We’ve got a special event for you! Tomorrow night Blue in Green hosts their 5th Anniversary Party at the Work in Progress gallery down on Vandam.

Roy Ayers is headlining, talk about classy!

Q-Tip and Lord Finesse will be on the 1s and 2s

and Black Thought will on his VIP guest thing

…and its FREE

Join RESPECT. Mag for what is bound to be a refined night of debauchery!

The post Event: Blue in Green appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

All photography by Loni Schick.

Roy Ayers is one of the most sampled artists in Hip-Hop history, and has worked with the likes of Pete Rock, Erykah Badu, among other hip-hop artists. RESPECT.’s @petermarrack had the opportunity to sit down with Roy during his recent stint in Toronto.

Read the complete interview after the jump.

I heard you had a tough time at the border, Mr. Ayers.

At the border?

Yeah, coming into Canada.

Oh, you mean last time I was here?

Okay.

The border agent last time- I had my shades on, and he said, “Take off your glasses, makes me think you’re hiding something.” And I said, “Are you kidding?” I took them off, and I said, “You can see I’ve been drinking.” I’m just kidding with him. No, I didn’t have any problems at the border. They let me go through, no problem. It’s cool, you know, customs at the airport. Matter-of-fact I came in here at an airport called- it’s downtown.

Oh, Toronto Island.

Yeah, they didn’t even have any security there.

They must have gone to one of your shows.

They knew who I was, knew I was Roy Ayers.

I’m here for a hip-hop magazine.

What’s it called?

RESPECT. Magazine in New York City.

Oh, yeah, RESPECT., I’ve heard of that. I’ve seen a couple copies.

An artist named Tyler, the Creator was having an interview with a Canadian journalist called Nardwuar and he gave him one of your records-

Nardwuar? Oh, that’s nice.

He was interviewing this guy Tyler, the Creator, I wondered if you had heard of him.

I think I have heard of him.

He’s a fan of yours.

I haven’t worked with him, but I’ve been working with a lot of new people. There’s a lot of new people on the scene. I’m having a good time.

Whenever I see the movie Jackie Brown now, I think of you. I heard a story that you didn’t even know Tarantino was going to use some of your music.

Oh no, but I knew when they sent me a cheque. *laughs* Some of the music from Coffy, yeah.

Have you read any Elmore Leonard novels, because Jackie Brown is adapted from one of the books?

No, I haven’t.

The vibe of your music reminds me of his writing.

Oh, thank you, thank you. I consider that to be a compliment, thank you.

You released some music on Ichiban Records.

Yeah, that was a long time ago. Ichiban Records, the guy who owned the label, his name was- uh, now what’s his name…

It was a hip-hop label originally.

His name was John, John what’s his name, John, but he used to work for a magazine called Blues and Soul. He was also a promoter of a lot of shows in New York and he had that label, Ichiban, which is a Japanese name. It was good. John, what’s his last name? Darn, he was an alright guy.

Clarence Carter was on the label there with you as well.

Yeah, I remember Clarence Carter, yeah.

Some hip-hop historians consider his record, “Making Love (At The Dark End Of The Street)” to be the first example of rap.

Yeah, Clarence goes way back.

Did you ever work with him?

I played two shows with him and that’s all. I never worked with him, but I played shows with him. I have had the pleasure to work with Pete Rock. That was nice. He’s a rapper and a DJ, you know.

When someone like Pete Rock is making music, sampling, is it a completely different instinct than what you feel on the inside when you’re making music, at the conception stage?

I think it’s all about one’s appreciation for music. Each of us are doing something very similar, entertaining for the people. People like to dance, people like to groove. They do that to my music. I see people dancing. I see people dancing to hip-hop music. I was on stage with Pete Rock and he played “Let’s Stay Together” by Al Green. And I thought to myself, “I’m on the stage with Pete Rock singing with Al Green.” It was very nice. It’s nice to see the people’s reactions.

And “Everybody Loves the Sunshine” is like the most sampled hip-hop record, but I think you may have influenced hip-hop fashion as well. You have some nice hats.

Oh, yeah, thank you. I try to be as hip as possible.

Do you borrow anything from hip-hop fashion, do they borrow from you, or is it give and take?

Everything is related, hip-hop, jazz musicians, we all have a good time. Out of all this stuff, it’s all fun, man. I’m an old-timer but I have a young heart. I’m 71 years old and I keep doing it. This is wonderful. I’m enjoying it, man. I’m glad to be participating in hip-hop where they’re taking my music and sampling it. It makes me feel really good.

Which artists are you listening to right now?

I listen to everybody. I like to listen to Erykah Badu. I like her.

Do you know her husband, or her boyfriend, Jay Electronica? He’s a hip-hop artist.

I haven’t really heard too much of him.

He went to Africa to record his debut album.

With African musicians?

Yeah, maybe.

Oh yeah, that’s nice. What’s the release on that?

[interview interrupted by a departing fan, and her husband]

They got to get you on Twitter.

I’m on Twitter. But I’m @TheRealRoyAyers because somebody took my name.

That must be interesting.

@TheRealRoyAyers if you ever look for me.

I saw you, yeah. It’s new.

Yeah, I haven’t really used it, but I’m on Twitter.

Positivity plays such a large role in your music. When you’re young, staying positive isn’t as easy. You have an off day and it’s hard to turn it around. Was there a moment when that clicked for you?

I guess I’ve been fortunate because I have met a lot of people who are positive, and not negative, and those who are negative, they seem to understand when I say things to them positive, it seems to turn people around, make them think of the positive aspects of life. I’m very happy because I’ve met a lot of people who have been very positive. I spent a lot of time with Fela Kuti in Nigeria. I spent a lot of time with James Baldwin. He was a black writer. He was one of our greatest writers. I spent a little bit of time with Malcolm X. It was really just a pleasure to meet him. That’s just a few people and there were other people too.

So you’re saying it’s the people you surround yourself with.

Yeah, that’s what it is. If they have a positive nature about them, they’re going to say something positive.

Do your children, or grandchildren, make music?

No, no they don’t. I have two sons and one daughter, and none of them play music or sing music. But they’re in the business. My daughter’s in the music business, she works for me. She works with me and helps me booking. My one son used to work for Warner Bros. He’s a record man. He lives in Australia now, and my other son is the manager of a grocery store down in North Carolina.

You talk about music being a release. Should all passions be a release?

They have their own release, yeah.

You agree?

That’s very true. *laughs*

How have you stayed so strong over the years?

Don’t tell anyone, but I eat Wheaties, breakfast of champions. Wheaties with some bananas.

The post Exclusive Interview: Roy Ayers @ Toronto appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

All photography by Loni Schick.

Bad Bad Not Good are three jazz-hop (jazz meets hip-hop) musicians from Toronto, Canada, who you may know from their publicized collabs with OFWGKTA mainstay, Tyler, the Creator. The dudes from BBNG play a nasty versions of “She,” “Fish” and even Waka Flocka Flame’s “Hard in da Paint”, all performed with the improvisation expertise of a jazz veteran like Roy Ayers, who they recently opened for in Toronto. I know, sounds pretty damn cool, right, three college students jamming together for an unrehearsed encore session before a packed crowd at the Nujazz Fest– But wait, didn’t I mention the dudes from BBNG were still in school? They attend Humber College in Toronto, and my gut feeling is that they’re about to drop onto academic probation, very soon. On a brighter note however, or rather, a “based” note, Billie Holiday spent some time on probation, and she wasn’t half bad.

Read the complete interview after the jump.

Can you introduce yourselves, because you’ve done the Exclaim! piece, but not everyone in New York City knows of you guys?

I’m Alex, I play drums.

I’m Matt, I play keys.

I’m Chester, I play bass.

You guys can go as wild as you want.

Alex: I like positivity, any items that are rare that you can find at antique stores.

You had some family here at the show? [opening for Roy Ayers at the MOD Club]

Alex: My dad and my uncle came.

Chester: My family’s in Ottawa.

What about school teachers?

Matt: We go to school. We don’t really like it.

Where?

Matt: At Humber, it’s a jazz program.

Yeah, I went to art school around here too, at York. Anything outside the box is not part of the curriculum.

Alex: Yeah, I guess you could say the same thing about us.

Matt: Yeah, we’re not very oriented with the school.

Chester: It’s cool because there are a lot of amazing teachers, but it’s not really-

Matt: I think we try to do everything the school wouldn’t do, and our teachers wouldn’t do, to make solid career choices.

Alex: Obviously, we respect the teachers at the school, they do their own thing, they’re great musicians, but if you’re going to study jazz- and the jazz they teach is from the 60’s and you learn old school stuff, which is all cool. But It’s not the right time and place for that music now. You can’t go out there and play what you learned at school.

Chester: It’s like a 1960’s jazz degree.

Matt: The thing about that jazz, it’s a good tool. Jazz at that point was based on the performer and really solid performances, proving your technique, but it’s kind of irrelevant now. No one really cares how well you can play your instrument. That’s dead.

What about hip-hop though? Obviously you have hip-hop influences, but I never heard of any producers you guys like.

Matt: Obviously J Dilla, Clams Casino.

I was going to mention Clams Casino.

Matt: Yeah, we’re totally into that stuff.

A$AP Rocky.

Alex: Yeah, the mixtape’s pretty sweet.

Chester: I guess we all came from a different musical background, but we all listen to hip-hop.

Matt: We’re all on top of new music.

Have you heard Blue Slide Park?

Alex: No, is that Mac Miller?

Matt: I haven’t heard that yet.

You should listen to “One Last Thing”, the Clams Casino beat, it’s unreal.

Alex: I’m not a big Mac Miller rap fan. I actually downloaded an entire instrumental album of Clams Casino beats, Lil B, Soulja Boy, yeah, it’s dope. It’s sick. He’s on top of his voice sampling and what he’s doing with his beats.

You guys like Ratatat?

Matt: Yeah, I like Ratatat, they’re pretty cool.

Alex: I think I heard “Seventeen Years” in grade 9. I was like, “Oh, this is cool, what is this?” Obviously I didn’t know much about music, but it’s just harmonies and guitar.

Matt: Yeah, exactly.

Alex: The production side of it is really cool.

You guys have the Odd Future reinterpretations and they do the remixes, then they worked with Cudi. Do you see that happening with guys down the road?

Alex: Yeah, basically where we are, we’re up on our game, we can play the instruments, like this guy [points to Matt] knows so much about production that no one even knows, mastering, like producers don’t even know about mastering.

So he can do it all.

Alex: Yeah, basically he’s like a book. He also knows web coding, computer programming, wait, wait, wait, wait, instrument list: banjo, guitar, I’ve seen him play upright bass, tenor sax, alto sax, and piano.

That’s what you need in hip-hop today, to be able to do it all.

Alex: Yeah, you need a basis. You’ve got to have a creative side, you have to know what sounds good, obviously if you make a beat that sounds good-

It helps to be able to do everything yourself though.

Matt: Oh, for sure.

Alex: You’ve got to be up on influences.

Do you have a long-term plan that way?

Alex: I think production and performance.

Matt: Yeah, that would be amazing.

Alex: Play beats, make beats, play beats live, or go perform-

Matt: To play with an emcee would be really awesome. We’ve never really done that yet.

Yeah, like the video you guys did with Tyler.

Alex: Yep, and that was cool because it was all one take. Tyler came over for two hours and we chilled, and he was like, “Okay, let’s do this.” We did an hour and a half of that, and that’s where that video came from.

Was it surreal when he walked in?

Chester: It was pretty crazy.

Alex: He came to my house which was pretty funny.

Chester: And we ordered Domino’s.

Alex: And he’s fucking hilarious.

Yeah, I saw the picture where he’s lying on the Domino’s box. Was it just Tyler who came over?

Alex: It was just him and his friend.

Matt: He said Hodgy and Domo were going to come, but they were working on some tracks at the hotel.

You should reinterpret some of those BlackenedWhite records.

Matt: Yeah, when they came in-

Alex: We were kind of geeking out, like, “He’s coming, he’s coming.”

Chester: Like Hodgy’s going to be here and shit.

Alex: So we started playing “F666 the Police” and he comes in, he’s like, “Yo, I know that. What is that?” We’re like, “That’s “F666 the Police,” and he’s like, “Oh shit.”

Don’t you think you guys would be great in hip-hop because your beats progress, even Clams Casino-

Matt: Well, it’s just loops, oh, well, Clams Casino doesn’t loop and that’s the biggest thing with hip-hop, half of those trap beats, you listen to a Lil B album and it’s the same four bars.

Alex: He’s produced some beats that aren’t like that, but there’s also stuff he puts more time into.

Matt: Of course. Also with a live band it’s so much easier to be interactive. You don’t even hear beats that are so interactive with the lyricism at all, it’s always just the same beat, and then the rapper could be spitting the craziest fucking polyrhythm and the beat’s going to stay the same, you know what I mean?

Hip-hop needs more interaction. There’s so much emailing in beats. If you had a session where you guys are just jamming-

Alex: Yeah, working with an artist and finding things they like, music they like, sounds they like. They’re all like, “I love 2000 music.” Or like 70’s shit. “Okay, cool, let’s do that.”

What about soundtracks, or scores? Are you guys influenced by them at all?

Alex: Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. There’s a lot of crazy shit, John Williams.

Matt: I used to be obsessed with Fellini. Those movies are so amazing for the soundtracks. We’ve never been like, “Yo, check out this sick soundtrack.” Remember that dude though, he was showing us the score, and it was fucking cool, I’ve never heard something so cool before, the progression was obscene.

Even The Weeknd is posting music from Blade Runner on his blog.

Alex: Yeah, yeah, well if you dig foreign films. People have been writing music for those movies. There’s always going to be so much shit that’s never going to surface, you pick it up, chop it up, cop a couple samples.

Could you see yourselves doing a score?

Matt: I think that would be dope. We could.

Alex: I’d like someone to give us a skate video, and then we make music for it. Have them edit it based on the tricks and then do some really interactive music with the skateboarder. Because every time you have a skate video-

Matt: It’s like Nu Metal, or plain hip-hop.

Chester: That would be really cool.

Matt: I think the coolest thing about movie soundtracks, it’s a really postmodern way of making music, because some movie soundtracks have so many different influences from different times, you get classical music, or A Clockwork Orange had all this crazy synth stuff-

A Clockwork Orange is crazy. I just saw it again at TIFF Bell Lightbox.

Matt: It’s an amazing movie obviously, but the soundtrack.

You guys listen to Suite For Ma Dukes?

Chester: Oh yeah, I love them, oh my god. My buddy, when she came to U of T or whatever, got Ma Dukes autograph. It’s pretty neat, yeah.

I wanted to ask you about the pig mask. You said it shows how good you guys are. Obviously you guys have to have somewhat of a- I know this sounds gay, intimate…

Matt: That’s why I don’t even face the audience. Alex is behind me. I literally have to be facing him.

Because you two look at each other and it’s like you’re reading each other’s thoughts on-stage.

Matt: That’s actually kind of how it is. We respond to each other from nothing. We rehearsed a bunch of our songs for a school thing, like, “let’s videotape this and bring it in as a joke,” and Alex and Chester didn’t even know I was going to bring it. Then we did a video for the next jam session, and we realized after, in music and when we rehearse, we don’t really make endings. That encore we did was totally unrehearsed.

Alex: So it’s funny when you wear a mask and in Jazz everything’s on the fly, go with the vibe. It’s like, “Okay, I’m wearing a mask now so you literally can’t see my face, my mouth, so I can’t be like, ‘no, no, no, yes, yes, yes’. With how these guys play, it’s fucking crazy, because they can pick it up. They listen so well.

Matt: The thing is [speaking to Alex], half the time you’re looking at me, like, “no, no, no,” but you don’t even have to tell me that.

Chester: It’s only been like six months or whatever but we seem to have this connection.

Alex: There’s been a lot of musical settings I’ve never been able to connect with, like with groups.

Matt: Yeah, we played the show at The Red Light and it was an hour and a half long, and that entire show was spontaneous. We had all these crazy interweaves to the songs. Nothing was planned. We don’t really have to.

Even completing each other’s sentences.

Alex: [laughs] Completing each other’s sandwiches.

What about future plans?

Chester: Keep making music. Keep being based, being positive.

Alex: Yeah, based, positive generation, positive activities, positive eating, positive thinking, breathing. Don’t be awkward, be positive. If you don’t study for a test and you’re going in there, just be positive. Fuck it.

Matt: More mixtapes to come, collaborations, more shows.

– By @petermarrack

The post Exclusive Interview: Bad Bad Not Good Talk Education, Working With Tyler The Creator, Clams Casino appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.