thaFormula.com
- The first time I heard you guys was on the "Vida
Loca" soundtrack in '94, how did you guys get on that
soundtrack?
Sick
Jacken Of Sick Symphonies/ Psycho Realm - When we hooked up with
B-Real in '93, he seen us somewhere and he wanted to hook up
with us and put us out so with paperwork and all that shit, we
ended up being good by like early '94. We were signed to his
production deal so he had to get us on a certain amount of
projects to make us a certain amount of loot per year and that
project came to the table and he got us on there. The Baka Boyz
produced that track and it was our first professional release.
thaFormula.com
- Now many people at that time compared you guys to Cypress
Hill, were you cool with that comparison?
Sick
Jacken Of Sick Symphonies/ Psycho Realm - Nah. People like us,
we don't really like to be compared to nobody. I think at that
point in time I wasn't making tracks or nothing so we were
getting produced by Soul Assassins producers so naturally the
Soul Assassins production team is gonna give us a Soul Assassins
sound. Being that my voice was a little high and Dukes voice was
low, you know the comparison was natural but once my boy dropped
out of the group and I started producing in '95 we got our sound
and when we debuted that first Psycho Realm record, we had found
our own sound. So if you listen to The "Scandalous"
track on the Vida Loca soundtrack, there is a lot of
similarities to that Soul Assassins sound. When something's new
you always wanna attach it to something like "oh that
sounds like this or oh that sounds like that." It's natural
so it don't bother us.
thaFormula.com
- Did that track open a lot of doors for you guys?
Sick
Jacken Of Sick Symphonies/ Psycho Realm - Yeah, it got us out
there. It got us our name out there. Before that, we were just
doing shows locally up and down California doing colleges and
shit like that. We weren't really doing major shows at that
point. After we did that track we ended up doing Big Top Locos
that Culture Clash threw right there at the Grand Olympic
Auditorium. We were performing with Rage Against the Machine you
know? So that was a big opportunity. Once you have a resume, it
does open a lot of doors. It just makes you look professional
like you're on the map.
thaFormula.com
- So after that track, what did you guys do next and was the
album already done?
Sick
Jacken Of Sick Symphonies/ Psycho Realm - Nah. We had demos, but
that was the first track that we recorded under B-Real's
production agreement. After that, we started recording the
album. TRT was producing at that point and we had a couple of
tracks from Ralph M of Funkdoobiest, Lethal from House of Pain
and we had about 8 to 10 songs done and my boy decided to drop
out of the group so we pretty much just canned the album and we
went back to the drawing board. I took one of B-Real's SP1200's
and started making tracks and that's when we recorded
"Showdown," we recorded "Psycho City
Blocks," "Stone Garden" and like all those demos.
I went and bought a 4-track at a pawnshop and started recording
songs in my living room and my apartment. By that time my
brother was on tour with Cypress doing the Smokin' Grooves and
the South America tour because Sen Dog wasn't touring with them
at that time so my brother went and did backup for B and B
started hearing the demos and got us a deal at Ruff
House/Columbia and the rest is history.
thaFormula.com
- What happened to the stuff that you canned?
Sick
Jacken Of Sick Symphonies/ Psycho Realm - It's probably on a
cassette in a shoebox somewhere in my garage. There is a couple
of songs that me and Duke recorded before. There was a song
called "Trippin'" and just a lot of demos that we have
that just never came out. It was just pretty much us
experimenting and trying to find our own sound because like I
said we don't wanna be compared to nobody. We worked real hard
to establish our own little section in this whole Hip-Hop game.
thaFormula.com
- Are those demos something you plan on putting out sometime?
Sick
Jacken Of Sick Symphonies/ Psycho Realm - Nah, those are just
sketches. You don't really wanna put out sketches, you wanna put
out masterpieces.
thaFormula.com
- How did you come up with the whole "Stone Garden"
concept and did you ever think that it would become an L.A.
underground classic?
Sick
Jacken Of Sick Symphonies/ Psycho Realm - Nah, me and my brother
were just in my living room and I was giving my brother
90-minute tapes full of beats. I would give him dozens and
dozens of beats and he would just pick whichever ones he wanted
and we would roll from there. Duke was mainly the concept guy
and I was mainly more the producer. He would write his version
of the story for the concept and I would write my side. But to
think and look ahead and say "oh this is gonna be an
underground classic or hit," nah. You just want to create
and when something feels right it feels right.
thaFormula.com
- So when you guys dropped the first Psycho album, were you
happy with the results of how it all turned out?
Sick
Jacken Of Sick Symphonies/ Psycho Realm - Yeah, we got no
complaints brother. I mean, when we signed to Ruffhouse, Joe the
Butcher over there you know he took good care of us. He put up a
lot of his own money and believed in the project. He was behind
the first Cypress record and all that. I mean he knew that it
was an underground record but at that time a lot of the groups
that were on Ruff House and Columbia already had radio singles.
So that's when the transformation from street teams to payola
and disc jockeys playing your song on the radio all day took
place and a lot of these groups started saying "lets do an
album but we are gonna have two singles" and that's the era
where you had a dope album and then you had 2 corny songs that
you had to skip. Those are the 2 singles that the label would
request. So what we did is we recorded the album first and then
went for the deal. So when they told us "oh we need
singles," we were like "the album is done, we ain't
going back and changing nothing cause its done." So they
took it. Joe the Butcher didn't get any support from Columbia or
Sony so the record did what it did. We thought if it got a
street push it could have done a lot more, but you know we got
worldwide promotion out of it and it was a good launch pad for
us to start this independent journey that we took for the last
ten years. We already had that worldwide exposure so it made it
a lot easier for us.
thaFormula.com
- Now later on you guys would do a "Stone Garden"
remix produced by Pete Rock. How did that connection happen with
Pete?
Sick
Jacken Of Sick Symphonies/ Psycho Realm - The label wanted to do
a remix. We really weren't into remixes but they were like
"who would you guys wanna do one with?" We were like
well we don't want anyone to really remix our music. Let's just
do a new track or a B-Side. They said "nah, we wanna do a
remix." So we named a couple of producers. The Rza was
actually interested in doing a remix for "Love" from
the Sickside and we wanted to roll with it but he was busy at
the time doing something and we would have had to wait. So
somebody at the label you know you got a lot of interns and a
lot of dudes that run certain departments, they think they got
all the answers. I guess they were a real big Pete Rock fan and
they went and solicited him. They paid him a gang of money for a
remix when we could have got a dope underground producer. Not to
say nothing bad against Pete rock because I like a lot of his
music. But that was more of the label then anything and we
didn't really have nothing to do with getting Pete Rock to remix
our joint.
thaFormula.com
- So when it did happen Jack, what did you think of it?
Sick
Jacken Of Sick Symphonies/ Psycho Realm - It was dope. I just
think Pete Rock's sound doesn't really fit. Our whole sound and
image is a little darker and Pete Rock is a little more jazzy.
thaFormula.com
- Now I know at that time you guys never wanted any guest
appearances on your music, what was the main reason for that?
Sick
Jacken Of Sick Symphonies/ Psycho Realm - Just because an album
is your ideas, its your creativity and I think at that time a
lot of albums were becoming compilations 'cause every song
featured somebody and we just felt that if you can't do a record
on your own, what's the point? You might as well do a
compilation. So that's the reason why B-real did the whole first
album with us because he wanted to jump on a couple of tracks
and we told him we didn't want no features and he was like
"well I'm joining the group then." So that first
album, he was a group member. After we left Ruffhouse, it was
kind of hard because he was still under contract with them. He
had a lot of work with the Cypress thing so he had to focus on
that. So that's why when we went independent it came back to
just me and Duke.
thaFormula.com
- Now I know Bobo of Cypress was also a member of the group, how
did he end up getting down with the group?
Sick
Jacken Of Sick Symphonies/ Psycho Realm - Bobo would come around
the studio sessions and play percussion and do all that. He was
just there for the whole creative process of the first record.
We took him on tour and we did everything with Bobo. Bobo is my
brother. That dude and B-Real just came and added their magic to
the record. Bobo is a lifetime member.
thaFormula.com
- So after all this went down with the label, what happened from
there with Sony?
Sick
Jacken Of Sick Symphonies/ Psycho Realm - Well they didn't know
what to do with a group like us. We were Mexican, we were from
L.A. and we were doing hardcore Hip-Hop. So they were like,
"where is the single at first of all and second of all how
are we supposed to market these dudes? Are we supposed to throw
them on channel 34 (Univision) or what are we supposed to
do?" So there wasn't really any communication. We were new
bodies so nobody really wanted to hear what me and Duke had to
say. We felt that we just needed to be marketed with street
teams on the street. Our fan base is on the street, go hit the
streets. Don't do commercials on the radio, don't do ads on MTV.
Do bus benches, do snipes and promote us on the street cause
that's where our fan base is at. After that I think our record
came out in November of '97 and we were off of the label in the
summer of '98. It was that easy. We sent them a fax saying
"please release us from the contract" and they signed
off and faxed it right back and we were independent from there
on.
thaFormula.com
- As far as tour wise during that first album, did you guys get
love no matter where in the country you went?
Sick
Jacken Of Sick Symphonies/ Psycho Realm - Everywhere we went. It
was just mad energy on stage and it just always got shot back by
the crowd so it was always good man.
thaFormula.com
- So when you decided to take it independent, how hard was it
and did you guys know at the time what you were doing?
Sick
Jacken Of Sick Symphonies/ Psycho Realm - Well right after we
left the label, we pretty much just went into a local studio
that was nothing fancy or major and we would just go to the
studio. At that time Duke used to stay in my guest house so we
would just be creating man and from there on we just went into
the studio, recorded a gang of songs and just planned to put out
a record on our own and experience that independent market. But
before we put "War Story Book 1" out, my brother got
shot. He didn't really get to do that whole thing with me, but
he got shot and I kind of went through what I went through for a
good 3 years. So "Book 1" we put it out and didn't
really promote it, didn't really push it and somehow someway it
just filtered out and it got out. I think we put that out in
2000 or 2001 and finally in 2003, Duke told me to snap out of it
and we put out "Book 2" and then from then on with the
help of Street Platoon we've just been touring and doing a lot
of shows and just pushing records man. It was just pretty much
realizing that the following was there and that we had a chance.
Just pushing it through tours and shows, independent
distributors, our own little marketing on-line or street
campaigns or whatever we could do.
thaFormula.com
- Did your brother getting shot affect you to the point where
you wanted to give up the music?
Sick
Jacken Of Sick Symphonies/ Psycho Realm - It affected me to the
point where I wasn't really caring about anything. I was in my
dark years. I was just lost in the bottle so I wasn't really
doing too much. I put these records out and did a couple of
shows here and there but I wasn't really doing too much.
thaFormula.com
- I remember when your brother got shot man and that era in
particular. Would you consider that era to be probably one of
the most violent times in L.A.?
Sick
Jacken Of Sick Symphonies/ Psycho Realm - The 90's definitely,
the early 90's more so than the late, but things didn't really
start calming down until after 2000. My brother just caught it
at the tail end of that era.
thaFormula.com
- That particular Tommy Burgers on Hollywood Blvd. was very
dangerous for years, what do you think brought a lot of the
violence there and surrounding areas in L.A. to a halt
eventually?
Sick
Jacken Of Sick Symphonies/ Psycho Realm - I don't know. You
figure, a lot of the homies that were putting in work are either
locked up or dead so it gets to a point where shit mellows out
and dies out and then you got a lot of new kids that are trying
to come up. I just think that this era ain't as hard as it was
back then .
thaFormula.com
- Watching how strong your brother stayed after the shooting and
after the injury would you say that and his word to you had a
huge impact on you getting back to the music full time after
that break you took?
Sick
Jacken Of Sick Symphonies/ Psycho Realm - Yeah, that's exactly
what happened. It was him telling me that was pretty much what
got me moving again. You know and then just me doing it again
you know we loved doing this shit, so him snapping me out of it
and me just doing this again you know the passion comes back and
you just move forward.
thaFormula.com
- So what exactly happened with the fan base with the release of
"Book 1" and "Book 2" independently, did it
just get bigger or did it kind of slow down a little bit and
then rebuild back up?
Sick
Jacken Of Sick Symphonies/ Psycho Realm - It gave us a stronger
fan base and it gave us our own fan base as opposed to a fan
base associated with Cypress. The first album still had B-Real
on it so there was a lot of cypress fans and all that, so "
Books 1 and 2" gave us our own fan base. People were liking
us for us and that's really what we wanted to establish. Psycho
Realm was Psycho Realm before B-Real joined the group. Not to
take anything away from that because B-real fit like a hand and
glove with the group. He blessed that first album. But really me
and Duke just appreciated the fact that we were recognized for
us and for doing what we do but B-Real was still featured on
"Book 1" on "Show of Force."
thaFormula.com
- How was it recording "Book 1" without the support of
a big label and also not having that big studio to record in?
Was it a big difference?
Sick
Jacken Of Sick Symphonies/ Psycho Realm - Yeah, there is a
difference. You know when your in a big studio you know its a
different environment, its a different vibe, plus it was our
first album, we were in the big studios, you got the big
speakers, you could bang it and do all that so you know the
creativity flows a little different. When we were in the smaller
studio, it was a different environment, but it was till creative
and good. You got a mic booth and all the tools you need to make
a record. Its just a different environment, different energy,
different vibe, but both of them are just as creative as you
wanna get.
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