Sir Mix-A-Lot

Monk One

Let’s get into it. Sitting to my left is the most legendary hip-hop figure in Seattle, Sir Mix-A-Lot. Everybody give him a big hand.

[applause]

Sir Mix-A-Lot

I’m glad you said “in Seattle.”

Monk One

We could have said West Coast, we could have said a lot of things, man. I think, speaking as a New Yorker, Seattle was put on the map by yourself. But there was a lot that went on leading up to it. Can you give us a little background about where you were coming from?

Sir Mix-A-Lot

Back in the early ’80s Seattle had a hip-hop scene but it was a midget version of New York. Everyone was trying to be like New York; cats with the hoodies, brick rings and the big belt buckles, Kangols, we had no identity. I just made up my mind, I’m not going to have a hit record by trying to imitate New York. So, I just did some weird stuff… completely retarded… it really wasn’t talent-based, it was just trying to find an angle. The music scene was kind of strange, it was divided at the time. You had the rock scene, which was always solid because of Hendrix, you got the Dave Matthews, Nirvana, Junior Cadillac, but hip-hop was still virgin. So, you had a bunch of cats, we were all battling, I used to run into other cats’ parties and DJ and cut-up and blow their speakers out, just trying to get attention. In about ’85 I decided to do a record, not to make money but because I wanted to scratch my own voice. “Ooh, I get to hear myself on a record.” So I met this cat named Ed Locke, another called Greg Jones. We put some money together and did a totally underground project but without saying “motherfucker” every other word, so it was underground sounding but it wasn’t underground music. We released it and got in vans to go all over the country, did free concerts and the rest is history.

Monk One

Going back a bit you were saying the scene was influenced by New York. Down in LA there was a lot popping off there, like Uncle Jamm’s Army and Egyptian Lover.

Sir Mix-A-Lot

You’re showing your age, man. You had the LA scene that was further along than Seattle, they were trying to come up with their own thing at the time. You had cats like Egyptian Lover, Uncle Jamm’s Army, World Class Wreckin’ Cru, which featured Dr Dre, Ice-T, cats like that trying to come up with something down there, mix up their own gumbo. Then gangster rap was born when Ice T did 6 ’N The Morning, and that’s when the West Coast really did something.

Monk One

How much of an influence did that have in Seattle?

Sir Mix-A-Lot

Major, major. You could watch the transformation. People in Seattle started being comfortable being from the West Coast, early on you had cats talk with an accent, “Yo, we’re from New York,” wearing fat laces, though I still wear fat laces to this day, but that’s another thing. But you had cats trying to rock fat laces and be NYC and LA made us feel comfortable about being from the West Coast. It was okay to talk about palm trees and cars because that’s what we do. So, it definitely influenced a lot of what I was doing early on.

Monk One

Did you get on the radio back then?

Sir Mix-A-Lot

Yeah, I had a partner called Nes Rodriguez, he was a DJ who used to travel back and forth to New York. Keep in mind I was broke, I’m talking about poorer than poor, we call it “po’”, “p-o”. I had no money and I met this guy at a party, I was kind of jealous of him, but he took my stuff and put it on the radio. It was interesting because I’d never been heard by anyone bar me, my brother, my mother and my sisters. I thought they were going to diss me, but they requested it, they started liking it. I developed a sort of radio personality, that’s where I got my delivery from, being a radio DJ. I used to just holler [shouts] but then I saw him and it has [affects a deep radio voice], and I was, “Oh, shit!” I got my delivery, everything about me came from my early years with Nes Rodriguez. Then I started meeting heavier rappers like Boogie Boys, cats like that from New York were coming out to Seattle to do shows and coming up to the radio station. So, I got to vibe with them, find out these were all real people doing music because they loved it, which is the way we all start. Then it changes, but we’ll talk about that later.

Monk One

So Nes is Nasty Nes?

Sir Mix-A-Lot

Like a god up here.

Monk One

Can you talk about his background and place in things up here?

Sir Mix-A-Lot

Nasty Nes and me went to school together. He was a little older than me, he graduated a couple of years before. He was a thug. When I met Nasty Nes he had a joint in one hand and a switchblade in the other. But he loved music, that was the thing we had in common, but I hadn’t found myself yet musically. He got signed to KFOX, which was an AM station back in the day. Hip-hop wasn’t really on the radio yet, he was the only one, and he had a show called Fresh Tracks, and he would fly to New York, go through the crates and buy used records from New York and bring them back and play them on Fresh Tracks. That really turned the city on, that’s when the kids were really rocking hip-hop, that’s why he was a god. He literally brought hip-hop to the masses in Seattle, he opened it up.

Monk One

And he would include your own original productions in the mix?

Sir Mix-A-Lot

Yeah, I had a little four-track cassette deck and I used to make songs. And I didn’t have a vocal booth, obviously, so I would take a wool blanket, a little mic stand and put the blanket over my head to get the silence. I’d be sweating like hell when I got out. He would play this stuff. The sound quality wasn’t the same as Run DMC or Doug E Fresh, but people still felt something. It wasn’t New York, it was something for us, by us.

Monk One

You were representing Seattle, it was something they could latch on to.

Sir Mix-A-Lot

It wasn’t until 1986 that I could feel comfortable doing it. Then I said, “You know what? I’m going to do an anthem.” You had LL Cool J talking about Queens and everybody’s talking about Brooklyn and money-making Manhattan, but I said, “What about Seattle?” Back then, it was different for those of you who go out driving, we used to hang out on Broadway at Dick’s Burger Spot, get high and knock chicks, that’s all we did. So, I thought I’m going to do a song about it, it was like an anthem. I’d never been out of Seattle and, all of a sudden, I’m getting requests to play Phoenix, Arizona. I had no record out yet, this is just selling tapes out of my house for $10. We go down to Phoenix and play a club by Dick’s Burger Spot on Broadway, and I realized they had the same scene as us. I stumbled on my first hit. I thought Broadway was just a Seattle street.

Monk One

That was “Posse On Broadway”.

Sir Mix-A-Lot

“Posse On Broadway”, released in ’87, sold almost two million units so far, still sells.

Monk One

And what label did that come out on?

Sir Mix-A-Lot

That was Nastymix Records, formed by the two gentlemen I mentioned earlier, Ed Locke and Greg Jones, and it was named after Nasty Nes and myself.

Monk One

And were you happy with the deal that was structured back then?

Sir Mix-A-Lot

[Laughs] Keep in mind I knew nothing about the record business, and anybody in here knows the difference between doing music because you love it and doing music for profit is night and day. Initially, I just wanted to do records, I didn’t care about the deal. You give me a deal and I’ll sign it. Initially, I was happy. Later on, I learned about publishing and copyright, how it’s to be used and not used, mechanical royalties, things like that came later. I found out about $600,000 I was owed but hadn’t received. It got a little ugly. I guess, I could blame him, but I don’t think he knew either. I think we all went into it blind and didn’t understand the business.

Monk One

How long did Nastymix last?

Sir Mix-A-Lot

We started it in about ’84/5 and it went through to about ’92/93. I left in ’91 and signed with the great Rick Rubin.

Monk One

How did that happen, did he approach you?

Sir Mix-A-Lot

He approached me but he did it slick because he didn’t want to be caught for tampering. He had his secretary call Nastymix and say they were Source magazine looking to do an interview. I’m thinking, “Man, Source magazine!” And she says, “Hi, this is Heidi from Def American.” I’m thinking, “So what? I want to talk to The Source.” And she said, “Hold on, somebody wants to talk to you.” This guy comes on the phone, talks real short, “Hey, Mix-A-Lot, Rick.”

“I don’t know no Rick, dude.”

“Rick, Rick Rubin.”

“Get the fuck out of here.”

Rick Rubin, for those of you who don’t know, that’s LL Cool J, Beastie Boys, Public Enemy, he was the man, him and Russell Simmons. He told me he started his own label, there was no more Def Jam for him, he was doing his own thing. He had Def American. I still didn’t take him serious. He said, “Why don’t you come down to LA and meet me? I hear your deal’s falling apart.” My manager and myself, we fly down to LA and he picks us up in this, I’m not lying, a ’69 Dodge. He’s got holes in his pants and I’m like, “What are we doing down here?” He sits us down in his room - and this is what I’m talking about when I say doing music for love, not profit - and he breaks out these ink blots of different artists. And there was one with this clock and I said, “That’s Flavor Flav.” And there was another with these cats wearing Kangol standing sideways, and I said, “That’s Run DMC.” He had one of myself and I didn’t know who it was. He said, “There’s your problem, you’ve got to discover yourself. You’ve got to make something of yourself and put it out there to the masses, you’ve got to create an image.” That’s where the hat and the furs came from. It was a video I’d done called “My Hooptie”, with the pimp hat, with the big furs. And he said, “That’s it, that’s you.” It was cool at first but after a while it hurts. “Why am I doing this? Am I doing this just for the money?” You start questioning your love and your loyalty to it.

Monk One

So, it was difficult after a while to be comfortable in that image after a while?

Sir Mix-A-Lot

Yeah, because we did “Baby Got Back” and people started to expect something. I had guys walking up with their girlfriends, turning her round and saying, “Yo, has she got ass?” I’m like, “Dude, I’m not the ass doctor.” [Laughter] That was cool for a while but then you get into the next album and you want to try something artistically different, you want to grow, but the label doesn’t want you to grow. “No, no, no, give us more of “Baby Got Back”. We’ll take “Baby Got Front”, “Baby Got Side”, whatever you can come up with that we can stay in this box.” If you only do music because you want to make money, you’re fine with that. But I love music, so that was why after one more album I asked to be released and a lot of people thought I was committing career suicide. But sometimes you’ve got to look in the mirror and ask yourself: “Am I doing this just for the check?” And I realized I was doing it for the check, so I pulled out again.

Monk One

What kind of advice would you give to someone starting out on that path? Is it possible to find a middle ground?

Sir Mix-A-Lot

Yeah, it really is and I would say to any artist when you’re just signing your deal, give them what you are initially. What I did is say, “I’ll make a little package of all my commercially viable records and I’ll give this to them and they’ll go, “Yeah!”, and it worked, but I held back all my “Hip-Hop Soldier”, “National Anthem”, all those songs that won me respect in the hip-hop community, I held those back from Rick Rubin, he had no idea about those songs. All he knew was the pop songs, so I would tell any artist, “Be what you are going in the door and you can stay that way.” That’s why I love The Roots, Lauryn Hill… even Metallica. I was into their stuff way back in the day, like Gary Numan. What I liked about him was he didn’t give a shit whether he had a hit or not, he just recorded stuff. Everybody out here laughed at him, “This guy with the English accent.” I loved him because he was being who he was. The Sex Pistols, The Ramones, Circle Jerks, I listen to all that stuff because it is what it is. I’m not a Britney Spears fan.

Monk One

You really incorporated a lot of that rock guitar sound.

Sir Mix-A-Lot

Yeah, I love rock. I fell in love with it at a concert. I loved it in the early ’80s, late ’70s, but in the mid-’80s it sucked. It was just a bunch of big hair and tight pants. In the mid-’90s I went to see Korn, I think with Limp Bizkit and one other act, and the energy was real – there was a moshpit, sweat, people running into each other. I was like, “That’s music, that’s what it should do to people.” It shouldn’t be about style, who’s got on the biggest jewelry or the nicest necklaces. I can say that without comeback because I’ve been there. I had a chain so goddamn big I could whoop your ass with it [laughter]. My first Benz, check this out, this is stupid. I bought a Benz, brand new, $80,000, back then that was a lot, now you’d get a used one. Brand new silver Benz. I took it over the street and got it painted candy apple red with a gold grill, gold mirrors, gold wheels, two-tone interior, just dumb shit. Then I brought it home and I’m living in the hood. That’s the kind of stuff I was doing. Then, when I went to the show in the mid-’90s, it woke me up. They weren’t about jewelry or money, it was just real. I remember one thing specific watching the group Disturbed, there was a guy crowd-surfing in a wheelchair, and they shouted, “Bring this guy up.” I didn’t know what they were doing. And they said: “You won’t see this at no fucking hip-hop concert.” And I wanted to whoop his ass initially, but I realized he was telling the truth. Hip-hop had become what we used to hate. We don’t see it now because MTV and Clear Channel control the industry now and they tell us that it’s normal. But it’s not, it’s abnormal. What’s real is groups who do music because they love it. These guys now are made, you got cats who can’t even rap, but they got a big chest and they been shot two or three times and that’s how you have a hit record these days.

Monk One

Back when “Posse On Broadway” hit you were out on tour with NWA, Hammer…

Sir Mix-A-Lot

[chuckles] That was one tour too. It was us, MC Hammer, Public Enemy, NWA and Stetsasonic, that was one tour, man, you can’t do that shit now. Back then hip-hop was more about togetherness, it wasn’t about the gangster hates the pop, and bear in mind this was pre-“Baby Got Back”, so I’m still new to the game. Public Enemy, that’s where I got all my game from. Chuck D and Ice T took me under their wing and showed me the game. I remember doing interviews and you can overdo your cool. You try to get beeped out as much as you can on the radio. “Yo, I had this bitch, man, and I socked the bitch in the face ’cause she was tripping with her motherfuckers.” Chuck D took me to one side and said, “Yo, you’re articulate, you’re bright. Why are you hiding it?” I said, “It’s true, I do kind of act stupid when I’m on camera.” “Cut that shit out, just be who you are. Relax.” And that’s where me came back into the game. We got blown off stage, I’m not going to lie to you, because I’d never seen shows like that, they don’t do it no more. This is back when Public Enemy had the S1W’s and shit moving around and skits, NWA had the street thing with Crenshaw Avenue, cats really gave up shows, but they were doing it because they loved it. You’re not making money when you do a stage show like that, you’re making a little bit, but it’s not really worth your time unless you love it. Now you got two guys and a cassette deck and they lip-sync.

Monk One

You went all over the country with that?

Sir Mix-A-Lot

Yeah, started off on the East Coast, which terrified me because I was never an East Coast artist, but when we got to the South I found my second home. We did some offbeat shows. We come off the tour and had two days off, so I did some shows with Luke Skyywalker. Whooo! Man, he could perform. I learned quickly, never open for a dude that’s got a bunch of naked women on stage. His show was incredible. It’s weird because I was around when hip-hop was born, so to see its evolution, and de-evolution to a certain extent, it’s kinda interesting.

Monk One

As far as the de-evolution goes, do you think there’s potential for… we had Quest[love] from The Roots up here yesterday and he was talking about the frustrating aspect of being on a major label and trying to break through and at the same time doing your own thing. Are you seeing hip-hop artists who are keeping their integrity while selling?

Sir Mix-A-Lot

Yeah, there are some artists who are able to and The Roots are an example. But it ain’t easy, because when you do a meaningful song that lyrically has depth and real cool production, labels won’t push it. Right now, is what I call the “kick-and-clap” era. Every track, take your 2000, get a nice group of handclaps, slide them off time a little bit so they “clack” [illustrates with hands] and that’s it [imitates hard beat]. That’s what everybody’s doing now and soon it will go to something else, but it’s really hard when you want to get away from kick-and-clap and say something in a track, the label’s not going to push it. So, when you do your shows you’ve got to push it out there, and that’s hard to do because you’ll piss your pop fans off. “Dude, do ‘Baby Got Back’. I don’t want to hear this shit.” You get a lot of that and you’ve got to balance it. The artists that do it, like Erykah Badu is one that will go, or say a show like Dave Chapelle, here’s my hit but you’re really going to have to dig in your heels and this is what I’m going to do, and you have to give it to them.

Monk One

Then you’ll get hated by your crossover audience.

Sir Mix-A-Lot

Yeah, your crossover audience will curse and you’ve got to give them something. There’s also a divisive side of hip-hop that’s starting to scare me, these “keep-it-real” cats. That can actually stifle creativity. What I mean by that is you’ll never hear me say Will Smith is a sell-out because he was never a gangster. What do you want him to do? Pull on a sock-hat and pull out a nine, dumping millimeters in a motherfucker’s head? That’s not him. That’s dangerous, because just from his acting ability alone he brings attention to hip-hop. So, you don’t want to put him on an island, you want to embrace him. But a lot of cats will draw a line in the middle of this street and say, “If you don’t drink two beers, shoot two people and fuck two hos by track three, you’re a sell-out.” That kind of shit is dangerous, it will hurt hip-hop. You can see people getting away from it now, necessity breeds creativity, so I think it will go back to where it was.

Monk One

What path have you taken to stay involved in music, be creative and reconcile these…?

Sir Mix-A-Lot

I hit a wall around 1997, a serious wall. Creatively, I couldn’t come up with nothing. I didn’t know why. It took me a long time to figure out what I wanted and it was because I was trying to figure out what you wanted. It wasn’t from here [points to heart], I was like, “That chick over there looks like she might buy my records. I wonder what she wants.” Figuring your audience out, this demographics shit, and I bought into it. So, when I asked to be released from American, Rick let me go, was cool with it. He owed me another advance and I walked away from probably about half a million bucks, but I found myself again and met another artist, a cat that’s been touring with me forever. I didn’t know he wanted to do a record, his name is Outtasite. I got him to record some stuff and I was giving him straight hip-hop.

Around then everyone was doing Tupac sound, West Coast, kind of melodic, R&B-sounding, he didn’t want to do that, “Let’s do some rock shit.”

I said, “But you rap.”

“So? let’s do it.”

So, we did it and nobody had ever done something like that before. He didn’t care about what people wanted, it was just about doing something he dug. That got me out of my funk quick. I started making good music again. I’ve got 40 to 50 tracks at home that I’ll be releasing over the next few years that are pretty solid. Cats are going to be surprised when they hear it.

Monk One

What else have you gotten into? The ringtone thing is popping off?

Sir Mix-A-Lot

Rewind this… when you say have I got any advice for artists, keep your publishing. That’s one thing we all let go, and I didn’t do that, thank god. A lot of artists, they sign a deal, someone goes, “Here’s ten songs you’ve recorded, I own 50% of them and here’s a $1 million.” And a lot of people will go for it because they came from nothing. I didn’t do it because of my experience with Nastymix I hung on to the publishing. In 2000, 2001 we started getting phone calls from Universal. We had a co-publishing deal for “Baby Got Back”, but I own 87% of the song and I wouldn’t give it up. Universal said there’s this new thing called ringtones. “What the hell’s a ringtone?” “You call this number…” I said, “Whatever, you go ahead and do what you want to do.” My manager called me, “Dude, we got a check for $300,000, what happened?” “I don’t know, I just told them they could do this ringtone thing.” Holy shit, there’s money in this stuff, so cats are coming back buying old school songs and putting them on their ringers. So, I started doing more of them. I took “Baby Got Back” and made a specific version of it with a rap about this cat answering the phone. But that wouldn’t happen if I didn’t own my publishing. You listen to the stories guys like Little Richard tell; that’s sad because I wouldn’t be here if wasn’t for them, but they don’t own their publishing.

Monk One

So, what kind of deal would be realistic for somebody starting out if a label approaches you?

Sir Mix-A-Lot

Anybody in this room that doesn’t have a deal, you ain’t getting all your publishing. There’s an unwritten rule in this game, and I hate the record business in case you hadn’t noticed, that says 25% of your publishing has to go the label, no matter what. Every time I ask why this is, they just say that’s how it is, the label has got to get paid. But the label will not try to take the remaining 75%. We’re so used to getting screwed on this, we call it 100% – we’re just used to it – but 100% of 75% is power and the labels will let you keep that. It’s the publishing companies that will try to take that from you. They’ll come and say, “We really like that new song you’ve got, we’d like to administer publishing on it.” I didn’t know what that meant. Basically, it’s what you’re supposed to do. They’re going to call everyone that makes money on your shit, they’re going to say, “We need that money in.” Money that’s going to come to you anyway, by law you have to get it. The only thing they can really do for you is place your songs in movies, commercials, ringtones, things like that. They’re not beneficial to you at all if they are not performing. Most of them do not perform. They just sit around and, let’s say Starbucks uses your song in a commercial, Starbucks pays them instead of you, they collect that money on your behalf, they take 25-30% of that money, whatever you’ve got worked out, and they send you the rest every six months.

Monk One

So, 25% of that 75?

Sir Mix-A-Lot

Yeah, but here’s the good thing. If they’re a hardworking publishing company and they place that song in, say, Charlie’s Angels, the record company, if you re-record it... Here’s the thing, if you have your song in a film, “Baby Got Back,” Rick Rubin will get a piece of it for master use. However, if Charlie’s Angels comes back and says, “Look, we’re offering $200,000 to use that song but Rick Rubin wants $50,000 for master use. We’ll give you $25,000 to re-record it because you own the publishing.” I ain’t supposed to be saying this stuff, but you re-record it, put it out there and you’ll make your money. As an artist, there’s nothing wrong with making money, don’t feel guilty about it, because if you don’t somebody else will.

Monk One

Explain what you mean when you say Rick Rubin owns the mastering.

Sir Mix-A-Lot

When I say publishing, it’s your written works, your lyrics. And cats that are producing on drum machines – that’s what I do – don’t think that’s not your music. It is. But the actual master is the recording. So let’s say you take that music, you take those lyrics, you record it, that song is put out by his company, he owns that actual master but you own the written work. So, if Starbucks says, “We want your song, but we don’t want this guy, he wants $1 million, we want him out of the loop. We’ll pay you $300,000.” Which is what you’d get from him anyway, you can then re-record your works, you can change the music a little bit and you own the works, he’s out of the mix. And that’s the difference between master and publishing. I’ve been screwed a lot, so I know.

[laughter]

Monk One

Us people starting out need to know ways to avoid the pitfalls.

Sir Mix-A-Lot

I learned it from Chuck D, Ice T, Run from Run DMC, these guys gave me a lot of information. When I was growing up I couldn’t care less. “I’m getting a check with more than one zero? This is awesome.” Didn’t matter to me.

Monk One

You did end up re-recording “Baby Got Back”?

Sir Mix-A-Lot

A few times. I’ve done it a whole lot of different ways. Yeah, pimp it … what the hell.

Monk One

And you own 80-something per cent?

Sir Mix-A-Lot

87.5%. I own 87.5% on “Baby Got Back” and the album after that, which is Mack Daddy, but everything after that I own it all. I own 100% of those other records. When I did ringtones on “Posse On Broadway”, 100%. When E-40 re-recorded it, 100%. When I did the Target commercial I owned 87.5, they came to me first, then we went to Universal and they cut the deal, which is what they’re supposed to. And they get a lot of money when they’re only getting 13% [laughter]. They’re like, “Goddamn, we got to massage this, squeeze it out.” And I re-recorded it for Target, because when they went to Rick Rubin, he wanted three, 400 grand. That’s the advantage of owning your own publishing.

Monk One

Is it possible to recapture it if you’ve given it up?

Sir Mix-A-Lot

It’s hard because a lot of the time they hold it for 20 years and sometimes it’s 20 years after you’ve fully recouped, which is worse. If I give you $1 million up front for your record, and there’s creative ways of showing you haven’t recouped – oh God, that’s a whole other subject, but the clock doesn’t start ticking until I get my $1 million back. That can take five years. You might be talking 25 years before the publishing reverts back to you. By that time you might be on Oprah talking about how poor you are and some other asshole comes and gives you $100,000 and takes you for another 20 years. That’s how bad it is. That’s the business.

Monk One

So, what happens, when you sign a deal, they are loaning you at a bad interest rate?

Sir Mix-A-Lot

I used to call it style points. You go out and look really cool, really rich, but you’re living on somebody else’s dollars.

Monk One

And you have to make that money back?

Sir Mix-A-Lot

It’s not as bad as it used to be. I saw What’s Love Got To With It where Ike Turner had to go and do concerts and give this up and sell cars. But it’s not that bad. If I give you a $1 million advance for your record, as it sells all that money goes to me, 100%, until you earn back that $1 million. It sounds cool until you look at how they do things, and I’ll give you an example which they’ll never admit. Independent promoter, he promotes, say, on the East Coast. He charges me $40,000 to promote your record. I tell him to send your manager a bill for $200,000. I’m going to give him another $20,000 to tell that lie, so he’s up to $60.000. Now you owe me $1.2 million, not $1 million. That’s what I hate about the business, it’s sad, but that’s what goes on. The payola issues, paying stations to play you, a lot of companies got tagged for that. So what Clear Channel did to get around that, say you go to Chicago, they own the station there, payola is illegal, I can’t give him another $20,000 to pay the big station in Chicago to play the record, those days are gone. But Clear Channel can do is, because they own the radio station, they can say, “You do this show that you would otherwise charge me $20,000 for, for free.” It’s still payola, but the artist gets screwed. These are the things that nobody talks about because if an artist signed to a label talks about it he probably won’t be signed to that label next morning. That’s the kind of stuff you really have to watch out for.

Monk One

That still goes on. Recently, there’s been a lot of stuff coming out where the artist goes to a station and the station will have a special concert to promote them.

Sir Mix-A-Lot

Yeah, Kube Summer Jam, I’m not knocking them, but let’s talk facts. If you go to their Summer Jam, there’ll have one anchor artist, say Snoop Dogg. He’s getting paid. All the other artists are fairly new and have new records. They need radio play, none of them get paid. They get a hotel room and a flight. Each one of those artists would probably be getting $5-10,000 a night normally. Now that’s payola. The record company is basically paying Clear Channel. Now, if Kube was doing this show for the music, it would be free or enough to pay expenses, but they charge $50 a ticket and the artists get nothing. Now, I’m not saying it’s all bad, if I was a new artist and I was going to get heavy rotation, I’m going to do it and I’m going to get rich. I remember when Ginuwine came out with Pony. He played here three times before this record came out and I thought he was getting screwed, but when the song came out it was No 1. So, necessary evil, I guess.

Monk One

It’s a gamble that radio play will push sales up.

Sir Mix-A-Lot

I went to Texas one time and did a show, I call them payola shows, the day of the show it was all, “Mix-A-Lot tonight in Houston.” The day after, gone, they didn’t play me again. Now, I’ve got a new tactic. I tell them if they want Outtasite to do a show they’ve got to play his record for a month, leading into the show, then he’ll come down and do it. That’s about the best you can do. If they play it for a month, hopefully it catches fire and once it does they have to play it.

Monk One

If somebody has the choice, now with the internet and so on, it’s a lot easier to set yourself up. What are the advantages of doing that as opposed to being on a major?

Sir Mix-A-Lot

The advantages are huge, but the artists haven’t truly figured out how to do it. The internet has opened so many doors but I think we’re all scared of what’s on the other side. But what’s the worst that can happen? You didn’t sell records on Tuesday, but you didn’t sell any on Monday either, don’t worry about it. Success on an independent is very different. If you get on a major and sell 200,000 you’re a failure, which is stupid. But on an indie you go from making a buck a record to $8 a record. You put $2 back into yourself you’re still making $5-6 a record. If you sell 20,000 units, labels notice that, believe me. Linkin Park tried to get signed for years, kept getting turned down. They released their record on the internet. Warner Bros signed them like that [clicks fingers]. Warner Bros didn’t remember that they dropped them before.

You could live anywhere, but you move some units they’ll find you. I just signed a deal with Notting Hill in England, he found out about what I was doing and he wanted some of it now. They will find you when you make some noise. If you do it right, the biggest problem we have as artists is that we tend to take the money, spend it, and not think about the next project. The next project comes, “How the hell we going to pay for this?” Well, you might want to sell that fucking Bentley you just bought. If the money is managed right and you’re succeeding on an independent, the majors will come running but you might not want them.

If you’re making $7-8 a unit and you’re selling 100,000 every four months, do the math. You’ll go from $6-7 a record to $1-1.50 a record and this independent guy over here is still pocketing a lot of your cash. They do the same with video producers, the video may have cost a $100,000 but they tell you it cost 200. You don’t have to deal with that on an indie level because you control your own destiny. Most successful independent artists don’t go major. The perfect example is Tech N9ne, an artist from Kansas City, probably the best rapper on the planet, his skills are off the Richter scale. His audience is rock solid. He did a show in Seattle a few weeks ago and sold it out just using flyers. He’s making a lot of money and he just turned Universal down. I said, “How much did they offer you?” He said, “A lot, but it wasn’t enough.” That’s the luxury you have when you do it yourself. Back in the day you needed the label to pay for your studio, but we can all use Reason, ProTools. There’s so much stuff out here now we can do it ourselves. So, the only thing they’re good for is promoting the record, and if you can do that even a third as well as they can you make way more money.

[applause]

Monk One

So, what are you using to make music?

Sir Mix-A-Lot

Ah, the tech stuff, I love that. I’m a button-head, knob-head, anything new I buy it. I use Reason but I don’t really like the drum machine, the sequencer tends to be too robotic. I use an MPC-2000, MPC-3000, I just got rid of my MPC-4000. I got a Roland MV 8000 drum machine. I use ProTools heavy, I’m a ProTools fanatic. I use a lot of Reason. I just bought Serato, which is awesome, I use the CDJ, I just bought the Mackie mixer with the optical fader, I use a lot of synths. Sometimes I buy a synth for one project. I hear a sound that’s just “damn!” and I might buy it just for one track and sell it to the next cat. Or, if I see someone up and coming like I was, sell it to him half price. Anything new is in my studio. I just bought this huge keyboard controller… who makes it? I’m loving that thing. I’ve just sold a vintage Jupiter 8 to Bruce from Nine Inch Nails. I had a Jupiter 6, a Roland Juno 106. I got all this old stuff, even an Elektro-Harmonix vocoder made in the ’90s, that shit sounds wicked.

Monk One

Are you still sampling?

Sir Mix-A-Lot

Yeah, but not from records unless they’re sound effects. I had the luxury of coming up in the early ’80s before sampling really existed. I had to make music, make sounds, so when they did come out they only had microphone plug-ins, so we’d use them for sounds, like rocks, dropping shit. Whatever you could come up with you’d use it and it makes your song so much cooler. Nowadays, everybody just buys a Korg Triton and uses them for factory sounds. I’d rather get a sampler and go out and find shit. I put on my Return of the Bumpasaurus album, we had a pond in my backyard and we had these big flat slate rocks. Throw them up in the air, and “Pow!” We’d use that as a snare. I’ll take kick drums and layer up four or five sounds. I’m real picky about that stuff. I’ll use a spectrum analyzer on just about every sample.

Monk One

What does that do?

Sir Mix-A-Lot

Say, I want a thick kick, a good short solid thud where I might want my drummer to re-trigger. I’ll get it real hot from about 50hz to 100, then I’ll take the accenting sounds and throw them on the outside, from 100-150hz they have a paper kick. Then, say 50hz on down, I might put a mic to my throat and go [makes beat noise with throat] and you know how frequencies argue with other, I’ll take a big, thick, wide kick drum. I love doing stuff like that. That’s the geek side of me. I’ll work on a sample for two hours.

Monk One

On one kick drum?

Sir Mix-A-Lot

Yeah, I’ve got 10,000 kicks. The land of 10,000 kicks, that’s my house. All kinds of kicks, snares, hi-hats… I’ve been working with a lot of drummers who hate pads. I had the Roland V drum kit and they hate that shit. I try to make it as accurate as I can, so I’d go and sample timbre from legendary kits and stuff. Every time I’m in the studio, I was looking at that kit upstairs, “Hmmm, come here man, and I’ll sample it with a mic.”

Monk One

How do you keep track of everything?

Sir Mix-A-Lot

Name your samples. I used not to, then you open up a folder that says, ‘Audio files 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,’ and you’re like, “Aw, shit.” You sit there and listen to them, so now as I sample them I name them and they’re names that only mean anything to me. Certain types of sounds I give similar names, like if it feels like something that fits, say, house or trance, I’ll name it. “Trance kick blank”. That way you can stay connected. When you have an artist standing over you and you’re working on his stuff, you don’t have time to go [indicates searching through files]. “Dude, I want a kick that sounds like this song.” So I check, “Ah, ‘Watery kick 8’.” I’m a file fanatic.

Monk One

Are you messing with house or trance?

Sir Mix-A-Lot

Not really, but a lot of the DJs I work with do. I went to see Chemical Brothers about six or seven months ago, that shit was… whoa! Two cats and a whole bunch of gear. I just wanted to steal the gear and leave. People call it house, but some of it wasn’t. It was like techno, vintage techno from the late-’70s, early-’80s, but they were mixing it up thick. I was digging that stuff. Music is music to me, as long as it makes your head nod. I just don’t like packaged music. “Today we’re going to make a hit record.” I hate that kinda shit.

Monk One

That’s like the Triton sounds that you pointed out earlier, there’s a lot of hit songs that, if you know this gear, you can point to it.

Sir Mix-A-Lot

I listen to the radio sometimes, “Ah, that’s Triton snare 5.” And the kick they use. That’s how they sell their music and it’s not like Triton is a bad board if you get into it and make new sounds. But cats don’t like making sounds. I love it, I tweak. I used to take my synth and get into bed with it – my girl doesn’t like that too much. I get the munchies, get into bed and make new sounds. I don’t know what I’m going to use them for and then later on, I’ll be working on a track six months later and think, “I’ve got a sound for that.” What I like about trance is they found a way to use strings. I love strings but if you use them in hip-hop, people are like: “Damn, is this opera?” You’ve got to find ways, that’s why I love Trent Reznor’s production. He takes synthesizers and puts them through guitar pedals… Shit you’re not supposed to do. I love that.

Monk One

Are there any other producers out there?

Sir Mix-A-Lot

I love Trent. I’m crazy about Timbaland because he’s not afraid to take hip-hop somewhere. His sounds. Most producers I dig don’t really do what they dig, they do what other people want. So, when I say I like the producer, I guess I’m saying I like what they’ve done that I’ve heard. I like the Chemical Brothers, sonically the way they move stuff around. I love when I put on headphones and you hear stuff center channel go behind you, I love that stuff. We’re not going to be stereo in five years anyway, it’s all going to be surround, everything’s going to be 5:1. You’ll get in your car and it’ll be center channels and rear-staging, front-staging, left, right. I give it five years and I like the fact that some artists are pushing that. Trent Reznor, Chemical Brothers, Timbaland, they’re there already.

Monk One

Do you have your system up to mix in 5.1?

Sir Mix-A-Lot

Yeah, but I don’t mix in 5.1 because people aren’t ready to hear it yet. You can’t do both. I did a 5.1 mix in stereo, it sounded like somebody stirring a pot of gumbo. It was horrible. The kicks were gone, just sloppy. But I think everyone will be there pretty soon – 5.1 is the way to go.

Monk One

So, it seems like there’ll be openings for engineers who know how to mix?

Sir Mix-A-Lot

Right now there is. I’ve got friends who only know ProTools, that’s it. And they can’t stop making money. Most artists, especially older rock cats, “Where’s the fucking bloody tape?” They don’t put it on tape no more so, they give the money to some whizz kid to track everything on ProTools. Or else they fool the artist. We worked with Quiet Riot on this benefit thing and they hate computers. So, they roll this big tape thing in that’s like 350lb, with these things, you’ve got to get in there and tune every channel. They record everything on tape and then when they leave, they transfer it all to ProTools. They mixed it and then they came in and said, “Oh, that sounds pretty cool.” I’ve always embraced technology. I’ve had ProTools from day one. I think ProTools 2 was the first I had. Even when it’s messed up. I remember when CD turntables first came out, grabbing it and scratching [makes horrible noise]. It was fucked up but they got it together now.

Monk One

So, you’re saying you got on Serato recently.

Sir Mix-A-Lot

It takes DJing to a whole new level. I can’t speak for the mixing aspect, but as far as scratching, especially when you’re doing chirps [imitates scratching chirpy noise], when you do it sonically you can have a tendency to drag it back past the start of the cut so you’re cutting air. But with Serato you can just look at the file and pull it back and chirp all day and you look real cool on stage. I dabbled with Final Scratch, which was cool, but Serato got it right. I didn’t even realize it was a local company. Rane did it. I’m hooked on Serato. The new Mackie DJ mixer, I forget what it’s called, but the crossfader, and any DJ knows you can wear the fader out when you’re in the middle of spinning somewhere and the fader goes off on one table and you’ve got to shake it, but the new Mackie has an optical fader so it’s touchless. It doesn’t have a fader pot, there’s no resistor – it’s the shit man, just having a little red light in there. Just looking at the trace, there’s no contacts, which I totally get. I’m also heavily into electronics so I’m itching to take it apart and have a look, but I can’t.

Monk One

Are you selling your music online for downloads?

Sir Mix-A-Lot

I was doing it for a little while… I’m totally into it, but I’m not really feeling the whole thing Apple’s doing because the artists aren’t making a lot of money on it. You sell a download for 99¢ and the artist makes a dime or a nickel, that’s ludicrous, that’s silly. And why is Apple doing it? I’ve got five Macintosh computers at my house, so I love their computers, but why is Apple doing it – why aren’t the artists doing it?

Monk One

It seems like there is more opportunity for an independent to get in and do it. Apple is playing the part of a major and iTunes is the distribution network.

Sir Mix-A-Lot

Apple is only doing what everybody in this room could have done. If one guy in this room had an idea and everybody in the room had an album, that one guy could put all their albums online and that’s it. It’s the same thing. Yeah, Apple can run commercials during the Superbowl, but I don’t want any artist to look at this stuff and say, “That’s untouchable, that’s unobtainable, I can’t get there,” because You can.

Monk One

Let’s open it up to the floor.

Audience member

Why don’t you DJ any more?

Sir Mix-A-Lot

I used to love DJing. I’m crazy about cutting and scratching, to me that’s like the lost art of hip-hop. The turntables are what the guitar solo was to rock. But man, the shit you guys do now? Oh my god, I was trying to crab scratch yesterday and I was getting arthritis. I still dabble with it but I’m not about to get onstage and use the Mix-A-Lot name try to front like I’m a DJ and put a real DJ out of a job. Because I didn’t like that when I was coming up. You guys do this shit every day. You get guys like Boy George, he goes out and DJs clubs and he ain’t shit. I mean, I could do what he’s doing. To me, that position should be taken by a real DJ, someone who works at the art form, because it is an art form.

Audience Member

I want to ask you about a famous video that was banned from television because it had some soapy breasts up against a glass window. Maybe you could tell that story for us.

Sir Mix-A-Lot

One of my pervert people, I like that. Just to rewind, this was my second album, after “Baby Got Back”, sitting in a room with Rick Rubin trying to figure out, how do we get their attention. Of course, every artist, after they’ve had a hit, they want to reconnect with the streets. I was telling Rick,“We got to do something, I don’t want to have just another pop hit and that’s it.” He said, “You have this song ‘Put ’Em On The Glass’, why don’t you do a video to it?” Everybody’s over 21, right? I hope so. “Put ’Em On The Glass” is this tacky senseless song about tits, for want of a better description, and he said, “Why don’t you do a video for it?” I said, “I can’t do a video for that.” “Exactly.” Back then you had a video channel called Video Jukebox, which would play real edgy stuff because they didn’t want to be like MTV. So we did this stupid video, total nudity, we used cars. Back then nobody used cars, I was like the car guy. We had all the cars in the parking lot, topless girls washing cars, total immature stupid stuff.

We gave it to MTV because we knew they wouldn’t play it. MTV turned it down, which is what we wanted. So we took it to Video Jukebox with an edited version, with the boobs blurred out. They played it because MTV wouldn’t. So, the song hits, “Put ’Em On The Glass” is huge and we run the commercials saying, [affects big, deep voice] “The video MTV didn’t want you to see,” knowing they wouldn’t play a video with nudity and cussing in it. It backfired in that it hit, the song took off and the video was No 1 on Video Jukebox for two months, but we didn’t have the records. I wasn’t even finished with the album yet. We did it as a joke because we thought it would get banned and we could promote me later as the artist whose videos they didn’t want you to see. We didn’t want to be seen as the pop boy. We didn’t know it would hit and we didn’t have records ready. Boy, you’re talking about embarrassing. We probably lost half a million record sales by not having it ready. But that video is legendary, everywhere I go people are like, “Man, can I get a copy of ‘Put ’Em On The Glass’? Somebody stole mine.” Good question. I didn’t think that would come up.

Audience Member

You mentioned some new songs we’re going to be hearing in the next couple of years. Without giving too much away, I wonder if you could elaborate on where the sound is going…

Sir Mix-A-Lot

I’ve been recording some songs myself but it’s been organic. By that I mean I’m not going to sit down and make an album, I don’t want to be the world’s first 50-year old rapper trying to make hit records. It needs to happen organically; if it happens, it happens. But I do have other artists, including this young lady, Tamika Williams. The first thing I notice about her is she’s that big [indicates very small], she’s 120lb and she sounds like an elephant. Soulful, deep, rich sounds and she sings way beyond her years. A lot of younger singers have problems with vibrato, they either sound like a billy goat or they’re totally flat. She has all that worked out. We started with an R&B record, which, to be honest with you, is kind of boring, but that’s what she wanted to do. All of a sudden the guitar player from Outtasite’s group came over and started vibing and they came up with this sound, I guess you could call it Evanescence meets Aretha Franklin, this real soulful, big sound. Full of instrumentation, cool chord progressions and bridges, and it ended up being this alternative R&B sound. We’re going to release her stuff. A lot of labels are interested, my lawyers are going to start shopping her but we have rules. Her album has got to be left alone. That’s one artist, she’s got one song called Black Hood, which is a song about reaping what you sow, basically what you do in life, do you think about the day you die where you have to pay for it. It’s a cool track.

Outtasite has been in the business a long time, his perspective is a lot like my own, even though he’s never put out a hit record. Very sharp, deep, and his thing would be Eminem meets Korn, really. He’s very important-sounding, he hates talking about cars and girls, he’s already better than me [laughs]. It’s not his thing. My stuff, I’m all over the place. Some of it’s, like vintage “Posse On Broadway”, heavy bass, knock-your-windows-out. And some of it is borderline rock stuff. I’m letting other people come in and touch it. I love people coming in and a lot of influences, people who aren’t in the music business, I love letting them come in and touch it. ’06 will be crazy, hopefully.

Audience Member

I also want to ask, a lot of people nowadays are using ProTools. But I guess a lot of us are interested in what you were using back in the early days, the old-school electro influences that we can hear in your music.

Sir Mix-A-Lot

Yeah, that’s what I was saying earlier. I use, it’s kind of weird the way I produce. When I go in the studio I have what I call my quick-hit stuff, by which I mean roll in a little Roland MC 909, an XV5080, an old Casio controller ’cause it’s real small, I can sit it on my lap. When I have an idea, I have these little digital voice recorders and I put the idea on that first and I sit down and whatever’s on I start making music on it. I don’t use my old stuff any more because MIDI doesn’t have those multi-timbral features I need nowadays. So I have a tendency to go the old trusty Akai 2000 or MC 909 and make just one four-bar beat and then I start dabbling with titles and feels, and if I get that one wicked title, you get your subject matter, you start writing and then I go back and produce the whole song around what I’ve written. So as far as equipment, whatever’s on, if I see a light flashing I start hitting keys.

Audience Member

But as far as a song like “Baby Got Back”?

Sir Mix-A-Lot

Oh, back in the day, I can go way back, when I did “Posse On Broadway”, I always wanted that 808 because I loved that shit. The first time I heard it was, I think, T La Rock and the Beastie Boys’ “Slow And Low” That’s where I got the idea for “Posse On Broadway”. I took an old Oberheim DMX that I used on my first album, Sequential Circuits, I forget what that was called. I had the first Roland Dr Rhythm, old shit I traded in and bought an 808. I turned that as far as it would go, I wanted that drum to last so long I could go for a pee and it was still hanging. “Boommmmmmmm!” I got into that on “Posse On Broadway”, but when I did “Baby Got Back” there’s a lot more techno mixed up in it. I was always into Kraftwerk, they’re the group that got me into drum machines. I wanted to keep that same 808 sound, but the 808 sucks when you MIDI it up, so that’s when I got into the Akai. I bought an MPC60, that’s how I did “Baby Got Back”. I took the MPC60 and synced it up with my Jupiter 8. There’s an old song called “It’s More Fun To Compute” by Kraftwerk [imitates drum pattern]. Listen to “Baby Got Back”, that’s all it was. Then I took the same notes [imitates Kraftwerk – “It’s More Fun To Compute”], that’s where I got the idea from, took that and turned it into something else.

Audience Member

So what other stuff were you listening to? Egyptian Lover?

Sir Mix-A-Lot

Oh, yes. We both come from the same school, basically. If you listen to “Egypt Egypt”, which is his biggest song and he’s got the breathing [imitates Egyptian Lover - Egypt Egypt], all that came from Kraftwerk’s “Tour De France”, and when you listen to “Tour De France” it was like this bike [imitates bike sounds]. They were doing all this cool shit; it wasn’t sex but we turned it into sex. And then we’re doing all this breathing and these weird things, they had this sound called pitty-pat in Kraftwerk stuff, this little electronic click and they would make this [drums on armchair]. It made the songs move faster and that’s what shaped the West Coast sound in the early days, the really clean, clinical German techno stuff with the big bottom end we were getting from New York, and that’s where all the early West Coast stuff came from.

Audience Member

It’s interesting you use the word techno as well because we had Arabian Prince a few weeks back and he was talking about a time when the words techno, electro and rap were all interchangeable. People were listening to Cybotron as much as whatever else. Our generation isn’t really used to that, we have really defined ideas of what techno is and what electro is.

Sir Mix-A-Lot

Neither had we. Anything that sounded electronic, we just called it techno. Then you had industrial, which was really different. I used to like that because it was different, you had that nasty sound, because the stuff we did was really perfect, the snares were really clean and everything was pristine and bright. Then the industrial stuff came and that’s what gave birth to your Trent Reznors. It had this distorted, murky, kinda saturated, overloaded sound which gave it a real energy. We all feed off each other, I guess, but you got to watch that now, you get sued.

Audience Member

Have you ever been sued?

Sir Mix-A-Lot

Oh yeah, I got sued a couple of times. One dude, and I can’t say his name because when we settled we agreed not to, you’ll probably call him to talk one day, I got sued by one guy that actually went and produced the song after I released my song. He listened to my song, went and did his song because mine hadn’t been properly copywritten yet and said, “Hey, I produced that years ago.” And thank god for Roger Linn, he’s the creator of the Akai MPC, he listened to it and he had a way of telling when the files were created and mine were created two years before his. He said he recorded the song in the ’80s, but I don’t want to mention no names. We had some other issues, one of them I lost which was interesting. I paid $100,000, he’s happy. To be honest, we stole the same thing at the same time. We both heard the same thing, interpreted the same way and ended up producing something similar, even though they’re not identical. But you could listen to the songs and hear where they’re both coming from. If Kraftwerk wanted to sue us, they could sue both of us probably [laughs]. That was a pretty fun lawsuit. Once I realized that he was just an artist trying to make it, I said, “Let’s settle.” I didn’t want to crush him, just settle and move on. So be careful how you get influenced. Listen to the feel, not the notes.

Monk One

Anybody else got something to say? Seattle people?

Audience Member

You still got any off those tapes you used to sell with “Square Dance Rap” on it? You still have the masters?

Sir Mix-A-Lot

Yeah, I got a suitcase – this stuff would probably explode if you put it in a deck – of old four-track cassettes. I got these old for-track cassettes and I can’t find a 4-track to play it in. I had some old 24-track stuff, the big two-inch reels, and I put one of those on the deck it tore the heads off, it just disintegrated. But yeah, I got the old masters, the first “Square Dance Rap”. What Jonathan’s talking about is that back in the day I’d record stuff at my house and sell it out of my window to make a little money. I had this track called “Square Dance Rap.” Which was crazy, and I didn’t want people to know it was me because we were mocking country music. I didn’t want people to know it was my vocal because I was talking like this [imitates redneck accent], we took the track and recorded it at high speed and then took it down and did the rap real slow with the accent [imitates slowed down redneck voice], “Sir Mix-A-Lot on the wheels of steel...” And when you speed it back up it was like a smurf and everybody thought it was another character. They thought I just did the music and cut in it, but I did the whole vocal. It was supposed to just be a joke, but the shit hit.

So now when I do concerts everybody’s, “Man, you didn’t do Square Dance Rap.” What am I supposed to do, inhale helium? So we do a little intro where I scratch the whole vocal over the top of it. I recorded that song in ’82. Hip-hop was so new then that people were doing dumb stuff. There was some dumb shit out. Rapping Duke, that’s another one. Rapping Duke was a cat that did John Wayne, he did a perfect John Wayne. I thought the dude was white because he was so accurate, but he was black as that turntable. I was like, damn! People were doing anything to get heard because you weren’t going to get radio play so you had to get noticed, so people were stealing TV themes, like Doug E Fresh’s “Inspector Gadget.” You do that now you get your drawers sued off. But you could get away with it back then. I don’t know what the statute is but a whole load of us would be broke if we got sued over that stuff.

Audience Member

I’m definitely one of those kids that came up on Fresh Tracks and from what I remember it was like a new song every week. Was it that kind of thing?

Sir Mix-A-Lot

Nes used to go to New York because it was, and still is, the hip-hop mecca. He would have some stuff shipped out that was fresh out of the crate. I remember when he broke the Roxanne battle. It had never been heard. He played the UTFO version and he had Shante doing a cussing version of a response and then the Real Roxanne. He was playing all that shit before it was even heard on the West Coast. You listen to some of that shit, it’s stupid as hell, but back then it was hot to hear all this real underground stuff and Fresh Tracks was a cool vehicle. It was a real shame when they took that away. I’d love to see something like that in every city.