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These are the transcripts of an interview with Cunninlynguists alongside Tonedeff and Mecca. The interview was conducted by Phayde on February 8th, 2004.
MVRemix: So how do you like Vancouver?
Mecca: The spot’s not too bad; we haven’t seen a lot of it so far, but I’ve been approached about religion and cigarettes and weed, so I’m alright. So far so good. It’s like being at home.
MVRemix: Have you been here before?
Tonedeff: This is the first time I have been to Vancouver.
Deacon: I’ve been to Windsor. Lost $25 in five minutes.
MVRemix: You guys have an “interesting” name. What other group names were you considering before you settled on “CunninLynguists?”
Kno: Super Lyrical, Lyrical Gangsters, but that shit was already taken, so we moved on. [Laughs]
SOS: Formerly known as the Icy Hot Stuntaz! [Laughs]
Deacon: Delicious Pimps! I don’t remember any other names.
Kno: Nah we didn’t have no other names. We just came up with that and it was a wrap.
Mecca: Every woman loves a good CunninLynguist.
MVRemix: I concur. What makes you guys different from every other group out there?
Mecca: This interview sucks!
MVRemix: You fucking suck!
Mecca: What are you, kidding? Have you heard every other group out there?
MVRemix: Yes. Yes I have.
Kno: She’s heard them.
Mecca: Well alright then. Have you heard our material? Wait a minute, I’m not in CunninLynguists, this interview ain’t even about me! I’ll be silent now.
Deacon: We do boom-bap shit but we ain’t from New York.
Kno: Here’s what makes us different: we approach our music in a way that we are not trying to do anything but make quality music, rather than try to put together an album that has a club joint, and then a song for the girls, and this that and the other. I think people are too caught up in trying to make specific songs for specific niches. We go into the recording process and whatever sounds good is what we keep. We’re not really concerned with who we’re aiming it at. That’s why all our fans are Hungarian lesbians. We’re not targeting anybody, and that’s what it ends up being.
MVRemix: I love me a Hungarian lesbian.
Kno: Me too.
Tonedeff: What I feel sets them apart is that I’ve noticed nowadays, everybody is caught up in making the “banger,” and every song has to have this ridiculously hard beat, and everybody is just making the same song over and over. What CunninLynguists do is that they make albums, and that’s an art I don’t think a lot of people know how to do, especially in a singles-driven market.
MVRemix: What is some of worst criticism that you’ve received?
Kno: Actually, I was made aware last week that I’m so wack that all my fans should die and my family should be raped.
Deacon: That isn’t criticism; that’s more like a threat.
Kno: Somebody said my beats were “white.”
Deacon: Yeah your beats are white. You make white beats. [Laughs]
Kno: I never knew beats had colours. I need to quit sampling Engelbert Humperdink; that shit’s fucking me up.
MVRemix: What do you have to say to the reviewer who said your family should be raped?
Kno: I’d like to say that it’s okay because it doesn’t make me angry. I don’t really have a reaction to that. I mean, those are fighting words, but I’m not going to fight anybody over something like that, because honestly… I don’t know man. In like two years, we’ll see what’s happening. If in two years [he’s] writing for Rolling Stone and actually has some type of influence over my career, then I will cry about it, maybe. Probably not, still.
MVRemix: Cry yourself a river?
Kno: Yes. I will cry myself a river.
Mecca: Timberrr…lake! [Singing] Don’t be so quick to.. walk away!
Deacon: I don’t think he’d be saying the same shit in person. You can write stuff all day, but words on the internet don’t mean nothing to me at all. I’m just curious; you know what I’m saying? Those are some foul words. Completely unnecessary.
Mecca: When you say some shit like that, you don’t know if they got kids, a wife, etc. He could be talking about your kids! That’s some shit to really want to fuck [him] up over!
SOS: This guy must be a loser though, because I don’t know who you’re talking about, and I’ve never read this. Who the fuck is that guy?
Kno: I found out that MC Hammer put out a hit on Third Base because Third Base said something about MC Hammer’s mom. I’ll leave you with that. That’s all I’m saying.
[Everyone laughs]
MVRemix: What have some of your biggest obstacles been?
Deacon: One person being from Florida, one person being from Kentucky, and one from Georgia, and then having shows in damn Los Angeles somewhere and we all got to get there together. That’s always the problem. Somebody’s plane ticket is always wrong. Lord, I don’t even want to talk about it.
SOS: I feel my biggest obstacle is fitting in, because everything is about cliques and crews, and you have to be down with the right people in order to get fame, and it’s all bullshit. I’d say our biggest obstacle is fitting in.
MVRemix: Why you trying to fit in?
Kno: We’re not trying to fit in. What he’s saying is that the fact that we don’t fit in is an obstacle. My biggest obstacle is teaching these muthafuckas how to rap, because when I met them, Deacon was on some, I don’t even know, Barry White, I-don’t-know-what’s-going-on…
[Everyone laughs]
Deacon: My biggest obstacle was hiding the fact, from all my niggas back in Kentucky, that a white boy was making all these beats, because they was like, ‘That shit ain’t street!’
[Everyone laughs]
MVRemix: What are the worst jobs you’ve ever had?
SOS: Oh God, you want to know about that?
Kno: Please don’t talk about the shit.
SOS: I’m not going to talk about the shit.
Kno: Don’t talk about the shit. He’s going to talk about the shit.
SOS: You want me to talk about the shit?
MVRemix: Girls love shit.
Kno: Not this kind of shit. I’m talking about real shit. I’m talking about lavatory, water-from-the-plane shit.
MVRemix: Yeah girls don’t love that kind of shit. No dice.
Deacon: All I know is that I would not be stuck in Kentucky stripping tobacco. Some other interviewer thought I said that, but I didn’t say that.
Kno: My worst job ever: I worked at a Briggs & Stratton plant in South Georgia while I was in college, and I used to get chemicals in my boots that made my feet swell up and I couldn’t walk. I went to the doctor and got a note that said I could be moved off the assembly line and Briggs & Stratton was like, ‘Fuck you,’ so I quit, and now I’m famous. What, bitches!
Deacon: You ain’t famous.
Mecca: I ain’t in CunninLynguists, but the worst job I ever had was at a place called Banana Republic, where I was surrounded by so many homosexuals, they made you feel bad to be straight.
[Everybody laughs]
Mecca: I got punished one time because a woman, who wasn’t afraid of being a woman, and who kind of liked being a woman, actually hit on me and gave me her number. The manager – who was a woman but dressed like a dude and had one of those names that was a female name but she made you call her the male version, like if it was Michelle you had to call her Mitch, and if her name was Rachel you had to call her Ray – she got mad at me and wrote me up for being heterosexual. I was surrounded by that many homosexuals.
MVRemix: What are your thoughts on nerd rap?
Deacon: What is nerd rap?
SOS: Haven’t you heard? That’s what we make.
[Everyone laughs]
Kno: Didn’t you get the memo, Deacon? That’s what we make.
Deacon: I don’t have email.
[Everyone laughs]
MVRemix: Who are some new artists that you’re feeling right now?
Kno: [Sarcastically] Yo I got to shout out my team, ‘cause we holding it down, my whole team. I’m going to take this somewhere else: honestly, careers can really be helped by established artists just saying that they feel someone. I’m not saying they listen to us; I’m just saying I’m sure they listen to something outside of their immediate clique sometimes, and they actually like it. Every artist that actually has a name is reluctant to mention that they listen to anything else besides their homie or their brother. Like Kanye West, I’ve read interviews with him and he seems straight up about that. He’ll mention other artists or whatever, and that’s what I appreciate. I mean, I’m not saying anybody’s got to shout us out, because I doubt anybody’s heard of our asses, but I’m saying for me to sit here and say ‘I like these guys, I like these guys,” well I’m not “supposed” to do that. I’m supposed to sit here and say I like Cashmere the PROfessional, I like Tonedeff, I’m really feeling that new Mecca joint, and Pack FM’s got a new album coming out.
SOS: I remember the Source asked us who we like and we told them a bunch of different people and they didn’t even use it, did they?
Kno: They didn’t even use that! They talked about the internet!
Tonedeff: That was their angle, the whole fucking time. I got issue with writers that obviously don’t have any kind of idea what the fuck they’re talking about, but I also have a chip on my shoulder about writers that think they’re way too in-the-know and have to use all these fancy analogies and try to compare you to everybody, just so they can get their intellectual rocks off about how much hip-hop they know. Like, “That verse is derivative of so-and-so, something that J-Live would do, etc.” It’s like, muthafucker I ain’t even heard that shit.
MVRemix: Besides hip-hop, what else do you listen to?
Deacon: I listen to a lot of Stevie Wonder. He’s always in my rotation. Good R&B is hard to find.
Tonedeff: I listen to everything under the sun. I have a predilection for very melancholy material – weird gothic shit. I listen to way too much Bjork, Radiohead, Tori Amos.
SOS: I like reggae, jazz. Oh, my girl put me on to that Ben Harper shit. That shit is hot. I like Bob Marley. I like Sergio Mendez and Brazil 66.
MVRemix: Are you satisfied with the progress that you’re making?
Kno: Oh I thought you said what we thought about Jamaicans! I was like, ‘I have no problem with them.’ [Laughs]
Deacon: I’m happy with the progress. It took a long time to figure out that the slow process is sometimes good. As you’re going through the slow process and furthering your career, it’s all training. You learn how to handle the progress that’s happening.
SOS: In my opinion, no matter what you do, the best thing to do is starting small and working your way up, because you will never have a strong foundation unless you work your way up and take every step. It’s all going forward; we haven’t taken any steps back yet, so everything is going well.
Kno: I think that working slowly and progressing slowly is the key to longevity.
SOS: Oh, and I wanted to say something that I didn’t get to say earlier: when we were talking about writers, yeah the media is fucked up. Writers are fucked up. Not all of them. Keep in mind when we’re talking about magazines, it’s not the whole magazine, because there are always certain people who are doing their thing, but then there are the other people that are fucking shit up.
Mecca: I went on an MTV interview. I auditioned. There were 200 emcees all together and I battled and made a team of five. By the time it was all said and done, all they were concerned about was what I did with my day. When I told them I spent it working, coming home [and] working on my album, they were like, ‘No, you need something else. What else do you do?’ I was like, ‘Well sometimes I play chess with the old folks,’ and they were like, ‘Oh, word! Can we see that?’ and everybody was all interested. Nobody cared whether I was any good, if the songs were going to be alright, did I have rhythm. Nobody gave a fuck. Remember that VH1 show we did? We got called specifically by this guy who saw us tear ass at a show. He called us down for this show on VH1. Soon as we get there, we’re sitting in front of these lily-fed college grads who don’t know shit, and the first thing she asked me was, ‘Do you have any baby mama drama?’ I said, ‘No, I don’t have any kids. I’m not even married.’ She said, ‘Well you don’t need to be married to have baby mama drama.’ I was like, ‘Do you have any baby father drama?’ She said, ‘No!’ and I was like, ‘Well alright then.’ She [also] asked me if I had ever made any money illegally, have I ever sold drugs, do I get along with my mother and father, do I know my father, have I ever been locked up… I didn’t answer most of these questions, but the point was that she was asking me. By the time the show came out, it was full of the worst, worst rappers you have ever seen, but they had the most tragic stories. Here’s another one! The same person was talking to Tone, and Tone brings her bios on each one of us, video tape of what we do and CD samples of our music. He has prepared all of this shit, which took him like eight hours to do. In the middle of his interview, this other chick comes running in with a napkin with a scrawled out phone number on it and she says, ‘Listen, listen! I just talked to this guy on the train who’s fresh out of prison and he’s getting his music career started!’ And the woman who was interviewing Tone puts the breaks on everything and was like, ‘Oh yeah, we got to call him.’
Are you serious?
Mecca: I bullshit you not! And by the time the story was over and we saw the show, one guy was a pimp and his mother lived in a shelter and she had aids, and he was taking her to buy cigarettes. Another guy was stabbed by his own sister.
SOS: Mainstream America is addicted to bullshit. That’s why the news is always on some bullshit. That’s why after 8 Mile came out they tried to commercialize that and now battles are like “the big thing.” But now when they do battles on TV, they don’t even do them right, and the person who wins isn’t the person with the most punch lines, but sounds more marketable or would sound better on a Swizz Beat. You know what pisses me off the most? Nobody heard about the guy from Sporty Thievez who saved a little child’s life by jumping in front of a van. He died when pushing the kid away, but nobody heard about that. The news didn’t talk about that because it was positive.
Kno: But they loved Sporty Thievez when they had a TLC diss track.
MVRemix: Kno, tell me about The White Albulum.
Kno: There really isn’t too much to say about it. The bottom line is that Jay-Z and Rocafella obviously put out acapellas because they wanted this done. Jay-Z has been quoted as saying the same thing. I just obliged that request. Anybody complaining about it, any one of those mad rappers who are complaining about wasting beats, that beat could have been yours if you bought it. I mainly did it for exposure. That’s really all it is. People will listen to that; It’s Jay-Z. I like the album. It’s not so much I listened to the album and thought it was wack and wanted to remix it; that’s not it at all. It was just an opportunity to showcase my talent.
MVRemix: What is your ultimate goal?
SOS: As CunninLynguists, we’re just trying to keep eating.
[Everyone laughs]
Deacon: I wish we could organize every rapper on the planet to simultaneously save hip-hop. I wish we could all come together at the exact same time and make everyone listen to good music for one day, because that’s all it would take. Like Kno was saying about Kanye West, when people hear good music, and hear good samples, they recognize it. They just don’t get the opportunity to hear it because it don’t get played. They only know what they hear, and they hear garbage.
MVRemix: Tell me something nobody knows about the Cunninlynguists.
SOS: SOS needs to pee really bad.
Kno: There’s three of them, and they’re all different ethnicities! Our CD cover looks like a Neapolitan ice cream box.
MVRemix: If hip-hop was a woman, what would she look like?
Deacon: Like Patty LaBelle in her prime.
SOS: Alicia Keys, because she’s a blend. She could be anything. But that’s only in my dreams. In real life, the female manifestation of hip-hop would look like Lady of Rage or something, because she’s gangsta.
Kno: Hip-hop would just have a fat ass and big titties. And a nipple ring that’s shaped like the sun.
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