Without further ado, here is the conclusion of the Sweatshop Union interview I did for Dope FM radio. I’m talking with Dusty Melodica, one of the seven members of this super group.

Chase: “So what inspires you when you are either beat making or writing your lyrics. Where do you draw inspiration from?”

Dusty: “Um, ya know sometimes from the sample itself ya know what I mean. I’ll be listening to a record that I’m feeling so much that I just try to capture a piece of it, I start making a beat and writing and things just happen. Other times I really be into a certain artist and whatever they’re doing will inspire me. It comes from a lot of places, It’s kind of a hard thing to pinpoint ya know? If there was like sure thing that I knew every time would inspire me. I’d be putting out a lot more music.”

Chase: “Yeah definitely. So I actually went to the record stores in Hamilton here and I couldn’t find Sweatshop Union here.”

Dusty: “Nah.”

Chase: “I bought your 2 CDs Natural Progression and United we Fall, I bought in a record store but I bought your latest release Water Street and Local 604 off of Itunes. So I don’t know if it’s hard to find your stuff or what the problem is. But I think Sweatshop Union should be a lot larger. You guys deserve props.

Dusty: “Thanks”

Chase: “So what’s the latest single?”

Dusty: “Oh My”

Chase: “Yeah, Oh My. There’s a great video for that. You can check that on YouTube as well.”

Dusty: “Yeah and we got a new video coming out for High Grade too, the next single.”

Chase: “Okay, so we’ll play Oh My and be back to wrap things up with Dusty from Sweatshop Union.”

Chase: “That was Oh My by Sweatshop Union off of their brand new album Water Street. If you don’t have that go pick that up. ‘Cause seriously right now that’s my pick for hip-hop album of the year. And we’re on the phone with Dusty from Sweatshop. Thanks for this interview man.

Dusty: “Yeah no worries, thanks for having me.”

Chase: “It’s definitely been awesome to have you on the air and talk with you about the group and about the lyrics and everything. You got another good lyric I wanted to highlight off of Labour Pains from your first album Local 604. You close off your lyric, ‘So I fight with my pen to enlighten a friend.’ That’s nice ’cause we talked about before how you guys are actually saying something and you’ve got lots of messages in all four of your albums, which is really nice to see. And I kind of gravitate towards that a bit. More like, I guess you call, the golden era in the early 90s when A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul and Jungle Brothers and all the groups were coming out and really saying something and still having a really good vibe to it. I kind of relate you guys to that in a way.”

Dusty: “Well that’s what we grew up listening to. That definitely heavily influences us. We’re all the same way. We wanna have some substance in the lyrics. We wanna walk away with something from the song, from the music. We don’t wanna listen to something that was just pointless rambling, right?”

Chase: “Right. So, just so we know, maybe you can run down the other member who weren’t able to be with us tonight.”

Dusty: “There’s Mr. Marmalade, Kyprios, of course, Metty The Dirt Merchant, Mos Eisley, Conscience, and DJ Itchy Rock.”

Chase: “I like the way you never know what to expect from song to song. Sometimes it will be a song with just Dirty Circus, or sometimes it will be Pigeon Hole or Innocent Bystanders, sometimes Kyprios will have a solo joint on the album. Sometimes Kyprios will be singing a hook. Does Dirty sing too, Metty the Dirt Merchant?

Dusty: “Yeah”

Chase: “Yeah cause sometime it’s hard to get all your voices straight. You guys mesh. I don’t even care who’s on the song, right? It’s like any Sweatshop Union song I’m like feeling it. So this had been a complete honour to have you on the air. I bought Water Street twice ’cause I noticed they had the instrumental album too. So hopefully, we’ll be talking over some of your beats here on Dope FM.

Chase: “One last question. What’s with the sheep for your logo?”

Dusty: “Basically the whole thought behind that is that people are easy to control in a large group. Ya know, same concept as herding sheep. That’s kind of the whole thing behind that, people are herded around like sheep. Ya know when the government or whoever it be that’s in power tells them what to do, they usually follow the bottom line and do it. So we put a message behind then music and hopefully we can herd people in another direction ya know.”

Chase: “That’s awesome. That’s really cool. I’ll guess we’ll play another track. I wanna hear Try.”

Dusty: “Yeah man do it up.”

Chase: “That song is awesome. That song’s off of United We Fall. Really, really great track. Thanks a lot Dusty for being on with us. This is 93.3 CFMU Dope Fm. Gamma Krush has been on the boards, Daddy J on the 1’s and 2’s and this is Chase March on the interview tip. Check out my blog or the podcast.

Chase: “Alright we’re closing off with Try. Make sure you stay tuned because we’re here all night long just as we do every Saturday. CFMU Dope FM. Peace.”

Thanks for reading! Check out the podcast of this interview.