DX: Do you think people expect everything on a silver platter now?
DJ Muggs: Yes and the labels too, everybody wants everything to be the same. It’s all cookie cutter, it's Pop music. It is everything that rap despised at some point. You know it despised everything it has become; it is R&B now. It is watered down and everyone wears their hat on the side, everyone has the tattoo on the forearm, all the same shit.

DX: With your history in the game, do you just ignore this all going on around you and just keep doing you?
DJ Muggs: You have to man. Of course we can sit around and talk about it with your friends and have your frustrating moments, but don’t hang on to that frustration man and let it tear me down. I just do what I have to do as I have a whole new vision. I have no problem.

DX: So what is your whole new vision?
DJ Muggs: It is all materializing as we speak. What we are doing now is introducing ourselves to a lot of the youth. You know there are a lot of 16 year-olds that might not know who we are which is understandable. So me doing [an album] with Planet Asia [click to view] and there are a lot more verses coming that will re-introduce me to the kids. It is still uncompromised, avant-guard, straight to the left, a la Salvador Dali type of art. I am very unorthodox and that is how we move. There is a whole world that loves us, that hates Pop music, it’s for those people. See I never liked Pop music; I liked Led Zeppelin, not Britney Spears so I am not going to make Britney Spears music. I have sat in the studio a few times and I haven’t been happy. I would start to think, "Who am I doing this for now?" When you start feeling like that, that you are a puppet, your real fans start to leave you alone and those Top 40 fans are only there for the moment, they are fly by night fans and all of a sudden, you are left with nothing.

DX: How did you avoid falling into that trap which some producers have done?
DJ Muggs: I would take six months off and go to Europe and deejay; fuck [making] records right now. Everything comes back around. My sound that was so cutting edge and so unique that it is about to be the brand new sound again because nobody does it.

DX: With filtered mics on tracks like "9 mm" you are still going to new places with your production, how would you describe the phase/style you are in now?
DJ Muggs: You know it is constantly experimenting but my sound is real dark. I am a fan of Led Zeppelin, I am a fan of Black Sabbath, I am a fan of Massive Attack, a fan of Tricky and there is just a dark sound that I enjoy making and it comes out naturally for me. It is grimy and it is gritty and you really feel it. That is what I do. Did I expect it to get on the radio? No. Did I think any of my tracks were going to become great hits? No. I thought that they were good records but when you look at what was on the radio at the time of "Jump Around," it wasn’t that.

DX: There are quite a lot of people now who are infusing their music with Rock as if it has never been done before; as someone who successfully pioneered that fusion….
DJ Muggs: Right now I am in Vegas with Alchemist [click to read] and I was saying to him, "Al, do you understand, everyone is thinking they invented this rock shit and that it is something new?" I was a skater and that was our life. I grew up around black kids, white kids, Latino kids, kids that skated, gangsters on the beach and all this that it has become is the shit we have been doing for 20 years. I am looking back like it is right on time for us now. We fit right in; it is funny to me yeah. You know we would get a lot of slack for doing shows with Rock bands like Metallica and taking Rage Against the Machine on one of their first tours with us. I truly believe we are visionaries and that we are able to see ahead. Sometimes we might be a bit too ahead of the curve.

I have a difficult time dealing with A&Rs who have no vision and I don’t think there are many music inspired people in the industry running it. I think there are a lot of people in it for the glitz and the glamor and who like music but there are no visionaries at the helm of the music business anymore, well very few. It is difficult to try and translate a vision to these people so I decided to go independent and go underground with my shit. That is where the Internet helps me as now I don’t need Sony to get my music circulated to the world.

DX: Do you think getting music out there to fast prevents fans from becoming familiarized with artists and their music?
DJ Muggs: Well that is the other side. It becomes easily disposable and there is no value to it anymore. You would play a whole album for the whole summer or for a whole year. Now you listen to an album a couple of times and you are on to the next thing because it is so disposable. It is all a big part of the puzzle and Soul Assassins is a lifestyle; we have cartoons, there are graphic artists, photographers, producers, we are a well rounded crew and we sell our lifestyle to people. It is more of a brand at this point as we have an international clothing company. Cypress can still go on the road and make six million dollars in six months no problem. Continued on page 3 »