Nicolay

this interview took place after Nic’s most recent Los Angeles appearance.

flicks by Kris Perry

How much of what we just heard was new shit?

Nicolay: About 50 percent was new, it’s a struggle sometimes because I play my own catalogue, I mean I could play other people’s shit but when I get a night like this I just want to school people and let them know what I’ve been doing. The good thing is, I feel like always in LA, they go crazy over it. I dunno what it is but I get so much love here.

That’s crazy because that’s the same thing a lot of American underground cats say about Europe.

Nicolay:Well I guess from an American perspective I’m an exotic person because I’m from a different country, I dunno if that has anything to do with it, I think that it does. For people here listening to my stuff they hear a lot of things where maybe it’s like, wow that’s kinda different. For Europeans there are a lot of groups that tour there regularly, like EMC, and they get a lot of love because they’re exotic to them. We kinda just swap.

How was reception SF?

Nicolay: It sucked.

Yeah? Aahhh

Nicolay: Actually let me rephrase that, the reception was excellent but we were dealing with a fuck-ass club promoter that cut our set short 40 minutes in because he felt like he wanted to hear more Top 40 shit.

Whaaaaaaaaaaaat?

Nicolay: He cut my set. Between you and me, and everyone else, I came very, very, very close to kicking his ass. I’m glad I didn’t, I’m not a violent person. It was a really really bad situation but I’m glad tonight we got some cali-style reception.

That sucks.

Nicolay: There’s gonna be haters every now and then. There’s gonna be people that simply do not understand it. I’m not too worried about it, I felt sorry for the people that came to see me. Sometimes you’re at the wrong club, tonight you saw me at the right club. The crowd was right on track, and that makes it a perfect night.

Have you been surprised by the amount of people do get it?

Nicolay: I look at it this way, I come to LA, which is one of the biggest, baddest, dopest cities in the world. I’m a simple dude from Holland. I go to LA and people come to see me. There’s a lot of cats that came specifically to see me and I feel that that’s very special. I’ve reached all the way to LA and so many people show so much love.

Is this the kind of thing you were thinking about when you first started?

Nicolay: I never really thought past the actual music making at that point. I was continuously making beats, I was never really thinking about even releasing anything. I was just doing it to do it, but then the Foreign Exchange thing happened. You get more professional as you grow into it. When I started I wasn’t thinking of anything like this, I’m not doing it for money, or trying to change the game or whatever, I’m doing this because I love this music.

Is your approach pretty much the same from when you first started making music?

Nicolay: It is exactly the same. I still just make music all day. I still just really make music for moments like this when I can play music for people and see them freaking out. The cool thing is they got their favorites from my older shit, and I coupled it with some of the new tracks and people were with it, they were following it.

What’s your favorite new shit to play?

Nicolay: I try to play one or two new Foreign Exchange tracks just because people really really want to hear that. Outside of that, I’ve finished an album with Kay, the TimeLine record, I played a lot of those just because that’s what I’m pushing and that’s the stuff that right now I want people to hear.

People don’t know you’ve know Kay for a while, can you explain how you guys met?

Nicolay: With him as well as Phonte, as well as everybody, we just got together on a website, okayplayer. It happened quite randomly, there was all sorts of dudes from all sorts of backgrounds and all sorts of geographical locations. It happened, and we gelled. Me and Phonte had this crazy chemistry and me and Kay had the same thing. It always works, there’s never really a moment where it’s like, dude, I don’t’ really dig what you did there, almost never. Those cats are so incredibly on the top of their game to me, however famour or not famous they are, or on the charts or whatever. I just feel that if I can help those cats to be recognized by people… they’re some of the greatest cats in underground hip hop. Definetly our little circle, we’re trying to leave a permanent mark right now.

For those that don’t know, who are the kind of people we’re talking about?

Nicolay: Well, Phonte obviously, Big Pooh, Little Brother, Kay from the Foundation, Darrien Brockington and Yazarah, Musina, our new group member. Also the bigger collective, Median, EA Floe, Chaundon, Joe Scudda. It’s kind of like a big group of people that sometimes they work with each other, but sometimes they work with other people, but there’s always something going on. I’ve jokingly said it’s like our Wu Tang, it’s different, we’re not crazy or anything. I’m a big Wu Tang fan, I love Wu Tang.

How weird is it that you can create this kind of community through national borders and so much distance?

Nicolay: Music in the last 10 years, the internet is the biggest development for music in the last 10 years. You can work with someone that’s 4000 miles away. It has opened up the world, but with the good comes some bad, but I think it’s good to deal with it properly. File-sharing, all the big corporations are trying to stop it and fight it, that’s not how it’s gonna go down. You’ve got to embrace that and use it to your own advantage. Like Phonte, he found out that the Little Brother album had leaked and he put it online on OkayPlayer, like, fuck it, here it is, get it from me instead. We’re not interested in numbers, we’re not interested in banks accounts, sure we want to be good, but we’re not interested in all that. We’re trying to make shit that will stand the test of time.

Speaking of quality, can you tell us about the Kay album?

Nicolay: It started as an afterthought. We started doing tracks just one by one, about a year ago we started. It’s a concept album, about the cycle of life if you will, from birth to death and rebirth, all of the songs deal with that. It’s not preachy; it’s more like story telling and stuff. It’s got some awesome people on it, Oh No, Stokely Williams from Mint Condition, Chip Fu of the Fu Schnickens. That’s one of the ones I played tonight, the Caribbean joint. It’s got Strange Fruit Project on it; it’s got a bunch of people on it. This album is just the latest thing in the dynasty; I’m really, really proud of it.

When you collaborate with someone like Chip Fu from the Fu Schnickens, I’m assuming that’s not someone that’s in your circle, how does that come about?

Nicolay: Networking. It’s really simple, Kay knows Chip really well because they were on the same label. Kay used to be on Ali Shaheed Muhammad’s label, Garden Seeker. So he was there with Chip Fu and Cy Smith and Stokely. Even though Kay’s a new artist to a lot of people, artists with the caliber of Stokely fuck with Kay.

Can you think of a moment when you reached a point when you felt like you knew you were gonna be making music permanently?

Nicolay: Well, when the Foreign Exchange record came out and the press was really good and people were loving it, I started thinking that this was something I could live off if I played my cards right. It took a couple of years to set myself up business wise and make sure you’re taken care of in regards to all that, but yeah, there was a moment in 2005 when I was thinking that this might work. By now I’ve pretty much lived off music for three years straight.

Wow.

Nicolay: That’s a long time. What we’re doing, in the underground, there’s not a lot of money going around, alotta cats are downloading…

Please, can you explain to people that having a record out doesn’t necessarily mean…

Nicolay: Having a record out doesn’t mean shit, unfortunately. I mean it means you’re proud of it, hopefully people will pick it up. But the finances behind that, no one really knows how it works. You buy a CD at the store for 14.98, you gotta image all the different parties that get cut from that. There’s the distributor that takes X percent and the label that takes X percent, so in the end, you’re not getting a whole lot from the purchase, and then you gotta recoup all your costs. It’s not like you’re making a lot of money, but I get by pretty good now.

How do you think that’s gonna play out in the future in hip hop?

Nicolay: I think honestly, there will be more attention on live shows. Like shit like this, where you go out and hear music, drink and be with people and have a good time. I think there’s gonna be a bigger emphasis on events and live shit.

Of course, the foreign exchange question. You knew it was coming; people want to know what’s going on. What can you say about the project?

Nicolay: We’re really like 90% into it. There’s only like one or two tracks left. Phonte comes from tour I think, next week. They’ve been touring with Little Brother for like the past 3 months or so, they’ve been on the road for a long ass time. We’re taking the last month of the year and maybe the first part of 2008 to finish that up, so it’s going to be out around spring, definitely.

That last track you played was a new Foreign Exchange track right?

Nicolay: Yeah

It sounded similar, but somewhat different than the first album.

Nicolay: That was something we were really conscious about. At first we both had our reasons to not be down for the new album. That album Connected, a lot of people were feeling that. So we decided we couldn’t really do that again, a Connected pt. 2, that would be lame, that’d be weak. We wanted to see if we could build on what we did before, the real soulful and musical aspects of it. There are a lot of instruments on there, orchestra shit. It’s really fresh.

Do you have any other upcoming projects besides that?

Nicolay: Well there’s the Kay album first, that’s coming out in February. Then, literally a few months after, we’re gonna be dropping the Foreign Exchange joint, so people should definitely check out both, they’re different but somewhat the same. They each defiantly have their own magic in them. Those two projects are what we’re pushing right now and that’s pretty much enough for me. Two album done and I’m like, I need a vacations.

Do you like to take it easier when you’re working?

Nicolay: I mean, you can’t honestly. You can’t ever rest, it’s a grind. The people that makei it in this game, it’s decided by who works the hardest, who’s focused and not distracted by stupid shit. That’s what makes the cut right now, it’s real simple. If you don’t’ bring you’re a game, you’re not making any money. So that means you’re always working, but I wouldn’t have it any other way, I love this.

Okayplayer, over the past years it’s changed a little bit. I know you’re an artists that is visible on there alot, what is your take on the way OKP has changed (EDIT–it’s not clear by how i phrased the question, but we were strictly talking about the message boards)?

Nicolay: I think it’s the fact that there’s a bunch of shit talkers on there, and the thing about the internet is if you got a big mouth, nobody comes and checks you. You are not gonna step to me like, you can tell me like, yo dog, I didn’t like your last album, that’s cool. But on OkayPlayer people sometimes really are trashing people, and they do that because they know they can’t be held accountable, when in reality they would probably get their asses beat. I feel it’s kind of childish, I still have a lot of love for OkayPlayer, I’m still frequently on it. I just try to steer clear of all the crazy shit, of all the hate shit. I’m there for the positive so I don’t’ need to deal with that. I just ignore, I think it will eventually just weed itself out. I mean, back in 2000 it was a different place. It’s all good. I still owe them a lot.

Anything else you wanna add before we bounce?

Nicolay: I wanna thank everybody that came out tonight, I’m hoping to be back soon, hopefully longer so I can go sightseeing. One love to LA, it is live out here.

Thank you so much for doing this, peace

Nicolay: Yeah, no problem.

TIME:LINE, in stores now.