Jumbo (LifeSavas) (November 2009) | Interview By: Chad Kiser

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Interview was done in November 2009

Questions Asked By: Chad Kiser & Norff Wess

 

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Dubcnn Exclusive – Jumbo (LifeSavas)
By: Chad Kiser & Norff Wess
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Dubcnn: Coming from Razorblade City, who or what made you gravitate towards hip-hop music?

I’m probably going to tell on myself with my age, which I’m cool with at this point, but there was a DJ during the 80’s in Portland who went by the name of Electro Wiz. Portland really ain’t got true Projects, but there was a housing complex that we both lived in called the Dekum courts. Him, myself and my running buddy at the time, who went by Mix Master K.D., we would go to parties with him and watch him rock, and he had a show on KBOO. What they now call mixtapes or mix CD’s, he actually had cassette tapes and he would mix whatever was the latest joint in hip-hop because the radio wasn’t getting it. So we’d watch Wiz spin and he taught K.D. how to mix and K.D. taught me how to scratch. So, I originally started out as a DJ. So that’s what got us stared collecting music, and from there we did house parties all over the city. There used to be a place called Cleo’s, a little after hours spot on Vancouver Avenue., there used to be a house over there, and if you ever here any body talk about the Fargo house parties (you know who you are). So I just started rocking house parties, watching Wiz and another cat named Michael J., I’m sure you’ve heard of the U-Crew aka the Untouchable Crew (If you were mine-1989), there was another group called Freak-Control and I have to pay homage to my dude J.W. Friday on KBOO. There’s a list of other names I could list, but just to not eat up time, those are the ones that really got me into it and from there I started taking trips back an forth to New York in the summertime and just getting up on what’s current. By hanging out in Brooklyn I would pick up what was new and bring some of that music back to Portland and try it out.


Dubcnn: How did the LifeSavas come into existence, and who chose the name for the group?

Well, Vursatyl used to be in a singing group and they would do shows around the town. I would make beats for him because he wanted to bring some hip-hop into the mix and DJ for them on certain gigs. So with that I realized he was really talented at rhyming, and they would come up to my crib and we would have rhyming sessions. From those freestyle sessions Vurs and I would develop routines. With these routines, we would go to hip-hop shows and if a major act canceled, we would get on the bill and rock that show. That’s how we started to build our reputation. So people started calling us the “life-savers” because if we hadn’t showed up and did the show there would not have been a show. So we thought we should go with that name. Originally, there were five members and we would rock the logo and the multiple colors and people would remember us from that. So it kind of tied everything together, even though the color coordination faded out, the name kind of stuck. Also, to add on to the LifeSavas name as well, once we started doing shows and flying all over the nation people would come up to us and thanking us for the message we had in the music; they would be like, you never know how words can have an impact on you and change somebody's life. People would say “you didn’t even no what I was going though, but I heard your words so clear, you could be out here saving lives”. We didn’t take it seriously, but after a while people keep telling you that, it starts meaning something to you, so we decided to stay with that name.


Dubcnn: Your moniker, ‘Jumbo the Garbage Man’, who came up with that name or was it given to you? What’s the significance behind the named?

The name Jumbo was given to me by the crew because friends would come over and my moms or they would be yelling for me. I couldn’t hear because the music would be so loud. They would come in and be like why you got the music so loud? and I would tell them I’m working on a track. They would comment on how big and jumbled the track would be. So they just threw that name at me because they know any time I get on a track I wanted to have a major impact on people. So my man Vursatyl gave me that name and it stuck.


Dubcnn: The LifeSavas dropped an album called Spirit in Stone, when that project came together, what was the psychological perspective as far as the music and lyrical content? Because you guys defiantly drop a monster on them.

It’s funny because most peoples first record, it’s like it’s your life story, you know what I’m saying?, that’s you trying to give it to the world, and you can’t or your unable to condense it to like 12 or 15 tracks. So we recorded about 25 songs and decided to pick the ones that were going to be the land mark. Lyrically, my man Vursatyl is a monster on the mic. The dude is A MONSTER! he’s got so many styles. We were together before we even started as group. We go back as like childhood friends, we played ball growing up, and we had like minds. When it comes to the emcees we both had love for the greatest of all time Rakim. We liked his ability to come up with so many styles. His skill encouraged us to have like friendly competition when we would write just to bring out the best in our selves, and so by the time we got to Spirit in Stone, it was like let’s make sure that we display the fact that we’re not new comers to this, know what I mean?. Because even though we haven’t had that much recording material out we’d been rhyming for years and I said we have to show case that with as many styles as possible, but still have our own signature on it.


Dubcnn: It sounds like you guys had time to tighten up your skills before you signed your fist album, you know like there was time in there to get everything really rock solid.

I would say yes and no. We had been doing so many live performances that had allowed us to test out songs, and really hone our skills and season ourselves as the emcees with command and confidence. The no part is because we didn’t have alot of equipment, and we didn’t have that much money. We didn’t have no Pro-Tools back then either, we just had a little hand held recorder and some turn tables. So we had to record that album, build a studio in a matter of weeks, basically in the back of Vursatyl’s crib. We gutted his garage, built it up, made the studio and recorded the album in a matter of weeks and the label came to town and listened to it and they was loving it. Then we finished the rest down here in the bay with my man Chief-XL.



Dubcnn: LifeSavas fans, they must enjoy that broad range of rhythmic poetics and musical soundscapes. As the production wizard for the group and also dedicated the emcee, who are your music related influences? cause I here a little P-Funk in there.

Yea man!. I’m definitely a Funkadelic, Parliament, and George Clinton, anybody under that family tree lover. I’m a fanatic for that kind of stuff man. I’m all the way in; that’s one of my major influences musically. A lot of people don’t know this about me, except for my man Vurs, but one of my favorite producers that really don’t get his props is DJ Quik, he’s one of my favorites on the production tip. DJ Premier, I grew up on Premier and Pete Rock, and another one of my favorites that’s out right now is HI-Tek. Between him and the late great J-Dilla, those are some of the few cats that can make the merge between hardcore hip-hop and keeping it funky.


Dubcnn: Your second album 2007’s Gutterfly is seen as a high concept album, featuring ghetto super-heroes. What made you approach the follow up release from the vantage-point?

Well it’s interesting because after the first record, you know usually with the first record the first impression is the lasting one. So people were putting us in a box after the first one, you know by labeling us; they were saying we were heavily De La Soul influenced. We love De La, and they’re one of the greatest hip-hop groups of all time. But we had to make a statement to let people know that we’re not De La Soul, we’re not trying to be De La soul. We’re LifeSavas, you know what I’m saying? So with the second record, even though it was a concept record, it was a way for us to show the other side's of ourselves that we hadn’t shown on the first record. Also, style-wise if you’ll peep, we was basically paying homage to all of our favorite the emcees on that record in character. We didn’t think we could do it just by doing a regular LifeSavas album, so we decided to try to make it interesting and push the envelope a little bit. There’s a couple flicks that influenced that. Alot of people, when they think of blaxploitation, they only consider like Superfly, The Mack, and things like that. But there are also movies that are like cult classics. There’s a movie called Coonskin where you have a young Berry White, you’ve got the young Phillip Michael Thomas, and Scatman Crothers doing voice-overs because the movie is half animated and half real cinema. So it’s like when I saw that, that gave me the idea to say hey we can do that with a record. Basically since the back story was that album, it was the movie that was never made. It was alot that went into it as far as like the process and putting it together and honestly the critics gave us alot of love and alot of props, but we felt like til this day, we felt like alot of people who were just regular music fans, because of the shift in music, missed that record or just didn’t understand that record. Which leads me to the third, the next joint, you know what I mean?, which were basically ain’t gone be no concept, ain’t hardly gone be no guests on it, it’s just gone be me an Vurs going hard and basically like I had told you previously on this call, this record is gone be the one were it’s just straight talk, we’re we want to make sure there’s no scratching your head, no trying to break down the lyrics to see what they mean. It’s gone be like as soon as you hear it, you gone be like ah I’m feeling these cats right here.


Dubcnn: The LifeSavas have been getting love from the underground, state side and over seas for some time now, does the mainstream even interest you?

Yeah and the interesting thing about what’s going on with artists right now, and Vurs and I was talking about this the other day. It seems like alot of artists are running out of ideas right now. They look at what’s out right now and when you’re trying to compete with that, it basically turns into chasing it. It’s like how do I connect with twelve, thirteen, sixteen, eighteen year olds, when I don’t make that microwave stuff? Everything has its place, but for right now I feel like, when I told you before when I heard Jay-Z’s D.O.A. I was like it done came full circle now. So I think you’re going to start seeing alot of cats that’s getting back to the main ingredients. To get back to your question, I don’t know if I could break that down in to a one-liner.


Dubcnn: I realize that it’s got some complexities and I think you answered the question. I was going to ask you about that because it kind of goes into hip-hop, where the emcees, producers, etc, they’re running out of ideas, so they’re duplicating what they think is going to be the next hot thing, instead of old-school where everybody was just themselves and had their own sonic identity.

Right, right, it’s funny how music changes. Like now people don’t want to hear messages, they want to hear something creative, but they don’t want it to be dressed up in something they have to figure out; they want something that they can get immediately you know. So for us we’ve always been ourselves, so we look at hip-hop music like right now is the perfect time to strike.


Dubcnn: When we talked earlier you said you moved to Oaktown. What’s the O like and how is the hip-hop scene right now?

Oakland is cool man, I love it down here. I definitely miss home alot, but I love it down here because it’s so much pride here as far as the black community goes. Even going beyond the black community, just supporting each other and really getting behind each other in what ever you do, whether it’s music, whether it’s what ever it is, they’re really just supportive of each other out here. It’s crazy because I’m sure some people heard what happened this past new year’s. This young brother named Oscar Grant was shot and killed by the fake police, aka the metro police. Before that happened alot of brothers were getting killed on the regular without any news coverage. But when that incident hit, it was coverage because, much later, and I won’t say that this was any retaliation, but brothers got fed up with getting picked-off by the police; so this brother started bucking back and he ended up killing four police officers. It was a tragedy and I’m not saying it was a good thing at all, but it just goes to show you the state of affairs down here. The recession is not helping, but things were already tense here in Oakland because with the amount of profiling that goes on, there’s just alot of unrest. When that happened the city wasn’t as bad as the Watts riots, but people were definitely downtown flipping cars over; there were violent and non-violent reactions. I was also here when Minister Farrakhan came to meet with brothers and you got people up there from the Christian domination, the Muslim faith and you got politicians in there. You could just see that it’s the people in the community that’s worried and feeling like this is about to get out of hand if we don’t really address this. Governor Schwarzenegger, you know what, since he didn’t do nothing about it, we got to address it; we got to take care of home first. So it just points to the spirit of independence, and the way that everybody comes together to try to make things better down here. I’ve become more active in things like that since I’ve moved down here.


Dubcnn: And that’s truly a good thing, but as far as the hip-hop scene, I know you got Too-Short and many others...

Yeah, to get to that part of the question, man there are so many dope musicians down here it’s crazy. As far as the hip-hop part you got young cats all over the place. You know you got the staples, you’ve got the legends and of course Short is out here, 40 is out here, let me see who else, it’s so many out, I hope know body gets hot at me for not naming them. But it’s so many cats out here in the Bay that got crazy skills. You know there was this thing called Big Tone, that my man Ja-Syria Media and Jake One, they put it on. They came down here and put on a “Beat Battle” in Oakland and in San Francisco. Imagine cats just coming out just to see cats play they’re beats, you had young producers displaying they’re talent, they’re tracks, and I think people was surprised to see that the young cats are that talented. Stuff like that led to a location called the Paramount where you have young producers, the emcees, dancers, and instrumentalists.

The Paramount has this program for the youth and it’s were they get to come out and open up for like a major act. How many other cities let people do that? Alot of cities have that talent, but I don’t know if they have those types of programs available yet. But it just goes to show you how strong the DJ community is down here. Spoken word is real strong, the B-Boy community, and of course the emcee community is crazy, I mentioned Short, you also got Hieroglyphics, Quantum Crew, Blackalicious, it’s a plethora of cats, so many cats, and there’s open mic night all over the place. It’s growing, and it’s interesting because a cat like Mos Def, and you’ll think he’s only out here for a night, he’ll sale it out for a week performing at a real boogie jazz club on some hip-hop. That’s a statement just to say how strong hip-hop is down here.


Dubcnn: True. You touched on it earlier, but when is the next LifeSavas album going to drop and is there anybody that you look forward to working with on new project or was there somebody in the past that you wanted to work with and didn’t, that you have the opportunity to work with now?

When is the album gone drop? Tell me when the album gone drop! (laughs)


Dubcnn: Oh! it’s like that!.....well, it better drop next week (laughs) I’m telling you right now, ‘cause we’re ready right now!

We are aiming for the early part of 2010. But we're definitely going to come with some new music real soon. I just can’t give a date. New music, and as far as who we want to work with, I like these cats called Sa-Ra Creative Partners out of L.A., they’re like if you like Parliament meeting hip-hop with their own thing own it, Sa-Ra is it.


Dubcnn: For better or for worse let’s get political, our political state of affaires is in a unique place right now. How do you feel about our first black leader of the free world, President Obama?

Man I’m excited. I actually worked on a few of the primary elections. I worked a few of those and so I had to do my part. Tell you what, like any other brother or any other sister in the states; we are very proud, excited, I fill like it’s about time. But in the same token, we like man that’s a job that I would not want; he got the hardest job in the world man.


Dubcnn: Exactly, and at a crazy time. This is the craziest time to be president.

Yeah, but you know what? It’s going to show how resilient we are as a people. Because no matter how they come at him, no matter what they throw at him he remains calm and he always has a logical answer, because the brother is smart. Also, his wife is just as brilliant, you know what I mean? You know, they’re resetting the standard. It’s like somebody hit the refresh button. He basically came in and said we’re going to reset the standard, for what family looks like; we’re going to reset the standard for what this old, cold White House looks like; were going to show how we’re up with the times and be online and a have presence online. There may be other countries making steps towards being green, but we’re going to publicly go green and were trying to be energy efficient and we’re going to re-evaluate our spending and just our way of living so we can establish a better way of living for our children and our children's children.


Dubcnn: The recent death of Michael Jackson was a shock to many of us around the world, but especially to those of us who grew up during the early to late 80’s. How did his death affect you in any way?

Man, it crushed me! It crushed me because it was weird, and the whole day I went through alot of mixed emotions because I felt like finally people would get to see and the world would get see how much of a humanitarian this cat really was, like he really wanted to save the world, that was his goal. They announced it on the BET awards that this cat had given the most money to charities and around the world, and it’s not like money can save the world, but all that he had given, even in his last breathing moment he gave everything to the world to try to change it or be a vehicle to change it. As a musician, it was tough to take because it really makes you look at it like, okay besides this music thing, this cat was still human, you know what I mean? He was still a human being and people thought he was a weirdo and whatnot. He was just trying to express himself the best way he knew how and he was a genius at doing it, and alot of things he did were over people’s heads maybe, or it was ahead of it’s time. It’s almost like he has the world’s attention, everybody can kind of look at it and look at the intricacies of it and see what made him so unique and now people appreciate him so much more. To me it’s a terrible way to appreciate our own. It’s like we should be appreciating them while they’re living, you know what I mean? Despite what the media says, you know despite what the tabloids do. Let’s celebrate our own. But our own are making history right now. I’m really excited to hear some of the recordings that never came out, I’m juiced we get to hear those. Finally, at least the consensus of what the world is saying that he was a good person and you always want your good to be spoken of win your gone, so I’m just excited to hear about that.


Dubcnn: Cool, Jumbo, that’s all the questions we have for you. Thanks for giving us some of your time to do this interview!

Thanks, guys!