Nostalgialator saw a return to your punk influences, though you were still working from a primary base of hip-hop. You sing on this album in addition to the rhyming and spoken word elements. It’s also the album that alternately experiments with conventional and highly abstract rhythms. When I listen to this album, I can sense the widening of those experimental perimeters, but I also hear a lot of frustration; it’s one of your most abrasive records. What was going on at the time when you were recording Nostalgialator?
The frustration you hear is (just to put things in chronological order): Right after Welcome to the Afterfuture, I was approached by Big Dada (Ninja Tune’s hip-hop division) and I did the Infesticons album (late 2000). Vijay Iyer reached out to me that same year, and we started working on In What Language (2001). Somewhere in there, I put out the EP Vernacular Homicide, and then in ’03 I did the Majesticons record. For a lot of that time I was still adjusting at Long Island University (where I was an adjunct professor) and touring.
I remember the dean of the English department leaving a message on my phone during the middle of the semester: “Mike, somebody told me you are in Scotland. Please tell me you’re not in Scotland.” I’d covered my bases, and he was pretty understanding. In ’96 I was hospitalized for drugs, and by November 2001 I was finally in recovery and have been so since. Anyway, none of this is an excuse for an admittedly disjointed record, but frustration is definitely the adjective.
But two things really stood out for me at that time:
One: Me in the process of moving. I had just put my record collection, toys, and gear into a blank white van to ship to France as I was moving in with my future wife. Suddenly I wasn’t in the Bronx anymore. I wasn’t really living near my friends who had provided such valuable feedback. I was either on tour or in this nuts-love bubble with my now wife in Paris, couch-surfing on my old couch – but it wasn’t my place anymore.
Two: Underground hip-hop in crisis
Negrophilia was inspired by the book by Petrine Archer-Straw and focuses heavily on jazz influences. It is also an extension of the themes in Archer-Straw’s book, detailing the history of appropriation of black culture in Paris in the earlier part of the 20th century. The album marked a clear deviation from much of your material and would set you on a path that had you exploring more jazz elements in your work. I know you are also a professor of English/literature. How much of your work as a professor dictated the direction you took on this album
This record was my commentary on my move to Paris and Archer-Straw’s book was a blessing during that move. I wanted to be clear that I did not move to Paris for artistic purposes, in the tradition of Wright, Baldwin, Dexter Gordon, Baker, etc…If I were following their great tradition in 2004 or now, I would have moved to Lagos, Sao Paulo, Mumbai, Johannesburg, etc.
What made Paris so exciting in the early/mid 20th century was this intense combustion of old-world methods colliding into brand new technologies. Back then the City of Light still had open sewage in some neighborhoods. That combustion is happening in the cities mentioned above and elsewhere now. As well, being my mother’s son dictated the direction of this album; she is probably why I taught as well.
Father Divine would be the last album recorded individually as a solo artist and under your own name before you would record joint efforts with Vijay Iyer and other artists. Father Divine sees a return to the stronger hip-hop leanings of Afterfuture. It’s not exactly a “party record”, but it seems a step toward a more hedonistic variance of hip-hop. What are some things you can say about this final album recorded as a solo work?
Well, I had been working with Vijay since 2000 and that influence had been insinuating itself since Nostalgialator and Ambrose Akamuse and Dana Leong played horns on Nostalgialator. I also did a solo EP in 2012 called Kids and Animals and in 2010 I did the last Infesticons Record. Father Divine was the first record I really made 100% in France. I worked with an engineer named Gymkhana (Fernando Ferer) and, like Fred Ones, Scotty Hard and Dennis Kelley, he also functioned as co-producer/sounding board.
My band up until then had been Jaleel Bunton on guitar and Damali Young on drums. We had been touring a fair amount and I was thinking about stuff I liked to play live. That had been the impetus for Nostalgialator as well. But I think I was more settled in the idea by Father Divine. I also wanted to return to some of the vibe of my first two records.
To be honest, making records in France was not easy at that point because I did not have the same band of ears. I missed the critical listeners that were my friends in New York. Back there I’d make beats in the Bronx all day, go across the street and play them for Rob, Fred and whoever was at the studio, then bike downtown, play them for Duane and Daniel Giviens at Other Music, then go to Max Fish or Vaugn and play them for whoever would listen to my headphones there. That could be Jaleel, Shannon, Beans, Creature or EL-P. I had this crazy set of listeners whose musical tastes I trusted.
In France, I didn’t have that and I didn’t really foster that because instead of going out a lot I was learning how to be a husband and a father. So I had Gymkhana. And that was it, with one exception: Dave Stzanke (aka Tahiti Boy) replaced Jaleel when he went to join TV on the Radio. He was the most positive dude in Paris and he was a big help as well. Somehow, with all those changes, I was pretty happy with how that record turned out. Making a record on the ROIR label was inspiring in its own right and Lucas who was running it was very cool throughout the deal.
Following Father Divine, there is a whole stretch where you collaborated with numerous artists. You also moved to Paris from the States. You made series of albums, including Still Life With Commentator, Anarchist Republic of Bzzz and Holding it Down: The Veteran’s Dream Project. These albums edge away from your work in hip-hop toward more abstract designs, usually with jazz. As you continue to explore these roads in music (moving further away from your previous hip-hop influences), what are your thoughts and ideas about how hip-hop is developing with other artists?
Yeah, so I started slipping in the jazz hole deep when I moved to Paris. It made sense at the time. I was married, had a kid, and when we did the shows with Vijay, they were these big operatic affairs with sets etc… I am the Librettist on those projects. It made me feel like my Master’s degree was paying off. Good food and hotels make a difference.
It also allowed me to expand creatively and I was thinking about what type of venues and music I wanted to be playing when I was 70. I figure I might as well start laying the groundwork for some of that now, even if I return to more electronic stuff in the interim. Of course, those are not always the conditions and that’s where the charm wears off.
The principal issue is I decided to put my family above all else. In France, I was able to still make a living doing all kinds of different projects and keep my family the priority. I’m not sure if I could have remained so diverse in the states. I’ve done some pretty kooky shit since moving here and there was even a time when I lost my compass for good and bad music; that was surreal. I had been such a music snob growing up. Then I moved to a country where the bigot in me decided all the music sucked and like all bigotry, it eventually led me to being lost at sea (French children’s songs can do a number on you though).
But for all the stuff I did that didn’t sweep me off my feet, I have had some incredible music experiences here. Amazing improvised music. I’ve played with David Murray here, and I got to play with Archie Shepp several times and work on his film about Attica Blues. There is a long list of esoteric stuff I’ve done here that I’m proud of and a shortlist that I wish never happened. You can find both on YouTube, I’m sure.
You live in Paris now; how do you view the music that is being made in Paris (hip-hop or otherwise), and what kind of influences are you picking up there in your own work? What new works do you have coming up in the future?
I live in central Paris because my wife has had a place there for decades, but I didn’t feel really comfortable living in Paris until I got a studio in Saint-Denis. It’s a suburb that feels like Brooklyn and the Bronx mashed up in a small space. It’s a neighborhood that reveals the truly international nature of Paris that makes it interesting in the same way that London, New York, Los Angeles, Sao Paolo, etc. is interesting because everybody is there. I need a kind of environmental mixtape to be inspired (like most artists these days, I assume). Saint-Denis has that.
When I made Welcome to the Afterfuture and the first two Majesticons records in the Bronx, the noise outside is what fuelled those records. My upstairs neighbor played nothing but Jay Z; downstairs was a Mexican Evangelical church with screaming sermons, my neighbors blasted everything from merengue, salsa, dancehall, reggaeton, and house to Hot 97 through my window. I needed all that. Saint-Denis doesn’t have all that, but it’s got the latest from Algeria, West Africa, and the Antilles mixed with the French version of Hot 97 playing somewhere, and I need that.
I live off overheard radio as much as digging in crates. Soundcloud and Spotify still itch but that’s where the crates are these days. I like DJs and local ads.