HipHopDX: Let’s start with the album: What is the concept behind it?
K-Salaam: We wanted to create an album that would spark creative ideas and kind of force people to think for themselves, and use critical thinking rather than just shove ideas down their throat - that one of the main ideas. There [are] other reasons. Number one, there’s a lot of garbage music out there; we wanted to make a change. Number two, we’re both very talented at what we do and we wanted to make our mark in the world, really.

DX: Reggae and Hip Hop are combined in the album. Was that done on purpose or did it come about organically?
Beatnick: We just wanted to make a good album. We’re fans of Reggae and Hip Hop to begin with; so I think naturally, it just how it came together.
KS: It wasn’t a pre-meditated thing at all. As musicians and as producers, we just wanted to make good music. That’s pretty much what it came down to. We never looked at it as, “Hey you know what, let’s make a Reggae/ Hip Hop collabo type of thing.”

DX: What do you hope to achieve with this album?
B: There’s a couple of things. One, it’s about the future, and getting people to think for themselves. And really, to spark creativity and get people to be more -
KS: - To teach people that music is more than the garbage they’re hearing right now. To let other people know “this is music.” This album is what the music is going to sound like in the future if things go the way they should. I feel like – and I don’t want to sound arrogant, but me and Beatnick are a little bit ahead of the curve. Good music is good music; it doesn’t have to be boring and we don’t have to settle for just anything. It kind of raises the bar and gives you something back. Not just the message - obviously there’s a message here; but music is something we want you to walk away with.

DX: There is a diverse group of features on the album, from Young Buck to Kweli, from Sizzla to Saigon. What criteria did was used for choosing artists?
KS: It came to a couple different things. Number one, we wrote down the bigger artists, thought about how to get a hold of them; and it partially came to that. As the album started developing, a lot of people started coming to us, and a lot of the relationships we just naturally started creating. We ended up giving a track to Sha Money XL [click to read]; Young Buck [click to read] heard it and wanted to get down with what we were doing. It’s a mixture of going after artists, and us making moves and artists gravitating to us because they were feelin’ the music and feelin’ the movement.

DX: How did K-Salaam and Beatnick first hook up? And how did you develop your creation process?
B: We met in the Twin Cities and started working on what became a Saigon [click to read] track; that was the first thing we worked on and it worked so well. We have good musical chemistry. He’s more the dude that foresees the production as far as structuring. He’s got a deejay background so he’s good at that; I play instruments and more the hands-on production. So it blends well together.
KS: Some of the tracks Beatnick would do himself, some we’d do together. Some he’d do and I’d put my two cents in. Most of the hooks we wrote together. I’m more of the person that comes up with the hook ideas; he’s more the beat maker and engineer. I’m more the person that structures the album, kind of helps structure songs – if they need help. That’s pretty much how it’s done.

DX: B, what instruments do you play?
B: Guitar is my main instrument. I play base, keyboard, a lot of percussion and just basically anything I can get my hands on.

DX: Where does your instrumental background come from?
B: I have a very musical family so it’s kind of natural. My grandpa’s actually a Jazz arranger and composer; pretty similar in the way we do things actually.

DX: Are you guys influenced by Reggae rhythms or have the Reggae artists featured on the album influence some of the beats?
B: Reggae is definitely a part of who we are. It just comes out naturally in the music.
KS: This is music, whatever mood we’re in – it really just depends [on] what mood we’re in. On this album we were working with a lot of Reggae artists and we were doing a lot of tracks with that style. We don’t really separate music. A lot of people say that but kind of say it as a gimmick. If you actually listen to the album from front to back, you’ll realize “Okay, this is real.” It’s all cohesive. You got people from down south, you got people from New York, you got people from Jamaica – it doesn’t really matter because it’s all under the umbrella of music.

DX: Some of the beats sounded as though they could have been sampled. Were samples used at all?
B: No, it’s all pretty much instrumentals. In general, the style we – I try and think of when I’m making a beat from scratch and playing all the instruments, I think “Okay if I were to put a needle on the record and I would hear the perfect sample, what would I want to hear? Okay, I’d want to use something like this with the guitar,” so it ends up sounding like a sample because that’s what we were striving for. Continued on page 4 »