Cmg Interview: The Pharcyde

[Elano]

Last summer Cokemachineglow’s Clayton Purdom and Chet Betz caught up with the Pharcyde before a show opening for the Roots in Cleveland. An interview of thinly veiled enmity and tiresome circuitousness ensued, and then Clayton Purdom promptly lost his tape recorder for about a year. Betz was really pissed about this but mostly let it slide, because he’s chill.

Then Clayton found the recorder like a week ago and transcribed the interview and thought it was a pretty fucking awesome read. He thanks the Pharcyde for making Bizarre Ride, and is confident that someday they’ll accept how good the record is, too.

CMG: So do you guys have any album plans?

Bootie Brown (BB): Yeah, Imani’s coming out with his stuff right now. That’s called Black Stardust. So he’s gonna be doing his album, and then later on in 2007 we’ll have a compilation called Eclectic Compassion. It’s gonna be us doing some songs, and then we’re also gonna have some other singers, some other people I know. Basically the whole thing is to get like the musical flavors we’ve been listening to, from a jazz player to someone doing some rock stuff to some funk or whatever.

CMG: I see. So Eclectic as in -- are we talking Andre 3000-style pushing out? Or how would you differentiate what you have in mind for that?

BB: I’m not sure there is any difference. I’m not saying I’m going down that path, but it’s similar in trying to push it out.

CMG: Does any of that have to do with feeling tired with rap?

BB: No, because we never really were the conventional three-verse, couple of hooks, straight-beats rappers anyway. We always had different styles and approaches anyway. So I don’t look at it, like, basically I’m getting tired of the format, it’s more like mastering the format. Composing, like, I wanna take this to the Mozart level. I wanna compose something where it just takes you to wherever.

CMG: You’re confident it’s not going to be like a Michael-Jordan-playing-baseball type of situation.

BB: It’s hard to say, because that could’ve been the best time of his life. He could’ve been going free, like, I’m stressed, I’m enjoying myself for a second. I can’t say. None of our music has been the same. I would never try to attempt in 2007 to make a Bizarre Ride (1992), even though there’s people who like it and say, “Why don’t you do that style?” To me it’s like, before everyone else was mentioning Bizarre Ride it was five years old to me already. It’s not necessary that you can’t do it, it’s just played out to me. I’m trying to expand and maybe people will catch up to this and say, “oh shit, I wasn’t understanding what they were trying to do.”

CMG: We were talking about that. There’s albums that you can respect, and, I mean, no one’s going to make an Arrested Development kind of album again, probably shouldn’t try to make one. So that’s kinda how you feel about Bizarre Ride?

BB: Yeah, it was timing. A lot of people our age, from 25-45, that’s what people can identify with Bizarre Ride. Like “Oh yeah, I was going through that, I was going through this at that time in my life.” Because most of the time when I meet people they’re saying, “Man, it was a time when I was breaking up with my girl. ‘Otha Fish’ really pulled me out.” It happens to be around the time, and that’s what a lot of albums are like, it’s a timing thing. When the album comes out, it sparks a time, and you can remember that year by the songs that were out. Like Duran Duran or the Cure or something like that, it’s like, “Damn! People were wearing these hairstyles.” And I think that’s what happened for Bizarre Ride. We were lucky.

CMG: That album hit at a time when hip hop was sort of formulating, in a way, and helped establish a genre. When you were making that album, did you feel like you were making something influenced by De La Soul or whatever, or did you feel like --

BB: I didn’t like the album at first because it was incomplete. We didn’t have time to finish it at first so we had to rush and finish a lot of stuff. I was into it, but I wasn’t into it like that. At that time I felt the (popular) sound that was coming out was songs that we could play in the clubs. To me sonically, Bizarre Ride couldn’t be played in the club. If you play it loud, it just distorts, it just goes everywhere. It’s too much sound, it’s too much voices everywhere, it just distorts. Once we got to “Runnin’,” once we got to “Drop,” it was like you could cut right, you could cut on the kick and cut on the snare, you could drop and you get the bass at the right place, it was pumping right. (Hip hop) was still young, because that was around The Chronic time, hip hop trying to make their music sound good time. Before that, I mean, I think very few people were trying to make hip hop but it was mostly about it being gritty.

CMG: On the other hand is there anything from the Bizarre Ride era, from that sound and style, that you wish that you could’ve incorporated into Humboldt --

Imani (I): Hell nah! That shit was twenty years ago, wasn’t it?

CMG: It was a long time ago.

BB: Put it this way. When we was doing it, ProTools was just hitting. So like the engineer we was working with, he was like, “I got this thing called ProTools, we can try to do something.” And I don’t even know what version it was. It was experimentation; none of us really knew what we was doing in the studio like that, in the big studio. And we would just have a high, and eat Indian food, and play pool and have somewhere to go. From staying in a car, and staying in closets, and sleeping on floors, to going into a studio and being able to eat was a hell of an accomplishment. It was like, damn, I can eat today. That was big in itself. Before that it was just AM-PM burgers. A dollar a day. That’s what you hear on the album: semi-adults happy as fuck that we’re not gonna be bums, and we got a meal. And that was the energy, and I think people feel that.

CMG: So what would you say right now is your energy point? That was your energy point then, happy as fuck you’re not bums, so what do you use now?

BB: At that time, let’s say, that was high school. Now, I feel like a professor that’s going back to school to go learn whatever. I’m not learning to get a degree, I just wanna learn, I want to invent some shit. I want to find a cure for cancer.

CMG: But are you teaching on the side? Are there people you’re teaching, you think?

BB: Oh yeah! There’s always people on the side. Not just music-wise. But now it’s like I’m the professor and I’m just going back to school like I’m gonna learn something and I’m going to get with a couple other doctors and we’re gonna sit around and we’re gonna come with this master cure.

CMG: Cook up some theories.

BB: Exactly.

CMG: So are you guys feeling pretty anti-skit? Bizarre Ride’s one of the few albums where the skits were great. Are you guys feeling like you’re pretty done with skits?

I: We didn’t have any skits on Bizarre Ride.

CMG: Oh yeah?

I: Bizarre Ride there were more, like, interludes, and pieces of songs and ideas. Some of the things were supposed to be songs but we didn’t have time to finish them so we wanted the idea to come across. I mean, I guess you could call it a skit but when I think of skit it’s like, “Yo son, you got some change for me?”

CMG: Right, phone conversations, and --

I: Yeah. They were just little songs for us that we wanted to sing, but we couldn’t really do it all the way. Just clowning, (sings) “Yeah, it’s all the way live, baby,” you know what I’m saying, just like extended parts of songs, and little songs.

CMG: So now it’s more about fleshing that stuff out.

BB: Yeah, I mean, how many times have you heard the phone conversation? How many times have you heard the radio station. You don’t wanna hear the radio station no more, it’s like man, if somebody says, “This is K-RAP” -- it’s just not dope anymore.

I: I’d rather just have little pieces of music, little beats or something that didn’t make the work. Just little soundscapes.

CMG: I hear Imani you got a record you’re working on.

I: Hell yeah.

CMG: What’s that gonna sound like?

I: It’s gonna sound sexy, grown up, new wave, old school, pro-black. That’s it, it’s gonna be me in rhythm form. If that makes sense. That’s who I am. I’m a freak funk nasty hip-hopper from Compton. So it’s gonna be kinda like psychedelic, funky. So everything I said, it’s me. I don’t know what it’s gonna sound like, but if you could put those words to sound, that’s what I’m trying to do.

CMG: You’ve got your hands in the production, it sounds like, then?

I: Making beats and producing, I mean, I see how I want the album to go and the sound and direction I want it to go, and so I’m heading the ship. But I have to bring in other people for navigation, and bass, and funk, and rhythms, but I’m the captain.

CMG: Who are the people you’d love to work with?

I: I’m working with everyone I love to work with.

CMG: Yeah?

I: Everybody. Only one I can’t is Jay Dee, because he died. But, I mean, really it’s not like I look out and search for somebody. We got everybody we need here. And I wanna show the people who I know, and not go out and grab somebody who everybody already knows, because I’m borrowing their sound also. I don’t want their sound, I want my own sound. So when you hear my record it’s not, “Ooh, that’s a Pharrell record,” or “That’s a Kanye record,” you know what I mean, I want my record.

CMG: And it’s promotion of your community.

I: There’s enough beats to go around. Some of the dopest people you never heard of ‘em before until somebody makes them popular. So I wanna be the dude that finds that dude who you never heard before but his shit is just quality.

CMG: What do you guys think of the album Fatlip put out?

I: What do you mean what do I think about it?

CMG: I mean, just, generally, did you like it?

I: It wasn’t for me. He wasn’t trying to please me. He would’ve never put that record out if he was trying to please me.

BB: We have different directions of where we want to go. Put it this way: when people say Bizarre Ride, people say, “Why you don’t have that comical flavor?” And it’s kinda like a Chappelle thing, I kinda feel the same way. I feel like people are not laughing with me, people are laughing at me. And I’m not with that. I’m not gonna degrade myself for anybody, because later down the line it doesn’t pay off. I say like, ODB. It was hella-funny, everybody was laughing, he was going down to welfare department in the limo, it was hysterical, but then when he died, and he was a crack addict, and he had all these babies, it wasn’t funny. It wasn’t funny. That’s just the realistic part. He probably died feeling real fucked up, because everybody just clowned him. To a point he put himself out there, and I just refuse to do that to myself. To me, unfortunately, that’s just the vibe I get from Fatlip’s album. He kinda put himself out there as this person and now everybody looks at him like that. If you go out there and just try to do something normal, try to do something regular, you just wanna be yourself, people are not gonna accept you for it because they just want you to put on this show. Also, people don’t know what it took to make Bizarre Ride. It wasn’t just dope raps. It was an era. It was not knowing. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. And being around, like, the record company and shit, everybody’s like, “Why don’t you do another Bizarre Ride?” And you got Fatlip and you tell him and he’s like, “Yeah, I’m gonna try.” And that’s the result. That’s the Bizarre Ride 2006.

CMG: But to you guys it’s like caricatures a little bit --

I: No no no, I say you put out what you feel at the time. And that marks that period. You’re not gonna go back to the third grade and do what you did in the third grade. Now I’m a professor, and I’m trying to get my masters.

BB: If we were still doing all the shit we were talking about on Bizarre Ride we would be idiots.

I: We’d be Steve-O, that’s who we’d be. But that was the era, it was cool. I liked it. But then we were like, let’s do some other shit. And we did some other shit, and that’s the whole thing about being an artist. I can do other shit. Now if I was playing a role on TV I’d have to be that same dude every week. That ain’t what music is. When people say they want another Bizarre Ride, if we was to do another Bizarre Ride they’d say, “Pharcyde sucks. All they can do is Bizarre Ride records.” Nah. But if every album we made was a Bizarre Ride record, that’s not what makes the Pharcyde fresh. Cutting edge, being creative, taking chances -- that’s why people like the Pharcyde, I think. And I think they love the Bizarre Ride, but they also love “Runnin,” and they love “Drop,” they love “She Said,” and that aint’ got nothing to do with Bizarre Ride!

BB: In this business you gotta be creative. There’s gonna be always someone who can replace you. They’re gonna be newer, faster. Like, Everlast. He went from “Jump Around” to Whitey Ford (1998). He stayed inventive, he kept himself in the mix.

CMG: So where is the cutting edge for you?

I: Just keep doing what you’re doing, don’t worry about what nobody says because that’s what got you here. Because when we were doing Bizarre Ride everybody thought it was wack, and then after it came out people thought it was wack, and then at some point the planets aligned and people said, “This is the greatest record I ever heard in my life!” No matter how many million people say you’re beautiful you only remember the one person that said how ugly you were. I was like, “Motherfuckers said we were wack, and now they said we were dope, I don’t get it! I don’t know shit!” So I just gotta keep doing what I’m doing and make some more music and they gonna say that they hate it, and then eventually they gonna say they love it, and I can just hold on to that.

BB: The only thing I have to say is, everything has yet to be done. There’s still some concepts that’s left.

CMG: Oh yeah?

BB: But I can’t say! I can’t say it, man

CMG: Can’t say?

BB: No

CMG: Not even like one concept.

BB: No man

CMG: Half a concept?

BB: There’s stuff out there. Put it that way

CMG: Got any discarded concepts you could share? Ones you’re not going to use?

BB: Nah, I’m telling you. I don’t know which ones I’m not gonna use. Put it this way, there’s concepts out there.

I: You could talk about the same thing a trillion times. You could talk about love, but it’s your experience. And it’s the new 16-year-old that ain’t experienced that shit. You can’t worry about all the haters and the humbug motherfuckers that’s seen everything and did everything. There’s people that come to our show that don’t know nothing about Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde. I don’t knock Bizarre Ride, Bizarre Ridewas cool. We just had to deal with so much shit with that record, people coming up bothering to tell us how great it is, it doesn’t mean anything. Because we were making the record and they were talking about how wack it was. They were like, you’re wasting money, what’re you doing. Then when we made the second record with Jay Dee, they kept saying, “who is Jay Dee and why do you wanna pay this dude money. His beats aren’t all that.” Now look at Jay Dee, oh my god. But people don’t know shit. I’m not saying you, but you know what you know and you know what you feel and you can’t let people determine or dictate how you do what when or where.

CMG: Oh, I understand. I don’t know shit.

BB: I don’t know shit! I just know what I feel, so I go with what I feel. I don’t feel everything. I don’t like everything. Even people that I like, artists that I like, I don’t like all their music. So for me to be like, “I put out a record and I want the world to like every song on it” -- come on. I ain’t bought a record I like every song on. OutKast’s my favorite, and there’s lots of songs I fast forward through. That’s just how it is. Wu-tang, you know. You find the songs you like, and if that song is good enough you can just have one song on that record that makes it good enough for you.

CMG: I don’t skip any songs on Liquid Swords, though. I listen to the whole thing.


BB: See, how my mind works I can’t do that to nobody. Nobody puts together nothing that’s that tight except for Straight Outta Compton (1998). That was like the dopest record I ever heard in my life.

CMG: So that one you’d listen to all the way through.

BB: Hell yeah! Nonstop. Because every song is different, every song is dope, and every song gives you something different. And it’s not just Ice Cube, it’s not just Eazy-E, it’s a nice mix. It’s perfect! It’s a perfect record to me.

CMG: So eclecticism, that’s something we can expect --

BB: De La Soul, 3 Feet High and Rising (1998), Straight Outta Compton, N.W.A., and Raising Hell (1986), Run-D.M.C. Those are the perfect records.

CMG: Why do you think you’re able to like those records each time?

BB: Timing, precision, and rhythm. That answers every question that you have. Any answer to any question that you need, you put that in the answer box. Because timing has to do with everything. I mean, if we put out “Passing Me By” three months later, it wouldn’t have been the same shit, it would’ve been a totally different situation. With that timing, it was perfect that we put out Bizarre Rideat that time. Everything was perfect, it was set up for us to come out.

CMG: What about precision?

I: Precision? Making sure that everybody’s on rhythm, on key, making sure that the beats are knocking and the snares is hitting. You talking about beats?

BB: Precision is like watching a marching band, watching soldiers walk down the street, and it all clicks in their head. It’s not forced, it’s just right there. When one person hits, the other person hits. From business, to music, to everything, your team is supposed to be locked through a mental thing. He knows when you gonna jump. If I’m onstage with Imani, we been onstage for so long, I may know that he’s gonna throw his arm this way, so I’m gonna duck, because I know that I gotta be careful. But to the folks out there, “Oh that was a dope ass move!” That’s just onstage though. I’m talking about with business, music, and with people. And that’s why I say you can put that in the answer box.

CMG: Yeah, but do you think precision can be fucked with? Like sloppy shit, like Madlib, and that’s good?

I: Everybody has a different funk to freak, and his fans are tuned into a different rhythm. That’s not for everybody. Then there are people listening to Dr. Dre. That’s so on point, so precise, so clean, so professional. But then you got RZA, where shit is all out of sync, but it works for him because that’s how he freaks his shit.

CMG: So you freak your shit for the precision.

BB: We do Pharcyde. And we’re not the Wu-Tang Clan and we’re not OutKast. And we’re not the Roots. We’re the Pharcyde. Some people like to make believe they’re other people. You do you and you get props for being you. Nobody can do you like you do.