PHAROAHE MONCH (March 2011) | Interview By: Jose Ho-Guanipa

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Interview was conducted in March 2011. 

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Pharoahe Monch // Exclusive Video Interview // Dubcnn


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Dubcnn: Dubcnn.com I'm here with Pharoahe Monch, what's up. How you doing today?

Pharoahe Monch: How you doing man?

Dubcnn: Good we're in Los Angeles and you just previewed your new album, W.A.R. Tell us about the new release of it and what you have planned for it.

Pharoahe Monch: It's big, we plan on going heavy with a lot of tour dates locked down. One of the things with the Villain record, as we talked about we are renegades. So one of the natural ways to promote it is to get out there, get on stage, eye level with the people in the community. Rock out and really preform the record. So I think that's one of the strong points of actually performing it.

Dubcnn: A lot of buzz has been going on about your latest short film/music video you recently released. Can you tell us about some of the issues it touches on and how the whole process came about?

Pharoahe Monch: It's simply the relationship between the police authority and the people across America, all neighborhoods really, but mostly impoverished neighborhoods, and my personal experience actually, and with the Shawn Bell and Oscar Grant and Ayana jones has brought more issues that recently happened – I thought I'd address it from my standpoint. The relationship needs to be discussed because these kind of things can't happen. I simply feel it's a tipping point. The tipping point I'm discussing is not necessarily a violent reaction, because war and violence is not the answer, which is why the song is written to bring about this type of discussion. But at the same time, we can't keep going in this direction. With these issues happening there's no type of discussion of what's going on in the legal side it's always the same ending. I wanted to write something that would spark these type of questions for me and more questions from even the authority point of view. My brother's a cop so we had to talk about the same type of issues.

Dubcnn: You were talking about in the Q & A session about the differences between working with major labels and doing it on your own. Also the democratization and how the industry's gone down on the major side and how anybody can put out their own thing, like you did with the video. What do you see as the advantage and what do you like about the whole way you're release your music right now and the whole freedom of it?

Pharoahe Monch: It's kind of hands on, but the most important thing is it's our product. It's like a small business owner opening up his own store. You gotta open it in the morning, you gotta close it and you care about product more. Not that I didn't before, but it's your business now. You determine how long you stay open and your work really facilitates how the people get it. I like being put in the position where I could get on stage and present it myself. I don't think anybody can tell the story better than I can. I think the people appreciate when you bring it to that. We don't want to bring about a bleak dark feeling about the record. We're elated we're in this situation, this is what we asked for. The dates in there and everything are there. I think major labels work fine for certain artists and not so fine for others.