Talib Kweli Interview

Below is the interview I just conducted with Talib Kweli. I asked him a lot of the same questions that I asked Jean Grae here and Pharoahe Monch here. It’ll be helpful to aspiring rappers, big hip hop fans, and new fans too. I ask him how he writes his rhymes, what advice he can give to starting rappers, and more. Enjoy!

Composer’s Corner: You grew up in a household with some professors in it. For instance, your mom is an English professor at Medgar Evers College, and your dad was an administrator at Adelphi University. What is your formal education history of music like? Have you ever taken piano lessons or anything like that?

Talib Kweli: I think I played a recorder in junior high school. At one point for like a month I took guitar lessons from a kid in my high school. I didn’t really learn shit though. Then there was a movie a couple years ago that never got made but that I got a part for. I played a drummer. I took about 4 months of drum lessons to make it look it real.

Composer’s Corner: It sounds like none of these impacted the rapper and musician you are today because those experiences were scattershot.

Talib Kweli: Those things were just things I tried. I can’t say I learned a whole lot. If anything what I know musically from rapping I probably brought to those things more than the other way around.

Composer’s Corner: Did you have anyone in particular who helped you learn the basics of rap, saying, “This is how you count beats, this is how you count bars,” stuff like that?

Talib Kweli: I approach music from a very intellectual standpoint. I’m not saying that to brag. I’m just saying I don’t feel like I’m necessarily as naturally talented at it as some of my favorite musicians. I think that’s what the interesting about Black Star always was, with Mos Def. I can write really well. But Mos Def is more organic. Even in the way we recorded. When we were recording with Black Star, I’d have to take the beat and listen to it for a while, for a couple weeks, before I was like, “Okay, I’m ready.” And then write it down on the paper. Mos would just hear it and start saying things.

Composer’s Corner: What is your compositional process? You were getting into it a little bit. You always have the beat first and you listen to it for a while before you know what you want to do?

Talib Kweli: That was back then, and I’ve evolved and changed and tried different things over the years. When I first started listening to Hip Hop, I didn’t really listen in an investing way to Hip Hop until like 1987, 1988. Groqwing up in New York you hear it. I knew Run-D.M.C. and Beastie Boys, but I didn’t really listen to Hip Hop. When I got to junior high school is when I started listening to Hip Hop, because that’s what all the kids were listening to. As soon as I started listening to it I started writing my own rhymes and I’d give them to kids in my neighborhood who were already rappers. I was already writing plays and poetry. I was definitely a gifted writer when I was young, so the writing was there. But it was the musicality of it that I had to come to learn. So when I first started rapping, when I gained the confidence to rap under my own name, what I would do is I’d have composition notebooks full of rhymes. Just full of rhymes. And when I started meeting producers as a teenager, and going into studios for the first time, I would try to say these rhymes to established beats. And I think that’s where my style developed from. To say rhymes that were already written with a syncopation in my head or written with a rhythm in my head and try to fit them to different beats. And over the years I’ve really gotten out of that habit and I’ve developed a habit where I want to hear the beat and the rhymes come directly out of the beat. As soon as I hear a beat, rhyme s start popping into my head, and I’m like, “Okay, I like that beat.”

Composer’s Corner: Yours is the first case of a rapper I’ve talked to who said that they write the rhymes first, and then get the beat. And you think that’s where your style developed from? Because some of the rhythms you use are so crazy, and no other rapper is out there doing the same thing. You fit 5 syllables to a beat, or sometimes 6 to a beat.

Talib Kweli: That’s exactly it./ That’s exactly the inspiration. I had all these rhymes that were written a certain way. And then I would hear beats I would like, and I would literally try to fit them. You hear that and you read that as a severe criticism. You’re talking about it as something that’s interesting musically and I appreciate that. That’s something that’s been said about my style that people have said that they love and people say that they loathe. And for me, I’m glad that I learned that way. It makes my style unique. I feel like that’s what makes my style unique. I take comfort in something that Bob Dylan once said. He was like, ”When I go to a concert, I’m not going to sing along, or I’m not going because I can do what the artist on stage can do. I’m going to see them do something I can’t do. So when I go, I want to watch a virtuoso performance, per se.” And when he said that, it struck me. I was like, “Okay, that’s where I’m at artistically.” So while I still make music these days where I go in and out of that style, so sometimes I stay more static and rap to the beat when I’m really trying to get a point across. And then I go back into that. As opposed to earlier in my career, it was always like that, because I didn’t have any beats.

Composer’s Corner: So you have the line first, and then fit the rhythms to that line? You have the text first, and then you come up with the rhythms for it?

Talib Kweli: That’s how it started. Nowadays, it’s honestly married. I think about things in couplets. Rhymes pop in my head as I’m watching TV or walking down the street.

Composer’s Corner: So you’re constantly coming up with rhymes?

Talib Kweli: Yeah.

Composer’s Corner: The couplet form is far and away from the raps that you see earlier in your career. Did it take you a while to come back to this easier and simpler form to rap in? Do you start with the couplet and build off that?

Talib Kweli: Now, I come up with a bunch of couplets. And when they start making sense together, then I’ll write them down on my phone or piece of paper. Then it’s coming together. You know how you exercise a muscle and it becomes second nature? At this point creating music and getting the music from the stage of a thought in my head and to onto a record to onto a stage where I’m performing it, I see all of that at the same time now. When I was writing as a teenager at 13 or 14 years old, and this it what made my style develop, there was no outlet. There was no knowledge, there was no understanding of how anyone was gonna hear this. Now, I write with more experience, more resources, more urgency. Like, “Okay, I can get this out. I can shoot a video.” But back then, I was just writing for other writers only. I had a real interesting experience with Def Poetry Jam. My writing when I first started was intricate enough that I could go to a spoken word event and rap. And it people would take it the same as an ill spoken word piece. But when I got to do Def Poetry Jam by the time Black Star came out and Mos Def was a little famous and we could be on TV doing this, I froze up. Because I had been stuck in writing 16 bar raps for a couple years. And I had fallen out of the habit of being loose with the pen and writing these long, loquacious, multisyllabic rhymes. And I didn’t have anything that I felt like I could offer. And that’s sort of where “Lonely People” came from. The style that I rap on “Lonely People,” which is a record that I don’t think ever came out, thatr was like me trying to get back to that intricacy. That is a part of what I do.

Composer’s Corner: Early on, you didn’t have access to beats and styuff like thast. Some people, like you were saying before, would use that as a criticism. But you see that as something essential in the development of your personal, unique, signature style of loquaciousness?

Talib Kweli: Without a doubt. Of course there was the influence of my parents, how my parents raised me. They taught me what they taught me, and taking me to museums and libraries every weekend. That has had a huge impact on my style, my parents and the household that I came from in Brooklyn. But if we’re just talking technique, that’s where the technique comes from.

Composer’s Corner: Say you’re watching TV and coming up with couplets, like you were saying before, and you write it on your phone. When you come back to it later to work on that rap, how do you remember what the rhythm was in the first place? Do you write it down with spaces or slashes to indicate rhythms?

Talib Kweli: That’s what I was talking about, with the muscle memory. At this point, if I write it down, I can remember the rhythms.

Composer’s Corner: You’ve got such a complex style. Do sometimes consciously dial it back to make the message more straightforward for the listener?

Talib Kweli: Not so much to make the message. I never dial it back for the message, but I do dial it back for the musicality. Sometimes, it’s like Evidence, who’s a great producer-rapper, he said, “It’s not where you place your rhymes, it’s where you don’t.” Sometimes that’s true. Sometimes spaces are gorgeous. You need space, and you need time for the music to breathe.

Composer’s Corner: Can you think of the time when your style changed from not having the beats until after you write the rap to having the beats before you write the rap? It seems like you had that former style until at least through the debut Black Star album, Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star.

Talib Kweli: Definitely, definitely. John Forte was probably my biggest influence musically-wise, Hip Hop-wise. Here’s a guy from the neighborhood who knew all the rappers in the industry because he just went out a lot and was very ambitious. He was a very talented rapper back then. Me and him were kind of a group, partnered together. We never had no beats. And instead of waiting on people to give us beats, Jpohn Forte learned how to make beats. And to this day, his learning how to make beats and play the guitar has been his saving grace. It’s carried him through life. He learned how to make beats, so my first beats I got were from John Forte and people around him. You asked earlier who taught me how to count bars, it was John Forte. He was like, “You’re rapping too much, you have to count bars. This is where the hook goes. Songs have a format.” I didn’t know any of that. Me and him are the exact same age. We met freestyling in Washington Park. We both went to boarding schools. We graduated the same year. We became roommates at NYU. But when we became roommates at NYU, while I went to theatre school, he spent one week at NYU and went and said, “I’m going to do music for a living.” And he dropped out.

Composer’s Corner: That seems to be a theme with your crew. I think Jean Grae did the same thing, she dropped out of NYU after she realized she already knew everything about the music business that they were going to teach her.

Talib Kweli: Yeah. Do you know how far back I go with Jean?

Composer’s Corner: I think I found out about Jean through you, but didn’t realize it went back that far.

Talib Kweli: Well, I knew Jean before I knew John Forte. When I met Jean Grae I was 14-years old. She wasn’t rapping publicly. She was just Tsidi, the girl we used to hang out with in the village. Then she started rapping. I can’t say whether she just started rapping or if she just started rapping in public. But she was really, really, really, really extra good. Those rhyme ciphers I was talking about in Washington Park, she was there. She was there for all of that.

Composer’s Corner: So is it only recently that your relationship with her has become more professional? For instance, she was on your label, and you guys started showing up on each other’s songs.

Talib Kweli: Jean is like a real New York city kid. She wasn’t just into Hip Hop, she was into all the underground music that was coming out of New York at the time. There was a trance scene, and an electronic scene, and a rave scene, and house music. Jean was doing all of that, where I was just doing Hip Hop. Jean kind of disappeared off the scene for a minute around the time when I was hanging out with John Forte actually. Then she came back around. People started putting out independent records. There was this crib on Clinton in Brooklyn, in Clinton Hills, where it was like OT, and Aggie, and Bad Seed, and Jean Grae, and Pumpkinhead, and everybody would be at this one crib making music. And Jean was the break-out all of that. She was making tracks under the name Run Run Shaw . She had ill raps. The group was called Natural Resources, and they were performing all around the city. They were developing a buzz. Jean started developing a buzz actually before I started developing a buzz.

Composer’s Corner: I didn’t realize that. I always thought it was funny, that four of my top five rappers have close relationships with each other, both personally and professionally. That’s you, Jean, Pharoahe, and Mos Def. How did you get to know them?

Talib Kweli: When Jean started making records and popping off, and becoming Jean Grae, developing the style she’s with now, that’s when I was on Rawkus. So we were part of the same scene, but it was different crews. Years later, when my manager and I, Corey Smith, came with the idea of doing Black Smith Music, we started talking about artists. And the first artist I mentioned was Jean Grae. I didn’t know he was aware of Jean Grae. And not only was he aware of Jean Grae — as you know, she likes to go out to party and drink — but Jean was one of his drinking buddies. They would party together often. I kneow her from Washington Square park, and Hip Hop shit. And he knew her, like, “Oh, that’s the girl I hang out with all the time.” Me and Corey both were like, “Okay, yeah, Jean is perfect for blacksmith.” I had been trying to get Jean on a song. Jean Grae jumped on “Black Girl Pain”, but I had tried to get Jean on Black Star. She was just doing her own thing. But she jumped on “Black Girl Pain,” and me and Corey get the label, that’s when we were like, “Jean Grae.” So that developed into my real friendship with Jean. Me and Jean were really good friends when we were 14, 15, and then we didn’t hang out for years. And then we became close again, years later.

Composer’s Corner: A lot of discussion in Hip Hop is over flow: what it is, who has it, and stuff like that. If you had to define it, what would you say? And how do you create good flow?

Talib Kweli: Flow for Hip Hop is like improvisation for jazz. Everyone has a different style. You have Miles, you have John Coltrane, and they have their own signature horn style, and that’s what your flow is like. The beat can remain the same or the beat can change, but your flow is how you interpret the beat. For me, the more free and loose I am, the better I flow. It’s something that you can overdo, or it’s something that you can not pay attention to. My flow has developed over time. I personally feel like right now in my career, over the past 4 or 5 years, I’ve been flowing the best of my career. Definitely. I would argue anybody down and play records. I would say, “Listen to my flow on this. Listen to it.” I feel like I’m becoming a master of my style, and I’ve experimented with a lot of different flows. A lot of different ones.

Composer’s Corner: Is rap more poetry, melody, or is it when you combine both together?

Talib Kweli: It’s all of that. It’s definitely when you combine all of that together. There are rappers who I love, that I’m scared of, like, “Damn, that motherfucker can flow. Damn, he can rap.” But they’ve never made a song I like. I wouldn’t go as far to name them.

Composer’s Corner: You’re saying that it never came together, the flow working well with the beat?

Talib Kweli: Yeah. You hear somebody and you recognize the talent, and you’re like, “Wow, that person can really rap. Wow, if they could just figure out what beat to flow on and how to make a song, it would be dope.” I’m aware enough of myself as an artist to know that there’s people who feel that way about me. There’s people who feel like “Get By” is my only good song, and I don’t pick good beats. I would beg to differ. But there’s people who feel like that, and there’s people who feel like that about me as well.

Composer’s Corner: So does every rapper have their own unique flow? And the question is how to make it fit to a certain beat and how to express yourself in a way that makes sense?

Talib Kweli: I’m saying that’s how it should be, and that’s what the best rappers do. There are flows that get popular. There was a Jadakiss flow that got popular. You know whose flow has gotten extremely popular lately? Chief Keef. The whole industry started rapping like that. There’s certain flows that get popular and people run with them. Definitely, Das EFX had one of the more popular flows.

Composer’s Corner: You were saying you flow the best when you’re free with it. Do you mean with where your place your rhymes, how long your sentences are, the words you use, or stuff like that?

Talib Kweli: All of that, but also how relaxed it is. Even if it’s a loud beat and an aggressive rhyme, the more relaxed I am when I’m performing it, it just flows better. It melds into the track better.

Composer’s Corner: I can’t think of a real specific song where you go hype on some shit, like DMX would.

Talib Kweli: There’s records that are certainly louder. “Human Mic,” on my new album that just came out, called Prisoner of Conscious. “Feel the Rush,” from my album Quality. There’s certain records. “We Got The Beat.” But yeah, you’re right. I would actually like to do that more. With Idol Warship, my collaboration with Res, I got to do different things flow-wise and vocally that I would have hesitated to do on a solo project.

Composer’s Corner: If you were to give advice to a starting rapper on how to be a better rapper, what would you say?

Talib Kweli: I would say study the greats. Study those albums. Great art is a collage. There’s nothing wrong with taking a bit of Jay-Z, taking a bit of Nas, taking a bit of Scarface, taking a bit of Ice Cube, taking a bit of whoever. Then, find an artistic community. Try to find one that’s live in the flesh, but definitely find one online. Soundcloud, Tumblr, wherever. Find an artistic community of people you can bounce ideas off of. That you can go rap to, and they can kick a rhyme to you that’s better than your shit that makes you go, “Oh, I got to go back to the lab.”

Composer’s Corner: What are some of those great albums you would say to check out?

Talib Kweli: Definitely Reasonable Doubt or Illmatic. Those to me are the giants of cohesive albums with incredible flows and lyrics. There’s also Main Source’s album, Breaking Atoms. The early KRS-One album. With Boogie Down Productions, called BY All Means Necessary. The Blueprint. Those things are dope. A lot of the Nas albums. Nas albums definitely. Jay-Z albums. The Kendrick Lamar album that just came out, where as a lyricist you’re like, “Holy fuck.”

Composer’s Corner: Do you see anything knew on that album that could move rap in a new direction, with his flow or any of that?

Talib Kweli: What’s interesting about him is that he has a flow that is very much part of his crew’s flow. Sometimes I hear in Kendrick aspects of Ab-Soul, aspects of ScHoolboy Q, aspects of Jay Rock, and sometimes in their music I hear aspects of him. But everybody’s still got their own thing. And I like that. That’s what I mean about having an artistic community. When you hear them do a flow that’s similar, oit’s clear that it’s because thjey’ve spent a lot of time together. And everybody has their own interpretation of it. And that’s what makes them greta. Those guys lyrically man, you don’t find that since Wu-Tang, where lyrically everybody all have something to offer.

Composer’s Corner: Do you see that kind of mutual influence dynamic working in your crew at all, with Jean or Mos?

Talib Kweli: I consider myself part of a loose knit crew of the best emcees. I consider Black Thought as my crew. Jean Grae, Mos Def, Wordsworth and Punchline, I definitely consider that part of my crew and when you hear me on a record talking about my crew, that’s who I’m talking about.

Composer’s Corner: So kind of like the extended Okayplayer family.

Talib Kweli: Yeah, exactly.

Composer’s Corner: I want to see how your process of rapping works in real time. So I’m going to give you a line that someone else from your crew has rapped, and I want to see what you would do with it next, how you would continue that rap line. Is that cool?

Talib Kweli: Okay, let’s try that.

Composer’s Corner: This is a Pharoahe Monch line. I tried to pick a line that would be similar to what you’d write. I’ll read it, and you can say what rhythm you’d use, or how you’d rhyme next. The line is, “This line will remain in the mind of my foes forever in infamy.”

Talib Kweli: The first thing I would do is find a word, probably a multisyllabic word, that goes with infamy. Something as close to infamy as I could. That’s the first thing I’d do. “Symphony”, is probably the easiest one to pick. I’d think of what “symphony” has to do with that. I always approach it as a writer first. What would symphony have to do witht hat? I’d probably spend some time on it. Symphony…Then I’d say something like, “The words are my instruments, it’s a symphony.” That’s about three-fourths of a couplet, right there: “These lines will remain in the minds of my foes forever in infamy.” That’s most of it taken up, so I only got a little bit left. So my flow would be dependent on that. You know what I’d probably do right there? I’d probably save what I just came up with, “The words are my instruments, it’s a symphony,” and find another word that rhymes with it. Let’s say “mystery”, for the sake of argument. So it’d be, : “These lines will remain in the minds of my foes forever in infamy / They don’t have a clue, it’s a mystery / “The words are my instruments, it’s a symphony.” And maybe add, “When I’m on the mic, I make history.”

Composer’s Corner: That’s actually very similar to what Pharoahe Monch does with that line, which is from the song “No Mercy.” He raps, “This rhyme, will remain in the minds of my foes forever in infamy / The epitome of lyrical epiphanies / Skillfully placed home we carefully plan symphonies.” You can see that he also rhymes on symphony, and actually has the same rhythm for that first line.

Talib Kweli: Maybe that’s just me remembering what he did then, since I’ve heard it before.

Composer’s Corner: True. Let’s try just one more. How about, “Real rhymes, not your everyday hologram.”

Talib Kweli: I’d think about twitter, or instagram, or follow man, but toss that to the side because that’s too easy…I’d probably go with a metaphor about Kevin Bacon as the character Hollow Man from that movie. So something like, “Real rhymes, not your everyday hologram / Can’t see through it, Kevin Bacon, no Hollow Man.”

Composer’s Corner: Damn. Shit man! You can come up with that so quick. That’s what you were saying before, how you see it all. I think of a point guard who sees the whole court and sees stuff develop before anyone else doies.

Talib Kweli: Point guard is a great example. I grew up playing baseball. People say baseball is boring, but the reason people say boring is because the whole time you have to see every possible scenario. And I think that’s helped me in my writing.

Composer’s Corner: Sometimes, I’m not too hot on rappers who seem to write 2 lines and then skip to a different subject. They just seem to have not written one verse all the way through, and just throw together bars willy-nilly until it makes 16.

Talib Kweli: Well, there are some great non-sequitur rappers though. Ghostface, Killah, MF DOOM is probably the greatest. I think there’s a style to it. I think Lil Wayne, to be honest with you,a s very good at it. People get mad at home because he focuses strictly on eating pussy at this point. That’s what it is, it’s not that he can’t do it. But think of how many different ways he’s come up with to tell you that he likes eating pussy.

Composer’s Corner: That alone is impressive.

Talib Kweli: Yeah, pretty impressive. [Laughs]

Composer’s Corner: Actually, that second line I gave you to rap off of was an MF DOOM line, from the song “Vomitspit.” I picked those lines because they reminded me of something you might spit, with longer words and rhymes and stuff like that.

Composer’s Corner: Say you’re in the studio and you’re coming up with your line. How much of the rhythm at the mic when you’re recording is improvised or worked on? Or is it the same take every time?

Talib Kweli: I definitely try different flows. I definitely do, for most of my rhymes. Especially the morewordy ones. Some of them are just straightforward. But for the more wordy rhymes, I try different flows every time until I lock in on one that makes sense. And then I perfect that one.

Composer’s Corner: In the recording process, how much of there is a back and forth between the rap you come up with and the beat the producer has come up with?

Talib Kweli: Truthfully, every song is different. I would definitely say the majority of the time it’s me going through rough, rough beats. Rough soul ideas. Loops, and drum ideas, and stuff like that, and then I’m like, “I like that.” And then getting with the producer and we add stuff to it.

Composer’s Corner: So you’re in on the producing pretty early?

Talib Kweli: I’m in on the process of picking the track early, but producing is adding everything to it. I pick a lot of loops, I pick loops. Like, “Okay, I like that,” then we build on that. To me, the build on top of it is obvious.

Composer’s Corner: Jean Grae had a theory that certain words, and even certain syllables, elicit emotional responses in listeners. Do you feel the same? And do you have a favorite word, like she does?

Talib Kweli: I don’t know if I have a favorite word. I think she’s right, and that’s something that you have to know intuitively.

Rap Analysis - Jean Grae Interview

Jean Grae Interview

            On December 27^th, I had the chance to live out a personal and professional dream of mine when I got to interview rapper legend Jean Grae. Besides from being an extremely genuine and nice person (sorry, does that ruin Style Wars for you?), I can also confirm her work from the “Cookies or Comas” mixtape: she’s funny as shit, and yes, does use the word “fuckery” in every day conversation. However, it was a dream not to be able to express my appreciation, but also being able to ask her the questions that I always wonder about when I approach rap music as a craft: how much of her work is inspiration, and how much comes from actively working on it? What idea comes first: words or rhythm? What do they know of music theory? Hopefully the interview below helps dispel some misconceptions around rap music being a “poor man’s music”, so to speak, because “anyone can rap”, but also it hopes give a window into something that we all, as rap fans, get too little information on: how a rap takes its final form on the record. Thus, my mission was to trace the development of the musical idea from its first conception, through to its editing in the studio, to its final manifestation on the CD. Thus, this interview touches on a little bit of everything. Rather than offer my analysis here, I want to present the interview in as raw a form as possible, and let you make of it for now what you will.

When you generate your rap, how much of what you come up with is inspiration, and how much of what you come up with initially do you have to shape and work on further?

It’s never reworking. There’s only one piece that ever took longer than an hour. I work best completely under pressure. The one song that didn’t work like that was ”you and me and everyone we know.” I try to write beforehand, but it just doesn’t work. I write usually directly before I record, and that’s it. I record a lot of stuff at home in my studio, or if we set a studio date…but yeah, I don’t have a really big process beforehand. My process beforehand is more I need to have a bunch of experiences in life. I never do first draft, second draft. I self-edit as I go along. I write really fast.

How did you, Mos Def, Pharoahe, Talib Kweli, Jean Grae, all 4 extremely technically complicated and accomplished rappers, find each other, and come to have such close personal as well as professional relationships?

I think for myself and Kweli and Mos it was just generally New York. We just kind of knew each other, and it was the same time and era, and we just never stopped being friends…outside of all of the rapping, you’re friends first. Pharoahe I met years ago and I guess we really started to be friends a couple years when I started working with some partnerships with him, and when we started hanging out, we were like, “Oh shit, I know who you are!” I call it finding the other mutants – “Oh man, I know exactly how you think!” But in a good way. But people who see me writing and creatively generally come the same way…so that’s how I look at it. We do hang a lot, but mostly we are never coming up with amazing raps. When you write, and I think as frequently as all of us write, all of that hanging out and experiences is exactly what goes into the rhymes, not happenstance, not random – it’s your experiences, what you heard, where you’ve just been. It’s absolutely all in there.

If you had to compare yourself to another rapper, who’d you pick?

I think Pharoahe and myself…we’re really different, but technically we focus on the same thing. I think we approach it in different ways, we’re really meticulous about using rhythms and patterns and words…I’m more word focused, and I think he’s more kind of rhythmically focused, just phrasing-wise, there’s shit I don’t think I could come up with.

What is your compositional process? Do you have a schedule, or do you just write as it comes along?

I absolutely set up a schedule, but whether or not I’m sitting there writing music? Hahaha…sometimes it happens, but usually not.  Something I wouldn’t have done before, I set aside time: “These are my hours when I’ll focus on this project or this project.” I can do a lot of organizing beforehand, but the writing seems like the smallest part to me. Sitting down and saying everything about the album is one thing…but it never happens until it’s the last second and I have to hand it in. My brain doesn’t get that spark until I’m under the gun.

When you start writing, do you start with words or music?

I don’t think that they’re different. I don’t separate the rhythm from the actual word. The word is exactly what is creating the timing…I guess I look at them as beats and notes in themselves. So I’m very conscious of what sort of patterns feel right…and you know it’s the best rhyme when you’re fucking the beat. You’re not competing, you’re not lying somewhere there, you’re getting in there, finding all the spaces where you’re supposed to be. It’s choosing the right words…the first idea, the one I always have and that takes the most time, is the opening line. And it all grows from there…there are people who are absolute masters at writing opening lines, that’s what you want, that’s how you know a song, that’s how it goes…Prodigy [from Mobb Deep]. Might be my favorite. There are so many fucking great ones…and when you find it, it’s absolutely an introduction for people who have never heard you before, it sets the tone for the song – it does so much, it’s a first impression. It happens really quickly – you can decide how many bars it will take – 1 bar, 4 bars, 8 bars – and once that goes, everything else finds its place.

So does the word suggest a rhythm?

Again, it doesn’t suggest, it is the rhythm. It suggests an emotion, whether you’re using triplets or whatever it is, I think certain patterns and certain syllables convey emotions, and that’s really my goal at the end of it. It’s not only using the right word, it’s selecting a word and usually one I haven’t used, words that draw emotions out of people. Words that are relatable are the most important things.

Do you have any favorite words? What kinds of words do you like?

           

I’ve always really liked words, and syllables are great. Words that feel good in your mouth! There’s a saying that, when we find one word that rhymes or a statement that rhymes, I know this is true for my friends and I, you can’t stop coming up with more words – we’ll just keep texting each other back and forth. I remember, talking to Pharoahe, finding out that we both have the same favorite word: it’s amalgamate, or amalgamation, is just an amazing word. I don’t write those kind of words down, but I’ll save them somewhere.

So you’re overarching guiding principle is the emotion you elicit in the listener?

I’d say so.

Is your approach top down or bottom up? For instance, it could be like making a hammer, where you start with a blueprint of a hammer and then put all the parts together until you have one? Or is it like legos, where you start with blocks, just start putting them together, and see where you end up?

It is more like the legos…I can’t visually see a whole puzzle, I’m not great at word searches. What I can do take the word search and make it something new. I work backwards, I work from the future. In my mind when I start with a song, I’m already at the video and accepting awards for the video. I can see the song and the video, it’s all done – what I have to do then is figure out how to go back and time and make the song. It’s like taking a giant ceramic pile. This is already a whole thing, I like this. I take the hammer, smash it, and then have to reconfigure it back into a whole picture. I need to know the innerworkings of it. I absolutely work backwards. When I start with an album, the album is already done. I know what I want it to sound like, I know what I want it to feel like, I just have to go figure out how to do it. I know what it looks like, I know how I want the videos to look – absolutely everything. It’s working from the future.

Based on that answer, and for you this question might not even have an answer, so I just want to hear whatever you have to say: Do you purposefully structure sentences to fall across the bar line to create a better flow, but I guess for you is the answer very case specific?

The rap has to make you feel a certain way. Whether it’s something like “Style Wars”, where it’s supposed to feel a little threatening, and unhinged, and energetic– and even if it’s something that’s the same tempo, you can’t go into “Love Thirst” threatening and unhinged because that would be fucking weird! Yeah, there are secrets that the general consumer doesn’t understand, that rhythms and chords all make you feel a certain way, words too. Even pop songs – hits are hits. These songs make you feel a certain way. I absolutely have finally come to understand that in music – I can play around as much as I want. There are songs I can go back to and listen to as an adult. Like, I heard Katy Perry’s “Fireworks” for the first time the other day, and this is kind of how I know people who appreciate music, like oh, you get it, and that song is fucking brilliant! Like fucking fireworks, are you kidding me? There’s a really deep technicality to making those kinds of songs so I think it’s going into that world understanding it, and when people are like, “This is underground, that is underground,” I’m like, well, a lot of people don’t actually know what they’re writing. If there’s a song I want to be an underground song, I know exactly how to write that. I’m not trying to sell it or license it. But if I want it to be in a specific kind of movie or TV show, then I’m going to include those words, those emotions, those feelings.

You went to La Guardia, a school for the performing arts. There, you learned music theory, both harmonic and rhythmic. Can you read music?

Yes, I can. I learned music when I was much younger, from my parents and I took a gang of piano lessons. I have my dad’s piano now since my parents moved, which is great, I was like, “I really need to go back in and play,” I play somewhat and play it by ear, and I just started going back into reading sheet music again. But it’s been a long time. I stopped doing formal training when I was younger, and really used to like going to places, like Carl Fisher, and picking up sheet music and learning how to play stuff. I love musicals, “Annie” for instance, I would get those books and really, really learn how to play those songs. I think there’s a certain amount of technicality that’s great, but I think mine also just came a lot of genes. It was just kind of innate feeling of knowing things, and then going into music theory class and being like, “oh, that’s what that’s called! I totally know how to do that!” They just gave it a name. That’s kind of how I’ve approached most of myself when I go to learn, I’m like I have ADHD, and this is a lot of money, thank you for telling me these 3 things I needed to know, now I’m going to go do that.

In 1989, you would have been 13 years old, around your time at La Guardia. At that time the big rappers were Kane, Rakim, and KRS-One, all technically accomplished rappers that moved things forward and influenced a lot of the trends today, such as Rakim’s internal rhyming. Did you hear them?

Yes. I especially loved Kane. I loved his “aggressiveness” – not necessarily that he would rap fast, but that his delivery was so forceful. Some others would be people like Cool Keith – he wasn’t even trying to rhyme!

What’s your notation scheme?

I don’t write as much by hand anymore, but when I do, it’s usually in slashes, for instance for a double beat it gets a double slash, but I also tend to space them on the page. I have to be super neat about it. Computers have been great for me because I write so much more and it looks like so much less and when you go back in, you’re like oh shit, that is not 16 bars, that’s 64 bars! So I need to relax. And because 64 ars on a note pad looks very very different.

So you know all that theory, counting bars and so on?

Yes, it’s really important for me.

In most public discussion of rap, that all usually gets glossed over. If you’ve never tried to rap, it is really difficult!

There are nuances and subtleties, and it is fucking difficult…you do have to learn how to count bars, and for some people, it’s just a term, saying “bars”… you know, like a hot 16. It’s absolutely necessary, and some people won’t even recognize it that much.

There’s this conception that “anyone can rap” because all you need is a voice, and a brain, and a microphone, and there’s this conception that rappers, since they don’t go to a formal educational musical setting to learn to rap, that rap is somewhat of “a poor man’s music”.

There is that conception out there, and again, I’d like to thank you. Not enough people recognize it.

Would you ever teach people to rap?

I think you can teach people to write, but I don’t think you can teach people to rap.

So you don’t notate your rhymes in “traditional” music notation?

No, I think I probably do that more so in my head. You know there’s times when I go back. Say when you’re going back and doing the ad libs, and you’ve already got the verse down, it would be easier to go in if you wrote it down and if you’re doubling something with pro tools, a lot of people go in and do one ad lib, and they’re like let me throw in another one on top of it. So it’s to go back in and say in bold, “These are things I’m going to emphasize.” These words are the words that need emphasis, or syllables…I probably focus more on nailing the ad libs. To me, it’s accents…the words that you should be getting right. Usually it’s the first time I’m hearing it, and if I did this right, then here is where I go in and figure out what needs to be accented.

What kind of experience have you had with “classical” poetry, such as reading Shakespeare?

Before I started rapping a loud for people, I was definitely doing poetry readings of my own written poetry for audiences, back when I was 12 or 13. We probably should not have been allowed in those clubs, but it was New York at that time and nobody cared. And I thought that it works for me, and again, it was immediately pulling emotions out of people. What words am I using to get to the emotions of people?

Have you had any kind of formal schooling in poetry? For instance, the metrics and accents of iambic pentameter, or anything like that?

I think I had great teachers at school, great English teachers, who actually focused on some of these things and I was really, really lucky to have that and be able to translate it to music, and be like, oh okay, this is the same thing. Good teachers who understood that those things were important.

So when you bring accent to a rap, it matters where they fall?

Absolutely, and it comes from having in my early career been super monotone about things, that I was reliant a lot on rhythms and accents but not necessarily doing it with my voice. Not on purpose, I think I was generally young and literally had not found my voice. So yeah, I think all of that forced me into it. It’s learning how to do stuff with a blindfold on, and then when you’re good enough you take the blindfold off, you’re like, “Oh shit! Well now I can fucking play around.” This would have been around “Attack of the Attacking Things” [from 2002], and going back and listening to it, it doesn’t sound young material-wise, but voice-wise, I can hear it. I didn’t really know what to do. I was definitely playing around more in the poetry world than the rap world. Really, really breaking rules and rhythms in a real conversational tone, and definitely not as technical, even just starting with the next album, “This Week” [from 2004].

Would you see “This Week” as a transitional album then, in terms of delivery and technical side of things? I’m thinking of songs like “Style Wars” – monotone, technical, as compared to the song “Going Crazy”, where you’re delivery is sing-songy almost.

This Week was a transitional album, just learning how to play around more. It was just having things in my head that I was kind of afraid to do. Sort of letting go of that fear, and being like, “Oh no you can totally play around, it doesn’t have to be one thing, not one sound.” It established that I knew what I was doing. You have to take it out of the level that came before. I was really happy about learning how to evolve.

On “Attack”, you had songs like “Live For You”, with a focus on poetry, almost like a book: there were characters, plot development, and resolution. But then a song like “Style Wars” from “This Week” has no linear narrative. There are people and places that are alluded to, but these things may or may not be real. What went on between those two albums? What led to that shift? Was it just opening the toolbox you have open to you?

General life just happened…when I change in life and go through more experiences, my writing has to evolve. It has to! If you haven’t done anything in those 2 or 3 years, and learned new lessons, met new people, formed new relationships, and you’re writing the same shit, the same way? I can’t do that.

How much of your rhythms at the microphone are improvised, or is it the same take every time?

Interesting for me, because it’s so new for me when I get in there, it just happened, so it depends. A lot of times where I go in and I absolutely nail it first take, and sometimes when you do that first take you go back and listen to it and you’re like, “Nope, don’t change a fucking thing.” Even though there are some imperfections, there’s magic in there. Usually, it’s a couple times, like 4 or 5. Just to kind of play around with it and get the energy right. I think that’s what it is, trying to figure out what I already have. I know the words are there, I know what it’s supposed to sound like, I can hear it in my head. But I try to justify the words, give them the life they deserve. You don’t want to let them down now because they look so good on the page. Not much editing or revising is going on though, generally really small stuff…figuring out vocally what I need to do. You put Frankenstein together, and bring him to life!

So when you start to write, you always have the beat first?

Yes, I definitely need the beat first.

How does that play out over the whole recording process? For instance, once you have the beat, do you just add the rap to it? Or will you go back and forth between the two – start with the beat, add rap, change beat to fit, then change the rap, and so on? How much do you coordinate with the production side of things?

I am really involved on that side. It’s a continual back and forth, not changing the beat, but definitely adding things…again, probably things that the general public doesn’t notice a lot. When we’re picking drops, even if you’re just dropping off the snare, or the hi-hat, or the kick, or everything for a second, it’s a huge part of constructing a song. It’s the backdrop, it’s the reason you’re going to feel the way about something, it’s the reason you’re going to take a breath and then come back in when you’re listening. And adding instruments, live instruments, or whatever sounds right…there are times when my manager comes back in the studio, and they’re like, “Yeah, Jean put a glockenspiel on it”, laughs, and he’s like “Really?” and then he’ll listen to it and he’s like, “This is why I hate you, because you’re right! Now it feels better.” It’s just wanting to have the right ear. If I’m going to add something, what is it going to be, where is it going to go, and how do I arrange it so that I’m pulling the same emotion that these words are driving at? So I’m really, really involved as far as that goes.

So you won’t ever mix and match raps to a beat?

Sometimes there’s a great moment when that happens. You might have something that goes with a certain beat…I don’t really write a lot of extra stuff, because I’m not just writing to write, but there are definitely times when you’ve written for something else and it might not ever get used or come out, and then you hear something, and you try that over that beat, and you’re like, “Oh shit, it’s perfect! Absolutely perfect! I” think that’s the only time that happens for me just because I don’t have a surplus of rap.

Sometimes, you listen to an entire verse from a certain rapper, and you just get the feeling that it was put together piecemeal. The first 4 bars all fit together, they’re a unit, they all go together musically, thematically…

 [Cuts in:] And then something else happens, and you’re like wait, what? That doesn’t go there!

Yeah, and you wonder how that jump got made…to me, that just means the creative process was they carry around a book, put together a lot of one or two liners, until you get a full 16 bars.

Sometimes, that happens. I definitely know rappers who do that. I sometimes call it “rappity rap” – you’re just rhyming cat with hat, nursery-rhyme stuff. I don’t do that. No, for me, everything is tailor made, with that really small exception that I can’t remember the last time that happened. I thought of that today, I had a verse, and I was like, “I’m sorry that song never came out”, but for me it’s different, because then I can go and create a different beat for it. But you know there are a lot of emcees who do that. I think there are some rappers who are better at doing that seemlessly, because I don’t know 2 people who write the same. I write differently than Kweli, and Pharoahe…I go in and if I’m in the studio session, I’ll be like, “let me see how you write.” And there are people who write in paragraph form, using ABCD phrasing. It’s really interesting to see everyone’s writing process, and even if they don’t think it’s a process, it’s fascinating.

So much discussion of rap centers around flow: what it is, how to create it, who has it, and so on. What is good flow to you?

Flow is different for each particular person – everybody has their own flow. What doesn’t work for one rapper might work for another. You have to get to know your voice as if it was an instrument. Know what you can get away with – how you sound, almost what the frequencies of your voice are. I hear beats that I really like, but pass on them because I know my voice won’t fit. I hear other rappers say certain words and raps that I really like, but I know that I couldn’t get away with it. It’s like certain accents, like Southern, can use certain words that others can’t. I think rappers should think more about what words they can use in a certain order. For instance, if you change the rapper of a verse, but keep the rhythms and words the same, the feel of the verse completely changes.

What is the first advice you’d give to a start rapper music-wise?

           

Learn an instrument, it doesn’t matter which one: recorder, piano, whatever. You need that different musical perspective in your work. Always rap a loud too – some things that look good on paper might not work in performance.

What is the future of rap musically? Is there any corresponding trend you see today that will continue into the future, like Rakim’s internal rhymes?

I think things go in 20 years cycles…what you’re hearing today kind of mirrors the early 90s. I’ve got no problem with that, because it’s like the people now never heard that stuff back in the 90s, so they can recreate it. But as far as specific things, I don’t see it right now. I haven’t had a moment in a while where I’m like, “I’ve never heard that before!” Andre 3000 is great at doing that.

Alright, let’s try a small composition experiment. I’m going to give you a line and you tell me how you’d continue it. How about the final line of your song “Style Wars”: “Slit your neck open from your chest/ who’s next to duel?”

I actually don’t think that was the end of verse, I think I cut it off for the song. I would do the obvious thing and continue that 3-syllable pattern, “next to duel”, which I was doing right before that point on the song, with lines like “Catch you hiding in a darkened VESTIBULE”…Maybe mix it up by using 2 words to fit that 3 syllable pattern, just like vestibule was 1 word for 3 syllables. Eminem is great at doing stuff like that.

How about a line you didn’t write: “Give me some more reason to have the women in your mama’s church…” (From “Oh No” with Pharoahe Monche, Mos Def, and Nate Dogg”)

Well, the words that stand out are “gimme”, “women”, and “mama”…I’d probably continue the pattern of the m sounds. I like when Mos sticks in one place for a while, which he doesn’t do too often…his verse on “Thieves in the Night” [from Blackstar] is one of those times.

Do you have any other favorite verses?

Pharoahe’s on “Extinction Agenda” [from Organized Konfusion’s album “Stress: The Extinction Agenda.”]

Who do you think is the best rapper ever?

Ooooo…um…I can’t tell you that.

You can’t tell me, or won’t tell me? Even off the record?

Yes, I have someone in mind. I do, but I can’t.

Can I ask why you won’t tell me?

Probably because…I’ll just say no, because that’d give it away too. I probably have a top 2 or 3.

Can I hear those?

Nope. Maybe I’ll tell you on my deathbed.

If you had to make a single recommendation of one Jean Grae song for someone to hear that had never heard your stuff before, which would it be?

I think it’s changed for me, and I think it’s difficult to say. Right now, it’d probably me, “You and Me and Everyone We Know”, because I think there’s a lot of evolution of things on there. But then there’s a downside to that, which is introducing that, with the reaction of, “Oh, okay, you’re more of a laid back type of rapper”, and “I;m like no, not really,,,go check me out on Assassins.” It’s difficult for me to do that, but I do get that question. What happens is that that becomes the perception, and then they go listen to other stuff.

Could you pick an album?

I think it’s a really slept on album, I actually went back and listened to it the other day, because there’s a lot of shit on there…I think of rap as a snapshot as what I’m learning at the time. I’d pick “This Week”, for a full, complete thought.

Are you always running ideas through your head in the course of your normal day?

My brain doesn’t ever stop working. I operate in terms of writing, just everything: dialogue during the day, different ideas…it absolutely never stops and there’s no way I’d be able to get all the projects done that come up in my head every hour.

Do you ever get tired of it?

I am exhausted right now. I just finished the Christmas album, and I’m simultaneously working on this video, writing, directing, editing, and then working on “Gotham Down”, the next album out the 22^nd, and I’m producing, and mixing, and writing, and then my show, “The Life of Jeanie”…my mind keeps jumping around to so many things, and I enjoy the business of it, but it was like 9 o clock this morning and my eyes just hurt! I just wanted to go to sleep! So I kind of had to force myself to sleep. It’s a lot, it’s an interesting time of year…but I think when there’s this great creative overflow of stuff, you have to take advantage of it. You know, the scene in old school where he does the debate team and he comes on, and he just fucking blacks out for a second, and then he’s like “Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God!” and then comes back, that’s kind of how it works for me.

Do you have any pets?

           

No…I love animals, we grew up having a lot of pets in the house, hamsters, mice, snakes, frog, fish….but not right now because I travel. It’s something else to take care of, probably not a good idea right now. I don’t have any pets because I like pets. They don’t deserve that!