PHAROAHE MONCH INTERVIEW from PRO KEDS on Vimeo.

Interview by Christopher Buckley

Nodfactor: Lets get a little bit into your background, how did you start producing?

M-Phazes: I was always interested in making music, since I first heard it I would bang on the side of the couch with chop sticks like I was playing the drums. Eventually I got my own drum kit and played for about 6 years, in the meantime I got into hip hop, early stuff by PE, De La Soul, RUN DMC and some others. Basically I figured out how to loop breaks with a tape deck, and would record myself through some shitty headphones, swap the blank tape over and do overdubs. I was tape looping up until I got my first PC and just took it from there.

Nodfactor: Australia isn’t known for their hip hop whats the scene like down under?

Phazes: It’s good now, its grown a lot in the past couple of years to the point of mainstream acceptance and radio play, so that’s a great thing. Artist are selling a lot of records now, as opposed to 10 years ago when you’d be lucky to sell a couple of thousand.

Nodfactor: You won the Second Annual Sha Money One Stop Shop Conference in 2008. What effect has that experience had on your career thus far?

Phazes: It’s been great, made a couple of major placements and got my name out there with the big producers I look up to. I went back to this years one stop shop and Sha really looked out for me. If I hadn’t had won the battle the year before I probably wouldn’t have made the connects I have.

Nodfactor: You’ve worked with a variety or artists from Amerie to Joell Ortiz and you also did an album with Emilio Rojas. Can you give us some details on how the albums’ conception came about and what the process was like?

Phazes: Emilio and I have been friends for a while, we had always done music together and one day I think we discussed it but it sort of took a back seat for a few months. Then we finally decided to do the album and it sounds great now! We are in the process of finding a good home for it so hopefully we will have a release out around August.

Nodfactor: How would you describe M-Phazes sound?

Phazes: I guess it’s really musical hip hop, soulful, I know that sounds cliche’ but that’s what it is, it’s soulful musical hip-hop with a twist of 90′s grit to it.

Nodfactor: Being your on the other side of the world what conflicts do you face when it comes to obtaining placements and getting music done with artists, besides not being able to be there with them of course?

Phazes: It’s frustrating dealing with people strictly over e-mail’s, but I have an agent out in the states who holds me down so it’s not a big problem. I guess it’s missing all the shows and meetings and things like that where I could connect with people.

Nodfactor: Are there any other producers or artists from Australia we should check for?

Phazes: Yeah there’s a heap, check out Trials, Plutonic Lab, Jase from Beathedz, there’s a heap more I can’t think of them all right now though.

Nodfactor: If there were any artists you could work with current or past can you tell us who and why?

Phazes: De La Soul, I grew up on De La, and I think they are one of the most consistent acts throughout their career, topics, substance and delivery they are always on point. I would love to work with Ghostface too, just to say I did a track with Ghost would be ill! Also Lauryn Hill, I listen to her album and think I could fit nicely in there.

Nodfactor: What do you have slated for the upcoming months of 09?

Phazes: Got a few track’s on Pharoahe Monch’s next release called “Let my People Go”, new M.O.P album I have the title track on, Amerie’s album I think is out in August, as well as my own project with all Aussie artists.

Nodfactor: Do people really say “throw another shrimp on the bar-b”?

Phazes: well no, “shrimp” is an American term, we call them prawns, and we try to stray away from any stereotypical catch phrase you yanks happen to make up for us haha.

Nodfactor: Who was the bigger Crocodile Hunter in Australia, Paul Hogan or Steve Irwin?

Phazes: Oh definitely Steve, dude was a nut case.

Nodfactor: I know cricket is the national sport but what about kangaroo boxing, I hear that’s the equivalent to dog fighting in the states?

Phazes: That never happens out here.

Nodfactor: Ever go on a “walk about” in the bush?

Phazes: Yeah I walk through bushes sometimes, if there’s a beach to get to!

Nodfactor: You guys call light bulbs globes in Australia, so what do you call a globe?

Phazes: A globe

Nodfactor: Any last words for our readers?

Phazes: Yeah, come to Australia and do some research haha.

The man DJ JS-1 just sent me this remix to “Ridiculous” featuring Pharaohe Monch, O.C., and Masta Ace. Ground Original 2 No Sellout is in stores now!

[See post to listen to audio]

I don’t believe in excuses so I’ll just apologize to you all and DJ Scratch for waiting this long to put out part 2 of our interview. But after you read it you’ll see that it’s just as timeless as his catalog.

Nodfactor.com: One signature of your beats are horns but they’re not like Pete Rock horns. They’re more like stabs.

DJ Scratch: My horns are stabs, you said it exactly. Pete Rock and Large Professor are the masters at horn (samples). They would take a horn and put it in all the pads and fade it down and bring it back up (mimmicks sound) da-da-da-da…I use them as stabs.

They add this dramatic element, which is why I guess you do a lot of album intros. Is that on purpose?

A lot of beats, especially with Busta, I would make a beat and I wouldn’t give him the beat unless he put it for an intro. In that first Busta run a lot of my shit sounded like movies, or a big event was about to happen. I’d tell him ‘you can’t put this shit in the middle of your album. You can’t even rhyme on this shit. This has to be the intro to your album.’  Intros are very important to an album. That’s the presentation of something great about to happen. A lot of my shit sounded like that.

I like that  intro to Pharoahe’s Internal Affairs.  You mentioned once that there was a “Right Here” Remix with Xzibit?

At the time Pharoahe got sued for the Godzilla sample so that deaded anything else moving from his album. But we did a West Coast edition with the same beat.

Now, there are also three different remixes to Busta’s “New York Shit”?

We did a Midwest remix with Common and Twista, a Dirty South with Three 6 Mafia, Slim Thug and Rick Ross and Rick Ross killed it! And we did a West Coast shit remix with Snoop and Dre. We did a New York Shit Remix with M.O.P. and Nas. I have all of them in my possession except the Snoop and Dre.

It’s funny how and where music ends up. How did you get those tracks on Phrenology?

Rock You – The Roots
I did two songs for Black Thought’s solo and he ended up putting them on Phrenology. For “Rock You”I’m a huge Bruce Lee fan and I was watching Fists Of Fury and I chopped up his whole fight scene: The punches, the kicks, the sword and just made a beat out of it. Just thinking to the left. I have a lot of beats like that but a lot of artists are scared of that and don’t understand it.

After all of these years you’re finally putting out an album. Tell me about, “Something To Spit To.”

It’s something I’ve always wanted to put out there. I’m putting some class A grade shit and make it different from all the other instrumental albums out there so I put skits on the album. The concept is that all of my producer friends and DJ friends are calling congratulating me for putting out an instrumental album and my MC friends are calling mad that I’m giving away these beats. After every beat there’s a phone call. Premier starts it off congratulating me and then LL calls in saying how I can give away these beats after I’ve charged him all this goddamn money for a track. I have DJ Premier, Pete Rock, Just Blaze, Diamond D, Alchemist, Kid Capri, Clark Kent, Spinderella, LL, Busta, DJ Cocoa Channel, Bumpy Knuckles and Da Beatminerz. All of these people are on this album are my real friends that I respect.

The DJ Premier drop they use is my voice from a skit on a Gang Starr album when everybody called in, “Aight Chill.” That drop has been used for everything with me saying “Premier-Premier-Premier-Premier” so he’s returning the favor. That’s my dude.

I sent out an email at around 1pm to everyone that’s on my album telling them to call this number and give your thoughts on me doing this album. By 8pm everybody called and did what I asked them to do.

You get asked to test a lot of DJ equipment before it comes out. So what are your thoughts on Serato?

When they first came out with Serato I wasn’t fuckin with it because it wasn’t accurate. For example, if you were scratching a record the cue point would move. It would drift. After like five updates they made a program in the Serato so you can adjust it to respond like real vinyl. I didn’t start using it til I started DJing for Puff. A lot of the stuff he wanted me to play wasn’t available on vinyl. He’d want me to play instrumentals of Biggie and No Way Out and I had to learn it while I was on tour. Even now I haven’t converted all of my vinyl to MP3s. The Serato shit is good, but it has its good and its bad. No you don’t have to carry crates of records but the bad thing is that it’s computer based and computers crash no matter what.

Fortunately mine hasn’t crashed but also, the main bad thing is that every body and their mother thinks they’re a DJ. Don’t get me wrong, the more DJs the better. But there are DJs now that have never owned one piece of vinyl and they’re getting booked over real DJs. And the new wave is these damn rappers that are becoming DJs because of Serato. If Jay-Z wanted to become a DJ right now he would get booked before me, DJ Premier, Jazzy Jeff or Cash Money. Not because he’s a dope DJ but they’ll hope he performs some of his songs. He could be a terrible fucking DJ. That’s part of the power struggle now. My whole thing is if rappers, if you’re gonna do this DJ shit, respect it. Respect this house. Ya’ll don’t respect the DJs when they’re DJing for your motherfuckin asses. You don’t want to put the DJ on the record cover, you don’t want to give the DJ royalties, or sign them to the same deal you have, but now you want to become a DJ because your career is over. So when you come over into our realm just respect this DJ shit.

Why haven’t you done more mixtapes?

The main reason I didn’t jump into the mixtape game is that the public makes more money off of your mixtape than you do, which didn’t make sense to me. I’ll make a beat for somebody and when it sells I get revenue, publishing, royalties. That lasts forever. You put out a mixtape and the only money you get for a mixtape is when you sell the master for x amount of dollars. But they take it and sell it out of their stores and make way more money off of it than you did. For example Kid Capris’ 52 Beats mixtape that he made 20 years ago is still selling and he don’t get a dime. They got Clue tapes from ’95 still selling over there and he don’t see a dime off of that. I do a beat and I get royalties for ever. I get licensed in a movie and that’s more money.

I’ll do one once every two years or so when I do one I want it to last. Like the EPMD Handle Your Business mixtape, people already have them but you flip it in your own special way. The concept mixtapes last forever.

The crazy shit is that I remember when mixtapes were actual mixtapes. When I found out that the mixtapes were done in the studio like a song that’s when I got turned off from it. DJ Clue is the dude that took mixtapes to a whole other level. Everyone needs to thank him. He didn’t start it, but he made it mainstream. But I went to one of his sessions and there was no turntables and dudes was recording like it was a regular song. They was like “hold up, I fucked up, punch me in.” It wasn’t even Pro Tools then, it was a two-inch. It’s a mix session, not a mix tape.

So when will we finally see this documentary on your life?

It’s hard because I’m still filming. I have twenty year old footage. The only reason I didn’t put it out is that I didn’t have enough current footage and my quest hasn’t stopped. So I got footage from me DJing for Puff and Snoop on the Puff Puff Pass tour, the TV show. I’m starting to buckled down and edit and should have something by the fall.

After you read that please check out DJ Kid Grebo’s two volumes of this influential producers work for your downloading edutainment.

Download Vol 1. here

Download Vol 2. here.

Vol. 1

01. Intro
02. Atom – Main Source
03. Line for Line- Freak L
04. Sex, Sex, And More Sex – Spicey Ham
05. Girls I Got ‘em Locked – Super Lover Cee & Casanova Rud
06. The Ghetto – Eric B. & Rakim
07. Listen To The Man – Kev-E-Kev & Ak-B
08. Its My Turn- Stezo
09. We’re Back Y’all – Freddy B and the Mighty Mic Masters
10. God Made Me Funky – Too Poetic
11. Time To Get Paid – Heartbeat Brothers
12. Go G. Whiz – Captain G. Whiz
13. A Thing Named Kim – Biz Markie
14. Comin’ in the House – Mikey D and the LA Posse
15. Interlude
16. Give The Drummer Some – Ultramagnetic MC’s
17. Ladies First – Queen Latifah Feat Monie Love
18. Got To Get Paid – Live ‘n’ Effect Posse
19. Cooling One Day – Simply II Positive (Organized Konfusion)
20. Stop The World – Black, Rock & Ron
21. Louder – Sport “G” & Mastermind
22. Pelon – 360 Degrees
23. Can’t Get Enough – Black By Demand
24. Outro
Vol 2.

01. Intro
02. M.C. Outloud- I’ll Put A Hurten’
03. Phase & Rhythm- Hyperactive
04. Eric B & Rakim – Let the Rhythm Hit ‘Em
05. Ultramagnetic MC’s- A Chorus Line f. Tim Dog
06. M.C. Tatiana- Mission To Rock
07. G. Dane – Coolest Of The Cool
08. Phase & Rhythm- Brainfood
09. Sport G & Mastermind- live
10. Marauder & The Fury- Get Loose Mother Goose
11. Two Shades Of Black- Surrender
12. Super Lover Cee & Casanova Rud-Do The James
13. Main Source- Think
14. Queen Latifah & The 45 King- A King And Queen Creation
15. Stezo- Girl Trouble
16. Disco Twins & Star Child- There It Is
17. Grand Master Caz- Casanova’s Rap
18. The Rangers- Jacks On Crack
19. Double Dose- Envious
20. Interlude
21. The Heartbeat Brothers- Bring In The Bassline
22. Mic Profesah- Cry For Freedom
23. Double Delight & DJ Slice Nice- Party Jump
24. Rappers On A Mission- S.O.L.O.
25. Princess Ivori- CrackPipe (changed it all)
26. Ultimate Choice- You Can’t Front (We Will Rock you)
27. Live N Effect Posse- I’m Getting Physical
28. Outro

Ah, you can’t do it like THIS though. I caught up Pharoahe Monch at the press day for the Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival and asked him about everything from his new project, W.A.R., sampling Maxwell back in the day, being called the Black Eminem and prepping the 10 Year Anniversary of Internal Affairs.

Pharoahe Monch Declares W.A.R! from Jerry Barrow on Vimeo.

In this Nodfactor.com exclusive Pharoahe Monch speaks about his own production techniques and the influence of other producers like Large Professor, Denaun Porter and the late Paul C. And did he really pass on the “Time’s Up” beat? Click to find out!

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Troy Donald Jameson knows how impatient his fans are. After waiting seven years between the release of his solo CDs, Internal Affairs and Desire, Pharoahe Monch has a boatload of music on the way.

“I have a concept record called the Verses Project with producers I’ve never worked with before,” Pharoahe told Nodfactor.com “It’ll come out like a comic book and be distributed digitally. It’ll be like Pharoahe vs. Premier and Pharoahe vs RZA. Then you can purchase the whole [series] for $5. “

The MC and producer, who laid the beat for his biggest hit “Simon Says,” is busy recording several projects at once. His first project, Let My People Go, should be out later this year and hopes to bridge the gap between some of today’s artists and fans of his peers.
“Music should be a little more free. We shouldn’t be criticizing as much as we do,” he explains. “The artist and the radio are just as much at fault. But here is a piece of music that you can like. There’s a lot of collaborations. Where as Desire was more just me holding it down, this is going to have some special appearances.”
He is also working on a double EP called Rock Vs. Disco. The concept CD is a period piece that takes place in the late 70s and early 80s when Disco emerged and challenged rock.
“I grew up on both so this project is like a double EP with a rock influenced side and a disco influenced side. I’m gonna have t-shirts that say Rock vs Disco: Which Do you love.”
In addition to preparing a “Making of Internal Affairs” (the ten year anniversary of the classic disc is next year) Monch will be releasing “The Hidden Years” which is the music he recorded between Internal Affairs and Desire.

Keep checking back to Nodfactor.com for a complete interview with Pharoahe discussing his own musical processes and the influence of producers like the late Paul C, Large Professor and Denaun Porter.

JLB

Sometimes it’s hard to let go of a thought. Months ago I started making a remix to Pharoahe Monch’s “Simon Says” using the horns from Isaac’ Hayes’ “Ike’s Mood.” I felt the aggressive intro horns would be a nice substitute for the monstrous Godzilla score that Monch himself sampled for the original.

But after a few attempts I grew frustrated with catching the tempo of Monch’s flow and moved on, instead using the sample for aremix of Jay-Z’s “Rock Boys.”

Well I gave it a second shot. I’m a tiny bit better at matching up drums than I was a few months ago so loaded the pieces of the sample into the channels and changed the pitch in some parts so it wouldn’t sound TOO identical. Of course like a dummy I got half way done when I realized the acapella was incomplete!! I was spending so much time trying to get the first verse right that I never listened through to the end. So the only vocals I had that I felt could match the intensity of Monch and the track were….MOP’s from “Ante Up”….(get it? Simon Says run yo shyt…raise your hands if you remember “Show No Mercy”…) To finish it off I used a piece of Luda’s verse from “Stand Up” for the hook…