Aceyalone Interview


We were meant to accompany this interview with an article about Project Blowed, the weekly open mic night in Leimert Park. We’re shitty journalists and did a half-assed job of coverage, so we’re gonna wait until next issue to do it. It happens every Thursday and is generally really damn good. You can check it out in the meantime. –Ed.


Hello.

Hi, is this Aceyalone?

Yeah, who’s this?

This is Fran Magazine. How are you doing?

Alright.

You just got off a flight?

Yeah, I just got off a flight to Seattle. We’re [Aceyalone and Abstract Rude] doing an A-Team show in Olympia.

I understand your birthday was the other day.

Yeah.

Congratulations. You get that pony you’ve been asking for?

The pony?

Yeah, did you get your pony?

I didn’t ask for no fucking pony.

Oh. Can we talk some Project Blowed?

What do you wanna talk about?

Well, we’re doing an article on [Project Blowed] as well. [Whoops, we’ll have it next time.] How did you get involved in it?

Well, the Blowed started from, you know, it’s been a series of different hip hop things. It comes together in three different parts. First part is The Good Life, which had started back in 1990 and was an open mic cafe, kind of similar to what Project Blowed is, basically the same concept. It was called Underground Radio, and it just grew to something bigger and bigger and bigger. As artists, as we got into the industry, we kind of outgrew the place. The actual place it used to be in was a health food store, and they had their own rules, and it was a small place–getting too many people. So, we kind of took the same concept and went to Ben Caldwell [faculty member, CalArts School of Film/Video]. He had been working on a thing called I Fresh [Shit, I guessed on the spelling of that. This is embarrassing; sorry if it’s wrong] back in the Eighties, so he was already prepared to take on something like that. We presented the idea to him, and he had already worked with the people who did The Good Life, so it was perfect. [His space] was right down the street. It was, like, people, basically, around LA and that little community trying to do the same thing. It was a slightly different, though, because Ben Caldwell’s an instructor at CalArts, so he brought different elements to the documentation and organization of it, and making it the workshop that it is. And we kind of just changed the name, you know, the name of the [original] place was The Good Life, and the name of the night was actually called Underground Radio, but as it had gone on [through the years], people had forgotten the name and just started calling it The Good Life, but we couldn’t call it that, obviously. We came up with a different name, and, you know, put it all together. I don’t know if I got all the story. That’s not the full detailed story, but it’s something like that.

How often do you actually get on the mic [at Project Blowed]?

I don’t know. I go through my times. It’s been going for nine years, and for the first five or six, I was on the mic pretty frequently. Now I get on the mic probably about once every four or five times I go.

Tell me a little about The Good Brothers album. Are there any up and comers on it that you’re excited about?

They’re up and comers to different people who don’t already know our whole scene and where we’re coming from. It’s a lot of cats that have been there, like Bus Driver and Lanxinxo, St. Mark and Longevity. It’s not a full display from everybody. It’s just enough to give people a taste. Riddlore, who’s been around for awhile, helped produce the whole album, so he’s getting his chance to shine on a different level. It’s not like we’re breaking a lot of new artists; we’re kind of working with already established artists.

Are there releases planned for people that have been appearing at Project Blowed that aren’t very well known at all?

That’s the idea. Everything just needs to take its time to come into play. But definitely that’s the idea, to bring all these cats that haven’t had a chance to put records out, to get their music out there and give them a chance. [I want to] open up as many doors as I can because I know what it’s like to be in that position. It’s been a long process, but this record is one of many that are gonna come out. Hopefully, we’ll just take everything we’re doing to a higher level.

What’s a typical day in the life for you? Are you doing a lot at the record label? I mean, what’s your position–are you more or less running it?

Yeah, I’m pretty much running it, like, running the direction, the creative ideas. I have yet to get into running a full label with artists signed and being in control of that part [the professional part] of their lives. I haven’t graduated to that level; I’m just getting to the point of, you know, putting out records. You know, it’s easy to do a record if it’s just myself, but we’ve got some new stuff coming out with Self Jupiter and some others…a big collective of artists…I don’t really know where the next project will come from, the one far down the line; I’m mostly working with people around me. Eventually, I guess we’ll get into some new artists that haven’t been heard at all, but there are so many people that we’ve been working with over the years that just haven’t had a chance to shine.

So does it [Project Blowed] work as your A&R? [Jesus, wasn’t I listening? He just told me that they haven’t signed anyone new. I don’t know what I was thinking; his response is good, though.]

No. I wouldn’t say that because I haven’t signed anybody like that. But, yeah, it could work as that. It could work as anybody’s A&R. Anybody could come down there. There are lots of groups who got signed out of these situations, of having an open mic. It’s not just for me, but we help create that talent pool with our style and influence and things that we contribute to make that place what it is and these things reflect on all those artists. And they kind of understand and pay homage to it as they go on. That’s how we become a more tight-knit crew because everybody gets involved. Some people might come, and somebody might discover them and they’re off to something else, and they don’t make any mention of Project Blowed. Some people might come, stay, understand all the music, the groundwork that we laid down, and want to be a part of this whole thing. I don’t look at it as about [my record label]. It’s a workshop where different artists can have opportunities, be able to grow and do a lot of different things.

Are you into much music outside of hip hop?

I like the Fifties-style rock and roll…I’m into jazz…I watch a lot of videos and stuff…the radio. I don’t know; I’m not the “pick an album up, fuckin, play it in my car every day” type of fan. I don’t want to be too influenced by any one thing. The only music I got and listened to all the time was in my early days of hip hop, when I got a Run DMC record or a Public Enemy record and would listen to it in the headphones and shit. Outside of hip hop, it’s pretty much the Oldies shit.

I heard you say in an interview that, outside of music, something that you might want to pursue would be writing. Can we expect a novel from Aceyalone?

Sure. Yeah, I definitely plan to. Well, I do a lot of writing. Maybe I’ll do an album, and it won’t be a record, it’ll just be the songs written. I want to experiment and open myself to something I haven’t done yet and see how much I can contribute to something like that.