What is it that you’re exploring in your music?

Music is everything, it’s around all the time. I love music that I can get inside. When I feel like a better version of myself, I know I’ve gotten inside the right music.

Do you think it is essential to have big ego to believe that people want to hear what you have to say? If you don’t need that, is something else required?

For me, it’s less about ego and more about an insatiable urge to create music and to sing and to share that with people.

Often in relationships, especially very close ones, you have to work very hard and make compromises. When you look back and think about your journey, what do you feel is the greatest thing that you both provide to each other?

I think our personalities definitely work on a nice balance. We kinda switch off inadvertently. Bad cop, good cop.

Something fascinating about your videos is the way you tie everything together into very miniature space. And the narratives are usually so light but yet so potent.

I’m super into minimalism and negative space. I think both of our affinity for symmetry also comes out in our visuals.

How does it feel to see so many people connecting with your tracks?

Of course, it’s amazing that our fans have responded the way they have. The exchange we have with our audience is a huge continuous affirmation.

I’m going to mention a few of your songs and I want your immediate reactions or what you recall from recording them. Let’s start with “Trip Fall.”

Blue [laughs.]

“Breathe.Scream.Dream.”

Ahhhhhhhh.

I must admit, there’s something kind of warm, laid back and sexy about your music. What song do you associate with the first time you fell in love?

[Laughs] I fell in love for the “first time” a couple times, so that’s tough. But maybe, Patty Griffin ‘Every Little Bit.’

Do you ever worry about your voice? It’s an obvious point, but so much rests on you being able to sing.

No worries really, I just sing all the time to keep myself in shape and I generally take good care of myself.

What’s the best reaction someone could have to hearing your music for the first time?

People connect with music in different ways, so to me, it’s best when people get lost or found in it, whichever works best for them at the time.

The post A Quick Chat with Denitia (Of Denitia and Sene.) appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

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RESPECT: So [J57] you rap as well as produce, but for this project you’re just producing. Why’d you make that decision?

J57: We were already gonna do an album where I produced the whole thing anyway and I kind of just brought the idea that we could it make it a little different from regular Koncept albums if we set it aside and just do Koncept and J57 and he was like, “I’m with that.” And then when we were in L.A., I remember we were going to do a show and we get to the venue and we were chillin’ because we didn’t want to go into the venue and talk to people and lose our voices. So we’re chillin’ outside still and he’s like, “Yo, I don’t think I want anybody else to do my beats.” And I was like, “Done!” So we were just like from here on out we’re gonna do this as a group. So now it’s a group dynamic. It’s always been fifty-fifty when we work on stuff anyway, but now it’s like official.

Koncept: And the sound is different as well from the previous stuff that we’ve done –

J57:  – Yeah and that’s why I thought it would be cool to separate it from all the other shit because it doesn’t sound like Awaken – and those are incredible records – but it just doesn’t sound like the other shit. It’s just bigger sounding.

Koncept: It’s the best music we’ve ever made. I feel and he feels and we feel like everything else – I’m proud of all my previous work – was learning. At this point I feel like I’ve really found my sound and my delivery and how to use my voice. And just how to make better music. Again, all that stuff, I’m proud of it, but it was just all to learn, to get us to where we are now. So with this new music it’s just bigger and better. So being a group will just make it stand out a bit more and make people see, before they even hear it, that that’s different from what they’ve done previously because now it’s actually a group dynamic.

Did you two come with a name for the group?

Koncept: Well the name is just gonna be Koncept and J57. The album is gonna be called Flight. And we have an EP we’re gonna drop before that called The Fuel.

You said that it’s always fifty-fifty when you two work together. Is there ever any overlap between your roles as producer and rapper?

J57: Oh yeah! Totally, totally! When we’re in the studio, he’ll come up with ideas for beats as well. It’s not like it’s all me. Or even just a creative idea in general. It’s not like a hundred percent half and half.

Koncept: It’s fifty-fifty in the sense that we do everything together. He may be like, “Yo, I love that verse, but what if we switch it up and have you do a bridge here instead of that?” Or, “What if you flip this line a little bit?” And I’ll be the same way. I’ll be like, “Yo this beat is crazy but what if we have this change-up here.” So it’s fifty-fifty in the sense that we’re both involved in everything.

J57: Like a real group! [laughs] It’s more than a rapper and a producer linking up for a real quick project. It really is like a group, like all the classic duos like Gang Starr. It wasn’t just like Premier made the beats and he was like, “Guru, go do some raps!” [laughs]. [Guru] was in the lab next to him. That dynamic is dire. There are people who are doing it, but they’re doing like one-and-off albums. We wanted to bring more to the table than that. That’s why we’re keeping it kind of old school with just “Koncept and J57.” It’s modern, but it’s old school at the same time because cats aren’t really doing that anymore, where there’s just two names together…well they are, but it’s just for those one-and-off projects, not for a real group.

Yeah like for an EP.

J57: Yeah, like me and some random dude link up for an EP, which we do all the time because that’s dope, but we’re not trying to do that anymore. We’re not trying to just make some shit. We’re trying to bring it to the next level.

Do you feel like that interaction that you have is possible only because of your previous relationship?

Koncept: Yeah, we’ve been close friends for years now, so our relationship in general just allows us to work together. And we both have the same goals and the same place that we both want to reach. So that forms the chemistry right there.

 So before we started the interview you mentioned labels that you’re possibly working with for this album. Is Fat Beats one of them? You two both used to work at the store.

Koncept: Yeah, we worked there together for awhile. For these projects, we’ve been talking to some majors and just different outlets. We recorded the album with Red Bull, so we’ve obviously been in contact with them to figure out some different options. And we’ve been in contact with Interscope and some other majors. And right now everything’s looking good. We’re just trying to find the best place for us to go.

Why did you name it Flight?

Koncept: So the album is my autobiography and it starts with me and J in Brooklyn, getting into a cab to go to L.A. and record the album. And I wrote the album like a movie, so then throughout the whole album, I talk about my childhood and my dad passing and growing up with a single mom, then high school, then moving out of the city to live in Vermont for a little bit and then moving back to the city. So I talk about everything in my life and the album ends with me and J recording the album in LA.

So it’s like a journey.

 Koncept: Yeah, exactly.

J57: And we recorded a lot of sound-bites, when we’re on our phones, when we’re taking the actual flight, when we’re at the airport, getting into the cab, the whole nine, from beginning to end while we were traveling. And we chopped them out and sprinkled throughout the whole album so it’s really cohesive. It has a real story.

So before you two even flew out to L.A., you two already had a very coherent idea of what this would be.

Koncept: Yeah yeah, exactly.

Koncept, you mentioned your dad passing. On “Awaken,” you said that his death scared you straight. What did you mean by that?

Because my dad died of drugs, so basically his death sent me in the direction of not going down the path.

The post Interview: Koncept and J57 Prepare For Departure appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

Referencing the famous clothing brand, Blu & Nottz recruit ANTHM, Homeboy Sandman, Sene and Johaz to leave this song in the murky dungeon where it was spawned. 2013 has been a quiet year for Nottz as far as releases, but he’s clearly not been lollygagging about. The metallic, nearly cartoonish clangs of the instrumental create an atmosphere of imminent fatality, like armed crooks raiding a unprepared castle. Listen below.

Blu & Nottz’s collaborative EP, Gods in the Spirit, is out next Tuesday, October 22nd.

The post New Music: Blu & Nottz feat. ANTHM, Homeboy Sandman, Sene & Johaz – “Crooks in Castles” appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

Photo by Julia Schur / RESPECT.

At a distance, ANTHM seems to be a man of contradiction. Once a Wall Street shark-to-be, he’s almost three years deep in an already impressive rap career that has seen him work with Blu, Sene, Freddie Gibbs, and DJ Whoo Kid. It’s not just his origins that are rife with contrast, though; ANTHM’s artistic range brings the variety of his aspirations to the forefront. One moment, ANTHM is teaming up with Blu (as GodleeBarnes) for one of the year’s best under-the-radar projects, a thoughtful, melodic dissection of aspects of life big and small. The next moment, he’s spitting perfectly polished venom over Eminem‘s “Role Model,” dropping more names than the white boy himself would. The next moment after that, he’s walking into the dark, wooden Sons of Essex in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, to sit down with RESPECT. for an hour and a  half.

ANTHM showed up exactly on time, holding a spare shirt in a plastic bag. His speaking voice was surprisingly similar to the resonant, emotive high-ish pitch that he has on wax. With rushed confidence, he bounced through the entrance, greeted the hostess, and sat at a dim booth near the back of the bar. Before it could become entirely clear why the sight of him in this lighting, in this booth, was familiar, ANTHM told us. This was where he shot the Houdini-ish fast-motion video for “Manhattan,” an early track in his catalog, perhaps the first one to establish his artistic presence–driven, thoughtful, and crisp.

The balance of extremes, and how that balance can distinguish a “rapper” from an “artist” was a topic of clear importance to the 28-year-old MC. As he spoke on the strengths of “BST,” a highlight from his July release, The Fire Next Time, he proudly highlighted its use of both a complex song structure–the use of a pre-hook, among other things—and that it was able to feature both “hot 16s” and “have a bounce to it.” “BST” finds a balance between dense, lyrical hip-hop and more easily accessible, head-nodding territory. Noting “BST” as a signal of growth, ANTHM recalled, “When I started I was a really good rapper, but a really bad artist. Every time I jumped on a record I would try to make it, like, 64 bars of fury.” When asked what pushed him over from his initial focus on complex, reference-driven writing to focusing on a song’s ability to move wide audiences, he responded quickly: “It’s definitely not…It’s not an overnight move, you feel me? It’s about breaking down what you understand. Early on I was just getting hype off technicals, or—or—moments that only I’m getting inside, or just a small group of people is getting inside. It’s like in hoops. It’s a dunk contest versus an offense that really works. As an artist, you’ve got to just take a step back and reflect on all the music that made you feel a certain way. Why did it make you feel that way? Every time you’re down and you go to a record to make you feel better you’re not…it’s not because you remember how many consecutive bars someone had a complex rhyme scheme. It’s about the moments in a record.”

As the interview continued, ANTHM’s manager, friend, and former Wall Street mentor, DG, entered the bar. In the brief moments when we spoke with DG about various managerial aspects of ANTHM’s movement, ANT himself took a moment to text. He didn’t once glance at his phone during conversation, but given even a momentary break from one form of his grind, he dives into another. He was and is eager for every opportunity.

Though he’s grown to prioritize and find greater satisfaction in being emotionally accessible, ANTHM’s competitive nature shines through in an almost pre-emptively headstrong manner. Shooting off topic for a moment, he commented, “What I feel right now is that I don’t really care who comes in the room.  Name anyone in hip-hop you like. Have them come in and say “Yo, you’re not a strong emcee,” and I’ll be like, ‘OK. Whatever.’ I don’t really care. I m indifferent cause I’ve already done what I needed to do, and I don’t see developing a sound as coming at the expense of writing.” He’s both an artist and man entirely unwilling to give ground. Paradoxically, though, he doesn’t resist change. ANT went on to recount how he wholeheartedly accepted the fact that his earliest works were not well rounded enough, and then adjusted accordingly, all the while refusing to let any one piece of his craft fall beneath his lofty personal standards. Take “We Were Kings” from The Fire Next Time, for example. The track is laced with some incredibly dense rhyme schemes and tight metaphorical imagery about the state of the rap game, but is sewn together by a hook that is always changing and the varying moments throughout ANTHM’s verses that become mini-hooks, of their own. In this way, his lyrics still find the forefront, only dressed up to be a little easier on the ears.

Examining a short list of ANTHM’s influences and role models, it’s not hard to tell where the polar pulls of his musical style come from. The precise, battle-ready rhymes that ANTHM often utilizes clearly hail from Eminem, a man that ANTHM recalls obsessing over in his gradeschool days. “I remember when ‘Dead Wrong‘ came out…when a record dropped, you just spun it until you memorized it, and then you went to school to talk shit with friends—‘Oh you fucked up that bar, it went like this.’ Some people would cheat and print the lyrics out and sneak them in their notebooks.” To see that ANTHM’s love of 90’s rhymes and no-frills mentalities runs deep, look no further than his excited, beaming choice for an ideal collaboration: “Rae[kwon] Ghost[face Killah], Method Man, Redman. And not just on a song where cats are mailing in verses, I want to see them light one up and talk shit. I wanna be in on the way cats used to make records back in the day. Not because I think it’d be some kind of groundbreaking single, it would just be fucking phenomenal, it’d be an experience. That’s some shit I would just go home and write about.” Speaking quickly, ANTHM continued, “And I always said I’d make a record with Eminem…and AZ. Man, I would probably get so sidetracked, I wouldn’t make my own shit.” Among the few other artists that ANTHM speaks with such excitement about are Jay Z, Rakim, and Kanye. Especially Kanye; the expansive, experimental, and emotive reach of ‘Ye’s work has had a sizeable impact on the Manhattan rhymer. As ANT put it with refreshing candor, “He doesn’t do it for the ‘cause.’ He does shit for the art. It’s fucking inspiring.”

A bit of Mr. West’s brash manner of being lives inside Anteneh Addisu (ANTHM’s birthname) as well. Asked about his Twitter handle, @NoCosign, ANT replied, in a vaguely, distantly offended way, “I believe in myself, otherwise I’m making an ass of myself for being here. ‘@NoCosign’ is about believing in myself.” The same way ANTHM is hard on the industry, openly criticizing and assailing it through much of The Fire Next Time, he’s hard on himself. He’s placed an aweful lot of pressure on those skinny, bouncing shoulders.

It’s important to note the colossal nature of each of ANTHM’s cited influences. The man is on a mission—in spite of their similar voices and knack for dense poetics, ANTHM didn’t cite Blu. He didn’t talk about Talib Kweli, with whom he shares both a socio-political conscience and an instrumental (The Fire Next Time’s opener finds ANTHM rhyming over Kweli and Hi-Tek’s “Love Speakeasy.”) While ANTHM clearly respects both of those artists, he only has eyes for the greater conquests of the mainstream, for crossover appeal, for more. Asked if “Polaris” would still be his choice for a fan’s introduction to his music, ANTHM took only a second before excitedly reaffirming the selection, noting that the track has the ability to appeal to non-hip-hop crowds. Though it may seem that ANTHM spends too much time meditating on hip-hop as a whole and his place in it, that’s only once piece of his puzzle. As he said himself, with one of his big, thin hands striking downward over and over to drive his words like nails through the air, as a response to the industry-damning “Vultures,” he gives the audience “AMG Forever.” Quoting the track, ANTHM rapped, “I don’t respond to no boxes anyone tries to put me in. It’s just me, DG and the music. I know exactly what we’re doing.” It sure seems he does know; he’s got his heart and mind in alignment, and now it’s time for us to sit back and enjoy. When it was all said and done, ANTHM thanked us profusely for the interview, and we thank him back. As of our last, brief word with him about a week ago, he was plotting on his next tape. Watch out for ANTHM—it may not be a choice for too much longer.

The post Interview: ANTHM Balances His Extremes appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

YC uses lots of mythical references, coinciding with GNK‘s cover art.  The MC also refers to contemporary figures such as Marcus Garvey and his Madison Square Garden speech. The MC told us exclusively:

My inspiration for the song is always the beat. It dictates how I feel when I hear it, and subsequently the song that’s written.  The idea of a chant struck me first. Then the melody struck. Then I was reminded of my fascination with the word “Negus” when I heard Elijah Black say it. It was all a string of random/organic occurrences, like it usually is.

“Negus” is about empowerment, and is composed much like a inspirational chant. It gives us a new vision on historical topics that are too often categorized as preachy. If you like what you are hearing and you are a fan of Soul Khan, Homeboy Sandman, Rebel Diaz, Sene, Scienze Ottis Clapp or Dao Jones, we advise you to come to YC‘s release party in New York City the 26th at SOBS.

The post New Music: YC The Cynic – “Negus” appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

The post Audio: ScienZe & Sene – “Rags2Riches” appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

Photo by Lexi Tannenholtz/RESPECT.

Real hip-hop fans accept that hip-hop comes in many forms and at SOB’s Thursday night, real hip-hop fans were definitely in the building. Though the crowd was drawn to the event by Elzhi, the people’s champ of Detroit emcees, they accepted the various acts that preceded him with open ears.

The night began with a brief set from Joe Cool, a young emcee from Louisiana. Cool started off with some technical difficulties, but his charismatic set and frequent acapella verses kept the party people enthused and animated. The highlight of his set was his track, “I Wanna Sell Drugs,” a painful song about the difficulty of being patient when [legal] opportunities are limited.

Cool was followed by 4th Pyramid, an emcee from Toronto. Accompanied by local artist Double AB, Pyramid promptly started his set, sans introduction. He wasn’t as energized as Joe’s, but the party people’s buzz stayed alive throughout. The most memorable moment of his set was when he donned a boxing robe to perform his song, “So Balboa.” Pyramid looked kind of corny in the robe, but also looked comfortable, as if he was really channeling Rocky, so things worked out. Kind of.

Most members of the crowd expected Elxhi’s entrance to follow Pyramid’s exit, but that wasn’t the case. New York based rapper Sene was next up. Audaciously rapping and singing during his set, Sene was a confident performer. He didn’t manage to quell the anxious crowd – only Elzhi could do that – but he did manage to keep things as sane as possible.

After Sene wrapped his brief set up, Elzhi finally emerged. Humble and respectful, he addressed the crowd with true appreciation for coming out to the show. Because brief introductions were the theme of the night, he began his set posthaste. “I been hotter than these pen jotters,” he spat in his first song. The line stood out because though he is informally known as “Detroit’s Best Kept Secret,” that didn’t seem to be the case last night. The audience effortlessly and excitedly rapped along to his verses throughout the night. The secret is definitely out.

Elzhi mostly performed songs from Elmatic, but songs like “Guessing Game” and “Motown 25” from his debut album The Preface also got some spins, greatly pleasing the crowd. The plucky emcee even performed his verse from the Slum Village song “Do You,” afterward shouting out to his former comrades and wishing J Dilla a peaceful rest.

The crowd was exuberant throughout Elzhi’s set, but songs from Elmatic had the crowd particularly amped. The album’s fusion of the old with the new really resonated with the SOB crowd, an intriguing mixture of hip-hop “purists” and “futurists.” Simultaneously embodying various hip-hop legacies — Detroit’s, New York’s, Nas’,  — the Elmatic song “Represent” resonated most strongly, especially when Elzhi’s DJ intercalated the song with the Wu Tang classic “C.R.E.A.M.”

All in all, it was a night to remember. As hip-hop progressively bleeds more and more into different genres and styles, it doesn’t lose its life force, but becomes stronger, more vital. It’s kind of counterintuitive, but definitely a positive state of affairs. With artists like Elzhi and fans like the people who came out to SOBs, things will only get better.

Look out for exclusive concert pics in the near future.

The post Elzhi, “Detroit’s Best Kept Secret,” Proves to be No Secret in NYC appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.