This month, the Underground Report is serving up a platter of Hip Hop groups as we bring two independent Hip Hop crews to your door. First, we’ll meet up with Deacon and Kno of the Cunninlynguists as they share their thoughts on how the south has ruined its 15 minutes of fame and even offer up the secret to selling shit-sandwiches. Then, we’ll catch up with Iller Than Theirs, the crew that is bold enough to have that name and bold enough to stand behind it. They sat down with us to discuss their tour, their “look” and the presence of hoes at underground rap shows. In the end, as usual, we’ve added some videos, some laughs and that good ol’ underground rap to your table. Enjoy the meal and give thanks for November’s Underground Report.
Cunninlynguists: The Dirty South’s Other Side
Since the release of their critically acclaimed Will Rap for Food, the Cunninlynguists have been garnering support in the underground. As time has passed, this support has grown and flourished. With the release of Dirty Acres, a new member officially on the team and more on the way, the Cunninlynguists sat down to speak with HipHopDX about everything from the dirty south to underground struggles.
HipHopDX: Cunninlynguists are on the way up around the world. Can you explain how things are when you go over seas and the way Hip-Hop is over there?
Deacon: The U.S. pays with respect. Overseas pays with money and love. But the grind is the same. We try to give our all regardless of what stage we're on.
Kno: People outside of the U.S. like what they like, that’s why a group like us can thrive. If they like it, they listen to it. In the U.S. too many people are caught up in celebrity and connections to make listening decisions for them selves. In the U.S. you have to be visible in the coolest magazines, on the coolest websites, on the best tours and co-signed by the biggest names or you have a long, hard road to travel trying to be successful no matter the quality of music you make. Not just speaking from a musical standpoint, but sometimes I'm unsure if the majority of Americans are able to think for themselves anymore, but they'll sure as hell put a shit-sandwich on their Visa if Paris Hilton is peddling it.
DX: You guys have an interesting name. Where'd it come from?
Kno: It was more of a joke name for a non-serious recording situation. We messed around and made some music a lot of people loved. Oops.
D: From out our ass. It came from the land of naivety. We had no idea that our music was gonna go as far as it has...if so we woulda picked a name that a six-year old could spell.
DX: The south gets so much hate. How do you guys counter that with your music and how do you view the south in general?
D: I love the south. It made me who I am, but I hate what we've done with our 15 minutes of fame. The dirty south became the synthesized south. We grew up listening to the music that made people interested in this
region in the first place. But once we got their full attention we acted like monkeys. It's cool though. I think the south is dope enough to bring that real shit back and shine some more.
K: Let’s be honest, rap music gets a lot of hate in general right now...and maybe deservedly so. I'm hard-pressed to find any redeeming value in some of the stuff that comes out nowadays. At least when N.W.A. or Geto Boys or Paris or Sister Soulja told me they were showing me a side of their lives that was honest but vulgar and that was the reason the music needed to be so uncut and raw, it was believable because the imagery of violence and all was balanced with statements about life and politics and movement. Now we have gangster rappers that kill 300 people in one song but never leave their gated communities and vote Republican. I have no fucking idea what’s going on here right now.
DX: You get so much publicity and acclaim from critics but that doesn't always translate to sales. How has that been and are album sales a huge part of what you are seeking in the long run?
D: I just feel that we haven't had the sales because we haven't had the proper push from a label. Freshchest just didn't have the manpower and the L.A. underground just didn't have the brains.
K: If you're basing your success as an artist on album sales in 2007 you will be a broken man in no time flat. If you're in it for money, sell ringtones and collect publishing. If you're in it for the art, make a direct connection with your fans and run your business yourself.
DX: I loved the title Will Rap for Food. Everyone knows underground rap isn't all about the bling. Have you guys ever been that low on money, though? If so, what got you all through it?
K: All rap really is for most people is a day-to-day job with some perks. I may not need a nine-to-five but you also shouldn't expect making art to put you in a position to retire at 30.
D: [Laughs] We're not too far removed from Will Rap for Food now. Belief in ourselves gets us through everything.
DX: You guys have worked with so many acts. Who was the best guest to be around?
D: Either Cee-Lo or Devin [the Dude].
K: Devin easily. You'd be surprised, the people like Cee-Lo and Kanye [West] are actually the coolest people to meet and deal with. It’s the indie artists that act like cocks and try and charge you money to jump on mixtapes. People who might be one-fourth as popular as you. It’s actually pretty funny. Underground rappers feel themselves. A lot.
DX: Aside from those you have worked with, who would you like to work with in the future?
K: I'd like to work with anyone who is talented and isn't a complete douchebag. And if they are a douchebag they need to have a budget.
DX: Let's talk about Dirty Acres a little more. Who can we expect to hear on it?
K: The only guests are Big Rube, Devin the Dude, Phonte of Little
Brother, Witchdoctor and Sheisty Khrist vocally. Club Dub plays some live instruments throughout and a pianist named Chizuko Yoshihiro.
D: Real talk. Real soul. Lush beats. We're always growing as human beings and we try to reflect that through our music.
DX: In the long run, where do you guys want to see yourselves in 10 years?
D: Producing within all genres of music and hopefully still droppin' albums.
K: Making a living off of production and music, being married with kids and trying to be happy.
DX: Finally, some people may not know about you or your crew. What would you tell them to enlighten them?
K: If you judge our music by our name or any pre-concieved notion you might have, you are making a horrible mistake that simply dedicating 45 minutes of your life to one of our records can solve. We're fucking dope. There's a reason that, after six years, you keep hearing our name pop up over and over. It isn't by accident. With a name like this, if we were even mediocre we'd be long gone by now.
D: Go to www.Dirtyacres.com and buy our new album...everything I wanna tell you for now can be found within those 15 tracks.
Iller Than Theirs: Money, Cash, Hoes
HipHopDX: Iller Than Theirs...Where'd the name come from?
Tone: It was toss up between that and "Kevin Bacon Survival Camp" and we settled it with a pig race. "Kevin Bacon Survival Camp" was a close second.
Kray: I can't help but smile when people ask me what the name of my group is. It's such a dope name. When people repeat it, to see if they got it right, as they often do, I say: "yeah, as in: It's like being Ill but even more so"
DX: For those who don't know-How would you describe your sound?
T: Kind of like a cross between LeTigre and LaCoste; an Alligator/Tiger; all Terrain and it will bite you.
K: Hobo-fresh or boxcar pimping. or like anything dirty but beautiful.
DX: There is a stereotype that underground emcees can write ill lyrics but cannot flow. How do you guys respond to such naysayers?
K: That's true probably. Most stereotypes have reasons for existing. We've got a lot of stereotypes working for or against us. I don't mind their existence. I really enjoy defying expectations.
T:There's also a stereotype that Asian people are bad drivers but Speedracer was supposed to be Asian. so how you figure that? But to answer your question there are a lot of wack motherfuckers in both the
underground and in the mainstream and a lot of fans of both tend to be closed-minded. Which they shouldn't be because there are a lot of dope motherfuckers in both. So basically: you're not any less of a man if
you don't pull the trigger - you're not necessarily a man if you do.
DX: How do you guys work? Do the beats come before the lyrics or do the lyrics come before the production?
T: The beats come first for me and they are very carefully hand-picked but lines and thoughts come to me as I'm going through my day and get jotted down and those come before the beat.
K: I'd like to quickly big up J. Howells Werthman who handledalmost all of the production on the album. The sound he developed for this record had an effect on how I wrote lyrics. The content and what I wrote came from conversations I had with tone and concepts and themes we continue to discuss and come back to when we are talking about life. But when I write, I write to a specific beat. I put the words together as decoration for this existing piece of music. The beat is not just a blank canvas it's a full painting with colors and shapes and I'm just putting text and voices on top of that.
DX: With so many underground acts around, how would you say you guys stand out?
T: Sometimes you gotta grab a chair and stand up on the chair and
make more noise than everybody else. I don't like bright colors to stand out but I'll stand on top of something. But also, just being yourself helps you stand out because no one's you.
K: Maybe we don't stand out. I don't know. That's for someone looking at us to say. It remains to be seen. People always tells us that we don't look like rappers. We’re trying to create a space for us to be ourselves in.
DX: "Good People" stands out on the LP. Who are some good people you hear on the radio nowadays?
K: I don't know anybody who gets played on the radio. That song good people is about actual people that I know or meet in real life who surprise me by being decent or helpful. Sometimes New York can feel like a cold place where every one's out for themselves. All these anti-human, money-hungry, nihilistic vampires running around trying to consume each other’s bullshit. The good people are my actual friends who allow me freedom from a fear of not having money. I don't have to worry about money because I have a safety net of friends and family. If I was in need, they would help me because they know I would do the same for them. Also I want to shout out Jah-C from The Project who appears on that song, and is one of the goodest people I know.
T: I also don't know any good people on the radio.
K: I'm sure if you met some of those artists on the radio in real
life they would be good people. Even the ones who seem like they wouldn't be by the shit they talk about on their records. A lot of them are probably really nice guys.
T: Sonny Barger, a leader from the Hell's Angels motorcycle gang, once said in a speech: "Ninety-nine percent of motorcycle riders are decent, law abiding citizens, fuck them, we're the one percent." I too feel like I only identify with one percent of the population. Not motorcyclists, I mean the world in general. I think I'd really like to hang out with Andre 3000. He seems like a real interesting person.
DX: What were some of your influences growing up?
T: Not getting beat up. Not getting my bike stolen. Stealing bikes. Beating people up. Graffiti. Carhart jackets. Rap Tapes with explicit lyrics that my parents would confiscate from me. And De La Soul.
K: I was heavily influenced by the indie Hip Hop stuff that started coming out in the mid-'90s: [Company Flow], Fondle 'Em, Stones Throw, Quannum, early Rawkus stuff. But I don't mean just musically. I was
already into Hip Hop and writing my little rhymes. I mean that it gave me the crazy idea that I could make music. The do it yourself spirit of those records were in stark contrast to the huge over-sized hyped
up corporate mega-stars of today. You can make art without money behind it - and it can be even better than the big-budget bullshit.
DX: There's a lot of diversity here. What influenced the recording of the self-titled LP?
K: We were living in a terrible concrete space. It was me, Tone, Scott Thorough, Probe, two pit-bulls and Rotti, and a bunch of random people would always be staying with us. It really felt like a flop house. We tried to make it nice. We even put a palm tree in there next to one of the three small windows. But the place was just full of sheetrock dust and garbage and weird things we found on the street. People kept moving in and out. We were trying to help some junkies and ner-do wells get on their feet. It felt very stark at times. I'm glad we went through that period though. We shut that place down shortly after we had the record in the can and signed with Embedded.
DX: You're about to go on tour. Where are you headed and who are you rolling with?
T: We're headed all the way across the county. We're actually on tour right now and we're rolling with A-PlusKnowbody and from Heiroglyphics, Junk Science from our crew Nuclear Family, Bukue One,
Devin the Dude, and Del. Right now we're in a hotel in Lexington, Kentucky on some real do-it-yourself shit. Making homemade CD covers for dollar CD's of exclusive joints to sell at the show tonight for kids who are too broke to buy the real CD. So they can take something home with them too. Because that's the most important thing for us about being on tour - That these kids get to know us.
DX: If someone has never heard of you, what would you say to make them want to listen?
K: I like the soft-sell. I'm not into heavy self-promotion. If you're reading this you should check our music out because It's always good to go find out about something for yourself instead of just taking somebody else's word for it.
T: I would hand them the CD and tell them it was somebody else that they already like a lot.
DX: What is the biggest difference between the underground and the mainstream music right now?
T: I'd say um....money.
K: Yeah money, cash, hoes.
T: But there definitely are some hoes at underground shows too.
DX: Is there a way to bridge the gap?
T: I'm sure there is. I'm sure some dickhead businessman can figure out a way to do that. I'm sure somebody's doing it right now. But I don't think that's a good thing. It would be like taking a homemade recipe and using it in a chain restaurant. There's no reason to do that.
K: It takes work to search for cool interesting music. Those who want it will go and find out about it for themselves. Lazy people just consume what is made easily available. In the end everyone gets what they want out of life.
Cunninlynguists: The Dirty South’s Other Side
Since the release of their critically acclaimed Will Rap for Food, the Cunninlynguists have been garnering support in the underground. As time has passed, this support has grown and flourished. With the release of Dirty Acres, a new member officially on the team and more on the way, the Cunninlynguists sat down to speak with HipHopDX about everything from the dirty south to underground struggles.
HipHopDX: Cunninlynguists are on the way up around the world. Can you explain how things are when you go over seas and the way Hip-Hop is over there?
Deacon: The U.S. pays with respect. Overseas pays with money and love. But the grind is the same. We try to give our all regardless of what stage we're on.
Kno: People outside of the U.S. like what they like, that’s why a group like us can thrive. If they like it, they listen to it. In the U.S. too many people are caught up in celebrity and connections to make listening decisions for them selves. In the U.S. you have to be visible in the coolest magazines, on the coolest websites, on the best tours and co-signed by the biggest names or you have a long, hard road to travel trying to be successful no matter the quality of music you make. Not just speaking from a musical standpoint, but sometimes I'm unsure if the majority of Americans are able to think for themselves anymore, but they'll sure as hell put a shit-sandwich on their Visa if Paris Hilton is peddling it.
DX: You guys have an interesting name. Where'd it come from?
Kno: It was more of a joke name for a non-serious recording situation. We messed around and made some music a lot of people loved. Oops.
D: From out our ass. It came from the land of naivety. We had no idea that our music was gonna go as far as it has...if so we woulda picked a name that a six-year old could spell.
DX: The south gets so much hate. How do you guys counter that with your music and how do you view the south in general?
D: I love the south. It made me who I am, but I hate what we've done with our 15 minutes of fame. The dirty south became the synthesized south. We grew up listening to the music that made people interested in this
region in the first place. But once we got their full attention we acted like monkeys. It's cool though. I think the south is dope enough to bring that real shit back and shine some more.
K: Let’s be honest, rap music gets a lot of hate in general right now...and maybe deservedly so. I'm hard-pressed to find any redeeming value in some of the stuff that comes out nowadays. At least when N.W.A. or Geto Boys or Paris or Sister Soulja told me they were showing me a side of their lives that was honest but vulgar and that was the reason the music needed to be so uncut and raw, it was believable because the imagery of violence and all was balanced with statements about life and politics and movement. Now we have gangster rappers that kill 300 people in one song but never leave their gated communities and vote Republican. I have no fucking idea what’s going on here right now.
DX: You get so much publicity and acclaim from critics but that doesn't always translate to sales. How has that been and are album sales a huge part of what you are seeking in the long run?
D: I just feel that we haven't had the sales because we haven't had the proper push from a label. Freshchest just didn't have the manpower and the L.A. underground just didn't have the brains.
K: If you're basing your success as an artist on album sales in 2007 you will be a broken man in no time flat. If you're in it for money, sell ringtones and collect publishing. If you're in it for the art, make a direct connection with your fans and run your business yourself.
DX: I loved the title Will Rap for Food. Everyone knows underground rap isn't all about the bling. Have you guys ever been that low on money, though? If so, what got you all through it?
K: All rap really is for most people is a day-to-day job with some perks. I may not need a nine-to-five but you also shouldn't expect making art to put you in a position to retire at 30.
D: [Laughs] We're not too far removed from Will Rap for Food now. Belief in ourselves gets us through everything.
DX: You guys have worked with so many acts. Who was the best guest to be around?
D: Either Cee-Lo or Devin [the Dude].
K: Devin easily. You'd be surprised, the people like Cee-Lo and Kanye [West] are actually the coolest people to meet and deal with. It’s the indie artists that act like cocks and try and charge you money to jump on mixtapes. People who might be one-fourth as popular as you. It’s actually pretty funny. Underground rappers feel themselves. A lot.
DX: Aside from those you have worked with, who would you like to work with in the future?
K: I'd like to work with anyone who is talented and isn't a complete douchebag. And if they are a douchebag they need to have a budget.
DX: Let's talk about Dirty Acres a little more. Who can we expect to hear on it?
K: The only guests are Big Rube, Devin the Dude, Phonte of Little
Brother, Witchdoctor and Sheisty Khrist vocally. Club Dub plays some live instruments throughout and a pianist named Chizuko Yoshihiro.
D: Real talk. Real soul. Lush beats. We're always growing as human beings and we try to reflect that through our music.
DX: In the long run, where do you guys want to see yourselves in 10 years?
D: Producing within all genres of music and hopefully still droppin' albums.
K: Making a living off of production and music, being married with kids and trying to be happy.
DX: Finally, some people may not know about you or your crew. What would you tell them to enlighten them?
K: If you judge our music by our name or any pre-concieved notion you might have, you are making a horrible mistake that simply dedicating 45 minutes of your life to one of our records can solve. We're fucking dope. There's a reason that, after six years, you keep hearing our name pop up over and over. It isn't by accident. With a name like this, if we were even mediocre we'd be long gone by now.
D: Go to www.Dirtyacres.com and buy our new album...everything I wanna tell you for now can be found within those 15 tracks.
Iller Than Theirs: Money, Cash, Hoes
HipHopDX: Iller Than Theirs...Where'd the name come from?
Tone: It was toss up between that and "Kevin Bacon Survival Camp" and we settled it with a pig race. "Kevin Bacon Survival Camp" was a close second.
Kray: I can't help but smile when people ask me what the name of my group is. It's such a dope name. When people repeat it, to see if they got it right, as they often do, I say: "yeah, as in: It's like being Ill but even more so"
DX: For those who don't know-How would you describe your sound?
T: Kind of like a cross between LeTigre and LaCoste; an Alligator/Tiger; all Terrain and it will bite you.
K: Hobo-fresh or boxcar pimping. or like anything dirty but beautiful.
DX: There is a stereotype that underground emcees can write ill lyrics but cannot flow. How do you guys respond to such naysayers?
K: That's true probably. Most stereotypes have reasons for existing. We've got a lot of stereotypes working for or against us. I don't mind their existence. I really enjoy defying expectations.
T:There's also a stereotype that Asian people are bad drivers but Speedracer was supposed to be Asian. so how you figure that? But to answer your question there are a lot of wack motherfuckers in both the
underground and in the mainstream and a lot of fans of both tend to be closed-minded. Which they shouldn't be because there are a lot of dope motherfuckers in both. So basically: you're not any less of a man if
you don't pull the trigger - you're not necessarily a man if you do.
DX: How do you guys work? Do the beats come before the lyrics or do the lyrics come before the production?
T: The beats come first for me and they are very carefully hand-picked but lines and thoughts come to me as I'm going through my day and get jotted down and those come before the beat.
K: I'd like to quickly big up J. Howells Werthman who handledalmost all of the production on the album. The sound he developed for this record had an effect on how I wrote lyrics. The content and what I wrote came from conversations I had with tone and concepts and themes we continue to discuss and come back to when we are talking about life. But when I write, I write to a specific beat. I put the words together as decoration for this existing piece of music. The beat is not just a blank canvas it's a full painting with colors and shapes and I'm just putting text and voices on top of that.
DX: With so many underground acts around, how would you say you guys stand out?
T: Sometimes you gotta grab a chair and stand up on the chair and
make more noise than everybody else. I don't like bright colors to stand out but I'll stand on top of something. But also, just being yourself helps you stand out because no one's you.
K: Maybe we don't stand out. I don't know. That's for someone looking at us to say. It remains to be seen. People always tells us that we don't look like rappers. We’re trying to create a space for us to be ourselves in.
DX: "Good People" stands out on the LP. Who are some good people you hear on the radio nowadays?
K: I don't know anybody who gets played on the radio. That song good people is about actual people that I know or meet in real life who surprise me by being decent or helpful. Sometimes New York can feel like a cold place where every one's out for themselves. All these anti-human, money-hungry, nihilistic vampires running around trying to consume each other’s bullshit. The good people are my actual friends who allow me freedom from a fear of not having money. I don't have to worry about money because I have a safety net of friends and family. If I was in need, they would help me because they know I would do the same for them. Also I want to shout out Jah-C from The Project who appears on that song, and is one of the goodest people I know.
T: I also don't know any good people on the radio.
K: I'm sure if you met some of those artists on the radio in real
life they would be good people. Even the ones who seem like they wouldn't be by the shit they talk about on their records. A lot of them are probably really nice guys.
T: Sonny Barger, a leader from the Hell's Angels motorcycle gang, once said in a speech: "Ninety-nine percent of motorcycle riders are decent, law abiding citizens, fuck them, we're the one percent." I too feel like I only identify with one percent of the population. Not motorcyclists, I mean the world in general. I think I'd really like to hang out with Andre 3000. He seems like a real interesting person.
DX: What were some of your influences growing up?
T: Not getting beat up. Not getting my bike stolen. Stealing bikes. Beating people up. Graffiti. Carhart jackets. Rap Tapes with explicit lyrics that my parents would confiscate from me. And De La Soul.
K: I was heavily influenced by the indie Hip Hop stuff that started coming out in the mid-'90s: [Company Flow], Fondle 'Em, Stones Throw, Quannum, early Rawkus stuff. But I don't mean just musically. I was
already into Hip Hop and writing my little rhymes. I mean that it gave me the crazy idea that I could make music. The do it yourself spirit of those records were in stark contrast to the huge over-sized hyped
up corporate mega-stars of today. You can make art without money behind it - and it can be even better than the big-budget bullshit.
DX: There's a lot of diversity here. What influenced the recording of the self-titled LP?
K: We were living in a terrible concrete space. It was me, Tone, Scott Thorough, Probe, two pit-bulls and Rotti, and a bunch of random people would always be staying with us. It really felt like a flop house. We tried to make it nice. We even put a palm tree in there next to one of the three small windows. But the place was just full of sheetrock dust and garbage and weird things we found on the street. People kept moving in and out. We were trying to help some junkies and ner-do wells get on their feet. It felt very stark at times. I'm glad we went through that period though. We shut that place down shortly after we had the record in the can and signed with Embedded.
DX: You're about to go on tour. Where are you headed and who are you rolling with?
T: We're headed all the way across the county. We're actually on tour right now and we're rolling with A-PlusKnowbody and from Heiroglyphics, Junk Science from our crew Nuclear Family, Bukue One,
Devin the Dude, and Del. Right now we're in a hotel in Lexington, Kentucky on some real do-it-yourself shit. Making homemade CD covers for dollar CD's of exclusive joints to sell at the show tonight for kids who are too broke to buy the real CD. So they can take something home with them too. Because that's the most important thing for us about being on tour - That these kids get to know us.
DX: If someone has never heard of you, what would you say to make them want to listen?
K: I like the soft-sell. I'm not into heavy self-promotion. If you're reading this you should check our music out because It's always good to go find out about something for yourself instead of just taking somebody else's word for it.
T: I would hand them the CD and tell them it was somebody else that they already like a lot.
DX: What is the biggest difference between the underground and the mainstream music right now?
T: I'd say um....money.
K: Yeah money, cash, hoes.
T: But there definitely are some hoes at underground shows too.
DX: Is there a way to bridge the gap?
T: I'm sure there is. I'm sure some dickhead businessman can figure out a way to do that. I'm sure somebody's doing it right now. But I don't think that's a good thing. It would be like taking a homemade recipe and using it in a chain restaurant. There's no reason to do that.
K: It takes work to search for cool interesting music. Those who want it will go and find out about it for themselves. Lazy people just consume what is made easily available. In the end everyone gets what they want out of life.
