I first spoke with Prince Paul in September 2012 for an interview that covered pretty much his whole career. The interview got a great response when it went up online, particularly the questions about the Gravediggaz. Since then I wanted to reconnect with him to discuss the first Gravediggaz record in more detail. It is a stone cold classic in my opinion and I had a lot of questions for him. I finally got the opportunity to speak with Paul again last week and I focussed the entire hour long interview on the creation of Niggamortis/6 Feet Deep. Paul was in an especially talkative mood so the interview is really in depth. We breakdown the album track-by-track as well as discussing the problems he had trying to get a deal for the group, getting the record out and much more.

I feel this is the definitive interview when it comes to 6 Feet Deep, I don’t think Paul has ever spoken in as much detail about the making of this album. So sit back, take some time and enjoy the read… Like I said, it’s very long! – Pattch 82

HHS: Wassup Paul, how are you…?

PRINCE PAUL: Yeah I’m good, just getting my day started. How you doing…?

HHS: Yeah I’m good. I wanted to focus the interview on the making of the first Gravediggaz record if that’s cool with you…? It’s a personal classic of mine and I got a lot of questions! Haha…

PAUL: OK yeah, no problem.

HHS: We kinda touched on this the last time we spoke… you mentioned that you gathered RZA, Poetic and Frukwan together at your house to discuss the possibility of forming a group. What was that meeting like with the four of you all together for the first time…?

PAUL: I think it was really just guys trying to get to know each other because they knew of each other, but they didn’t know each other. And at the same time they didn’t really know what each others skill level was. So it was a meeting to more or less get them to understand why I’d picked each one of them and what I thought they possessed that I thought would be cool collectively as a group. So it was a lot of playing music and guys giving each other respect for the work they had done. I think once they realised that I didn’t pick any slouches, you know each of them had something to offer, then it just made it a little more relaxed and like ok let’s come up with some ideas and ok, ok you are nice… I see why Paul called you here. It was cool after that and then we came up with the first song, “The House That Hatred Built”, and that was the first thing that we did just all sitting down together after coming up with the concept of what the group was… the Gravediggaz.

HHS: Was the track recorded during that first meeting too…?

PAUL: Yeah if I remember correctly. In the midst of bringing them all together and us sitting and talking and we were like ok the name of the group is Gravediggaz. I thought ok I think I have a beat for that. I had so much music and a lot of the music I was making back then was really dark. I think I was going through some type of weird depression or something so it kinda worked out that the name of the group was Gravediggaz and I had a whole bunch of music that was dark and it was just a track that fit the vibe at the time. The guys came up with stuff and we recorded it. Once everybody heard how they sounded together on one track that made them even more excited to want to work together.

HHS: The demo tape that you recorded, was that done around the same time…?

PAUL: Yeah the demo tape followed right after. Once we had the first initial meeting it was just a matter of getting everybody’s schedule together and figuring out when we all can meet up next. At the first meeting I played music and they liked it, so I gave them some songs, “2 Cups Of Blood” was one of the beats which I thought was just a throwaway track, but I remember RZA was like “YOOOOOO that’s crazy let’s use that!” I’m thinking he’s crazy, you wanna use that?! It’s not even done! So I gave them the beats, put them all on cassette. They took it home, listened to it, and the cool thing is they talked amongst each other without me having to be there, because introducing them is one thing but then for Poetic to reach out and discuss ideas with the others like on this song I’m thinking about doing this or let’s do that… So by the time that they did come back to my house to record we had a good grasp of what needed to be done.

HHS: You had to shop the demo for quite a while before you finally found a label that was interested…

PAUL: Yeah nobody wanted to mess with us you know. One reason why I put that group together was I felt I was being disrespected in the music industry in the terms of just probably record execs. It’s funny at one point you’re in the limelight and people are like “he’s the greatest thing ever” and then a year later it’s like “awww he’s wack, De La Soul have fallen off”, because back then De La Soul Is Dead was considered a failure. Now it’s like “wow it’s a great record,” but back then it was like “woah they fell off.” And then dealing with Russell and them, we had the Dew Doo Man label that we were talking about and then didn’t happen and it was just horrible. Going through all that and then shopping the demo and I’m thinking it’s the greatest thing ever, I’m putting three guys together who are having hard times so they’re feeling what I’m feeling so I’m thinking this is a combined energy that we’re putting on this demo and we’re doing everything with passion and people are going to love it. And then they go “ohhh Gravediggaz… it’s a gimmick… I don’t know… its kinda wack.” I remember I had a friend she worked at Jive and she brought it there and one of the guys, I’m not gonna mention his name… I do remember his name because it kinda bothered me… but she brought it into the A&R meeting and he was like
“ohh man these guys are old, they’re played out, nobody wants to hear them again.” And this is pre-Wu-Tang so I guess that shows the power of having Wu-Tang behind the situation too. And it really bothered me and it literally sat for a year, I went to all the labels, anybody that I knew, that I had connects with… Tommy Boy, Def Jam, Jive, every label we could think of and they turned it down. It kinda hurt man, something I worked really hard at, I mean HARD.

HHS: I heard that you had a meeting with Eazy-E too about possibly putting the record out on Ruthless…?

PAUL: Oh yeah, you know it’s funny out of all of the meetings, initially he was one person that was interested in putting out the project. I flew out to California because I had a connect out there and I knew Eazy from before because we had toured with N.W.A. on a few dates when I was with Stetsasonic. He’s a real nice guy, it’s funny I’m thinking N.W.A. is all street and gangsta, but he was a real nice dude man. I remember going to L.A., going to Ruthless Records and I remember he had the demo in his hand and he’s like “yo Gravediggaz… I really like this, I wanna sign y’all.” I’m like REALLY?? Wow! One, I’m a big N.W.A. fan to begin with, people don’t realize how huge of a fan I was so this was kinda going full circle for me. So I’m like, “wow he get’s it, after all this rejection, Eazy gets it.” So I’m like “yeah let’s do this deal,” and I remember Jerry Heller was there at the time making an offer. First of all I gotta thank Eazy, God rest his soul, for giving me a copy of the N.W.A. VHS tape that I wanted so bad and it wasn’t in stores at the time hahaha, so I had to get that! So then I talked to Jerry Heller, he was ok but was very disinterested you know, he doesn’t care about the music, he’s just the business dude. But that contract, I don’t remember the details, but I do remember it was probably one of the worst things I’ve ever seen in my life… it was almost like, it was better off not putting out the record at all, hahaha. I’m not saying it was this bad, but it was like yo you wanna put out a record? Pay me and we’ll put out the record, haha. It made sense why a lot of the people at the time had beef with Jerry Heller because it was that bad. It was like… what? Are you kidding me? It was horrible. So I still had a little faith and I was like “yo I’m gonna wait out for a better situation.”

HHS: How much time had passed between recording the demo and the actual album…?

PAUL: Over a year, because it took us a year to get the deal. It was almost a year to the day when John Baker from Gee Street called and said hey I like this demo and I wanna sign you guys. And the deal was actually half way decent. So we started the demo in ’91 and the actual album came out in ’94 so there you go haha. Right after we signed the deal it probably took us about six months to record it.

HHS: On to the album itself… it opens with a short intro “Just When You Thought It Was Over” and then goes straight into “Constant Elevation”, an absolute killer opening track!

PAUL: Oh yeah, my whole thing when putting an album together, and I still feel this way, is I like having an introduction to what the album is about. This is when people used to listen to albums; I don’t think people really listen to entire albums as much any more, they kinda skip each track. I tried to set up the mood and I wanted to let people know what they were getting in to before the whole album started. And then “Constant Elevation”, even before we recorded the album I knew I wanted to make that the opener, even before the vocals got on I already had an idea what the intro music should sound like.

HHS: How did you manage to get them to spit in those crazy styles, especially Poetic and RZA…? Were you pushing them or were they experimenting themselves…?

PAUL: Well it all started with Poetic. “Constant Elevation” was, I think, the first song that we recorded collectively after we had gotten the deal, the first track done in a real studio rather than recording at my home. I remember Poetic started rhyming, RZA didn’t get there yet. There was me, Poetic and Frukwan, RZA was late getting to the studio. I asked Poetic to start it off and he just came with some regular… you know, not regular… but you could tell he hadn’t been in a studio in a while. And I’m like “come on man, come on this ain’t you, you’re nice man, don’t front man; you’re nice so let’s show it.” Then after a few more tries he came out with the “BEEEEEWARE!!” And he kicks the whole rhyme like that, real crazy. Now that’s what I’m talking about, that’s what I’m looking for. That kinda set the precedent on the album of what his style would be. Frukwan had to follow that right after, and he didn’t want to be outshined so he had to make sure that he got in where he fit in and then by the time RZA got to the studio I played him what we had done and his eyes lit up like “YOOO!! That’s crazy!” I wanted him to do just his regular style that he was doing at the time, but he was like “nah nah I gotta change it up, gotta change it, listen I’ve been working on this style of voice.” And that’s when he came with the style of voice we have on the album. We did two versions; we did one like how I wanted it to be done, which is on my Hip-Hop Gold Dust album, which I personally liked better and then the style that he did that ended up on the album.

HHS: I was going to mention the alternate version on your Gold Dust compilation. So is that the version that you actually wanted on the album…?

PAUL: Yeah that’s the one where I was like “yo that’s what I like.” People don’t understand that Gravediggaz was like a reinvention for everybody, Frukwan didn’t wanna come out like Frukwan, Poetic didn’t wanna sound like Poetic. Prince Rakeem didn’t wanna come out like Prince Rakeem and I’ll remind you when we were there putting the group together he didn’t even have the name The RZA then. He made up the name at my house, because we were all thinking of names, ok I’m the Undertaker you know, The Gatekeeper, Grym Reaper. He said “I’m the Resurrector but I spell it RZA-rector, you can just call me RZA for RZA-rector.” So we’re like “ok that’s cool, that’s different.” So that’s a little known fact, he made up that name at my house.

HHS: Then we come to “Nowhere To Run, Nowhere To Hide”…

PAUL: Yeah RZA came in and I remember at the same time he was recording with Wu-Tang. He heard the beat and wanted to use it, originally that wasn’t the beat I wanted to use because I had another idea but it worked out. He came up with the hook; he was like “yo I’ve been having this idea in my mind – nowhere to run to baby, nowhere to hide.” OK let’s do that, we recorded it and everybody laid the vocals down, RZA did a rough take and right at the point where he messed up at I put the little “daaa daa da da” (sings the kung fu riff from the beginning of “Protect Ya Neck”) to cover up the space where he messed up, because “Protect Ya Neck” had just came out. He was like “yo I’m coming back to redo my vocals,” when he came back he heard what I had done with it; I think Method Man was with him too. He was like “YOOO! That’s crazy!” I was like “yeah I didn’t have time for you to come back and fix it; I just wanted to get on to the next song.” He was like “yo that’s crazy; I love how you came up with that idea.” So it was a mistake that I covered up. I liked his delivery; it’s just that he kinda forgot what he was going to say at the time so I covered it up.

HHS: “Defective Trip (Trippin’)” is next. Who usually came up with the subject matter for each track…? Was it them hearing the beat or did you have a certain topic in mind for each track…?

PAUL: It was both. With some of them the guys would hear it and be like “ok I’m thinking this,” like RZA with “Nowhere To Run, Nowhere To Hide”. With “Defective Trip”, I had that idea; I was like man “let’s talk about trippin’, drugs.” And I thought the beat kinda fit the vibe of trippin’ you know? Kinda spacey a little bit, still funky. I gave them the concept and they just ran with it. That was the cool thing about working with them, we were all able to talk to each other and express an idea without feeling nervous you know, everybody was open so if it was a stupid idea they’d tell you it was stupid… but respectfully, haha. So I came with the concept, they wrote to it and I just added all the stuff around it.

HHS: The next track is “2 Cups Of Blood”, which was originally on the demo tape. Did you re-record that track for the album or did you use the demo recording…?

PAUL: No. A lot of stuff that you hear on the demo tape is actually on the album. So yeah, “2 Cups Of Blood” was recorded at my house, it was recorded on an 8-track cassette Tascam, I had an SM58 microphone, everything that you hear on that record is low budget and we just mixed it at a decent studio to make it sound good. But yeah, that was recorded at the house; Poetic and RZA were going back and forth. I know Frukwan kinda felt left out, I don’t think he was there at the time they recorded the rhymes. I was like “yo it sounds good as it is man, I don’t wanna change it.” Not every song has to be predictable with all the same people all the time. It’s one of my favorite songs, the beat was a mistake but it worked out and I gotta thank RZA for that because he heard something that I didn’t hear.

HHS: “Blood Brothers” is a track that Frukwan produced…

PAUL: Yeah “Blood Brothers”, the original track was on a demo that he had. When I put the group together I listened to it a lot and I liked the beat so much that when we started making the album, I tried to get everybody involved so I was like “yo let’s use that beat that you had”. I think Poetic came with the hook and expressed it to RZA and Frukwan and they just wrote to it and that’s more or less how that one came about. We had to recreate the beat because there was a lot of samples so a lot of it we replayed but we tried to make it sound a lot like a sample.

HHS: Next is the short interlude “360 Questions” with a little dig at Tommy Boy Records…

PAUL: Haha yeah, I just wanted to be silly. Ahh man I’m trying to remember everyone who is on there, I remember there was a bunch of people at the studio; we were at a studio in downtown Manhattan called GLC Studios. We just had a whole bunch of people there and we were like yo let’s just have them ask questions… I think Vernon Reid was there, just random people you know. And then yeah at the end… who killed Tommy’s Boy… I wasn’t expecting that one, haha. We were all ex-Tommy Boy artists at the time and everybody had bad stories about how they got dropped, except for me of course, I wasn’t dropped I just kinda moved on. So I was like, cool… and when we were sequencing the album I thought “Suicide” would be really good after that.

HHS: “1-800 Suicide” has such a laid back beat but the lyrics are so crazy that it creates a strange vibe. The lyrics seem even more unhinged because they’re spitting over such a calm, melodic beat…

PAUL: Well, I remember playing that beat for them and I really liked that beat, I made a few beats during that time that I was like “yo I really like this one I gotta record it.” I think I may have come up with the concept of suicide because I sampled the KRS-One thing in between, and they were like “yo this is crazy!” We recorded the vocals exactly how you hear, Frukwan came on first and I remember the guys were like “yo he nailed it, he nailed the concept, he nailed the vibe,” and that was his first take that you hear on the record. Then Poetic was like “yo watch what I got, I’m gonna go a little different on it” and he did the whole sing-songy part and I was like what?! That’s so nuts! Because the rhyme was crazy, the rhyme style was crazy. And then RZA kinda just reeled it on home, just going in with his Prince Rakeem style, but hardcore, hard. That was his first take.

HHS: There was also the RZA remix of “1-800 Suicide” that was on one of the singles. Poetic’s verse especially on the remix is crazy…

PAUL: They had asked me to remix it and I told RZA “yo man I can’t really think of anything for it, why don’t you remix it.” He said ok, and then he came up with the idea. Poetic was always the type of dude that was very competitive and I used to always put him a RZA against each other a lot. I used to always tell Poetic like “yo I think he’s nicer than you…” and then I’d go to RZA and go “yo man I think Poetic can kill you man,” hahaha. It always brought the best out of Poetic and with that rhyme he wasn’t taking no shorts man, he killed it. It’s a very underrated rhyme, people talk about great verses and to me that’s one of them.

HHS: “Pass The Shovel” was next, but that track only appeared on certain versions of the album. Was it left off the American release due to sample clearance issues…?

PAUL: Nah I just really didn’t want it on the record you know. That was put on by the recommendation of the label; they wanted another track to put on the UK release. I said ok, but to me it didn’t really fit the theme of how the album went. It was originally a demo that we recorded at the house and then we re-recorded the vocals. I actually like the original demo over the re-recorded one, but that was more to please the label. At the time I felt the beat really didn’t fit where we were going.

HHS: “Diary Of A Madman” is probably one of your best known songs. Can you tell me how the situation with the production credits happened…? Because you actually produced the track right…?

PAUL: Yeah I mean what got it twisted… I’ll explain how it happened… RZA came in with this sample and we were like “yo that’s crazy let’s use that.” RZA was like I don’t know, it’s not mine, I didn’t loop this up my man RNS who lives around my way did it. I was like “yo, ask him if we can use it.” RZA said “man we gonna have to give him credit, we gonna have to break him off a little bit and give him some credit.” I said “yo whatever it takes to get the loop.” So when we looped it, we didn’t even get the real loop, we just took it off the cassette. I said “yo, ask him what the sample is.” He was like… “he got it from a car commercial.” I said what?! Get outta here! RNS wouldn’t disclose what the sample was at the time. So I looped it up and added a beat and stuff to it. I took it, programmed the beat, recorded all the vocals, arranged all the vocals and that’s when I met Shabazz The Disciple and Killah Priest, they came down to the studio. Shabazz heard the beat, just the beat and the loop and he wanted to rhyme on it and he killed it! He was the first one rhyming on that song and the guys didn’t know how to follow it because it was too crazy. There was no concept to the song, just his rhyme. So I had to sit down and figure out how I could make this cohesive because there’s no hook, there’s no concept. So I came up with the courtroom thing and then I wrote out that part. When all the rhymes were on, I put the courtroom part on and I never told them what I was going to do. I played it for all of them and they were like yo, how did you come up with that idea, that’s crazy! How did you link all that together! It was just an idea I came up with. I took it, recorded the vocals, mixed it and at the end of the day I didn’t care about credit, I just worried about the record getting out. Technically RNS was never there, we used his sample and it was through RZA because it was RZA’s connect so then RZA got credit but the person who actually put the whole song together was me, haha. So I never got the proper credit, but I didn’t care. If it’s gonna take RNS to get credit for this so we can use the sample, because it was dope and I had no idea what it was, RZA had no idea what it was, so RNS was the only person that had a link to that sample. Now I know what it is, but back then I didn’t know what it was. It all worked out. So when I see people like oh RNS and RZA killed the track… I’m like what?! Even the production sounds like me, you can tell. RZA and RNS ain’t gonna come up with the whole courtroom scene, it’s not their style. But it all worked out in the end, haha.

HHS: “Mommy, What’s A Gravedigga” is quite a short track. A longer version appeared on the B-Side of one of the singles. Is there any reason you put the short version on the album…?

PAUL: I just wanted to keep it short and sweet, which was my thought process back then. It was a short, cool sample. The first time I remember hearing that sample was when Pos had it for a De La remix; I was like yo that’s dope! People didn’t really know the remix that well so I was like yo, I’m gonna reuse that. So I got my man Scotty Harding, who was my engineer for the album, play the bass over it and I’m gonna flip it the way I want to flip it. We made it really, really short and I like what they did to it. I added people’s vocals, the girl’s vocals at the beginning. People used to record stuff and send vocals in on cassette so I could sample it and put it on the album at random places, it worked out.

HHS: “Bang Ya Head” is a real hardcore track… the beat is crazy energetic. What was the thought process behind that one…?

PAUL: That was a beat that I had that I originally recorded as a demo for the Cold Crush Four believe it or not haha. They never put it out and never used it and I still liked the beat so I played it for RZA and Poetic and they liked it. RZA had just been recording “Da Mystery Of Chessboxin’” with Wu-Tang and he came back and he’s like yo for some reason U-God kept on saying “run in to the wall, bang ya head”, so we should call this Bang Ya Head, it has that kinda vibe to it. RZA said it was stuck in his head to use that with this beat. I said “yeah whatever you wanna come up with I’m just glad you wanna use it.” RZA set it off, he came up with the hook, and he showed the guys how he heard the track.

HHS: “Here Come The Gravediggaz” was produced by Mr. Sime…

PAUL: Oh yeah Sime, that was Poetic’s homeboy at the time. Poetic and his brother were doing The Brothers Grym when we reconnected. Sime was their producer, and he produced their demo. It was amazing; I thought he was an unknown amazing producer. Since Frukwan had a beat on the album, and RZA was participating and I wanted everybody to be involved, Mr. Sime came up with that beat and he played it for me. I was like “yo, it’s only fair to have y’all do a track on the album, put that one on there.” So that one was all conducted by Poetic, him and Mr. Sime got together, came with the beat, took the hook, told the other guys what it was and I just mixed it.

HHS: Then we move on to “Graveyard Chamber”. Another crazy energetic track and a classic early RZA beat…

PAUL: Oh yeah RZA killed it!

HHS: How much guidance were you giving to RZA back then with regards to production techniques, etc…?

PAUL: It was nice because he really respected a whole lot of what I did. It was really during the days of “We Love You Rakeem”. We were recording a lot of demos back then and unbeknown to me, he was kinda learning a lot of stuff, programming stuff, he’d watch a lot, he’d ask questions. It wasn’t until years later when we started going to the studio, recording this album, that’s when he started developing his own style and his own stuff. I remember he was heavy in to using the EPS, the Ensoniq EPS and then the ASR came out, the ASR-10. I remember that’s when he brought it to the studio and recorded the “Graveyard Chamber” beat. The thing is, I was so in to technology back then, like up and coming technology… but what was cool about him is he just did his stuff unorthodox, he just put stuff in off-beat, put in snares manually you know haha, and it kinda made me go back on what I was doing. Technically what he was doing was off, but it felt right and sounded right. That’s how it was when he came with “Graveyard Chamber”. It was a late night in the studio and I was like “yo we need another beat.” RZA said he would come up with something and in pure RZA style he made some stuff on the spot. He was like ok I got this sound, I got this idea… and I just watched him on the Ensoniq. It was real late, because we had the graveyard session; it was like 12 at midnight till 8 in the morning. He came up, all the guys came through, he created the beat and I remember it got to a point where I was like “yo man I’m sleepy I gotta go home haha.” I came back the next day and it was done, I was like “what?!!” I think I was there for a couple of the rhymes, like when Dreddy Kruger got on, he killed it. I think I watched Poetic, and I remember RZA wrote his rhyme while we were out on the road.

HHS: I read that you sat in on some of the early Wu-Tang recording sessions…? What was that like…?

PAUL: Well I’m used to going to studio sessions and there’s usually a lot of people in there, everybody vibing off, somebody is writing here, people doing stuff, people talking… but they were just so focussed on getting it done, it was a bunch of dudes in the studio and the energy to me was like having a football team. And in the middle of it all was the coach – The RZA. The beautiful thing was that they had so much respect for the RZA, every word that he said, the cats really respected and looked up to him and to me it was really impressive because RZA had a lot of respect for me. So what was even more impressive at the time… as they looked up to him, he was coming to me and asking me yo what do you think Paul? And I was like “Wow!” It was a nice thing to come in to a lot of those sessions and get respect for being I guess what was called an OG at the time. Just the vibe of those sessions though, cats were hungry man they were really ready to get it done and they were really excited, excited for each other and to me I was impressed. It was good times back then man, even though I was going through a little depression it was nice to see guys together and wanting to succeed. This was before all of the money and the fame and everything kicked in. They were really in to getting that album done.

HHS: Back to the Gravediggaz album, can you tell me about “Death Trap”…

PAUL: Yeah, I like “7 Minutes Of Funk” and nobody ever used the version with the bongos in it, everybody always used the 12 inch version. I remember Bambaataa used to rock it all the time so I was like “yo I wanna do a version of that song.” I played it for them and they thought “ok it’s something kinda new on the album because everything had been going one way, so yeah let’s use this one.” I went and asked Masta Ace to do the intro which I thought would be kinda ironic because he had just done the SlaughtaHouse album and he kinda mimicked all of that. He was in our studio at the time; we were all at Firehouse Studio so it was kinda easy to get him on the intro. I think Poetic came up with the concept of what they should talk about on that track.

HHS: Then we come to “6 Feet Deep” which is another track produced by The RZA. I read that the basis of the beat was some live instrumentation that RZA sampled…

PAUL: Yeah, one day we were in GLC Studios and I think it was before the engineer got in, he came in late and they had a live room with different instruments like drums, guitars, tambourines, pianos and stuff. So here is all of us waiting for the engineer to come in and we’re like “yo let’s see if we can get somebody to run the DAT tape” and we just started playing the instruments. I think I was on the drums, RZA was on the piano, Frukwan was on the guitar if I remember correctly and Poetic… I think he had a tambourine or something haha. So all these guys who can’t play anything, and we’re just kinda vibing and laughing and joking and recording stuff. It was all on one DAT tape, and once in a while we’d get in to a groove and we’d come up with something that I thought was pretty slick. RZA took the DAT tape and I was like “yo man I want a copy of that”… I never got a copy of it. So he took bits and pieces of what we recorded and he sampled it on his ASR and added a baseline and a beat. I was like “yo that’s crazy, that’s the session we did! I want a copy!” I still never got a copy, haha. So he took the stuff that we played and sampled it and made that song.

HHS: The last track is “Rest In Peace (Outro)” which is another dark beat…

PAUL: Yeah in putting the album together we had the intro so I wanted to put an outro on there too, kinda summing up what we did. I think it was just me, Frukwan and Poetic, RZA was coming late to the studio. So I was like “yo this needs some type of ending” and the guys were thinking about it, I guess I didn’t explain it properly. So then RZA came in, I was like “yo this is what I’m trying to do, just sum it up you know, to end the record.” I let him hear the beat and the first take he nailed it, he knew exactly what I wanted, he got it. And then everybody else just followed his lead, that’s why he’s the one main vocal right to the end and everybody else was just kinda vibing off what he was saying and I just produced around it.

HHS: When I spoke to you last time you mentioned that you put the album together almost like a jigsaw puzzle, as in all of the MC’s weren’t always there at the same time. Did that make it even more of a challenge for you to make the album sound as cohesive as it does…?

PAUL: Of course and to me I like challenges like that. I like sitting and putting things together. It’s hard but there’s a feeling of accomplishment at the end of the day because nobody knows better. Like on “Diary Of A Madman”, nobody knows that song was all over the place, there was no type concept to that song. But to make a concept to it and to put it together in that way and to grow and they don’t know any different. To me it was lifting my ego too you know what I’m saying? At the time I thought I was kinda wack, people weren’t feeling me so I’m gonna have to show them how nice I am, let me really showcase some production skills. If it didn’t get respect from the people that listened to the album, which when the album came out it wasn’t a big record, but to the guys I worked with like Poetic, Frukwan and RZA they knew all the work I put in to the album so to get their respect, to me it was important.

HHS: Did you do much touring in support of the album…?

PAUL: Yeah, yeah we toured. We toured over in Europe, we did a tour of Japan and we toured the States with Wu-Tang when Wu-Tang first came out. We did a lot of press. The thing is it was just at the time when Craig Mack and Biggie Smalls came in. So we were doing one thing, but that other type of sound started popping. So when people looked at us like, “Gravediggaz? Ahh man this is a gimmick!” We kinda got swept under the rug even though “Diary Of A Madman”. for I think like a couple of days in New York City, was the number one requested single. And it had no hook! So that was pretty cool, but for the most part people thought it was a gimmick which kinda hurt my feelings because I worked hard on that album. I really worked hard on that album. I think if it came out like two years earlier it would have been a big record. If it came out at the time that I put the group together, if it came out during that time I think the album would have been way bigger.

HHS: So what are your overall thoughts on the album now…?

PAUL: I’m still satisfied with this record; it’s probably my favorite record that I’ve done and I don’t like too many records that I produced. I think the records I’ve done are ok, but that one I listen to and I enjoy it from front to back. When I listen to the album it’s a little different for me because I hear all of the production and all the hard work. I’m sure it would be ok if I came to the studio, did the rhymes and then I’m gone… but I pieced a lot of that together so when I listen to it I’m usually like wow I can’t believe I did that and the equipment I did it on. Now everything is done via computer. I did everything on DAS-950’s, I had a sequencing program called Master Tracks and I used the SP-12, did things by writing stuff down on paper and numbers. There were no screens to look at and move things so it was hard. So when I listen to it I appreciate a lot of the hard work. When I listen to it I miss Poetic because throughout the whole project me and him were probably the closest, he was a Long Island dude, we talked all the time. It was nice at the end of the day for guys like Poetic and Frukwan, them especially, to be able to buy cars, take care of their families. So for me to help provide that, to me that was a better feeling.

HHS: Thanks for taking the time to speak with us, I’ve taken up a bit more of your time that I probably should have…

PAUL: I didn’t even look at the time man, haha. I appreciate it man. Take care.

PATTCH82: Thanks for taking the time to speak with me, how are you…?

ADRIAN YOUNGE: Yeah I’m good, I’m good. Thanks for reaching out.

P82: No problem, I’m a big Delfonics fan so I couldn’t turn down the chance to discuss the album with you.

ADRIAN: Thank you man, I appreciate it.

P82: How did you initially hook up with William Hart (lead singer of The Delfonics)…?

ADRIAN: Ummm, well basically through Twitter. A fan contacted me on Twitter saying that he knew William Hart and essentially wanted to hook us up. So he hooked us up and we made an album, it’s pretty much not that much more complicated than that.

P82: Were you a fan of The Delfonics older material…?

ADRIAN: Oh yeah man. There’s a song on ‘Something About April’, it’s called ‘Turn Down The Sound’ it’s the first song on the album, and that song was modelled after… it was supposed to be, ummm… if The RZA had produced The Delfonics in the late 1960’s, how I think it would sound. And so basically I was studying Delfonics stuff for years, I studied Delfonics to do the Black Dynamite stuff. I’ve been a fan and I’ve just studied their music for so long that when I got the opportunity to do this it just really blew my mind.

P82: Were any of the other Delfonics members involved in this album at all or just William Hart…?

ADRIAN: Nah nah it was just William Hart because they don’t really do much stuff together, plus Major Harris died, Randy Cain died, so there’s only really Wilbert Hart who is William’s brother but he does his own thing and William does his own thing. And, when it comes to The Delfonics stuff, all of those hits, that’s pretty much William Hart that wrote most of that stuff you know. You’ll see a lot of the publishing going to Thom Bell or Stan Watson, but Stan Watson was their manager, he didn’t write anything. So he actually took a lot from William. You know between me and you, he was kinda one of them dudes that knew the business and William didn’t so his name is on stuff. And Thom Bell arranged a lot of the instrumentals and all of that stuff. So stuff like ‘La-La Means I Love You’, that’s all William Hart so he’s always been the leader of The Delfonics as far as the writing is concerned and as a singer. Plus he owns the name ‘The Delfonics’ so because he owns the name and was always the leader I used him as the lead singer and I brought my own two back-up singers to sing with him just for this version of The Delfonics.

P82: Does the album have a title…?

ADRIAN: It’s just Adrian Young Presents The Delfonics, yeah.

P82: What was the recording process like, what sound were you aiming for…?

ADRIAN: Well we did everything that they would have done in the 60’s. I don’t have any computers in my studio, it’s all analog tape. All analog tape, all old equipment, I mean my mics are like from the 60’s and early 70’s, everything in there is old. So when William came in to my studio he was pleasantly surprised because he said it felt like going back in time.

P82: Like back in their day…

ADRIAN: Yeah like back in the day. He was a natural, he works really hard he has a great voice and we sat there and we wrote together, we wrote the entire album together. That guy is a genius man, I learned a lot from him. I learned how to write sweet romantic songs in the style that they wrote back then. It was just one of the best feelings of my life as far as music is concerned. The first time I heard his voice on one of my songs I was just totally mesmerised. Because I know his voice so well so to hear him on something that you created was just crazy.

P82: How did the song writing process work…? Did you provide the backing tracks for William to then write lyrics to…?

ADRIAN: Essentially, I wrote all of the backing tracks, he wrote all the lyrics. We came together and wrote some lyrics together but for the most part he wrote all the lyrics and I wrote all the backing tracks. We recorded the album in two sessions, and these two sessions were a week each. So he would fly in from Philadelphia to LA and he’d stay with me for a week and then three months later he flew down and stayed with me for about a week and I had about six tracks prepared for him. He’d come down and do his thing. And then when he came back I’d have another six prepared for him and he’d come down and do his thing and then we wrapped the album.

P82: I bought the single, the red 7” vinyl, so that’s pretty much all I’ve heard from the album so far… but William Hart’s falsetto vocal is still incredible! After all these years!

ADRIAN: I’m gunna send you the album dude. Do me a favour, I’m not by my computer so send me an email to remind me. But keep it to yourself because it doesn’t come out until February. And thank you for buying the record man, I appreciate that man, thank you so much.

P82: Well I’m a huge Delfonics fan so I always support any releases. And that would be great if you could send me that!

ADRIAN: That’s great man, definitely.

P82: You mentioned the backing singers earlier, have you worked with them before…?

ADRIAN: Yeah it’s the same back-up singers I used on ‘Something About April’. Well actually on this track its Loren Oden and Saudia Mills. Saudia Mills is actually the girl that’s on the cover of that 45 single, that’s her. And then also Om’mas Keith is on that single. But for the most part the whole album is Loren Oden and Saudia Mills as back-up.

P82: Is it Saudia that is duetting with William on ‘Lover’s Melody’…?

ADRIAN: On ‘Lover’s Melody’ yeah yeah that’s Saudia Mills on there.

P82: I saw the little clip of that track at the end of the ‘Stop And Look’ video…

ADRIAN: In that video too, that’s Saudia Mills playing the female lead.

P82: So from start to finish, how long did the album take to complete…? You said there were two sessions with William Hart…

ADRIAN: Yeah two sessions, two 5 or 6 day sessions. So in the first session we did six songs, the second session we did seven songs and then it took me another month, ummm… let me think. We started recording in September.

P82: What was the vibe like during the sessions, laid back…?

ADRIAN: Well he came out, the first session was six days and the second session was five days. So I had some basic tracks for him to sing over you know what I’m sayin. And then when he left I finished up everything with myself and my band. So as far as just recording his stuff, that was about two weeks. But as far as me finishing everything else, as far as real time time time I would say about two months. So I guess you could say the entire album was really split into about three months. But he was great to work with man, he works hard, he has a very open mind and he’s progressive. You know he didn’t just want to do things that were like old Delfonics stuff, he wanted to take that old style and make it a little bit more modern.

P82: I’ve heard the first single and the B-Side ‘I Can’t Cry No More’. Is the rest of the album in the same vibe…?

ADRIAN: It kinda stays in that vibe but goes all over the place. It’s quite conceptual like if you listen to my ‘Something About April’ album it’s really deep and cinematic and this album is deep and cinematic as well. It’s deep and cinematic from like an Italian perspective, also from an American perspective as far as old music is concerned. It sounds like an album that The RZA from Wu-Tang would sample. So all of those kinda cinematic, dark, ominous sources that he would go to to sample, it’s like an album that’s full of that kind of music.

P82: The video for the ‘Stop And Look’ track is a really cool concept. Who was it that came up with the idea of the 90’s theme…?

ADRIAN: Yeah I came up with the idea for it because The Delfonics did a lot for Hip-Hop in the 90’s because they were sampled all over the place. So a lot of Hip-Hop heads know about The Delfonics because of those samples. So I kinda wanted to bring William, instead of taking him all the way back to the 60’s, I kinda wanted to create a world where he was relevant in these past generations, not just one. So that’s why I chose the 90’s as the middle ground, so it’s like he’s still relevant now in the present, he was relevant back in the day and he was relevant in the middle which was the 90’s. And also with the album, I feel like it has Hip-Hop sentiments so I just felt that it would be more interesting to put him in the 90’s versus putting him in the 60’s because it’s kinda expected for him to be in the 60’s.

P82: I was going to mention about the ‘Stop And Look’ track, it does have a Hip-Hop feel to it, the drums especially. You can easily picture an MC rapping over that beat.

ADRIAN: Absolutely. Are you familiar with the other album I’m doing?

P82: Yeah definitely, I’m a Wu-Tang fan so I was gunna ask a few questions about the Ghostface project a bit later if that’s cool…?

ADRIAN: Yeah yeah no problem man.

P82: How do you feel this new album compares to the older Delfonics material…? Is it like a natural progression from what they were doing back in the day…?

ADRIAN: My goal with any album is to always try and make an album that’s better than anything I’ve ever done before and better than anything the artist has done before. So that’s my goal. Whether that was accomplished or not, I don’t know, I really don’t. But I know that I strived hard to make the best album. So if you ask me if it’s better than their old stuff, I won’t ever say it’s better than the old stuff. If you ask me if it’s as good as the old stuff I would say to me it is. If you ask me if it sounds like the old stuff, I would say a lot of it does but it’s more so in the future. I want people to expect something classic but not expect to hear the same thing rehashed, I want to push it forward. We strived collectively, William and I strived to push this forward, to make it special and to us it is. To us it’s something that we really love and we just hope that other people do. If people don’t like it we can respect that, but we really hope that people dig it.

P82: What has the response been like…? Has anyone heard the album in full…? Have you had any feedback…?

ADRIAN: Yeah some people have heard the album, the response has been extremely good. Are you familiar with Souls Of Mischief, the group? Like Hieroglyphics and all them?

P82: Yeah yeah…

ADRIAN: They are in love with the album, I’ve been hanging with them lately and they love the album. And in fact Ghostface… we used one of the beats from this album on my Ghostface album as well. RZA loves the album, loves the album, so we’re getting a lot of respect from people so that’s always a good sign. We’ll see what happens.

P82: Do you plan on touring to support the Delfonics album at all…?

ADRIAN: Absolutely but we haven’t set anything up yet. But yes there is definitely a plan.

P82: Moving on to the Ghostface Killah project, how did that come about…?

ADRIAN: Well RZA and Bob Perry own a label called Soul Temple Music and Bob Perry was the A&R for the label. He was a fan of my music and reached out to me to ask me if I’d like to do an album with one of the Wu-Tang guys, and of course I’m not gunna say no, haha. And that’s basically all it is, it’s not that big of a story, that happened. And we’ve been pretty tight since that time, it’s just been great.

P82: So did he actually ask you who you wanted to work with or was it Ghostface all along…?

ADRIAN: Yeah he asked me if it was Ghostface I wanted to work with. But my thing was… I love all of them. Any one of them, generally speaking, would have been great for me. Now, was Ghostface my top choice? Ummm, they’re all so good so it’s hard to say because if I did a Raekwon album it would have been the same thing. If I did a RZA album it would be the same thing. If I did a GZA album it would be the same thing. I like them all that much, Ghostface was just one of the choices I would have made. But, if I could go back and change anything would I? Oh no, I’m super happy to be working with Ghostface. You know what, I will also say, that when I wrote music for the Delfonics album… Ghostface was popping in to my mind. So I guess naturally Ghostface… naturally an album with Ghostface just happened. Maybe it was something cosmic because I kinda felt it coming anyway. It’s hard to explain, I’m not trying to avoid the question…

P82: So you were kinda already writing tracks that had a Ghostface/Wu-Tang feel…

ADRIAN: Yeah yeah, so I guess to make it a little more concise… there is no specific person I would have picked out of Wu-Tang to do an album with, but I will say that my music is more akin to Ghostface than other people because Ghostface is so cinematic with his rhymes. My instrumentals are so cinematic that it would probably be the best match. So because of that formula it’s inevitable that me and Ghostface ended up doing an album.

P82: So how is the album sounding…?

ADRIAN: Oh man I really like it a lot. Again, I tried to make the best Wu-Tang album ever. Whether that happens or not, I don’t know. But do I like the music? Oh I love the music. I loooooove the music! We’ll see what other people think, I’ve shown it to people and they’ve said it’s some of the best stuff they’ve ever heard. I’m not saying that, that’s what the people have said. We’ll see what people think.

P82: Will we get to hear something from that album soon…? Will you be dropping a single…?

ADRIAN: Yeah, we’ll be releasing a video probably next month. I’m actually flying out to New York on Monday to finalise the mix on that album. And the album will be out March 19th through Soul Temple. And the Delfonics album is through Wax Poetics.

P82: Ghostface Killah worked with The Delfonics back in 1996. Did you ever consider featuring Ghostface on the Delfonics album or William Hart on the Ghostface album…?

ADRIAN: William Hart is actually on the Ghostface album because we are using one of the tracks from The Delfonics album for the Ghostface album. It just worked out like that, haha.

P82: Which Delfonics track is it that you are using…?

ADRIAN: It’s a song called ‘Enemies All Around Me’.

P82: It will almost be like an IRONMAN reunion having Ghostface and William Hart on the same track again. Can you shed some light on any other guest features…?

ADRIAN: Probably after next week I can, but there are some Wu-Tang guests and of course the album is executive produced by RZA. So RZA is one of the guests on there. So there are definitely some Wu-Tang guests on there but I can give more of that information out after we finalise the mix next week

P82: Going back to the Delfonics record, it drops on February 12th. If it does well would you consider doing another one…?

ADRIAN: Oh hell yes, I definitely want to do more. I had way to much fun doing this record. This is hopefully the first of many. We’ll see what happens.

P82: Do you have any other projects in the pipeline at the minute…?

ADRIAN: I’ll tell you one but you can’t announce it…

P82: OK…

(Adrian goes on to mention an upcoming project that he has in the works)

P82: Cool, cool… I won’t mention it in the interview…

ADRIAN: Yeah we can talk about that in probably three months or so. I just want to get the Delfonics stuff and the Ghostface stuff out there and then get this out. Because when there’s too much at one time it gets confusing you know.

P82: Do you play all of the instruments on the Delfonics album…? Or is your band on there too…?

ADRIAN: I played most of it. I got my band a little more involved but I played most of the instruments. I’d say probably 85%. But my band is on there, my drummer David Henderson he’s playing on stuff. Jack Waterson is playing some guitar. Everybody in my band definitely represented on there but I’m still playing most of the stuff.

P82: Do you have a favourite track or album from The Delfonics older material…?

ADRIAN: My favourite track of the Delfonics is ‘He Don’t Really Love You’, it’s one of the first songs that they ever did.

P82: Is there anything else you’d like to put out there before we finish up…?

ADRIAN: I guess the only other thing that I’d like to make known is that I put all that work in to make sure that a legend will be heard again. William Hart is a genius and I do hope that we continue to make many beautiful albums together. Love that guy! Basically it was a great experience and I’m very excited to see what people think about it. It’s a new life for William. One of the main reasons I wanted to do this album is because I’m a fan of William Hart and I wanted him to be a legend that could come back and still make legendary music for a new audience. So basically for me, I really don’t need accolades for this. I just want William to be endeared by the people. That’s what means the most to me personally so I just hope that happens but we’ll see. And if you have any other questions man you’ve got my e-mail, you’ve got my number so it’s all good just hit me up.

P82: Thanks for that. I can’t wait to hear the album…

ADRIAN: Thank you, let me know what you think man. I’ll send it to you today. I appreciate it man, if you need anything just hit me up.

Adrian Younge Presents The Delfonics is released on February 12th through Wax Poetics

Adrian Younge/Ghostface Killah – 12 Reasons To Die is released on March 19th through Soul Temple Music

PATTCH82: First off, the new album Eyrth, Wynd And Fyre is set to drop on February 12th. How do you feel it stacks up against your other solo records…?

CAPPADONNA: It’s just different man, it’s more together you know what I mean? The message is a little more clearer and I think it’s just an all around tighter album production wise. Big up my man J. Glaze on the production tip.

P82: There are a lot of lesser known producers on the album. They did hook you up with some bangers though…

CAPPA: Yeah man it’s just something different you know. I always want to give the underdogs a chance to shine through. We been reigning in the game for over ten years and it’s always good to be able to look back at the brothers that’s trying to come up and do they thing man, and give them a chance. It is a sacrifice as well, because when you do this a lot of people look at you like your value is lessening. But really, your value as an individual is increasing because that’s a wonderful and good thing to do for people man.

P82: I noticed that J. Glaze produced pretty much the whole first disc of the album

CAPPA: That’s right, J. Glaze produced it so it was basically a fifty-fifty split between me and him.

P82: Can you speak on some of the other producers on the album, guys like G-Force, DJ Snips…

CAPPA: Yeah DJ Snips and G-Force, all of them dudes right there I hooked up with them through J-Ronin. J-Ronin was like my A&R for this project. DJ J-Ronin from Brooklyn. I was definitely grateful to him, Sav Killz, Kevlaar, all of them guys man. They definitely made a great contribution to the work man. I couldn’t ask for a better line up than that. Also big up to Lounge Mode, my physical brother, for his features and input on the album man. We definitely got great songs like Bar B Que. So you know, I couldn’t ask for a better deal than that.

P82: There are very few guest MC’s on the project. Lounge Mode does appear on quite a lot of tracks on the second disc…

CAPPA: Yeah I been trying to work with Lounge Mode for quite a while now. We’ve never really had a chance to do anything so I took this opportunity to take out all of these songs that we did at one time or another and put them together for this nice collaboration. It just reminds me of the elements again, you know, Earth, Wind and Fire… the fire is the truth, earth is the strength and the wind is the sense of something that you can feel but you can’t see. So you can’t see me but you can still feel my words though. So that’s the elements right there, and with me and my brother it’s a combination of love, anger and emotion you know what I mean? It’s a very well rounded album.

P82: On the recording process, what would you say was the tone or feel that you were aiming for with this album…?

CAPPA: Umm I took it as more or less me just doing me this time you know. I wasn’t under any pressure or anything like that, I wasn’t trying to concentrate on what anybody else wanted from me. I just kinda tried to take it back to how I felt when I first started you know, just me. But at the same time, not as high tempo.

P82: What made you decide to drop a double album…?

CAPPA: The reason I did that man is because I haven’t really dropped too many mix CD’s lately. So I wanted to give the fans something that they could enjoy and then at the same time have something left over for later. They can listen to one disc in the day time and one at night and they getting it for the same price.

P82: You also dropped the prequel EP ‘Natural Elements’ a little while ago, that introduced us to some of the new producers.

CAPPA: Yeah definitely man. Like I said man, Kevlaar, DJ Snips, all of my buddies man, J-Ronin…

P82: Do you have any favourite tracks on the album…?

CAPPA: Ummm I like Puffed On Pride and In The Dungeon. I like Boogah Hill. There’s a bunch of joints on there that I like man.

P82: A lot of the tracks are putting across a more positive message. Tracks like Pull Ya Life Together and Children Of Israel…

CAPPA: Yeah that’s how I’m trying to do it man, I’m trying to keep it positive but still with a nice beat you know. But on P2 I’m gunna go with a more happy, dance, kind of up tempo thing goin’ on so this was a good time for me to get all of the slower songs up out of my system because I’m about to, how do you say… raise the bar.

P82: So what are you coming with next, P2…?

CAPPA: Yeah, The Pillage 2.

P82: I was going to ask you about that. It was reported a while ago that you were working on it. So is that definitely in the pipeline…?

CAPPA: Yeah man, P2. I’m gunna get some tracks from RZA. I’ve got tracks from Mathematics and 4th Disciple, I’m trying to find Goldfinghaz. But it’s like, I want bangin’ tracks though.

P82: So are you trying to go back in with all of the same producers from the original Pillage…?

CAPPA: Yeah but mix it up though. Remember I’m doing 70 songs, don’t be surprised if it’s another double CD. Because if I’ve got just hits after hits who can stop that?

P82: Do you prefer working on solo projects or with the Clan…?

CAPPA: I like working with Wu-Tang and I like working for dolo too…

P82: How was it hooking up with the Clan again for the ‘Six Directions Of Boxing’ track for RZA’s Iron Fists soundtrack…? Were you all in the studio together…?

CAPPA: Nah it was only like me, Masta Killa and GZA in there. And 9th Prince. But it was still beautiful man. When we did the Jimmy Fallon show a month ago it was me, Ghost, U-God, Masta Killa, RZA, so we always getting in there.

P82: You also contributed some verses to Cilvaringz’ upcoming project. Have you heard anything from that at all…?

CAPPA: Nah I haven’t heard nothing from Cilvaringz yet, but as long as that buzz is still there we gon’ live.

P82: Have you spoken to RZA or anyone else in the Clan about the possible reunion album for the Clan’s 20 year anniversary…?

CAPPA: We’re in meetings and talks and negotiations right now, once we get the appropriate formula to make everybody happy then we gunna go forth into this 2013 with the gangsta lean.

P82: What would you say is your main focus, the Wu-Tang Clan album or your Pillage 2 album…?

CAPPA: Both of them are high priority and high profile albums, but the thing about it is I’m definitely going to make sure as an individual that I’m on my job. But I did start out as the group so you know, I have an equal love for my solo career, as well as the groups projects and efforts.

P82: Most Wu-Tang fans consider The Pillage an all time classic amongst Wu albums. How do you feel about it after all these years…?

CAPPA: It’s definitely my favorite album man, not because it went gold. Because at that time it seemed there was a lot more love around hip-hop, not in general, but definitely for me and my team and my squadron and everything we were doing. It was new, it was a good venture. I love the work that I did, I had a free mind and good things happened man.

P82: Are there any of your projects that you wish had gotten more shine…?

CAPPA: I just wish and hope that I could do better as an individual and up the bar on my lyrics and up the ante on my business knowledge and just me being able to go more to my fans and my team as a well grown man you know. A well put together grown man yo.

P82: I read in a previous interview were you said you didn’t really want to limit yourself to just Hip-Hop, that you also wanted to do rock, reggae and just music in general. Is that something you are still trying to pursue…?

CAPPA: Yeah I just want to be the artist and be loved for being the artist. I don’t want all the fuss and fights. I just wanna do good music, and be taught how to do better music.

P82: Your rhyme style is unique and your voice is instantly recognisable as you. How did you develop your style…? Were you influenced by any other MC’s when you were coming up…?

CAPPA: Yeah I was into Slick Rick, Dana Dane and all of them cats. Rakim and Nas, you know, the early heavy hitters. I like a lot of variety in hip-hop, smooth hip-hop too.

P82: Do you listen to much hip-hop in general…?

CAPPA: Yeah I listen to a lot of stuff man. I love reggae though. Yeah I love reggae, I been trying to do my little reggae thing. I did a couple of joints but didn’t really wanna put them on the album. I did one on The Cappatilize Project called Wanted. Wanted In Jamaica with KMC. (Sings) Wanted, Wanted, Wanted in Jamaicaaa…

P82: You’ve been through a lot of up’s and down’s in your career. What would you say is your greatest achievement looking back…?

CAPPA: My greatest achievement is surviving all those up’s and down’s. Not that I’ve built anything big or better, it’s just having survived. That’s the supreme victory to me man, because any day could be your last, even if you’re rich or poor, you’re on or not, it doesn’t matter.

P82: Do you have any regrets…?

CAPPA: My only regret is that I didn’t put everything of my spirit and my soul into each project. I feel like I could have really done more if I had the knowledge that I have now, to be a responsible spokesperson for hip-hop and the content of my lyrics.

P82: Which projects do you mean…? Your earlier work…?

CAPPA: Yeah I just feel like I was so much more gifted with my wordplay man, I could really express beautiful things you know. If I had my way, which I guess I do now, I just wanna do good music that’s going to be uplifting and empowering. I still want to give them the reality, but without the formality.

P82: I’ve seen you perform live a few times with the rest of the Clan. You used to spit your verse from Winter Warz acapella at a lot of shows. Would you say that is your defining verse or your most famous verse…?

CAPPA: Yeah I liked my Winter Warz style and I’ve definitely explored sometimes how to duplicate it but I haven’t yet found out how to imitate it. It was a different time and day but I love that style and I will concentrate somehow on getting a piece of that action. It would be nice to have that for the P2.

P82: We do get to hear glimpses of that style every now and then. There was a track on Slang Prostitution, the Somebody’s Got To Go track where your flow was crazy!

CAPPA: Thanks man, that’s what’s up. I definitely be trying to hit it when I could but I’m gunna go even harder now because I feel I know what needs to be done. So I’m gunna do my best and just really bring some good music man no matter what. If the message is positive and people don’t like it that’s too bad but I’mma keep it positive and I’mma keep it coming hard.

P82: You seem to work with Inspectah Deck a lot on your projects and his. Are you closer to Deck than the other Clan members…?

CAPPA: I used to bump in to Deck in the hood every now and then you know so we can collaborate and do that like that. But he ain’t scared to come out to the studio, he’ll come out and do it when he says he’s gunna do it probably 8 out of 10 times you know.

P82: Going back to the new album, people can pick it up on February 12th. Will you be doing any touring in support of the album…?

CAPPA: Yeah definitely. We gonna kill it on them live. Yeah we gonna kill it.

HHS: First off, Mic Tyson is set to drop on October 30th. How do you feel it stacks up against your other solo records…?

SEAN PRICE: Ummm I don’t know. I just make them shits you know. You figure that out, the fans figure that out.

HHS: Personally I think you’ve got a classic on your hands here. Every solo album is a step up from the last.

SEAN PRICE: Thank you man, I appreciate it.

HHS: Do you have any favorite tracks on the new abum…?

SEAN PRICE: Ummm, the title track. You know what I mean. I like the wordplay of the second verse man… You a battle rapper / you be rapping in battles / I shoot your shit up duke it’s a wrap for the battle / niggas yappin’ they tattle / it’s a wrap when I catch you / chrome to your iPhone I clap at your Apple. I love that line, hahaha. I love that shit man.

HHS: With Monkey Barz you had the whole ape vibe going but then you seemed to drop it for the Jesus Price album. What made you pick up the ape vibe again for the cover of Mic Tyson…?

SEAN PRICE: I wanted the apes on every album man. But Dru, for the second album, Dru was like get the fuck outta here with that ape shit. So I listened to him. But we went back to the ape shit now so get the fuck outta here with that shit Dru Hahahahaha.

HHS: The beats throughout the album are slamming. You managed to get heaters from pretty much everyone. One of the standouts was the Evidence produced “BBQ Sauce”. Do you personally reach out to each producer or do they send you beats to pick from…?

SEAN PRICE: I went to California to work with Alchemist and you know him and Evidence are like brothers so you know. As soon as I got off the plane, and Alchemist picked me up, we went to Evidence’s crib and the first song we did was “BBQ Sauce”.

HHS: Alchemist hit you up with a few heaters too, the first two tracks on the album both being Alchemist beats, it sets the album off perfectly.

SEAN PRICE: Word thank you man.

HHS: Alchemist has dropped a lot of projects this year. Have you been keeping up with any of those projects or the MC’s he’s been working with…?

SEAN PRICE: Well you know, Alchemist is a great guy, he works so hard. He does a bunch of songs with all kinds of people, he be on the road with Eminem, you know he DJ’s for Eminem so you know, he’s a man of many hats. He’s dope overall though, he’s a great guy.

HHS: What do you think of some of the other MC’s that Alchemist is working with at the minute like Action Bronson, Curren$y, Domo Genesis…?

SEAN PRICE: Ummm I’m not too familiar with, who was the last guy you said? Genesis?!

HHS: Yeah Domo Genesis, he’s down with Odd Future…

SEAN PRICE: I don’t really know who he is, but Action Bronson… that’s my boy though. If you see Action Bronson ask him about the Five Percenter Sandwich!

HHS: The Five Percenter Sandwich…?!

SEAN PRICE: Yeah, ask him about it man. Who else did you say?

HHS: Curren$y… he did that Covert Coup mixtape.

SEAN PRICE: Oh Curren$y… I don’t listen to Curren$y either, not because of any disrespect. He just be so high all the time that he makes me high listening to him. You know, I’m tryin’ to be part of a functioning society so I can’t listen to Curren$y man. His rhymes make me high haha.

HHS: Do you listen to much Hip-Hop in general…?

SEAN PRICE: Nah, actually I listen to ummm… the song I wake up to every day is Billy Ocean’s “One Of Them Nights” [Ed: "Nights (Feel Like Getting Down)"]. That’s my favorite song. (Sings) “Ohhh I’m on fiyyuuure.” That’s my shit right there, Billy Ocean baby.

HHS: Ill Bill features on the Solomon Grundy track on the new record. How did you originally hook up with Bill…?

SEAN PRICE: Oh man, Illest Bill that’s my boy man. We just friends, you know if he ask me to get on a song I’ll do it and vice versa you know what I mean. I did one on Kill Devil Hills, I did one on the new La Coka Nostra joint. And I asked him to get on this one and he did it no problem. We supposed to be working on a project soon too called The Pill , so look out for it.

HHS: I was just about to ask about The Pill collaboration. So is that still happening…?

SEAN PRICE: Yeah, yeah, hell yeah.

HHS: You mentioned the track you did on Kill Devil Hills, the “Troubleshooters” track…

SEAN PRICE: Yeah “Troubleshooters” and I did “Electronic Funeral”, that’s the name of the song on the La Coka Nostra album, it’s crazy.

HHS: For the “Troubleshooters” track were you actually in the studio with Muggs and Bill or did you record your verse separately…?

SEAN PRICE: Nah me and Bill was in the studio at the time. Me, Bill and Eclipse.

HHS: Do you prefer working on solo projects or do you work better as part of a group like Heltah skeltah or Random Axe…?

SEAN PRICE: I’m definitely happy by my self, you know what I mean. The money is better. But you know, I’d just rather be alone, hahaha.

HHS: Do you think there will be a follow up to the Random Axe album or was that just a one-off project…?

SEAN PRICE: I would definitely do another Random Axe album man, that was fun. That was fun. I’m looking forward to doing that again you know. Guilty, that’s my boy. And Black Milk is a genius but he’s not aware of that genius so it’s awesome.

HHS: I heard that you didn’t know who Guilty Simpson was when he approached you for a verse on his Ode To The Ghetto album…?

SEAN PRICE: I didn’t, I didn’t. Somebody just asked me, and me being greedy for money I said yeah. But I ended up doing the song for free anyway you know, once I realised he was dope I did it for free.

HHS: So how did that one guest verse steam roll in to the full Random Axe project…?

SEAN PRICE: I literally got off the phone, said who’s Guilty Simpson… this guy played a shit load of Guilty Simpson records and I was like fuck a song, let’s do a whole project! As simple as that. Being that the first song we did was Run and Black Milk made the beat we was like fuck it Black you can make all the beats. It was real simple.

HHS: Did you have any other input in to the album aside from your rhymes…? Like guest features, which tracks were used, etc…?

SEAN PRICE: Not really. I suggested Roc Marciano and Danny Brown but everyone else on there was all Black Milk’s doing but I have no problem man, big up Fatt Father and all the other boys on the album.

HHS: Who do you think took it lyrically on that album, yourself or Guilty…?

SEAN PRICE: You know what, I don’t know man, maybe Guilty man. I can remember a few times when I’m going yeah I killed him on this one but then Guilty would just drop a verse that would slap the shit out of my verse so I dunno. You know what, I’ll give Guilty the gold medal man, I’ll take the silver, it’s alright.

HHS: It inspires good competition though…

SEAN PRICE: Exactly. We wasn’t trying to out rhyme each other. I remember when I did Chewbacca, started writing it and when I spit it niggas was like wooooo! And I was like yeah I got the gold medal on this one, but then Guilty just murdered me and shit. So I was like alright, they both good verses, I’m not gunna re-write a verse to try and top his shit because that’s corny.

HHS: Is there one album that you’re most proud of, or that you feel stands out above the rest…?

SEAN PRICE: Kimbo Price. I love that Kimbo Price mixtape, I still play that shit right now, it still holds. That was a good one man.

HHS: How do you decide which tracks actually end up on mixtapes and which ones go on proper retail albums…?

SEAN PRICE: Ummm well with mixtapes I just do a shit load of songs, mix them down and put them out you know. But with an album, I’ll have a bunch of songs, I’ll give them to Dru. Dru will be like this ones cool, this ones whack get the fuck outta here, this ones cool, you know what I mean. We just take it from there. The whole team is on board with the album. Mixtapes I do what I wanna do but the album, I do my part and then I hand it to Dru and they do their part. That’s great management baby.

HHS: It’s good to have someone around you that is totally honest with you and will tell you when something is wack…

SEAN PRICE: Yeah I’ve learned. Dru taught me something so I try not to fall in love with these songs, because they’re just songs you know what I mean. There might be a sample that you can’t use or this, that and the third. So I’ve learned not to love the songs, it’s like fuck outta here, it’s done, move on you know. It’s better for me that way.

HHS: With regards to samples, what is the most you’ve had to pay out to get a sample cleared…?

SEAN PRICE: Oh there was a track on Nocturnal I think. I forget which sample. We sampled ummm Bad Company? Was that the group? And yeah they wanted a shit load of money plus roll over’s. Which means every certain amount sold I had to pay them again! That was a nightmare. And the song wasn’t a single or nothing, it was just an album track you know what I mean. So yeah, I’ve learned from that shit.

HHS: Is there anyone in Hip-Hop that you haven’t worked with that you would like to…? Anyone you would like to collab with…?

SEAN PRICE: I think niggas collab too much you know what I’m sayin’? You can’t hold shit down on your own? Collab too much man. I don’t wanna give a fuck about that man, but I do because people pay me. But when it’s my album, first of all I don’t wanna get a bunch of crazy dudes on there because they’re never together, they never do the song together. So that shit is whack, I like to perform my work you know what I mean. I’m an old school dude man, fuck all that collab shit man, hold it down. Like I ain’t gunna do a record with Christina Aguilara on it or some bull shit. If it’s gunna be a hit, it’s gunna be a hit on my own merit man.

HHS: One of my pet hates is when a rapper puts out a so called solo record, but it features two or three different MC’s on each track…

SEAN PRICE: Yeah it’s like a fake compilation album man. I always narrow it down to just my friends, they’re not all even rappers, they just friends. Ill Bill be wild cool. Ruste Juxx too. These are my boys man. And I don’t even have Rock on the new album.

HHS: I was about to ask you about that…

SEAN PRICE: He’s still working his ass off, but I did that on purpose just to let him know, you know… I’m good. I did it so he could be proud of me. I ain’t got you on the album, I don’t need you for a hook or nothing baby, I’m doing it baby. Hahahaha. You know what I mean, it wasn’t out of spite, it was out of love.

HHS: How much do you charge these days for a guest verse, or if someone hits you up through Facebook or Twitter for a verse…?

SEAN PRICE: It varies man, it depends if I like you. Sometimes the song might be so fucking horrible that I’ll make you pay me more just for going through the hell. If you contact my management and ask for a feature they’re gunna charge you a shit load. Hahaha.

HHS: I remember reading in an old interview that you were going to up your prices after some kid tried to get you on a track using his Bar Mitzvah money…?

SEAN PRICE: Yeah a kid man, he wrote to me. (Speaking in the background) You remember that Noah, when that kid wrote me? He wrote me saying yo my bar mitzvah is coming, I wanna take some of the money and get a verse, I love your music. That’s a true story. So I’m like yeah maybe I should raise my prices man. And then my man Noah had a bar mitzvah too, he could have bought a Sean Price verse and had some money left. He could have bought an album hahahaha. Oh shit.

HHS: You dropped a couple of verses on some Wu-Tang related albums over the last couple of years. I always think of Boot Camp Clik and Wu-Tang as quite closely related because you were both big crews that came up at the same time. Did you see it like that…?

SEAN PRICE: Hold on, hold on. First of all I’m not Boot Camp man, I’m down with Wu-Tang. Yeah I’m not down with Boot Camp man that shits weak. I’m Wu-Tang now. Don’t ever refer to me as a Boot Camp Clik member again man, I am Wu-Tang.

HHS: You need a Wu-Tang name then, you can’t just go by the name Sean Price.

SEAN PRICE: Oh yeah man, I’m The Shizza. Yeah. Sean The Shizza… a.k.a. the 14th Disciple. Nah but Wu-Tang nigga. I just did a verse for the Brooklyn Nets mixtape by Clark Kent and the whole verse I’m bigging up Wu-Tang Clan. I’m Wu-Tang man, I don’t think RZA knows yet but when I see him I’m telling him man. I’m Wu-Tang man.

HHS: I think RZA needs to start charging a fee for being Wu-affiliated these days…

SEAN PRICE: I’m Wu-Tang man… for free! Hahahaha.

HHS: Back in the day did you see it as an element of competition between Boot Camp and Wu-Tang…?

SEAN PRICE: I mean it’s always competition but I got love for Wu-Tang. It ain’t competition to the point that I’m like I hate them. I love Wu-Tang. Me and Raekwon is good money, me and Ghostface is good money. Me and Inspectah Deck. And I just hit U-God on Twitter man, you hear that new song they got? On the Iron Fists soundtrack, you heard it?

HHS: Yeah the “Six Directions Of Boxing”…

SEAN PRICE: I think U-God got the gold medal on that song man, I had to hit him on Twitter to let him know man. He caught a body on that song man, it was beautiful.

HHS: U-God has been spitting flames for the last few years now…

SEAN PRICE: Yeah, yeah U-God is stepping up man, I’m happy to hear that too. And Masta Killa, he’s from East New York, I’m from Brownsville. I just did a song with Masta Killa for his new shit too. Me, Agallah and Inspectah Deck got a record together too, it’s crazy. I wanted to put it on my album but Agallah wouldn’t give it to me, it’s crazy though.

HHS: There’s been a couple of tracks where both yourself and Inspectah Deck have dropped guest verses on the same track… There was that “Phil Anastasia” track.

SEAN PRICE: Oh yeah man. Deck wanted me on his last album too man, but he has horrible phone etiquette and so do I. We crack jokes about it now but you know, because of our horrible rapper phone etiquette we never got to do the song. But we will work though.

HHS: I just wanted to touch upon something that you mentioned in a previous interview about writers block. Is that something that you have ever suffered from…?

SEAN PRICE: Nah I don’t suffer from that shit at all. Listen to “Figure Four”, the first word is Botswana you know, how can I get writers block? I write a word down on a piece of paper and I just build from that. So nah, I don’t get writers block. If I ever get writers block, it means the beat is corny man that’s all that means, there’s no such thing as writers block. It’s called corny beats, not writers block.

HHS: Have you been working on any other projects…? What have you got planned for after Mic Tyson…?

SEAN PRICE: Yeah man but I learned to stop talking too much about these shits man because they start to take on a life of they own. And then you get people like yo what’s up with that, hurry up hurry up. So I’m not even going to talk about it man. I’mma show you better than tell you.

HHS: Going back to the new album, it drops on Tuesday. What are you expecting sales wise…?

SEAN PRICE: Nah I don’t give a fuck about that shit man, that’s for the label to deal with man. I’m just the rapper, I do the rapping thing. The label can do all of that worrying about sales and shit you know what I mean. Just let me work my product and we’ll see what happens.

HHS: For quite a high profile album you’re doing well anyway as the album hasn’t leaked online yet as far as I know. It’s unusual this close to release date.

SEAN PRICE: I don’t even wanna speak on that, I might jinx myself you know. Hahaha.

HHS: A lot of the producers on the album are guys that you’ve worked with before like 9th Wonder and Khrysis, but who are some of the lesser known’s like Amp and Wool…?

SEAN PRICE: Amp and Eric G are part of 9th Wonder’s whole Soul camp thing. Wool, that’s a friend of mine, he lives on the West coast. He’s always sending me beats, he’s a great guy. He sent me that beat and he had like a nasty Sean Price sample in there and I was like yo take that shit out and send me the beat back. And he did, he sent it back, I wrote the rhyme and sent it back to him the next day. He’s just a good friend of mine, every time I’m in the West coast he’ll come out and smoke me out with some good kush.

HHS: I also wanted to ask who Realm Reality is that you’ve got featured on the Bully Rap track…?

SEAN PRICE: Realm Reality is my friend Rick Gonzalez, he’s an actor. He was in Coach Carter, he was in Illegal Tender, Old School. So yeah he’s an actor but he’s my friend.

HHS: And the album closes with two Beat Butcha tracks too, he seems to be everywhere at the minute…

SEAN PRICE: Yeah that’s my boy man. He’s from the UK right?

HHS: Yeah he’s from the UK.

SEAN PRICE: Yeah he’s a great guy man he makes some crazy beats. I will work with him again for sure.

HHS: There are also the iTunes bonus tracks too, I haven’t heard them yet but you got a Statik Selektah track there…?

SEAN PRICE: Yeah Remember. The track is called “Remember”. It’s got me and Freddie Gibbs on there. He murdered his verse, murdered it. His verse is a murder case.

HHS: Freddie Gibbs is another guy that just seems to be everywhere all of a sudden…

SEAN PRICE: Ummm yeah he actually said that in the song. Said that he’s been rapping for years but just starting to get it now. So he’s been around for a while.

HHS: He seems to be getting a bit more shine now…

SEAN PRICE: Yeah I mean that’s good, I’m happy for him man. He’s a great guy man. A friend of mine works with him and he asked me and Tek to do “The Ghetto” remix with Freddie Gibbs and we did that. And then I asked him to get on this song and he did it, he bust it out.

HHS: You’ve worked with P.F. Cuttin’ in the past. Did you not hook up for Mic Tyson…?

SEAN PRICE: We actually did that song “Ruben Blades” that I put out, he did that but we decided not to put it on the album that’s all. But I work with P.F. Cuttin’ all the time. He’s my DJ. That’s my homeboy and I’m also the godfather of his child, haha.

HHS: Well I’m pretty much out of question now man. Thanks for taking the time to speak with me. Good look with Mic Tyson when it drops.

SEAN PRICE: That’s cool man, I have a great grilled chicken salad man, shit is awesome so I’ll get back to that. Alright bro, I appreciate it. Thanks.

HHS: First off, what is the concept behind your new album Negroes On Ice…? Didn’t it start out as a theatre show of some sort, like a comedy/sketch show…?

PRINCE PAUL: The concept is kinda like a day in the life of my Son, obviously it’s highly exaggerated, it’s more or less like a story that builds into music and goes into the story, almost like A Prince Among Thieves but this is more like a one man show type of thing where he kinda gets up and just tells everything about what his day is like, it’s like a bizarre exaggerated day in the life of a teenager. To be honest it’s really stupid… it’s just bizarre. It’s really hard to describe, some people listen to it and think it’s great, some people listen to it and think I’m ruining Hip-Hop and here, there and everything else so we’ll see.

HHS: So is your Son, DJ P. Forreal, the main MC on this project…?

PAUL: Umm, well actually we have a few other MC’s but he kinda splits it half and half with the other guys. He doesn’t really rhyme, I kinda made him rhyme by default you know, when we came to do this we didn’t have the budget so he was forced to rhyme some of the stuff, it’s difficult because he can’t rhyme so it was horrible, horrible times but we got through it, made it work haha.

HHS: I heard the “Textual Healing” track and didn’t think the rhyming was bad…

PAUL: Yeah I mean, what people don’t realise you know… well actually he did that one pretty quick but a lot of the times on the album it’s like a billion takes, you know like “do it again, do it again, do it again, do it again” haha. I guess it’s almost like when Eazy-E rhymed on NWA records, you know you’d hear the stories about how he had to punch in and do stuff over because he really wasn’t an MC. It’s almost like the same thing, but he’s getting the hang of it now, he’s getting better.

HHS: Do you handle all of the production on the album…?

PAUL: No actually it’s split between me and him, initially he did most of the production on there but as time went on we needed to pick songs so we’re doing 50-50. And there’s also a guy, a friend of his that he works with which is another Paul, named Paul Mackenzie and he plays the keyboards so they put a lot of stuff together between them two on the album as well.

HHS: Did your Son used to go by the name of DJ Paul Fresh…? Does he just go by DJ P. Forreal now…?

PAUL: Yeah he went by Paul Fresh for like 3 months haha, and then he changed it.

HHS: I also wanted to ask about the Unreleased Series that you’ve been dropping on Soundcloud. It’s almost like a continuation of the Hip-Hop Gold Dust compilation, is that what you were aiming for or were you just trying to get more tracks out there…?

PAUL: Well I wasn’t even thinking about Gold Dust when I was putting the stuff out, I was just trying to put out music that was going to waste you know. I got so many tracks just laying around, with vocals, without vocals, stuff that got rejected that I did mixes for. I figured I might as well just put it out you know, it doesn’t do me any good just holding on to it, I might as well put it out and let other people enjoy it. I put it out there, some people think it’s great, some people think it’s crappy you know, but at least I get to not keep it in the computer.

HHS: Do you plan on putting out any further volumes of Hip-Hip Gold Dust…? Do you have vaults full of unreleased tracks…?

PAUL: Umm probably not, unless someone approaches me to put out another record like that you know, but those records are kinda hard to put out because you have to get clearance from all the artists and some of them are hard to find, a lot of the stuff is sample based so then you got clearance of all the samples so it’s a lot of hassle. So to put it out online, it’s free, it’s just way easier… not profitable haha… but it’s way easier.

HHS: One of the tracks I wanted to ask about from Hip-Hop Gold Dust is the LA Symphony track…

PAUL: Ahh yeah, yeah “Broken Down”…

HHS: It’s one of my personal favourite Prince Paul beats. Did you do any more tracks with LA Symphony or was it just the one track…?

PAUL: Wow thank you. Umm it was just the one track, they had approached me, wow I had totally forgot about that, it was a while back in the day they were like “we’re big fans and we’d really like you to do a song with us” and they let me hear some of the stuff they were doing. They had some type of beat they wanted, you know “that Prince Paul sound” and I remember I gave them that beat and half of them liked it, half of them were uhhhhhhhhhh, they weren’t too sure about it. But I was like hey man, this is a Prince Paul beat, this is my style and you know it all worked out and I think they did a really good job on it. It’s sad that it never officially came out.

HHS: Yeah, that’s why I wanted to ask about it because it never came out until the Hip-Hop Gold Dust compilation…

PAUL: Yeah I think their deal got messed up, typical Hip-Hop story you know, you get signed, you get dropped, or the label goes out of business.

HHS: Another track that you dropped on Soundcloud was that unreleased Gravediggaz track “The House That Hatred Built”. Was that something that was recorded for the demo tape or the first Gravediggaz album or was it just you guys messing around…?

PAUL: Yeah that was the first song that we ever recorded as a group, so it was a demo you know, everybody came by the house, I played the song, the beat that I had and I was like yo, I think we should use this. This kinda fits the style we had talked about. And it was really on the spot we recorded it so what you hear is the first song we ever did.

HHS: Who came up with the idea for the whole Horrorcore concept on the first album…? Did you have the idea or was that just the kind of beats you were making at that time…?

PAUL: Well a lot of the beats I was making were kinda dark, I was going through some weird depression at the time, it was more or less like a career thing, my career was going on a down turn, you know, dealing with music business stuff, and I was young too, it kinda stresses you out. So all the songs I was making were dark sounding so when I approached RZA, Poetic and Frukwan and I was playing them some of the music, I think the vibe that I was doing kinda steered it in that direction. It’s funny, like Poetic would debate this if he was still around god rest his soul, but I think it was more or less RZA that came up with going in that direction.

HHS: Kind of like that’s how RZA interpreted your beats, put his lyrics over it and every one else followed suit…?

PAUL: Yeah that more or less kinda happened, you know, we were sat thinking of names and stuff and I’m almost positive RZA came up with Gravediggaz and I was like “Oooooo..”. And we took names up you know, and that’s when he invented the name The RZA, because before he was known as Prince Rakeem. And he was like yo, I’m going by The RZA, for Resurrector or RZArecta… and I’m like yeah that’s cool hahaha. So everyone went around the room making up names. So yeah it’s a little known fact that the RZA’s name was invented in my house.

HHS: Possibly a tough question… who do you think was the illest MC in the Gravediggaz…?

PAUL: Umm, it depends on what day, you know, it would always flip flop. For a minute I would always say Poetic, but then I remember I used to get Poetic and RZA to battle all the time. I was always going to Poetic’s ear or going to RZA like yo, Poetic can eat you up man haha, and RZA would be like word, word?! And they would just battle and I would have to say RZA would get him haha. Almost every time. But Poetic was really, really slick, like some days you catch Poetic and you can’t beat him you know, and some days you catch RZA and you cant beat him. Frukwan was a really competitive MC, he was like ok I’m gunna lay my rhyme and then I’m gunna lay back. They were the best MC’s ever.

HHS: When it came time to do the second Gravediggaz album was it a decision that you made to take more of a back seat on the production side of things…?

PAUL: Yeah, I only really wanted to do the first album, that was my main thing. When it came to the second album I remember me and RZA were talking about not doing it, like yeah we cool, but felt that Poetic and Frukwan weren’t really in a position to move on. We still had another album contract and budget, so you know, to make it financially better for them we decided to do the second album. I told them I wasn’t really into doing the production as much so I told RZA it would be wise if he did his part, he was starting to put together his production team, he had people working under him, he was building his Wu-Tang conglomerate. And he decided hey, let’s get everybody paid, so everyone can produce some tracks in addition to himself. And I’m cool, I just want to chill out, you know, I’m on to the next thing.

HHS: Were you still present at the recording sessions and mixing sessions…?

PAUL: A lot of times I was there, more when they were recording the lyrics rather than the music because you know a lot of producers make beats in the house and then laid the track down at the studio so I felt like they didn’t need me there, it was their own production I didn’t want to step in.

HHS: So when the third Gravediggaz album came around, did they approach you to be involved…? Or where they already aware that you had moved on…?

PAUL: I think more or less they did it on their own, so it was a conscious decision like ok Paul is outta the picture, so we need to get this album together to prove that we can stand on our own two, and I’m just guessing here, but that’s more or less how that came about.

HHS: The RZA has said in a couple of interviews that a new Gravediggaz album is in the works. Have you been involved in that at all…? Is it something you would go back to…?

PAUL: Yeah we talked about it a few times, we talked about doing some reunion shows. I spoke to RZA’s manager and we were putting together a whole big thing. But then it never materialises and I can’t blame RZA because he’s a busy dude you know. A lot of it falls on his shoulders and I literally spoke to him last week and I was saying we been getting a lot of questions about Gravediggaz, maybe we should do it you know, and he agreed like, let’s do one more go round and end the chapter. When that’ll be… I don’t know. Have we discussed it… yeah. Doing beats on the next record, for me I’m not sure. I know that they recorded some stuff already and I heard some of the stuff that they did, but I’ve gotta see if I can fit into that lane.

HHS: RZA dropped a new Gravediggaz track a couple of years ago featuring him and Frukwan called “2 More Cups Of Blood”. Did you hear it…?

PAUL: Nah I haven’t heard that man, I’d love to hear it though.

HHS: He put it out as part of his Wu-Wednesdays series through Soundcloud…

PAUL: Well I gotta check that out, I remember when I went to his house, he played me a bunch of new stuff like here’s some new stuff I’m working on. And you know, he says this is the chamber were in this time so take a listen, and I’m like ok, cool. But I don’t remember that one… I might have heard it, just didn’t know the title, but I’ll have to check that.

HHS: I read a while back that the reason there has been no material by Poetic released since his death is because he told his family that he didn’t want any of his music to be released posthumously. Had you heard anything like that…?

PAUL: I’ve never heard that, that’s actually the first time I’ve ever heard that…

HHS: Is there much unreleased Poetic material…?

PAUL: I think there’s at least a whole albums worth. I know I have some stuff in my possession but you know, I would have to get permission from his estate and everything and I respect that, if I wanna touch anything. But other than that yeah he definitely had a lot of stuff. He was like a real MC, he wrote constantly. He wouldn’t just write to the song, he would just write rhymes to write rhymes so he had tons of material.

HHS: The project that you were working on straight after the first Gravediggaz album was the Horror City album right…?

PAUL: Well the Horror City stuff, I kinda did it at the tail end of the Gravediggaz record. What freaked people out, especially when I tried to shop the Horror City stuff, people thought it was the same thing as Gravediggaz because of the name Horror City. But Horror City is just the slang for Amityville, that’s what it’s called because of the Amityville horror. And so people got it all mixed up and it caused a whole lot of stress but yeah I recorded that at the tail end of making the first Gravediggaz record. I think it was a really good album man, but nobody heard it at the time.

HHS: It gets pretty much universal acclaim on Hip-Hop blogs since you put it out online. The beats are like a natural progression from what you were doing on 6 Feet Deep, were you still in a dark place at that time…?

PAUL: Yeah, yeah, all of those beats were made around the same time. Sometimes I go back and listen to it, at that point I was doing a lot of that stuff on ADAT tapes so I listen to those tapes, there’s maybe ten songs on a tape. Sometimes I listen to those songs back to back and they all have that same vibe. It’s what I was going through at the time. In some ways I wish I could repeat that again, it’s a time and space as far as getting back in to it.

HHS: Is there any of your projects that you feel stands out above all the rest…? Which are you most proud of…?

PAUL: My favourite record that I’ve made, out of all of them, is probably the first Gravediggaz album. I put a lot of work in to that. It was a passionate project to kinda prove to myself that I could still make a good record, and I still had the ear, I was able to put people together that didn’t know each other and convince them to make a project that would work. And it was a challenge in the sense of a lot of the time the guys weren’t in the same place at the same time, like RZA would come in and record some vocals, Poetic might come in, Frukwan might come in, or Poetic and Frukwan. So to make it sound cohesive and work. There were times when we were all together, but there were times when everything was haywire. So when you make a record like a jigsaw puzzle, to put it together was kinda amazing. So when I listen to that at the end of it, you know, that record was a lot of hard work. That’s all I think about now, it was hard to make this album.

HHS: Do you prefer working as part of a group, i.e. with Gravediggaz, producing for De La Soul, Handsome Boy Modeling School, or do you prefer working solo…?

PAUL: I think it’s easier when I make stuff on my own in the sense of I can kinda guide the direction. But I like the idea of collaborating with other people. You know, a lot of times I can’t think of everything, so if there’s people that you respect and work with we can come up with great ideas, that’s fun too. That’s a whole lotta fun, and it takes my production to a different level as opposed to when I’m by myself. When I’m by myself I’ll go but so far but when you’ve got another mind on something he’ll take you places you didn’t think of.

HHS: DOOM! recently gave an interview with XXL Magazine. He was talking about an upcoming project, he didn’t give much info but said it was a full length collab with a beat maker from New York that made hits in the 90′s… he also said it wasn’t DJ Premier. A lot of people started mentioning yourself as a possibility… Can you confirm / deny anything about this…?

PAUL: Well I can say right now that it’s not me haha. It would be nice if it was. Me and him were supposed to work on a record about 10 years ago. When did the first DOOM record come out, ’99…? So yeah, maybe around 10 years ago we wanted to put a record together, but we just never got the time to make it materialise. But yeah, it’s not me. It would be kinda cool maybe in the near future.

HHS: What is your relationship like with DOOM! now…? Do you speak on a regular basis (or as regular as you can with a cat like DOOM!)…?

PAUL: Yeah I mean I catch him every whenever. We have an extensive relationship, I’ve known him since he was a kid because we did Gas Face together, that was the first song he ever rhymed on. So despite all the stuff that’s going on, he’ll every once in a while hit me up. And a lot of the albums you hear, he’ll send it to me first and it’s like what do you think? Do you think I should do this? How do you think this and that, a lot of times for advice which is flattering, and that’s kinda what it is. We’ll sit, we’ll chat, we’ll talk about life, it’s not just music, we’ll talk about the family, what’s going on, how’s your health haha, you know it’s not all beats. We talk about grown folks stuff half the time haha.

HHS: Are there any of your projects that you wish had gotten more shine…?

PAUL: Man I wouldn’t like to say. I wish all of my records sold a lot more. But I mean it all kind of worked out where it’s supposed to be, you know. Would I like to have overall greater success… Of course. But at the same time I like the freedom of making the records I like to make. A lot of the times with big labels and big budgets, there’s big expectations and you have to deliver, which means in some cases kinda commercialising your style a little bit just so you can meet the needs of the label. So for me being able to make whatever kinda record I want to make, I’m cool with that. I prefer a loyal fan base rather than the fan that just buys your record for the hit.

HHS: Politics Of The Business is a very underrated album with a lot of hot joints. It seemed to just go over people’s heads at the time it came out. Why do you think they didn’t ‘get it’…?

PAUL: Yeah I probably asked the same question at the time when it came out. Sometimes I think beyond… haha how can I put this… my brain works a little bit too fast, because I’ll think of stuff and I’ll put a lot of sarcasm in and put a lot of stuff in the music and a lot of times it goes over peoples heads, and they’re like ohh ok, he’s trying to do whatever. Or they’ll try to figure it out or try to pigeon hole it. Sometimes it’s just as simple as a quick joke, or I’m poking fun at a certain style of music and people are like ohh he’s trying to do this and it got caught up in everybody thinking I was trying to commercialise our music, but I was really just poking fun at a lot of that stuff. The other part of it too was it was a joke that I had going on with Tom Soderman at the time, he was stressing me, I remember he told me “Albums don’t sell, singles sell, make a whole album worth of singles”. And I was like, you know what, that’s kinda funny so I was just poking fun at that conversation.

HHS: I wanted to ask about a couple of your one-off projects like The Dix and Baby Elephant. Are these things that you would revisit…?

PAUL: Probably those are one-off’s. Baby Elephant I really enjoyed doing because I love working with Bernie Worrell. It was just a lot of stuff with his business and his management so we could never really hit it off like we wanted to, but would I like to make another one… Yeah I’d love to work with him again, he’s a great dude man I look up to that dude. The Dix would be a lot of fun to do because it’s just a bunch of me and my friends acting stupid haha, but will it happen again? I doubt it but a lot of those same friends are always on the records I make anyway because we’re friends.

HHS: What have you got planned for after Negroes On Ice…? Any future projects in the works…?

PAUL: Yeah I mean right now I’m doing umm… I haven’t made a Prince Paul record in quite some time, like a serious one that I’m really passionate about with some really good music. When I make records like The Dix and all that other stuff it’s just for fun, it’s not competitive, it’s not to win any new fans. It’s not really how I’m feeling at the time, it’s just acting silly. So what I mean by a real Prince Paul record is like a Gravediggaz record, like the first one is a real Prince Paul record or A Prince Among Thieves, those are records that I worked really hard on and I really love the music that I made. So I have a whole lot of music that I’m sorting out trying to put together.

HHS: Have you been working with any other groups or MC’s lately…? The Souls Of Mischief album that you did a few years back is a personal classic!!

PAUL: No not really. The Souls Of Mischief album was a hard record to make too but it was a lot of fun in the sense that I got a chance to really hang with those guys and get away from the house. We spent like a month, almost a month in a house out in the woods man it was horrible haha you know, bugs all over the place it was hardcore! Working on my Mac laptop you know, it was some gully recording but it was cool. But yeah, there’s been a few things I’ve tried to put together over the last few years but it’s just hard getting people together. Back in the day if you had a budget, it’s easier to get guys together and MC’s together and say hey here’s some money let’s work on this record. One, they’re motivated because they’re getting paid and they can take time off because they’re getting paid. And the other part of it is they obviously love the music. So now it’s difficult for me to go to MC’s and say hey, lets work on this project together, and they go ‘For what?’ haha. And I’m like ‘to make great music!’ haha. And they go, ohhh ok, and it never gets done.

HHS: Is there anyone that you haven’t worked with that you wish you had…? Or anyone you would like to collaborate with…?

PAUL: Man, I don’t know, I’ve already worked with RZA, I’ve already worked with DOOM! If it was up to me I’d like to do a record with those two guys again, but other than that…

HHS: I think you’ve worked with pretty much everyone that’s worth working with…

PAUL: Yeah I mean really, unless they’re dead it’s hard for me to think of anyone I want to work with.

HHS: You produced the Resident Alien album when you had your Doo Dew Man label. Were there any other acts that you were producing, or was anyone else signed to the label…?

PAUL: Oh yeah there was a gentleman by the name of Mic Teluxe, a good friend of mine, I grew up with him actually. To me, he is exceptionally good lyrically. We did maybe half an album and it never got released and I’ll probably throw a song or two on Soundcloud. I thought he was really, really good but the label just crumbled and things didn’t work out so I didn’t get a chance to put his music out but I still have a few of his songs.

HHS: Have you ever seriously thought about rapping…? Have you ever dropped verses on any projects…?

PAUL: Aside from the De La records like Pass The Plugs and Description and that kinda stuff. I mean, I’ve jokingly done stuff but never really like hard core rhymes, you know. You’ll find joke verses on Stetsasonic songs, you’ll find joke verses on some of the records I’ve done but to sit down and really rhyme rhyme? I know my limitations hahaha, I’d be playing myself out. I’d be doing a disservice to the sport if I tried to rhyme.

HHS: A couple of years ago there was a member of the Wu-Tang Corp forum called DJ Wuki that had an unreleased package of Wu-Tang tracks for sale. It included 8 Gravediggaz tracks that no one has ever heard of or been able to find. Most of the tracks featured Shabazz The Disciple, some of the track names were ‘Save Yourself’, ‘Radiation’, Diggaz Was Dead’, ‘Another Page From The Diary’, ‘Revolution’, and ‘False Things Must Perish (Original Version)’. Were you involved in the making of any of these tracks…?

PAUL: I don’t think I’ve heard of them, who knows, even if I did I probably wouldn’t recognise them just by name. It’s hard to say because of the whole umbrella under Wu-Tang and everybody who made beats, there’s so much material, it’s hard to keep track of who did what.

HHS: Your albums Psychoanalysis and Itstrumental deal a lot with themes of depression and mental conditions. What was the inspiration behind basing a whole album on those topics…?

PAUL: Being depressed haha. Especially when you’re younger and in the music business it’s difficult, some people deal with it with drugs but I’m in my head all the time so I’m constantly thinking, thinking, thinking. And when you’re young, you take stuff a lot more personally so you sit down and somebody disses you or you put trust in people or record labels and stuff you shouldn’t do. A lot of those people look at you as dollar signs, they don’t look at you as people, so today they’ll be your boy, but when you’re not charting they’re like Who? Paul who? I take all that stuff personally and being an artist I put it on wax like ok, this is how I feel, and make a record in this zone so yeah that’s how a lot of those came about. Those records are kinda like blueprints of what was going on in my life at that time.

HHS: Like your state of mind at that time…

PAUL: Yeah it’s like a diary. People say yeah you’ve done De La records, you did De La Is Dead, you did 6 Feet Deep, but I look at it like, man when I made that I was going through this, and when I did that album this other stuff was going on. I look at them differently, I don’t hear them like other people do.

HHS: Which would you say is your favourite of the De La Soul albums you produced…?

PAUL: Umm probably the first one, like, we didn’t know what was going on. I mean, I had a cool time making records with Stetsasonic, but with De La we were just going for broke, we weren’t worried about labels, we were just making our own kind of record. It was weird because it was like the blind leading the blind haha, I was fronting like I knew what I was doing but I really didn’t and those guys had so much faith and trust in me and we made a record that weirdly did well.

HHS: Going back to the new album, Negroes On Ice, when does that drop…?

PAUL: It changed, it was September 25th, it’s now October 2nd and the vinyl and the CD’s come out on the 16th on Nature Sounds.

HHS: Have you ever worked with your Son on any previous projects or is this the first time you have collaborated…?

PAUL: Working together on songs this is the first collaboration, but I’ve recorded his voice here and there on stuff and he’s been around from day one. I remember when he was a baby when RZA and them would come round when we were recording the Gravediggaz stuff and doing the De La stuff so he’s used to the whole recording process. It was different when I started recording him though, he got a taste of me being a perfectionist.

HHS: Can you shed any light on the other MC’s on the new album…?

PAUL: Umm I can give some basic ones out, there’s a lot of vocalists and vocal appearances on here, there’s Breeze Brewin who I’ve worked with before, my Son’s friend his name is T Harris, there’s Soce The Elemental Wizard, obviously my Son, there’s a bunch of vocalists. I’m not at liberty to say just yet, I kinda want to surprise people when they hear the album and they’ll go that’s such and such, man that’s such and such. There’s a lot of guest appearances on there.

HHS: Good luck with the album when it drops and thanks for taking the time to answer these questions…

PAUL: Thank you. I appreciate it man and no problem at all.