Interview: B Dolan Gets Sweaty

Photo by Chelsea Memmolo

What do you think rap does that spoken word doesn’t do? You’ve mostly moved past spoken word, right?

Spoken word is a funny thing because I wrote raps from the time I was 12 years old and I moved to New York City when I was 18 because all of my favorite rappers came from here [laughs]. And I didn’t know shit about the music industry. I just thought, “All my favorite rappers came from New York, so I’ll just go to New York.” So I came here and I just happened to go with a friend to a poetry reading and read some lyrics and people heard a rhyme pattern that sounded like rap, so someone suggested that I go to the Nuyorican’s Poets Cafe, which I did, and got on stage and it was kind of immediately successful. When I started performing, people started liking it and at the time, Def Jam was taping their Def Poetry Jam. And I was only 18 at the time. And I was like totally overwhelmed, making contacting with the music industry for the first time.

Through that, I came to the DIY approach and realized that I wasn’t going to work within that [industry] framework. So spoken word was like a weird little detour. And it just so happened that people came to know me as that because I released a spoken word album first. But I did learn a lot of tricks in the world of spoken word. It taught me certain things that I still utilize, like how to speak intimately and personally with a crowd. And some other little performance tricks that I still use now. But I think music is always gonna be a more popular format. Because there’s just more happening when it’s words and music. And if you’re not totally engaged with the words, you can still like the music, or the music can deliver the words to you in a more catchy, engaging way. I like spoken word and I’ve made spoken word that I’m really proud of and think is some good writing, but for me, music is gonna always be the primary mode for that reason. And because I love music. I think musically and I’m excited by making music. Occasionally ideas come in the form of a poem, but it seems kind of rare. There’s a poem on the new album that will be about the Old Dirty Bastard.

Oh, so you have an album in the works?

Probably next year. Definitely next year. We’ve been working on it for a year now already. And a lot of guys playing in the new live band are on it. Alias is working on it as well, mixing, and it’s coming together really well. I’m really excited about some of the songs and I don’t want to let it out of my hands until it’s as great as it can be. So I’m not setting any kind of date or timeline, but it’s getting there. I’m definitely excited for people to hear the stuff.

I’ve noticed that you tour more than you release music. For a lot of rap artists, especially independent artists, who have to kind of fight really hard for any attention, that’s kind of rare. Why are performances so important to you? I’m sure you’re making music in the meantime, but you’re not releasing it at the same rate.

Some dudes are just flooding the blogs constantly with music. And for me, I just don’t produce music that way. I would much rather work for 3 months on a song –

On one song?

Yeah – that I think is great, rather than release like C plus material just as an excuse to get blogs to publish my name. There’s a lot of this going on in hip-hop and a lot of quantity over quality. But I never really believed in that. I believe that the album takes however long it takes. But I understand why it happens. There’s a lot of pressure. Once you’ve had success in the music industry, now there’s a booking agent and a manager and a label and a tour manager and a driver and a merch guy that all want to go on tour and have an excuse to go out. And a new album is that excuse. And a lot of people succumb to the pressure of, “Well fuck it, we’ve gotta get back on the road, the deadline is coming” and they just put some piece of shit out there. Or it’s half-done.

I don’t have it in me to do that shit. Maybe it’s just because I’m old. Maybe it’s a new generational think that feels like music is just disposable and kind of immediate. But for me, I feel like if we’re pressing a CD, it better stand the test of time. It better be here. It’ll be in the bargain bin [laughs], but it’s an artifact of me and myself and everything. So I’m careful with that. In order to not rush those things, I end up touring a lot. And I’m lucky that I like touring a lot. I love traveling, I really like being on the road and I really like playing for other audiences and winning fans over. In fact, I would wager to say that the majority of my fanbase up to now – I’ve been lucky enough to have people like Sage Francis and Buck 65 and Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip, and now Circle Takes the Square and Atmosphere all bringing me out on the road. And the majority of my fanbase is people that came to see someone else and I went on first and they were like “Oh shit, this is cool!” That interaction, that method, has been my way of skirting the fact that I’m not skinnier and prettier and hipper.

I’ve never been like the flavor of the fucking moment. Pitchfork and Rolling Stone have never decided that I’m like the “it kid” for this year. And I don’t give a fuck about that. I learned from indie rap dudes before me that you don’t have to even do that. As long as you come back to the city with a new interesting show and you send people home with a great CD that they take home and they listen to over and over because you’ve given them some content to digest, they’ll come back next time. And with Strange Famous, we have people coming and introducing their kids they had from marriages that happened because they met at a Sage Francis concert from years ago. So we’ve never been the “it guys” of the year, but that shit comes and goes whereas we are more slow and steady and we have a more familial vibe with our fanbase. And real lasting support. And it’s all built on touring and shaking people’s hands and going to their city and just getting sweaty with them. I’m gonna do it as long as I can, man. Until my body gives out [laughs].

That’s respectable.

In your interview with the Providence Phoenix from 2 years ago, you described the Church of Love and Ruin as a way of seeing how successfully you produced an audience that appreciates anti-homophobia not just as a “message from another white guy” but as a necessary acceptance of performers who need anti-homophobia so they can perform. In other words, you wanted to see if your fans were really down for the cause. My question is how do you go about “producing” an audience? How is that different politically from “finding” an audience?

I think that’s something that happens to every band who has success whether you like it or not. It’s not even something you can stop from happening. The stuff you put out into the world attracts a certain kind or amount of people and at the end of the day, a lot of people, most people, at the end of that process find themselves with a fanbase that kind of in some way reflects who they are, more often than not. It’s not one hundred percent of the time, but in general, if you are really putting yourself into the music, it just makes sense that the people you connect with come out to your show are going to have some things in common with you. And I like to think that over time – Sage was putting out albums with lines like, “I attended candlelit vigils for Matthew Shepherd while you put out another ‘Fuck you, faggot’ record.”

Sage was saying that stuff years before I put out “Which Side Are You On,” so a foundation has been laid there. You might be a fan of hip-hop and you might be a fan of ours, but when you’re at our show, you’re in our living room and you’re gonna respect all our guests. We’re not gonna tolerate bullshit. We’re not gonna tolerate people treating each other like shit. It happens everywhere else in the world, but while we’re in this music venue and while I’m on stage mastering this ceremony, it’s not gonna fly. And the kids who can’t get down with that write us off and call us “art-fags” or whatever and forget about us, but the kids that are with that and think that’s how people should be toward each other stick around and they feel good that they can hear me say those things on stage and create a safe space for them.

The funny thing is, man, you’re not doing gay people a favor by letting them come to your show. You’re doing yourself a favor, because gay people are fucking great. LGBT of our fanbase are some of the most colorful, interesting, warm, welcoming people, that we get to meet. And if we were out there making music or saying shit on stage that made them feel like they didn’t belong where we are, we would be poorer for that, not them. They’re gonna go somewhere else and take their cool ideas and energies with them. And I think hip-hop in general and these tough guys haven’t figured that out. You’re on stage dissing women? So every guy has to be an aggressive, hyper-masculine male? And all music played has to sound like Mobb Deep? [laughs]And then these are the same guys who bitch about “hip-hop is dead.” Yeah, well that’s all on you. Because you’ve locked the fucking doors and no one new can come in.

Speaking of “Which Side Are You On, I was listening to it the other day and it reminded me of your recent Twitter comments on Eminem’s song “Rap God and it got me thinking about how we have this “ancestor cult” in rap where if you challenge elders, you just receive all this animosity. But you were willing to make a challenge. Why do you think it’s important to hold our elders accountable? What’s at stake?

For me personally, I try to be very careful and responsible in terms of that. I do understand that I’m a white artist in a black art form and so there is a certain degree of privilege and of separation between my reality as working class New England and the reality of broke New York City residents in the 80s and the 90s. I’m not trying to judge anybody or speak on anyone’s situation other than my own to a certain extent. But, at the same time, we do have certain things in common in that we are heterosexual males and I believe that men have to keep men in check, white people have to keep white people in check. Like it’s not a woman’s job to tell your boy when he’s being an asshole. It’s your job to tell him. So with Eminem, when I hear that dude, just in 2013, not only does he sound dated as hell –

With the Clinton references?

– the Clinton references and the faggot thing. Who the hell is going out of their way to say “faggot” in 2013? And in one way it’s really great because ten years ago when he put out that album, most of America was with it, but now it sounds ugly in a way that it didn’t then because most of America has grown up a little bit. That dude just apparently hasn’t, which is a shame.