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Columns Warp + Weft Warp + Weft: A Jay-Z Discussion with Lazerbeak
Columns Warp + Weft Warp + Weft: A Jay-Z Discussion with Lazerbeak | Warp + Weft: A Jay-Z Discussion with Lazerbeak |
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| Written by Steve McPherson | ||||
| Wednesday, November 28, 2007 at 12:04 PM | ||||
Page 2 of 2 RM: So ... you don't rap. LB: I don't rap. I tried for a while: anytime I'd have a couple beers in me I'd freestyle and I am so sorry for the people that I made listen to it. It was bad. I so wanted to be involved but I can't rap. I can put words together and I do that with The Plastic Constellations, but I can't straight-up spit three sixteens [sixteen bar verses] and do that over and over again. Words don't come to me like that, and I don't have that much interesting shit to say. But I make some beats. RM: So when you're making a beat, do you think about what is going to go over it? LB: Not until I've got the rough blueprint of the track, and that's when I will literally just turn it up really loud and walk back and forth and rap what I would imagine going over it. Obviously, they're not real words. Just to make sure that it's rappable over—that it's not too weird. And if I can do that, then God knows what other people could do to it. I'm just a huge fan, honestly. I listen to rap music. I love it and I just respect from a fan point of vew the rapping. Making beats is different. That's some serious shit, but as far as lyrics, I just listen to it. RM: So when you're listening to something, do you first key in on the beats? LB: It's generally style. If it's someone new, a good beat will definitely help your cause. Then you've got my attention. And then just delivery. I'm into the Southern shit and have been for quite a while and it's not that they're saying incredible stuff (although some of them are), but it's the way they do it. It immediately grabs you, like Rich Boy. I love Rich Boy. His album is really insane to me, but it's not because he's the greatest rapper ever, and it's not because he has the greatest beats ever, but somehow he conveyed something to me. And I'm not going to say that I completely relate to these dudes; I deliver pizzas. But there's something in there and I think the struggle can be related in a lot of different ways. So even though I'm struggling to pay the rent and I'm delivering pizzas, I can relate when someone's talking about coming up regardless of what they're coming up in.  Jay-Z: More Frank Lucas than Ludacris RM: Well, and that's what any kind of music to a certain extent does on a very immediate level. It makes someone's experience mutable in the sense that you can hear that and then re-constitute it into your experience. It's not as if, when you just broke up with a girl and you're listening to some break-up song and it's tearing you up, it's not like you're having the same experience as this guy, but there's a thread there. It's interesting that it can be there in something as specific as rap. Because I definitely key in on beats initially, and I've always kind of loved that experience of, when there's something that grabs me, when I catch a lyric it's like, "Oh!" and it just blows me away. I like that about rap a lot. In rock, I feel like I've been listening to it for so long and I've played it for so long, that I pull all that in a lot quicker. I kind of like the way that I have to go through rap slower. I was talking to Stef [Alexander, aka Rhymesayers/Doomtree artist P.O.S.] about this one day when we went out for Indian food and this was just when I was seriously getting into mainstream rap in the sense of really trying to give a lot of stuff a shot. And I was saying how it's weird for me listening to it, especially as someone who's going to possibly be writing about the music, that I have to listen to it for a week before I even start thinking, Do I like this or not? I have to take this time to absorb it and try to understand it from its own perspective and Stef was like, "It's cool." LB: I feel like the older I get, the more I like everything. I lost my critical ear, I think. Which is a bad thing, but I'm trying to get it back. But I listen to B96 [Chicago radio station] a lot and I find myself liking a lot of the songs on there and they could be terrible. And I have a really huge soft spot for R&B music whether it's new or old, but T-Payne is singing through a vocoder. It's obvious that his voice is affected all the time, but I can hear that he knows what he's doing as far as putting melodies together and I respect it somehow and I like it. And I will get the most shit ever because of it. It's the same thing with R. Kelly. It's a joke, I get it. But he makes some really good songs and I respect the music he makes. Same with My Chemical Romance. I've lost all sense of cred when it comes to liking anything, but I like what I like and yeah, The Killers are cool with me. RM: So what are you not feeling on American Gangster? LB: I haven't found major flaws with it since I got into it at all. I think that he's always going to put a couple tracks that are for the ladies, regardless of how crazy it is. And the "Party Life" song, I like the beat, but it just goes on forever, but I think it's kind of like old, sexy, '70s lounge. RM: That's like "Roc Boys" for me. Whenever the track comes on, I'm excited, but three minutes later ... I think if there was one part where it was without the horns—that's a great horn line, but you don't have to have it go every time. LB: That's the new single, and I agree. A lot of people have been blown away by that, but I think the sample gets really repetitive. But I'm excited because that will actually do well in the clubs, and there's nothing like that being played in the clubs these days. RM: It's not all 808s. And one of the things in the Salon article that made me really want to go and get it was how the author said it's his first distinctly non-commercial record, basically, ever. I mean, there are singles on it, obviously, but none of those songs that scream, "This is it. This is the banger." And the way that I felt about The Black Album, even, is that I'm waiting for the next banger. But this one, basically I can listen to the whole thing and not skip tracks. LB: He pulled it from iTunes the day it was released, supposedly because he said he wanted it to only be bought as a collection of songs, which is interesting, but it's also another publicity stunt. And I didn't understand why he put out "Blue Magic" as the first introduction to it because I don't think it's a very strong introduction to the record. But I'm glad it's like a bonus track on the album as opposed to part of the real deal, because it doesn't really fit at all. I'm just happy to see him on top again and becoming an artist. It really feels like if he wanted to, he could just do this for a while and he could make weird stuff, too, and he's going to lose some fans, but I think there's a lot of people that will stick with him if he keeps making shit like this. I even defended Kingdom Come, knowing that he was trying to push some boundaries with it, even if no one could relate to it because we weren't billionaires. RM: So I finally saw "Fade to Black" [Jay-Z documentary about the making of The Black Album and his farewell show at Madison Square Garden] which I remember you were talking to me about a year ago. LB: Didn't it blow your mind a little bit? RM: It totally did. The scene that really killed me was the one where he goes to see Timbaland and he plays him "Dirt Off Your Shoulder." Because the thing that fascinated me about that musically is that with a band, all the songs are built from the ground up, and even if somebody brings in a song and it's sort of done, you still add to it. But if you're a rapper, and especially if a rapper like Jay-Z and you have the pick of producers, you hear a bunch of tracks like Timbaland plays for him, and then you hear the hook from "Dirt Off Your Shoulder" and he stops. And just the experience of hearing that amazing thing and thinking, I can have that. LB: Yeah, the vignettes with the producers, for me, that's the greatest motivation. I watch that when I'm not able to make a beat and just go, "Okay, let's do this." It's so cool to see that interaction on such a high level. These superstars who are at the heart of it have to make these songs before any of the success comes. That movie is one I'll put on if I need to get ... not inspired, but if I need a kick in the pants. You can just sense the raw passion or hunger or whatever to make good music. RM: Yeah, that often gets kind of squashed by the time you're getting the CD. Especially with something like Jay-Z, so much has gone into it: packaging, promotion, singles, videos, all this stuff, ringtones. It's so manicured and then as much as Jay-Z or any rapper is going to talk about their technique, they're not going to talk earnestly about how it came about. They're just going to talk about how easy it is for them, but then when you see that creative process happening, you realize they're just like any guys out there making beats, making albums, rock bands playing clubs. LB: Yeah, they just do it in really nice studios. But at the end of the day it's the same process. That's all it is and that's why it's so awesome. Anyone can do it. So I get the same feeling if it's Stef or Sims or Mike [Mictlan] coming over: I never know if anyone's going to like anything. And that sense of satisfaction when someone is so into it immediately. You can't beat that feeling. RM: There's a certain sense in which that's always the feeling. It being in a nicer studio, that's secondary to the fact of the feeling. It's all about how you label your success. I remember having the experience of, when I was living in Massachusetts, driving to play a show with my band at the time and we were playing at the bar that we always played at. Every time we played we knew it was going to seel out, and we knew everybody was going to be into it, and I had to drive an hour to get back there, but driving there, I was like, How could it ever be better than this? It might be bigger, there might be venues I play that are larger, but it's never going to feel better than just knowing we're going to go kill it. LB: Yeah, and everyone's going to be down with it and they're all going to freak out. And that sense is cool, because I don't necessarily need to know what it feels like to sell out Wembley Stadium because we've [both TPC and Doomtree] sold out First Ave, and I just can't imagine a better night in my entire life, whether it was with TPC or the last Blowout. It's gone like that ever since selling out the Foxfire or the Triple Rock. It'll always blow my mind if the room is packed and people are down. You don't get over that. COMING UP: Doomtree Blowout 3. Friday, December 14. First Avenue . 8 pm. 18+. $12. |
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| Last Updated: Tuesday, December 11, 2007 at 10:51 PM | ||||
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