DX: I'm with you. What inspired the "Transitional Joint"? Great insight on your end…
E: Real track. And basically that's what the track said to me but at the same time I kind of pulled thoughts and feelings from what I felt and what other people were going through, and just kind of put it in a pot and mixed it up like gumbo. But off rip, that's what I heard from the record: sounds like somebody was going through a transitional. They were bitter at one point and now they're brought back to life. And from there it was like, "Hmm…how can I make this song come to life?" I'm gonna take my experiences and other peoples' as well and there you have it.

DX: Talk to me about the scene in Detroit. It's current state, Eminem's disappearance, etc.
E: The Detroit scene at one point in time was booming. I can recall me battling in the lunch room thinking like, "Man these cats is wack as hell out here man, wasn't nobody seeing me." And I'm like I wanna go to New York 'cause I knew they had talent from the music I was hearing. And then one day I actually went out to this place called the Hip Hop Shop. And when I went out there it just changed my life. It showed me there were people out in the city just like me that was taking this rap to another level and giving it 110%. And you see cats like Eminem, you see cats like Royce Da 5'9", Obie Trice, everybody before they got big at these spots. It was just crazy, I was a part of that scene too. But the wild part about it now is, it's not a scene anymore. I mean you got certain spots that's trying to re-open […] but there's no more open minds. The open minds are gone. I remember seeing Em when he was getting big and had moved units, went platinum and all that – and he was still up in Andrew's Hall. But he wasn't on the dance floor, he was on top 'cause he just enjoyed the moment; he enjoyed being there. We have nothing like that now.

DX: What has changed?
E: The industry has changed; technology has changed. It's like a domino effect. Everything trickles down. We talk about this all the time – like the Internet: it's the gift and the curse. you can be sitting on your chair and say something that affects somebody all the way across the side of the earth and be heard. That's cool but then at the same time they [artists] may come out with projects that may end up getting leaked out and this and that and certain people may want to download – ain't nothing wrong with downloading but these artists need their support. So before it got extremely bad, I've seen some of the best artists protesting like, "Please buy these records, please, if you don't I may have to switch up doing what I do to get this money." It started off like that; and then I've seen some of the best rappers leave the underground Hip Hop - or just that middle ground kind of sound - and just go straight to the mainstream. And then you have the fans like, "What happened to such and such boom boom boom?". But in actuality, this is the job.

DX: Good point. Slum Village is known for their experimentation and unique sound aura. What have you learned from the entire experience?
E: So much; so much. For one, I've learned not to put all your eggs in one basket. For two, just the experience of making the Slum Village records taught me how to make lemonade out of lemons. It also taught me different ways and different techniques to actually record a song. And it also taught me what to look out for later on in my career as far as how to conduct business properly and what to look out for in contracts and the whole nine. So I took a real course, it felt like I was in school – and I'm still in school. We're about to put out this next record and probably sign with Koch…but man, it's really been a journey, just going around the world and being able to rock an international crowd. Learning how to do that, learning how to pour the energy from the crowd and push it back to the audience – just the whole nine. Life experience and I'm still learning.

DX: What's going on with the S and the V?
E: It's a lot of projects in the works. We're supposed to do a project where we're rapping over Dilla's beats but that got held up. It's a little technical difficulty popping off in the background with certain little projects but we still plan on doing all these projects that we said we're gonna do. But we're working on a new album now and we just got in a studio to do a few cuts for this album so it's looking out to be great.

DX: How do you keep focused on one project? Or are you doing multiple projects at the same time?
E: See That's the thing; that's one of the things I learned. When it moves you, do it. Music is like a bottle – a CD is like a bottle. What you wanna do is trap that feeling in that bottle and that's your project. We want to make sure we trap the feeling inside of the music and make it come off right. Continued on page 3 »