Going into his fifteenth year as an emcee releasing product, Gift of Gab lived up to his name as a guy with a lot to say. Throughout the years as Blackalicious’ lyrical half, Gab helped put Sacramento Hip Hop on the map through raw, technical lyricism, tangible subject matter and energetic stage shows.

In between Blackalicious releases, Gab has linked up with Solesides family member Lateef and The Crown City Rockers’ bassist Headnodic to form The Mighty Underdogs. Three guys from three groups who deserve at least three times the fanfare they’ve yet received. Gift of Gab talks to HipHopDX about this incarnate, battling Brotha Lynch Hung in the late ‘80s, and if he thinks Papoose jacked his alphabetical swagger.

HipHopDX: Tell me about The Mighty Underdogs. How did this project come to be, and what is it?
Gift of Gab: We’re basically having [The Crown City Rockers] sitting in when we do this live. This whole tour right now is “Blackalicious presents The Mighty Underdogs with The Crown City Rockers.” The Mighty Underdogs is myself, Lateef [from Latyrx] and Headnodic. Based on the fact that [Headnodic] is also in The Crown City Rockers, we tried to turn it into an interactive thing. We’re a group that came together out of nowhere, but the chemistry was so strong. We did about 30 songs within a couple of months. It was easy. Lateef gave me a call one day and said, “Yo, I wrote to some of these beats Headnodic got; they’re pretty dope. You should get on a couple of ‘em.” From there, it was instant chemistry. It flowed so smoothly that we did an EP and an album. The EP is actually available through Giftstribution.com.

DX: Is it all digital then?
G: In about one week, it’s gonna be available through all the digital distribution networks. Right now it’s only available through the website. We also have distribution through this company called Traffic Entertainment for hard copies. It’s called The Prelude. It’s six songs, just getting people ready for the album. We plan to drop the whole full length album in ’08. These are just warning shots to raise peoples’ awareness of the group.

We’re still putting records out on Quannum, but based on how the industry is, we think it’s a good time, just as artists, to put stuff out ourselves. We wanted to do this EP just ourselves.

DX: You are a king of the EP. Melodica and A2G are classics in a lot of eyes, including mine. In just six tracks, what’s the secret to winning over a new fan?
G: We took songs from the record and we took songs that weren’t for the record. The EP is an entirely different body of work from the album. But it warms up people to what the group is about. The lead song on the EP is called “Gunfight” with MF DOOM. The album is called Dropping Science Fiction, and it’s completely different from a Blackalicious record. The whole record is based on fictional storytelling. Damn near every song. Songs about being in outer-space, songs about being abducted on tropical islands, gunfights, we’ve got a song called “I’m a Monster,” where we morph into different monsters. We just wanted to make a fun record full of storytelling because there haven’t been a lot of records out there like that.

DX: You’re one of the few rappers/emcees who admits fiction in his work, but on top of that, you’re also challenging storytelling in the Dana Dane/Slick Rick sense?
G: Exactly! There’s a line in the intro saying, “We’re not keeping it real.” A lot of emcees focus too much on keeping in real. That’s cool, that’s good, but people forget that this is art. Art is part of your imagination. It’s limitless. You can go anywhere. There’s nothing wrong with doing it if you’re being creative about it. What if Steven Speilberg kept it real all the time? A lot of great movies would have never been made.

DX: To what extent do you think that the iPod generation appreciates all forms of music coming together?
G: I think that that’s where it’s going. It’s a different generation. Back when I was coming up, it was a Rock crowd and it was a Hip Hop crowd and it was an R&B crowd. You can listen to some of these Rock groups now and hear Hip Hop influences in them. Some of the brand new ones. You can hear Hip Hop incorporating Rock. I think that it’s all music. The worst thing you can do is shut yourself off, and not explore everything out there. Everybody can appreciate good music. Hip Hop has always been like that, ‘cause Hip Hop is the only music that can be Rock, Jazz, Calypso, Soul, any kinda music.

DX: With The Craft, a lot of former outsiders caught onto Blackalicious. This was happening simultaneous to a lot of Hip Hop consumers bootlegging, downloading or just not buying. Does going for that Indie Rock or experimental crowd pay off?
G: I’m just grateful, man. We’ve been doing this for over a decade now, and we try to stay consistent and push each other. Our whole crew tries to push each other to make dope records. It’s been a blessing to have been able to do that this far. I don’t really see any end to it. I still feel like there’s a lot of music inside all of us that we still need to get out. It’s good to see that. But it’s been a process. We started out putting our own records out, as Solesides, when nobody knew who we were. It was just a brick-by-brick thing. Over the years, we’ve been a following. It wasn’t overnight. We put our first record out in ’93; that’s damn near 15 years of consistently putting out music and trying to elevate our live shows. Continued on page 2 »