Here is the wrap up of the interview that Gamma Krush and I did with Windchill of Artists Over Industry and After.Words.
If you’ve missed any of this transcript, please go and read it from the beginning. There is a link to each new part at the end of each post as well so you can navigate through the whole interview quickly or you can just go download the podcast and listen to it for free. Either way, I hope you enjoy this as much as I did. I had a lot of fun doing this interview.
So here it is, the wrap up,
WINDCHILL: “I got the new album coming out in October man. Try and get me up there. I got my passport. I am ready. I would love to come up there, straight up.”
CHASE: “Nice. There’s a lot of good places to play in Southern Ontario. Some people like Classified have been on a tour and this guy Shad is making a lot of noise right now. So, yeah, hopefully you can get up here.”
WINDCHILL: “That would be sweet man. I’ll definitely keep you posted, for sure.”
CHASE: “It feels like I could talk to you all night. I mean, we got an overnight show but I know you gotta perform or you could stay on air all night. We could like spin a set and come back and talk to you again. This has been wicked.”
WINDCHILL: “Absolutely. I could always call you guys back on my way home and give you updates on the show.”
CHASE: “That would be cool.”
WINDCHILL: “I’m always down to call. I love talking to the real heads who always listen to the real stuff. And ‘real hip hop’ is used pretty loosely these days but you guys know what it truly is. And likewise to you both, it was a pleasure talking to you guys.”
CHASE: “I still have like 40 questions I want to ask you because we kept on coming up with new things. I definitely have more to talk with you about for sure. Anyway, we should close off with another song before we go anywhere.”
WINDCHILL: “Yeah, what you do you wanna roll, do you want to roll another After.Words joint or maybe go to the solo album, what re you thinking?”
CHASE: “I was thinking about paying homage but I wanted to talk to you about some of your lyrics there so if you got like 5 more minutes, we’ll drop the track, talk to you some more, and then we’ll let you go perform, do your thing, win some awards.”
WINDCHILL; “Absolutely bro, that sounds like a plan. So this is ‘Pay Homage’ produced by JJ Brown, the one and only JJ Brown who you hear with Louis Logic. So here’s my joint.”
CHASE: “Alright this is it. ‘Pay Homage’ by Windchill. This is Gamma Krush on the ones and twos, Chase March on the interview tip. Dope FM we’ll be back.”
CHASE: “Alright that was ‘Pay Homage.’ Nice, nice track. The beat on that is amazing. It’s cool to see that JJ Brown produced that. Louis Logic, I’ve been listening to them for a while. Nice stuff. So they’re from your area too right?”
WINDCHILL: “They’re actually from New York.”
CHASE: “Are they really?”
WINDCHILL: “I know they’re both not originally from New York but right now they’re residing in Brooklyn and have been for a while.”
CHASE: “Nice. I have to come clean with you here. When I first heard this song, it was a while back, I wrote you off. I was like, ‘Yo, I don’t need to hear someone saying someone else’s rhymes again. Rappers do this all the time. They call it paying homage and stealing someone else’s rhyme and I don’t want to hear this.’
And I ignored you for a while until Gamma started spinning ya. And then I listened to it a little bit more. Because really, I’m a hip hop historian and I’m getting really tired of kids coming up to me and quoting a song and telling me that Soldier Boy or C-Murder did it. And I’m like, ‘No man that was Rakim. Nah, man that was like… ‘cause they don’t know where it’s coming from. And I’m thinking we almost need some kind of footnote system so the kids these days know what homage is being paid ‘cause they don’t know.”
WINDCHILL: “Yeah, they definitely don’t.”
CHASE: “Because I wanted to talk to you about some of your influences in this interview but if we listen to that song, I’m sure we hear them. Like Onyx and 2Pac and Biggie and there’s like a million in there. So I think the more times you listen to it, the ore you can pick up. And it’s cool ‘cause I’m a fan of pretty much all the ones you mention in there too.”
WINDCHILL: “That’s what’s up. Definitely. I know what you’re saying and don’t get me wrong. I’ve actually got that response a few times. Because you’re right. For some reason in hip hop music they do feel that they have to pay homage. It’s almost a way of showing you’re down almost, ya know what I mean? Of course, it wasn’t that to me. A cool little story about that song. I guess just being an artist that every song should have a little bit of a backdrop. I used to collect tapes like crazy. And I had shoeboxes full of tapes, all the way back to Main Ingredient tapes, Supernatural tapes from way back.”
CHASE: “Nice.”
WINDCHILL: “And I’m not too old but I had all the old KRS-One stuff. I was young. I was like ten years old listening to Krs-One. But at any rate, I wanted to make a song called ‘Pay Homage’ because I wanted to pay homage to the people who truly changed my life.
Hip hop changed my life so much for the better that I truly had to pay homage to it. Hip hop didn’t get me some girls, it didn’t give me money, it didn’t give me a new car. It didn’t give me anything like that but it gave me peace of mind, which we all know, there’s no price tag on that. So I felt a need to say thank you to the things I found in my life that bring me peace. So that’s why I wrote the song.
And what I did was, I had all my old tapes but once CDs hit they took a back seat. So they’re all out back in this aluminum shed and I had them out there. And they gold moldy and most of them didn’t work. I’d put them in and try to play it and some of the tapes would snap and whatnot. So they were pretty much useless. But I still had them all. And what I did was, when I went to write this track, I brought in all my tapes. I’d have to say it was at least a couple hundred. And I just got my one, big, huge table I had in the kitchen. I place them all face down so all the song titles were facing up. And I just laid them all out, literally hundreds of tapes laying out and I don’t even know how I started writing it.
But I knew if I wanted to pay homage and that was my idea that I wanted to weave song titles and albums into bars but it’s not like totally biting any lines that they say. It’s kind of like making lines outta the song. And that’s what I did. I just sat there and constructed a verse and it sounded dope. So I was actually rhyming it. I was using song titles, album titles, ya know, with the Busta Rhymes thing I kind of like quoted the whole chorus, like everything. I was like, ‘Yo, I gotta do this.’
And then, the funny thing is I wrote that and it was like to this old beat and it was just some beat lying around. It wasn’t close to the beat I got from JJ. And when I played it for the boys, they were like, ‘That is the joint right there!’ and a few people were like, ‘I think you need a better beat.’ And I could take that. I’m good with the constructive criticism and I knew anyway that the beat wasn’t nothing to write home about. So I just started looking.
And I went to ScribbleJam right before I dropped my album. It would’ve been ’06. ScribbleJam, they used to hold it down in Cincinnati. Eminem got his start there. Ya know what I mean, it’s like a weekend long hip hop festival. The year I was there Brother Ali rocked and Louis and JJ had rocked, and the background with them is that we threw our own hip hop festival here in PA back in ’05 and we had Louis Logic and JJ as the headliners. We brought them in and that’s how we started a relationship together. And then in ’06 I went to ScribbleJam ‘cause I knew they were on the bill performing. Because we did get really cool with them when we did the show, it wasn’t just ‘Here’s your money, bounce.’ We talked and we got cool with everybody. And I went out to ScribbleJam and I was talking to them after the show. We must’ve sat there for an hour, chopping it up with them just like old friends. And I had mentioned to JJ very briefly that I was working on an album and I’d love to get a beat. And he was like sure, when you get home, hit me up. We’ll talk about it.
And the after I got home, I remembered the pay homage thing. I basically just had the accapella and my verse of ‘Pay Homage’ and I just went over JJ’s beats and listened, listened, listened. He gave me a beat CD with like 40 joints on ‘em, maybe 30 and just listened, listened, listened, and when that one hit, I was immediately making payments the next day. This is the one. It was one of those things where you just know. That was the beat for that song, no doubt.”
CHASE: “Nice. It works. I think I judged you too harshly on first listen because it does work and I’m a hip hop historian and I appreciate those influences, so I’m sorry about that man. But it’s definitely good I got Gamma Krush to school me on what’s good, ya know? ‘Cause I listen to him all the time.”
WINDCHILL; “For sure, no hard feelings man. I know what you’re saying man, I get it all the time. There’s a bunch of crap out there and if you don’t make sure you give it a listen, ya know, people fall for anything, you gotta make sure you give it a second listen just to make sure it’s legit man. But no hard feelings man, it’s all good.”
CHASE: “This has been amazing talking with you, simply amazing. I feel like we could talk all night. You’re a super intelligent guy, totally into hip hop, you make good songs and good albums, in good crews, but we know you’re at the venue right now. We’ve been taking up a lot of your time so we should get going but you should just let us know how people can get a hold of you so if people want to find you online, they can.”
WINDCHILL: “Yeah, and right back at ya bros. Thanks Gamma for all the calls and everything. Thanks Chase. It was a pleasure to meet you today. I had a blast talking with y’all man. I’ll definitely check out Dope FF. I check the podcasts now and again when I got the time. Please do that because these cats are preserving what real hip hop is all about, what real indy artists need. This is great for me. I’m a humble dude. And I can’t thank you enough like seriously, right back at you guys 100%, and let’s definitely do this again. And listeners out there I got the myspace if you want to check me out its myspace.com/windchillofaoi and I respond to everybody, I hit everybody back, all my info, albums, shows, tours, free downloads, everything is there. So please swing by and drop me a line. I would love to talk and meet with y’all for sure.”
GAMMA KRUSH: “No doubt. We’ll have that up at dopefm.mypodcast.com or either dopefm.podomatic.com. Either or, and like I said before to all our listeners, subscribe to both really. We’re not going to put each show on each podcast. So subscribe to both, see which one comes up first and tune in. But y’all already know that for real. Yeah, we can’t thank you enough B. Because here at Dope FM we listen to a lot of underground hip hop and we always look in to all the independent artists. So any of y’all out there just look up the myspaces and check out what’s out there from all over. Like the hottest rapper out right now and he may be living out in Antarctica, ya know what I’m saying.”
WINDCHILL: “Yeah man, you never know. And I commend you guys on putting people out there simply because you’re a fan and you like what they’re doing ‘cause a lot of the radio out there, ya know, it’s all paid for. Like foe a couple grand the DJ’ll be playing your stuff. I mean that’s cool too if that’s how these guys want to get around, throwing around thousands of dollars. Whatever. I ain’t here to hate on it. I don’t agree with it. That’s why I commend you guys. The reason you play it is because you like it. And a lot of DJs can’t say that. A lot of DJs get a playlist handed to them and they don’t like one song. Like Primo’s calling them freaking robots, ya know what I mean? Some DJs don’t understand that they have a powerful weapon and they’re sitting behind one of the most powerful media weapons in the whole world and here they are playing this bull to everybody and infecting the young kids minds, ya know what I mean? I don’t know. I just commend you guys a thousand times. And that’s what’s up seriously.”
CHASE: “That’s how we roll each and every day here at Dope FM. The coolest thing is that we got the podcast so we have free mix tapes for everybody basically. And we’ve got this interview series that we do. And another cool thing is that I will actually take four hours and type this all out and put a transcript of it up on my blog.”
WINDCHILL: “I gotta get running. I gotta get up in here. I think my DJ is here. So let me get in here and do my thing. And I will talk to you guys soon. Thanks again for chatting with me. I really appreciate it.”
CHASE: “Alright good luck tonight at the Central PA Music Awards. This has been Dope FM with Windchill of A.O.I. and After.Words, we’re outta here.”
GAMMA KRUSH: “cfmu.mcmaster.ca and as always we are never stale in Westdale. Keep it locked, yo!”
WINDCHILL: “Peace!”
Well that’s it’s it. I hope you enjoyed this interview as much as I did recording it. Make sure you go and download the podcast for free.