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DIRTY 4 FOUR Do you rap in Sinhalese, Tamil? Or do you rap in English? MF: We did the chorus in Sinhalese for “On Stage”, the concert we are playing in TNL. The rest of our songs are Sinhala choruses and English raps. We’re planning to do some Tamil raps. We have totally different styles. I go on with crunk rap I am into Lil Jon, and K-Mac’s into East Coast rap like Mobb Deep. Earthquicker is into strange music like Tech N9ne and that fast flipping style. It’s like three totally different styles. How did you hear about artists like Lil Jon and Tech N9ne? MF: When it comes to music we have a hard time getting the music. We have to order CD’s from USA or burn CD’s we get from other people. We don’t do that normally, we try our best to get the original CD. Normally we buy it from Vibration or some other store, or we download it from somewhere or just get it from USA. Does Vibrations sell a lot of local CD’s too? MF: They sell a lot of local albums, but they don’t have the music we listen to, they don’t have what we want. What I do is I tell one of my cousins to send it from America. Where are you from? What part of the city? MF: I’m from MLV, that’s Mount Lavinia. He’s from Kottawa, they call Kottawa Midwest. That’s the way it is. Earthquicker is from Midwest too. Where about in Mount Lavinia? MF: Near the police station. How did you get together as a group? Did you meet in school? MF: We met through one of my friends. He was into rap I was into rap, we didn’t know each other. We were like rolling on, and one day I met and we were like, dude we can do something. But we didn’t have a proper producer to create our music. We had a producer, but they didn’t do the style we wanted. You had a certain sound in your head, but he couldn’t get it. MF: I was like, dude do it like this, do it like this. But he was doing something totally different. Now we got a new producer called Lord X, he’s really good. After that we kept meeting up and drinking booze and smoking up together, and we talking about what we are going to do in the future. Then we did a song called a “Story About a Gangsta”. It was about our life, what we do like smoking up and stuff like that. It was a big step. It was done on one of Eazy E’s tracks, so we did a mix for that track and it was all right. Then we did a song called the “Rhythm of a Gangsta”. That was one of my own originals, it’s featuring Lanthra. Then we did a song called “Put it Down” for all the ladies in the club. Then for the TNL concert, we wanted to do something crunk for Sri Lanka, so we did a song called “Dirty CMB”, like Dirty Colombo. We made it dirty. It’s not Colombo anymore, it’s Dirty Colombo. Now we are working on a new song called “Get Down”. How did you get into the TNL contest? I went to the TNL radio station. I had heard about it on the radio. I had this plan to play for Onstage for 4 or 5 years. All these years didn’t think I was ready, I had to study about this more and I work on my rap lyrics. Also I didn’t want to do it as a solo artist, I wanted a new band. Finally I felt I was ready, so I went to TNL and gave in my demos. I gave “Life of a Gangsta” and they called me in 3 weeks. They were like, “Dirty 4 Four, you’re in!” I was like, cool. When we played for Onstage everyone was like, “You did a brilliant job.” It was awesome. In my opinion I know that my band did a great job, way better than the others. The rest of the bands that performed said that we did a great job. TNL called us and said we’re in the finals. The finals are on the 10th I know what’s going to happen, we are going to win. If we win this it’s going to open doors for us. We’re going to put out an album with 15 songs. Then we are going to the “Dirty CMB” video. That’s our next step after “Get Down” is done. Who else was chosen for the finals? North Coast, Shiam and Kavisha, who’s drinking Kotthamalli at the moment. He was on air and he was saying that he was drinking kotthamalli. Those are the bands for R&B and hip hop. I don’t know about the rock. Is there a big audience for rap in Sri Lanka? There is a crowd in each and every corner of Sri Lanka; even if you go to Anuradhpura or Galle there is a crowd. You should play the music that they want. You should know how to do it. Iraj and them are doing a great job, they have the music the people want. When it comes to rap that’s the hardest part. A lot of people don’t understand what we’re talking about. In our raps we talk about topics only the Colombo crowd knows. They might understand what we talk about, but we have to do Sinhala music to get popular in SL. None of the rappers know how to rap in Sinhala. We’re planning to feature with other rappers so we can do something. Like Rasindu wrote the Sinhala lyrics for Dirty CMB. The English version was totally different. I was like, this is too much for Sri Lanka, we have to do something else. So we did a Sinhala version of that and it sounded really cool. With gangster music. When you have rapping in Sinhala on it, it really sounds nice. But I don’t know how people will like it. I’m not talking about the Colombo crowd. I’m talking island wide. When an artist comes and does something new or original, it’s hard to break in. People don’t welcome you with open arms. It takes a while. But artists who do original work are the ones who survive, like in America rappers like E-40 and Tech N9ne. How are you planning to release your CD’s? Are you going to do it independently? We can’t go directly to a record label and say we’re doing gangsta rap in SL. They’ll be like, are you bloody insane? Are you mad to do gangster rap in Sinhala? So what we’re going to do is write our own CD’s at home, 4 songs, 2 mix tapes. We’re going to make my own album cover and do everything. We’re going to spend on our own. We are not rich, but we’ll do something to get the cash. We’re going to go to all the shops and ask them to carry our records. We can tell our friends to get the word around. Normally an original album is going to be about Rs500; ours is just going to be 150. Everyone can buy it. I’m glad you are doing it that way. You’re not waiting for anybody to release your CD. Also it’s really good that you’re rapping in our languages. I’m planning to do Tamil crunk rap. I can’t write in Tamil, but I can speak in Tamil, cause I was born as a Muslim. KMac is Buddhist. We’re going to get our lyrics down. There are so many people who write lyrics in Tamil so we’re going to talk to them and give them an idea of what we want. I’m going to get the lyrics done in English later, translate it. That’s the main thing. There are so many rappers in the US. US is like the head of rap, it all started there, so if we do it in English it’s going to be the same thing. We have to do something different, do something that’s Sri Lankan. We have to do something that will stand out. Like Reggaeton, they came up with something totally different. The roots are African American rap, but they put the South American culture into it and it’s popular all over the world. What are some other rap acts in Sri Lanka that you think are good? No one is really into what we do. I don’t want to mention names, but I know people who want to be like American rappers. They are trying to copy their style and lyrics. They don’t think anyone can tell, but we listen to a lot of rap. When we go through a CD we know where this song came from. In Sri Lanka people don’t know a lot of rap. Only 2% in Sri Lanka listen to gangster rap. We need to have a different flow. Different styles and rhythms As in any art form, rappers need to find their own style and create something original. When I’m going around like this everyone is like, “Dude what the hell are you wearing?” Totally big pants, big shoes, I don’t care this is my style this is the way I have to be. Even if you go to a village now they dress like rappers. Yeah, it’s all the rap styles in Sri Lanka now. All the people are trying to be ghetto. When you talk of gangster rap, are you talking about hardcore lyrics? Not just talking about killing someone or stabbing someone. Not about drugs and robbing people. We are talking about something totally different. We rap about what’s real to us living in Colombo. You rap about life in Sri Lanka. He’s talking about hardcore things and about our homies, things that go on in the streets. Earthquicker is into something totally different. The way he raps and the way he does it is really psycho. We call it psycho raps. He raps in an awesome sexy flow. We talk about playing and women. That’s what I rap about. That is what I am, a playboy. I have so many women. I’m with two chicks now. Kmac talks to the younger people, telling them not to do drugs and those kind of things. Topics that we really want to talk about, it’s not about murders and killings. People want to mess with us. You can’t mess us cause we talk real, we doing real, we are not doing bull. How did he get in to rap, Kmac? When I was about 15 years I used to rap some of the East Coast flows. How did you come up the name Dirty 4 Four? Four 4 are the beats we play. We were called Violence before, but we thought there’s too much violence in this country so we wanted to change it. I was into Dirty South, and they were like the beats for me and I was like why don’t we come up with the name called Dirty. My rap name is Dirty Middle Finger. Earthquicker was like, dude the beats that we play are four-4, why don’t we make it Dirty 4 Four? I seriously like the name cause it’s about what we do the beats. Four 4 is like hated out there, Four 4 is like riding dirty for haters in Sri Lanka. They think we play bullshit, but I don’t give a shit about that. What else do you do when you’re not rapping? As a job? I stopped schooling…I got expelled, gangster shit. I’m going to learn to produce my own music. I spend a lot of money doing songs with other producers. I’m doing a graphic designing course. Just by doing music you can’t earn in this country. We’re playing four concerts this month—TNL Onstage, Mt. Lavinia, a concert at Trans Asia. We’re not getting paid, it’s just publicity. We have to get real popular if we want to get cash. We just started the band four or five months back. When you do shows do you perform with other rappers? Doggy Nation, that’s my ex-band. They are from Mt. Lavinia. There’s another rapper called Fill T and we might play with pop artists. How are you planning to build your name up? To get popular in Sri Lanka you need to put that Sinhala part in a song. What we do is we play South beats and put a Sinhala chorus in and make it sound different. We make it USA style music with Sinhala language We will get our own sound after awhile. If you notice, in America at the beginning people on the West Coast had the East Coast influence. After awhile they developed their own sound. That will happen in Sri Lanka. Are there clubs where rappers go to hang out? You’ve got like D’s. H2O and Onyx used to play hip hop, but now they are into Trance. Friday nights we just booze and smoke up. Saturday night we just party. The clubs open at around nine. We go at around 11-12. We don’t go to one club, we go to three or four clubs and party around. Normally where do people buy their rap CDs here? If you want to find a Tech N9ne or Ice Cube CD where do you find them? It’s really hard to find rap albums now. They have a shop called Fill T’s Hip Hop Shop in Mt. Lavinia. One of our friends, Fill T, has the shop. There are all the albums you need there.
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