MVRemix: For ‘Labcabincalifornia’, you were one of the first groups who used Jay Dee for some of the production. Jay Dee is now a producer who is on a somewhat mythical level. He has produced for Slum Village, Common, The Roots, A Tribe Called Quest, and more. How did this connection happen? What was Jay Dee like?

Imani: He’s become larger than life. He’s dope. It’s so funny, because when I heard his beats, I knew that was going to happen. Q-Tip hooked us up. We went to New York to work with Diamond D and a couple of other cats. We ended up working with Buckwild and Showbiz. We were just hanging out and living the hip-hop life. It was incredible. It was like we got accepted into the fraternity, chilling at Uncle Diamond’s house for a barbeque and Pharoahe Monch comes over along with all of these old school cats who we only knew their names through records. They were telling us that they loved The Pharcyde. I just soaked it up. It was dope. I was loving that sh*t. Anyway, we were in the studio with Q-Tip, free styling on the mic with Consequence. We were living up the hip-hop sh*t. The beats just were not sounding like the beats we wanted to get from Q-Tip. We wanted some of that ‘One Love’ kind of sh*t. You know what I mean? The beats sounded cool, but I was listening to them and thought they sounded a little like Fat Lip’s beats or Bootie Brown’s beats. The beats were cool, but we tried to keep it real as real could be. It’s hard to keep it real all the time. If I was going to be f*cking with Q-Tip, it is easy to say, ‘Whatever you give me, I’m a take it.’ N*gga, we don’t roll like that. The cool part about it is that Q-Tip is our folks. He’s cool people. He didn’t have to hear us say anything. He could just feel the vibe. He knew where we were at. He was like, ‘Man, I’m not even gonna front on y’all. I got this tape from this cat I met at Lollapalooza. I think you need to f*ck with him’. That was straight up from Q-Tip. There was no way he had to plug us into Jay Dee. Jay Dee was going to be large regardless. Q-Tip hadn’t actually worked with him yet. He was just talking to him. Q-Tip played us the beats and the snippets were like only 10 seconds long. I was like creaming on myself. Every beat I heard, I was like, ‘Doooooooaahhhhh! Play that back! Oooooooh!’ I was goo goo-ga ga. We needed to hook up and meet that homeboy. Now mind you, everybody else was flabbergasted by J-Swift at the time. The record label, the fans, and the people who were f*cking with us thought J-Swift was God. They were like, ‘Who the f*ck is Jay Dee?’ I put this on my momma! Motherf*ckers don’t know sh*t in the music business! I felt like we were on some next sh*t. I knew that once the world heard Jay Dee, that was going to happen. I saw him at Rock The Bells when Tribe Called Quest was doing a show with Madlib. The first time I saw him, I heard he got sick. We saw each other in passing. The next time I saw him face to face, I was like, ‘Dog! Do you remember in the studio? I told you that you were going to get mega-large and act like some super producer and forget about n*ggas!’ When I saw him, I told him that. ‘You’ll become a mega producer. When you see me again, you’ll act hella big and front on me like that.’ I couldn’t get in touch with the n*gga! He wasn’t acting like that. He was just hella busy. It was all love.

MVRemix: Who are some producers who you would like to work with?

Imani: I would like to work with Dr. Dre and DJ Quik. They are perfectionists and their beats sound so professional.

MVRemix: Who are some artists who you would like to work with?

Imani: I would like to work with The Platinum Pied Pipers. Triple P! That’s the hottest record I bought recently. I don’t know them cats.

MVRemix: What was it like when you first went to New York?

Imani: I’ve been blessed, man. When we went to New York, we didn’t have any money. We were out there chilling. Buckshot came through with Steele from Cocoa Brovaz. They laced up a track.

MVRemix: What really happened with Delicious Vinyl?”

Imani: Dude! This is funny! We were trying to get off of our label. People got this idea in their mind that we got dropped, but we hated Delicious Vinyl! They were f*cking ignorant! We recorded all these records! We were in New York and recorded with Pharoahe Monch, Buckshot, Steele, Q-Tip, and all these people. We never turned it in! We didn’t even tell the record label that we recorded the sh*t.

MVRemix: Where are the masters for those unreleased recordings with Pharoahe Monch, Buckshot, Steele, and Q-Tip?

Imani: Hey, I got them on my I-Pod right now. I’m waiting for a good opportunity to release them. It was a crazy situation. When we were out there recording, Delicious was going between record labels and distribution deals. They lost their distribution and ran out of money while we were in New York. We had all of these people just waiting to come to the studio and do sh*t with us, everybody you can think of! Delicious pulled the plug on us. That was right after ‘Labcabincalifornia’. We went to New York to work on the third album and that’s when the sh*t started to get crazy.

MVRemix: Since every album by The Pharcyde is different, how did people respond to each album?

Imani: I’m a tell you exactly from our perspective. The first album came out and people thought we were wack. ‘Who are these dudes? They’re wack! I’m not feeling this ‘Ya Mama’ song. Or, they thought, that ‘Ya Mama’ was different. There was no in between. Some people thought it was different, funny, and liked us. Or, they said, ‘That song is wack! I hate them dudes!’ There was no middle ground. That was November 1992. In May 1993, the world changed. That was when we released ‘Passing Me By’ with the video. It was like we were a whole different group. We were like a totally other group who never put out ‘Ya Mama’. With ‘Passing Me By’, many people never heard a song like that or never saw a video like that. We were groundbreaking. They thought we were the dopest thing since sliced bread. After ‘Passing Me By’ came out, it all changed. We met up with everybody and became official. Then, people began to see the live show. Then, they were like, ‘They are leaders of the new school of what is going on right now.’ Then, the second record comes out, ‘Labcabincalifornia’, and we do Lollapalooza two years in a row. The record is not moving a whole lot of units, but we are gaining a whole lot of fans. People were feeling ‘Running’ more than ‘Ya Mama’ but it wasn’t like ‘Passing Me By’. Then, the ‘Drop’ video came out and it was just like when ‘Passing Me By’ came out. Basically, it all happened like this. We came out with ‘Ya Mama’ and they said we were wack. We came out with ‘Passing Me By’ and they said we were dope. We came out with ‘Running’ and they said it was wack because it didn’t sound like ‘Bizarre Ride’. Then, they saw the video for ‘Drop’ and went back to the ‘Labcabincalifornia’ CD and put it in. ‘Drop’ made people think, ‘Let me light one up and listen to that sh*t again’. Then, it all made sense.

MVRemix: Where were you during the September 11th terrorist attack? How did you deal with it?

Imani: I know right where I was. September 9th, I was in Boston. On September 10th, I was just getting home from being on airplane in Boston. One of those airplanes was coming out of Boston too! I was tripping! Damn, I was tripping! I cut my hair off! I had long ass locks! I cut off all my locks. I was bugging. When I turned on the TV and saw that sh*t, I never saw anything like it.

MVRemix: Word association. I am going to say the name of a group, artist or person, and you say the first word that pops into your head. So, if I said ‘Public Enemy’, you may say, ‘Revolution’ or ‘Fight The Power’. If I said ‘Flava Flav’, you may say ‘Clock’, ‘Crack’, or ‘The Surreal Life’. Okay?

Imani: Okay, classic!

MVRemix: Pharoahe Monch.

Imani: Incredible.

MVRemix: Jay Dee.

Imani: Dope.

MVRemix: Wu-Tang Clan.

Imani: Classic.

MVRemix: Phife Dawg.

Imani: Five feet.

MVRemix: Jamiroquai.

Imani: Woooo! Is that a word? I love Jamiroqaui. We got a chance to do a show together in London. It was ridiculous.

MVRemix: Common.

Imani: Rasheed. The reason I said that was because I knew the dude for so long. We did a show in The China Club. He made is way up there and made sure he let us knew that he loved us and wanted to rhyme with us. This was before ‘I Used To Love H.E.R.’ days. He used to come out to L.A. to The Pharcyde manor. He’s a cool cat. I have to call him by his government name.

MVRemix: Fat Lip.

Imani: The West Coast Ol' Dirty Bastard.

MVRemix: Eminem.

Imani: Rich.

MVRemix: Slim Kid Tre.

Imani: (laughs). ‘When the planet and the stars and the moon collapse!’ I would say Saturn Seven.

MVRemix: Curtis Mayfield.

Imani: Original neo soul.

MVRemix: George Bush.

Imani: Meet The F*ckers.

MVRemix: How have you evolved as an emcee?

Imani: I went from being a person who plays a role on a team to being the dude who can walk into the studio and attack the track like a pack of wild timber wolves.