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I know that the Quannum Web site is going through changes in the same way that the Quannum group has changed, and I was wondering if you guys are working on not just promotion but selling on the Internet.
X-Cel: Definitely. We're working hard to really get our site where we want it to be, so it's just a little under construction because it's big, completely and totally revamped. To us, the Net is like the next frontier. The Net represents the expansion in this whole game of music. I think in the next six months to the next year, there's gonna be a lot of paradigm shifts in terms of the way people view the distribution of music. Especially stuff like AOL buying Time Warner; they totally just flipped the game. So it's definitely of vital importance to us -- how we can, independently and through synergies with other companies, get our stuff out there.
OK. Let me go on to the album. It kind of is and isn't a concept album. It is in that you have certain themes running through it, but it's not because it doesn't, as some concept albums do, pound the themes into your head. With Nia, it kind of flows through. Can you talk about coming up with the thoughts you wanted to put behind the album?
Gab: Nia is just everything that we experienced during the years that we created it, you know, thought the thoughts that we thought, certain things that we looked at, that we saw how things were, ideas on how things could be better, situations we went through and just celebrating the music … Nia is just our souls. "Nia" means "purpose" in Swahili, and for us, this is where we stand right now, with the album right now. It's not all we got, but it really -- I sound like Common Sense [laughing, probably in reference to a speech on Common's One Day It Will All Make Sense] -- but it does mean a lot. Nia just represents that universal struggle that everybody goes through to become a better person, and that's just the message we wanted to get across: We're just people living life just trying to grow.
X-Cel: We really worked hard to give the listener the comprehensive view of all the growth that we've undergone from the first record and then to A2G, up till now. And within that, we wanted to create a sonic range to really embrace. So there is a message in it, that being that we're living in times, like you were talking about, with the Net and everything, times are moving faster than they've ever gone, period. It's ill when you can log on to your computer, and you can have a barber come to your house and cut your hair, you know what I'm saying? People are just bombarded with so much information from so many different angles in the race of life, and just trying to keep pace, you can kind of lose touch with yourself. The underlying thing is that no matter what's going, just hold that there. If this whole shit blows up tomorrow, all you got is you. I was at the barber shop yesterday, and my barber was talking about how, New Year's Eve, everybody was coming in like, "Y2K, Y2K -- I'm getting water and such and such" He's like, "I remember when there were no computers. You mean to tell me that if something breaks down, that my life's gonna stop? It's not gonna happen." Another friend of mine was talking to a 90-year-old woman in Dallas, in a nursing home, and she was just like, "Baby, the same God has been providing for 90 years of my life. You mean to tell me that if whatever computer system blows up, He's not gonna provide for me if I ask Him?" For me, that's just a woman that's in touch with herself.
Getting to the message, when you listen to Blackalicious, you'll get songs with the message, but you'll get songs with the straight up battle rhymes. I was just wondering, how cautious are you about trying to get a message out without being preachy?
Gab: It kind of just comes. As artists, we're into the fundamentals of battle rhyming. But also, we think about things, we see things, and we feel things, and we have our opinions on those things. It's not really a conscious effort … it is and it isn't. It's not like we sit down and say, "And we're gonna make a record with this as the message." It sort of [comes together] as the ideas come to us, and the concept of the album comes to reveal itself. It's just the things that we have to say.
All right, going on the same topic, with "Deception," [the fourth track on Nia] I like the song a lot, but it makes me wonder, do you guys think sometimes that hip-hop is obsessed with itself? Because it seems like, more than with any other genre, you hear artists in hip-hop talking about the state of hip-hop than you do in other forms of music.
Gab: "Deception" wasn't really about the state of hip-hop, though. "Deception" was more a microcosm, if you will, for the bigger thing in Nia. What we really wanted to get across was a story of a person who held something very dear to himself, held something very close to his heart. And for whatever reasons, other things began to come into play and began to cloud his vision and his focus, and as a result, he lost that sense of nia, that sense of purpose. It just so happened we choose to use the example of an MC, but … Cisco [the song's main character] could have been a painter or a social worker or a teacher.
X-Cel: It's just the whole thing of nia, not lettin' shit cloud you from your purpose, not letting things change you up and get you off of your purpose.
Gab: We don't like to spend any time … I feel what you're sayin', in terms of hip-hop being too conscious of itself and not just being, you know what I'm saying, and that's why we don't get into those debates -- is it better in '99 than it was in '88? -- 'cause they're all integral parts of a whole, 'cause we couldn't be where we are in '99 without the stuff that came before. When you talk about the state of hip-hop, I mean right now, I'm excited. I'm excited when I hear people like Dilated Peoples, people like J5 or Apani B Fly; there's just so many dope artists getting lights shined upon them. We're living in a good -- I think it runs in cycles, and I think we're in a definite upswing in terms of artists and creativity.
Yeah, I'm waiting for the J-Live album; that'll be tight. All right, I wanted to talk a little bit about production. On this album, it seems like there were chances taken, not just by bringing Shadow in on "Cliffhangers" -- because that track goes all over the place -- but on "Trouble" and "Eve of Destruction," how the track breaks down at the end. It seems like you guys let loose on the album.
X-Cel: We just explored, you know. Gab is like a styles lyricist; he's a styles MC. He likes to travel, and he likes to take his listeners into various dimensions of his mind. As a result, as the producer, my challenge is to come up with a soundscape that is gonna support that, and it works both ways. It allows me to really study and explore different genres of music and seeing how I can take those influences and fuse it into what I do and give it to him and know that it's gonna be met with an open mind. And even if he doesn't always feel it, he'll sit down and look at it; he won't close his windows in any kind of way. Whereas a lot of MCs have one thing and one style that they do, and that's cool. Certain MCs wouldn't sound good over certain types of sound. With Gab, his whole approach or philosophy is that he wants to become another instrument within that track, so it allows us to do things like "Trouble" or "Smithzonian Institute" or "Beyonder" or whatever.
Gab: And then go and do things as different from that as "Deceptions." And the same thing goes with X. You know, X is a very dimensional producer, and I never know what he's gonna come with. I can't put my finger on what the next track is gonna sound like, so it always gives me, as an MC, room to explore.
Right, change up the flow.
Gab: Definitely.
On production, I wanted to know what it's like working in the Quannum collective when you've got so many different producers. You've got Shadow, of course, and you've got Lyrics Born [one of the vocalist in the Quannum group Latyrx], who produces. What's it like vibing with all those guys?
X-Cel: It's cool. We've all kind of grown up in music together. People always talk about the Davis thing, but 90 percent of our education and growth came between the three of us just exploring music and studying music, production, artists' careers and music history and just the whole gamut, you know? So on one hand, I think we all work extremely hard to be on top of our game 'cause everybody is so intensely passionate about what they do and the given sounds that we've all spent our respective years developing. But on the other hand, we always -- our influences are so vast and so varied. Josh [Davis, a.k.a DJ Shadow] may be into one thing that I'm just not feeling, but at the same time, I can respect it, and I can see where he's coming from, and I can see whatever influences he's taken from that, how he's used it and sculpted it into his own sounds. And it's the same thing with Lyrics Born, but it's all just a mutual respect for each other's process.
OK, I want to know if you want to talk about upcoming projects. I know X-Cel has the Maroons thing with Lateef [a solo project from Lateef of Latryx, featuring production by Chief X-Cel]. Are you planning any shows or tours?
X-Cel: Lots of stuff. Gab is doing a solo album that everybody is contributing to. He's doing stuff with Shadow and myself and other producers that he's down with. The two of us are doing a record called B-Sides Live. It's gonna be out in fall, and what that's gonna entail is a lot of B-sides that come out on singles in correlation with Nia but not necessarily on Nia [including, presumably, the two bonus tracks on the current "Deception" single]. The DJ's will get it first, but people who aren't DJs, who just have CD players, [at] the end of the year they'll get some love, too. It's also gonna include a lot of the excerpts from a lot of the shows we do around the world. Like this past tour, we recorded shows in Amsterdam, London and France, as well. So that'll be included as well as shows right here at home, in the Bay, across America, just around the globe. Lateef and I just started recording the Maroons album on Monday, so we're just, like, hard at work eight hours a day doing that. Starting the week of February 15, we start touring North America, then we head over to Europe, stay over there for about a month, then come back, tour America again, then go to Japan and Australia. So, this year, God willing, it's gonna be filled with a lot of music, both live and recorded.
All right, great album. Hope it goes platinum for you guys.
Gab: Buy a million copies!
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This article originally appeared on RadioSpy
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