Prototype Issue
Hip-Hop's Future is Ill
By Kamren Curiel
(page 1 of 2)It's rare to stumble across a hip-hop duo in LA who are born and raised in Hollywood and can justly represent the city of devils, I mean angels.
With so many transplants shading sunny southern Califas, especially in newly hip areas like Echo Park and Silver Lake, you have to wonder where all the natives went. So sitting down with Illadox crew members Trent Moore aka Truce aka Trill Trent aka Sailor Boy (nah, I just threw that one in) and Josh Thomas aka J Perzell to talk homegrown hip-hop and about their upcoming debut album Club 8000 was a breath of fresh air.
Q: How did you guys meet?
JP: We had mutual friends, but in high school (they both attended Fairfax High) we weren’t kickin’ it. It just kinda happened after.
T: The future comes together, you know?
Q: What made you decide to make music together?
JP: We were both doing our own thing with music and then just came together. Trent was in a group called The Losers back in 2003 and we started to collab in 2005.
Q: How are your styles the same and how are they different?
JP: Our imagination is pretty much the same, but we’re two different people. Trent talks different, dresses different, and acts different. I think that comes out in the music. We have the same vision, so that’s the main thing.
T: Yeah.
Q: What’s the vision you guys share?
T: Shit, year 8000. (Long Silence) Planetary.
Q: Is that how you define your music? Futuristic?
JP: You can say that. Whatever’s going on, I like to take it up a notch. I make music for myself and try to satisfy what I like to hear. I know other people want to hear the same thing and think the same way. If somebody’s trying to go futuristic with it, I go years ahead of ‘em. If somebody tries to be raw with it, I try to be rawer, dirtier, nastier.
Q: Do you sample old stuff?
JP: I do a lot of sampling; whatever catches my ear. I try not to use what’s obvious. Even if it’s a Michael Jackson record, I’ll sample a sound, anything, and use it so that you don’t know where it’s from. I flip anything. That’s how I make music. I use an MPC drum machine and create loops. I don’t chop shit up off computers.
Q: Where did you guys grow up?
Both: Hollywood.
T: Hollywood always up to no good.
JP: I was born on June Street, between Melrose and Santa Monica and grew up pretty much on Wilcox.
T: Melrose and Wilton, Saint Andrews. He was just on the other side, dude.
Q: How did growing up in the thick of it affect your music?
JP: I had all types of friends, different races, and would go to their houses and their parents listened to all different kinds of music. My dad would play everything. It all contributed to how I make music today.
Q: With so many neighborhoods in LA racially segregated, how did growing up in a place so diverse impact you?
JP: Most people in LA don’t get to see different things and they’re closed minded. The way I was brought up, with my parents being so diverse (his family’s from Venezuela and Trinidad), I’m very open-minded to everything.
T: Yeah man, I’m Panamanian and Black.
Q: How would you classify your music?
T: Hip-Hop, really, but I’d say new age hip-hop. The future. New; newer than what you think is new right now.
Q: What about hip-hop today are you hating?
JP: How it’s so over-saturated with whack shit. It’s not like how it used to be in the mid- to late-90s when you had people doing all different types of hip-hop—Missy was out, Busta Rhymes, Biggie, 2Pac—you had people doing gangsta rap, hardcore lyricists, artists like The Pharcyde. I think the 90s was a good run. It’s gunna come back to it being more universal again and everybody’s gunna be able to shine doing their own thing.
Q: So you see the 90s coming back?
JP: 90s is back. The style is back. Not just the 90s, but how there were more options on the radio. I feel sorry for people who are new to hip-hop and turn on the radio and that’s all they listen to. It’s not a reflection of what’s really going on.
"If somebody tries to be raw with it, I try to be rawer, dirtier, nastier. "—J Perzell
Q: Besides hip-hop, what other music inspires you?
JP: I can’t really pinpoint one. I think everything does.
Q: Do you think LA has a good rep for making music?
JP: I think it has a good rep, but it has the same images that [originally] put the west on the map—Dre, early Chronic, Death Row days—and that’s not all that’s out here. People don’t see LA being what we’re about. When people want to hear music that’s from the West Coast, they expect to hear gangsta rap and that’s not all that’s out here. That’s what makes me do what I do and be myself even more because it’s not different. I know a lot of people and a lot of other artists that are doing it too. Music isn’t being represented well at all.
Q: What are you working on now?
JP: Club 8000, the name of the album and name of our click. It consists of DJ Higher, J Perzell [me], and Truce.
Q: When is it gunna drop?
JP: Sometime next year for sure.
Q: Why is music so important to you?
JP: ‘Cause I can’t help it. If I said ‘I’m not gonna make music anymore’, I couldn’t even do it. It’s the only thing I’m addicted to. I could smoke weed for a month straight and stop for like three years. I could get drunk every night, but stop whenever I wanted to. Music is something I can’t stop doing.
T: Live it, breather it, dude, eat it.
Q: Do you do it for money or love?
Both: For the love.
Q: So you’re not like most rappers who come out and want to sell millions.
JP: Well, people always tend to say ‘I do it for the love, I don’t want to get famous,’ but you do want to get recognized, especially if music is being misrepresented. You want to show the world, or whoever’s paying attention, what you do and what you think, and how you interpret what’s going on.
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