Features

Interview Conducted by - By Marlon Regis

THAFORMULA.COM - At an early age, growing up in LA's who was your mentor in this rap game? What have you been able to carry on from this influence?

Abstract Rude - "It was the rappers at the Good Life Cafe - Freestyle Fellowship, Volume 10, Unity Committee known today as Jurassic 5, The Pharcyde, Ganja K, Erule, Medusa. These were the emcees from the LA underground. At the time, everybody was getting record deals for their projects, so that was pretty much the goal and motivation. But we always kept that base at the Good Life going as far as staying active and being at a higher level with the rhyming. In 1991-1992, I was in 11th grade, 12th grade - I was one of those high school kids that was making a name for myself throughout the high schools as an emcee. We also had our crew, Tribe Unique, they were a dance crew. I was down with them from way back and I emerged as an emcee, then we started doing our thing together up at the Good Life. By 1992, I was definitely making a name for myself up in there, going up in there with my own beats and all."

THAFORMULA.COM - Are you OK with people still referring or associating you with Project Blowed, or you'd wish people sort of move-on, maybe more associating you with Abstract Tribe Unique?

Abstract Rude - "Well, I'll tell you like this, as far as the album is concerned, I definitely want the Abstract Tribe Unique, known as A.T.U. We're on a campaign right now, to just burn that into people's heads to obviously sell our records. But as far as my affiliation with the Project Blowed on a street level, it will always be there. Project Blowed is a label now, and Ace is taking that to the next level. Hopefully, they'll be a lot of positive and successful things come out of that venture, and hopefully somehow I can be a part of it. Definitely, it's one affiliation, it's not like I'm giving up my Project Blowed affiliation. But to answer your question, I do want people to associate me right with Abstract Tribe Unique before anything else. That's what I'm about right now. 'Cause we've been around as you can see for a long time and our Project Blowed crew if it's one thing we've been guilty of is concentrating primarily on the art, and we haven't always been on top of our business so you have a lot of cats that have really brilliantly used this whole network that we kind of help build since the early 1990's. I would consider myself at the forefront of the people in Project Blowed trying to make that change for the better, and take things to the next level, keeping the artist values strong and creative."

THAFORMULA.COM - Is the lyrical content of your music on this new album, "Showtyme" totally reflective of your own experiences, since it is very clear that you're a rapper more in line with reality?

Abstract Rude - "Yes, it's a concept album that was definitely made with thought in mind that we're taking this to the stage. We're presenting this to people. So it's real live show oriented, but as always I take the listener through journeys of my understandings as it relates to my experiences. Understanding through experience is where you ultimately can relate. That's where your knowledge and wisdom is the heaviest. I raise a lot of questions that I feel like the listeners should ask themselves as I ask myself, and yuhknow, just kinda like stir it up a bit, kinda get people thinking."

THAFORMULA.COM - What's the drive behind keeping focused on being conscious, and what is the main dilemma in trying to stay afloat in the rap community in keeping people thinking?

Abstract Rude - "Well, I'll tell you like this. There's a lot of material that I can write that image that I've portrayed and built up over the years wouldn't necessarily align with. So maybe I'm a good writer and I could sell songs like that. As our personalities are real complex, they're totally dimensional, so can our written material be, it's just getting to a point where you have to make the tough choices on what you choose to present to people once you built up a certain image. And that's basically what the challenge is. Because as a writer I write, and I don't let anything inhibit me when I write but when I sit back and look at what I did and go, now is that a song I want the world to hear or not? So I try not to worry too much about what I feel like anybody will think with what I do or write. I just stay true to myself. As far as being conscious and remained focused, if my music comes off that way, that's just what I am - the better half of my person or most of my person is concentrated on probably trying to do some good in the world. That's gonna shine through naturally, it's not really an attempt to be that way."

THAFORMULA.COM - Do the dreads represents Rastafarianism, or more a style and identity amongst your peers?

Abstract Rude - "OK, I'm glad you asked me that. When it started out, when I first had dreads, it was more an attempt to separate myself from the kind of gang-infested neighborhood that I lived in. I didn't live in the worst, worst part of South Central like Watts or whatever, but I did live in South Central in the middle of it. 59th and Western, which is right by the Slauson Swap Meet. There was a lot of gang activity, and with me not having any older brothers, Dad not really in home with us, I was pretty much an easy victim of being lured into the association with gang life. And I was in my own way. As the conscious movement and the thinking movement of Hip-Hop grew, me being a pretty well-educated youth at that time, I was able to understand it and embrace it. So I would say I made a conscious decision. It felt way better to listen to like KRS One, Public Enemy, Poor Righteous Teachers. And people like that were talking about it. There were a lot of dance crews that sprung up around that time, that were really Native Tongue-influenced crews like Lost Tribe, The Hip-Hop Hippies, you even had some cats that called themselves the Rainbow Tribe. We had our own heroes on the West Coast of that kind of vibe which was already like The Soul Brothers who danced for Def Jef, we also had the Scheme Team who danced for Divine Styler. As that movement started growing, and all dance tribes started springing up in LA, that's when we started locking. It was some rastas who taught us how to properly lock our hair with Cactus and Aloe Vera. There I definitely studied and I definitely delved into a lot of different things other than just what I was brought up on, if you will. No, I don't consider myself a Rastafarian, so no my locks don't represent that, for what my locks represent is a long-standing separation between me and the ills of the community and my attempt to have my circle within the square, or square within the circle if you will. But at the same time not to distance myself from the community, but to remain in it in a way that is kinda close so that they can tell I'm one of them, but they can tell I'm not down with all that bullshit going on and I'm trying to still work with them. So that's what my locks represent as a South Central native."

THAFORMULA.COM - That single, "All Day" - I could play that, as it says, ALL DAY. I think that song really drew me into taking a deeper interest in your creative process. How'd you come to construct this?

Abstract Rude - "Well it takes a great producer like Fat Jack, which we like to call our 'Underground Dre'. He came at me with the concept, with the 'all day' sample with that lady singing that, already in there. So it was actually real easy to figure out what the name of the song was gonna be. It was probably the easiest song on my album to record. And that's some of the stuff that touches people the most really is some of the most simplest stuff that doesn't even take that long."

THAFORMULA.COM - From hearing you spit, especially over tracks like "Coolin'" or "Before We Gone," I get the impression that you're very comfortable within yourself as a person. You seem like you have nothing to prove to anyone, but yourself or maybe if you get tested or directly approached to do so. Isn't this maturity sort of contradictory in such a youth-oriented genre as Hip-Hop?

Abstract Rude - "Good question. It just might be, who knows if I was on a major label maybe you'd hear more songs like "Coolin'" and "All Day," and less songs like some of the more head-banger ones. You never know, you do kinda have to go with one sound. If it's been one thing, we're so diverse skillfully that's probably been the thing that made it difficult to market us earlier on as we considered ourselves ahead of our time. We weren't giving the company one strong thing to go with. I could agree with you a little bit, but I would say that me being Abstract Rude - that's the parity of my name. I'm gonna give you something abstract, but it's still gonna be on a down-to-earth level for you to feel it. So it's kinda like yeah, we're on some different shit, but we ain't no punks, we're from the street."

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