Zion I Q&A

By Soren Baker

I was surprised that you incorporated drum ’n bass into your music. What makes you comfortable doing that, since most rappers don’t normally do it?

Zion: We’ve been doing it for a hot minute. We’re on an independent label so we can basically do what we want. It enables us to experiment, do what we feel and not really trip off of if the label is going to be willing to market it or if they think that it’s too big of a risk. We can just get in there and get busy. Plus, brothers come from different backgrounds and are just open to music. We’ve been hearing hip-hop since the early ’80s. At a certain point, it’s just time to give it some new juice, add some flavor to it instead of just recycling the old.

OutKast did a little bit of that sound on "Stankonia" and people seemed to embrace it but then you don’t hear too many people being risky and going along those lines.

Zion: I think fools are just carbon copies. Everybody likes to clone. As soon as something tight comes out, everybody wants to go follow along and ride on the wave. I don’t know if it’s just music or the society or the education system we live in, but people are followers for the most part. Those people that are willing to experiment, go forward and do something different, those are like people that are trying to open themselves up to being really who they are, being unique and not being afraid of being that. Folks who aren’t willing to really try to do what they’re feeling are just scared. It keep you stuck.

Amp Live: I hear a lot of groups that do drum ‘n bass and hip-hop stuff, but you just never hear about them because it’s either alright or the rest of the stuff isn’t tight enough or doesn’t really come out and create a buzz for people to listen to the album. There is a good group of people who are doing it, but the sound just isn’t perfected enough where they get people interested in them enough to listen to it.

Other than you, there’s Jungle Brothers, OutKast and Tech N9ne.

Amp Live: Plus, that was a couple of years ago. That whole electronic scene is changing within itself.

When you were prepping your first album, 2000’s "Mind Over Matter," you had singles coming out a while before the album. What took the album so long to come out after that?

Zion: We dropped the first single in 98 and the second single in 99. It was the label we were working with, plus we didn’t really know the game as tight in terms of timing of releasing the album in conjunction with the single. It was our first project really being out there. We didn’t know what was up, that the single dropping with the album would increase sales. We really weren’t even hip. We just kind of let the label, Nu Gruv Alliance, run things and they were totally mismanaging whatever was going on.

Was it "Mind Over Matter" that helped you get with Linkin Park for the "Reanimation" album?

Amp Live: We met them with "Mind Over Matter," but our publicist knew them so she kind of kept in contact with them. We met them before they blew up through our publicist.

Was it a good experience getting with them? Did you learn a lot? What happened?

Zion: They work at a real high level with the music. It was just cool. Mostly we worked with Mike, who’s like the rapper who also does a lot of production. He was real straight-forward with what they liked and what they didn’t like and what they wanted. It was cool to see that. They weren’t on some arrogant stuff, but just from a strictly artistic point of view, it was tight to work with somebody that’s that professional and having a clear vision of what they want to see. It helps you be more specific in what you’re creating with them and it gives you tools to when we go back and do our own thing, we take some of those tools with us.

What types of things did they do that were real different?

Zion: When I spit rhymes, most of the time, unless it’s a really hard verse, it doesn’t take me that long. Dude had me in there spitting eight bars and it took me a half-hour to 40 minutes. Just for eight bars. I was doing it over and over and over again. Every couple of times, he’d be like, ‘Try this. OK, relax. Do this. Emphasize this.’ Just real specific. I was like, ‘Damn, I never take this much time when I do my rhymes by myself.’ But when I heard it back and heard how good it sounded, I was like, ‘Damn, I could see why I did all that work.’ It helped me up the work ethic.

How did you go about getting with your new label, Raptivism?

Amp Live: When Nu Gruv went under, our publicist put it out on e-mails that Nu Gruv was going under and that we were available agents. We just got phone calls. They came through with the fattest deals.

What made it the fattest deal?

Amp Live: For one, they had good distribution, which right now is a problem for a lot of people. And they were hungry, which is something Nu Gruv was lacking.

What is Raptivism’s distribution?

Amp Live: They’re going through Rykodisc, which is going through WEA, which is going through Warner Bros., which is pretty cool.

What do you think made that label interested in you? The music they put out seems to have a political edge.

Amp Live: Like you said, they do political music. The music we do isn’t maybe so much political but it’s definitely got a conscious lean. We’re trying to come with something that’s kind of inspirational. I think those two philosophies definitely go together. They saw an opportunity. I think it was perfect timing. We lost our deal and they just got their distribution deal. The time was right. That’s how the universe works.

You didn’t have a lot of guests on either of your albums. Artistically, do you not want to work with a lot of people or it is just that Zion has a lot to say?

Amp Live: A lot of it has to do with scheduling. Then, we like to work with cats that we vibe with. We tried to get some more guests, different guest, but schedules were just off. It’s sort of hard. At the end of the day, you just get what you can get.

Zion: Really though, there’s hella people on the album, especially the new one, "Deep Water Slang v2.0." There’s probably about five or six guest vocalists, but there’s hella musicians on it. On this album, I felt like it was way more of a community effort than "Mind Over Matter" because we pulled in all our homies on it to work and get busy.

I thought this album sounds more musical, for lack of a better term. You added a lot of elements with the guitar and some of the other things, like viola and cello. With the stereotype of rappers not putting real musicians on their albums, is it hard to get cats to work with you?

Amp Live: Being in the Bay, it’s not that hard. You’ve got a lot of just cool musicians that are willing to work and do different stuff. And that’s if you just want to hire somebody. We’ve got a lot of friends who play instruments. It was just like putting them on, in a way. It wasn’t that hard.

On which songs do the live instruments take the song over the top on the new album?

Zion: "Flow."

Amp Live: At first it was programmed and then we did it over live.

Zion: "Fingerpaint," too.

What was the difference in "Flow"?

Amp Live: At first, the beat was programmed. Even though we always had a live bass on it, the piano and everything were programmed. Then we just redid it. We had a drummer come in and play the same thing basically, but add a little more funk to it. Then, we had my man Ajai Jackson come in and lay down a piano and a Rhodes part. We just sort of put everything together and had my man Steve Hogan come through again and put a bass on it. It came together cool and it still that similar type of knock that the first version has. That’s what made that song over the top to me. The beat was still in the pocket but it was all live. We also have a bonus track called "One More Thing" on the album featuring Susie Suh. That was dope because it was pretty much a vibe session.

On "Cheeba Cheeba," did you get that from Schoolly D?

Zion: We were just referencing some old school. Aceyalone came up in the studio and we just started rocking. We’re like old school cats, kind of. We grew up with hip-hop. It was just the feeling of the song, the way we were hitting the beat. We wanted to do it like a party thing, but we were dropping some science in the words, but not so obvious.

You both went to Morehouse. How did you end up living in the Bay?

Zion: I’m from the Bay. I went to Atlanta. We were doing the thing out there. Once we graduated from school, we were still doing the music thing but it really wasn’t popping, it wasn’t moving. We got signed to a label out there, but we dropped off the label and then we kept moving with the music. It just seemed like the way were doing it, we were making tapes of our new stuff, and people weren’t really tripping. Between the time of going to school in Atlanta, I would always come back to the Bay for Christmas or whatever and I would just kick it. I would see the underground popping. I would see Hobo Junction getting down. Mystic Journeymen getting down. Souls of Mischief were big at the time. I just knew that the Bay, for the underground style of music that we were doing, I just knew that we could do it out here. In ’96, I decided to leave Atlanta. I came back, checked it out. Bought some tapes, made some tapes and started passing them out to people. People were like, ‘Damn, this shit it tight.’ I called up Amp like, ‘Yo, you got to come out here. People are feeling it. We can do it.’ He came out like four months later. Once he got here, we just started putting it down, hustling. Within like six to eight months, we made a connection with the label and we got a deal soon after that.

What about your song "Sorry"? As much as rappers talk about keeping it real, they really don’t. A lot of times they don’t really give you their real emotions other than putting up the wall of "I’m the best" or "I’m the most gangster." You really don’t get a sense of who they are as a person. But songs like "Sorry" helps because it shows people being remorseful or having regrets because much of the more popular stuff is more celebratory.

Zion: I feel you because right now hip-hop is real fantasy based. Everything the normal person don’t have, a rapper is supposed to have to be successful. A lot of the songs and the way that we’re moving with our music is just to be more vulnerable. If somebody listens to it, they can feel it and relate to it and not feel like they’re alone in their experience. Also, maybe they can see a different solution, a different way out of it or to look at it.

For more information on ZionI go to: zionicrew.com.