Author Topic: Rakim Talks New Album, Tour, History Lessons (NEW interview!!!)  (Read 270 times)

Elano

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Rakim Talks New Album, Tour, History Lessons (NEW interview!!!)
« on: October 24, 2007, 11:17:08 PM »

Rakim is back, or at least he's on his way. It's been eight years since he released his second solo album, The Master, and aside from rumors surrounding his signing to and subsequent drop from Dr. Dre's Aftermath label and some reissues, he's been relatively quiet since then.

In the last couple of years, he's taken to playing shows again, and over the course of this year, it came out that he was working on a new album called The Seventh Seal. The record is finally nearing completion, and it will likely hit stores early next year.

Though not a concept album, The Seventh Seal focuses on the theme of tearing hip-hop down to its essentials and building it back up to previously unknown heights. Rakim's done a little non-musical building as well, establishing his own Ra Records, which will not only release The Seventh Seal but also provide a label home, management company, and distribution for other artists.

Before the record comes out, Rakim will release a concert DVD titled The R-kives: Live Lost and Found. The DVD features performances from two shows at NYC's B.B. King Blues Club interspersed with interviews, backstage and tour bus footage, and a few other performances from around the U.S. It will also come with an enhanced CD featuring previously unreleased new material from the God MC.

Finally, Rakim has a previously reported tour coming up where he, Ghostface, and Brother Ali will front live band Rhythm Roots Allstars.

In the midst of all this activity, we spoke to Rakim about process, his return to recording and performing, and his role as an educator in hip-hop.

Pitchfork: What made you decide it was time to starting playing shows and recording an album again?

Rakim: Well, I've always been the type that didn't like to wear out my welcome mat, and I haven't dropped anything new, you know what I mean? But at the same time, you don't want to wait too long. You want to get out there, get your feet wet, test the waters, and reassure within yourself and with the crowd that it's time to do what you do. You get that cool sound from the crowd, and it puts everything in perspective. If I wouldn't have felt the response that I got, then I would've said, "I'm not going to do an album" or "I'm not gonna go on tour. I'd rather drop the album before I try to come out on tour." But the response was real good, and that's what I was speaking on as far as confirming with myself and with the crowd. Because as the artist, I'm modest, man. I don't take anything for granted, and my thing is if I get the welcome mat, then I do what I do. If I don't get the welcome mat, then I either got work to do or it's time to just fall back. I use my experiences as learning experiences.

Pitchfork: How are you rehearsing for your tour with Rhythm Roots Allstars, a live band? Do you work on your parts separately from the band of with them?

Rakim: We're going to sit down and have a few rehearsals so we can give a real good show. I want it to be tight, and I want to make sure that our chemistry is there. The last show that we did in Texas [at SXSW 2007], it was funny because I was supposed to get out there a little early, but I got out there late and we didn't have time to practice. They knew the songs, but we never got a chance to sit there and mesh, so we went on stage that day and winged it. But they're so professional in what they do, and they're so tight that at the end of the day it's just like having a DJ put on a record: You can get up there and kick your verse, and you can turn around and wave your hand and they're going to stop just as a DJ would. So everything worked out perfect, and hopefully too many people didn't realize that we didn't practice. I was surprised everything went real good, so that's another reason why I'm looking forward to this tour. I'm going to be able to do some things that I normally wouldn't be able to do.

Pitchfork: What kinds of things?

Rakim: Just show the power of live music and explain to the crowd and almost teach them the reason why we sampled records. We're going to have a little fun up there. We're going to learn a little something, and we're going to hear some real good music.

Pitchfork: Do you feel like it's your responsibility to teach people about the origins of hip-hop?

Rakim: At this point in hip-hop, [the history] definitely needs to be expressed a little more and put in front of their faces so that they won't forget where the essence of hip-hop came from. If I'm one of the artists that knows about it then yeah, I'm responsible to keep that alive and keep it in the listeners' faces and give them access to it. So hopefully I can do that. To me, at the end of the day, it's just doing my job. If this was something political or something dealing with the world and there was something that I knew, I would feel obligated to inform people. This music thing, there's a lot to know about it. And we're definitely going to have fun with it, but at the same time, we have to keep it alive. This hip-hop thing-- if we don't do it, it will die out. So definitely, I want to do my job.

I think it's important that we cherish this right here. It belongs to the youth. It belongs to the older people who were brought up on hip-hop. It's not just a young music. We created this in the suburbs and the cities and around the parks, and what we have to understand is that that's big. You look at jazz. When they created jazz years ago it was the best thing to happen since fried ice cream. But then you look at it now-- it's not so popular as far as [being] universal. The jazz lovers still support their music, but when you look at it on the wide span it went from being the only thing to one of the many. The same thing can happen in hip-hop if we take it for granted and don't cherish it. We've got to understand that it's that first impression that made hip-hop take the world by storm. And once we start forgetting those recipes, after awhile they're going to look at it like just another music. And not just them. Us. We're going to look at it like it's not special; it's not going to have that same appeal that it had. So of course we've got to understand the root before we start picking from the tree.

Pitchfork: In as much as it can be about one thing, do you think that hip-hop should be universal, that it does have something to say to everyone?

Rakim: Yeah, I think so. Just right now, hip-hop is dealing with the form of divide and conquer. There's nothing wrong with the down-South music; there's nothing wrong with the Midwest; there's nothing wrong with the West Coast; there's nothing wrong with the East Coast, but the thing is you've got the Dirty South [just] buying their [own] music now. New York has always been a melting pot. We can agree with many things. But some of the different places, they only buy their own music. And that's because we're letting them separate the music [into] Dirty South hip-hop or underground hip-hop.

We shouldn't have to call it underground hip-hop. We should be able to do our music and people buy it for what reason they want to buy it. We shouldn't have to market it, or if it's underground it only sells 700 or 500 or 300,000 copies. Let's just make music and let the consumer be the consumer. Whatever consumer gravitates toward that music, let him buy that music. But once we separate it, we're separating the music, and then after awhile it's not hip-hop anymore. It's Dirty South music, Midwest music, West Coast music, and New York music. And that's the way we lose, because the record sales are gonna go down, the effect of hip-hop is gonna go down.

We were already fighting amongst ourselves, but now [it's] to the point where we're competing and fighting and constantly pulling and tugging at each other. It shouldn't have to be like that. You look at the older r&b artists when they do their award shows and things of that nature, they go there and they just bless. You look around the room, everybody's smiling, people are talking to each other, glad to see each other. But you know rap, there's a lot of pride in the room. It's a different environment. But I think if we understood the movement that we have a little more, then we wouldn't be so-- I don't want to say angry, but we wouldn't be so protective and distant from our fellow label mates and our fellow music mates. This is our thing. If we keep at it like we are, they're going to take it from us. They can't wait to do that.

Pitchfork: It seems another part of the problem could be that there's few really dynamic personalities. You've got people, in the music itself, with big personalities, but a lot of them don't seem to be vulnerable in any way. On the other hand, a lot of the Southern rappers tend to be sort of faceless. It's just like this machine of these guys that make songs. There's less of a culture of developing really interesting, vulnerable, but still exciting personalities than there once was.

Rakim: Maybe it's becoming more [about] money than the love. And maybe that's the problem, because I know the money will make an artist change his creative process. That's simply because if the money's in a certain market, then that artist is going to go home and prepare to touch that market. At this time, it's become a machine now. If you can go to a studio and produce what they want, that's all you need to do. And then somewhere in between, you'll find that artist that really still loves his craft, the artist that has a lot to say, the artist that creates his music and his genre of music and his style a little different than other people. That's what makes people unique, that's what makes people stand out, that's what wows people, just something we haven't seen before. But when you look deep, you'll find those people still exist, but we're more flooded with, like you said, the money machines. They don't really have to have that love for the music, or a lot of them don't care about touching the masses as far as some of the stars that we look up to touched us with their charisma.

Back in the day, you would like the music or you would like that person for what he did, but then when you met him and when you saw some of the other things that he did you would like him even more. That's what's missing, man. You can blame that on the labels for not expecting that from their artists. If the label doesn't expect it, if they don't ask that from their artists, the artists are going to do what they're supposed to do. And that's turn in records, and then they're good. Years ago, the labels used to coach their artists and tell them what's going to help them, and they looked at their good points and brought that out of them. Nowadays, it's a little different. The labels are happy because the money is coming in. They don't care if the artist destroys their career. They don't care if the artist is selling out. For that moment, as long as they're bringing that paper in, everything is good.

Pitchfork: How have you changed since the days when you first started recording?

Rakim: Well, I've matured and been through a lot. I learned a lot about the industry. I learned a lot about music in general. When I was doing it back then, hip-hop was wide open. It was fun for me just writing rhymes and enjoying that part of it. But now you've got to be a lot more business-savvy. For me, it went from enjoying my hobby-- even after we signed the contract, I still looked at it as just enjoying my hobby. I love writing rhymes. I love hip-hop. As you grow and as you learn a little more, as you watch the industry and everything, you try to get a little more involved with your business and stay in tune with the shifts. Hip-hop changes every week, it seems, from slang to the dos and don'ts. There's a lot to learn. There's always a lot to learn.

Pitchfork: How do you challenge yourself to stay relevant, musically?

Rakim: I challenge myself to the music. If I get a track, I look at the track, and I'll take the track through the highest extreme that I can and come up with a concept on that instead of taking the easy way out. When I get a beat, I can see a million rhythms in the beat. I can see the slowest rhythm in the beat, and I can settle with that and write a song. Or I can look for the most intricate rhythms in the beat, and I can build my style and build my concept on that. That's how I challenge myself, by making sure that when the music comes to me, I'm giving the best of Rakim that I can for that track.

As far as seeing if it's what it should be, I'll be real careful with that. First, I'll make sure it feels good to me. Otherwise, I won't play it for anybody. Then I play it for a few people, and I ask questions about the song, if it's this or that. I like an honest opinion, so I try to do it in an honest way. I don't have any yes men around me. I have good people around me. I've got a whole library full of songs, but at the end of the day, we only have about ten songs ready. That's how I know that I don't have people around me that are just yes men. It's good to have that honesty around you.

I'm not perfect when it comes to writing. I'm not perfect when it comes to knowing hip-hop. I strive to do what I do, and I strive to do good music and knowing that it's not always going to be a hit and that it's not always going to make the album. Knowing that gives room for the people around me to say, "No Ra, we're not gonna put that up 'til later." I'm not married to everything I do. I do it, and I want to make sure it's good. If it's not, then I know it, and my team won't hesitate to let me know if it's not.

Pitchfork: After listening to a beat and hearing the rhythms inside of it, have you ever written more than one totally different verse or series of verses for a beat?

Rakim: Yeah, definitely. Sometimes it'll happen before I finish it. I might start off writing something and get a whole verse of it, and then when I go back and say it, sometimes you don't capture the same fireworks that you were seeing when you were trying to create it. Sometimes if I don't get the best out of what I'm trying to get, then definitely I do it over. Sometimes I take a whole song and kind of touch it back up-- if I feel it's getting a little weak or it's getting a little boring, then I'll change four bars or I'll change the style in a few bars just so that it's what I think it should be.

Then some songs, if I don't get that euphoria, we'll just put it to the side. I don't marry the beats. If we get a hot record where we know that record's a smash, then that's the one that I may alter, or if I have to do it over, I do that. I like having the freedom to try new things. Sometimes, you might try something. It might not be exactly what you thought it was going to be, but just having that freedom to try it is what I like now.

I've got my own personal studio so I'm not worrying about the engineer [or] what time it is. I'm not worrying about somebody saying, "Yo Ra, what are you doing in there?" I'll try it out and listen to it. If it works, then it'll definitely be groundbreaking. If it doesn't work, then I'll put it to the side. That's that freedom, man. It's good to have that because I definitely want to try some new things. I'm not trying to change my base of who I am and what I do. I just want to bring them new and improved styles, new music, and just keep being relevant.

Pitchfork: When a track does work and you like it and you keep going with it and everything, is there ever a point when you're performing it and you just get sick of it? Like "Microphone Fiend", have you ever gotten sick of "Microphone Fiend"?

Rakim: No. Performing them, I always get that energy. But listening to them sometimes. Like, I can't stand to listen to certain songs I did a long time ago. When you're performing it, you get that energy back from the crowd, and that's when everything is in perspective. That's why you do it; that's why you wrote it. A lot of songs that I wrote I pictured being on stage when I wrote them, that stage feeling and the crowd giving it back to you. You could be up there [with] a toothache. You could have just had an argument with your wife, could've just lost $5000-- the worst day you could possibly go through. And you get up on stage and do one of the records that you hate hearing every day, but you get up there and you start kickin' and the crowd starts kickin' and you're looking into their faces, they look, and you forget about the money, you forget about the argument, you forget about everything. That's what's good about it. Once I start getting to the point where I'm onstage hating certain records, I'm going to sit back and enjoy it from afar.

Pitchfork: What do you do to unwind when you're not working on music?

Rakim: My family keeps me grounded, man. I started this when I was 16 or 17, and when you're not on tour, when you're not in the studio, you want to be as normal and as regular as possible. Me and my family, we'll watch movies. We'll go hang out, do things that make me feel grounded. To some people, it might be nothing. "What you're doing today, Ra?" "I'm not doing anything. I'm sitting here." But at the same time, I've got my family around me. Sometimes just being regular, away from going out on the road and always constantly being around hundreds and hundreds of people that you have to greet and meet. Because if it wasn't for them, I wouldn't be me. So sometimes the total opposite of that [touring lifestyle] is what I enjoy.

Pitchfork: Speaking of tours, are you planning on incorporating any live band stuff on The Seventh Seal?

Rakim: That's something that me and [Rhythm Roots Allstars] spoke on the last time we got together. Since we're going to be on this tour, and I'm going to be completing the album while I'm on tour, we'll try to get into the studio and whip something up. Because like I said before, they're real tight at what they do, and that's the reason why we sample records, to get that live band sound. So if we can come up with something, and I'm sure we can come up with something that's crazy, then it's nothing but a quick studio trip, and we'll definitely make a statement with that.

The reason why I said I want to get out there and have some fun and learn at the same time is because some people think that hip-hop is two turntables and a microphone, and it is. But the essence of hip-hop is that live band. That's why we had the turntables. When it started, we were scratching live bands. These 60s, 70s funk bands, rock'n'roll-- we were taking the records and scratching them. If we would have been in the environment where we had drummers and horn players and guitar players-- that's not that common in the ghetto. If we would have had guitar players, bass players, drummers, saxophonists, then you might have seen something different with hip-hop, as far as bands being more incorporated, because that's what it is. I don't want to take the DJ element out of it, but at the same time, I just want to let the crowd know that this is why we sample: that live band. I want them to respect that live band. And if I can do something on the album, it'll definitely be a nice piece, and it'll be a statement as well

Hip Hop Live! dates (all with Rakim, Ghostface, Brother Ali, Rhythm Roots Allstars):

10-29 West Hollywood, CA - House of Blues Sunset Strip
10-30 San Diego, CA - 4th & B
10-31 Long Beach, CA - The Vault 350
11-01 Santa Cruz, CA - The Catalyst
11-02 San Francisco, CA - The Mezzanine
11-03 Portland, OR - Roseland Theater
11-04 Seattle, WA - Showbox
11-07 Park City, UT - Harry O's
11-08 Denver, CO - Ogden Theater
11-09 Aspen, CO - Belly Up
11-10 Kansas City, MO - The Beaumont Club
11-11 Minneapolis, MN - First Avenue
11-12 Chicago, IL - House of Blues
11-13 Bloomington, IN - Bluebird Nightclub
11-15 New Haven, CT - Toad's Place
11-16 New York, NY - Nokia Theater
11-17 Baltimore, MD - Sonar
11-18 Washington, DC - 9:30 Club
11-21 Philadelphia, PA - Trocadero

 

SP0RTY

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Re: Rakim Talks New Album, Tour, History Lessons (NEW interview!!!)
« Reply #1 on: October 24, 2007, 11:19:40 PM »
i been waiting for his album

5 Albums I'm Bumping Right Now (In Order)
Blu & Exile- Below The Heavens
eMC- The Show
WC- Guily By Affiliation
Westside Connection- Bow Down
Wu Tang Clan- Enter the 36 Chambers
 

Laconic

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Re: Rakim Talks New Album, Tour, History Lessons (NEW interview!!!)
« Reply #2 on: October 25, 2007, 12:08:14 AM »
Dude is right with the live music talk.  Hip hop is so much better with live music integration.  Hopefully, he'll set an example for "producers."

topshotta

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Re: Rakim Talks New Album, Tour, History Lessons (NEW interview!!!)
« Reply #3 on: October 25, 2007, 02:49:35 AM »
I wonder if there still gon be any Dre-tracks on the album?
 

Lazar

Re: Rakim Talks New Album, Tour, History Lessons (NEW interview!!!)
« Reply #4 on: October 25, 2007, 08:22:16 AM »
Good reading. Thanks

Invincible

Re: Rakim Talks New Album, Tour, History Lessons (NEW interview!!!)
« Reply #5 on: October 25, 2007, 10:10:36 AM »
I wonder if there still gon be any Dre-tracks on the album?

Can't see it.