Mowf and Anti - A conversation from 2002.

[anti]

Its 1996 and I'm in my living room fiddling with this cheap stereo I just got from BJ's Warehouse in Boston, Massachusetts. I'm jogging through the channels and I stumble upon Emerson's college radio station. All of a sudden the DJ starts screaming from my speakers that there are these cats, Mad Skillz, Danja Mowf and Kalonji the Immortal from Virginia called the Supafriendz who are lyrical geniuses. The song they played was Vowel Movement. This was my first true experience of Virginia-based hip-hop. Danja Mowf, as a collective, please tell me who exactly the Supafriendz are and how they came to be. The original Superfriendz were approximately 11 MCs, of course everybody knew who Mad Skillz was. There was myself, Lonnie B, Kalonji the Immortal, Javon the mid-evil and Lil' Roc. They first were interoduced on Mad Skillz album "From Where". We also had a few DJ's, they were Mike Street and Dj Marc. We also had another rapper named Speedis Toine and BY. BY would always come to the show and help out. We also had someone named "Who?" who is now with a group named Tribe of Judah. We came together at a radio station at the University of Richmond. WDCE. Mike Street used to have a show called the U.R. house party and when I got back from school, from college, I wanted to get serious about the rap game. My manager Bill McGee told me I needed to focus and find people in the area who were really doing. And the first person I thought of was Skillz, I went to school with him at JFK High School. So we used to rap at the university show that Mike Street hosted. Eventually my skills got to the point where someone noticed me and we just got together.


Now you were the first hip-hop artist to release an album titled Word of Mowf in 1997. An album that was quite socially conscious, you touched on topics from lynching in Strange Fruit to the rising murder rate of black men in Like Flies. However, one of tracks which particularly caught was interest was a track called Question. It posed questions to your audience on the formulaic approach in becoming famous in the hip-hop industry. To quote a lyric, "Do you have to be from the hood in order to know how to rap good/Do you have to pack a Tek9, serve jail time to learn how to rhyme?". Well its over a half a decade since that song first aired… looking at the current state of hip-hop, have you received your answer?
Hehehe. Umm, yeah I think I've got my answer. I was posing rhetorical questions then based on my frustration at the time trying to figure what type of style or what I was supposed to talk about in order to be successful. Since that point after trying with Word of Mowf and noticing some of the other people trying the same formula, I tried to talk about different things. Things that aren't so mainstream like drugs and violence. You notice that some of the people who talk about that type of material rise up the chart and seem more successful. Not to say someone cant make a conscious song like Common and go up the charts, but it seems at this point of the game, it appears that the content of your music can determine how many people feel like they want to digest it or what they want to hear. Sometimes people choose to be entertained; sometimes they feel to be educated. A lot of this drug talk and gun bussin' is really exciting.


Why is that though?
It appeals a certain part of human nature that is drawn to things that are naughty and things that dirty. Its nothing new because violence had been attractive just like sex. It's become more up front these days. The shock value is rising to the degree that they are getting more and more numb and eventually everything will be raunchy and violent and we ask ourselves "how did we get here?" It's because of human nature. If you keep exposing people to a certain type of music, certain type of views they start to get comfortable with it and they begin to want more. If the sugar works, why just sprinkle on there a little bit? I'll just give you all the sugar to the point where its not even sweet even more, so I've gotta keep raising the bar and find something else that's even sweeter. That's the point where we are now.

[anti]

As a self-proclaimed intellectual poet of the streets, you are also college educated young black man with a degree in Electronic Technology, not to mentioned a multi-talented artist… There's a mild rumor of superstition going around that states if you're educated and conscious, your music will not sell to the masses. Do you think that these factors could hinder someone from being a commercially accepted rapper?
Yeah, I think hinder is a good word. I hate to say that anything will keep somebody from "doing it". But I think that when you deal with mass consumption of this type of recorded media you still deal with some very basic thing. You deal with people who want to sing and people who want to dance. So as an intellectual or a poet, you tend to complicate things. A lot of times when people want to party, dance or enjoy themselves, they're not really in the mode to digest something that complicated for them to think about. Things that work real well are nursery type rhymes and melodies. Its an approach that you take musically when you understand a pentatonic scale. "Nanaee boo boo, Lalalala" Its something about these types of scales that stick in your brain and makes you remember it… and it becomes to fun to sing.


So are you saying that you can't take lyrics from "I Used to Love HER", by Common to a beat like Nelly's "Country Grammar" or B. Rich's "Whoa Now"?
Well the beat is one thing. If somebody put an "I used to love her" over that beat, what you willdeal with is that I used to love lacks a strong hook. It's a good subject matter because, #1, he's talking about a girl. Its about admiration and love, something can conceptually think of, even though they are being fool because its really about hip-hop. The things that are really making records move and sell is how much somebody wants to sing and dance to it and how catchy it is. Without a good strong hook or beat, the strong is not catchy. Now if you can make a good record like Black Cop by KRS1, which is an example of a record whos words don't get in the way of how the record feels. You've got a beat that automatically gives you a reggae feel and girls want to dance to it and he's yelling over it, ka-ka-ka, and he's expressing his frustrations. This is a political record. So you do have these circumstances where someone can express themselves over something that's danceable. But I think that's far less achievable than the normal. Its a lot more difficult to come up with a record that is socially conscious and saying something but is still digestible by the youth where they car enough to put it in there car to listen to it.


What is your motivation to make music?
My motivation has changed over the years. Creativity is such a wonderful thing in any right. Whether its rapping or poetry or something you created and you dug down within yourself, and your ideas, and you have a concept; and you're able to bring it all together. That whole thing is always motivation. The things I do now, I do differently than with Word of Mowf. With Word of Mowf I was definitely an artist who had something to prove which was to say that I can say something on the record and Im going to be so conceptually intense that its going to flow with people. If they get into it, it's no way their not going to like this record. "Im gonna talk about these 14 ladies, Im gonna talk about Strange Fruit which will be a first person lynching…" It's no way that someone who appreciates music is going to be able to listen to this and not get with it. That's what I was thinking. <smile>. But what I learned was that there is a part where you have to get someone into the record first, because if you don't get them in they wont make it to the end in order to understand what the whole person is. Maybe somebody doesn't want to listen about somebody getting lynched. It was all new to me. So now as a record label owner than an artist and somebody who is getting up in age who has to think about why I am doing this and what it means to me, I have to get something more rewarding that just my artistic wards. I've gotten so many artistic awards over the years that I could stop doing it. I do love to do it, but at this point in my life it has to make sense because it takes a lot of your time. So unless this is a hobby to me that I'm comfortable with, then I might be cool with it. But I'm a label owner, what does Danja Mowf want right now. I look at the fact that there is so much money made in rap right now. So much money being generated. I would love to just come downstairs and work on music and have that pay the bills and provide for my family off of something I love to do. So the challenge is how you do that. How do I make a product that can get played on the radio and in the club. That's my objective. I've gone from being an artist to being a label owner and I have to ask myself: "What will sell and what will the people buy" You have to play it to what people like to a certain extent.</smile>

[anti]

You're currently signed as an artist under Missy's label Goldmine, owned by Elektra Records, a subsidiary of AOL-Time Warner, tell me how you managed to collaborate with her and how has the experience been?
The first thing that happened was our remix to Aaliyah's song, "Are you that somebody". It was an accident really because it started off as a freestyle for a mix-tape for DJ Reese here in Richmond, but I recorded the verse and the radio started playing. We submitted it to Timbaland and them but they didn't bite on it, however Richmond kept playing it. Atlantic Records asked for and started sending it out and it got real big in New York. It was the #3 record for 2 years in a row for 1999 and 2000. It got played a lot! So they way I heard it happen was Missy was on the plane and a lot of people were asking her who she had on the record… but they didn't put me on the record. DJ Clue told Missy he put it on his mix-tape and was talking about how hotit was and how hot Danja Mowf was and how dope it was that she had signed me and that they had a good act. So she got off the plane and called Skillz to get my number. So Skillz called me first and was like, "Yo did she call you, did she call you" and I'm like "Who?" and hes like "Missy!!!" and I'm like "Nah man I didn't hear nothing from Missy she didn't call me!" So I'm up now! Ok, Missy is supposed to call me and 3 something in the morning so I kept checking the phone to see if it was ringing or if she left a message.. .and then the phone rang and it was Missy and she was "Yoaaaaoohh, may speak to Daaaanja Mowf" you know sounding like Missy. So I was like "Yo!!!!" and she was like "I'm really feeling you, I want to sign you, but I wanna hear you rap regular I wanna hear you just bust something for me." So I had a beat that was already cued up and I just kept rapping so she was like "Yooooo, youre dope. Im gonna sign you" So that's how that worked out.

So how's the future of that working out?
Missy is a very busy person producing and being her own artist. We negotiated the advance for me to buy studio equipment which was a very smart thing for me to do. I guess I could have gotten the money to do something else with it… but I wanted to make studio quality recordings here, in my house. I recorded songs but it was very difficult because Danja Mowf at that point was coming off of Word of Mowf and trying to mold into Missys/Elektras groove. I understood I had done it on the Aaliyah record, so I knew I had it in me somewhere, but I just didn't understand how to make a commercial record. Because I'm still talking about subjects and I got stuff on my brain. It's a funny thing that happened when I was coming up because me, skills and Lonnie came up when it meant something to be an MC and in between the type of us being artists, the game changed where MC's didn't care anymore. They just rapped. It wasn't about your skills on the mic. So during that time period Im trying to give her songs that she felt, but I couldn't really do it. So I told Missy to get me in the studio and produce some songs with me, you know I can do it. But she couldn't get me over Timbaland beats, she wasn't giving me beats, any guidance, and I was doing everything on my own… so out of 20 songs, she probably liked 3. It didn't work out… she had to deal with album and her stuff, I was being neglected so I asked for a release. I never really got the release, they let me go, but the release is still pending on them getting some of that money back for that equipment… So I'm still theoretically signed.



We briefly talked about your Word of Mowf release in 1997. In 2001, Atlanta-based Ludacris released his sophomore album titled Word of Mouf. Were there any conflicts with copyrights or was this just a coincidence that he used the same album name?
Yeah, that was just a coincidence. Word of Mouth is a popular name or saying. I think he may have used it because of something with his crew. The fact that people compare me to Ludacris doesn't make it any better with our vocal style and our flow. At the point before Ludacris came nobody was flowing like me like I had done over Aaliyah. But my manager Bill McGee used to always tell me that ideas are out here just floating around. Somebody already has your idea, somebody is doing it, somebody is sounding like you. Everywhere in the world, there's a billion people in the world. <giggle> There are a lot of coincidences coming from Ludacris <giggle> I've met him before, I know he had the right combination and mixture to do what I should have been able to do with Missy. I like Ludacris and I like what he's doing. But he doesn't have the subject matter than I have.

[anti]

Recently you were involved in a project with Appalshop, an Appalachian media group in Whitesburg, Kentucky, who are producing a documentary about the rural prisoners forced to conform in privatized suburban prisons. You co-produced music for the documentary that infused the country fiddles of Kentucky bluegrass with the raw hip-hop drum-kicks of the dirty south. Tell me a little more about this project and what did you accomplish?
Ameila, the lady that ran the shop called me a year before talking about abluegrass or hip-hop mixture. I didn't know if she was paying or what, but I knew that the concept of me being able to challenge and put that together meant more to me than how much money I would make off of it. She stayed in touch with me and she wanted me to come to Whitesburg Kentucky and get with Dirk Powell who is definitely known around that scene making this hillbilly music and us coming together to do the soundtrack to support a documentary on the prison system there. The documentary is about a culture shock and everything that is going on in the prison system, so they wanted to make the music represent what was going on and to clash these two things together as well as show the harmony. The purpose of the film is to expose some of the injustices going on with some of these prisoners. Mostly African American who are being taken away so far… there's a lot of mental anguish for the prisoners. So I hope it goes along well, because the music definitely did.
You're also involved with the community and you speak to kids at local high schools. What type of influence do you think rap music and hip-hop have on the youth of today? Is it positive or negative?
Man these kids today… even in my small community; they look at us as icons and heroes. It's a powerful thing how on my home block the kids come out and chase behind the truck. Its crazy… just because I rap on a song. So the things the super friends do going around talking to these kids having something else to say to them is a very powerful thing, something that more rappers should do. Because I cant sit here and say that I say everything I'm supposed to on a record. There are times that as a grown man I express things that are naughty and aren't right and it gets to these kids too. As somebody who has a sister and is planning to have a child and someone who understands how powerful this medium is that the kids are open to it and listening to every word these rappers are saying and trying to do everything they see on the videos. These people are icons.. if they just took one second and said to these kids something else out of sincerity to get them to understand is that its not all about this. The first thing I let these kids know is that I'm a college graduate and that my truck, I drive an Escalade on 22s, is paid for because I have a job and a college degree. They like to think that you flossing and you getting more money off rap and that's what youre supposed to reason. And I do live some of that lifestyle… but its important for them to understand that all this floss is not what its really about and the reasons why I am the way I am is because I went to school. These images aren't really real and these kids are being fooled into thinking that everything is all good.
Well how much responsibility do you think these artists should take, because I mean, there not these kids fathers, mothers, uncles, or aunts. Its not like these rappers really have to care about how these kids are thinking… because these rappers are, like you said, trying to get paid and get their dollars too.
Well, that's an easy way to get out of it. It depends on where your consciousness is. Everybody doesn't have a parent who can't teach them… so in some way shape or form you should feel some responsibility to balance the scale out since you have so much power as an artist. If you're just doing it for yourself.. you're serving everything an injustice. Jay-Z comes and tells you something, it is like the word of HOVA!, J-HOVA. And that's crazy… so you have to use the power wisely.
Being an artist who is also involved with technology, you have realized the potential of the Internet and independent distribution. How important is the Internet to your music, your fan base and the future of the Supafriendz?
The Internet is where we started. It was the easiest way to get to a lot of people without a lot of money. Bill McGee, of 804Flava Records, hipped me to the net. I used to get on the net when AOL 1.0 was out and I would get in the chat room and mail out the 12"s to anyone and everyone who asked for it. Right now we have a pretty large community on our flavatown.com website, that's where we make a lot of our sales off of. You have your Napster and your Audiogalaxy people who share your music… so its a lot of people who have been exposed to our music because of the web, so I cant be mad at that.

[anti]

As a seasoned veteran of hip-hop, what advice can you give to up and coming artists who are well respected in the underground, yet have an insatiable urge to go commercial?
Man.. I would say you're in a very funny position, because in this game you going to have to pick your sides. If you want to be underground and be artist then stay underground and artistic. Make your records and get them to the people who want to hear it. Because if you rap about the solar system or concepts that are not easily digestible, you may have to do a little more footwork. To try to get to a commercial crowd means that you have to adjust your style and presentation to make it more mainstream and marketable, and when you do that you start to….I don't want to say sell out… but you start to make your material able to be sold…<giggle> So if you have an insatiable urge to go mainstream, then you need to dumb down your style some. Don't be so complicated. You need to find some high-school or middle school girls and let them choose your tracks and listen to your songs. Concentrate on hooks and beats… if you have the urge.</giggle>
As Danja Mowf, the entertainer, Danja Mowf, the socially conscious, and Danja Mowf the all-around good guy, what legacy do you wish to leave through your music, your art and the messages you convey for the people to hear?
At some point in time I hope to facilitate my desire to make music and touch on topics that I want to touch upon. Word of Mowf is a good example of that. Danja Mowf right now is trying to vibe with some younger artists and feel what type of music they're trying to make. I want to be successful here in Richmond, I want to come up from out of here and have them say "Look at them now, they made it big! A success story from Richmond" I would love for that to happen…making it work for us. And then if I can reach that point I'd like to stretch the boundaries and work with folks like Jill Scott… But yeah… I cant just say to the people "Yaayaya, Im over here come see me!!" I need to come to the people, get them comfortable with me, and then gradually introduce them to some things that I like to hear and that I think will make this hip-hop thing grow a little more… Cause that's what its all about man. It's got to grow.

[Nerd Motivation 101]

That was from anti-thug.com right?

Damn, doesn't feel like 8 years ago.

[danja]

this guy has me as an avatar.. how he get an avatar?

[danja]

oh well damn.. I have one

[anti]

lol, i didnt do that. i thought you added that pic to my profile.

[The Dre Era]

The dead has arisen

[Jeff Sticks]

this guy has me as an avatar.. how he get an avatar?

http://trueexclusives.com/wp-content/gallery/extra/dsc1957-1.jpg

:D