I think Guilty Simpson is one of my favorite rappers right now. I can’t think of the last time he was wack, or as some people like to criticize of him, boring. to me he’s taking street rap and reinvented it to be fresh again. I’ve always been a fan of people who can find new ways to flip shit that’s already been covered, and Culplable is one of the few new dudes who can make me laugh at a “i’m-gonna-shoot-you” punchline, which is no easy feat. often times people want musicians to wow them with complex displays of skill, and while I’m definitely a fan of out there, intricate shit, sometimes it’s alot harder to play down, to just cover the basics, and that’s why I like to think Guilty has been on fire for the past year or so.
What up though, it’s Invincible. In Detroit, repping Emergence, Bling47 and aNoMoLies crew, about to drop my album, Shapeshifters. We’re gonna speak about all that.
How would you say you first were introduced to hip hop, in any way you’d wanna take that?
I moved to the US in ‘88 from the Middle East. I lived in Israel Palestine till I was seven. I didn’t speak English till I moved to the US. I gravitated towards hip hop when I was real young, I would just write down lyrics to people’s rhymes that I liked and that’s pretty much how I learned English. I took ESL classes for the basics, but as far as getting my vocabulary up, I learned that through hip hop. Also learning a frame of reference with what was going on with communities here in the US that I wouldn’t really get to know about by living in another country because they only show you one side of everything. That’s how I initially got into it, then me and my home girl used to write rhymes together, putting our lyrics to other people’s rhymes, that’s when we were like in elementary school, like nine years old on the Casio keyboard with the little beats and the microphone up in it. That was just some messing around stuff but when I got to high school that’s when I started freestyling and kind of getting serious about the whole craft of it. Then I started sneaking into clubs, doing open mics with the backdoor secret knock with the bouncer, which evolved into throwing my own events. We used to take abandoned buildings and throw our own all ages shows.
Oh word?
Yeah it was crazy. If you didn’t have a club you could get into you just gotta make due. So we would do stuff like that and then I took a trip out to New York when I was like 16 with some home girls of mine and ended up connecting with aNoMoLies. I met some people that knew aNoMoLies, actually this cat named D-Stroy from the Arsonists I met at a Lyricist Lounge event, he told me about aNoMoLies. Basically I connected with aNoMoLies and that convinced me to move out to New York so I could be around more dope female emcees because I was kind of one of very few in Michigan at that time. So I moved to NY when I was 17, to work with aNoMoLies and be in the whole open mic/cypher scene at that time, it was a really big independent movement, which I’m sure you know, during the late nineties. So that kind of sealed the deal, when I moved out there to work on music full time I knew this is what I was doing with my life.
I’m glad you brought up aNoMoLies because I actually thought you were part of the founding group…
They started like a year before I met them. It was my first open mic in NY it was a Lyricst Lounge event, I met Wordsworth, I met D-Stroy and afterwards he was saying, ‘yo, you gotta meet this army of female hip hop people. they do everything! there’s like 50 of them!” He was making it sound like a mythical type situation, and then the next time I came out to NY he brought me down to the Nuyorican and I met Heelix, and we instantly clicked and that’s when I made my decision to move out there and work more closely with them. They had established it because they kept running into each other and wanted a way to support each other so they started the collective. It was like 30, 40 people when I came into it but now it’s like 5 of us that keep it going and everyone else is like extended fam.
Damn! What I always hear when people tell me about aNoMoLies is that the crew was dope but it was hard to get ahold of the physical music.
Yeah, we didn’t have too many releases. How aNoMoLies would work was more like a crew than a group, the way people would see us was live at shows. We used to do shows so often, we would be at every event at that time in NY opening for everybody that was coming up at that time, we were opening for deadprez, Blackstar, even Black Eyed Peas at one time when they were underground. That’s how people knew of us, but on the recording level most of us were pursuing solo stuff back then and collaborating with each other here and there. It’s less so of a group that records together, even though we are working on a project that we hope to put out sometime in the near future.
Dope, so aNoMoLies crew is very much active?
Yeah I mean that’s family. Those are like my big sisters. They’re gonna be at my NY release party and they’re gonna come out to Detroit in June for this Allied Media Conference.
So obviously we have to talk about the fact that you’re a female MC in a landscape with not too many visible female MC’s, because they do exist just not on a wide leve, so just to put it real broadly, what is your take on that?
My take is that first of all, there’s so many dope female emcees out there, like you said, but there not seen. Everywhere I go, aNoMoLies is almost like a message in a bottle, anywhere I go in relation to a female hip hop type event, like when I toured with Stacy Epps and Bahamadia in Europe last year, there’s gonna be mad females that come out to those shows that are emcees or b girls or who produce, but they do it more so on their own, not trying to deal with the industry and all the bullshit that comes with that. I just want to put that out there first, but as far as why they’re not seen or heard as often as they should be, first of all i think that has to do with how these labels don’t know how to market a female artist. They look at us like, damn, we don’t know how to reach your audience, which basically means they’re lazy with it. They just go with a formula like they do everything else. What comes to mind when I think about this is a skit on Immortal Technique’s album where he’s saying there’s a market for Riverdancing, there’s a market for nipple rings, but you can’t find a market for a real female in hip hop? That’s bullshit. That’s why for me it was important to put my own music out and figure out ways to release and market my music in ways that correlate and compliment my music itself. I feel that by doing it myself I can be a model for other female artists. For the masses? The masses don’t even know that skillful female emcees exist for the most part, it’s been reduced to the easily marketable, sexual bullshit, which I actually don’t have a problem with, I just feel that the whole spectrum should be represented. With aNoMoLies, we break down our names to No Mo Lies, basically no more misrepresentation and we abbreviate our name to ANS and our motto is “the answer and the ultimate critique, is the solution.” If you have a problem with the industry, your ultimate critique of the industry is to be the solution, be a crew of female emcees that’s working together, not on some catfight, Miss Rap Supreme type bullshit, but really come together and put ourselves out and elevate the craft. Eventually we’re going to be able to sustain ourselves, I already know that, and it’s taken a little longer than it would for a typical artist, but I think people are going to catch on very soon, it’s really a movement with female emcees.
Now as far as the topic of gender in hip hop, I racked my brain alot before this interview trying to figure out how to tackle the subject of gender in hip hop when to me at least, it seems like hip hop is so heavily gendered towards one side, so I wonder how you can build your identity within something that isn’t necessarily too open…I dunno if I’m making sense….
I see what you’re saying, like alot of dudes market themselves by playing into the same shit like basically playing out this gender role shit, like I’m the most hardcore dude or whatever. But I think that traps dude too, there’s alot of dudes out there that don’t want to be on that bullshit either. They don’t want to be limited to being the most hardcore asshole you’ll ever meet. That’s everybody’s problem too though, not just a female problem. I think there’s dudes out there that have a hard time getting accepted because they’re not hardcore enough, and thats something for us to figure out because at the end of the day there’s alot of listeners that stopped listening to hip hop because they felt like that’s all it was, so where did all those listeners go, and how can we get them to listen to our music?
Throughout your career, how has your attitude toward that changed?
When I was younger it was terrible. That was one of the reasons why I moved to NY, I was very young, 15 years old sneaking into clubs. I would have the worst case scenario of much older dudes being creepy and trying to get with me. Super wack shit like people being like, oh yeah Imma help you, and that’s the set up for them trying to date you. And overall people just being like…
Condescending?
yeah, condescending, like, oh you’re good for a girl. As I got older though, I found alot of dudes that were allies, with aNoMoLies I found a crew of females that had my back and wasn’t on that bullshit, and met more and more dudes over the years that weren’t condescending that were like brothers, that did have mutual respect for me as an artists so that helped me cut off anyone who was on that bullshit. At this point I don’t really keep too many people around me that’s not giving me mutual respect. The only thing I would really add to it is that I used to really get upset about it, and now I’m very solution oriented at this point in my life, so anything that used to really piss me off and make me wanna go battle everybody, now I’m like, you know what, let me just channel that energy into making this classic record or setting up this label that’ll put out incredible innovative, independent hip hop. I just channel it and once again, the ultimate critique is to be the solution.
Now getting back to straight music stuff, when did you move out from NY back to the D?
I was there for 3 years, from ‘99 to 2002. I left shortly after September 11th, but I spent alot of time in the D while I was gone. My first ever benefit show, cuz I’ve thrown alot of fucking benefit shows at this point, the first ever was for a Detroit organization called Freedom House, and I threw it while I was living in NY in 2000. I was spending time in the D, every time I would take the Greyhound home to Ann Arbor, I would end up just getting off in Detroit because it stopped there first and they’d have real long layovers so I’d be like, fuck this layover let me go hang out with my Detroit peoples. After that, sometimes I wouldn’t even go all the way to Ann Arbor I would stay in Detroit. I got involved with the different community organizations that were using hip hop and they were just basically peer pressuring me into moving there and it worked, obviously, because I haven’t left since. Even if I move to other places or travel, I know i’ll always call that home.
Since that time, since you hooked up with aNoMoLies and started to get more serious about your shit, how was it coming up in Detroit during those years?
When I was in high school it was crazy. I used to rock with this cat named SUN, he’s on the record on that “Deuce/Ypsi” joint. He’s been an independent cat from Ypsi for years and he used to take me with him on the shows he would do all over Ypsi and everywhere. We would go to alot of legendary shops, most people heard of the Hip Hop Shop but there was this other spot called the Mohagony. I think that’s where I did my first show in Detroit actually. There was this one spot called the Fat House, I remember that was the first time I met alot of cats when we did a show there. Dez was there, Dirty Dozen or D12 as they go by now, Proof, Eminem, everybody used to be at everything so you kinda came up with everybody. Athletic Mic League and myself came up together obviously since I have Lab Techs all over the record, we’ve been doing stuff together since high school. Now as far as how it has evolved, when I left and I would come back and visit, I would see how it was growing. It was just more and more people pushing each other creatively, it was like a real competitive, like a friendly competition thing. We would have hissy tapes of each others shit before it came out because you just wanted to know how you were gonna one up them with your stuff. People still have that kind of hunger to innovate styles and find ways to flip stuff in a crazy new way, that’s always been a huge inspiration for me, being around all the incredible artists in the city. Especially Finale, he’s the main dude I roll with in the D, we did an event together called called Quality Control, we still do it here and there but we used to do it monthly for a couple years. We would just feature different people every month, trying to keep the community thriving. At this point there’s not as many things going on to keep the hip hop community going, to give them an outlet, but we got a couple weekly’s and there’ll hopefully be more stuff for people to showcase the talent in the city.
Now getting to this album finally, how long has it been in the works?
Technically a lifetime. I’ve been working on this forever, it’s my first official album. But this group of songs I’ve been working on for about three years. “Sledgehammer!” was the first beat I picked for the record, I heard it on a Lab Tech beattape and was like, that’s gonna be one of the first songs on the album.
So the name of the album is Shapeshifters, what’s the significance behind the name?
The main thing on the surface level is putting out there versatility as an artist. This is my first album and I didn’t want to be pigeonholed like, oh she only does this kind of style or that kind of style. I wanted to show a whole spectrum of styles I can rep. As far as the deeper meaning, it has to do with the concept of self transformation and how thats connected to transforming our communities and our struggles, being able to transform that through transforming ourselves. I think art and hip hop play a huge role in that process of people really being able to have that knowledge of themselves and apply that to change something much bigger than themselves. On a more specific level, I’ve been reading alot of science fiction lately and just the concept of the future and trying to think about how hip hop is going to be like in the future and what the fuck kind of future we’re creating now? So just wanting to have some kind of hypothesis about that or having some questions so I’m not rapping for the sake of rapping.
One of the first things that struck me most about the album when I heard it was how, musically, it was intense. Did you have some kind of vision for it when you were picking beats?
I wanted it to be cinematic. When I write I write very visually, I always imagined what the concept was going to be visually first. Pri from aNoMoLies taught me that, if you hear the beat you want to think, what’s the movie going to look like or what’s the video gonna look like and that’s how you begin your writing process. For me I would just pick the beats that seemed the most like a movie score and just go from there, so that’s why alot of them are real intense.
Lyrically you also cover a broad range of subjects, and before I get into specific tracks, what would you want people to get out of you as an MC after listening to the album?
First and foremost, I want them to just hear. The skill and the wordplay, just hear that. I think once people hear that enough times, the message will seep in. I really worked to make it so the message doesn’t beat you over the head so first off you’re hearing the flow and the style and the word flips, then once you appreciate that aspect you can get to the message. The message itself, I take alot of time researching my topics–I didn’t go to college so I look at the songs like this is my thesis, every song is a thesis. I’ll go research it, I’ll make sure everything I’m saying is exactly on point, air-proof, air-tight. Once I get all the facts in place, I always try to get it across through a story or an ill concept or analogy. Instead of directly telling you, I’d rather have it be something where you’re captured first by the concept of it. “Detroit Winter” for instance, off PPP’s first album, people can take that on face value like, oh she’s talking about the seasons, or they can look into it deeper and see it like, oh shit, she’s talking about Detroit as a whole and how its in this transformational place from being this abandoned, hated-on, segregated city to where people are making something out of nothing and changing their environment to this futurstic, post-industrial haven for people to look to in the future. There’s many layers of meaning.
“People Not Places” stood out to me alot, just because I don’t think I’ve heard any other rap done on that subject like you did it.
The song was inspired by a conversation I had with my mom, or my Ima, that’s how you say mom in Hebrew. So I was talking to my Ima and she was telling me how she misses back homes, and how she misses people not places. I thought wow, that’s so deep, that’s so profound. It occurred to me, here is a land that Palestinians have been displaced off and what a privilege it is that we as Jews don’t have to miss it. We still have the right to go there while Palestinians have been denied their right to return. Then you have this Jewish birthright to go and visit and gain citizenship in order to make sure it’s a Jewish majority, Israel’s government wants to make sure there’s a Jewish majority living there. That’s why they provide birthright tours, to convince people into moving there. So the song is done to expose this and especially in light of the 60th anniversary of the Nakba, the great catastrophe is what it means in Arabic, the displacement and massacre of Palestinians in 1948 and the establishment of the Israeli state. Then, to answer your question about how it was to go back home and all that, most of my family refused to see or even speak to me when I went in August.
Oh word.
I hadn’t seen them since I was a kid. My aunt, my cousin, their whole family refused to see me or speak to me because I was going out there to work with Palestinians. So the racism in Israel is very deep seated. My family is not very conservative, they’re just like every day people and that is how their train of though is about it. Bu growing up, it wasn’t just my personal experience, you have to realize I grew up in Ann Arbor. The whole Detroit metropolitan area has the largest Arab community in the US
Oh word?
Yeah, Dearborne, stuff like that. My best friend growin up was from Iraq, my other good friend was from Iran and I had a lot of Palestinian friends. When I was a kid, during the Gulf War for instance, my aunt would be calling my mom talking about she just woke up and there was a bombing in Tel Aviv. That would happen here and there, but everyday I would hear my best friends families from Iraq, they would be on the phone with their families everyday like, ‘are you OK?’ because it was bombing right there right in Baghdad. During the Gulf War that was right in my face because all my close friends had families that were directly affected by it, and I had family in Israel and I got to see the difference and how much more their families were affected by it, how much more directly. I had a friend in middle school who was telling me about their uncle being a prison in the Israeli prison and being tortured by the Israeli military. That was an awakening for me at a very young age, oh shit, Israel is not what I thought it seemed. It wasn’t just my own family and my own experience but I had a large community around me that was affected by it.
You mentioned Ann Arbor and the surrounding areas of Detroit earlier and one of the songs I wanted to talk about was “Deuce/Ypsi.” Could you explain the context of the song and all that?
Actually, it’s deep. In the album there’s like four tracks that kinda explain my life geographically. People not places, as far as the middle east, Israel Palestine, the track Spacious Skies, which is talking about the move from the middle east to the US and the wake up call from that, and Deuce/Ypsi is talking about me growing up in Ann Arbor. When I moved to the US, that’s where I moved immediately. Most people consider Ann Arbor, even in Michigan, ‘oh, that’s a college town.’ They think that’s all it is. In reality, most parts have its ghetto or its low-income housing section. Ann Arbor has it like anywhere else. It’s deep; Ann Arbor and Deuce Ypsi are right next to each other and Ypsi is much more like a working class town. Ann Arbor has a working class but they all live in the outskirts of town. It’s almost like living inside of one of those double-mirrors, where everyone is looking at the mirror saying “oh it’s so liberal and colorblind. Everyone just gets along and it is so diverse and great.” When in reality, we’d be at school and nine times out of ten, it’s the minority students that were being suspended or sent to the special classes, as far as disabled learning or whatever. They kind of relegate the youth of color to those places. I just saw a lot of racism go down in the midst of it. In the song I talk about how in high school the Klu Klux Klan came to speak on the roof of Ann Arbor City. That was a wake up call. At the same time, seeing the everyday ways that racism plays out, like the landfill being built directly across the street from the projects. The most insidious stuff that happens is actually the most meaningful, like the way the students are treated in the schools. What really sparked the song though, last year, I was walking down the street in Ann Arbor. I was out there for an event. Ironically the event was that the university of Michigan students had a forum about anti-Arab sentiment on campus. I had my keffiyeh on and I was walking down to use my ATM, and I was about to use my ATM when this SUV full of frat boys rolled up and started screaming on me, “fuck you, you Afghanistan bitch.” Then they threw a bottle at me. I looked up and there was a police car right there, he was right behind the SUV and didn’t say anything, like he obviously didn’t give a fuck.
Oh word?
Yeah, that was real infuriating. Originally my whole verse was talking about that situation as like a case and point about what the fuck is wrong with Ann Arbor, the façade that it’s such a progressive place when really it’s not. But then I just took it to tell a story about my childhood and growing up there and how I viewed it, versus than how someone might view it from the outside. Then [I also wanted to touch on] the relationship between Detroit and Ann Arbor and Ypsi, they’re only like a half hour away but to local people it can feel like a foreign country to them. They don’t realize that there is a community within Ann Arbor, within Deuce Ypsi that’s dealing with the same kind of struggles that Detroit is, just on a micro level.
Yes, yes. That segues into another song I wanted to talk about, probably my favorite song on the album, you’ve mentioned it before, is the “Locust” joint.
Yeah, Locust is also probably five years in the making as well. Shoes gave me and Finale the beat, we got the same beat CD and we picked the same beat like, “oh shit, let’s work on something together and try figure out who’s gonna use it.” It’s actually two beats on the song, the second beat is off the same record. It’s dope, House Shoes did that. But the concept itself for the record, the first half of the song is really about embodying or personifying the buildings and the landmarks in Detroit that have been forgotten or abandoned by the development and the gentrification that’s taking place. The second half of the song is showing the forgotten musical legacy that’s being erased. One of the most obvious examples is that when the super bowl came to Detroit, they demolished the Motown building in downtown Detroit.
Yeah, I heard about that.
They actually demolished it. I have footage of them demolishing the building and when I went down to film it I met Barry Gordy’s niece’s best friend. She was out there with her fur coat taking pictures and I was asking her about it. She was explaining how it wasn’t the originally Motown building, but it was the office that Barry Gordy and Motown had in downtown Detroit for a longer period of time than he had the small, you know, Hitsville Motown studio on Grand boulevard that most people are familiar with. But the one on Woodward, that was the main office they were at before they moved to LA. She was explaining they were gonna convert it at one point to a museum and a space to preserve the legacy of Detroit’s musical history. She was explaining how that fell through for different political reasons, but at the same time all this money is being spent on building huge stadiums downtown and casinos and a lot of other unsustainable projects that don’t benefit the people living in the city. On top of that, demolishing the Motown building is so symbolic of just erasing the whole legacy of the city. They turned that into a parking lot that wasn’t even paved in time for the super bowl. There were remnants from the Motown office blowing in the wind down Woodward, music sheets from Marvin Gaye, reels, everything literally blowing down the street in the wind. What the fuck, why would you do that? That’s a piece of world history, right here in our city, why would you erase that? For me, at the same time, have you seen the documentary?
Well, the point of the docu-music video is to show there’s a lot of people in Detroit doing work to develop the city in a way that’s led by the community and accountable to the community. As opposed to the current way that most development happens, which is really gentrification and displacement of people in an unsustainable way. Even though the song can be really depressing, the docu-music video really aims to get the conversation going on how can we not only resist gentrification, but what is our vision for our community in the next 20 or 30 years. Obviously the land barons and huge development companies have a vision for it, but it doesn’t include us living there anymore. What is our vision for it, how are we going to be self-reliant communities that take care of our own means with community run business, areas where people own there own property. Across the board, development is more than housing and businesses, it has to do with people developing their highest potential as people and communities. Tha’s the basic premise of it, but you just gotta see it. It speaks for itself.
At the beginning of the song, the woman speaking mentions a history of fires in Detroit. I have somewhat of an idea what that’s about, but I was wondering if you could give some background info on that.
The woman speaking is Gwen Mingo, and Gwen Mingo lives in an area of Detroit called Brush Park. Brush Park is the historical Black neighborhood, it used to be called Paradise Valley and Paradise Valley was kind of the Harlem of Detroit, that’s where all the Jazz clubs where and everything, John Lee Hooker used to play on the front porches out there and stuff like that. in the 50’s they built the freeway through it and in the 90’s is when they started what they call ‘urban renewal,’ and what she’s referring to when she’s speaking about 300-400 fires….
Yeah.
In the span of two years….
Wow.
From 1997-1999, there were hundreds of fires in that area and from a lot of the residents perspective, they were hired arsons by developers. Developers would hire homeless people or poor people, first of all it’s historical housing and to legally demolish a historical building you need to remove the historical…I’m trying to think of the architectural term for it, basically anything that affects the structure of it or the historical markers of it. So they would hire homeless people to go and take the names off the buildings and snatch off the different decorations on them that would mark them as historic. They hire people to arson buildings for a small fee, people are broke and desperate so they’ll do that but at the end of the day it’s fueled by these developers who really wanted to put a buncha condos up and have it be a place where the local residents where completely gone so they could make room for these downtown developments that could serve whoever they were hoping would move in.
That’s deep. You obviously make no bones about being socially aware and vocal through your music. Is that something that was always present in your music?
Yeah, definitely. I mean I would always try to balance it with like a battle MC thing, now it’s more into storytelling and creating creative song concepts and all that. It’s always been like that, I don’t know why. My first CD I bought was from Paris, you know who Paris is?
Yeah, yeah. The dude who had that album with the plane flying into the White House and he’s worked with Public Enemy.
Yup, yup. The album I bought from him is called ‘Sleeping with the Enemy’ and the whole record starts with him about to assassinate George Bush Sr. I always had that perception of hip hop as an outlet to get a message across. At the same time I was listening to a lot of different stuff, Gangstarr, Tribe Called Quest, even like Boss and MC Breed, people that were more local. I always try to balance it out where the message doesn’t overwhelm people, but that’s always been present in my stuff. My first rhymes had my little message lines in there.
Is that something you have to negotiate sometimes, or do by now have the process down to where you can involve that in your music and still keep it music?
I always make sure the music comes first. I’ll come up with the flow pattern before I come up with how I’m gonna put the message in it, so it’ll fit in naturally. As far as who I reach, I try to reach people that aren’t already activists. I make music that I hope can be an introduction to the issues for people who might not have thought about them already. Almost like a gateway drug, like, ‘lemme check this out…” For me, it’s like if I can catch someone’s attention because it’s a dope song and then they hear a line and they’re like, ‘wow, she’s talking about… that’ I learned about most shit I know about through doing that. ‘what the fuck did they just say? What does that mean?’ I hope people do that with my music but I definitely have a good amount of activist people that are already aware of the issues and it’s good to make music for them too. We need music to sustain us while we struggle, to remind us why we do it. It is a struggle, I don’t want to ever be limited or pigeonholed to the point where it would prevent me from reaching people who haven’t heard these issues, one of my priorities is making sure that I am accessible to people who wouldn’t normally have access to these ideas.
i think the first issue had the first print article on Jay Elec, and the second boasts a pretty comprehensive story on the “beat” movement that’s happening all across the world right now. but those are just two grains of sand in the deep, dusty crates of SHOOK. you’re welcome.
oh yeah, the mag’s website is finally up. you can also download the issues there. issue 3 out soon….
I’m Brandon Young.I act, rap, write and make beats.If you’re a fan of The Wire on HBO, I played ‘Fletcher’.I go by B Young on the mic.
Most people probably know you from The Wire. How did you get involved with the show?
I did a short film in the summer of ’06 called Streets 2 Suites.A casting agent in Baltimore saw it and contacted my agent in regards to auditioning for The Wire.That was in February of ’07.I did the initial audition, then the callback and then the call came.It happened within a matter of two weeks.
Were you a follower of the show before your involvement?
Not an avid viewer, no, but I watched Season 1 in preparation for a role as a drug dealer in a play I was doing about a year before I was cast on the show.
You’re originally from Philly and the show was shot in Baltimore. Did you find any striking differences or similarities the two places?
There are a few differences, yeah.People speak differently in both cities.Baltimore people speak with more of a loose twang, whereas Philly folk have a sharper form of speech.The music is different.B-More has that house, Philly has that soul.But it’s funny because I heard the dude Young Leek from B-More and could’ve sworn he was a Philly emcee.One thing I noticed is that B-More doesn’t have as much of a Caribbean influence like Philly does.Maybe is does and I just didn’t see it but in Philly there are Caribbean restaurants and culture shops all over the city.Besides those differences, both cities are alike; the same goings on with a different name.
What kind of things did you learn professionally and personally from your experience on the show?
I gained a wealth of knowledge from the experience.I adapted to the TV and film technique of acting.I come from the theater where everything is bigger for the stage, but for the camera it’s a different energy that’s needed.I got to observe the ways and actions of artists who’ve been working professionally for years and years.Of course I learned from the actors on the show, but also from the writers and the technicians.They’re very serious about what they do and they still allow themselves to have fun with it.Personally, I learned not to let any form of fame or notoriety go to my head.
Now moving on to after the show, you chose to come out to LA rather than stay on the east coast, why did you choose LA?
My agent was the first to suggest it to me saying “You’ve done a TV show, you should move to LA.”I was originally going to move to New York, pursue theater and wait for LA to get at me once I further established myself.I really didn’t want to go through another east coast winter though.I had been into the music coming out of So Cal for a while and wanted to check out those vibes. I took a trip to LA in February, it was my first time.I was here for two weeks and enjoyed it.I went back to Philly to close it out and then moved to Venice Beach a month later.
What music from out here was catching your ear?
The ones who are truly making the LA music scene what it is know who they are.I’ve been bumping their stuff for a minute.A lot of it inspired me to transition out here.
Since being out here what do you think of the music scene?
It’s unified.Artists are more accessible and willing to link up than in Philly.Everybody knows everybody else and the scene seems to move as one.You can go to other cities and it’s the opposite.Instead of unifying, everybody’ trying to be #1 all by themselves.
Overall, what have been the harder adjustments of moving out here from Philly?
There haven’t been any hard adjustments, really.I knew a lot of people who lived here before I came.I had TV credit before moving here so I escaped the pressures of “trying to make it in this city” as they say.The weather is wonderful, the food is good and the women are friendly.I’m well adjusted.
What projects do you have, both in music and film, coming up?
I recently wrapped production on a short film entitled Round on Both Sides, directed by Marquette Jones who also directed Streets 2 Suites.I’ll be doing a one-man show called Freedom Rising in Minneapolis in a few weeks.It will be featured as part of the Republican National Convention.No, I’m not a Republican, I have political affiliation.I’m looking forward to see what the Minneapolis music vibe is about though.Music wise, I’m writing and recording.I’m linking up with my good peoples P. Slang and Tha S Ence of Hustle Simmons when I go back home next week to rehearse for the play.I’ve got some performance opportunities coming together for my trip home and I’ve got shows lined up for the fall.I’m just making songs right now though.I’ll decide what I want to do with them when I’m ready.
