Author Topic: New Ras Kass interview [+ The Quarterly video update] (Read 175 times)

Elano · « **on:** September 28, 2009, 10:46:58 PM »

HipHopDX: Where have you been?
Ras Kass: [Laughs] it’s a transition period. If you’re talking about as far as putting out major label albums, there’s that sense. If you’re talking about legal situations, decisions that cost me, I’ve been going from there…and then there’s the concept of where I’ve been recently. [Laughs]

DX: Let’s address each, at least briefly. What’s happening with you and Capitol Records?
Ras Kass: Me and Capitol…you know, they want party records. We didn’t see eye-to-eye. That went on for a long time, basically five years. I can’t go into that, we agreed not to talk about each other.

DX: What do you owe them as of now?
Ras Kass: The initial contract that I signed was for five albums. I can never seem to get the third album done. That was Van Gogh and that died, and the fourth album was Goldyn Child…there were different perceptions. At that point they would have said that I didn’t turn in an album. I just really felt like everybody else - all my peers, some people I considered my friends - their careers were progressing and mine was kind of halted. So I took the steps I felt were necessary to change the situation. And that resulted in a lawsuit. And that dragged on for a long time, five years. There it is in a nutshell. We’ve settled in, and I think everybody’s better for it. And it’s a new day now…

DX: Are you happy with the vision of your current projects? Right now, The Quarterly.
Ras Kass: Yeah. I’m enjoying myself. Just to be able to do something in spontaneity, of being able to be your own artist, do what you want to do, when you want to do it…there’s pros and cons to everything. The con is that you don’t have somebody that’s willing to upfront and that’s willing to make all these things happen, or get you to this place, or BET Awards. “We’re gonna fly you and pay for your hotel and give you 20 dollars a day”…all that. That’s the pro side of being on a major label. The con is that sometimes they get caught up in so much red tape or politics that you lose the time. You can’t get it done fast enough because either you’re busy in an office trying to convince someone that this is a great idea or they think it’s a great idea but they’re still taking this long to process it.

I just like being able to do what I want to do, when I want to do it, to be perfectly honest. That’s how I and most people get signed – doing what they want to do. [Laughs] You do you and these people come along and say “Hey, we want to facilitate an environment…” And then you get into this machine and they signed you for doing you but now they think you should do something different. And that’s just a conflict of interest off-top. But I’m really happy with what I’m doing. I enjoy every day. I’m excited to be creative.

DX: You raise a good point about the signing mechanisms. Are artists signed due to their marketable potential, and then “tricked” into meeting label demands, or does the demand of the market change so rapidly between the time the artist is signed and the time she or he is expected to release an album, that labels feel they have no choice but to cater to the new market trends?
Ras Kass: Both of those could be the case. I wouldn’t make an absolute on either one of them - everybody’s case is unique. I can honestly say by the time I actually signed, and the lawyers… it was a whole year later. My first album came out in a transitionary point where Hip Hop sound actually changed and so my project didn’t sonically fit - everything changed within a year. That stuff happens sometimes; growth spurts. In my case, it was a bit of both.
I don’t think it was some evil plan [where] labels want to sign people and then change them. These bosses don’t even listen to the music. These A&Rs – and sometimes it’s not even the A&Rs - but they sign people because of the buzz and not necessarily because they appreciate what the artist is doing. So once the artist has a buzz, they may want to sign that artist because somebody else wants to sign them. It’s like the jealous girl that doesn’t want the guy until the other girl wants him. And then they sign him and realize “I don’t want them to be like this. I know so and so wanted him, but now that I got him, I want him to do this.” There’s also a misunderstanding on the part of the artist going into a situation…

DX: Are you presently interested in creating an “album?”
Ras Kass: I wasn’t really interested in an “album.” I kind of look at it from the aspect of the market and try to do creative things. There are more rappers than there are fans at this point. There are more producers than there are fans. There are more label executives – “I want to be the next Baby ” – than there are fans. I just want to look at the successes of people who utilize the Internet and be in the genre of Rap but not necessarily in the exact catalogue of where some people would try to stick me. I just did what I call The Quarterly. It’s The Quarterly, not an album.

DX: Let’s get to The Quarterly in a second. I don’t want to talk about your legal situation for it isn’t relevant to your work. But I do want to ask what you took away from it?
Ras Kass: It sucks. Anybody that raps about it and says it like it’s cool probably never really been. You can look at it for what it is, who did this and who got beat up in the neighborhood, who’s a stripper, who’s a weed tosser. It’s like WWE. Some wrestling shit. I’m just a pretext that it’s real. The fundamental thing is that it’s bullshit; it’s a waste of life. I don’t want to be here.

DX: The Quarterly. A total of 16 tracks released every Monday?
Ras Kass: It’s basically a single a week. I wasn’t sure exactly how to do it. It’s kind of worked itself out. It’s bleeding into the fourth quarter. I planned on doing one for every quarter in length. In the next week or two I’ll be dropping a leak along with six additional records. So the first 500 people will get it for free…and for those who want to support it…it qualifies as an album. Original records, period. But it’s not an album in my brain so I wouldn’t call it an album. [Laughs] It’ll be 16 songs. I don’t know if I’m putting a skit or anything in it. I may add additional songs that I’ve done with other people in the context of the past three months. So me and Nino Bless did a record called “Sparta” for my man Veterano’s mixtape…so it depends.

DX: Do you have a main objective with these tracks? What do you want the old Ras fans to know, and the new supporters to learn?
Ras Kass: I don’t want to use the term “rebranding,” because it’s really not. With a Jay-Z, you can look at Reasonable Doubt to The Blueprint 3 , and its official release is dated with an “official video.” You can get a perspective of this person, their growth. I didn’t really have that. Because only my first two albums [Soul On Ice and RasAssination] officially came out, people tend to have this weird interpretation of who they think I am, and they have no idea. I mean I tried to document it. I’ve literally dropped the same amount of albums as anybody who started around the same time as me. But because I didn’t have an official title with a barcode on it with so and so’s label printed on it, people don’t perceive that as being who I am – for some strange reason. I think it’s completely stupid but people are people and that’s what they think.

So for me, because they haven’t officially solved my progress and growth, people tend to live in 1998, and I’m not in 1998. We’re in 2009, that’s 11 years ago. So definitely the goal is to start from scratch. People don’t expect Mos Def and [Talib] Kweli to necessarily jump up and do a political album. Kwa is doing records with Justin Timberlake – nobody talk shit. Because they understand that people grow and evolve…Ludacris evolves, Eminem evolves...I’ve kind of been relegated to being stuck at some point. So my thing is to get people up to speed - “this is who I am. Get with it if you want to.” Not every song is for every person. I make songs for myself and I’m a multi-layered, multifaceted person. Sometimes I like club records and sometimes I like Jazz records, Rock records, battle records. I’m gonna be creative and do things I like. And if you try to scold me to one particular brand of Rap, then you’re sadly mistaken ‘cause I’m not gonna do it. Aand if you’re gonna criticize me for it then you’re a true idiot.

DX: “If This World of Mine,” is reminiscent of Immortal Technique’s “Payback” which you’re featured on, and Ludacris’ “Growing Pains” on a somewhat re-collective note. I know you can’t speak for Doo Wop, but where did you want to go with this track?
Ras Kass: I approached it differently. Doo Wop is my friend, he’s always helping people…I always show him love. Doo Wop did the record and sent it to me. I liked where he went with it: if this world was his and his very selfless. He just wanted to save [Notorious] B.I.G., which was dope. And then I thought about, if this world was mine, what would I do? And I’m just my own mistake. I’m just my big brother – I don’t’ have any brothers. So if I had a big brother, that’s what I would have taught my little brother to do if he wanted to rap…[Doo Wop’s] world was selfless and I think mine was selfish. I try to approach everything independently. The beat was dope - Pete Rock selective. And what Doo Wop did was really dope. It made me reflective, and what popped up in my head was my journey and what I wish I had.

DX: On “Amazing” you said “rappers might sell more, but lyricists is savages.” Where is the place for lyricists in the industry? I ask particularly in relation to up-and-comers. You mentioned Nino Bless earlier on, and he just announced that he’s bowing out of the industry. One of the reasons he mentioned is the increasing divergence from the art of Hip Hop.
Ras Kass: I’ve known him for a long time so I’ll have to go pick his brain. For whatever reason he feels like he doesn’t want to be a part of [the music], he’s always gonna be a part of it because he likes doing it. I would have to say that maybe this is a short-term decision to him. For some people it’s a passion. I enjoy what I do. I don’t enjoy the business side of it; I don’t enjoy doing shows; I don’t enjoy getting on radio shows and rapping and shit like a trained monkey – I don’t like any of that.

But what I do enjoy is being with somebody that’s talented and them making a dope beat, and us coming together and creating something that we both think is really dope. That is my passion in life. So whether I want to do it as a business wouldn’t change that I enjoy doing it. Some people like playing basketball. Obama wants to go play basketball. I don’t give fuck about basketball - it’s not my passion. My passion is getting in the studio, hearing a dope beat and try to figure out how to approach it, make it doper, or give it what it’s supposed to have on the vocal side. So I don’t have a comment about Nino except that it’s still his passion; I know him as a person. Whether he wants to do it professionally, that’s his decision. Sometimes the bullshit outweighs the passion…

DX: You got together with Killah Priest on “Milli Vanilli” and you’re also working with Kurupt. Any HRSMN news? Or are you sick of the HRSMN questions?
Ras Kass: No, I’m never sick of it. [Killah] Priest is my man; Kurupt is my man. This is my homie. There’s an intricate story of how who met and how we even became the HRSMN. But we are the HRSMN; everybody functions independently but when we come together, we represent something that was an ideal that I think maybe we didn’t execute…and a lot of times, to be perfectly honest [laughs] my girlfriend was the biggest problem – and that’s a metaphor for the label I signed to. We initiated and attempted to do something that hasn’t been really done in Hip Hop. And we were gonna have a revolting fifth member. That was Phraroah Monch on certain songs, though it was very inclusive. It wasn’t like we’re this clique and we don’t want nobody else. We wanted to just have lyricists so if Nas was willing to put one song…We wanted to make something special that’s Hip Hop-oriented. We started that foundation, and watching Slaughterhouse take it to the next level and actually put out a record…we’re part of that foundation.

DX: Your appreciation through the track “Thank You” is heartfelt. “Real” tends to describe the main response on the blogs. How is that form of “real” distinguished from the “you’ll be missin’ till fishermen see your corpse” form of “real?” For example, when one hears genuine tracks such as Kanye’s dedication toward Jay-Z through “Big Brother,” the initial response is “it is real; emotional; friendships, bonds, real life, loss.” Then there’s the whole side of machismo and violence, which is also perceived as “real.” That person killed five people, they’ve been to jail, etc. It seems as though to survive or stand out in Hip Hop, one has to experience violence or subscribe to criminal activity in order to identify with a listener and disidentify with another artist. In Hip Hop, why does the quest for identity still tend to cater toward violence?
Ras Kass: I don’t necessarily think it’s the Hip Hop phenomena. We go watch movies everyday, we watch TV shows – ER – somebody gets sliced and there’s drama…the doctor’s fucking the nurse but she’s in love with the outpatient and then everybody gets their head chopped off. We just live in a world that’s fundamentally cavemen or something to that effect. I don’t think it’s anything unique through Hip Hop…we’re human beings that respond to strength and violence is strength. Period.

DX: What is appealing about encouraging violence versus encouraging fabric softener use? That is, putting people into body bags versus putting softener it into the washing machine?
Ras Kass: There’s a place for both. Maybe it’s imbalanced but it is what it is. It’s like complaining about gravity. I like gravity but I’m not stupid enough to jump off the seventh-story floor and say “gravity, you should understand how I feel.” Part of it is being ill. When Nas said, “when I was 12, I went to Hell for snuffing Jesus.” That fucked my head up. I come from a Judeo-Christian background. I was like “Oh shit, he didn’t just say that? He’s going to Hell but it sounded great.” It’s just the nature of the beast. Rap was created by urban people. Majority [it was] Puerto Rican and Black…I’m sure it’s whites too and some Asians – whatever, some underprivileged people. It was created by some motherfuckers who didn’t have a lot. If you listen to some of those older songs, especially Blues, niggas is talking about they caught their wife cheating and they gonna kill a bitch. It’s the experience of being a second-class citizen. That’s where most of this music comes from. Even the Gospel shit. Talking about “Masta’s fuckin me up, but Jesus is gonna save me.”

Why do we spend all this money to watch a boxing fight or a football game? It’s gladiator. We like seeing the strongest survive.

DX: Is it that we like to see the strong survive or are we empowered by watching others become subjugated? It’s false power of course. But is it falsely empowering?
Ras Kass: I think it motivates us. I watch Gladiator and that’s the one movie from which a tear came down my eyes. Deep down there’s something about having everything stripped from you and you being soldier enough to do the right thing and still accomplish and win. Even though he passed away, he won. Maybe it motivates me like “Fuck that, I’m a soldier, I can do that shit.” They can take all the money and they can take the videos and they can sue me – or whatever it is, in any situation. I have to hold my head and I’ll be alright. There’s pros and cons to everything. If listening to rap music makes you want to shoot people then you’re a fucking idiot. I don’t think it’s just rap music. Your value system is fucked up already. People were killing before the invention of TV and video. Man is just man.

DX: If Gladiator motivates are you, are you also motivated by romantic comedies? Like Love Actually, Definitely Maybe?
Ras Kass: I’m a guy. I’m not gonna say I haven’t enjoyed those movies, but I’m on a different wavelength. I’m not a woman. I’m not geared toward emotionalism, I’m geared toward rationalism. This may sound like a sexist thing, but it’s really not. I’m just saying we’re fundamentally different and that’s a good thing.

DX: Fans debate expiration dates on rappers. How old is too old? Who is lying about their age? What topics should be off limits after a certain age, etc. Throughout North American media and Hip Hop alike, why the pre-occupation with aging and why is it shunned so much?
Ras Kass: Young is usually prettier. Your skin is more supple and your titties are bouncing. It’s just the world we live in – especially in North America. We are vain. We used to have a very rigid vision of pretty that’s not very inclusive. At least now we have somewhat of a broader definition of what beautiful is. But it is what it is. And there’s a business standpoint to that. If I come out at 16 and I get fans who are 14, and 15 and 16, I have a 10-year life span to grow with them as they grow and they relate to me. Demographically, 16 year-old white girls influence spending habits of everybody else. That’s the new demographic. We want to make songs that influence 16 year-old white girls…

Don’t ask me my age. What does that have to do with anything? Let me look how I look. People are obsessed with age. It’s just how the world works – at least the world in North America. But does it really matter?

DX: Some of the best emcees are not particularly attractive. But those same emcees who’ve been in the game for at least 10 years are victims of the retirement discussion. Perhaps it’s not the level of physical attraction, or sexual appeal. But rather, age. There is discussion about whether Jay-Z should retire circling strictly around his age.
Ras Kass: I’ve heard those conversations. Kids I know they like whatever they like; some shit I can’t get with. And then there is always a preoccupation with what’s new. Jay-Z is not new. Rick Ross came three years ago. He was new. He may be 40 years old – I’m not saying that he is – but I’m saying…Flo Rida or whatever…they’re new in a sense of being new and not young. So preoccupation with age may be about the new.

DX: Great point. You’re a fan of history. Any particular theme you enjoy?
Ras Kass: Nothing in particular. I don’t really get into politics per se. I just try to get ideas and the back story of the cultural anthropology. Whether you take it from a natural history point of view or a Juedo-Christian point of you, you’re dealing with two people anyway. You just start with two. Somehow we all end up being unique in how we look. Whoever you want to think Adam and Eve were, if you come from the point of view asking were they white, were they…? ‘Cause now we got white, black, Asian, Dominican, Puerto Rican, Serbian, Croatian – we got all these people who have uniquely become their own cultures and we all stem from the same. And that’s the biggest story period. So looking at it from that point of view to me is always interesting. Looking at how tribalism has extended to nationalism which then extends to racism and classism and sexism and all this other shit. It’s an interesting story; an interesting movie…