ThaFormula.com - How do you feel about the lack of hardcore Hip-Hop nowadays?

Immortal Technique - I think that's based upon what executives feel that they can market. Nowadays the formula for music is based on like happy-slappy type Hip-Hop. There is nothing that is real deep. I mean if people wanna call it emotional it's real serious. It's more like people are talking about the hood. Its like white people get emotional when we start talking about 9/11. Black people get emotional when we start talking about slavery. You go to Miami and start talking about Castro, your gonna find a whole lot of emotional Cuban people. Whether people call it being emotional or serious or crazy, there are different types of markets out there for music. With Hip-Hop it's no different. There's all types of Hip-Hop music but the corporations job is not to take risks. Their job is to recycle marketing schemes. Their job is to make a package that people will buy without even thinking so if you can have like a 10 year old reciting your hook over and over that's the bottom line. They don't wanna teach people nothing, they don't wanna break no standards. If they can make the artist wear a dress and go triple platinum there would be a lot of faggot ass rappers walking around looking like women.

ThaFormula.com - What do you feel Hip-Hop is all about now?

Immortal Technique - Hip-Hop is all about marketing right now, its not really about no skills and that's my biggest issue with Hip-Hop right now. It's not whatever niggaz people think is wack 'cause I mean there is always gonna be people that people think are hot that other people think are wack. People think Illmatic is a classic but I know niggaz that don't like that album saying its good but its not what its cracked up to be.

ThaFormula.com - Why do you feel most artist don't call out wack rappers even though they know it and speak off the record that they're wack?

Immortal Technique - Well if I have an issue with somebody…uh it depends. If it's something that I think is comical, I'll talk about it on a record, but if its something serious then why would I beef about it on a record in the first place. To me beefing on a record is a stupid idea. Like if somebody said my name on a record and was like "fuck this so and so," I wouldn't think about going into the studio. I'd be thinking about finding out where you live. That's just what it is. Also I would have to think about why this person is coming at me. Did I do something to him? Did I fuck his girl? Did I ruin his life somehow? Like maybe it's somebody, an old bitter rapper whose time came and went and they looking for some fresh start and some way to get they name back or maybe its a new rapper who doesn't know shit. Me personally I'm a grown man and I don't have time to play little games like that with people. The way I discuss and deal with things I don't like is I work consciously towards doing what I can do to make it better.

ThaFormula.com - When did you start rhymin' seriously?

Immortal Technique - First when I was young I just played around with it. When I got to be like 15 or 16 I really started writing rhymes and then when I got out of prison in like '9 that's when I decided to say "Fuck this," and started battling cats. So I won all these battles in New York and after I won all those battles I said "this is a waste of time and this ain't getting me nowhere." I learned a lot but I decided to make music after that.

ThaFormula.com - Did you get your life straight before or after you went to prison?

Immortal Technique - Nah it wasn't like I was one of these niggaz that just went to jail and came out and was like "oh yeah now I'm gonna get my life together." I had my life together before that. The prison actually kind of fucked up my life because I was doing good on my own. I had got myself a job, I was hustling, I was going to school, I was doing my best to get better grades and then all of a sudden I got hit with time and I was like…man it really threw me off of my game. You're essentially a slave and you belong to the government. So I didn't take life seriously and I didn't appreciate it as much as I did when I came out. The little things like when niggaz get up and go to the bathroom at night. It was just emptiness for me. When I came back I was like "yo I got to get serious, I gotta get on my grind and support my family to make up for all the time that I was away."

ThaFormula.com - How hard was it trying to get a job when you got out man?

Immortal Technique - It took me months going different places and getting the door slammed in my face. I ended up getting a job on my own by lying to people and telling them I had no rap sheet. So I got a job answering emails for some web company or some shit so it was cool. It paid pretty good so after I got that it was just work, go to school, and I wrote rhymes on the side and started doing the battles.

ThaFormula.com - The struggle you went though is the struggle a lot of brothers and sisters go through on a day to today basis that a lot of people do not understand…

Immortal Technique - I'll give you a clear and present example. There's been times when people who involve themselves in a cause finally start to understand. It's not that they finally start but they are amazed. Like I know people from every spectrum of this Hip-Hop. I was just hanging out with my man Sean Price and the Lo-Lifes the other night at Club Envy. It was Harlem, Brownsville and Bed- Stuy in the house and it was all love in there 'cause everybody knew each other. Then on the other side of it one time these cats from Minneapolis called Atmosphere, they invited me out to do a anti-war show. They invited me and this cat called Boots from The Coup, and they invited us out there and it was ill 'cause after the show one of the guys that owns the club called up some cat from that label they have, Rhymesayers, and he was like "yo what the fuck are you doing? You're gonna have these fucking terrorists in my club? You wanna bring whoever you wanna bring but don't bring fucking terrorists and communists to my fucking club." Really what he was probably trying to say was "stop bringing niggaz and spicks to my club and that doesn't reflect badly on Atmosphere or Rhymesayers." That reflects badly on the club owner and to me that doesn't reflect the people 'cause the people showed me mad love when I was there and they bought every fucking CD I had. From one end of it to the other, I think its just the question of them understanding where we're coming from.

ThaFormula.com - So you got your life back in order and your were writing, working and going to school…what did you do next?

Immortal Technique - Well I went to school majoring in Political Science. I was really, really trying to stay out of trouble 'cause I was on parole, I had to get piss tested all the time. I would just do my thing and then I started doing the battles and it was when I won enough of these things I realized that they don't do nothing for you, then I started with the music, song writing and an album. 'Cause at first I had the idea that everybody else had. I was like "yo I'ma got get signed, somebody will see me, offer me some dough and then I could do my project." I read a book called "All You Need to Know About the Music Business," and it outlined a lot of interesting things that I had never known. I recommend that book to anybody that's out there trying to start. I started hearing stories from other people about what they was involved with in terms of their label and I came to terms with some things that were pro-label and con-label. Like people complained about their label like "oh yeah they taking 18 cents a record, but obviously so 'cause there putting up all the money in the first place." You do nothing but spit on a track. That doesn't mean shit to be honest. I go into the studio and I spit my verse over a track. That's probably the easiest part of making music 'cause after that I gotta mix it down which takes ten times the time to record it, then I need to have it mastered, pressed up, marketed, promoted, and distributed. You know all those things take an incredible amount of energy, time and perseverance to get done. I mean there are always fuck-ups, there is always people that's late. You gotta crack the whip on your own workers as well as muthafuckas that's out there doing their thing. I'll be honest with you though, I'm not a slave driver. I don't try to jerk niggaz. At my label anytime I make money everybody that rolls with me gets paid 'cause I know niggaz got kids to feed. I ain't trying to leave nobody behind that was down with me since day one.

ThaFormula.com - So what did you do from there?

Immortal Technique - I had this thing called "Revolutionary Vol .1." It was a whole bunch of songs that I wrote while I was locked up in jail. At one of the battles I met up with somebody, a cat that I knew in Harlem on Lennox Ave. He was a DJ and he told me his man had beats so I took all the songs that I wrote in jail, I went over to their house and I just heard what they had and I was like cool. So we all started working on a project together to make this happen. So it took us a little while and we banged it out. I took all my jail songs and wrote 2 new ones and then eventually put that shit out. After that people started talking. I won the Rocksteady battle and then I started selling "Volume 1" and it sold real well the first couple of weeks. By then I had no label and it was interesting 'cause right after that 9/11 happened and nothing was moving for like 2 or 3 months. Nobody cared about Hip-Hop, nobody cared about nothing. People just wanted to go to war, people were confused, people were scared, people just crawled in a shell and became ignorant and accepted whatever the government told them. The only time I ever had people complain about that music were probably some rich little nerds on the Internet who don't like anything that uplifts Black and Latino people. They automatically think me talking about our struggle is racist which is stupid 'cause I've always believed that racism is not the issue here in America and that it's really "classism," and that racism is just hiding that. It does a very good job of doing it and believe me, racism is a very real thing.

ThaFormula.com - You seem to have fans of all races...

Immortal Technique - My fan base is so diverse, and it's spread out. Like I got a lot of Latino people obviously because that's primarily what I am and you know my grandfather is Back. His family was originally from the West Indies so I feel compelled to speak about that, and I think that's very important for me to come to terms with the pride in my African heritage that's there on my grandfathers side because I think a lot of Latinos have been raised in a culture of racism where we're defeating ourselves. Where us (both races) together would be probably the most powerful group on the East and the West Coasts.

ThaFormula.com - So nothing was movin' after Sept 11th...what then?

Immortal Technique - I went to the Source 'cause my man hollered at the Music Editor and told him "yo you should hear this kid, he's nice." So rather than send my tape in I walked in there and met the dude. I played him the song called "Dance With the Devil" on "Volume 1." He really liked it and then I brought this VHS tape with me that people had tried to pay me lots of money for but I refused to give it to anybody. It's a compiled tape of most of the battles that I won. It has a whole slew of rappers that just get demolished and destroyed. He called everybody from The Source office in and he sat down and watched this tape and what ended up happening was that everybody just erupted in laughter every time I destroyed a nigga. So they were like "aight cool we could probably put you on the list to get Unsigned Hype." So I just spit a verse for this dude off the dome and started rhyming about everything in the room and then I just kicked like a regular written on some real hardcore shit. The dude was like "aight you don't have to convince me no more, I believe that you definitely gonna be one of the people that works hard." It was ill because when I was in his office everybody kept coming in and I would know certain people. They were like "that's Technique," or "yeah I seen you at this show" or "do this and that," and he was like "damn you're really involved in this underground shit." I was like "well what I'ma do yo? I gotta hustle, I gotta sell my CD's at the shows that's where I'm making money. I go to the show, and I'll rock it." You know I wasn't always getting paid for shows back in the day. It was like a open mic, I would only get like 5 or 10 minutes do 2 songs, murder it and then wait outside and get my aggressive marketing scheme on like "yo nigga this is some real shit."

ThaFormula.com - So where did you go from there?

Immortal Technique - Well, then I left school to focus my mind completely on this. Then I started building a studio with one of my peoples, this cat Southpaw, and we built a studio and we just started recording "Volume 2."

ThaFormula.com - So when did the hook up with Uncle Howie come about?

Immortal Technique - It actually happened through DJ Eclipse. Eclipse hollered at me like "yo what's up?" 'cause I was having some problems with trying to get distribution for "Volume 2." Originally I was supposed to have it through a certain distributor and they got shook cause of the political content of it. They were scared because I had Mumia on the record, they were scared because I had a song about the war 'cause I was talking about the racism that exists in the Latino community. They were scared 'cause I was talking about 9/11. They were just scared, pussy, and that's the bottom line. After that I went everywhere like "yo what's up?" and some people were like "yeah, yeah, alright that sounds cool I'll see what I can do for you," but at the same time they wasn't doing shit for me so it dawned on me to say fuck this, I gotta do this myself. So even though I put the record out through the label I started, "Viper," I was finding my distribution and I found a way through Caroline that hadn't happened yet and I was still looking for a place to get vinyl or some shit. I came at Fat Beats and they were a little iffy, those dudes are cool, like the people that work at the store, but I have no relationship with the people who work at the main office.

ThaFormula.com - I would think being Fat Beats they would have picked it up in a minute?

Immortal Technique - Yeah but they didn't 'cause I guess they have a lack of vision which they been recently cured of. I came to terms with making peace with them, but I'm an honest dude…at first I really was not feeling them at all. I was like "fuck them niggaz, they ain't shit," but at the end of the day I was like "I guess they didn't believe it." But I'm not trying to shit on them 'cause they are doing a good job now but I mean they get a million submissions and sometimes their picks are on and sometimes, sometimes their picks are off. When I started selling so many units they were like "alright well damn you really do have a fan base," and I was like "well you could have just asked me that and we could have saved ourselves a whole lot of problems," but its good that it worked out this way cause I got to work with Uncle Howie and everybody involved over there.

ThaFormula.com - So you said Eclipse approached you?

Immortal Technique - Well he called me, actually and he was like "yo I know Fat Beats has been bullshitting but we'd be interested in putting out the record," and I was like "word?" Originally like if I dealt with Fat Beats I was gonna get like a 90 percent cut cause you know they take their little distribution fee and I get what I get. Eclipse said we we'll get a little bit more of a cut because we will pay for all the pressing and all the stuff and to be honest vinyl is a promotional tool so I really didn't feel like busting my ass wasting dough. So I was like "yo if y'all ready to hook it up and take a little bit more I could understand and that's fine." Then right after we made the deal for that, I got the Hip-Hop Quotable in The Source and I was like "you know what, fuck that! I'ma put that song on the vinyl even though Fat Beats didn't know if they would take that because I'm rolling with Uncle Howie and y'all muthafuckas will take anything I want you to take," and that's when I was still mad at them. Nowadays I'm cool, they cool. They are doing their job. I feel like Uncle Howie is doing a spectacular job. I have no complaints about them ever. I just think that if Fat Beats had come to me a little sooner on they own or whatever, we would have done everything, but then I wouldn't have all the hook ups that I do through Uncle Howie, so even though like they take a little bit more of a percentage its cool because they are doing a lot more work for me.

ThaFormula.com - So what's your plan now.? Do you plan on just doing singles with them or just singles though Uncle Howie?

Immortal Technique - I'm not sure yet. We will probably do a project after the next single. But whether that's another single, EP or album I really don't know yet. As far as the "Revolutionary" album we gave Caroline 5000 of them in the end of November so I haven't even worked this record really. It's just been floating out because of all the shit that I've done for it. So we're gonna work it for like 3 or 4 months probably real hard and by that time it will be April and it will be time to release the EP and then we will release "Revolutionary Vol. 3 in 2005."

ThaFormula.com - So are you still trying to get on a major or are you through with that?

Immortal Technique - For right now I'm not concerned with that. Not that I'm through with it but I'm not concerned with it. I came to the point where I was like "you know what, fuck y'all, I refuse to conform."

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