Cut Chemist & Hymnal

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

A warm welcome for Cut Chemist and Hymnal [applause]… Why don’t you start by explaining your relationship and how far back that goes?

Cut Chemist

Hymnal and I met in seventh grade – what was it, Mrs Merson’s history class or something? – and we butted heads over something, we had a custody battle over some Run DMC song. The friendship blossomed after that. You didn’t start rapping till about ’91?

Hymnal

Probably about ’88. Still in high school.

Cut Chemist

‘88? Then you were a closet rapper because I didn’t hear it about till ’91.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

When did you meet and where in the world?

Cut Chemist

’84-ish, in Los Angeles in middle school. Actually, it was middle and high school. I stayed and he left, went to LA High. That was ’84.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

And you have collaborated before this?

Cut Chemist

Just doing math homework, nothing creative.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Talk a little about then. You just mentioned fighting over custody of a Run DMC song.

Cut Chemist

Yeah, probably the social impact of what the song meant. “It’s about that.” “It’s nothing to do with that, it’s about this.”

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Describe for everyone the environment of Los Angeles at the time, what was going on?

Cut Chemist

Anybody see that show Fame. It was like Fame. Everybody spinning on their head in the street. Just to give you an example, I’d go up to Carl’s Jr, which is a fast food joint, in my windbreaker because I was into breakdancing and some dude would see me walking, and he’s got a radio and his friends are with him, and he’d walk over and bumrush me: “Yo, dude, break out some cardboard.” Right in front of Carl’s we’d just battle. Dude, this is some really surreal shit… yeah, let’s just just dance at the drop of a hat. And it was like that. People would be walking around on Hollywood Boulevard and Mike and I would be battling people, rapping. Back then people would be rapping on the street and dancing, like a Lionel Richie video, it was crazy. Run DMC was out and rap was just crossing over with all the other elements of hip-hop, so all the kids were into it.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Anyone who knows about the early history of hip-hop in LA [will have heard about electro]. What was your experience of that?

Cut Chemist

LA is so spread out, the cultural dynamic is really interesting. It’s still pretty mysterious to me, even though I’ve lived there for 34 years, I think that’s what keeps me there, because I can’t figure the place out. But there was a huge electro scene, I think because of the mobile DJ scene, which is different from the East Coast, which is more about house parties and block parties. In LA people had to drive because it’s so spread out, even in the Bay you had the same thing. Not that that has anything to do with electro, but all the mobile DJs were playing electro, like “It’s Time” and Cybotron, things like that. I think it came from the pop-lock era, just R&B getting more progressive.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

When did you decide to start messing with these things over here? Those turntables.

Cut Chemist

These things?

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Yeah.

Cut Chemist

’84. I DJed… What was my first my first DJ. experience? Oh yeah, you guys are going to like this one. On my 12th birthday, I entered a DJ battle that KDAY, which is the local radio rap and R&B station at the time, was sponsoring. I thought, “This is fun. I’ll just put on my windbreaker and go DJ.” Man. I didn’t know to use a mixer. All I knew to do was move the record back and forth. I was good at it and I remember I was trying to put a little pizzazz in it so I was like popping and scratching and shit. It was really corny. It was bad. It was terrible. It was horrible. But yo man, I made it. That was like the preliminaries and the final was at Radiotron which is that club in Breakin’. I don’t know if anybody’s seen that movie, Breakin’. Anyway, I made it past preliminaries. I think based on the sole fact that I was white and I was 12, you know what I mean? I wasn’t really good and I remember fools were salty. They were like, “Who’s this little new jack-white y’know…” That was back in a time where there were no white DJs. There certainly weren’t any 12-year-old white DJs. So I did have that going for me but I got crushed in the finals. I was trying to blend “Buffalo Gals” and “It’s Time.” It just wasn’t working. I got dissed.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Do you remember who won?

Cut Chemist

I remember Arabian Prince was actually in the battle.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Arabian Prince was in the battle?

Cut Chemist

From Uncle Jamm’s Army, yeah. I don’t think he won. There were some good DJs at that battle.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Besides Arabian Prince being involved in that battle, do you have any recollections, I mean you were young at the time, but of Uncle Jamm’s Army or any of that sort of stuff?

Cut Chemist

Oh yeah.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Explain what that was.

Cut Chemist

Uncle Jamm’s Army was a mobile DJ. crew that started doing mixes on KDAY, the rap radio station. Every Saturday night.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Just to interrupt I guess for those… I think everybody sort of… We’re at a point where rap radio 24 hours is not really that big of a deal, but KDAY was a pretty big deal. It was the first 24-hour rap station?

Cut Chemist

Yeah, 24 hours. They broke records like no other place in the world. Where they’re playing… Air time anyway. De La Soul, Public Enemy. They played “Rebel Without A Pause” constantly in daytime rotation. Talking to program directors, just on a side note. People that DJed there like Tony G… Program directors would actually threaten them, taking away their job if they played that rock shit “again” for PE or that “spacey shit” for De La Soul. They were just like “Man, fuck you. We’re going to keep playing it because the listeners are calling in requesting it.” Songs like “Plug Tunin’” and stuff and… they even played [De La Soul’s] “Double Huey Skit” which wasn’t even available. That’s KDAY.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Sorry to side track you a little bit. As far as KDAY’s background was but Uncle Jamm’s Army was…

Cut Chemist

Was the DJ group that did mixes for the station every Saturday night. If they had an event like Run DMC Live at the Pasadena Convention Center, they would have Uncle Jamm’s Army opening up doing DJ sets. Egyptian Lover, who is one of the members, had like eight turntables and they would be doing live mega-mixes, where it sounded like a studio creation but they were doing it live. It was pretty progressive for that time. This was like ’84, ’85.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

And they’re playing huge venues.

Cut Chemist

Oh yeah. Huge, almost like forum-size places.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Huge auditoriums. Huge like…

Cut Chemist

Not even like 1,000. Like 10,000.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

When did you get to the point where you really took it seriously as far as from messing around on the turntables to doing production and what-not?

Cut Chemist

I was just a fan of hip-hop music. I never really considered myself somebody that wanted to do it until I heard the Jungle Brothers album, Straight Out The Jungle. It was a record that was made entirely of records. There was no drum programming. There was nothing used other than records to make that. And I was into collecting records. I was into DJing and stuff. I was like, “I can make something like that.” That’s when I met Chali 2na and Marc 7 from Jurassic 5. I think we met around ’87 and we started making demos in very much the same fashion as that album. We would just keep… I remember we used “Watermelon Man” by Herbie Hancock and I was back and forth and they would rap.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

They would just rhyme over it and you would use two copies and just do the beat.

Cut Chemist

Mm-hmm. And then my dad used to write songs so he had a four-track and he gave that to me and we started making demos and stuff with a sampler.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

How did you get from just working with those guys to doing Jurassic?

Cut Chemist

I think it was a long haul of demos… doing demos and getting turned down by labels and it was a real dark time for underground music. We were just kinda… we had to get signed and all this kind of stuff. And then Jurassic 5 was just… I think the first time we put something out independently because we we’re just like, “Screw this. We’re not going to do demos anymore. It’s not really going anywhere.” So we pressed up something ourselves and just put it out there. Sold it out of the trunk of my hatchback. $5.00 a piece and then it got picked up by Blunt/TVT out of New York. That was ’94, so that was when things really, “OK, this is when we’re going to… it’s finally happening.”

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

That was the single…

Cut Chemist

“Unified Revolution.”

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

“Unified Revolution.” You say it was a dark time for underground, in terms of what?

Cut Chemist

I’m talking late ’80’s in LA.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

In LA?

Cut Chemist

If you were doing anything that didn’t sound like LA Dream Team or something, I don’t know, then you weren’t getting put on. We were definitely embracing more of an East Coast thing. It was just hard to find a niche in LA. People weren’t really trying to hear it even though at the time you had NWA but that was more gangster stuff and that was also eclipsing all scenes. There was really no place for conscious East Coast-influenced rap in LA.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Was it just the sonic pull of what people were doing on the East Coast that made it attractive to you? Obviously, Jurassic had a lot of vocal interplay. How did all of those elements come across to you being out there?

Cut Chemist

I think, plain and simply, just me not being from there just seemed so much more alluring and mysterious that I just wanted to know about it. It was foreign to me. I knew that the roots to hip-hop lay in New York so if I wanted to know where I was going I had to learn more about it. So I would collect battle tapes and all that kind of thing.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

You did visit New York regularly, didn’t you?

Cut Chemist

Yeah.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Explain a little bit about your visits to New York in the ’80s and what kind of profound effect that had on you.

Cut Chemist

’86… I was 13. My sister was going away to college at NYU and we would go visit her every summer in New York for like a couple of weeks. I would sit there… First of all I would map out this huge digging trip. Pretty cool for a 13-year-old, I got to say. I would go to the library, tear out all the yellow pages, check them out from all the cities we were going to be driving through. Make sure all the record stores, taped all the radio shows. I would have two boxes in the hotel room while my family would go out and do tourist stuff. I was like, “Hell no. Right here.” Chuck Chillout on one end and Red Alert on the other, press and record on both and just sitting there like this, you know. Bring those tapes back home and play them for people like Terry and we would just bug out off them. That’s how… for Chali and everybody and we’d all sit there and get inspired and make music.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

When you guys finally signed or got your records picked up by the labels and things, at the time you said it was a dark time, it was a difficult time for underground artists in Los Angeles but I think it also became a fertile time because there was other likeminded people. Is that correct?

Cut Chemist

Absolutely. I think once the mid-’90s came around, Fat Beats started putting out a lot of records. The East Coast started putting out tons of independent records. A lot more than they already were in the ’80s. It was just an influx. Huge. It got people everywhere putting out independent records. You had Fellowship. Freestyle Fellowship is pretty much one of my favorite rap groups of all time. Not only because they’re really skilled but they were the first group I’ve ever saw putting out something completely independent. I think the only store that I saw this record in was Triple 5 Soul. It was such bad quality. It was a four-track, unmastered. It had everything going against it but it was really good and they were, they’re a good group. It was a great piece of art and they got signed off it. I kind of said, “Hmm. So it doesn’t really matter. You don’t have to go to a big studio if you just do whatever you want to do and make sure it’s the best it can be. It might be worth putting out.”

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Speaking of the Fellowship, do you want to mention something of the live venues and scenes that catapulted those guys and how that was inspirational to you?

Cut Chemist

There’s a health food store in South Central LA called The Good Life and every Thursday night they had an open mic night. Freestyle Fellowship were one of the main groups that would show up. Others were Kurupt from Dogg Pound, the Pharcyde, Pigeon John, there were so many people who built careers from that place and it was just great. You couldn’t curse on the mic so you had to be really creative about what you said. It was right around the time of the [1992] riots and the Rodney King beating, so it was a really fragile, volatile time in that area. I thought I was rolling deep; it got a little abrasive sometimes for me. I had really long dreadlocks at the time, which was just adding fuel to the fire.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

There were memorable encounters with Nation Of Islam security.

Cut Chemist

Exactly [laughs]. But it was cool, everybody respected what I did because the beats were tight. Chali 2na and the rest of the crew were cool, too, so it was a great time. He [points to Hymnal] formed a crew called Darkleaf and they would come up there with us and we would just roll this big posse, Native Tongues-style and do songs, and we just earned a lot of respect. It was cool… bright fluorescent lights, fresh produce and rappers. It was weird.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So Terry, what was your recollection of that era, and how profound an effect did it have on you?

Hymnal

It was big because, like Lucas was saying, the East Coast influence on West Coast rap, underground rap, was really big. From an Afrocentric point of view and an academic philosophy that came from the East Coast, came from the Nation of Islam, came from the Zulu Nation. It affected everybody listening to KDAY, by the time they were rapping, consciousness was pretty much the main way to advance your skills. It was talking about a life philosophy and it blended well with the scene at The Good Life, which was a health food store, which was about positive vibes and being positive in the community. It was run by a lady called B Hall, and that was her goal, an educational thing, getting the neighborhood kids to stay out of trouble. That was the big piece of it, so I was just happy to be a part of it, week after week, not only practicing their skills but also talking about the latest books, the latest philosophy, the latest esoteric religious ideas that would influence the next rap they were going to write. It was a far cry from the aesthetic of gangsta rap, which had a completely different motivation to it, completely different words.

Cut Chemist

It was almost reactionary to the gangsta rap scene. There was so much of that going on we were all sick of it, so we all rendez-voused every Thursday.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Not being from LA, being from the East Coast, we always thought that’s what LA and California stuff was. But you say Kurupt from the Dogg Pound was there. What sort of interaction was there?

Cut Chemist

Gangster rappers would show up and they would do their gangster shit and we weren’t mad at that. If you had skills that was cool, you just couldn’t curse. So people did their gangster shit and it was cool if it was entertaining, but a big part of what was going on there wasn’t gangster, it was, “Hang your gangster up at the door and come on in.” [Laughter]

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Do you want to drop in any music?

Cut Chemist

Let’s play a little something from the album, or is that jumping the gun?

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

No, that’s a good thing.

Cut Chemist

Maybe we should start with a rap song because we’re talking about rap music. And it’s the new single so I can plug it. This is from The Audience’s Listening, which is my new album that came out a couple of months ago. Shit, sorry. We’re about to hear “The Storm.” Edan and Mr Lif are rapping on it.

(music: Cut Chemist – “The Storm”)

The cool thing about that is it encompasses everything we’ve been talking about. There’s a big influence of ’84/’83-sounding music, obviously, then you have the East Coast MCs. I thought that was appropriate to follow up with.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

This is your first solo record after a pretty lengthy career with the group.

Cut Chemist

I was in J5 for 11 years.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Were there any sort of conscious decisions creatively that you made in approaching this record being from the so-called turntablism… with that background?

Cut Chemist

Yeah, it’s funny because I got signed four years ago to Warner Bros and it was a lot different then, because the climate for DJ music was cool. It was still cool. Now it’s not cool. It just seems like these types of records aren’t really in any more. It’s really poor timing to put out a record like this but whatever. It is what it is. I think the approach I took with a record like this is every song had to be something completely different from anything I’ve done in the past. I actually, on a side note, I just want to thank Red Bull because I’ve been tearing my hair out for the last four years at Red Bull trying to make this record. We were in Rome and I was just like all depressed, trying to teach students. It’s terrible. In Brazil, I recorded a song during the Red Bull session in Brazil and it’s on here too. Everything just had to be different. Otherwise, if I can’t explore, it’s not really worth doing.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

What do you attribute this sort of change in climate to as far as perception?

Cut Chemist

The mash up? I don’t know. It’s such a convenient culture now. Who said that? Trent Reznor? “Music is like McDonald’s or something. They just want it fast and quick.” I kind of agree. I think anything that sounds really over-produced I think is kind of a turn off sometimes. People want sometimes… I kind of feel the same way too. I think things are really minimal right now. Media and marketing… an album has to be a series of ringtones, not songs. This is the perspective of the music industry, I’m not talking about people. I think that makes it hard to put out a record like this, which is highly conceptual, well not highly conceptual, but probably just conceptual enough to not get into it. It’s like, “Well, you know, Warner Bros, hmm, a motivational speaker.” It’s like, “What are we going to do with this?” There’s no chorus. There’s no hook. So, a record like this has a lot of things going against it.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Well, but I mean did you… some of the press I’ve read in bigging up your record has sort of pointed to the fact that there are songs rather than just sort of just exercises. That must have been something that was a conscious decision going into it so that you don’t… Because you’re aware of whatever kind of climate change is out there in terms of…

Cut Chemist

Yeah, I did try to gear it more towards the pop arrangement. There is verse, chorus, verse structures in there. Suggested, but even in the instrumental song there’s a… I took a music arrangement class in college and it was like A-B-A-B-C-A, you know. Verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, verse, chorus, out. A lot of the songs have that arrangement.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Do you want to play something else with… that speaks to that sensibility?

Cut Chemist

Sure. Yeah. Let’s see. Well, “The Storm” definitely defies all of that. That’s just verse, verse, out. I’ll play “My 1st Big Break,” which I think would be the best… Watch for the tempo change though. It’s kind of dangerous.

(music: Cut Chemist - “My 1st Big Break” / applause)

I’m sorry. I made a mistake. That’s actually verse, chorus, verse, bridge, chorus, out.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

What is the big break? What is your first big break?

Cut Chemist

There’s so many connotations of that. I don’t know what you mean. Which one do you want? Which was the first big break I found on a record?

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Well, I don’t know. I guess in relation to this song, why’d you title it that?

Cut Chemist

It’s my first solo record. It’s my first big break. It’s the first big break on a record. It’s the first big break on the album.

Hymnal

It’s a surf song.

Cut Chemist

A surfer’s first big break. It’s really like the first time a DJ gets hooked on digging. You might not be any into it, but when you find that first drum break, you’re like, “Holy shit. I gotta find another one, and another one, and another one.”

And I think that’s why I put the surf guitar sounding thing in there, because it’s the same thing for a surfer. When they catch their first break, they’re hooked and there’s a lot of parallels to surfing and digging. You try to go to the most furthest out beach that no one goes to, to find the breaks that no one can. Same thing for diggers and record stores. Go to the unknown record stores to find those breaks. So I don’t know, the picture on it’s a surfer, for the song on the album. So, I don’t know…

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So, OK. Let’s talk a little bit about some of the challenges of playing out a record like this, speaking of breaks and samples, on a major label. This is the kind of thing that drove you to get into the music and…

Cut Chemist

Now it’s taboo.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Now it’s a little more difficult.

Cut Chemist

Especially, since about a year ago there was a new law. There’s no law about sampling, you just can’t do it. I guess, that’s the law. There’s nothing that says if you take this much you owe this much, there’s no graph as far as the relative proportions, which is a crime in itself, because there should be. If you take a snare drum and somebody catches you they can take 100% of your publishing. That didn’t stop me, because that’s what I do. It took me over a year to clear the samples on the record. I had to take some off because there were quotes that were outrageous. I sampled one word, “listen”, off Rick Rubin’s first record, It’s Yours, and he wanted 50% of my publishing and $15.000. Can you copyright one word? No, but since it’s titled the master you can claim publishing. So I took that off. But I did pretty well, I negotiated a lot of things with people and approached them like a fan instead of my lawyer contacting their lawyer. A lot of the artists that I sampled are really obscure and don’t have a career anymore anyway. I think they were really flattered when I’d call them up and say: “I’m a big fan and used a portion of your song to make my song.” Send it to them, and if it was nothing that was overtly offensive that would turn them off, they weren’t like a born again Christian or something and it had the word “fuck” in it, then we were good.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Was it demoralizing if you hit a snag and had to change something? Obviously, you’ve made decision that you put “listen” in.

Cut Chemist

That “listen” was a big one, and it’s tough because you spent all this time making this song and you’ve got to change it at the last minute. But you’ve just got to find another “listen”.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Now you said you approached a couple of people you sampled as a fan. I think you mentioned you had a situation like that with a particular record of the album. Why don’t you explain something about that?

Cut Chemist

This is an interesting one. I refused to clear a sample because we had trouble finding it and we needed to get the record out. So I just said: “There’s no sample on this song, all instruments are played by me.” As luck would have it, that’s the one song Apple chose to be on their new iPod Nano commercial. “Swell! $30,000,000 campaign. I’ve got to clear this sample, because if these guys see it, they’re going to sue Apple and Apple are going to sue Warner Bros and Warner are going to sue me. No commercial and so on…” So we found them, and it was the Boogie Boys on Mike & Dave records, which was pretty much an out-of-the-trunk operation.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

It’s a great old-school record, but very small distribution.

Cut Chemist

My manager contacted Mike Gee from the Jungle Brothers to contact Red Alert to contact this guy Yoda or something to contact Disco Dave from the Crash Crew and he had to contact his brother, but his brother’s agoraphobic or something, so he had to slide all the paperwork under the door. It was really weird, $200 or something. Anyway, Apple has no clue, they’re going, moving forward with this commercial. I’ve got to clear the sample, time’s ticking, they’re going to launch this thing in a week. I’m on my tour in England getting phone calls, like, “We’re totally screwed.” I was like: “Just roll with it, we can’t let this slide.” They wanted $150,000 because they’re mad that the record was out and we didn’t clear it. “I’m mad because Jay-Z used it on “Girls, Girls, Girls” and we got nothing for it, so you’re going to pay.” Great! So my lawyer said: “They’re demanding you write this letter.” So I’m at a soundcheck in Belfast writing this letter: “Dear Mr. Disco Dave, I sampled your record because I’m a huge fan of your record and ’yadda yadda yadda’ and I sampled it because it has a lot of sentimental value to me.” And this is all true but that didn’t stop them from wanting $150,000. I don’t think they even read the letter, or maybe they did. Anyway, it worked out, I think the day that we talked them way down - I owe my lawyer so much. She kicks ass. It worked out that all the money I made from the commercial I had to give to them, but that’s OK because at least I had a commercial out there – and I think the day they signed the contract was the day it aired, it was crazy, it couldn’t have been any closer. Those are the kinds of weird things. You’ve got be careful, if you don’t clear samples and it’s licensed to a movie or something, then people see it, they’re going to come back and bite you in the ass. I know why Warner Bros are so diligent at looking over my shoulder about the status reports on the samples because there’s a bigger picture than just the record. That’s what music is, it’s all marketing now, it’s not really just music anymore. It’s ringtones and movies and commercials and stuff. I have to remember that.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Do you think the awareness of all that is much higher than it was a few years ago with all the Jurassic albums?

Cut Chemist

The thing with the Jurassic albums is there were all these vocalists on it, so it was much easier to slide all these uncleared things under the table because we had MCs rapping. But here it’s instrumental, so: “Who’s the vocal? You don’t credit anybody and we need to pay them union session money.” Everything is so mathematical. “No, we’ve got to pay them.” Anyways, I’m saying too much information, because I know you guys are recording this, and I’m giving up all my tricks [laughs]. No, there’s always a way around it, if you need to put something out, you find a way.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

But the trade-off is worth it for you to reach out to a broader audience because you could come out on a smaller label who don’t clear anything?

Cut Chemist

I thought it was quite a bold statement to come out on a major label like Warner Bros, who’ve never put out a record like this one, I don’t think. Back in the day they had Cold Chillin’ and Jungle Brothers, which was great, but since then I haven’t seen any DJ records. That, I think, is a bold statement and I think people are reacting to it because the sample clearance is a big issue. But, you know, all samples cleared, wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

You talk about digging and you’ve got a bunch of records here, is there anything you want to play?

Cut Chemist

I was going to play the Apple song. This is called “The Audience’s Listening Theme Song.”

(music: Cut Chemist - “The Audience’s Listening Theme Song” / applause)

The sample in question was the “Listen to the music,” so it was like the main part of the song, so I had to show my cards.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

It wasn’t like something you could’ve changed.

Hymnal

Or I could’ve done it.

Cut Chemist

That came up. My management said: “Why don’t you just redo it with a vocalist?” You really don’t have a clue, do you? [Laughter] This is going to change the entire song and they won’t want it any more.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Do you want to talk a little bit about you guys’ collaboration on this record?

Interviewee: Cut Chemist

Yeah. For sure. We did one song, and we’ll get into that, but Terry was instrumental in me making this record because I just needed a shoulder to cry on, pretty much. And somebody to talk philosophy to because there’s subtle suggestions and concepts in every song kind of threaded throughout, and Terry and I were deep in concentration and thought for the whole making of this record. So yeah, it was really important that, besides that one song, that he stuck around and helped me out with that. Do you want to talk about any of that stuff?

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Yeah, what kind of support did you provide for this gentleman over here?

Hymnal

Like I’ve kind of mentioned, my whole history is really kind of big into the conscious movement of rap and the ramifications of it. So, I stayed in school, stayed taking philosophy classes, religion classes. Got a couple psych degrees and stuff like that.

So it’s like, I was just really good and really aware of some of the ideas that he was trying to portray in the album. And we would talk about it, and, you know, use little tricks, little free-association tricks to just fill in words, create concepts. Just really try to look into every song to try to get it to match the overall concept that we were trying to convey.

There’s a lot of different meanings in the album, and one of the major ones from the very beginning was the idea that the audience is listening, the idea of “Who is the audience and how they’re exactly paying attention.” Like, “What do they want the DJ to do or to be? How’s the relationship? Is it reciprocal? Is it just one way where the DJ’s making you do stuff?”

As you’ll hear in some of the songs, like “The Audience Is Listening Theme Song,” that refrain of, “Listen. Listen to the music. Listen.” It kind of sounds very hypnotic because as you go through the album, you’ll kind of pick it up, that that whole question of, “What’s the role the DJ and the listener? Who’s who? Who do you want to be?” and, “Who am I, as kind of the artist of origin?” and maybe we’ll figure this all out by the end. And believe me, a lot of the concepts of things we collaborated on while we were doing it were just so philosophically complex that it sounded like a very progressive, Polish jazz record or something. It was just really, really out there…

Cut Chemist

It was like word problems and math.

Hymnal

Yeah, like word problems, and so we pulled a lot of that back and the surprising thing out of that kind of dark theme of who’s in control when someone’s DJing… luckily, the end result turned out to be a whole lot of fun. I mean, if you feel that in all these songs, that there’s a lot of really joviality, because what I came to discover with Cut is the statement that I found that he was trying to make or his answer to who’s listening and what’s the role of the DJ, and kind of to provide excitement and fun and kind of a shared mutual experience that’s positive was the ultimate thing that came out of it. That was really fortunate, as opposed to like how a Nine Inch Nails record comes out or something.

Cut Chemist

We did want to make it fun in the end. You know, it was really hard to make, but in the end, songs like “Big Break” they’re just fun. It’s like, you can dance to them. They’re hooky. I think that’s important in music is… I never was the type of guy to make a record that was so complex that you couldn’t get into it. It was a turnoff. Like you said, like Polish… what did you say?

Hymnal

Polish progressive jazz.

Cut Chemist

Progressive. Polish progressive jazz. Because you know, Polish jazz is fine.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

When you started the process, you said it took you four years more or less to finish this. So at the start of that four years, were all these issues flying around in your head even then?

Cut Chemist

Yeah.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Or was it something over the process, because…

Cut Chemist

Even when I did songs like “Lesson Six” it was in my head. You know what I mean? I wanted to make something very… catering to the idea of music theory, tempo changes, complex arrangements from a DJ standpoint. Use classical and jazz theory in DJ music, but it couldn’t strangle itself and be fatiguing to listen to at the same time. It had to be fun. And I think “Lesson Six” was my first experiment with that and it worked. So this album is just an extension of that.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Also, even from a theoretical point of view, but like just like, you talk about philosophy and sort of asking what the DJ’s purpose is, and this and that. What about that was driving this project, or is it something that just came out of it from you guys’ discussion.

Cut Chemist

Well, now one of the first songs I did on the record was a song called “Motivational Speaker.” It’s the first song on the record, and I did that maybe during the Quality Control album. So that was fairly early on. That concept is pretty much all in there. I think I did have that early on. In fact, it’s a really short song, and I’ll play it.

(music: Cut Chemist - “Motivational Speaker” / applause)

It’s like fun conspiracy. It’s telling… It’s only good when people listen, it should be done this way for this kind of people. I thought it was really funny. It was a dialogue record I changed contextually to fit this, fit that theme. So that’s the first song on the record, it kicks off the whole concept of what’s the role? It should be done this way. Music fascism.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

I guess, you must use a lot of different genres of music in what you do. Is there anything you have to give us an idea?

Cut Chemist

Some Polish progressive jazz perhaps? I’m heavily influenced by African music, particularly Ethiopian, and I can play one of the more famous Ethiopian songs because it was featured in a Jim Jarmusch movie, [Broken Flowers]. Now we’re totally changing trajectory, but this is a good song and you need to hear it. This is Mulatu and “Yegelle Tezeta”. I’m probably butchering the pronunciation because it’s Ethiopian.

(music: Mulatu Astatke – “Yegelle Tezeta” / applause)

You guys need to find that guy – he’s around, Mulatu – and bring him to [the] Red Bull [Music Academy]; and when you do, call me. I’m a huge fan of his music, particularly because of the five-scale method and diminishing chord changes and everything. It’s dark, but at the same time it’s really soulful. I think culturally and musically Ethiopia is one of the most isolated places in the world. They don’t really export their type of music. The closest thing to western culture, besides Mulatu going to New York and studying music, was probably Duke Ellington going there and playing. But other than that it was completely isolated.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

How did you first start getting into this stuff, because you did a party in New York this last summer and you played a lot of this kind of stuff?

Cut Chemist

The first time I heard Mulatu was probably the first time all of us did, when Sean Ritchie put out the Vinyl Dogs compilation that had the drum break. His shit just sounded like it was recorded on Mars. It affects a lot of people the same way. Then meeting people like Quantic, he’s a really great DJ and music producer. He and a guy called Miles Cleret run a label called Soundway, which reissues African and Caribbean records. They took a trip to Ethiopia with Brian Cross, a friend of mine, and they turned up loads of Ethiopian music and kept going back there, turning it up. I was just buying it off them, trading it off them, and they were just schooling me on it. So a lot of my knowledge of it comes from them. Then I was meeting people around the world that did the same thing. I actually met a guy – this is a trip – a flight attendant with Lufthansa and he flies around the world, particularly Africa, goes in and buys records. This is a hustle and when he comes in here on a stopover I’m like: “What did you bring?” And he dishes it up and it’s beautiful, man.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

It’s a good connect.

Cut Chemist

Yeah, connecting flight.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Isn’t Mulatu’s Ethiopian stuff on Ethiopian Airlines or something?

Cut Chemist

Ethiopian Airlines sponsored a lot of the recordings of the US stuff. But the Ethiopian pressings are all like… I think there’s only five labels that were made in Ethiopia: Phillips, Amha, Kaifa. I can nerd out all day, but anyway, there’s five labels.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

You mentioned…

Cut Chemist

When we play the song we did together you’ll see how that scale structure fits together.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Well, do you want to play that?

Cut Chemist

I’m gonna play something else.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

You’ve got some cued up?

Cut Chemist

Yeah, this is Indian, this is awesome.

(music: The Black Beats – “The Mod Trade”)

Cut Chemist

That’s by The Black Beats and that’s a song called “The Mod Trade.” I’m into all that kind of moddy ’60s kitschy Americana-sounding stuff; mixed with a little ethnicity is always nice. That one comes from India and that’s more on the psychedelic vibe. Me and him [points to Hymnal], I’m bringing all this ethnic stuff and he’s bringing all this psychedelic, psych-folk and we just sit there for hours playing each other records. “Ok, here’s [inaudible] from Addis.” And he’s, “Here’s Collie Ryan from Santa Barbara.” It’s kind of a trip and it makes for a really interesting dynamic and I think we meet somewhere in the middle on this one, it bridges the gap between the two genres.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Is that more or less the process? “Go ahead and check this out.” That’s how the tracks start?

Cut Chemist

Pretty much. I think we just do it to diffuse our mind state from the day. We won’t sample any of those records but they’ll be swimming in our subconscious when we talk about the song that we’re going to do. In some cases we will sample it, but not all the time.

Hymnal

This tune is called “What’s The Altitude” and like [Cut Chemist] says, it’s pretty much a convergence of all his esoteric world beats that he’s coming with and from a vocal standpoint, I wanted to tell a story. It’s basically a boy/girl story, but the elements that it has in it are of garage rock. You’ll see that it has that sort of White Stripes-ish sound in terms of the beat. In terms of the vocal you’ll hear some of the Native Tongues influence, the abstract lyricism, and the refrain “it’s alright” came from listening to the Velvet Underground a lot. If you know Velvet Underground, you’ll know Lou Reed sings, “It’s gonna be alright” in just about every song he sings, because he’s coming down from something at that time [laughs]. Rock & roll. Take a listen, you’ll hear all those influences and I hope you like it.

Cut Chemist

This is as if Mulatu Astatke joined a punk band.

(music: Cut Chemist and Hymnal – “What’s The Altitude”)

Hymnal

Surprisingly, or not so surprisingly, that song was also featured on a More Cowbell website.

Cut Chemist

Really? Cool… awesome.

Hymnal

Listening to that song you should hear a lot of influences. A phrase like “better living through chemistry” was a tagline I used from the Eli Lilly Chemical Company. The hippies flipped it to use as a catchphrase to encourage people to use LSD. I dropped subtle things in there that are cues to that time, that was an inspirational time for me and I like digging for music during that period.

In a lot of ways, psychedelic music comes from the same place conscious rap comes from, a desire to transcend adversity, to dig into the darkest parts of yourself and go down into the darkest parts and bring something up from that. It’s like the symbol of the lotus, the root of the lotus being down in the dark mud, but yet the flower is up and open to the air. That kind of music brings it out in the people who listen to it. The way in which it seems to flash forward to today is contemporary neo-tribalism or neo-paganism. A lot of you out there probably make electronic music, hip-hop music. The scene and the people that you’re entertaining, they’re often there with their psyches enhanced in some way, whether it’s alcohol or marijuana or acid or X, or nothing at all. Most of the time they’re coming together to hear the music we’re playing it’s to transcend whatever adversity they’re going through at the time and find a new place, come together in a union in that new place.

You can see the remnants of psychedelic culture offshoot into rave culture. If you look at the philosophies of Timothy Leary for example, he espoused a kind of conservative religious – if you can use the word conservative in the same sentence with Timothy Leary – he had more of a conservative view of dropping out, this religious kind of demeanor around the psychedelics. Whereas Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters had more of a freak-out philosophy, which is: drop your acid, play your music really loud, do it all at once, play your visuals, show the gel slides, go to town. See what actually happens.

If you want to read more about that stuff there’s Tom Wolfe’s Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test will tell you all about that time. Timothy Leary wrote many psychedelic prayers, along with records. The Merry Pranksters also had records with The Grateful Dead, tripping and all that stuff. All of that is very, very well documented, but if you look at the modern dance culture you’ll see both those vibes in that culture now: the sacred spirit, spiritual symbols and the idea of freak-out, balls-to-the-wall experience.

Where that fits in as regards creating music, we try to take these pieces whether they’re samples or synth patches or sounds, we try to take them from one source, combine them together and ultimately try to create something that’s a third thing, that’s new, unique and different, that’s apart from the songs we used to put the thing together. In my opinion, that’s how that music has definitely influenced me.

If you want to know more about creation from that standpoint, there are books by Carl Jung on Creativity And The Active Imagination that I would definitely recommend checking out. His idea of the transcendent function is top-notch, because it involves pulling something from your conscious to your subconscious to create a third thing that’s different and distinct, because if we all just pull from our sound modules and our samples and left things as they are today then all music would sound alike. But somehow we all take these things, you could give any one of us the same set of samples and we would all create something new. And that’s kind of the symbol of how that function works. So…

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

How did you first get into this psychedelic stuff?

Hymnal

Well, I was about 13 years old. [Laughs] A lot of my knowledge about that came just from collecting weird records. I mean, really when I first started off going by covers of records was something that was really big for me, and always with psychedelic records, they would have the real trippy, kaleidoscopic drawings and things like that. I picked that stuff up and what I just started to notice was the similarity in the lyrics to the philosophy of conscious rap. The idea of transcending growth. Going to a higher place, a more unified place and things like that.

But, I been collecting that stuff for a while, and for those of you out there that sample, you know a lot of the open drum breaks come from rock records. So those are big for collecting, but over time I’ve just got into them, got into the underlying philosophy of it, the people and the movements and stuff like that. It would have a big influence on the stuff that I started to write. Not only doing that kind of stuff, participating in electronic music culture, hippie culture in the States and stuff like that, but just always, it just influenced me. It brought me here.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Were your parents hippies?

Hymnal

My brother’s a big ol’ hippie, man.

Cut Chemist

My parents had a cornfield and a weed marijuana patch. Does that count? [Laughs] I’m pretty sure they were hippies. Are we recording this? Shit. Sorry, Mom.

Yeah, big time. My dad wrote folk songs and they used to cook weed and I was like, “What is that,” you know? “What’s in the oven? What’s for dinner?” It was a real trippy… You know, in Hollywood in the ’70s. I remember my dad had stories because he grew up in Hollywood his whole life and, you know, he used to give rides to the Manson followers. He was like, “Wait a minute, who was that on the TV? I just gave her a ride.” He’s lived there his whole life and hearing him talk about his experiences through all that. They used to sell soap with Amway to The Roxy so I used to be like, this little four-year-old in diapers in the backseat while they were at The Roxy, doing something, I don’t know. Hanging out with some people. So they were.

Hymnal

For those of you who are interested, the Beat writers, William Burroughs for example, has some of the first sampled loop experiments that were out there. He pioneered, along with Brion Gysin in North Africa, Turkey, out there with the Sufi mystics when Burroughs was living exiled out of the States and had a bad heroin habit. He was doing a lot of tape recorder experiments where he would tape on multiple tape recorders his poems. Then he would take those tapes, cut them up, then restructure them, basically to take the same phrase and then do all the permutations of the phrase.

You can find some of these early experiments online. You’ll hear some of these early William Burroughs sound collages and some of his experiments with Brion Gysin, they’re really, really interesting. He was also into the idea, loosely you could say, of the transcendent function. With his cut-up method, he’d take Bible verses and things like that and cut them up and change them. Kind of like refrigerator magnet poetry and do all the permutations of the words. He and Brion Gysin, I guess along with the Sufi mystics and a lot of hash, believed that there was magic that would come out of the recombining of words. Take that for what it’s worth. Maybe it’s kind of naive, but a little bit of that is what we all expect to find when we put together the things that we put together.

Cut Chemist

Every country has its own form of that. Brazil has Tropicália, which follows the same philosophies. I’m sure people like Pierre Henry and people in France, Jean-Jacques Perrey, and Kingsley, and people like that were doing something similar, all relatively around the same time as well. I think that should be stated too.

Hymnal

Right and there were a lot of artists who came out to North Africa at that time. Everybody was into this stuff, the new consciousness, the new way. Things that would later become new age philosophy and electronic music culture. [Cut Chemist], actually has a sample here, one of the records that came out of those sessions. I didn’t know that there was anything recorded but he actually found a Nathan Davis record from his time in Turkey.

Cut Chemist

When he went out with Burroughs and all those guys. But there’s nothing that really has any evidence of electronic and cut and pasting, it’s all just straight jazz.

Hymnal

It’s just free and consciousness.

Cut Chemist

They were all there at the same time when they did this.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

You mentioned that you saw parallels between that stuff and the conscious rap. Do you say conscious rap from the classic era? I was just curious to know of where you hear conscious rap now.

Hymnal

Now, a lot of the just the general underground aesthetic with rap and DJ culture is on that tip. It’s like, “Let’s all get to a better place, let’s have fun doing it. Let’s break our heads open a little bit, but at the end of the day, we’re all going to a better place.” I think in a lot of ways, that is one of the top-five signature things that makes underground music, underground music, is that desire for transcendence. Pop music tends to define what that is for you.

There are certain people who like to have that defined for them and others who have a more expansive view. We have our share of fellows like The Roots and Common, and in some senses Kanye is a representative of that type of aesthetic that people can take in a kind of general, mainstream way. Dance music culture in general, with the repetitive beats, the kind of tribalist style of the drums. It’s all kind of evocative of pulling something out of you from a kind of an ecstatic trance point of view.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Is there anything else you want to throw in or does anyone have any questions at this point?

Cut Chemist

I’ve pretty much run out of stuff, but if anyone has any questions.

Audience member

I’ve just given Cut Chemist one of my mixtapes and the very last track of it is actually a cut-up of William Burroughs and Timothy Leary. It is just 50 seconds but it is a good illustration.

Cut Chemist

You want me to play it?

Audience member

Yeah, play it, everybody will understand the words, so…

Cut Chemist

[opening CD] I like your packaging by the way.

Audience member

Thanks. Basically, they were just discussing for about an hour, so I took their words and made them say something else.

Cut Chemist

Track 27?

(music: audience member’s mixtape)

That’s awesome.

[applause]

Thanks for that, I’m going to have fun listening to that one, man.

Audience member

Sometimes you use a sample and you cannot find the source or the people, so you just go for it. And if someone appears they take the benefit. Is this how it works?

Cut Chemist

Yeah, it’s weird. If you sample from the record there are two issues: publishing and mastering. If you remake someone else’s music then that’s a publishing issue. “Oh, you ripped off the chords of my song, it sounds a lot like my song.” Usually, you can fight this because there are so many notes it takes to make a composition copyrightable, but if you take something off a master and they can place it, “Oh, I know that’s off my record that I put out,” then you really don’t have a case at all. They can get you for whatever they want.

Audience member

In the Arab world we often have old singers and very old records, and sometimes we sample but there is no way we can find the people. The system there, you buy a song from a composer and then he gives up the rights.

Cut Chemist

Where is this?

Audience member

In the Middle East and in Ethiopia and in Africa. I was wondering, we sample old songs and we want to sample them because we are reviving this traditional music. But we don’t know where to search. What happens when they appear? They can stop the record?

Cut Chemist

When you fight it in court sometimes the court is lenient and says, “Your claim is too outrageous, you should only ask for this much.” That happens quite a lot. If someone wants $1,000,000, then they have to calculate how much the record really made and make a reasonable deduction based on how much it made. That’s usually what will happen, but then again I can’t make you any promises.

Audience member

So, you recommend that we go for it anyway.

Cut Chemist

Oh, hell yeah!

Hymnal

Are we recording this [Laughter]?

Cut Chemist

You can’t stop art. I think as much as the industry tries to set rules, we’re an untamed beast. You can’t stop people from trying to make art. I’m going to keep sampling forever. Fuck anybody that says I can’t do it. I can and I will. Everybody should do the same, so go for it.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Anybody else?

Audience Member

Alright there. First off, I just want to say, you know that first track, the one with Lif. It really reminds me of “Stroke of Death” from Supreme Clientele, Ghostface?

Cut Chemist

Oh really?

Audience Member

Yeah, really. It’s just got that energy to it. That’s a big up there because that LP is like…

Cut Chemist

Yeah, that Ghostface is dope.

Audience Member Yeah, it’s like I used rotate three, four times around you know?

Cut Chemist

Not to cut you off, but that’s where old-school rap meets psychedelia, where everything’s just in your face and really not trying to be afraid of anything. Which I think Ghostface and that whole crew was all about that philosophy. Madlib is about that. I really respect the hip-hop people that are willing to take it there, because there’s not many of them, so thanks.

Audience Member

Yeah that’s definitely a big up. Just on a lighter note, I just wanted to ask if you’ve ever played in a women’s toilet? What did you think of it if you did?

Cut Chemist

Have I played records?

Audience Member

Well, played whatever.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Thank you for the clarification. Hold on a second, I’m going to give you this mic because your other one’s cutting out.

Cut Chemist

I have played in a women’s toilet actually, not 12 hours ago or whatever it was. At Honkytonk’s. Apparently the hip-hop room was the women’s bathroom. That’s great. That’s encouraging. The house room, that was the main room and we got the women’s bathroom. Yeah, to answer your question, I have played in a women’s bathroom. Thank you. What has this career become?

Audience Member

I just want to make a comment about what you are saying… Just that I personally do everything bootleg since four years, but I have a job aside, but I don’t care. What is good is by doing that over the years, I got respect from some people who gave me the right at the end.

Cut Chemist

I think different countries treat it differently. America’s just like everything else that happens there, it’s just negative. People just try to take advantage over there. There’s a lot more respect, in Italy for instance, people who have been sampled are like, “Oh no, it’s cool. I like it.” Sometimes they’re like, “I wish they would have credited my name on the record.” France, I’m sure is the same. In Poland, I cleared a sample in Poland. A Polish record and that was a little weird because I guess the state owns everything so the artist really has no claim to their own music. I had to go through the state and all this crazy shit. Yeah, every territory is different, they treat it differently so, all the more reason to go for it.

Audience Member

Yeah, should go for it.

Audience Member

There is a sunshine story about that. I have a friend in London who made bootleg of a Whitney Houston song and it got really popular. I think her record company did a smart thing. They flew him over to make a remix, formally. So there are those kinds of studios too.

Cut Chemist

That’s awesome, if you can’t beat ’em join ’em. Wow, that’s big up on Whitney Houston’s record company, man. That’s cool. Did it come out?

Audience Member

Yeah, it came out.

Cut Chemist

It did? Was it a big remix and happy ending?

Audience Member

Happy ending.

Cut Chemist

Great, excellent. Dreams do come true sometimes. Anybody else? What is this? Is this the first lecture of the whole series?

Audience Member

Do you know the Mulatu remix, by the way? Of Zero dB?

Cut Chemist

Wait a minute. Somebody was talking about a re-edit of the one I played by Bugz in the Attic, or somebody. Not Bugz in the Attic, not Bugz in the Attic, somebody. Is that girl Karen here?

Audience Member

It’s actually Zero dB who did it. Of course, it’s a bootleg.

Cut Chemist

It is a bootleg.

Audience Member

It’s a 12-minute long edit of Mulatu Astatke. It’s a European thing, we’ve listen. It’s a mate of mine, I make music with him, with Zero dB. He’s made a fantastic edit and it’s no cracking.

Cut Chemist

Oh shit, I’ve got to hear that.

Audience Member

Should get it.

Cut Chemist

Yeah, we’ll rap about that afterwards. Cool.

Audience Member

About this Ethiopian music. It has been reissued by some French guy and he has dedicated his life to this music.

Cut Chemist

The Ethiopiques series. Is his name François?

Audience member

I don’t remember his name.

Cut Chemist

The Ethiopiques series is a wealth of information. Not everything is reissued on there, though, he missed a few good ones. What volume are they up to now, is it 38?

Audience member

34.

Cut Chemist

… 34 volumes of Ethiopian music, it’s a series called Ethiopiques out of France. I would suggest if you’re into this type of music to go and pick them all up. They range from everything from Ethiopian soul to traditional. It’s a good place to start.

Audience member

And they are remastered.

Cut Chemist

And they are remastered, sometimes off the tapes rather than the records so they sound better.

Audience member

This is getting back to the sample side of things. A lot of musicians I’ve worked with over the years have taken samples and either pitched them up really high or really down to obscure the sample. That’s the way they believe they can avoid potential copyright issues. In your experience has that been the case?

Cut Chemist

No. They employ music specialists and they can subpoena your sessions to do a wave-file analysis because everything is recorded on a computer now, which is visual as well as audio. Now it’s not your ear. You can match the file by looking at it, so if it’s the same, they’ve got you. I haven’t heard of any cases of that actually happening, but that’s the talk in the rumor mill. If you slowed it down they can go in and see what you did, the plug-in you used. It’s a mess, I wouldn’t get away with stuff by slowing it down or speeding it up.

Audience member

So if they want to get you, they can basically do it.

Cut Chemist

Yes. It may cause somebody to be distracted from recognizing their work, but if they still recognize it they can go in and fuck you up.

Hymnal

The popularity of the tune matters as well. If you’re doing an underground release you can pretty much go for it as you need to. The unfortunate side of that is if something happens and the record becomes popular, then everybody wants to capitalize on the samples that you used.

Cut Chemist

I think they said something like, if you’re under 50,000 units sold, then don’t even worry about it. It’s not generating enough income for them to trip. I think there was a Stones Thrown record that came out on vinyl only, so it probably sold about five copies or something, but it got licensed to a movie and the guy saw it. How much money does a movie make? So he went after them, he went after Stones Throw. That’s when you’ve got to worry, when it’s in some kind of marketing campaign.

Audience member

Do you ever use live stuff?

Cut Chemist

Yeah, there’s a lot of live playing around the samples, it’s just disguised, you can’t really discern which is which. It’s probably half and half. I used a few people. I used Breakestra, who maybe some of you have heard of, he’s a friend of mine from Los Angeles, a guy called Miles [Tackett] He’s very gifted, he can play any instrument you can throw at him. He played guitar and bass, I had my engineer play a lot of bass on it and this kid named David Stromberg played a Cuban guitar called a tres on one of the songs. Then I had a complete samba band in Brazil record for the song “The Garden”. So, there’s quite a bit. Going once, going twice, ah, that one.

Audience member

I was just wondering, over the period of time that you’ve been into music and collecting and what-not, how much rap from outside the obvious places, LA and New York, did you get to hear? I’m aware that KDAY did used to play a bit, but I’m not sure how much. Did you hear stuff from Paris, the UK, Japan?

Cut Chemist

Only when I started touring with Jurassic 5, when I started going to those places and buying rap from there. I think I got into English stuff because my friend went to England in the late ’80s and brought back Tim Westwood tapes, which is their big mix show. Squeezed in between Tribe and whatever would be Demon Boyz and Hijack and what was that other one?

Audience member

London Posse?

Cut Chemist

Nah, the really good one, but never mind. So I was like, “England gets down, too!” The Cookie Crew. She-Rockers. Then in France I heard Shurik’n, then there was a really great Dutch rapper I bought once.

Audience member

I’ve noticed a lot of people only get to hear it when they reach that country. It’s a shame because they talk about how hip-hop’s this worldwide community, this worldwide movement, but it’s not actually worldwide in itself. You’ve still got that insular thing, people who are just on their New York shit. I understand that everybody’s got to rep their hoods, their ends, whatever. But I’m still waiting for somebody to work with… KRS and Chuck D have spoken about this unified 5,000 leaders by 1990 or 2000 working together, but it still hasn’t happened, it happens in small pockets. There’s no outreach from a big platinum mainstream American rapper to someone in, say, Denmark… because hip-hop is in Denmark. Do you see a time when that happens, or do you yourself plan to do it?

Cut Chemist

Kind of a “We’re All In The Same Gang” worldwide version, a posse cut?

Audience member

Yeah, a better record than that, though.

Cut Chemist

Self-Destruction.

Audience member

Yeah.

Cut Chemist

“Same Gang” was made in LA, man. Have I thought of it? No, I haven’t, but I think it would be a good idea. Something like that would probably happen here. You have people from all over the world, you have gear, so that’s your task should you choose to accept it, you should all make a song together. “We are the world. We are the Red Bull Music Academy…”

Audience Member

All right. I’m over here. Sorry. I just wanted to ask you…

Cut Chemist

Oh no, no, no. Is that Torsten? No. Go ahead. Sorry. I thought it was. I really did for a second. I could only see this much of you.

Audience Member

Oh OK. Sorry. I’ll sit up.

Cut Chemist

There you go.

Audience Member

I’m a DJ and I obviously go digging for a lot of records. I was curious after you played the Ethiopian stuff, do you have any other preferred music from… Whatever that we wouldn’t have heard of? From countries that don’t put out that much music internationally? Do you have any preferred areas like in Asia or in Africa?

Cut Chemist

Well, the sample for the song we did, I didn’t bring any. I’m sorry. Just for example, the song that’s based off “What’s the Altitude?” is Indonesian. I do try to find records from odd countries that normally you wouldn’t think, “Oh. There’s a Cambodian psychedelic rock record. Yeah. I really want that.” I don’t have any examples for you.

Audience Member

Where would you go digging for Indonesian music?

Cut Chemist

To find stuff like that? Straight to the source. You might want to check on eBay of that country. eBay dot… Cambodia… Ca or whatever. Turkey. The only problem is it’s all in their own language especially when you get to eBay Korea. It’s like I don’t know how to read Korean characters, so you’re pretty much screwed there unless they have pictures of the covers. Mostly when you tour around the world you want to stop and nose around a little bit and ask people where the records are, which is proven to be a harder and harder task every year. That’s how you get those records.

I think a lot of stuff I get here in Australia, oddly enough, I have a friend that for some reason because it’s in this part of the world that here’s India, here’s Singapore, and then Indonesia, it kind of funnels down through here somehow to Australia. I see quite a bit of it here. I haven’t seen any African stuff. I do get quite a bit of it here in Australia.

Audience Member

All right. Thanks.

Cut Chemist

Mm-hmm.

Audience Member

Hello.

Cut Chemist

There you go.

Audience Member

I don’t even think I need a mic. You were saying it took you four years to do a record. I’m just asking were you signed at that time or did you make it and then license it to a label or did you actually get the deal and then make the record?

Cut Chemist

I got the deal first.

Audience Member

You got the deal first. Were they patient for four years? I know the way that labels are right now.

Cut Chemist

I’m really surprised I’m still signed to Warner Bros because they’re the first label that’ll ax you. I think they do annual sweeps of artists. The business affair guys, they’ll look at charts and go, “Who isn’t making us any money? This guy’s been signed for four years.”

Audience Member

What did you tell them? Sorry.

Cut Chemist

Well the guy that signed me was the president of the label, so I was safe as kittens basically. It felt good, but I will say this. My option did change from a three-album deal to a one-off, which isn’t so good because there’s no next record really, so they don’t need to invest any money in this one to make the second one more successful which means that they’re not really enthusiastic about marketing and stuff for this record because it’s the only one. They have the option to do another one based on this one’s success, but they also have no option. They also can turn it down, just be like, “You’re not our artist any more.” I think that was a result of taking so long.

Audience Member

Do you find that your market, if you know, what do you think is your biggest market listening to it? I used to train in dance. I can see a lot of people who dance really getting into what you’ve just played. Do you see it as hip-hop heads, dancers? Do you know what is your main audience is?

Cut Chemist

Dance probably. Electronic. Dance. I think the minute you say hip-hop it’s pretty… I can speak from American terms only because that’s where I live, but it’s very closed-minded. When you say hip-hop there’s expectations that go into that and I think the people that buy hip-hop records, I don’t want to say they’re narrow-minded, but I kind of do. I’ll say it. I’m kind of like that. I know when somebody says “rap record” I have a kind of an idea of what to expect. I think when you say “dance” it’s a little bit more open to interpretation and I think that audience in general is a little bit more open, to try new things. They are willing to explore more probably because of what he said about the psychedelic movement and its parallels. They’re just more into exploration, whereas hip-hop not so much. My biggest market would probably be the dance, electronica. That’s how I would like to see it under iTunes or something. I think it says hip-hop, though.

Audience Member

Thanks.

Cut Chemist

Mm-hmm.

Audience Member

Thank you. You’re used to the more independent labels and dealings with more smaller companies and then you did your thing with Warner Bros. Aside from the financial stuff, what did you see was a big difference in the way that you brought your music to them?

Cut Chemist

The way I brought it to them?

Audience Member

Yeah. Did you give them a different sound or did you feel that you had to give them something a little different or you just did you?

Cut Chemist

I just did me. I was very fortunate to have my point person there. Not the guy who signed me, but production manager I guess was his official title, but he was my liaison between me and the company. He was just really progressive minded. He liked a lot of cool shit. He was really into Meat Beat Manifesto and all this cool progressive dance stuff. He let me do whatever I wanted. I challenged him. I tried to bring him stuff that he wouldn’t be into. This is way too far left. When I brought him “Big Break” which is that second one I played, he was like, “This is a single.” I’m like, “A single? You can actually market this as some kind of pop form?” He’s like, “Oh hell yeah.” I just did me.

Audience Member

That’s dope.

Cut Chemist

Yeah. It was really cool. Especially in a place like Warner.

Audience Member

What about…

Cut Chemist

Of course he left, now. When my record came out he went to Interscope and everything’s been an uphill struggle ever since.

Audience Member

You were also saying when we spoke yesterday about you would do things different or you didn’t like the way they marketed the record.

Cut Chemist

It’s still early on in the campaign. Just numbers-wise, budget wise, what they’re giving me for videos and stuff it’s kind of not that good. Yeah. It’s all based on not having a next album to follow up with. There’s so many reasons and I don’t know half of them why things are the way they are over there. It is early on, and I think things with like the iPod commercial and whatever things could look up. Sales could boost.

Audience Member

Would you do anything differently next time around?

Cut Chemist

Yeah. Put a leaving man clause in my contract which means whoever signs me if they leave, or if my point people leave, then I get to leave because the problem is when you go to a label, and this happens more often than not, the people that see your vision, that signed you, they’re not going to work there forever. What happens when they leave and they pass your project off to somebody who doesn’t see the vision? Those people are just going to not treat it like whatever and they’re not going to sign off on the money you need to market it because it takes a lot of money to market something like this especially in a label like Warner Bros. You work for Stones Throw, Stones Throw knows exactly who their market is and they strategically go after that market every time, and they sell units. Warner Bros, their market gamut is so wide that my record just gets thrown in the sea of Green Day and Madonna or whoever. All their other acts and it’s like there’s no real… they don’t know where it’s supposed to land.

Audience Member

It also seems like that could be in your benefit too because…

Cut Chemist

It could be if they spend the money to make the people that listen to those groups pay attention to this. They have to know this exists in order to know about it in order to buy it. That just doesn’t happen because they’re too busy buying Green Day. How are you going to be like, “I’m over here.”

Audience Member

Right.

Cut Chemist

Jumping in front of Tré Cool. It’s kind of tough. It takes ends. They could or at least they need to be creative about it.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Do you think that the Apple thing, though… That’s significant.

Cut Chemist

Yeah. I thought so. Of course this is what they said. Yeah, but those things don’t sell records. I was like damn, man. Apple just… they’re supporting me. Why can’t you guys? What’s going on? No, no, no. I’m really making it out to be a lot worse than it really is. They’re like, “Yeah. Let’s try to capitalize on this by making that song a single.” I’m like, “That song a single? Wow.” It’s doing well on CMJ, so people are like, “Oh. People actually like this crap. Maybe we should start paying attention like the radio promotion people.” Like, “Yeah. We’re kind of getting into this now.” It has helped.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Would you say from your experience the active time in terms of how long the company pays attention to your project and works it is going to be different as well. You have a shorter window of opportunity.

Cut Chemist

One thing they seem to be realizing, which I think too, is this isn’t a record that you just blow it up and then it’s over. This is a slow process of working this record, perhaps a year-and-a-half to two or whatever. That’s cool. I don’t think they’re going to slow down on trying to make it work any time soon. I think they’re going to just keep pushing it along. Maybe it won’t sell 100,000 units in a month or whatever, but it may in a year or something and they said that’s cool. They’re not trying to sell a lot of records because people don’t sell records any more. It’s all downloads. They’re hip to that, now. That’s cool.

Audience Member

Do they give you an idea of what their plan is in terms of marketing? Do you get a say in it?

Cut Chemist

That’s one thing I have to constantly ask them is to diagram me a marketing plan from A to Z about this album. First single, second single, third single. How are you going to work it? Where? They’ve never done that, even though I constantly ask them how are you going to work this to alternative radio? College radio? They just throw it out there and see what sticks.

Audience Member

You don’t get much input into what you’d like to achieve, what you’d like to see?

Cut Chemist

I tell them. That’s all I can really do. I can’t really go in there like Suge and hang the guy by his ankles out the window. I could try it, but I’m pretty sure security would rough me up a little.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Not that he would ever do anything like that.

Cut Chemist

Not that I would ever do anything like that.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Any other questions?

Audience Member

I guess you can worry. In fact, I was on the two sides. I’ve been in the major for a while and then having my independent PR company, I know that, sorry to say, it’s not a good sign when it happens like that. Maybe you should have released the album a bit before when there was the other boss.

Cut Chemist

Probably, but the music wasn’t ready then. It would have been something I wasn’t happy with. I’d rather put out a record and be totally happy with it and not be successful than a crappy record be really successful.

Audience Member

The really important point is that especially for when you sign in a major is that experience that with my record is that you don’t get released in the other countries. They don’t take the option because they think it’s a too underground record. For example, that’s what happened to me. It’s sold 4,000 worldwide. Just the executive production…

Cut Chemist

What territories turned it down?

Audience Member

Sorry.

Cut Chemist

What territories turned your record down?

Audience Member

It was released in 10 territories, but it’s originally from Universal Jazz France. The other territories, obviously, the other Universal didn’t get it. Even the one we released it to please the Universal Jazz France, for example, and the others just didn’t pay attention to it. Basically that’s a main problem is that it’s better I think to be in a big independent label but be released everywhere with a good promotion everywhere than being on a major who doesn’t really control the other territories in a way. They cannot push them to release it. I don’t know if you have commitments from all the territories to release your album. That’s my question actually.

Cut Chemist

Oh, OK. What’s the question, I’m sorry?

Audience Member

My question is, is your record going to be released worldwide?

Cut Chemist

Yeah, it should be. I mean, it is. As far as I know. I know it’s at least in Japan. Usually when they say they tell me the UK that should mean Europe, all of Europe. America, yeah. Canada, yeah. Japan. Europe.

Audience Member

Australia?

Cut Chemist

Yeah, I think we’re good. It’s all Warner. I think I feel more comfortable sometimes when it’s not Warner. It’s licensed to different companies in different territories. I like that because I think it almost creates a competition between the companies. It’s like, “Oh, well, France is blowing it up. You’re tripping, so you need to pick up the pace.” Or more independent labels who know their markets sometimes. That’s what we did with the J5 EP. We were signed at Interscope in the US but we licensed it to Play It Again Sam in the UK. It really worked out well. Both were really successful. I think that’s better.

Audience Member

Do you have your own studio?

Cut Chemist

Yeah.

Audience Member

Do you still need a producer as for producing the record? Or you just need a producer for the license and the distribution?

Cut Chemist

I mean, I could do everything myself if I wanted to. I could record a song, mix it, press it up down the street, and sell it out of my car. That’s how we started. We did. We did exactly that. My time is short because I have to tour and so I don’t really have time to do all that stuff. I kind of need a company to do it for me.

Audience Member

You need the company to pay the time for you to…

Cut Chemist

To manufacture and distribute.

Audience Member

But you can arrive with a product that you just license.

Cut Chemist

Oh, I see. I could. Yeah, I could do that. I always feel funny about that though because I almost feel like I need to find a home first in order to make my music. Otherwise it’s like, I wouldn’t feel motivated to do anything. If Warner Bros wasn’t on my back saying, “Where’s the record?” I probably never would have finished it. I just would have been like, “Oh, one day I’ll sell this to a company and it’ll be great,” but it would never happen.

Audience Member

But you took four years anyway.

Cut Chemist

What’s that?

Audience Member

You took four years anyway.

Cut Chemist

Yeah, well I’m saying if I wasn’t signed I would have taken 10, 11, 12, you know? It would just have been…

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

It’s all relative.

Cut Chemist

It’s all relative. Yeah, four years. Mind you, I was in two groups and touring all the time, two bands. Cut me some slack. I left my group for this record, man. Poor me.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

You were doing Red Bull a bunch of times.

Cut Chemist

Yeah, I was doing Red Bull a bunch of times. Yeah. Anything else?

Audience Member

You can have several cans for free.

Cut Chemist

Yes, I can.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Anybody else? One more in the back.

Audience member

I want to know what kind of software do you use for your production?

Cut Chemist

Pro Tools. A very primitive version of Pro Tools, which is like TDN56… What is it? I don’t know. Yeah, I use Pro Tools for no other reason than that’s what somebody turned me onto. If they’d shown me Vegas or Reason, then I probably would have done that. It was just what the last guy was doing, so I was like, “OK, that sounds cool.” For some of it I used an eight-track reel-to-reel. I ditched my drum machine, I used to use an MPC 2000 to make beats. Not any more. I use a CDJ sometimes for pitch-shifting, which is cool. Then I realized I can do that on Pro Tools anyway, so what’s the point?

Audience Member

Thank You.

Audience Member

Hi, I just wanted to ask, do you still have the same passion for music now than you had years ago when you first discovered these records and amazing music?

Cut Chemist

Hmmm.… If I hesitate that long it must mean no. No, I do. I think after… This was an incredibly hard experience for me and incredibly personal because it’s such a personal record for me that I’m almost completely spent. It’s kind of a bad time to ask me, because I’m not really ready to pull all my passion together to make another record or to really appreciate stuff. I mean, I love buying records and I get real excited about it, but to give you an example, I’m not buying as many records as I used to. I’m not as active going out and digging, so there must be a reason for that. Maybe that’s it. Maybe records are too expensive, maybe they’re not out there like they used to be and I don’t want to spend the time. I don’t know.

Yeah, I’m not quite as excited but I still get jazzed up when I hear a really good record and I want it, you know what I mean? I think it will be a while. It’ll probably be another year before I start really actively making another solo record and really getting excited about it. I mean, I can’t wait till that happens.

Audience Member

Thank you.

Audience member

Do you cut and edit after you record your scratch? These things you program in Pro Tools.

Cut Chemist

Yeah. That’s a “yes” or “no” question, right? Do I edit my scratching, is that what you’re asking?

Audience member

I don’t know if I’m right, but I think Kid Koala records a lot of times until he gets it exactly right.

Cut Chemist

I get what you’re saying. So if I record a scratch and it’s kind of offbeat do I fudge it a bit by using Pro Tools? Am I cheating? Is that what you want to know? [Laughs] Because Kid Koala doesn’t cheat! He does, lady, he cheats big time [laughs].

Audience member

Sorry.

Cut Chemist

No, it depends. I do cheat a little bit. My only justification is, can I recreate it live later? Yes, every scratch on my record I can recreate in my show. Maybe when I’m recording it I’m not quite there yet. I put my arrangement hat on first, and I need to do that in the computer, I can’t really improvise. I’ll do a scratch and then I’ll think how interesting can I make it in the computer. Maybe I’ll recreate it in the computer. Sometimes I won’t, I’ll just leave it as it is, knowing I can do it in a show if somebody asks me to. Whatever works, I don’t really have any rules about how I do it.

Audience member

[Inaudible]

Cut Chemist

There’s this turntablist’s mentality sometimes about, “No, you can’t do that”. I think it was Premier, he started it. He does all his cuts live. They’re razor-sharp and really funky. Did he do it live? I don’t fucking care if he did or he didn’t, it sounds great and I’ve seen him do it live, so show and prove, it’s all good. But Kid Koala is great, he’s one of my favorites.

Audience Member

Did you always have your head around the engineering side of things when you started making beats and songs? Or is that something that you were really interested in wrapping your head around?

Cut Chemist

I’m sorry, engineering?

Audience Member

You know, like…

Cut Chemist

Like mixing and stuff.

Audience Member

Yeah, yeah.

Cut Chemist

Mixing sounds. I was into it because it was something I had to do. I was never really into engineering. I never went to school for it. I just know I needed to do it to put my songs on tape. Oh, add a little high, OK. Add a little low. Add a little mid. It’s just like turning the volume up basically. No, I’m not really good at it. I tried mixing my album myself and it sounded like ass. I got this guy that engineered, second-engineered, assistant-engineered the J5 records. He just has his garage with a computer and he’s just a whizz with plugins and EQs. He mixed it. I mean, I was backseat driving the whole thing but he was twisting the knobs and suggesting what I could use to make it sound this way or that way.

Audience Member

What was one of the key things that made you move away from the MPC and move just to using Pro Tools?

Cut Chemist

I’m sorry, what’s that?

Audience member

You said before you’ve moved away from using your drum machine.

Cut Chemist

Why? The bit rate. I was using the MPC 2000 and it’s 16-bit. Why not go 24? I did a little taste test of a sample of my record on the drum machine on the computer and the high end, there was something about the crispiness of the drums that the MP didn’t get that the computer did. I’m really sensitive to the crack of a snare, the high-end sizzly texture on my drums and I’m not going to lose that resolution on my shit, I’m going to go straight to the computer. Plus the sequencing on the drum machine is fallible. Every 12 reps you can hear it jump or skip, ever so slightly, but just enough to annoy the shit out of me. Pro Tools is exact, you can put it in grid mode and boom! The fact that I can see it, although it’s deceiving to use your eyes for music, I just like it. So, for all those different reasons, that’s why I ditched it.

Audience member

Are you still hands-on, do you still use pads to trigger stuff with Pro Tools?

Cut Chemist

No, it’s really geeky, it’s me with a mouse, it’s not appealing at all. It’s funny because the music I make tries to sound very hand done, like it’s manual. No computers. I think that’s what takes a lot of time, to make it not sound like it was done on a computer. My album is a series of repetitions, being taken out, put back in, a series of repetitions. That sounds cold as ice, not very human, so I spent a lot of time making it not sound like that.

Audience member

Hymnal, you spoke about the line that gets blurred between performer and audience and I was wondering if you can recommend some authors, you mentioned Carl Jung, who explore those concepts. Or if you yourself have some thoughts?

Hymnal

Those are two distinct subjects. When I was talking about that line between artist and audience, things that come to mind are some of those anthemic rock albums like Pink Floyd’s The Wall. That’s exclusively about that exact phenomenon and how the artist can lose his place by their ego becoming so enlarged by being a star, or a musician, that they lose their perspective. In that movie, as many of you will know if you’ve seen it, the rock star becomes literally a fascist dictator and the audience becomes a faceless sea of followers.

In the sense of working with Cut on this record, there may be the idea of – and this is just me, I can’t speak for him – the idea of doing a solo record, having come from a group like J5, and what is the impact of that. What’s going to be his own audience when he strikes out on his own? We work on some of those things in the record. As far as books, one thing I didn’t mention as far as conscious rap in the States, there’s a guy named Noble Drew Ali who wrote a book called the Circle 7. That book, to be succinct about it, was based on a lot of freemasonic teaching and Eastern teaching that he put together as a remedy for African-Americans to benefit themselves. One of the students of Drew Ali was Elijah Muhammad, who was the founder of the Nation Of Islam, and the Nation of Islam and the ideas that came out of the East Coast were the dominant philosophical ideas behind the Zulu Nation and were, through them, disseminated by Jungle Brothers, Tribe, De La, X Clan, Public Enemy and so forth.

So, if you’re a hip-hop connoisseur and interested in where that stuff came from philosophically, then you want to look up information on Drew Ali. Another guy who’s a little more esoteric but also influenced African-American spiritual consciousness is Sun Ra, the jazz musician.

I think he came from Chicago also – Chicago is where Elijah Mohammed came from – and Sun Ra, believe it or not, some of his influences started when he was eight and in the Cub Scouts. If you recall some of their early literature they talk about a god that is in nature, and that comes from a freemasonic idea, that God is internal. The idea that God is internal really fits in with the neo-pagan idea that ecstasy can be achieved through your own bodily acts, not necessarily through grace from above, but that you can find it living and existing inside yourself. That’s a predominant idea inside music and if you’re interested in more information on him there’s a book on Sun Ra called Space Is The Place: The Life And Times Of Sun Ra.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

It’s a wonderful motion picture as well actually.

Hymnal

Right, yeah, where he does battle with the devil.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Yeah. It’s a good movie if anybody gets a chance. It’s on DVD. Netflix. Netflix everybody. Anything else?

Audience Member

Yes.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Yes.

Audience Member

Over here. I unfortunately missed your set yesterday but I think it was a DJ set, right?

Cut Chemist

What? The one in a women’s bathroom?

Audience Member

Yeah, but I don’t want to talk about the bathroom. I just wondered do you also do a live set like do you perform your album in a way?

Cut Chemist

Yeah.

Audience Member

I don’t know… What do you use then?

Cut Chemist

I’m here because I’m on the Parklife tour which is a DJ tour across Australia. For that, I’m doing my “artist” set, which is four decks. It’s two turntables and a mixer, two CDJs and a mixer, Serato, and something else. I can’t remember. A wah-wah pedal. I don’t know. I do, I use Serato to dismantle some of my songs on my album, to use elements to recreate them live. Then I use the CDJs to use the cue points for drum machine kind of pads and do some minor programming. Yeah, I do try my best to interpret what’s on the record live. It’s not just me playing a song and going, “Yeah, I’m cool.” It’s actually me trying to do something in much the tradition of people like Kid Koala who… I’m probably his biggest fan in the world. He’s one of the greatest live DJs ever and he does that. You can see everything that he… you can see how he made his record right in front of you and I’m a big fan of that.

That’s why I like DJing. I like seeing something. I like to see you entertain, but there is interwoven in that parts of me playing other people’s records and doing a DJ set just to kind of get people dancing. Even though I like people watching what I’m doing, I also want them to dance too. I don’t want them to just watch me for an hour-and-a-half. Maybe they can dance and know when to look back and watch me and then dance again and then watch me and then dance again. That happens. That does happen. They know when there’s something to watch, turntablist parts of the show, DJ parts of the show, parts to listen to records. “Oh, he’s playing a 45, it’s funky.”

No, the women’s bathroom set was just a set and I don’t know, man. As much talk as I hear about it today, maybe because it was in a bathroom, but I don’t really think people were feeling it. I looked up… You know, how do you follow up Nellie Furtado “Promiscuous”? Well, you play Mulatu. Doesn’t go over sometimes. You do what you do. I’m not going to change what I do to please people that want to hear Gnarls Barkley 12 times in one night. I want to try to school them on something. I think they’ll walk away subconsciously saying, “Oh, shit, wait what was that shit he played last night though? Why is that in my head? The next time I come out, maybe they’ll be ready for it.”

A lot of the times, like when me and Shadow will do something for Brainfreeze or Product Placement, it’s maybe people don’t get it, but a year from then, they’re like, “Oh, I was there.” It’s like don’t wait next to dance to it. Dance to it now. Get it now. Why not? It’s not that hard. Whatever, I’ll just keep playing my Mulatu records in women’s bathrooms and fuck it. You know? Proud of it.

Audience Member

Thank you.

Cut Chemist

All right. That’s it. We’re wrapping it up.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

All right, thank you Cut Chemist, Hymnal. [applause]