EVIDENCE  (November 2008) | Interview By: Javon Adams

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Interview was done in October 2008

Questions Asked By: Javon Adams

Evidence Interview Audio: Listen Here

Evidence Gave Dubcnn A Shoutout: Listen Here
 

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Related Media

DJ Skee Presents: Evidence - The Layover Mixtape (Free Download)
DJ Skee Presents: Evidence - The Layover Mixtape (Streaming Audio)
Evidence - The Far Left (ft. Alchemist & Fashawn) [Video]
Fashawn - Our Way (ft. Evidence) [Video]
Evidence - So Fresh (ft. Alchemist) [Video]
Evidence - Don't Hate (ft. Defari) [Video]
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Dubcnn: Evidence welcome back to dubcnn.com. How are things?

Everything is extra ordinary. *laughs* That’s two words not one.


Dubcnn: I wanted to get right into it, man. The term underrated is often used when your name is mentioned so how do you go from being underrated to more widely appreciated for what you do as an artist? Or does that matter to you right now?

I’m at a real interesting point in my career right now. Last year I was trying to gain everyone’s approval because it was my first solo album. I was very concerned with making sure that everyone understood what I was doing. Last year was like my talent show and I was trying to put people on to what I was doing. It’s difficult to build a new brand so that’s what I was doing. I was giving out a lot of promo t-shirts, so to speak. I was building the brand.

This year I’m getting into a real creative process that I never really got into before. It’s not that I’ve stopped caring but I stopped reading magazines, watching TV and listening to radio so much and focused on being creative. On some real sh*t. I know that people say that all the time but I have people like Alchemist, Sid Roams and Babu and all kinds of creative people around me and I felt like it’s time to stop caring about what other people do and get into my own sh*t. As a result its opening up a lot of doors right now.

Underrated is a big compliment to me because it just means that you haven’t really landed yet. As far as reaching more people, I think that because I am getting content with who I am…not just as a rapper but as a man and my existence on earth…that it will be more light. And people are attracted to light. So hopefully they will get attracted to my world and I won’t necessarily have to go out seeking it so much. Hopefully I can bring it to me more this year through work ethic and a lot of live shows.


Dubcnn: I want to speak about the fruits of you building your brand in a minute. But now that the Weatherman LP has been out for over a year lets look back on it for just a second. Are you happy with the way it performed in the marketplace? And talk about what stepping out on your own taught you?

I’m still in the process of (unintelligible) myself to be honest. From ’96 – ’00 is kind of what I am mirroring right now. I’m trying to do a better version of that because that is when we were on the vinyl sh*t only. We were hustling sh*t through Fat Beats and doing shows from people who would just give us gigs for cash at the end of the night with no booking agency. It was real innocent and that was why Dilated took off and created a bidding war and buzz. I’m really just trying to go that route right now with building the fu*king process up.


Dubcnn: Did the album do what you thought it would do?

The album sales were not as good as they could have been but there are positives in the sales. For instance, I’m a year and a half out and my second video “Chase the Clouds Away” just made Sucka Free Sundays on MTV. How does that happen? It’s a different hustle. So to answer your question directly it’s showing me that you can give up on something you believe in and independently it takes a lot longer to reach people than it did through the system. That (the system) kinda got me lazy. Putting out 3-4 records through Capitol I could always expect between $150,000-$300,000 marketing budget that would put me at a certain spot. I could always expect a $100,000 video. I could always expect our group to be splitting up an advance of $200,000 every year. It does make you a little lazy and I am happy that I am off that situation because I have a lot of freedom to do whatever the fu*k I want, whenever the fu*k I want. That’s the kind of artist that I think a lot of people should be right now. I keep saying it, but I think the superstar sh*t is dead. The whole ‘I’m on the stage, you’re in the crowd and look at me and worship me’ sh*t is over. Get dirty and shake hands and do that sh*t. That’s what I’m trying to do right now.


Dubcnn: You mentioned getting back to that independent spirit. I read where you said that your debut album gave you an opportunity to give fans more of Evidence. The responsibility was all yours from the design to features…

Yup, that’s what we talked about last time with dubcnn.


Dubcnn: Right. So having experienced that liberation does that help you when you get back to record with Dilated and be an even better group member?

I can’t tell you that yet because I haven’t done it yet. I’m really charging up for Dilated Peoples. The thing with Dilated is that we always wanted to do music with each other. I love making music with Rakaa. He’s like a big brother and I have learned so much from that dude and I don’t want it to be anything forced. In the last year or two I have recorded more than I have in a long time but not on Dilated People songs. I’ve worked with Rakaa and his album Ten Crown of Thorns which is the album he is about to drop. Babu has Duck Season 3 coming out in October. So they have to catch up right now. And I don’t mean that I am better or ahead I mean that they have to go through the cycle of what I went through in terms of revealing an individual identity outside of Dilated Peoples.

I think once they get to do that, especially Rakaa, then it will be really dope. It’s like being in a marriage and you say, ‘I just want to go out and fu*k for a couple of weekends.’ *laughs* ‘I’m going to go out on some player sh*t and I’ll be back and hopefully you understand that.’ Then you feel that you don’t have to go out and do that stuff because you feel that you have an understanding. Maybe that’s a bad metaphor. Maybe it’s not. *laughs* My point is that once he gets to have his freedom and I have already had mine…I think we’ll be able to really see eye to eye and get busy. Right now I want to make sure our mindset is right when we hit the lab again.


Dubcnn: You are about to start that cycle again. You have a new mixtape called The Layover and a sophomore album Cats and Dogs on the horizon. What can you tell us about those projects? Will Alchemist be holding down most of the product again? What about you on the beats? Tell us about it.

I’m grateful that people enjoy the production that I do and I want to continue to do that for myself. However, I am around a lot of people who are doing ill sh*t. My sh*t has to go through the same process that theirs does in order to make the album. I’m not just going to use an Evidence track because I’m Evidence and it’s my album. That’s how you hurt yourself. If I can make something on the same level as DJ Khalil or Crisis or Alchemist or some of the people that I’m working with then it will make it. But at the end of the day I am presenting myself as a rapper. I’ve been rapping a lot lately…in the last month I have probably spent 26 of the 30 days in the studio from 11am to around 3 or 5am. I have recorded about 25 to 30 freestyles right now and I have been leaking a couple of them.

I want people to understand that I’m on some creative sh*t. When you say you are creative you can’t just say it…you have to put it out there. Hopefully my words are good but my actions are better.

Here is how it will go. The Layover mixtape is first and that will be hosted hopefully by DJ Skee, who is one of my favorites. [Editors Note: This interview was pre-release on Dubcnn; the Layover Mixtape has gone on to record over 40,000 Dubcnn Downloads]. Dubcnn knows him well. I’m going to do an actual Layover EP and it will have six songs of brand new material. I kind of want it to be like Pete Rock and CL Smooth’s first album. That EP they put out before Mecca and the Soul Brother was so fly. It made you want to go buy that sh*t. I got one track from Sid Roams, two from Khrysis, I have one and one or two from Alchemist. That will be the Layover EP which will hit around November 11th.

I won’t say the label its on but I did start my own label called Taylor Made Records. My mother’s last name was Taylor and she passed away and I really want to continue her legacy. So I took her signature for Taylor and added ‘Made Records’ after it. So the logo has a lot of importance and it really powerful to me and I think we are going to have success because of it. This will be the first thing on Taylor Made Records slash ‘something else’ but I am not going to reveal it yet because I am still doing paperwork. Hopefully all this sh*t is just promoting Cats & Dogs.

I’m talking to Mick Boogie to do another tape to promote Cats & Dogs after the Layover EP. I just have to understand that it’s a big world right now and being an artist who is reserved and in the shadows is of the past. Maybe if you had a label that put a lot of money into you but I don’t think it is possible to overexpose yourself. In the next year I’m going to try to go the ‘overexposing myself’ route.


Dubcnn: I saw the video on your myspace that touched on your production and saw the Taylor Made Records logo on there too. It touched on how you have done away with a lot of your vinyl collection and decided to keep what I call a mini-arsenal of records that you feel are most useful to you. What prompted you to prune your vinyl tree so to speak?

I just had so many records and it was taking up all this space. Since we are entering the digital age I’m doing a lot of online digging. I might find things online or have a record and go search for other things online or vice versa. I am making a lot of my beats on the Reason program now. So using more software as opposed to hardware. I still have my MPC and my ASR, which I love and I still make a lot of stuff using those. I’m not going to abandon that. But I started asking myself why I had three and four copies of a record. For what? I don’t want to be 60 or 70 years old and have all my shoes from when I was young. That’s one of the things my mother always did. She always kept sh*t. I’d be asking ‘why are we keeping this?’ *laughs* So I cleaned it all out and the vinyl rack that you saw was just samples. I still have a hip hop vinyl room that I can’t part with ever. So every piece of vinyl in the sample rack has a reason for being there. Maybe a drum record or a library record or something I’ve sampled in the past that I wanted to keep. Everything there has a reason. I broke it down to maybe 1,000 records.


Dubcnn: That’s still quite a lot. But you are an accomplished emcee and a talented producer so how important is chemistry between an emcee and a producer?

I’ve been learning that it gets deeper than that. The chemistry between a rapper and producer as a person is important. Then the chemistry with the producer’s rhythm is just as important. It’s two different things. For example, if its an Alchemist beat because I have rapped over his drums for so many years I really understand his swing. As a result I will probably do better on his stuff then from some guy that I just get beats from somewhere. That’s because I understand him as a person and his rhythm. Same thing with Sid Roams (Joey Chavez & Bravo). I can rap on their beats the best. I grew up with them in Venice and I understand them as people and producers and it comes out fresh. I think it is very important but there are cases where you don’t have to meet the guy and magic happens but that happens randomly. To create a vibe with the people you really have to be tight with the people. That’s why I think the Weatherman LP worked because everyone from the guests to the producers were people that I had in my rolodex and already knew with the exception of Slug from Atmosphere. I didn’t know him very well but I knew him well enough to cold call him and he didn’t hang up on me. *laughs* Friends make better music than strangers.


Dubcnn: I know you have another long studio night ahead of you so let the folks know where to stay up on what’s going on with Evidence. The floor is yours man.

Well, I’ll just sound like every other person in the world. My MySpace is up and I try to keep it a little more interactive than a lot of people do. It gets checked everyday and sometimes hourly. New posts to keep you informed on what I am doing as well as the people are around me. Like Alchemist is coming with his album in late October like Babu. My man 88 Keys is coming out with his album in Late October. Stuff like that is what you will find there.

If you could check me out live I would really appreciate you doing that. I feel like some of my recording are good but when I memorize the recordings and do them live I feel I get better at doing those songs. Sometimes I wish I could go in an re-record a lot of my sh*t now.


Dubcnn: Not to cut you off but I was at the show that you did in Tucson, AZ when you were touring with Little Brother. The energy that you had on stage was good and it was great show.

Thank you. Sometimes my energy doesn’t come off on vinyl as much as I would like but then I learn how to do it live. So check out the live sh*t. I would definitely recommend that. And for any rapper you like…if you see him doing so sh*t you don’t like then throw some sh*t at him.


Dubcnn: *laughs* Thanks again for your time man.