Rhettmatic

Yeah, this is Rhettmatic. I’m from Los Angeles California. Represent a couple of crews, World Famous Beat Junkies, Visionaries, CA All Day, Lusty Boys, too many crews, Rocksteady Crew and blah blah blah.

What was your beginning to all this?

Basically, before I was a DJ I was actually a popper and a graff writer.

When is this?

This is in Jr. High. Kinda like by 8th grade is when I got more into DJing. Right at that time, you had Grandmaster Flash, Malcolm McClarence, the Supreme Team, tapes were coming over from Afrika Islam’s show, but we would also have like KDay and Dr. Dre, Joe Cooley, Headjam and Gemini, Julio G, Egyptian Lover, they were all spinning on KDAY. Also another station called KJFJ and KGHL, but KDAY was the main one and stuff. A group called The Mix Masters, who were kinda like the first, I wanna say over here on the west coast, the first DJ crew per se. Like all-star DJ’s…

Like established DJ’s?

Yeah, but I wouldn’t say established, cats were making noise already but they became famous because of that. So listening to that plus whatever was coming out of New York, trickling to LA, I became fascinated with DJing even though popping and graffing was my first forte. Seeing Grandmixer DST live on SNL with Herbie Hancock scratching Rocket, then my man Chris who is also an original member of the Beat Junkies, he was the first person I saw actually scratch live, from then it was like, I wanna be a DJ.

What kind of music where cats playing around that time?
Before Hip Hop really started coming in it was more like Funk, Soul, some R&B, like Zapp, the Time, Price, O’Brien, The Parliament. Then Sugar Hill came out with Rappers Delight and people were like, what’s this. We would listen to funk, but even before that I would listen to new wave and rock, whatever was out at the time because that was all we knew. But once Hip Hop started coming out here, that’s when cats started gravitating towards it. It seemed like there was a correlation between Hip Hop and Funk. Cats were into funk already, a lot of the gangsters were into funk.

How did it go from just DJing to being your profession?
When I was growing up, there was a thing about it. When hip hop was coming up you did at least two of the four elements, either a popper, a b boy, a graff writer or a DJ. I was doing at least two or three. I couldn’t rap for shit.

Haha, did you try?

I tried to rap. At the time I don’t think Asians were looked upon to be good rappers.

True, but now…

Yeah now, but that’s like twenty or something years after. The thing is Asians have been involved in the west coast since the beginning. There’s always been dope asian b boy and DJ’s and graff writers. Especially Philippino’s, they were considered the Puerto Ricans of the west coast. Some of the first Asian crews were like Boo Ya Tribe, and they’re Samoan, they’re from Carson.

Yeah, Boo Ya Tribe!

Before they were even rappers they were poppers and before they were poppers they were gang bangers, they were bloods. They were known back in the days as one of the dopest poppin’ crews, they used to be called Blue City Crew. If you remember that one documentary called Breaking and Entering, they’re in that. Then they became the Boo Ya Tribe and became the rap group and stuff like that. So they’ve been around for at least, if you know your history on the west coast, a while. There were a lot of Asian mobile DJ groups that were coming up in southern California, but also northern California. In northern California you had that big mobile DJ scene with Q Bert and all them. I had my own mobile DJ group too back then, at the time you did everything. You did parties, you scratched too, you did writings, at the time that was part of it. Sometimes you would DJ some type of Quinceañera and people would just bum rush the party so they could party and start breaking and all that, I guess that was the thing to do. What was the question again?
How did you go from being just another head into the scene to being,  Rhettmatic ?

Going through the times, paying my dues like anyone else. Going up the ladder and learning everything as time goes by. Then getting more serious and I got more into battling, we used to battle for name or equipment, and if you lose you lost your equipment or you had to change your name.

You used to take cats equipment? Ah, that’s dope!

Aaah, I was kind of lucky I guess. As I got older, around like late 80’s and early 90’s, I started hanging out with cats that were in the same circles, that eventually became the Beat Junkies. Alot of the Junkies, we kind of grew up together or knew each other from the same scenes and we just happened to click more, we left our respective mobile groups or scenes because by the time of like ‘89 everyone thought that the DJ was played out and we were the only ones still doing it. By ‘92 officially, J. Rocc was like, I’ve always wanted a crew, let’s call ourselves the Beat Junkies and wear these Green Lantern rings.

So you guys wore actual rings?

yeah, actual rings. There’s no real significance to it, but basically J. used to work at a comic book shop so he was like, yeah, we’re gonna wear these Green Lantern glow in the dark rings around our necks  We were like, um, fuck it, alright. It’s funny because everywhere we’d go we’d wear these things around our necks and people would ask what the significance was, we’d be like, I dunno, we’re Beat Junkies, [we wear them] cuz J. said so. When we started going to all the DMC battles we used to wear the rings around our necks, so people would be like, who are these motherfuckers wearing these Green Lantern rings, entering battles and actually winning? Half of us were, the irony of the group was that though the group was started by J. Rocc who happened to be African-American, most of us are Asians.

Hold on a sec, for anyone that might not really know, who all are the Beat Junkies?

The Beat Junkies was started by J. Rocc, with founding members Melo-D, myself, Curse, Tommy Gun, Icey Ice, Symphony who is a girl, that’s actually Ice’s sister, Havik, Shortkut and D-Styles, and then Babu and Mr. Choc were the last ones to join the crew. All in all there’s 13 of us that started it and active now, maybe six or seven.

You also mentioned other crews you are a part of…

Well the Visionaries started maybe a year after the Beat Junkies started. I met this cat called Keith Kool, who is Japanese-American, at the time there wasn’t that many Asian-American MC’s and if there were, they weren’t that great. For me being Asian, I was very critical of that because I remembered going through, as a DJ, having to work ten times harder to prove ourselves and to get respect so it was like, okay, if this person’s gonna rap they better do it right and represent us right. So then I started to see his name around parties and stuff, then I finally met him and he wasn’t bad so we started building. At the time I remember I was working with an MC but it didn’t work out so I was kinda looking for someone new to work with. I met up with him and we started building, next thing you know I was like, yo let me make your beats, okay, word. So we’re working on some projects and we ended up being a group together, and then he had some friends that he knew and we kind of met through that same circle. We started all gelling and whatnot, I remember meeting 2mex through Rakaa of Dilated Peoples. I knew Rakaa before they were even called Dilated. Dilated’s first name was the Fatliners, and I knew Rakaa because we were part of the Rocksteady Crew, LA chapter. Long story short, we all started joining with each other and became the Visionaries.
How do you keep active in all the stuff you’re in, because I know Beat Junkies and Visionaries aren’t the only things you’re involved with?

I keep active in the scene because, at heart, I’m still a hip hop fan. When I get to meet new people, they inspire me and they humble me. When you’re young, you think you’re the shit, that’s that B Boy mentality but as I got older I started meeting people from different areas, that shit just humbles me and makes me appreciate stuff more. What it comes down to is, wether we like it or not, it’s up to us to spread this culture, it’s our culture. No one is going to preserve this unless we teach it and share with each others, how it’s supposed to be.

How have you felt that culture change since you’ve been in it for so long?

In some ways it’s good and in some ways it’s bad. Everyone now has an opportunity to make a living in this business per se, but you have to understand the difference between the culture and the business. If it weren’t for hip hop I would never have met someone like Shoes, House Shoes. We met in Detroit when I was touring with Jurassic 5 and Dilated and the Junkies at St. Andrews Hall, that was my first meeting with Shoes. So from that, we started building, besides Dilla, Shoes is the man. You want to hear who is cracking, who do you want to connect with, we connected because of hip hop wouldn’t you say Shoes?

Shoes: Hell yeah.

Rhettmatic: Because of that common bond we’ve become more personal friends.

Shoes: and we smoke weed.

That too. So you know, it’s good and bad. You also got technology and the generational gap. Before we didn’t have the internet, if we wanted to do a scratch we had to learn on our own. No one would teach you, back in the day, the term  biting  meant you didn’t copy anyone, if you did, you had to prepare to battle or fight. You might get your ass beat because of it. Nowadays, it’s considered influence and there’s nothing wrong with being influenced because we’re all influenced but if you take someone else’s shit without putting your own style into it, then it’s a big no no. Today it’s considered to be okay, it happens. Before the elders would tell you, don’t do that shit. I can understand where the younger cats are coming from, they want to get their shine too, they wish the older cats would show them because sometimes they can get on some, *in a whiny voice* oh maan, but at the same time there’s little respect for the people that came before. You might be better than them now, but if it wasn’t for them you wouldn’t be where you are now. There’s people that are better than me in beat juggling or scratching or whatever, but at the same time what took me 10 years of hard work to learn, people can learn in 5 months or less. Some people are making beats, like they’ve been making beats for three year. Three years??  It took a long time for a lot of us to perfect what we got. We had to figure shit out on our own and just do it, we didn’t have videotapes. It’s great and it’s bad. The generation gap too, don’t get me wrong, I’ve met a lot of cats that are very respectful, but some cats are like, fuck that, your shit’s old. Yeah it’s old, but what are you doing? Plus everyone now is not a fan, they’re a critic. There is easier access to shit, people can critique publically without any consequences, back in the day if you talked shit you better back it up. I don’t know how to explain it, but it has it’s pluses and minuses.
Since you brought it up that people can now make a living off this culture, you’ve been able to go all over the world through this music. What about that do you like and is there any spot that sticks out to you?

Japan, I love Japan. Ironically, outside of the US, other countries like Australia or spots in Europe, they appreciate hip hop more than we do. We take it for granted because we live it everyday. To us it’s like drinking water, they don’t get to experience it like we do over here. You see cats over there that still appreciate buying CD’s and vinyl, where over here the newer generations are downloading everything and I can’t be mad at that, but at the same time, it makes it so it’s not fair for those that really work and put their heart into it, and cats here don’t understand the meaning of paying their dues, they just want instant gratification. Before you had to wait for an album to come out, now you can download it before it comes out. It’s like, what happened?

Isn’t it something that the artist is going to have to adapt to? I mean you can’t undo the internet.

That’s one thing about hip hop, you can adapt with it. You learn how to flip it, hip hop has always been about flipping shit that wasn’t meant to be, you make your own steez out of that, make something out of nothing. Even in the face of what is going on, the ones that are really pure hearted and really love it will still be around and the ones that are in it just to be famous, I mean we all want to be famous when we’re young, but as we get older we realize how we really love this. We live and breathe this shit.

CATCH RHETTMATIC ALONG W/ DJ HOUSESHOES, RAS_G AND KUTMAH THIS WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10TH AT THE WORLD FAMOUS LOW END THEORY IN LOS ANGELES, CALI-MOTHERFUCKING-FORNIA.