Lucy’Lo Interview Wraps Up

The Lucy’Lo Interview Wraps Up today. If you’ve missed Part 1 or Part 2, you can go back to read them now. And please download this show for free or stream it with the player below so you can hear this in-depth discussion as well as some songs from his group 84.85 and some classic material by Lou Rawls.

Chase: “Gamma Krush brought me back into this interview thing because I hadn’t done that for about ten years. I recently took one of my old interviews that I did for television and put it up on a podcast. It was from superGARAGE from 1995. They’re an awesome band and the drummer has some videos up on YouTube so I messaged him on there and he was like, ‘Oh, that’s so weird to hear the old versions of our songs.’ 

They had a tape out at the time but they did their stuff live in the studio for the interview and they came out with a CD after that, so it’s a little bit different than how those songs ended up on the CD.”
Lucy’Lo: “The end product is always good. You end up having the end product because that’s what you decided on. But a lot of time, I find the best version is about three-quarters of the way through, you’ve worked out a lot of the kinks but some of the rawness is still there. You haven’t buffed it all out yet. There’s some of that bullsh*t that’s in it, that you end up taking out, ya know what I mean? I love that. A little bit of rawness, a couple little mistakes, the millisecond that you didn’t loop properly, I think, is always the best part.”
Chase: “You know what’s interesting? Avril Lavigne actually left some ‘Oops’ moments on her last CD. You can hear her laughing quietly in the background on some of the tracks. You can tell she was having so much fun on that record. There’s even some behind the scenes stuff where you see her blowing into a beer bottle into the mic to get an extra, weird, kind of sound.
It’s kind of cool when you can have fun with your music and kind of let it ride. And I know some of my more favourite songs, that no one is ever gonna hear because I didn’t make it in my rap career, but some of those I had a lot of fun doing when I was just fooling around.  And it’s like, ‘That actually turned out really well.’ I don’t know where that creativity comes from, where that inspiration comes from and you just get it down.”
Lucy’Lo: “It’s just flow, it’s nature. I’m not a fate dude. I’m not a destiny guy. I’m not a love will conquer all. I’m not a soul-mates person. But I do believe in natural creativity and sometimes what flows most naturally is best. That might go against a lot of my more pragmatic beliefs but when you can express yourself, sometimes that’s the best way to do it.”
Chsae: “I actually feel sorry for people who don’t have that outlet because I can write, you can produce, you can DJ. I think human beings need to be creative. I think that’s part of life. If you’re not creating, you’re pretty much dead. You have to be able to express yourself somehow.”
Lucy’Lo: “Not to take it too deep but in America right now, it has sort of ceased to be a production hub and has become a consumer culture and is slowly dying. Whereas before that, it was a production culture. When you’re manufacturing, you’re on the up and up. When you cease to do that, when you’re just consuming, for music heads, when you start to just appreciate and you’re no longer putting out, whether you’re interviewing, you’re blogging, you’re creating music, even on the side, you don’t have to be releaseing sh*t, but doing anything creative. When you’re not doing anything, you start to lose touch, ya know what I mean.
In Canada, it’s the same way. I don’t mean to come down on the States. For us as the North American culture, it’s the same thing. Through the late 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, producing. It started to become a consumer culture in the 80’s and to the 90’s and 2000’s, and you start to see us fall out a little bit.
It’s the same sort of thing with music, when you’re creating and participating in the creative sphere and putting something out there. You’re putting yourself out there in some way. You’re contributing and as soon as you start to just consumer, you start to die out a little.”
Chase: “You know, five years ago I was thinking that music was dead because of where it looked like it was going. People aren’t going to be paying for music anymore, it’s all free downloading, and I was thinking, ‘There’s gonna be no more new music.’ And I don’t feel that way anymore. If anything, it’s the exact opposite. Going back to your comment there, people are producing stuff.
Stuff seems to be coming out almost faster these days. Every day there is new music in my inbox. And every day there’s new stuff in my email that people are sending me and on blogs for me to listen to. It’s the opposite of what I was thinking five years ago. It’s really phenomenal that way.”
Lucy’Lo: “A lot of people have commented either way about technology. Bringing the consumer closer to the production. Now everyone has a laptop. It’s weird if someone has a desktop, almost, these days. Like this equipment that is actually really good is super-cheap. It’s cheap for people to produce. 25 years ago when Primo was starting to produce, what does DJ Premier need to produce?
He’s gotta find someone who works at a studio, get them to let him in, let him watch, let him apprentice, get them to teach him to do it, then he can work on it when he gets studio time, and that’s how he learns to produce because equipment was so expensive.”
Chase: “That’s how I kind of learned too. I bought time in three different studios.”
Lucy’Lo: “And so you needed to invest something to be able to do it. Now kids start to produce with equipment their parents buy them for Christmas. On one hand. there’s a lot of sh*t music out there, there’s a lot more sh*t coming through. There’s a gazillion more songs than ever before because it’s so easy. If you’re an indy-rock band, if you’re a one-man country band, you can create a song on a laptop.
There is a lot of cool shit out there too but it’s like a fishing net and for all the b*llshit, you’re finding more and more kids doing good things that you can foster. And like you said, it’s coming out faster. For everyone saying, ‘Oh the democratization of music, it sucks, there’s so much more bullsh*tout there.’ There’s also the side where a lot of new music is coming out faster and we can pick and choose the good things from it.”
Chase: “There are some years where I have thought, ‘That was a lackluster year for music’ and two years ago I felt that but last year was awesome and this year is already starting out pretty good. I’m already bumping some crazy stuff right now. This has been really cool. I like to have discussions about hip-hop and where’s it been. Thanks a lot.”
Lucy’Lo: “Thanks.”
Chase: “Make sure you tune into DOPEfm each and every week, where we bring you the best in underground hip-hop. Don’t forget to check chasemarch.com for the transcript. You can download our shows for free from DOPEfm.ca. Thanks for tuning in!”