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Q & A W/ sick Jacken Of sick symphonies & psycho realm: The legend of the mask Pt. 1
feedback: info@thaformula.com
April '07

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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