It’s July folks, the summer is blazing and we cannot get enough of the west coast. Contrary to the gang-banging regiment of the mid and late 90s, The Golden State now offers a diverse artistry for the Hip Hop fans, which includes rappers from all ends of the creative, topical, and music spectrums. And Malkovich is one of them. A member of the B.L.X. Crew that stems from Los Angeles, the highly creative and pleasantly intriguing rapper drops a mixtape, Sicksteens, which follows up from his debut album, Skeletons (2006). The tape has many interesting concepts to it, from the abundance of features (the entire B.L.X. Crew) to the looping and mixing of old school beats that not only include Hip Hop (N.W.A., Slick Rick, Outkast) but also Funk and Soul (James Brown, Kool & the Gang) which were sampled to intertwine. The result is a tape 20 tracks deep, reminiscent of the old and introductory to the new. Italian by birth and Iranian and British by blood, Malkovich sits down with HipHopDX to discuss Sicksteens, his next release, Flighty, and the connection he has with John Malkovich.

HipHopDX: How about you introduce yourself for many people are still unfamiliar with you.
Malkovich: Okay. Well, they call me Malkovich. I run Malkovich Music; this is a little personal enterprise I set up a few years ago. I’m part of a crew called B.L.X., the Bassline Xcursionists. We’re a crew out of L.A. I don’t know if you ever heard of Omni, but he’s a dude from our click. We got several other cats in the crew. We put a few albums out around the turn of the century. We put an album out in ’98 called Vocabudrab Sessions. We put another one out in 2000 called Sunchpunch. And we put another one out in 2001 called Vegans Want Beef. Around that time we were about 10 deep; we did a bunch of shows in L.A., we did tours in America, we’ve done Hawaii, we’ve done Japan, Europe – we even went to Peru. And once we’ve gone through all of that and got a little older, we started trying our own solo projects. So I put out a project out a couple years ago called Skeletons. That’s my first solo album; made it into some stores, couple of singles did pretty good. Now I got this mixtape Sicksteens that’s tying me over until my next project comes out. But we’re all from Los Angeles; I’ve been in Los Angeles from 16 years now and my whole crew is from L.A. and that’s where we stay; that’s where we’re from.

DX: Sixteen years? I didn’t know you were there for that long.
M: I came in 1992.

DX: And lived in Europe before that?
M: I lived several years in England. Then I lived in Iran – ‘cause that’s where my mom is from. And I also lived in Libya, North Africa, for a couple of years. I was in Portugal for a year; couple of other spots in Europe. And I got here in 1992, a month after the riots. It was a real funny time to show up; that’s kind of where Hip Hop hit me in the head and that’s what led me to be here right now talking to you.

DX: Why the name Malkovich?
M: I always liked the idea behind the movie Being John Malkovich; just the idea of someone in your body that sees what you see and kind of operates you at the same time. Everything I do is different. If you listen to Skeletons, it has nothing to do with Sicksteens. And I can promise you, what you hear from me next has nothing to do with Sicksteens. Nothing in my life has really ever been concrete. I enjoy being able to move around a lot. So the Malkovich thing is kind of like an umbrella that allows me to do whatever I want to do with the music.

DX: What is your aim with Sicksteens?
M: One primary aim: I wanted all my homies on one CD. I just wanted to be able to hit people with one CD: this is my click. At the same time, I wanted to be the one directing in a sense…I feel like I know all my boys’ strength. I wanted to be able to put them on a right beat, get the right responses out of ‘em; at the same time, I love all this old music so much. It’s all I listen to; it’s been like that for years. And I wanted to do something that would bring all of my friends together and also allow me to start fooling around with all this old music. I made a wish list of my favorite rap songs. I just lined them up and I went and found the original records; and we looped them and we tried our best to recreate different songs. For instance, number 10 –it’s a pretty good recreation of a song called “Something Like That” from N.W.A.’s Straight Outta Compton. Every song on Sicksteens references a Hip Hop track and an old school soul track. Except for number 19, “Nicaragua”, it’s the brand new shit; it’s a loop but it doesn’t reference any old Hip Hop track. Continued on page 2 »