Doc Brown Interview

It has been a good few minutes since Doc Brown was last on the UK Hip Hop scene. In that time he has been ripping up clubs not with his rhymes but with his wit.

I caught up with him to see why he left us all out on the cold and what happened to his elusive album but in the corse of our conversation he hada few things to say about the music industry and the state of Hip Hop to.

"The internet has changed the music industry. Every type of music and every type of musician is suffering to a different extent. You know, a couple of years ago a Robbie Williams album came out, I think it was called Rude Box, on EMI and they sold so few that they actually had to destroy a load of pre-orders. I think it was one million pre-orders had to be destroyed before they were even delivered. They were made in Beijing and they stayed in Beijing and they crushed them and used them to form the basis of roads in the provinces of Beijing.

When I read that story in the newspaper I did start thinking, ‘Jesus if Robbie Williams can’t sell records then how the hell are we going to do it?’ I realised that the internet had really changed the way people were experiencing and enjoying music. A lot of artists get really angry about it, and sometimes it makes me angry but at the same time I can understand. You know no-one’s got a lot of money, so why would you risk forking out some money on a rapper [where] you don’t really know if the album's all going to be good. You might just pick your favourite song and roll it from there, if you don’t want pay 79p on iTunes for it then you can probably find a way to copy it from somebody else. It doesn’t seem like a crime that would affect anyone but we are the victims, obviously. Rappers are the victims.

It’s so natural now that people don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. Even now I get people emailing me, emailing my website, asking how they can download my stuff for free. Even on my videos on YouTube all the comments are talking about how to get my songs on LimeWire or how to rip them off youtube, as if I wouldn’t notice or mind. But the fact is that it’s happening to everybody and I think it’s increasingly hard for people to sell records.

To me the music industry has shifted to its original way of reaching the public when popular music came out in the fifties, which is the live circuit. So live music is massive again now because music as it was has become faceless. What I mean by that is everything is a downloadable MP3 or is copied from someone else on a blank CD there’s no liner notes there’s no artwork. People are enjoying our music for free but they’re not getting to know the artist anymore, so ultimately they can enjoy their pirated music for a while but if they really enjoy it at some stage they want to connect with that artist on a deeper level.

If you look at the upper echelon or artists like at contemporary stuff, not the Bruce Springsteins of this world, but the Lily Allens. They are making a living now not through selling records but through the live circuit. It’s real and actual. You have to gig like 300 days of each year to really make your money back. It’s gigs and merchandise now which is massive.

In the UK rap game, which kicked off from vinyl and then moved on to CD and briefly had a resurgence of income through legal downloads, now it’s tough because rap gigs have never really been a big deal. Rap gigs are coming back in the States now but even like ten years ago in the States rap gigs weren’t that big because promoters didn’t want to risk it. They felt there would always be some sort of street element attached to a rap gig and we’ve always had that problem here and so rappers can’t even get paid gigs."

Read the rest of the interview and find out why the Doc left Hip Hop.

Sledgehammer kisses and good natured disses

“He’s a c***,” says Mudmowth as a mischievous grin creeps across his face, before breaking into a laugh. He’s referring to friend, producer and Associated Minds label-mate Metabeats. While some might be offended, Mudmowth’s jovial jibes will come as no surprise to Metabeats who earlier in the week predicted this is exactly how Mudmowth would describe him.

This banter is indicative of a pair of artists who are totally in tune with each other. They met in Cardiff at the long running club night Higher Learning, six years ago and started working together a few years later. Having teamed up on Metabeats’ Metaphysical album and Mudmowth’s up-and-coming debut album, they found their working styles mashed so well it warranted its own project. As a result they are presently working on Sledgehammer Kisses a six track collaborative EP, due to be released in early 2009.However it wasn’t until much later that the pair started working together through mutual friends.

Needless to say having worked on many projects together they had quite a bit to say about each other.

Meta on Mud

Definitely the more subdued of the pair Metabeats has a relaxed personable manner. It’s almost difficult to imagine him playing off of Mudmowth’s brash vibes but then opposites often attract.

This abrasiveness was actually one of the things that sparked Metabeats’s interest in Mudmowth when he saw him years ago. “He sounded more American,” he says of Mudmowth’s early performances, “a lot more abusive.”

Although it was the punch lines that caught Metabeats’s ear the first track they worked on, Concrete Buttercups, confirmed that Mudmowth had hidden depths. “That sort of stuff was where I first heard him being, not just a punch line rhymer but a story teller and opening his heart up more,” he says, “it’s a lot more personal sort of stuff, which is exciting for me because I’d not heard him do that.” Mudmowth is, it would appear, a lot more versatile emcee than people think and not a guy easily placed in any one box.

Certainly he’s no joker in the studio as Metabeats praises his professionalism and enthusiasm to get going with creating material, a process which doesn’t take him long, “I can give him a beat and he can get it recorded within a week,” says Metabeats, “sometimes you have to wait months to get material off people, whereas our processes work a lot quicker. I think the energy of stuff works a lot better that way as well because things are happening quickly and the thought is still there. You can leave stuff for a month or two, or half a year, some people leave stuff too long and they lose the concept of what they were aiming for in the first place.” This quick work means the EP should see the light of day before Mudmowth’s already completed album even hits stores.

Mud on Meta

“Taking the piss out of people behind their backs, it’s the Mudmowth thing,” says Mudmowth before reassuring the other members of Associated Minds present, “I love you all really.” It seems that having some level of bile spit at you from Mudmowth with a knowing smile is just a sign of acceptance.

When it comes to getting down to business Mudmouth may not always be serious but then this is music, not heart surgery. “It’s not even work,” says Mudmowth, “work’s the wrong word, it’s a joy to do. It’s fun, we bounce off each other.”

A crucial part of that bounce is encapsulated in Metabeat’s bassbins, for Mudmowth they hit all the right spots from day one, “There’s a lot of people that try to imitate what he’s doing” he says, “but no-one does it as good as him. From going to Higher Learning you’ve always got producers chucking you beat CDs and Metabeats’s stood above the rest of them.”

That’s not to say that Mudmowth hasn’t seen Metabeats’s style develop over the past few years. Mudmowth explains that he thinks it’s important that with so many producers using similar drum patterns that anyone aspiring to make Hip Hop beats needs to try and carve themselves a niche. That’s why there’s a touch of pride in his voice when he says, “He’s got that sound now I can hear a beat and know it’s a Metabeats beat.”

That’s probably why Mudmowth is so optimistic about the prospects of the EP when it’s released next year. “The two tunes I had recorded before I even though we were going to do the EP, I knew how good they were,” he says, “not wanting to sound like an ego maniac, I knew if we could expand on them we should have an EP that would blow and I know we have. We don’t fuck around.” He’s not joking this time.

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