HHS: How did you guys come up with concept of “Meat Shake”

Andy Cooper: Meat Shake is a Long Beach fast food chain where we all met in the early 90′s, when we got out of high school. It was my first job, aside from summer jobs with my dad, it was my first independent job. Einstein was working there at the time, and then Diz came around maybe six months later. We worked there together for maybe six months, and that’s how we started the group.

HHS: Okay.. So as far as incorporating it into the album, was this just pure fun or was the deeper meaning to it?

Andy Cooper: Yeah, a lot of it was fun and humor. Maybe if there was any deeper meaning, it was a satirical look at culture, especially in America, there’s the fast food clique of people – the majority, the mainstream of just “give me something quick, easy, cheap, simple to digest”. And then us being in the music business, there’s the high-end, super-cool crowd, on the edge of fashion. The edgy crowd that would never eat McDonald’s or something like that. It’s sort of a look at two sides of culture in America.

HHS: So where would you guys say you fit in to that?

Andy Cooper: (Laughs) nowhere.

HHS: Those are like the two extremes.

Andy Cooper: Yeah, both groups of people don’t like us. We fit in nowhere.

HHS: Since the music you are making isn’t typical to today’s definition of what hip-hop “should” sound like, how is the mainstream press viewing the album?

Andy Cooper: We’ve gotten a lot of negative to lukewarm responses from mainstream press. I think our group’s easy to pick on because we’ve got a different look, a different style, a different angle, a different humor, a different sound, so, it’s really easy to call us out, because when every group in every magazine looks like 50 Cent and whatever else is hot at the moment, a group like us are like fish out of water, I suppose.

Dizzy Dustin: I think they just can’t stand us period. We’re nothing, we’re a totally different music than they are, you know? It makes no sense for them to feel what we are doing or like what we are doing. Like Andy says we do get some lukewarm response, but most of it is that we aren’t the jiggy scene or the “in” type of music. A lot of these people are looking for the really.

Andy Cooper: Street cred.

Dizzy Dustin: Yeah the street cred. We could care less about the street cred.

HHS: How is the indy press, in comparison?

Dizzy: The indy press has always been good to us. Independent magazine, independent whatever, they’ve always been supportive.

Andy: The bad bit about our music, radio or press or anything, is that our music is pretty musical, relatively intelligent, and humorous. Right now, music culture isn’t geared towards that. Big time record labels and big time magazines, they gotta feed people, they gotta hire people on their staff, they gotta go on vacations, and making money is their main objective.

Dizzy: And we’re not a group that’s going to make a lot of people a lot of money.

Andy: Exactly, at least not at this point. We ain’t generating monster money. I guess that’s when you become a priority, I suppose.

HHS: Okay, so it’s obvious that you guys aren’t on the corner slangin’ rocks or anything. But how important do you feel street credibility is important to the music. Being that’s it’s not necessarily a part of your music, how important is it to hip-hop in general?

Dizzy: I don’t know, I mean, I have to sell crack because my music don’t sell. I’m on the corner selling crack right now, trying to pimp some hoes and everything. So, as far as street credibility goes, you can ask anybody in California they know I am.

Andy: You know what’s funny to me about street cred? The only people it seems to matters to are nerdy young white kids. That’s the only people who are concerned with it – the people who have never lived in a bad neighborhood or never been around Black people. All of a sudden “I ain’t real!” You know, Hubert from Irvine is worried about street cred. Honestly, if you love music. I don’t care of James Brown is from Iceland, it’s funky! It doesn’t matter.

Dizzy: I think street cred is just gonna level you to the streets. Us as a group, we’re way above trying to get street cred. We’re not about where we’re from. We’re all rooted in hip-hop, as far as trying to gain respect on the street it’s not going to get you anywhere. You’re gonna be one of those groups that got a little bit of recognition in your own neighborhood, or doing shows at little venues of 500 people or something like that. I think our goal is a little bit higher than that, so street credibility, we really don’t care about that. We’ve paid our dues.

Young Einstien: Don’t forget that we are from Long Beach.

Andy: That’s the irony. Of all the young white hip-hop groups that came out, we are more old school and more from bad neighborhoods, and grew up in all that gangster stuff way more than anybody else did. We could be talking about that every song, but that’s a waste of time.

Dizzy: I think our music is a way to escape that. I grew up in the north side of Long Beach, there wasn’t a friendly neighborhood at all. I’m an old cat, I grew up on hip-hop..

Andy: He been hit with a few shots, now he walk with a limp!

Dizzy: Yeah but you don’t hear me talking about it on record.

HHS: At the same time though, do you guys agree that certain areas will kind of define an artist, like Nas wouldn’t be Nas without Queensbridge? You know what I’m saying?

Dizzy: I think that growing up in Long Beach has diversified our music. Long Beach is one place where you get a mix of everyone – black, white, Mexicans, Asians, whatever. Everybody grew up on the same type of music. Andy would go to a dance or something, and they’d play a Salt-N-Pepa cut and then play a Guns and Roses tune or something.

Andy: I would say that I think you are right, like in what you said about Nas, if what you are trying to talk about street stuff, then I suppose you should have some street credibility. Like you should know what you are talking about. But I am personally not interested in hearing about selling jumbos because they have been talking about if for like ten years and they’ve exhausted the subject.

Dizzy: It was dope when N.W.A. did it though.

Andy: Which is ironic, because those guys weren’t really even that street credible. But I understand, if you are going to talk about selling crack, you should have sold crack, I suppose.

Dizzy: But that’s not how the rap game works, man.

Andy: I suppose that’s true. But my point is that why does music have to be about the street, why does hip-hop have to be about the street. I understand that it came from the street to a large degree. But historically, I’d say most music and hip-hop has been about partying and fun and other subjects besides selling crack.

Dizzy: The beginning of hip-hop was about: forget about your problems in your neighborhood and your house, and go to the park and have a good time. Dress in up in goofy suits and have a blast.

Andy: And lying about stuff that you don’t really have. That’s 95% of all hip-hop, pretending you have stuff that you don’t. “Gotta color T.V., so I could see.”

Dizzy: A lot of people look at real hip-hop like it’s gotta be that “rah rah” real rough stuff, when hip-hop never started out like that. If you could prove me wrong, someone please do. Rap way back in the day, they had these giant metal suits, doing dance moves, kinda like the disco era.

Young Einstien: Melle Mel (dressed) like Motley Crew.

Dizzy: So I really don’t think that hip-hop originated with the hardcore street credibility act.

HHS: I agree.I been on your side for a minute now. So what made you guys decide not to include any cuss words on your album?

Andy: We did say “jackass” once.

HHS: Okay, well. I mean you guys are hip-hop fans. I’m sure you listen to hip-hop on a regular basis, or at least have in your lifetime. I know for me, cussing has just become an everyday part of my vernacular, and a lot of it is because of hip-hop. So, I’m curious, did you guys sit down and say, “let’s not cuss on this record”, or.?

Andy: Check this out: Biz Markie, Rakim, Peoples Instictive Travels, 3 Feet High and Rising. I mean like, great, great albums maybe some of the best – no cussing, if maybe one or two cuss words. So to me the most quality stuff, ironically had the least amount of cussing. Not including Straight Outta Compton which is like the best record ever. But I mean, the point is, you could make a great argument that cussing and great hip-hop don’t necessarily go hand-in-hand. Rakim being the best example.

Dizzy: Um. Fuck, like I cuss all the time in regular life.

Andy: Cuss cred!

Dizzy: But I think when your working on writing, cuss words become a crutch for a lot of people who can’t think of something creative to say. Like, “I can’t fill in this one-bar or line or whatever, what am I gonna say? Oh ‘motherfucker’ fills up half a bar.” I don’t really like to cuss on albums. I don’t like to bleep nothing out.

Andy: Plus we all like our mothers and would like our moms to be able to listen to the record.

Dizzy: I gotta kid so you know, I’d like to be able play it. We’re the type of group where people come up to us like “my kid loves it, my mom loves it, my grandmother loves it”. Since we don’t sell a lot of copies, we are trying to hit every angle of human. Like a kid or someone in a walker.

Young Einstein: We did just do a song with Grand Puba and he held it down for the cussing.

HHS: Yeah my daughter is four, it’s like the only current hip-hop album I let her listen to. She loves it.

Andy: Maybe we should go to Nicolodeon and try to get a T.V. show or something.

Young Einstein: I was looking in a chat room and someone was asking what could be played for a seven-year old, and someone said “Ugly Duckling”.

Dizzy: Yeah, but seven year olds don’t go out and buy albums.

HHS: Yeah but that’s cool, because from my perspective, when I’m driving with my daughter, except from your album and a few classics, I don’t listen to hip-hop in the car. I love hip-hop, but as a parent, it’s just not happening.

Dizzy: I had another mom tell me that her daughter thought we did a song called “Just A Little Simba”.. You know, from Lion King.

HHS: Oh man (laughs).

Andy: You know the bottom line to all that junk, its not that nobody in hip-hop should cuss, and nobody should talk about crack. All we are proponents of is diversity. There is no reason that hip-hop cannot be a wide spread culture with different ideas and different approaches. That’s what makes a culture good. The thing that makes a culture bad is homogeny, when it’s the same products, the same look, the same story, the same “I got shot” over and over again.

HHS: It’s obvious from listening to your music where your influences stem from, everybody you mentioned, at least as far as hip-hop is concerned. But do you still consider yourselves fans of hip-hop? Do you listen to today’s artists?

Dizzy: I can honestly say that I don’t listen to that much hip-hop no more. I stick with a lot of the older stuff. I listen more to people’s demos than I do mainstream music. I haven’t bought an album in so long. It’s just one of those things. Hip-hop is in a very bad time right now with all the mainstream, the bling-bling, and the jiggy. I mean when you can pick a basketball team off the street because everybody’s wearing jerseys and make them look like pros, something’s wrong.

Andy: On the underground level, there’s a lot of repetitiveness, lack of creativity. A lot of good lyricists, but the production, it’s not bad, it’s just not funky anymore, and that’s what I always liked about hip-hop. Here and there, there will be tracks; I like People Under The Stairs and a lot of stuff.

Young Einstein: Rarely, I’ll hear a couple songs a year. The last song that I really wanted to go buy was Jay Dee “Fuck The Police” and that was like over a year ago.

Andy: Yeah there’s no loops and funk, just a lot of crescendos and chopped drums, and people talking about how they do ill science on lyrics and emcees and all this.

HHS: You guys heard Edan’s album?

Dizzy: Yeah, Edan! He’s all right, yeah!

Young Einstein: I was listening to it on the internet, it was dope.

HHS: Einstein, how many records would you say are sampled per song on Taste The Secret?

Young Einstein: We don’t sample.

HHS: Come on.

Young Einstein: Average? Per song, I’d say like 12, on this record.

HHS: I heard you guys had problems with sampling in the past, can you shed some light on that?

Andy: We got in trouble for that song “I Did It Like This” on the last album.

Dizzy: And we didn’t get in trouble for the Beastie Boys sample (on the song) either.

Andy: Yeah we got caught on that one. It’s hit or miss, we’re gonna sample and we aren’t going to pay for it. We just hope we don’t get in trouble.

Young Einsten: Yeah if we are getting sued, that means we are doing something right because a lot of people are hearing our record.

HHS: I heard a crazy ass story on that. Something like you weren’t even sued by the original artist, by instead someone who bought the rights to the record for like $500, after you used it?

Dizzy: We were sued by Ubiquity. That’s pretty weird huh, and the crazy thing is that they put out records incorporating samples and they aren’t even clearing all of them.

Andy: It’s a small complaint, but we’ve been lucky thus far. But nobody really even bought that album, on this album we sampled 10 times more.

Young Einstein: “Turn It Up” might have 30 samples on it.

Andy: The worst one is “La Revolution”. Well, drum breaks don’t really count, but that has like 9 different loops. We try to make it spicy.

HHS: Andy can you break down your involvement with Crankcase?

Andy: Some guys I know from my church make kinda bad funk music, and I thought it was amusing so I did some songs with them. I’ve never performed (live) with them before, but there’s an album coming out, I was on like half the songs. I played little keyboards and drums on it, cause I’m pretty bad at those and so are they, so it works out. I’m not really an official member; I mean I suppose I am, we never really talked about it. It’s always been pretty loose with them. I never signed any contracts or anything.

HHS: So being that Taste The Secret was real conceptual from start to finish, is your next record going to be another concept like that, or..?

Andy: Next record? (Laughs)

Dizzy: I make more money selling crack, man I don’t want to do another record.

Andy: Shoot, I don’t even know if there is a market for another record. Actually before you called me and (Einstein) were just talking about that. What’s the future, what do we do?

HHS: You guys have to do another record.

Andy: Yeah, I’m on it! (Laughs). Could we take donations from the few fans? Pledge drive.

HHS: No for real, because there are not people making records like 3 Feet High and Rising anymore.

Everyone: (Laughing) because nobody wants to hear it!