How’s the tour going?

The tour is cool. It has its ups and downs, but as a whole if I look at it as if it’s bad or good it’s been good. All of the shows have been cool. With Prince Paul I’m learning a lot and I get a chance to be with somebody that’s a generation ahead of me with experience in hiphop and [I'm] also working with Ugly Duckling and Eyedea is about to jump on the boat so its all good.

It’s kind of an eclectic mix of artists on the tour, how did the tour come together and how did you get down with it?

Stuff like that comes as part of the business with booking agents and stuff like that knowing who’s who in hiphop and different names popped up to Prince Paul and other names came out and then everyone put it all together and visualizes their position. It’s not like groups its like Prince Paul has his own thing, Ugly Duckling has their own thing, Eyedea has his own thing and I have my own thing.

This is one of the first times I’ve seen you hit some East Coast spots how have you been received so far?

It’s tough out here. I always see it as a regional type of thing. We do good in the west, the southwest, and in the Midwest, a lot of places all over but I would say we get that much more appreciation more towards where we are [from]. When we get out here it’s a little less but we still try to maintain, that’s why I’m here now it’s a worldwide thing. It’s loose on the east, but we’re trying to build it (a following) up everywhere else so they have a chance to experience and make a choice on whether or not they like how we put it down.

Do you approach your sets any differently depending on which city you’re in?

I read the crowd whether it’s a real lax crowd, or a real hyped crowd, or a fan crowd that really wants to hear certain things or if it’s a crowd that’s gigging like “Who’s playing again?” We kinda gauge the crowd and it happens at the moment too, although we do a lot of the songs, but the moment in which everything comes together all depends on the chemistry of the night.

Let’s talk about some of your albums. Your last album was “Accepted Eclectic.” What was the goal for that album and how have those goals changed for the Love & Hate album?

Well “Accepted Eclectic” was stating that I accept the fact that I’m eclectic. It’s gonna take a lot of albums to be able to get the whole point across of what I’m trying to do lyrically. Each album might change and go through different dynamics but that’s still apart of something I want to put out there. Certain get a hold of the record and say this doesn’t even sound like the last one. People fall in love with records for the time that it represents for them, but its growth in everything my experiences, my life, my lyrical ability and whatever and it changes. I want to change it continuously anyway and “Love & Hate” is just another progression of what I’m trying to do and the expression at the time that I was trying to get across.

Describe the love and hate relationship you have with hiphop.

I love the art of hiphop. I like the technical grimy aspects of putting the music down, what it does to your spirit, and how it can change people and send messages. That’s the cool shit about it, it’s our culture. It’s a whole subculture. I funnel a lot of the things I do through hiphop [such as] my learning experiences, my world travel experiences, and my people experiences. What I hate about it is the excessive amount of commercialism. You got people out there who only get the music that comes right to them so the one with the biggest flag sells the most records.

Everybody has these love hate relationships why did you choose to make that a focus on this album?

Yea, I don’t know what the rules for an album are supposed to be. I’m making a grand statement or am I making a grand statement or should this just be Aceyalone’s next album? Everything is going to be looked at as what type of thought did you have behind it. I didn’t make it a fully conceptual album like this is the love side and the hate side and these are the dynamics of life. I think we all know those types of things. It’s just a statement of where I’m at. Yea I love the music business and yea I hate different parts of it.

On the album I saw you brought in El-P, which wasn’t too surprising, but you also brought RJD2 in for a couple of tracks. What did you hear in RJD2′s beats that you felt he could add something unique to the Love & Hate album?

I like working with different producers. Different producers get me off. El-P and I talked about doing something a while ago back in ’98 or’99 and the opportunity came up to do it. With RJD2 he reminded me a lot of Mumbles, the couple tracks that he had were different and right up my alley.

What did Deconstruction Company add to the project and what made you want to work with them?

Just being an independent artist I’m going through a series ups and downs when it comes to distributors. The whole idea is to get the right distribution deal and get in the position to have all of our records out the right way. It was just another situation. I’ve gone through Nu Gruv Alliance, Caroline and now Deconstruction Company. They approached me, they’re an art design and video company, and presented some stuff and at the time I didn’t have a distributor for our records. It’s about putting ourselves in the best position business wise.

When you were making Book of Human Language, knowing that you were putting out albums afterwards, did you know that the project could possibly be the comparison that the rest of your albums would be judged by?

I gave that some thought. I knew it was a concentrated album and I knew what direction it was going to take. I kinda had a feeling about how the fans were going to take it. My idea was that it’s better to get an album like this off to let people know the depth at which you’re coming from and then get another album off that is lighthearted so people can understand your dynamics. I felt that if I did this album later people wouldn’t have been as receptive to it. So I just did it and the music just came. I’m not one of those artists that’s thinking everything out career wise. I’m just doing the music that comes from the heart and that’s the result of it. I’ll do another Book of Human Language type of record and I’ll take something that I’ve touched on and make it a whole album. It’s all conversations. We can talk about anything at any given time with anybody and nobody wants to have the same conversation all the time. Sometimes a conversation goes two or three hours on one subject like A Book of Human Language and sometimes you sit up for an hour and talk about fifteen different things.

What can people expect from A Book of Human Language II?

My mentality is different, I was living different, my mind state is different, it’s going to be a different album. What was important to me is slightly different everything from family issues to people in your life at the time. All of that plays a part with the expression of music.