It’s been a long 5 year hiatus since the last Blu & Exile collaboration. Since their last project together, the brilliant Below The Heavens in 2007 the pair have been exceptionally busy on an array of individual projects, with both continuing to gather huge plaudits and an ever-expanding fanbase in the process.
It may be a bold claim off first glance, but so good was Below The Heavens, that it can be genuinely be considered in a similar ilk to Illmatic in terms of offering a modern hip hop record which was thought provoking without being contrived, unquestionably different and frankly gave their peers a decent slap-in-the-face wake up call.
Their latest release, Give Me My Flowers While I Can Still Smell Them, has had a relatively controversial start, with Blu releasing an un-mastered raw version of the record on Bandcamp, prior to the official release through Fat Beats.
Some loved the idea, others didn’t, but with the Exile-polished version now on general release, DUBCNN caught up with the duo at their show for More Bounce in Manchester, in what was their debut UK show as Blu and Exile.
Check out the interview and footage of the show below.
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Interview was conducted October 2012
Questions Asked by: Mark Jorgensen (@markjorgy)
Video Filmed & Edited by: Bedos Mavanubu
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Dubcnn Exclusive – Blu & Exile
By: Mark Jorgensen
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Blu & Exile “Give Me My Flowers While I Can Still Smell Them” Teaser
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Watch The Interview
Prefer to download the interview? Click here to download the MOV (225MB)
BLU: What up, this is ‘BLU Her Favorite Color’, holding it down for Dubcnn with my man E-Exile in the place to be, y’ know what I mean.
Exile: Dubcnn!
Dubcnn: Hey this is Dubcnn, we’re here in Manchester for the BLU and Exile gig at the Mint Lounge; courtesy of More Bounce. We’re about to go and do an interview with BLU and Exile and then catch the show – check it out.
Dubcnn: So, BLU and Exile, welcome to Manchester.
Exile: Thank you.
Dubcnn: How was your show?
Exile: Ah man, it was… incredible. I had a really good time. It was dope. [We’re] On the road right now, it really feels like at home y’know, and with BLU too y’know.
BLU: Hell yeah!
Exile: Like er shit, yeah when was that, me and Aloe first brought him out here with MED – we had a hella good time…
BLU: ’05!
Exile: That was ’05!
Dubcnn: Where did do you play?
Exile: Shit, just all over Europe y’know…
Dubcnn: Haha I was just testing to see if you remember Manchester…
Exile: Yeah, na, but…
BLU: This is BLU and Exile’s first time in the UK though, for sure yeah.
Dubcnn: Cool man.
Exile: Oh yeah that’s right…
Dubcnn: So the latest release that you’ve got is ‘Give Me Flowers While I Can Still Smell Them’. So tell us a little bit about the new release.
Exile: Uh, shit, y’know… a lot of it was recorded actually kind of earlier on, like in 2009 y’know… shit. I don’t know, we were trying to finish up a couple of other songs or something. We were both on other projects, and it kind of got y’know lost or whatever. But we wanted to add some new shit to it too, but we just didn’t get around to it. Then finally we added some new shit to it…
BLU: Yeah yeah… Yo man it was ’09, we did the… we did like probably like 30 songs in a week or two weeks. Exile gave me like fifty beats, and I had all these bunch of raps stored, know what I mean… just got off a tour. But the song sat for a long time you know? And people was demanding for some new shit for so long… but we wanted to y’know… me and Ex y’know what I mean, we go in, we wanted to really go in. So we gave it to the people y’know what I mean. The response was like so great; all these labels started hitting us up for the product y’know what I mean, and Ex was like “well Dude that’s just some demos” y’know what I’m saying. So Ex went in and like stepped it up y’know what I’m saying… and like made it a nice sound piece bro, y’know what I mean, a classic sound piece y’know what I’m saying… “if this is hell let me get my mail!”
Exile: Yeah! Yeah! Right…
BLU: That was the heart…money! Errrr
Dubcnn: Everything that you did, like, tonight… you gave a masterful display on the MPC …masterful!
Exile: Word, word…
Dubcnn: So something that’s become apparent over the last few years… sampling and stuff like that, almost is starting to become a bit of a dying art because its become a bit of an expensive art in a sense, so like there is a bit of an option to kind of go down a route of just doing a lot more keyboard work and stuff like that. So what’s your kind of opinion on that?
Exile: I got my keyboard shit y’know, I rock that shit too. I got this project… I got this project of some like electronics… I’m trying to figure out if I should do an instrumental project… do another BLU and Exile album or what the fuck to do with it. I’m working on it so… but er, y’know I fuck with that shit, but I’m also gonna be fuckin’ with sampling y’know what I mean.
