Lumpz One
Interview by Penis Demon Urine
Your music sounds very different from other Rap music I’ve heard. Is that something coming from Albuquerque, or is that just your sound?
Å little bit of both. I guess being from the Southwest influences what I do, but locally I’m known for having my own kinda sound. And each project is different from the other ones too. That’s a standard I set for myself, to change it up with each album.
How does being in the Southwest influence your music?
Like in Albuquerque New Mexico there’s a desert feel. It’s real sandy out here. It’s not the biggest of all cities, but it has a small town/big city feel at the same time. I 
brought all of those elements into the album. I gave it an urban feel but also a desert, rural feel at the same time.
That feeling did come across. The guitar parts and the singing reminded me of the desert and hot weather and the space. Especially certain tracks that you do are very different from regular Rap.
That’s exactly what I had in mind. It’s cool that you got that. I’m a fan of classic Hip Hop. I like to freestyle. I’m into the whole Hip Hop feel. But when it comes to making my personal music I like to bring in different influences from a lot of the older music like seventies Funk, Rock, older Jazz from the thirties and forties. I try to find the older music now, because I have a large collection of Hip Hop already. I listen to a lot of music.
Were you into Hip Hop first and then started branching out into other types of music?
Originally as a child I liked pretty much everything that was played around here. I was always around music. One of my aunts actually introduced me to my first Hip Hop record. It was Mix Master Mike, I don’t know if you remember that one. That was my first Hip Hop album, that was in the late eighties. I was really young then. After that pretty much all I liked was Rap music until I got a little older and was already making Hip Hop music. I was working with Q—he passed away a couple of years ago—I was working with him out here at Q Productions. He showed me a lotta different things. Originally I was in a Jazz/Hip Hop fusion band called Questionable Ethics. We were all kids, like 15, 16 and doing shows in bars and shit.
You’re a good musician? You can play instruments too?
I didn’t start playing instruments until I was 21 or 22. My uncle taught me a lot about guitar, which really changed my music because I started getting more of an appreciation for live instrumentation instead of playing my beats all on the Phantom. I’ve always done sample free music. I don’t sample anything, everything I play myself, but originally it was just on the keyboard. What I’m doin now is I’m playing live bass, I’m playing live guitar, I’m playing live hand drums, I’m playing piano. It’s a lot more exciting and more challenging. To me personally it feel awesome to be doing it this way. To be singing and rapping and mixing all the music together gives it a different vibe.
Do you feel like in the Southwest there is a distinct sound when it comes to Rap?
In the Southwest we have a lotta different styles. Albuquerque alone, Santa Fe, Farmington, a lotta places have it going on. As far as Albuquerque, a lotta cats moved from the smaller towns to Albuquerque and started doing their music out here. Certain groups have a similar sound to each other. Some crews sound a little like the LA underground. Some sound like the East Coast underground. Some crews sound Down South. Some crews sound like they’re from the Bay, which is kind of what I branched off from.
Are there any other artists that are doing something similar to what you’re doing?
There’s another artist out here who has his own sound as well, his name is Ridic. His music has a whole different sound from other stuff that we get out here. Everybody else are good at what they do, but I prefer to hear something a little bit different. Locally we have so much talent, so many artists, so many crews. There’s a couple who have a straight desert sound as well, like one group called Cultura Fuerte. They’re off the chain, those cats. They have a trumpet player, a poet, a percussionist, two emcees, a bassist and a guitarist. They’ve got a whole different vibe and they keep it real. One thing about all of us out here, we know how to perform shows. A lot of us have been doing this for 15 years, myself only 11 years. The Hip Hop scene has grown and shrunk many times out here, but there are few diehards who have been around since the late eighties. We definitely have a strong scene. There’s a record label called Illist Records that are doing a program called Hope for Hip Hop, and it’s all for the kids. It’s all free, they give dance classes and all that. It’s always something going on out here, a lot of positivity and a lot of people working together.
Is there money coming in for the artists to survive? How do you get by?
I work, man. I work hard. As far as locally, there’s really no way to make any money and survive off of music. I’m sure that’s the case in a lot of cities and states right now, not just here. I have family members who were making good money doing music back in the eighties when Albuquerque was rocking, but now it’s different. The bars only wanna give you 10%, they wanna take half your door. For me it’s hard because it’s hard to explain what type of music I make. My foundation is Hip Hop, so I fit in with other Hip Hop artists. But my new music has a Jazz, Funk, Soul, Classical guitar, Rap mixed fusion type of sound. It’s hard to explain that when I’m trying to get booked. And my content is not typical to Rap music either, because I try to make it pertain to what’s going on in my life. There’s millions of people like me who have to wake up and go to work so they can pay their bills, buy food, and then when they have time they do what they wanna do. I hope to be able to make a living doing what I love to do some day, but until then I’m just gonna work and bust my ass.
It’s sad when you think how many people are not doing what they really want to do. How people spend their lives working a job they hate just to survive in this system.
It’s sad because you’re so limited. There’s so many things that you wanna do. On top of that, artists like myself, I’m completely independent. I’m self-funded, self-promoted. Everything I do is all me. It’s hard because that there is a full time job. And I have to work a full time job to pay my bills. You don’t have time to do your music the way you wanna. There are days when you wanna choke your boss, and it ain’t his fault. You just gotta do what you gotta do. I’ve got so many things I want to do with my music, but it takes time. For me, I want my music to sound right. I could go to all these different studios that we have here and so what I want but it’s not gonna sound the way I want it. I have to do it myself.
You have your own studio?
Yeah. I have the whole thing. All that album was done in my studio. I did the engineering, the mixing, mastering, everything. I owe everything I know to Q because he taught me all the recording programs and all the equipment. I don’t even like computers.
What programs do you work in when you make music?
It’s all Protools now. I wanna switch to a different program that will allow me to start going to hardware, so I can get away from software, more like the original studio techniques. I have a Fender guitar that I’m using different effects with it, so this next project will be more musical than the last one. It might be a little more up tempo, a little more hectic, not as relaxing and soothing.
Do you work with other musicians or play music for other people?
Honestly, I haven’t worked with anybody in a long time. I was with that band before and we were all butting heads creatively. They wanted to do cover songs live and I wanted to do originals live. They didn’t wanna make new music, and I wanted to make new music. Then I started working with another artist named Dice Dastardly. He’s living in El Paso now with his brother, and they’re working on a project that I’ll be producing for. Those guys are amazing. I don’t know what name they’ll be going by, but I heard one track and it’s one of the hardest songs I’ve heard in a long time.
What kind of music are they doing?
That’s straight Hip Hop. I’m a big fan of Hip Hop, Rap music, Gangsta Rap, even some of the newer stuff. As I see the industry I know that most of these artists don’t have all the money they say they do, they don’t have the cars or the jewelry. But the kids see the whole façade and they want all of these things. They’ll do anything go get it too.
Rappers are responsible for fucking up the minds of so many kids. They poison their minds with the fantasies they put out. The girls think it’s cool to be a whore.
I agree with you 100%. These rappers talk about these things that they‘ve never been through or seen. As somebody who is conscious of these things, I’m a little discouraged. I try to encourage people do go a whole different route. In the long run, that’s what it’s about. When Gangsta Rap started it was different. They were talking about their lives. Now you have the artists who grew up listening to that, and they only talk about it because that’s what they feel they have to rap about.
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