Leeds Hip Hop Scene

Once again I was given another opportunity to review for LEEDS HIP-HOP SCENE, I was back on the guest list and once again in a position to witness something that I will never forget as long as I will live, in fact, when I think of how good it was to watch MR. MONCH run through one of his new tracks whilst sound checking, I will probably be reflecting on it when I am watching the worms below. One of the best live moments I have ever witnessed, and with only 20 of us in the room, it was very personal.

Interviewing ASM is the real reason I was there so early, and, after they had finished their own sound check, we ventured upstairs to a room that until-midnight had been vacated by the PHAROAHE. His rider was out, but we weren’t allowed to get our teeth into his luxuries, so we got our teeth into ASM and what makes a group of young musicians and writers from around the globe come together in the name of purifying hip-hop. The first question I put to each individual was ‘what inspired you as an artist to play the instrument you play and get yourself into a hip-hop/funk based band?

ELLA (England): I started playing when I was very young and played classical music up until I was about 19 and then I met GREEN T and we did a track together which I had written and that went really well and it just went from there (which will be used by Channel 4 to bridge programmes in the near future GREEN T tells us)

FP (Germany): Basically the whole of ASM grew up in the same high school together so we was always kickin’ it, doin’ graffiti ‘n’ shit every day. That vibe and havin’ a good time with my friends made me relate to the stuff we’d listen to which was hip-hop and funk, and just music, wanting to spread the word through good music you know…

GREEN-T (half Canadian-half German): hip-hop jus’ hit me ya know, like different personality structures. Different kinds of people like different kinds of music and I got into German hip-hop, and the thing about German hip-hop back then, like 96, 97, 98 was that it was like where American hip-hop was 5 years previously, like old school, with all the funk breaks and jazz samples and that’s like how I got into it, there was a couple of mixtapes like a Dj MAD mixtape which was a German dj who was mixing like erm, classic hip-hop tracks like Eric B & Rakim and Tribe called Quest, De La Soul and shit like that with all the sample sources and it was like yo, this shit comes from somewhere else and it kind of worked backwards like that rather than getting into the funk breaks first.

We then got into discussion on how U.K. hip-hop is doing well in the Eastern parts of Europe like Poland and the Czech Republic, and how thanks to things like Ryan Air and Easyjet it’s cheaper for artists to get out there when in the past people were touring round the U.K. in a week and a half straight then sitting around not being able to really do anything else, and the results are that people are being exposed to U.K. hip-hop on the continent.

I then asked what hip-hop was missing; the quickest answer came by the way of the MPC maestro FADE, it’s been missing ASM. GREEN T squashed the possibility of a bad vibe by saying ‘Don’t get us started on that shit, we don’t wanna hate, we’re trying to be on a positive thing’.

Then FADE (of England), brought it all back to the first question, and the reason he got into hip-hop was an interesting one: Downloading man, if it wasn’t for downloading I don’t think I would have got into hip-hop as heavy as I did, a lot of people hate on downloading but like, in a way, before I got my turntables this dude called Bjorn from Sweden who was a fiend at downloading, he used to hook me up with all these CD’s of all this shit that I didn’t know and I had two older brothers who were into hip-hop too. 

SATIVO (Chile/America): Erm, I didn’t really like hip-hop as a genre, I liked classic rock and flamenco a lot, and I thought hip-hop was too simple, I didn’t really get into hip-hop until like 10^th or 11^th Grade so I was about seventeen when I really got into it and I mean I’m hating on downloading now but I definitely wouldn’t know as much about music now without downloading, but, I buy a lot of music on vinyl and cd’s. I got turntables because I bought this Beastie Boys CD with Intergalactic on it and heard Mixmaster Mike, and I thought I’m never going to be that good so I’m not going to buy turntables, but then GREEN T bought turntables and I was like, yeah, this scratching shit is pretty cool, being able to change songs, by mixing two of your favourite songs together, and the freestyling at night, smoking joints and freestyling at night.

ORLANDO (English but half French via his blood stream): I was a choirboy (this did make me question if he was pulling my leg but, he wasn’t and he also had a top ten choir hit, he then went straight from a choirboy to mixing Jungle). I was trained and I toured all over Europe and then when I was 13 I went into a record shop and bought turntables then started buying Jungle, and I’d been into drum & bass all my life and then I realised there wasn’t any soul involved in the music so I started looking to funk and jazz and hip-hop and then somehow ended up with this lot and that’s it really.

I pulled the plug on asking formal questions and we just talked. I found out that the musically talented award goes to ELLA and ORLANDO. That FP is a man of few words, but when he speaks, it’s worth listening. ELLA’s real name was let out the bag, along with the name of their new album; both had to be kept under wraps. It seems that GREEN T’s made up of love peace and harmony and FADE likes the word crack, they have opened up for J-LIVE, MASTA ACE, DJ FORMAT, FINGATHING and now PHAROAHE MONCH. Onto the subject of their music being played on the major radio stations and they feel for all the right reasons that it’d be a good thing, for exposure and the fact that everyone that they have played their music to, young and old, have liked their music. This time of year has come round and their schedule looks busy, they’ve got a German festival to play and their new album is going to be named and out very soon, near the end of this interview GREEN T asked a question for the future of hip-hop, ‘where does the solution lie? The only answer I have come up with for now is that ASM need to stay together and mature, look forward and not back and hopefully they will find the answer in their future releases. FP sits up to have the last words… SMOKE BLUNTS, YEAH, JUST SMOKE BLUNTS!

Be sure to check out their COSMIC FLAVOUR EP, it hasn’t left my car stereo since they kindly gave me one, it’ll be reviewed very soon,

peacizzle, esSDee.

Technorati Tags: ASM, interview, hip hop