Apathy: Sunday Night Sound Session
April 2006
MVRemix: ...define you as an artist...
Apathy: Yeah. Like the new XXL, they put me up in there and they put a little article of me in there... they put my picture and then next to it they put "Mad Rapper" and I thought that was crazy corny! I thought that was wild corny of XXL to do that. When I had that whole interview for XXL with the guy, I wasn't mad at all. I talk about it in a cynical sarcastic way like, "Eh, whatever." So I don't know if the guy did that, if the reporter did that or if XXL did that - some editors. But I was like, "Damn. I'm not mad, I'm cool." I'm just like "Damn, that's unfortunate." And that's crazy because that's gonna be the first time some people get to see you so it's crazy to have that label from the start.
Apathy: God, I'm so not mad man.
MVRemix: Speaking of doing your thing on the side, you're a founding member of the Demigodz and you guys have been doing things since the mid 90s, even back then. What kind of stuff do you guys have coming up on that? Obviously Celph just dropped an album with J-Zone...
Apathy: We've got a lot of stuff coming up now that "Eastern Philosophy" is out the way. One of big things coming up is Motives - "The Art of Doe Rakin" is gonna be comin' out, and Motives from my crew, he's one of the lesser known members from Demigodz, but Mo is bananas, his album is crazy. Me and Chum the Skrilla Gorilla produced the entire thing and it's called "The Art of Doe Rakin." We're workin' on Celph's album right now but I don't know what's gonna happen with that.
MVRemix: About a month ago I stumbled across your Myspace blog and watched it blow up with fans and people talkin' sideways and everything. Basically you kind of created a little firestorm with the issues you had on the state of Hip Hop... I know you hate that question, but what were you trying to get across in your blog that created such a controversy on your site for those people who haven't read it yet?
Apathy: Man, that's so funny because... I don't want to say I still get a backlash, but my whole thing is man - I love sarcastic asshole humour. I watch that "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and Larry David is the funniest dude ever. So when I sit there and pop off, I'm not like [mocking hard voice] "Yo man! There's too many cats in the industry! I hate this!" I'm not sitting there like that, I'm like "Yo, who are these guys, who do they think they are?" And we laugh about it. The whole point of that is that there's way too many upcoming new guys in the industry. No-one can say there's not. Because of technology and recording technology these days, you can buy a mic and a pre-amp and record a album.
Things like MySpace, which I love - I think that MySpace is the greatest invention ever - you can sit there and you can put up your pictures, you can put up your rap name right there in the left hand corner and congratulations now you have a rap name, you now have your four songs, you have your little pictures... Where you sit there and take them, try to look all cool in the pictures. So it's like a do-it yourself rap kit because of technology. Back in the day you had to be nice, you had to have access to some kind of studio to do something, to get somethin' really poppin'. And now it's just like any fan or any loser herb can come along and just be a rapper, and nowadays if you call somebody wack - you're not allowed to say "wack" anymore because you're considered a hater.
So no-one in the world is wack? If some rapper comes along and says [dumbed down voice] "Yo I am / The man / And check it / My rhymes is dope / Probably get infected." And I'm like, "Yo, that's kind of wack." They'll be like "Oh, you hatin' son! You just hatin'!"
MVRemix: I was having the same discussion with someone recently about Basketball. If you see someone who can't play and you tell them that, people will accept it.
Apathy: I've used that exact analogy.
MVRemix: People will be like, "You're right, I don't have a jumper. I know." But if you say the same thing about some dude, be like "Your flow is just not good - it's unacceptable."
Apathy: With that said, everyone is allowed to be an artist. We were talkin' to Evil Dee about this, from Beatminerz. Evil Dee told me "Yo man, nowadays there's more people on the stage than in the audience." So people out there, really visualize this - imagine a stage full of 80 emcees, because everybody's allowed to be an emcee nowadays, and there's 2 fans in the audience, because that's how many fans there are left.
MVRemix: That's actually real and I've seen shows get shut down because there's too many up there.
Apathy: It's crazy man, it's out of control. Back in the days we used to go to house parties and if you told somebody you were an emcee, it was a big deal. Nowadays they're like "So what do you do?" I'm like "I'm an emcee." They're like, "Oh, I'm an emcee too. So's my cousin, my grandmother raps too, she's got a demo comin' out... got a mixtape."
MVRemix: As soon as they started puttin' out beat making games for Playstation - I was like "It's a wrap."
Apathy: You know the whole mentality is it's not just limited to rap nowadays, it's a huge thing, a societal thing where American Idol, you've got the movie "8 Mile," America's Next Top Model, The Apprentice - everyone believes they can be this huge entrepreneur/model/singer, so everybody just feels like everyone has to get it poppin'.
MVRemix: That's true and it's in every genre of music so the question is when is there gonna be the first rap American Idol? 'Cause you know it's just like a year away...
Apathy: Come on man... We've been subjected to it already with the 106th and Parks and everything.
MVRemix: A big part of the blog that I liked and it was in one of your replies was basically just if you like the music, support it, bump it. That's what I think every fan should do. Don't take everything so literal.
Apathy: That's another thing too is that they really got amped, it's like I sat there and I'm fighting this political position. It's just me speaking my mind, I'm one person, it's my humble opinion. You don't gotta listen. You don't gotta read it. If you don't like it, change the channel. It's just me airing it out. People sitting there talkin' like I'm writing the Ten Commandments. If you like the music, support it. If you don't, change it - leave it alone.
Related content:
"Sunday Night Sound Session" with DJ Hyphen and J. Moore airs every Sunday night on KUBE 93.3 FM (Seattle) from 11 PM PST - Midnight.
http://www.kube93.com to stream online.
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