 |
 |
|
|
|
Shaggy
2 Dope of Dark Lotus
Who came up with the name of Dark Lotus – the supergroup of Insane Clown Posse, Twiztid and Blaze Ya Dead Homie? That came up so long ago it was kind of all of us sitting down and it just kind of came to us. A lotus blooms at nighttime. It grows in swamps in dirtiness and filth. You ain’t gonna see a lotus marinating in a bouquet of flowers you’d give to a bitch. It’s just not gonna happen. Lotus is like the underdogs. It’s like a magical underdog of the world. It blooms at fuckin’ nighttime. What other flower does that shit? We’re so underground, we never get to see the day or light – just like a lotus. We’re just like a lotus flower chilling in some grime and shining at nighttime, you know? You have a radio show called “Shaggy’s Old Vinyl Collection” on www.WFuckOffRadio.com. Can you tell me about that some more? I play mostly all old-school rap. I’ve been collecting records since I was like in fifth grade. So I’ve got the most fuckin’ retarded record collection. I’ve got thousands and thousands and thousand of them. We cheat a little bit on there because I do my show with DJ Clay. So we’ve always got two sets of turntables hooked up. I work off vinyl; he works off CDs. So we’ll flip back and forth here and there. He’ll work off of CDs. But I’ve got shit that I’ve even forgot that I had from when I was in sixth grade. I’ll be flipping through my shit and find the Rapping Duke and be like, “Get the fuck outta here!” So I try to put together shows, as far as music goes, with shit that either still is or was the shit to me when I was younger. Sometimes I play shit from the late ’90s, but I try to keep it at least late ’80s, early ’90s. When does your radio show air? I’m on every other Tuesday at 9 o’clock. Sometimes it switches because of schedules and shit like that, plus I’m living like half-time in the Keys of Florida right now. So I’ve gotta fly back to Detroit a lot. I’m always flying back from Florida to Detroit. How are you liking living in Florida? Oh, get the fuck outta here, man! We’re living on Gilligan’s Island! It’s ridiculous. Detroit in the summer is the shit. I just can’t stand the winter no more. I’m not a cold-weather person. So I had to get a spot down there for the wintertime. But like I said, in the summertime I fuckin’ love me some Michigan. But that winter, man, I can’t take that shit. With all of your touring and recording commitments, how do you find time to ever be in Florida? If it’s a day here, two days there. … If the schedule ain’t busy, I’ve still gotta be here every two weeks for my radio show. Plus, there’s whatever else you have to take care of. There’s always time for Florida, man. How would you compare the new Dark Lotus album to the first two Dark Lotus albums – “Tales From The Lotus Pod” and “Black Rain?” This Lotus record is nothing like the other two Lotus records. First of all, it’s shaved down to just the five of us. We got sick of trying to flip around with a sixth person in there. So it’s just down to the bare minimum of what it’s supposed to be. Off the rip right there, that’s a little bit of a difference because we’ve always tried to find a sixth person for it. Now, we realized, fuck that, just keep Lotus what it’s supposed to be. And the whole undertone and everything to “Opaque Brotherhood,” it’s more darker. It’s more serious. It’s more of that wicked shit. There ain’t no party tracks on there. There ain’t no funny songs on there. There ain’t shit, man. It’s just straight-up in your face. It’s how we feel and this is why shit’s going down – that type of shit. There ain’t no political shit – nothing like that. It’s just representing the underground to the fullest. Could you tell me about some of your favorite songs on the album and what inspired your verses on them? You know what, I really don’t have a track list in front of me now. But I’d say it was every song. Every song on there. I went into this record in a crazy frame of mind. I’ve been trying to get my head straight for a while. So a lot of the shit that I wrote on there, I’m just now starting to memorize and get it because I was off on some other writing that shit. And at first I didn’t even know if I liked it or not because I wasn’t even in the right frame of mind when I was doing it. So a lot of shit, I don’t remember writing that stuff. I was just zoned into a different world trying to get into that shit. But now that I listen to it, I’m just like, “Damn, man, we all just came through and shined like nobody’s fuckin’ business.” I listen to it now and I can’t believe what’s coming out of those speakers. This is pure fuckin’ dope right here. For the first Dark Lotus album, there was no track listing included. And on the second Dark Lotus album the tracks were listed on the actual CD, so you can’t read them while it’s playing. Is there a reason why Dark Lotus has been a bit cryptic with the song titles? I mean, every track is fresh as fuck. Of course everybody’s gonna have their favorites, but it’s the type of record where you ain’t gonna have no need for the skip button. You’ll just be like, “Oh, that track’s the shit. That track’s the shit…” Of course, people have their favorites. But this one does have a track listing on it, so you will be able to refer to the actual names or whatever. But, yeah, I just don’t see anybody wanting to skip through one song of this. There’s no fillers. It’s top to bottom, pure geniusness, man. How’s everything going with Psychopathic Records’ new sub-label, Hatchet House? Hatchet House, right now, is like a volcano. There’s some magma leaking out and that shit’s about to erupt and blow the fuck up. So right now on Hatchet House we’ve got DJ Clay putting out mixtapes or mix CDs – whatever the fuck you call them now. And that’s the shit because it gives the artists on Psychopathic an opportunity to do some shit they normally wouldn’t do or don’t have a chance to do on their own records. On “Let ’Em Bleed, Vol. 1,” the first one he came out with, I did a remix to “Fall Apart” by Twiztid, shit like that. I did a whole remix to “Get Ya Wicked On.” It’s just collaborations that people are doing. Today in the studio, R.O.C. and King Gordy were doing a track for it over one of Clay’s beats. So it’s just a crazy collaboration and a mix-up of different artists – and even artists doing tracks for other artists and shit like that. It is definitely fresh as fuck. We’ve been handling shit all day and right after I get off the phone with you, I’m about to head over to Clay’s studio and lay some more shit down. Who else is coming out on Hatchet House? Right now, we’ve got a couple of things that we’re fucking around with, but they aren’t 100 percent shoe-in, for sure. We’ve got a record coming out called “Tunnel Runners,” which is gonna be basically 15 or so underground artists that are on top of their game but ain’t getting no love – besides on their MySpace page and shit like that. We kind of went through and, in our opinion, put the dopest ones together. We’re gonna put together a compilation just to give other underground artists that don’t have an outlet to shine … We’re gonna hook it up like that for them. And who knows, maybe two or three people on there that everyone’s digging and feeling, we’ll be able to keep fucking with and put on like that. That’s what I like about that record. It’s giving a lot of artists an opportunity to shine that don’t have no outlet besides the computer – that don’t have money to press up records or for decent studio shit and stuff like that. So we kind of heard the talent that they got and we’re gonna be fuckin’ with it and hookin’ it up – distributing it and all that shit. So I think that’s the first small thing we’ve got coming out of Hatchet House. But we’ve got more shit bubbling. Are you looking for a female rapper? We’re looking for anybody – any sex, any size, any color. It don’t matter. If somebody comes dope, they come dope. We were coming out with Tali Demon on that, but we suddenly dropped her. It was no big fallout or nothing like that. It was just problems with contracts and conflicts like that. My opinion, I thought she’s dope as fuck. She’s got good stage presence, she can sing, she can flow like a motherfucker. But just shit behind closed doors didn’t really work out. What’s coming up next for Insane Clown Posse and for you as a solo artist? Well, I see us kicking around for a solo record for me and J. I mean, J’s got like a whole record recorded now. It’s just a matter of finding the right time to do it or figuring out what he wants to do with it. There’s still another ICP record in the works. We didn’t start recording it or nothing. I mean, with ICP records, it’s like two mad scientists in a laboratory. You’ve gotta have the right feeling to record a record, the right time to record one and the right time to drop it and shit like that. So it’s all about timing. To both of us, we could be fucking with anything else, but ICP is always priority No. 1 for us. I mean, doing Lotus and all that is definitely the whip because that shit needs to be done. But our full hearts are in ICP. That’s it right there. That’s the bottom line. What can you tell me about the Dark Lotus tour as far as opening acts and what fans can expect? I’m not too up on that shit, but I think it goes out from mid-June all the way through July. I believe Haystak is opening it up. He’s gonna be on the road with us. What’s a Dark Lotus show like? It’s just mayhem, man. It’s just five motherfuckers up there doing their thing. It’s a presence. We could be up there and not even say anything – just hold our mics out. Lotus onstage is a party for what’s going on in the crowd. It’s like the ambience, the soundtrack for the big fucking party that’s poppin’ off, you know?
|
|
