to happen] if you have a sample you haven’t cleared. That combined with the fact that both Phonte and I wanted to do something different, we didn’t want to do the same album twice, and say: “We’re back!”, and just call it part two. In essence we set out to do something different, it’s more of a soul record. It features Phonte mainly singing actually and it gave us both the chance to come into our own more as artists on this album.«

RBMA: »So can we hear some?«

Nicolay: »Yep. This was released as a single a few weeks back. It’s a good example of what I was saying about us moving into unknown territory if you will.«

(music: Foreign Exchange feat. Muhsinah – Daykeeper)

Nicolay: »This is actually a duet, I want to shout out real quick Muhsinah. If you don’t know about her yet, check her out. She’s got her own album right now, she’s from DC and an incredible talent.«

RBMA: »And another Academy participant.«

Nicolay: »Yeah. I mean, there you go. Muhsinah, check it out.«

RBMA: »So how did you work on the album, through the internet?«

Nicolay: »Yeah, the irony has it everyone’s going: “Now that you’re up in Carolina and in each other’s faces every day….” But we didn’t, we used the internet again, it’s just more efficient at this point. We have a theory about it. I get to do my thing undisturbed without anybody looking over my shoulder, suggesting anything or influencing me in any way. At that point it goes to the vocalist who works the same way. I’m not suggesting anything. To both parties, when you get it back it’s a huge surprise. My theory is that you have a creativity that’s real personal, whereas if you have two people in one room – as everybody here knows – you’ve got to compromise, to meet each other in the middle, and I’m really bad at that. If I have something in my mind, I can’t walk away from that. So the way we’ve been working works for us, we’ll continue doing it even though we live two hours away from each other. It’s ironic, but that’s how we’ll probably keep doing it.«

RBMA: »So how do you work? It sounds like you’re in your room, doing beats for eight hours, go to sleep, send them round. Is that how it works?«

Nicolay: »That’s pretty much it. I do more, but I’ve got my little home studio, nothing fancy at all, and I just work a lot. I’m not looking for any distractions outside of music. I love being here, I consider this to be one of the perks, but I’m not the kind of person to go to parties and shake hands. That’s not what I do, I’m most comfortable working eight hours a day, 10, 12, 16 if I have to, and doing it every day, seven days a week.«

RBMA: »But isn’t it ironic, you coming from a band background where you have to come together and play in the same room, and now you’re the total opposite?«

Nicolay: »It is ironic. At first I started doing it for the very reason that I was overplaying in bands. This is the opposite and for a lot of people music making is an interactive process, but for me personally, this is what gives me the best result, instead of being in the same room and saying: “OK, what are we gonna do?”«

RBMA: »So you’ve stressed the working morals, how important is that for you to get to the point you’re at now?«

Nicolay: »Vital. While talent is an important thing, it’s only so much of it. The work ethic is by far the most important thing for any musician. It’s easy to fall into certain traps as a musician: late nights, drinking, other substances, but at the end of the day there’s always going to be someone working harder than you taking what you want to get. I found that out pretty early. It’s a deadline-driven industry and if you can’t meet it, someone will pick up that slack for you if you don’t watch out. You’ve got to be flexible, you’ve got to be ready to turn things over from one day to the next. You've got to be ready to jump at anything and work as hard as you can, it’s a vital part of it, especially in today’s industry.«

RBMA: »Talking about deadlines, I understand you set your own these days, you’re not signed to any label.«

Nicolay: »If you don’t like deadlines, the best thing you can do is be the guy who sets the deadlines. There was a time when I just wasn’t comfortable anymore being with a label, because I found out there’s nobody that can promote my music better than I can. You’ll hear this from a lot of people. I’m emotionally invested in it, my life is on the line to a certain extent, so obviously I’m the guy who knows what’s best to do. I may not have the means of a label, but I still feel I know better where I need to take it. So I started my own label, just so as not to have to ask people for things anymore. I said to myself that if I make the mistake at least it’s me, instead of this label guy. So I started taking control of everything, rights, masters. A lot of licensing opportunities for film and TV are what they call one-stop, where someone will call you at 11.00pm and say: “I need a song tomorrow for the new episode of Grey’s Anatomy. Can you say yes or not?” If you have a publisher, then you’ve got to call your people, ask this or that person, and at that point you’ve already lost the opportunity. So it becomes more and more important to not to have anyone around you to whom you give the decision-making authority. Own your own work so if someone calls you, say yes and you’re on.«

RBMA: »Do you do a lot of that stuff, TV music?«

Nicolay: »One of the reasons I didn’t at first is because I had a lot of samples that weren’t truly legal. So you can make a decision not to clear them, but according to how prevalent the sample is, they can claim 100% of the song. Like Bittersweet Symphony by The Verve, that song is owned by The Rolling Stones a 100%, even the lyrics that Richard Ashcroft wrote for that track are owned by The Stones for the simple fact they used the (does the melody line of Bittersweet Symphony). That’s a Rolling Stones track, and from what I understand they made the mistake of releasing it anyway. Once you have a record that has a sample on it doing really well, that’s when…. Fabolous, Breathe, everybody know that track? It has a Supertramp sample, that thing blew up on the radio but they hadn’t cleared the sample yet, so Supertramp said: “I’ll take 100% of that, thank you.” Including Fabolous’ lyrics. So it becomes almost a no-brainer not to do it. We’re getting into it more and more where we’re able to license instrumentals and tracks to TV.«

RBMA: »Not just a no-brainer, but maybe even a necessity. Is it even possible to make a living by being a hip hop producer who sells beats with samples?«

Nicolay: »If you’re 9th Wonder or Just Blaze or Kanye West, you’re not going to have a lot of trouble. Outside of that, it’s hard. For me, it’s the combined sum of selling records, doing shows, doing licensing, doing everything. That whole thing combined, I get by: I’m not rich, but I get by pretty good. Anyone who is a producer right now making records, you’ve got to be ready to do DJ gigs, mixing for other people, mastering, if that’s what you’re really good at. You’ve got to do the whole thing, otherwise it’s very hard.«

RBMA: »Those two things, the business aspect and the creative aspect, do you have to separate them in any way? I’m not a musician at all, but I imagine it’s very hard when you have to think about creating this music to also be thinking about what happens with it, ’Will I have to clear anything, will I get my money for that? Will I be able to use it?’ Isn’t that limiting?«

Nicolay: »I don’t think like that when I’m making music. I keep them separated in the sense that when I’m doing music I do it with zero compromises. When it’s done I’m sitting down and thinking, ‘Let’s see how I can pimp this, how it can make me money.’ It doesn’t always work. A couple of weeks ago I was at a soul music summit in Atlanta and the panellists were all talking about how you as a musician shouldn’t think about business because it’s art and you need to keep your integrity. But that’s a bunch of bull. If you, in this current climate, don’t think about business, you’re just selling yourself short. You have to understand that part of it by now, especially as the music world becomes less and less about recorded music, selling CDs and albums, and much more about other opportunities. You really have to understand how that works. Don’t be afraid of words like marketing and business and promotion. A lot of musicians are always like (slumps shoulders): “That’s what my dad does.” It took me a long time to respect that that’s a vital part of being a musician as well.«

RBMA: »There’s certainly no denying that people need money, need to eat. But isn’t there a difference between 2003, or even before, when you were making music after your day job and weren’t thinking at all about that kind of stuff? Is there a difference in the feeling?«

Nicolay: »No, to this day I feel the same way. When we did the new Foreign Exchange record we took a lot of risks by not making it a hip hop record. Fans of Foreign Exchange are mainly hip hop fans, and we’re going in a different direction, so in itself as a business decision that would be questionable. I never really mix the two or let my decisions while making music be guided by business motives, but once it’s done, we sit down and think how we can maximise it to its full potential.«

RBMA: »So it wouldn’t be an option for you to make a third Foreign Exchange album that sounds like the first?«

Nicolay: »The reunion album?«

RBMA: »Yeah, hip hop seems to be obsessed with these reunion albums. People have been talking about the Nas and Premier album for years.«

Nicolay: »The Dr Dre album Detox.«

RBMA: »Why is that? It seems to be only genre where people are obsessed with what’s new but in the end they’re always talking about bringing it back. After ‘fuck’ it’s the word most used on hip hop records.«

Nicolay: »Guess who’s back? This will sound ironic coming from a white European guy, but hip hop is a very young artform. Other genres have had to deal with that before, like rock – rock had a pretty bad phase in the ‘80s. It’s not necessarily about people trying to recapture some of their heyday, it’s no different from Supertramp reuniting and going on tour. But I’ve never been interested in any of that. When I started doing music it was just because I felt like it. I did it because it has a lot of therapeutic power for me. I feel it helps me to deal with things, the way that other people may need shrinks or whatever. It’s a very healing, therapeutic, engaging thing. It’s never about the market potential or the ideas behind it, or recapturing the glory days. I’d hate it if you play this back in 10 years and we’ve just done that very album, so I better be careful, but I do feel underground independent artists have a responsibility to keep raising the bar instead of keeping it in the same spot.«

RBMA: »So when you named the new album Leave It All Behind is that what you had in mind?«

Nicolay: »Phonte named it so you’d have to ask him what he had in mind, but it’s definitely a title you can read on all sort of levels. But for us it definitely means we were here, but now we’re there and you need to leave it all behind to be able to understand where we’re at. That’s definitely an interpretation of that.«

RBMA: »The whole thing of leaving these things behind seems to be a current theme of your life. You dropped out of college and left that behind.«

Nicolay: »Thanks for stressing that again (laughs).«
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RBMA: »You left your home town and now you’re leaving the old sound behind. Is it important for you as an artist to consciously leave things behind, or for artists in general?«

Nicolay: »I think the sound is very much still the same, but how we use it is different. There’s nothing on the new album you couldn’t have seen coming. You can’t expect the fans to go as far as you go in terms of experimentation, you’ve got to take it step by step. But as artists you have a responsibility to find what’s new. Sometimes you find that what you thought is new but someone else already did it 10 years ago. That’s fine. You have a responsibility to experiment and push yourself. Sometimes you get into situations where, looking back it maybe wasn’t the best thing to do. But ultimately you have that responsibility regardless of whether or not it’s successful.«

RBMA: »Good. Maybe we can hear another track to bring this to an end.«

Nicolay: »This track, ironically, is the closest to the old album, but it gives you a good perspective of how we took that sound and turned it into something new. Muhsinah is on this cut and also Darien Brockington. I don’t know if you’ve ever had him in the Academy.«

RBMA: »He’s the only person who hasn’t been.«

(music: Foreign Exchange feat. Darien Brockington & Muhsinah – Something To Behold)

Nicolay: »In terms of sound this isn’t that far from what we did before, but in terms of vocals or content it’s definitely a newer thing.«

RBMA: »Thank you. Give it up for this gentleman.«

(applause)

RBMA: »So any questions or are you all too tired?«

(pause)

Nicolay: »We’ve been talking about hip hop a lot, and I’m not just a hip hop dude. So I’d like to play something that’s a little bit different just to see. (inaudible question) That would be a pleasure, man. One of my personal highlights in music was working for Roy Ayers. When you say “working for”, you’ve got to put that in quotation marks because most of the time with these things you’re working for the labels. I was lucky enough to meet Roy and they gave me full multitrack files for one of his songs from way back and asked me to do a remix for one of his projects. Roy really liked that and you can’t really get better props than that. Here it is, it’s called A Funk In The Hole. I made it into a blaxploitation sound, very ‘70s, very disco-funk, and I think as a producer that’s the cream of the crop getting to work for people like this. I’ve done something for Bob James, legendary keyboard jazz player. Those are the things I consider the highlights.«

(music: Roy Ayers – A Funk In The Hole (Nicolay remix))

»I can leave this running, it’s an instrumental so we can talk over the top of it if you have any questions.«

Participant: »Making beats after your day job when you started, what kind of equipment did you use and what’s the difference between then and now? Obviously, you’re not using any more samples.«

Nicolay: »Ironically, I still use the same thing. I’m not an MPC person, I just never figured out how to work that. I’m a computer dude and I already had a computer. My secret weapon is a free programme that I’ve been using all along called Modplug. It’s a free sequencer and it’s not normally used because it’s different from any sequencer out there. It has a bit of a learning curve but it has the most precise timing I’ve ever heard in any sequencer, hardware or software. Anybody interested in checking out a new tool, you can download it for free and give it a go, it’s really cool. I use Pro Tools to mix things after I’ve sequenced them but the sequencing is still much the way I started out. Thanks, I appreciate it. Have a safe trip home.«

(applause)