Tag Archive for 'DJ Green Lantern'

Immortal Technique Interview, Part 3

published
on June 20, 2008
by
ACtual
in culture, genres, interview, music, music business, politics, and technology
. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Immortal Technique Cover Art for The 3rd WorldThis week we have posted two parts of our exclusive interview with Immortal Technique. In these interviews Tech has discussed his method for writing music, the effort it takes to self-produce an album, his views on global politics and current events, and insight into the creation of his upcoming album, The 3rd World. In this final segment, Tech talks about music revenue, the remix culture and the upcoming Presidential election.

For Part 1, click here.

For Part 2, click here.

AC: Going off of that in terms of revenue and economy, there has been a lot of talk of internet piracy hurting the income of musicians. In “Obnoxious,” you advocate people to “burn it off the fucking internet and bump it outside,” so you obviously don’t feel that piracy is hurting you. What do you think the difference is between the reality of what musicians make from song and album sales on iTunes, and what the record industry wants consumers to believe they make in order to discourage music piracy?

IT: I definitely would like people to purchase The 3rd World in stores and purchase it online, but I think it was more of a way for me to express my frustration with the music industry. I can’t believe they have the audacity to call anybody else a thief. As much money as they steal from artists, as much as they don’t have a health care program for any of their artists, and I look at stuff like that and I’m disgusted. They go to these conferences and tell kids, “How can you steal a record?” I’m like really?

AC: They’re stealing from their own artists.

IT: How come you steal from your own artists? How come you’re selling the masters of your own stuff to be bootlegged in order to generate a buzz in the hood. You’re doing it to yourself and then you want to blame other people? You Godless piece of shit. How dare you try to take the moral high ground with the rest of the society by claiming that someone else is a thief? Really? What about all the Black artists who R&B and Soul were based on, whose masters were bought up in a fucking fixed contract? How about all the people who never got the money that they deserved because someone else slapped their name on a fucking recording, who didn’t have anything to actually do with the process of making this music, or didn’t participate in any of the song writing? How about all the publishing that you owe people? That’s tantamount to reparations that you owe the Latino and African-American communities. So before they talk about stealing money, they should realize that when you point the finger at somebody, there’s three fingers pointing right back at you.

Besides all that, I think that even though it‘s a great thing to be able to download music, there’s bad things to it too. Like when you don’t want a record to leak yet and then it does. So it’s not like I think downloading is great all the time. I definitely don’t want my record to be leaked before it’s ready to be leaked, cause it might not be the correct version of the song, or I might have wanted to change something to complete my artistic vision. But I think also that what needs to be said is that it’s not downloading that’s killing the music. It’s the fact that a whole bunch of people who don’t know shit about music are in charge of a music department. Like I’m glad that you went to the Wharton Business School, I’m glad that you know how to market a record, but that doesn’t mean you know shit about music. Unfortunately, that’s the problem with Hip-Hop, that’s the problem with our culture. We have a whole bunch of people who have no connection to our culture dictating everything for us. We’ve given a valid opinion to people who are not connected to us, over us.

AC: In the musical aspects of your recordings, how much control do you feel it’s necessary to have? Would you be in support of remix work as long as it didn’t distort your artistic message?

IT: I don’t know, remix work is touchy. I understand people sampling a track or something, but being able to take all of your work and re-do it and release the project and not give you a cut off anything, that’s different. You want to take a song and burn it off the internet, that’s fine. But if you’re burning my music off the internet and then selling it, that’s a whole different type of fraud. That’s not just regular fraud, that’s a violation. That’s some shit that’s going to get your IP address tracked down and beat the fuck up. If you follow my tour with a fucking camera and then try to release a DVD of all my shows, and you’re trying to charge people for it, you know what, I’m not even going to let the law handle you, I’m going to handle you motherfucker.

And I think that this is the point that I’m trying to make…it’s acceptable for people who can’t afford your music or can’t find it in the record stores, which was the issue with Revolutionary Vol. 2 to do that, but I always felt like it didn’t affect me as much because the people that really believed in my work and really believed in my music, they were the same people that were willing to go to the record store after they heard it and try to find the album, or they downloaded it and said, “You know what, I really like this so I’m going to support it.”

AC: Politically and philosophically, you’re the most in depth rapper when it comes to discussing important issues. But a lot of them, racism, poverty, crime, terrorism, religion, breakdown in the educational system, corruption within the political system, these are all tied together, so it becomes like a ball of string. Where do you start unraveling?

IT: I think sometimes I try to take a historical approach more than anything else. Try to talk about how racism came about, talk about the history of terrorism and the history of our involvement in a country, talk about the history of a war and our dealings with specific countries. Then we create a chronological order to follow wherein we take note of specific time periods and the progression of the way in which we became enslaved or became free, or the way we advanced ourselves so we can break them down into subsections. That way we can say, “Ok, this is the origination of this, these are the contributing factors of what made this happen, this is how this plays to this.” Then you start with the origin in history of all of these things because they all do have an origin in history.

Slavery has been around since the Hammurabi period in Mesopotamia, so I think we can look into the origin of lots of things. In terms of whether it’s Communism or Socialism, I mean, it doesn’t start with Karl Marx. I’m sorry to disappoint the adamant White left that sees him as a god. He’s not the father of Communism, he just decided to write down some ideas that were prevalent in all societies going back thousands of years. African and indigenous peoples had a sense of collectivism before Europe even had a structured civilization. That’s not to talk down to Europeans or anything, but just to make the point that this has been going on and the history of our people is older than we can imagine it being. Even the kingdom of Egypt is 4, 5,000 years old, and that doesn’t even begin to describe the kingdoms that came from the Nubians that gave rise to the Egyptians, even though Egyptians are touchy about that subject. But it’s true. These are things that we need to acknowledge, we need to embrace so we can understand our civilization better rather than just falling into the category we always do of being hateful of every civilization besides our own. We need to learn the lessons from history or we’re going to be doomed to repeat them again.

AC: On that note Tech, I have one more question for you if you have time.

IT: Sure.

AC: Basically, our current Administration in this country is a joke. They’ve infringed on our civil rights, deleted emails, judicial firings, and they’ve gotten us into wars we shouldn’t be in. On “Freedom of Speech,” you say, “I love the place that I live, but I hate the people in charge.” We have an election coming up. Do you see any real potential for change in either of these candidates or does it look like more of the same to you?

IT: I think it will be more of the different. It’ll be different things. Obviously we’ve made trillions of dollars of investments in Iraq, and as much as I’d like to believe Barack Obama, who by the way I did vote for, because I vote in every election. Not because I necessarily believe Democracy can’t be circumvented, but more so because when presumptuous motherfuckers come up to me and be like, “Did you vote dude?” and I’ll be like, “well actually I did and it didn’t make a motherfucking difference so get the fuck out of my face and organize something different. Stop thinking that the only way that we can appreciate the democratic rights that we fought for are by voting 25 times every century.” I think that democracy is the institution we set up, not just for voting, and I think that Barack Obama, if he’s elected, will be able to implement more social programs for the benefit of the average American than John McCain. The war will not end. Barack Obama talks about change. You know what’s going to happen? The war’s not going to end, the war’s just going to change. It’s going to be a different war. America tried having a war that was justified by nonsense, a war that was narrated by an idiot. Now they’re going to have a war that is justified and narrated by an incredibly articulate and incredibly intelligent man, if Barack Obama is the one that’s elected. But he’ll have an excuse for it, and for everything, and just from his speech at AIPAC, I don’t think that America’s position on the Israeli-Palestine conflict is going to change. I really don’t think that we’re just going to up and leave Iraq, like I said, the war is just going to change.

AC: And again, that’s assuming we’re intelligent enough to put Obama in when this is a country that for 8 years went with Bush.

IT: Right. He might not even win. We have to realize that the places he beat Hillary Clinton were because people didn’t want Hillary Clinton to win because of the Rush Limbaugh factor, where people were saying, “you know what? We need to smear Obama, we need to make sure he doesn’t come out of this looking rosy, so I want Hillary Clinton to be voted for.”

AC: Right. Well Tech, I won’t take up anymore of your time. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk today.

IT: No doubt. And remember, June 24th, you’ve got The 3rd World, Immortal Technique and DJ Green Lantern, will be on sale in every store, be on myspace.com/immortaltechnique, and of course you can preview the record on viperrecords.com.

So there you have it folks, Immortal Technique’s exclusive interview for Evolving Music. Start getting excited for The 3rd World to drop as the tracks I’ve heard off it are phenomenal. They continue the trend of excellent music supported and punctuated by vicious and powerful lyrics and masterful delivery. Evolving Music and MixMatchMusic would like to thank Immortal Technique for his time in doing this interview, as well as Dennis Paredes, Sam Donado, Public Wizard and Viper Records for helping to make it possible.

Immortal Technique Interview, Part 2

published
on June 18, 2008
by
ACtual
in culture, genres, interview, music, and music business
. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

On Monday I posted part 1 of my interview from last week with Immortal Technique. In it, he touched on his method of writing music and creating albums, his inspiration, his time in prison and his previous work with DJ Green Lantern. In part 2 of this interview, Tech talks more about his upcoming release The 3rd World (due out June 24th), capitalism, the foreign policies of the US and perception of Third World countries. Check back Friday for the third and final installment of this interview.

AC: It’s my understanding that the title of this album, The 3rd World, is also a metaphor that looks at the recording industry as being almost US Imperialistic-like, and the underground scene being more of a 3rd world country, is that correct?

IT: Absolutely. And even in the way we’re presented, they present the underground as some little backwards ass place where nothing really gets done, the same way they say, “the only way that some of these 3rd world countries can be efficient, the only way you dark people can have any sort of success is to privatize everything. Privatize your water, your communications, your transportation industries, sell us your diamonds, sell us the rights to your oil.” And that’s what the industry does when it comes in to deal with another artist. “In order for you to get on, what you have to do is change your image, take the political content out of your music, change the way we market you, sell us your masters, sell us your publishing, sign a 360 deal where we get a huge percentage of your merch and your fucking shows.” And I’ve always looked at that as utter ridiculousness, and I can’t accept stuff like that.

In the same way that that’s done to our people overseas, that’s done to us here. And we’re not any more efficient than anyone else. We think that because of the technological advances of our society that that makes us morally superior and more civilized than anybody else? America still has election fraud just like West Africa; we just had that in 2000. We still assassinate our own presidents; we just did that what, 35, 40 years ago? And after that, Bobby Kennedy? And we’ve had political assassinations after that. We have a high murder rate, we’re a gun culture, we’re no better than anybody else. We’ve definitely funded horribly authoritarian regimes, and then we sort of step away from that.

I look at the example of El Salvador, where we put 1.8 billion dollars a year into a Civil War to fund paramilitary death squads. And because we’re not physically on the ground doing it, we step away from that as if we had nothing to do with the repercussions of it and the horrible human rights abuses, the torture, rape and murder that even ended up claiming the life of an Archbishop of the Catholic church simply because he was telling the troops that were funded by American money and the CIA that it was un-Christian to oppress their own people. And it was un-Christian to commit political genocide against people who thought differently from them. And that it was the will of God and Jesus Christ to show mercy to the poor and to realize how corporations were exploiting people. That’s not Christian Socialism, fucking idiot, that’s Christianity, that’s the spirit of Jesus Christ.

If I come into a room and you’re having a debate with somebody, and I give you a set of kitchen knives, or I give you a gun, and I leave the room and I say, “Handle your business,” and lock the door behind me, just because I’m not in the same room as you when you do what you need to do, or when you do what I put you up to do so I can gain the benefit of you controlling that room economically, that doesn’t alleviate me from the moral responsibility of what has happened there. And I think that that’s something that the American empire will have to admit or it will destroy it in the long run, because truth crushed will always come to light. I’m afraid that Leo Strauss, father of Neoconservatism, was deathly wrong. It wasn’t that Liberalism failed. It was that America became schizophrenic, because on the one hand it claimed to be the bastion of freedom and democracy, and on the other hand, it was a racist police state for Black people and it was spreading its own brand of Imperialism to the rest of the world, just like Russia was. What Russia did to Eastern Europe and Asia was the same thing that America was doing to West African and all of Latin America and the Caribbean. So where’s our moral high ground? Didn’t we do deals with the Taliban before? You want to find excuses for all of this, that’s fine, but you’re just lying to yourself. These aren’t conspiracy theories, these are real life issues. We created the Saddam Husseins, we created Manuel Noriega, because we needed people like that.

AC: Now tying that back into the labels of the underground, what do you think the underground labels need to do, both separately and together, need to do in order to create the kind of backlash needed to change the current industry structure?

IT: Really just make music that has soul. Make music that you want to. I know that there is a trend to just make music that’s radio friendly, this one’s for the radio, this one’s for the bitches, quote unquote. I just make music and then after the album is done, I say to myself, “ok, what can I see playing on the radio? What is more for the streets?” Whereas other people tailor their music for this or that, or they’re like, “Oh, yo, this isn’t a really dope song, these aren’t really great lyrics, but this would probably make a really hot ringtone.” Like, at that point, what the fuck are you really doing?

AC: That leads me to an interesting question. Lately, I don’t know if you’ve been reading about it, but there’s been a few really well publicized stabs at independently releasing albums for free on the internet by Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails. Do you think those releases were an important step in the way the industry is changing, or does the fact that both of these groups were already well established and wealthy enough to release an album for free make it more of a publicity stunt than anything else?

IT: That’s an interesting argument. I mean, can you have Capitalism without capital? That’s essentially what the argument is. Could America have had an Industrial Revolution without the capital it built up from slavery? Probably not. The reason that we abolished slavery was not because we had some sort of guilty conscience. Even in the beginning of the 1900s, they kept African people in the Bronx Zoo as proof that they were the link between man and monkey. They used to keep Pygmy Africans there. I mean, this is reality. Racism was backed up by Eugenicists, by racial science, by the church even, in order to justify continuing the profit margins of slave traders and one subsection of the country. Whereas the other side realized, “You know what? It’s much more efficient for us to be able to have free men do their labor. They work much more efficiently than slaves, and we don’t have to pay for anything. They have to pay for their own things.” The money that they get is regenerated and recycled into the economy itself, it creates a stronger economy.

In the same respect, I have to say that that’s a beautiful concept, and if someone blew up just doing that and giving away their music for free, then obviously they had some other job, but I guess these cats have the benefit of already having a multi-million dollar success. But I wouldn’t necessarily categorize it as publicity stunt or something that was done with some sort of two-faced attempt at garnering even more of a fan base. I mean, it seems like they were just honestly putting their reputation to the test with their fans. They could have miserably failed, and it could have done nothing, and it could have been broke, but they gambled the right way. Obviously they have a very loyal fan base. It’s something that I guess, you’re right, can only be done with a fan base that’s committed to the artist.

AC: Now going off on fan bases, you tour and you make a point of spreading your music outside of the US. What have you seen as the state of record industries in other countries, and how has going abroad helped you spread your message and build your base?

IT: Well I can spit in English and Spanish, so definitely anytime I’m in front of a Latin American audience, or a Spanish speaking audience in Spain, we’ve been able to look at that and think to ourselves, or I think to myself, how far this hip-hop culture has actually come. In other ways though, I look at it and think that in Africa and Latin America, when I’ve been there, people don’t buy anything but bootleg albums. No one goes to the store to pay the equivalent of 10 dollars for a CD because that’s literally like a week’s wage.

AC: The word of mouth surrounding you obviously has been increasing greatly in the last few years, and you’ve done this all without the major labels’ help. For someone like you who was told that the marketing of your music would be difficult, and your content would be difficult to sell, how have you attacked self-marketing, and what has the growing success meant in terms of changing your strategy now?

IT: Lots of people, not just the record labels, told me that this wasn’t going to be lucrative or that no one was going to care, but I was fortunate enough to believe in myself and say, listen, I’m going to do whatever I want, with or without the express permission of other people. There’s no gatekeeper for me. I don’t need somebody to co-sign me to put me on.

Anyone who has supported me has never been because I twisted their arm, it’s been out of the goodness of their own heart because they felt the truth in the music. So I think in terms of marketing myself, I don’t need to create a rap persona, or a different personality in order to sell records. For me, it’s just as simple as getting the word out and getting the music to people. The music sells itself, and the message sells itself. It creates an even stronger support base because we’re drawing in from lots of people who don’t get their struggle talked about, lots of people who never really had the benefit of Hip-Hop addressing some of the issues that they’re dealing with.

For example, I have a song called “Harlem Renaissance” on The 3rd World, wherein we take the struggles like what goes on in Bosnia or Kurdistan, where people are being ethnically cleansed, and struggles in Palestine where people are losing their land to a foreign government’s occupation, and we relate that directly to what goes on in the inner city communities where we’re being ethnically cleansed economically. Where gentrification is changing the face of the neighborhood, but not for us, because the only reason they’re making the neighborhood better is so we can get the fuck out so they can raise the rent or create condominiums that go for 1.5 million dollars, and in the hood, you know people don’t have that type of money. So essentially what you’re saying is “Get the fuck out.” Like one of those rich country clubs, where it’s like, “You know what, it’s not that we don’t want Black and Latino people here, it’s just that it costs $150,000 to be here, so we know who’s going to be here, we know who’s not going to be here.”

In the same way that in the future, there will be a racism based on the reality that there will be different races. There will be a race of people who can afford to be genetically modified and say, “I don’t get AIDS like the rest of you fucking people. I don’t get cancer like you. I was fixed from the point that I was conceived and had different genes added to me to where I’m not as susceptible to levels of cold and heat the way you are, my skin doesn’t develop cancer the way yours does when exposed to this climate.” There will be people who are specifically tailored that way, and that’s going to be based on money as well. All of these things, whether or not we know it, are creating even more divisions in our society, so we know who’s going to be able to afford that sort of modification, and it damn sure ain’t gonna be the majority of the people in Africa or Latin America or Southeast Asia. It’s going to be rich people living in the 1st world. And those of us that look like our people, that will be able to afford that, are only that because they’ve been working for people who have been exploiting our land, and those traditionally are the people who control this country. (Editor’s Note: For an interesting fictional representation of the type of expensive genetic modifications Tech envisions here, check out Gattaca.)

Click on this link for the third and final installment of the interview where Tech talks about the current music industry, remix work, internet piracy and the upcoming Presidential election.

Immortal Technique Interview, Part 1

published
on June 16, 2008
by
ACtual
in genres, interview, music, and music business
. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Immortal Technique has been on the scene, steadily gaining in influence and word of mouth for several years now. His first two albums, Revolutionary Vol. 1 and Revolutionary Vol. 2 redefined what rap music could be by not just mentioning public and political issues, but by intelligently, eloquently and powerfully incorporating them into a coherent message meant to spur action in the listener.

On this blog, we’ve previously reviewed an Immortal Technique show, as well as given many readers a first glimpse of Tech’s highly anticipated new album with DJ Green Lantern, The 3rd World. Last week I had the opportunity to speak with Immortal Technique and ask him a few questions. Due to the length of the conversation, and in preparation for the June 24th release of The 3rd World, I’ll be posting this interview in 3 parts, because how else can you tackle posting an interview where you talk about everything from writing rap lyrics to local politics in over 9 pages? Check back later this week for parts 2 and 3 of the interview with Immortal Technique.

AC: I want to start first by talking about your music in general, then I want to talk about The 3rd World release and the recording industry specifically, and then I’m going to ask you a few questions about your ideologies, political philosophies and views on some of the current global issues.

One of the strongest things about your music is that you remain independent, and you’re honest and unfiltered. On your first two albums, you incorporated a wide variety of styles from songs like “Caught in the Hustle,” which has a very South American sound to “Freedom of Speech” that borrows from Pinocchio. You also routinely include lyrics in Spanish. On The 3rd World track that I’ve heard, “Golpe de Estado,” has Spanish lyrics over a Godfather song. What’s your process in terms of writing your lyrics, and finding the music for them when it comes to your Peruvian birth, Harlem upbringing, and subsequent global experiences?

IT: I think that all of these things bring themselves together in a crux of cultural diversity. I’m from New York City, which is very different from the rest of America I must say. Anyone who is reading this who is in New York, or anyone who is reading this from a place in San Francisco or a place in LA, they have to realize that these large cities are very different than what the rest of America looks like.

Due to the fact that we have so much influence from other places that even Hip-Hop itself comes from the fact that Kool Herc brought all these records back from Jamaica and started spinning different things, and the African drum influence comes from so many different cultures and we have so many different people to thank for the advancement of this type of music. And I think that that being the case, it’s just another example of diversity for me about the music that I make.

AC: In your online postings and your blogs and song lyrics, you have a vast knowledge of social, economic and political issues and you cover a lot of topics almost all at once. Then at other times, the battle aspect of your rapping background comes out more. When you’re writing your lyrics, how do you approach dissecting a topic that you want to talk about and forming the structure of the message that you’re trying to get out?

IT: It really depends. There are some songs that have taken me, for example, two or three years to write. Something like “Dance with the Devil.” Then there’s a song like “Bin Laden” that took me one night to write. I wrote “Point of No Return” in a week, I wrote “Caught in the Hustle” in an afternoon. So I think that it just depends on how inspired I am. And not just how inspired I am by a track or if one takes longer to write, it doesn’t mean I’m less inspired by the subject matter or by the effect it’s had on my life, but more in how I’m inspired about conveying that message. Because something may be a little more delicate in terms of the way I want to analyze it in my mind, say, listen, this is surgical precision that I need in order to get this subject across because it deals with something so serious. Not that stuff that I write very quickly doesn’t deal with something serious, but maybe it’s a more natural flow and it’s more like, alright, I just feel this right now, so worse comes to worse, I come and edit the lyrics later. Sometimes I edit them, sometimes I don’t. So it depends a lot on the conceptuality of the record, that’s usually what it starts with.

In the past, when I was in prison, I just wrote lyrics that were based on what I felt and what I was seeing around me and what I was seeing going on in the world even though I wasn’t there, and how I felt about that. And how I felt about being a slave. The reality about me being released and saying to myself, “Hey, I’m actually free,” and all the different levels of freedom I felt. Because when I was incarcerated, I felt like I was trapped. Then, when the CO’s threw me in the hole and 23/1 where I’m in a restricted housing unit and I only get to leave my cell for half an hour a day, you know then I think I’m even more trapped. I get out of that and think I’m free, then I get out of prison and I think I’m free but I’m still on parole, then I get off parole and think I’m free, but I still can’t get a regular paying job because of my criminal record, and I can’t get into Canada because they won’t let me in there because of my criminal record.

So there are lots of degrees to the way I perceive things, and I guess the change in my life and the way that I conduct myself, and my maturing process, not just my voice getting a little deeper and raspier because of the 100-150 shows I do a year, but all these factors coupled with the evolution of my flow and how I decided to make music has definitely changed the way I do songs now. Whereas in the past, I might have wrote verses first and then found a beat, now it’s more about constructing a concept, then maybe getting a hook together, and then structuring lyrics that really cement the subject matter into one perfect unison.

AC: It’s one thing to be on an independent label, and then it’s another thing, like you, to have complete control over your lyrics, your music and your message. Could you talk a bit about the beginning to end process that you have to personally go through to create an album where everything on it is yours?

IT: (long sigh) Ya, that’s the process. That’s the process right there. Work, work, work. Like you just said, you summed it up, I have to do pretty much everything myself. I’m learning to delegate responsibility a lot more, but most of it still falls on my shoulders. And while I have people that help me out like the people at Viper Records, and people that help with the visuals, and then I have people who are constantly trying to come in and contribute whatever they can, I appreciate all of that. I don’t ever look down on anybody just based upon what their particular position is, because I started out not being very well known, just selling my records around the hood, and then when I was finally able to expand my fan base, I never ignored the people that originally bought my records. I never changed my style up to suit other people and make them feel better about themselves. I still wanted us to be able to talk about the problems that we have, but not just in a complaining manner, but also how to fix them, how to take personal responsibility for some of our issues, or I should say for all of our issues, because we’re the only ones who are going to fix them, not somebody else.

It’s definitely an incredibly huge process from the conceptualizing of all the records like I just said, to writing all the lyrics, cause don’t nobody else write music for me. Sometimes I bring samples to people because I want to use these specific samples, or I’ll come into the studio with a melody in my head and be like, “Can we play this out,” and people will say alright. When I have to meet up with other MCs, or I have to get to someone else’s studio, I’m driving up there myself. A lot of do it yourself stuff, of course, that’s why I get the lion’s share of the paper.

AC: That provides a perfect segway, as the next couple questions I wanted to ask are dealing specifically with The 3rd World. This album has been highly anticipated and the collaboration with DJ Green Lantern is kind of a new direction for you. How did the idea for this collaboration come about?

IT: Well, it’s a new direction in the fact that I’m doing an album with him, but I’ve done plenty of songs with him in the past. I did the “Bin Laden” remix and the original “Bin Laden” back in 2004, and I did the “Impeach the President” in 2006, and I just recently was featured on the Grand Theft Auto 4 soundtrack that he was on. So I’ve always worked with Green Lantern, it’s just that I had originally come to him telling him I wanted to do a mixtape, and he had come to me telling me, “I don’t want to do a mixtape, I want to do an album, I want to have an album in stores,” and I was like, “Alright, we’ll make that happen.” And he was telling me, “Whatever I need to do to help you with that, let me get you some instrumentals,” so he gave me some instrumentals, and we basically started out doing stuff for The Middle Passage and Revolutionary Vol. 3, but eventually, it became such an overwhelming display of music. Not that it didn’t match the conceptuality of The Middle Passage, although some of the songs didn’t, it was more of the fact that it was its own project as soon as I stepped back from it. I was like, “Wow, I have like 19 songs here. What the fuck? I’m sitting here with 20 songs, I’m sitting here with 25 songs.”

Some of these are definitely for The Middle Passage, some of these, like the song “The 3rd World” talks about the correlation between poverty here in America and police corruption here in America, and those same issues being mirrored in the Third world. To me, it was incredibly important to make those subjects known, especially now since we’re going into a different political climate. It’s important not to lose sight of that, because I feel like certain demographics of people in this country benefit from their relationship with the places they come from, and why shouldn’t Black and Latino people have the same? Why shouldn’t we be able to express ourselves on a national platform? I think the fact that Latino people have allowed immigrants to be demonized so much, that’s not all on the White media, that’s on us, because we’re living with that, it shows us how weak and pathetic our community leaders are in the face of all this stuff, because they put up the most minimal struggle. I really think that there has been a complete under representation of the struggle against this. One march on May Day is the culmination of all this? It’s an ongoing fight that’s never going to end, and yet we’re not unified about this, and that’s why they’re capable of demonizing us and vilifying us, and I believe it’s a disgrace to our people to allow something like that. So it’s a personal responsibility of our people to get it together.

Follow this link to part 2 of this interview where Tech talks more about The 3rd World, the music industry and global politics.

First Listen: Immortal Technique – The 3rd World

published
on May 15, 2008
by
ACtual
in artist/album reviews, genres, and music
. 12 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

(Follow this link to Evolving Music’s interview with Immortal Technique.)
(Follow this link to the full album review of Immortal Technique’s “The 3rd World”.)

Following the announcement of the release date of the upcoming Immortal Technique album (June 24th), us media types were treated to a few tracks to introduce us to what could be the most anticipated independent album in years. And when I say independent, I’m not talking about a rapper on an underground label. I’m talking about a rapper who sold his CDs on the street and now refuses to sign with a label that could provide more exposure as it might infringe on his message and mission. However, with the announcement that a large amount of production for the album was completed by Jay-Z’s DJ Green Lantern, it had yet to be seen if Immortal Technique could stick to his guns amid production that on previous albums had been handled by far more independent names like Southpaw and 44 Caliber.
The press release was accompanied by a quote from “The Payback,” “I make rap about lyrics not beats and marketing.” And after listening to this track, “The 3rd World,” and “Reverse Pimpology,” there is no question that regardless of the beat behind him, Immortal Technique will not change his message or the power in his lyrics.
On the first listen, I liked the songs, but was concerned. These didn’t sound like Immortal Technique songs I had heard off the first two albums. The beats are more accessible, and even in an unmastered format, are a bit more polished than some of the more basic tracks off the two Revolutionary albums. On previous releases, while there are numerous tracks that grab musically from the first beat (“Caught in the Hustle,” “No Me Importa, “Obnoxious,” and “Harlem Streets” to name a few), one of the staples of the style is that the beats are more of a backdrop for Tech’s lyrics than anything else, and appreciation for them is derived mainly from how he sounds over them.
So when “The Payback” comes on with a vintage hook that could have come out of a Kanye song and laid back horns, the initial auditory reaction is to think the lyrics are going to follow those pop sensible lines. But when he opens in typical Tech fashion, “I want to run for President and the focal point when I’m campaignin’/is to put FEMA to work on plantation at Camp David,” it becomes clear that nothing has changed but the background, and even that difference is then altered by Tech’s forceful delivery and unmistakable style. By the end of the cut, as much as you could imagine hearing the beat on a radio station, Tech has made it completely his own, and you can’t imagine someone rapping about women, money or any of the other surface level topics popular in the genre today. The song is all the stronger for it.
The first beats of “The 3rd World,” while retaining the ragga-street melody style of tracks like “Peruvian Cocaine,” employs a thump and kick beat that’s harder and more fleshed out than Tech listeners are used to hearing. His mastery of lyrics, both in how he fuses lines and words together while never losing sight of his content, is again in full display here with lines like, “from where the bombs that they used to drop on Vietnam/Still has children born deformed 8 months before they’re born.”
When the initial reaction is to the first few measures of music, it’s easy to forget why you’re listening. So much of hip-hop today is based on listenable production that masks otherwise impotent lyrics. For a second you think you’ve stumbled into one of these before you remember that you’re listening because it’s an Immortal Technique track. And when you remember that fact, you start listening and realizing that not only is he the same rapper from the previous two albums, but he’s better because his message and delivery is truly incredible regardless of the beat he chooses. In short, these songs take an already potent lyricism and delivery and drive them home with an increased versatility derived from new musical landscapes behind them.
While Revolutionary Vol. 1 and 2 were perfect for his style and his message, they are largely an extension of each other. With these first three tracks from The 3rd World, Tech demonstrates an ability to adapt over any beat, and when he spits that he “makes rap about lyrics not beats and marketing,” the idea behind the new album and his collaboration with Green Lantern becomes more clear. He doesn’t care what he raps over, as long as his words are heard, and he doesn’t care who sells his album because he knows it will get out there if his message remains strong. While on a first listen these songs might shock Immortal Technique fans, the second and third listen reveal lyrics that are just as potent as the previous releases, packaged in beats that will change the way you listen to him. The elements of government conspiracy, poverty and disrespect to the major labels all show flashes here, and any concern that Tech would get soft in his lyrics or his delivery is washed away instantly.
With production coming from Green Lantern, Southpaw and Buckwild, and every indication that Immortal Technique’s strength as a lyricist and ideas as a revolutionary have not waned in the years since Revolutionary Vol. 2, I can tell you already that these three tracks make an excellent starting point for what is shaping up to be a forceful album. June 24th, Viper records, Immortal Technique, The 3rd World. Just to be fair, I’ve also heard bits of the tracks “Mistakes,” “Death March,” “Lick Shots,” and “Golpe de Estado,” but I’m not going to ruin the entire anticipation for the album here!

For a review of the full album, click here.

Immortal Technique: The 3rd World Release Date

published
on May 7, 2008
by
ACtual
in genres and music
. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

3rd World Art
{Editor’s Note: I’ve now heard three tracks off this album. You can check out my review of those here.}
{Editor’s Note 2: I’ve now heard the entire album, and the entire review can be found here.}
(Click here for Evolving Music’s exclusive interview with Immortal Technique)
It’s been the talk over here for a few months, but we’ve finally been treated to actual factual information concerning the upcoming Immortal Technique release The 3rd World. Revolutionary Vol. 2, Tech’s 2nd album, has been in circulation for 5 years now without a follow-up, and the buzz for his next album indicated that it would be something along the lines of a mix-tape format with tracks produced by Jay-Z’s DJ Green Lantern. Apparently though, fans waiting for something thrown together along the mix-tape lines will have to readjust their expectations in light of what has become a fully fledged concept studio album by the two intent on examining the underground hip-hop scene battling the major studio labels in the analogy of 3rd World countries against the economic powerhouses. I’m also fairly certain that we’ll be hearing a continuation of the other political ideals Tech is known for throughout the album.

I say this is a concept of marketing and lyrical attack that MixMatchMusic and us folks over here at Evolving Music can get behind. Long known for his revolutionary ideals and viciously direct lyrics, Immortal Technique has been a symbol of the growing war being waged on record distribution lines by major corporations and independent artists. He has remained fiercely independent in order to protect the integrity of his message from being tampered with by commercial interests. The result has been two full studio albums that examine poverty, economic and racial disparity, the various US “wars” on terrorism and drugs, and scathing attacks on the current state of our political system. With the war for the music consumer and methods of distribution heating up in the past 8 months with the media permeating success of Radiohead’s In Rainbows and Nine Inch Nails’ Ghosts I-IV, a statement of underground strength on the level Immortal Technique is capable of is one that should be watched with interest.

Furthermore, the press release leads me to believe that there will be no attempt to tone down his message or alter his ideals here. Immortal Technique remains one of the most ideologically grounded rappers in the business, and with the premiere backing of Green Lantern, this album is sure to keep your head nodding. Here’s the track listing, straight from the publicity in Tech’s camp. Be on the lookout for an Immortal Technique interview in the next week here on Evolving Music and listen for the album to drop on June 24th.

1. Death March (featuring Dj Green Lantern)
2. That’s What It Is
3. Golpe De Estado (featuring Veneno & Temperamento)
4. Harlem Renaissance
5. Lick Shots (featuring Chino XL, Crooked I)
6. Interlude
7. The 3rd World
8. Hollywood Driveby (featuring Psycho Realm & Street Platoon)
9. Watchout (RMX)
10. Reverse Pimpology (featuring Mojo)
11. Open Your Eyes
12. The Payback (featuring Diabolic & RasKass)
13. Adios Uncle Tom-Skit
14. Stronghold Grip (featuring Poison Pen & Swave Sevah)
15. Mistakes
16. Out on Parole
17. Crimes of the Heart (featuring Maya Azucena)
***Bonus track (R.O.T.C. featuring J.Arch & Da Circle)