DX: The Rolling Stones of Hip Hop...
DJ Muggs: Well we might not be the new boy band or pop phenomenon and we understand that we can’t go back and be that and we don’t want to, we just know who we are and what we have to do. We go to our shows and you have 40 year-old people and 13 year-old kids just like you would at a Stones concert. It’s like people introduce their younger siblings explaining that they need to know about this and know about that. Then you get your supporters around the world and when you are feeding them you know they are going to turn up for the meal. We continue to do what we do and it all comes back around.

DX: Well it is like with the Hip Hop Honors, various people have commented that you guys should have been recognized before now, do you feel like that?
DJ Muggs: I thought we would have been recognized for a lot of things before now too you know but if you read your history, people have done a lot of incredible things but didn’t get recognized for it until years and years after the event. It is just the way it is with us; we are blue collar and we are always going to be the underdog and even if we were to win the championship four years in a row, we are still going to be the underdog as it is in our cards. We understand that and we are cool with it. We just keep working hard.

DX: You were very present in the documentary Rhyme and Reason. What do you think seeing you, Dre and RZA in the labs did for young producers in the late nineties?
DJ Muggs: I hope it inspired them to want to do their own thing and want to bring creativity rather than trying to be like everyone else because all three of us, one thing we all have in common is our uniqueness in sound and refusing to sound like anyone else and always looking to find the next sound or the next new thing. If I had the money, I would wait six years [like Dr. Dre] to put a record out you know to work on it but we don’t have the cash to be doing that.

DX: Do you believe Hip-Hop was more pure in the nineties when you look around you now?
DJ Muggs: I think it was brand new and it hadn’t been exposed to the masses. I traveled the world and people didn’t always know about it. Even when I moved to L.A. from New York City when I was 14, there was a lot that people weren’t aware of, but like I said earlier you can go on the Internet now and find out about anything you want to. Hip Hop took over the world from being a sub-culture in the corner.

DX: You have contributed to an endless list of soundtracks, how does that creative process differ for you?
DJ Muggs: I usually go in and watch the movie and see if they need anything that is inspired by the movie or inspired by a character or something inspired by a scene. You talk to the director and you talk to the music supervisor and they can clue you in and from there I go and make something for them.

DX: Do you have a preference over that or straight music production?
DJ Muggs: I can’t say more or less as everything has its time and place. I like getting away from the studio and doing that and then from there I like to come back into the studio and make records as I get bored. Then I get bored and I head out on the road and if I am on the road too much I get sick of it. It is all part of the process.