Samples have always been the backbone of hip-hop. The very first raps were performed over beat breaks, which were looped and extended to provide B-boys a platform for their gymnastic dance routines and rappers their bombastic bars. However, despite hip-hop’s preference for calling back to the past, making history as modern as a freshly-released single, the genre has oddly few examples of another tool for paying homage to the forebears and icons of days past.
Last week, M1 and Stic.man of revered revolutionary rap duo Dead Prez revealed that the late, great Los Angeles legend Nipsey Hussle reached out to them prior to his death for permission to remake their seminal 2000 debut albumLet’s Get Free — but the idea was never executed, as Nipsey passed away before he was able to begin work on the project in earnest. Besides this one high-profile example, there aren’t very many other albums by current rappers that seek to recreate the classic works that have inspired and influenced them. So, why doesn’t hip-hop have many cover albums?
Part of the answer may stem from rap music’s status as a young genre. Just 30 years ago, the culture as a whole was still fighting for its legitimacy, dismissed as a passing fad. However, that didn’t seem to stop musicians in other disciplines from nearly constantly covering each others’ songs to the point that there is widespread debate about the “best” versions of hits like “Respect,” originated by Otis Redding and made classic by Aretha Franklin; “Proud Mary,” a Creedance Clearwater Revival turned rocking revue by Ike and Tina Turner; and “Strange Fruit,” the defiant ode to Black resistance in the face of monstrous treatment sung by Billie Holiday and further popularized by Nina Simone.
Rock artists have also had a long history of reinterpreting classics for new generations. Consider Dirty Projectors’ Rise Above. In 2007, bandleader David Longstreth set out to replay Black Flag’s 1981 album Damaged from memory despite not hearing in for 15 years prior. If that sounds ambitious, Beck’s 2009 project Record Club would seem downright obsessive, as the genre-hopping multi-instrumentalist sought to cover whole albums in just one day each with a fluid collective of musicians. These included Leonard Cohen’s Songs Of Leonard Cohen, The Velvet Underground’s The Velvet Underground & Nico, and INXS’s Kick.
The form is a staple of other genres, such as rock and soul, but seems foreign to hip-hop, despite the fact that hip-hop now has enough history behind it to have several generations of “old-school” music, as many a millennial has been dumbstruck to learn in recent years. Where a 35-year-old today may have cited NWA, Public Enemy, or Run-DMC as “old-school” based on their high school experiences, a 15-year-old today looks at that 35-year-old’s high school faves like Jay-Z, Ludacris, or Nelly, and sees only a pack of old fogeys — Public Enemy may as well have been recorded on Fred Flintstone’s Dictabird.
Further complicating hip-hop’s relationship to cover projects is its reliance on samples and insistence on originality. Biting lyrics is a no-no of the highest order in hip-hop, and while sampling is the foundation of the art form, rarely are songs recreated or reinterpreted — and sometimes, choosing a sacrosanct record to recreate is seen as blasphemous. Just look at the reaction to DJ Khaled’s Outkast sample on his 2019 song “Just Us.” Borrowing the melody of “Ms. Jackson” didn’t work out any better for him than J. Cole’s similar homage — borrowing the loop from “Da Art Of Storytelling, Part 1” on “Land Of The Snakes — did for the North Carolina MC.
However, there is one example of a hip-hop cover album that was both well-received and tastefully done. In 2011, former Slum Village member Elzhi set out to pay tribute to one of his favorite MCs, Nas, by recreating Nas’s revered debut album Illmatic with a live band. The resulting mixtape, cleverly titled Elmatic, saw Elzhi putting his own unique twists on both Nas’s rhymes and the ’90s masterclass beats; Elzhi deftly re-worded some of the more iconic lyrical sequences, keeping the familiar diction and cadences, channeling them to flip Nas’s autobiographical tales into narratives of his own Detroit upbringing. The band embellished on the Ahmad Jamal, Gap Band, and Michael Jackson samples, bringing their musicality to the fore, where previously the drum tracks were the centerpieces of the album.
Elmatic‘s success only highlights how intriguing the idea of hip-hop cover albums truly is. Rap music, despite its reputation as a youth genre with little use for its elder statesmen, has always held a deep reverence for the history, breadth, and depth of Black music. Puffy can sample Diana Ross for a celebratory posthumous Notorious BIG single and Three 6 Mafia can turn a 30-year-old Willie Hutch soundtrack cut into an international players’ anthem, thoroughly disproving the trope that hip-hop doesn’t respect its elders. Rappers and producers simply choose to reinterpret what has already been done. If that’s not the essence of a cover, nothing is.
Nipsey Hussle and Elzhi both understood this, and both were willing to take the plunge, risking the disapproval of hardcore hip-hop heads to salute their musical forebears. That’s to be applauded — and imitated. Hip-hop now has a rich history of its own, just waiting to be mined, paid homage to, and translated into new terms for younger ears that may not be familiar with it, but are certainly much more receptive than they are given credit for. Whether it’s a New York boom-bap standard, a West Coast G-funk essential, or a Dirty South crunk classic, it’s time for hip-hop to begin giving its older albums some fresh looks.
Nipsey Hussle is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
“Basically, I tweeted a joke that I assumed Pheobe Bridgers would probably write the vaccination anthem of our times on her next album, which would probably come out in a few years. But then, I decided I would write it instead in the meantime,” she laughs. “This tweet that I thought was very niche ended up blowing up.”
The song, aptly titled “Immune,” opens with the lyrics, “Traffic from the East Side’s got me aggravated / Hotter than the day my brother graduated / Wait four hours in the sun / In line at Dodger Stadium / I’m not scared of dogs or getting vaccinated.” The song resonated with fans and Bridgers herself, who retweeted the clip of the song with the simple comment, “oh my god.”
“When I tweeted the Phoebe Bridgers parody, which then became a real Jensen McCray song, I didn’t expect it to do what it did,” says the 23-year-old singer/songwriter who found herself suddenly famous. “I always thought there was some artifice to it, but in my case, and in a lot of other people’s cases, it really is just an accident. It was very much fortuitous timing, and I think I wrote a pretty good verse that people liked as well.”
Growing up in a bi-racial Black and Jewish family, the Los Angeles native always knew she wanted to be a musician. She took music lessons as a child and when she attended the Grammy Camp at USC at 16 years old, it cemented her desire to pursue music professionally. She returned to USC for her undergraduate degree, this time to study performance with an emphasis on songwriting, and while she was there, her manager found her on Instagram and, as she shares matter of factly, booked her for a show.
She released her first single, “White Boy” in December 2019, following it with “Wolves” in February of 2020. The plan was to continue rolling out music, but the pandemic put those plans on pause. However, the same mixture of inherent talent and social media magic that had brought McRae to her manager was conjured up again. She was awarded the honor of joining 2021’s YouTube Black Voices campaign, where she hopes her music will “[illuminte] one tile in the mosaic of the Black American experience.”
“I feel like the point of my music is to provide another example of Black womanhood and Black female existence in the world,” she shares when asked about the socially and politically conscious nature of her music. “I think even in my music where I talk about things that are not directly related to my demographic identity, it informs the work I do anyway. When I talk about mental health and unrequited love and adolescence, and in addition, political issues, I feel like my perspective as this person who is at the intersection of a few different marginalized identities comes through always.”
McRae has seen success in the same communities her idols have created, though, in her experience, there’s still more work to be done for women of color in alternative music. “When I would play shows, people would always ask me before I played if I made R&B or if I made ‘urban’ music,” she digs. “I don’t even know what that means. That’s kind of a big word in music. Then after I played, they’d be like, ‘oh, you remind me of “insert white artists here”, but with more soul,’ which to me was just like code for ‘you’re Black.’ I think as with many other fields, white women kind of got the exposure first, and now people are opening up their definition of womanhood and rock music and folk music a little bit more to include women of color in that space.”
When McRae reminisces about her favorite artists, her eyes light up, her speech quickens, and fits of laughter punctuate her sentences. Here, she pays homage to the Black artists who have not only inspired her music but, in some ways, have made her music possible.
Alicia Keys
Alicia Keys is the reason I am a musician. My mom played me her music, and I was so drawn to it right away. She was a mixed girl with braids and I was a mixed girl with braids and I was like, ‘This is everything to me.’ Really, it was her piano playing more than that I was really drawn to. I don’t even really play piano primarily anymore but the piano was my first instrument. Alicia Keys showed me a model of musical identity that really resonated with me when I was a kid. I just loved everything she did — especially The Diary Of Alicia Keys, Songs In A Minor, and As I Am. Those three albums were really important to me.
Stevie Wonder
Alicia Keys and Stevie Wonder were two of the first artists I listened to in childhood. Stevie Wonder [was] just fun and the virtuosity that he had was really inspiring. I just remember being in the car with my older brother and my mom and just begging to hear “Black Man.” We would just scream, “Black Man, Black Man, Black Man!” so she would play that over and over again. My dad is a lawyer, but he has a beautiful singing voice and he used to sing a lot of Stevie Wonder to my mom. That was part of how he courted her, so that’s a very important part of my story.
Tracey Chapman
Tracy Chapman is important in the sense that I get compared to her a lot. I am honestly not as well-versed in her discography, everything that I know I love, but I have to acknowledge the historical lineage that led to me as a musician. She’s a Titan. I’ve seen so many different live performances of her playing “Fast Car” and her silencing arenas with just her and her guitar. That’s really important to me because even though I love playing with a band and that’s something I definitely want to do when shows come back, just the knowledge that it’s possible to silence an arena with just you and your voice and your guitar is something really remarkable. And also alto representation. Higher “feminine-sounding” voices are often favored, and having a super deep voice sets me apart — which is cool but it can also be sort of isolating. There are not a ton of female-identifying artists who have those super deep voices, at least not in the genres I traffic in. So, whenever I do find other artists who have that deep resonant alto, I feel very seen.
Corinne Bailey Rae
One of the other biggest artists in my childhood would be Corinne Bailey Rae. I listened to her self-titled debut constantly when I was a kid. She was another Black woman with a guitar making this interesting fusion of pop and folk and jazz, and she’s British. I’m kind of an Anglophile. I love how delicate and feminine her depiction of Black womanhood is. There [are] a few songs on the album that are so special to me. Obviously, “Put Your Records On” — the big hit — just makes me happy. But “Like A Star” is a song I played at so many school talent shows. That song, “I’d Like To,” I love that song so much. That song to me is like summer. It paints such a vivid picture of growing up in a Black neighborhood. Obviously, for her, it’d been growing up in the UK, but there are a lot of overlaps. When I was little, the neighborhood I grew up in before I moved to the Valley, growing up [with] that sense of community and just being around a large group of Black people, just being fully joyous.
Moses Sumney
A more recent discovery is Moses Sumney. I started listening to him when I was a freshman in college. I don’t remember who originally played me “Plastic,” but I was frozen where I stood when I heard it. Everything I listened to from him is so inspiring. I wrote an essay about his double album græ that I’m going to put on my blog one day. He completely defies all description and, with regard to being someone who’s trying to break out of stereotypical genre boxes myself, to watch the way that he does that is amazing. Everything he does is about bouncing back-and-forth between binaries with regard to not only musical genres, but also gender. He’s so comfortable in himself and makes incredible art that isn’t bound to any social expectation, it’s just really beautiful. His lyrics are so incredible, his voice is its own crazy instrument. He’s so in control of his artistic vision, which is something I aspire to one day. I’m instrumental in all of the decision-making in my art, but I don’t necessarily feel like I am as confident as I one day could and Moses is definitely the model I want to emulate.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Last year, Chiiild, the moniker for Montreal-based singer Yonatan Ayal, arrived with his debut project, Synthetic Soul. The seven-track effort was led by the success of “Count Me Out” and “Pirouette,” tracks that helped bring plenty of attention to him. He was eventually named one of the most promising Canadian acts and this year, Chiiild will look to fulfill that with his upcoming debut album, Hope For Sale.
While we’ve yet to receive music or a release for the project, Chiiild’s Yonatan spoke to us about the direction fans can expect him to go in on Hope For Sale. “The intention I think was — to break it down — lyrically, to be more conversational, to reflect the times [more],” he said. “A lot of the artists that I love and I grew up on are just like mirrors of society… it’s beautiful because you see what’s happening, what’s trending in life, not so much just music, and you’re like, ‘Hey this is what I need to reflect, this is my reaction to that trend.’”
Coming off a year like 2020 that was as hectic and overwhelming as any set of 12 months could be, Chiiild insists that as an artist, it’s important for him to reflect the times for listeners of today and tomorrow. “I’m here to translate what has happened in the streets and try to immortalize it on record and say, “Hey you know what? Tomorrow’s going to be better,’” he said.
As he continues to prepare new music for a release at some point this year, we sat down with Chiiild’s Yonatan and asked him for some of the Black artists that influenced him and his sound as he grew up and found his voice, and he gave us these thoughts on the five (but really six) Black artists that inspire his work.
Gigi
She’s an Ethiopian singer. She put out this self-titled album when I was a kid, or at some point a long time ago. It was just played on rides from Montreal to Toronto every few months when I went to visit family. It was so peaceful, so moody, [and] it still had so much of our culture in it. As an artist, you’re a sponge so it just seeped into me early. I would say she’s definitely my first inspiration. If you listen to the record, she has this version of her album, it’s called “The Illuminated Audio Version,” and it is so meditative, so peaceful, it just transports you to another place. When you think about the music that we’re making, that’s a big part. There is a sense of escapism, I do want you to put your headphones on, or turn it up real loud, and just get lost in it, build a ritual around the record and I feel like that’s what that album taught me to do. The best way for me to describe it, I’m not sure what it’s called by word, but it’s that moment where something that’s not sad makes you wanna cry. That’s the feeling where you’re on the brink [of tears] and you’re like I don’t know why I just feel this way and it’s overwhelming. That’s the goal, that’s the destination [with escapism]. I know it sounds dramatic, but I’m pretty dramatic.
Massive Attack
[They’re] kind of a Black and a White artist in one. To be fair, I don’t really see color in the same way partially because of that same experience we talked about earlier. I would say that music is probably the closest attempt at blending R&B, punk, reggae, dub, [and] industrial. It’s what they created as a world their own… I feel like the attempt is to create a world of our own as well, I want to be best in class, in my space with my tribe and my people, and build that one-on-one relationship. When I listen to Massive Attack, I’m just like, this is something that doesn’t get classified as Black music, but is Black music to me. That’s something that I love. Other things in life made me tap into who I am instead of trying to fit, being an Ethiopian Canadian, it’s like how much representation do we have in the world or in media until The Weeknd, that’s like yesterday. It’s not that long ago, I would say I was encouraged to just be myself because that’s the only way that I was able to radiate the way I’m supposed to. There’s a quote that I’m going to misquote that I heard that I think kind of sums it up the best: “Great strength is shown in restraint.” Being able to restrain from doing all those things and just focusing on my values and what I want to put in the world is my greatest strength and where I find my strength. It took a really long time to get to a place where I’m just like, “This is me, this is who I am, whatever take it or leave it.’ It takes everyone a lifetime to really get fully acclimated with themselves. At the same time, that’s what this is about, that’s really why I’m doing this. I’m doing it to represent myself and people like me and people will find it.
Sam Cooke
Because of how “Count Me Out” was conceived. “Count Me Out” really came from me watching an episode of Being Mary Jane and Sam Cooke’s “(Somebody) Ease My Troublin’ Mind” was playing. I was just immediately taken back by it, went and bought every CD I could find, or vinyl, but I essentially collected them all within that year and studied it, studied it, studied it and I was like, “I want this.” I want to do something like this that feels like this but that is a reflection of all my inspirations. When you think of “Count Me Out” and how starts in that string intro and how it’s in 6/8 and just the way it’s composed. You can tell that as an artist you’re a sponge, I’ve been listening to Sam Cooke for the whole year, “Count Me Out” happens, it’s just the natural process. I’m not sure anything that I’m doing other than trying to be my own being is on purpose. I think as artists we recognize things that are beautiful, interesting forms and that stuff happens in your everyday life. You go out the house and you see a strange car and you’re like, “Oh, this is really interesting, there’s something really attractive about it.” With music, you go into the studio and press a bunch of buttons and do all kinds of things and when something really special happens, as a great artist you recognize it, that’s all you’re doing. Like yeah, you did press the buttons, and yeah, you make it sound, but the point is you recognized it, that’s the difference.
Bob Marley
I’m kind of going back in time, so it’s like that’s also part of my DNA growing up. If you’re in an Ethiopian household, you understand the impact of Bob Marley but what’s impressive and with Bob Marley is his ability to represent everybody. Every shade of Black was represented with Bob Marley and that’s one man, it’s unbelievable. He did his thing and I really truly respect that and aspire to radiate one-fifth of his energy. I think some things are popular because they’re popular and some things are popular because they’re good and I think Exodus is popular because it’s both good and popular. It’s just incredible, that’s probably the album I listen to the most. I love “Buffalo Soldier,” I love the storytelling element, “No Woman No Cry” [as well]. It’s a journey, you turn on that album and from top to bottom it just feels incredibly homogenous. He’s telling his story, but at no point do you feel attacked or threatened by what he’s saying, and I think that’s a big superpower of him and his collaborators. He can be revolutionary without making you defensive. That’s magic, I don’t know how you do that. You just sing along to it whether you’re the perpetrator or the victim. You’re just like, “I’m with you.” That needs to be studied if it hasn’t already been studied it’s just the way that his messaging is just second to none.
Jimi Hendrix/The Weeknd
I would say Jimi Hendrix for his incredible gift, his talent, and ability to just communicate through his instrument, that’s something that we all as musicians want to be able to do. The other one would be The Weeknd more recently. Representation alone, the fact that he just keeps pushing the bar for artists like us, like I said, growing up there was no one that looked like me on TV and for him to go and continue to push the bar it’s incredibly inspiring and challenging at the same time. I’m in constant awe. That’s kind of the bar that keeps moving, if that makes sense. I’m grateful that we have somebody like that.
For nearly its entire 40-year history, hip-hop has been just as defined by intergenerational conflict as it has its youthful energy and rebellious spirit. It was founded by teens in New York rejecting the constraints of their parents’ music, causing no end to the consternation of elder generations back then — a tradition that continues to this day.
However, as much as those early rap records — and the ones of today — are a repudiation of whatever conventions defined “grown-up” music at the time, they are also influenced by and tied to those standards as well. The first rap records sampled disco, funk, and jazz, even as they strove to create something new and different. Today, modern artists sample their predecessors, borrow their flows, and pay lyrical homage without thinking about it, like it’s second nature.
And as much as the elder generation has been bemused by and berated youth movements, there have also always been those who have sought to guide, instruct, and encourage the “kids.” For every J. Cole, there’s a Jay-Z; for every Kendrick Lamar, there’s a Dr. Dre.
For Queens, New York poet, drummer, and rapper Kumbaya, there’s Pharoahe Monch, the veteran syllable slayer perhaps still best known for his Japanese monster movie-sampling 1999 hit “Simon Says.” Beginning his career in the early ’90s as part of the duo Organized Konfusion, Pharoahe has evolved and persevered through three decades of hip-hop, making him perhaps one of the best-suited artists to mentor an unconventional up-and-comer like Kumbaya.
The rap elder statesman and his protege joined Uproxx via Zoom to talk about the roots of Black music that have always tied generations together, the evolution of Black music through its myriad forms, the legacy both artists hope to leave behind, and the responsibility artists have to the world around them.
So, first of all, I just want to say, thank you both for agreeing to participate in this discussion. We’re talking about the rich history of Black music and its impact on American culture and the roots of Black music and so forth. A great place to start that discussion is when you started becoming aware of the differences between Black music and mainstream music, and what your first experiences with Black music really were.
Pharoahe Monch: I guess my first experience was in a church. With my parents being from the South, it’s like a mainstay. So, very early on, even in that sense, I would notice the patterns and stomp my feet to the various rhythms.
Kumbaya: When it came to church, my family didn’t have a tradition. Sometimes we went. Sometimes we didn’t. So, I think my first experience was kind of just digging through my mom’s CDs. She always had a whole bunch of CDs on deck, and I would just, on my off time, I would dig through them. I didn’t know what I was looking for. I was just looking for the most attractive CD cover, and I just popped it in. And I had no idea what I would, who these people were, but I just knew I really enjoyed what I was hearing.
I remember one time, she came in the house and she gave me a DMX cassette, and she said somebody had given it to her. And it was the one where he had all the blood on the cover [Flesh Of My Flesh, Blood Of My Blood] and my mom said, “Somebody gave this to me in the street.” She goes, “Here you go. I think this is gospel music.” And I was like, “I don’t think so.”
Well… He prays on it.
Kumbaya: I was like, “Ma, this man barking. I don’t think this is ‘gospel,’” but I listened to that front and back. So it was just those hands-off experiences. But as far as the differences, I was always told that it was all our music. All of the genres came from us. So for me, it’s just like, I see the differences as far as who gets to have their music on the forefront more often. I see that. But as far as the sound, it’s ours.
Pharoahe Monch: Even on the DMX joint, it’s intertwined, because he hits those things like a pastor, and then he’s praying on there. And he would pray on stage and sh*t like that. My whole household was just a plethora of different vibes. My mom was the gospel. My pop was jazz. Brother was the rock. Sister was the Jacksons, and so forth. But within all those genres, you can hear the originality and the origin.
I find that interesting because even going back to your time on Rawkus Records, your labelmate Mos Def [Yasiin Bey] made the song “Rock N Roll”: “Elvis Presley ain’t got no soul, Chuck Berry is rock and roll.” He was talking to the roots of where the music comes from. And I’m really interested in how music evolves and how you translate those influences through your own music. For instance, Pharoahe, you have, “Hallelujah, Pharoahe Monch’ll do ya.”
Pharoahe Monch: It’s funny you bring up Mos. I remember one time we did MTV, and his mom was managing him at the time. And he and his mom was telling me how his grandmother liked that verse. She was like, “Oh, he killed it with that ‘hallelujah’ part.” At that moment, in that piece, I am trying to bring about that same vibration and let it resonate on some Martin Luther King sh*t in terms of the tone, and in terms of the power there, with sh*t that moved me.
I used to study what gives you goosebumps. Is it the truth in the words? Is it the tone? Tonality in the line? What was it about the King speech that makes everybody’s hair stand up? What is it about Chuck D that can make your hair stand up when he hits you with a bit of truth? With the tone on that sh*t back then, I would be like, “Yo, this is different.”
All those things are soul to me. And all those things are Black to me. You have to study that sh*t to dig down into the roots of making people feel you beyond the f*cking content, which is why I’m a big fan of Kumbaya. It’s a combination of truth and pocket tone. As an MC, you don’t say somebody is nice unless they can command all of those kinds of elements. I think if you study Black music, you’re constantly chasing the elements.
Kumbaya: First of all, for Pharaohe to say he’s a fan of mine blows me away.
I just really like words, and I knew that from an early age. My mom knew that about me. I like to read, and I like to write. And so, I would just naturally gravitate towards voices that made me feel something. I say to myself, “Oh, I need to study how to be like this.” That’s when I started to realize that you start to take on the elements that you are drawn to, that you’re attracted to. So, if as a rapper, you’re just attracted to the flash, then you’re going to take on the element of the flash and ignore all the other stuff. But if you’re attracted to the tone, if you’re attracted to the presence, if you’re attracted to the look on somebody’s face, you’re going to start to absorb that stuff and put it back out in your own way.
As we’re talking about the impact that hip-hop music or Black music can have on culture and have on a person… knowing that impact, do artists have a responsibility to address that or use that?
Pharoahe Monch: I think for me, my overall feeling about artists is all about freedom. So, if you want to make some f*ck sh*t or some dance sh*t or some good time sh*t, all I want from that is to be inspired and motivated. It doesn’t all have to be revolutionary in the sense of pushing a Black agenda forward. It can be revolutionary in how it inspired me to think about doing that or to inspire the next person to think about doing it.
For me, it’s important to have the total spectrum of freedom but to also focus on leaving gems and continuing the legacy because this is what we come from. This is what we gathered this energy from, so it’s only right to give it back
Kumbaya, I absolutely heard a lot of what he was talking about in the music of yours that I listen to, but it’s being translated through a different lens. Pharoahe’s from a different generation. Kumbaya, you’re of course a little bit younger. What’s your take on the artist’s responsibility, and how do you think your individual lens makes it unique and so important to make sure that that perspective gets heard?
Kumbaya: At a basic level, we’re all the same. We’re all human beings and there’s no feeling that you’re going to feel, there’s no feeling that Pharoahe’s going to feel, that I’m going to be foreign to. There’s no emotion or anything that you’ve experienced, that I’m not going to understand. I may not agree but I’m not going to not understand it.
So I just feel like naturally as human beings, no matter what an artist does, no matter what they portray, whether they even try to be responsible or not, somebody is going to feel them. They’re going to resonate with somebody. So I think an artist’s responsibility is to just project whatever it is that you truly would like to project, which is why it’s important to know yourself and to stick by your stuff.
Pharoahe Monch: And you take the time to find your voice so you can get to those inner places. When you think about it in that sense it still goes back to the ancestors, not to get on some spiritual sh*t…
Kumbaya: No, let’s get on it.
Pharoahe Monch: When you tap into that sh*t, you tap into a vibration that’s undeniable every single time. It might not be for everybody but that sh*t’s going to resonate crazy when you dig that deep.
Kumbaya: I was listening to Ahmad Jamal yesterday and for like two weeks now I’ve been replaying this one song, “Poinciana.”I can’t stop listening to that song. I have no idea why but it makes me feel a way. I don’t even know what the title of that song means.
For a very long time, I was very angry. I was a very angry Black person for a very long time, rightfully so, once I started to learn about this system in place against me. I got very upset and I had to work through that because it started to affect my behavior for a reason that was unhelpful to me. So, I had to address that and I had to go and be on my own and work through that and find that voice so that I could express this in a more palatable way.
So I guess just to kind of wrap things up a little bit. Of course, history is always changing. It’s always moving forward. Right now, we are making history. So, I guess the obvious question is how do you want history to see you?
Pharoahe Monch: It’s simple for me, man. A lot of the joy I’m getting is learning and it’s dope to know that it’s a continuing f*cking thing that’s ongoing. The reason I personally push forward is that you can go back and listen to a verse or a song like Ahmad Jamal and get a whole new interpretation of that sh*t than when the first time you heard it. I think that’s part of the lesson of why you layer shit because the history of our message is that this shit needs to travel beyond our years.
If you look at the Black Messiah joint and Fred Hampton and the Panthers, Malcolm, Martin, at some point they all literally said, “I might not get there with you but this sh*t is going to resonate,” and not in the corny sense. You know, people are becoming more aware of the hardcore harsh reality of how they looked at the ugliness of this country. People always promote the “I have a dream” sh*t, but as we see now, Martin was like, “Yo, this sh*t is f*cked up. It’s f*cking two Americas and y’all need to be called out on that sh*t.”
So, woven into the Black experience of the music that I think resonates with artists like ourselves. That’s what makes this sh*t last and that’s what makes this sh*t a learning experience.
Kumbaya: I feel like I’m kind of new in the game so I actually never thought about that, what I would want to be remembered for. I know that the impact that I want to make is I want to encourage people to remember, as Toni Morrison said, “Words are things”. They’re real and they get into the walls and they get into the clothes and they get into you. I guess I would like to remind people of the power of them — particularly the power of the words that you speak to yourself because those are the most important words, the ones that we don’t hear.
I just want to remind people, “Your ideas are real. They’re real ideas. And if you feel passionate about something, go for it. Make that move.”
Pharoahe Monch’s A Magnificent Day For An Exorcism is out now via Fat Beats. Get it here. Check out Kumbaya on Soundcloud.
