I’ve interviewed Big Sean various times for Metro Times, Cultural Vibe (where we were photographed above), and others. Sadly, his interviews have almost always consisted of the same questions ever since then, and that was years ago. “What do you think of Drake stealing your style?” “What is it like to work with Kanye West?” “Talk about hip-hop’s affect on fashion.” I hope that every Big Sean interview is a big difference, and I walk away disappointed every time.

So when I got another chance to interview Sean for HipHopDX, one of the top hip-hop publications, I decided to speak to him about something he really knows: Detroit. Based on his hometown allegiance, our rapport and him being an open book in general, I’m really happy with how this interview turned out. Hopefully, new readers feel the same way.

CLICK HERE to read “Big Sean: Detroit State of Mind.”

A few days after Christmas, I knocked out one of the best interviews I’ve had in a while. For my monthly Producer’s Corner column on HipHopDX, I interviewed Andrew Dawson. Dawson has engineered, co-produced, and/or mixed every Kanye West album, along with other heaters like Common’s Be and Finding Forever, Rick Ross’ Teflon Don, and more. Any of my readers know that my interviews are heavy on the allegorical material, and Dawson dropped some gems about instructing Elton John to re-sing a bad vocal take, locking himself in the studio with The Game for a month, and why to never turn Aretha Franklin’s microphone up in the studio. A clip of the article below:

DX: As a fan of different musicians, I can imagine it’d be like a playground to work with so much stuff at once (for Kanye West projects). How fun is it to put that stuff together?

Andrew Dawson: It’s really cool. That’s the creative and technical part, is where you can go, “This will work here, this won’t work there.” You’ve also got to hear it in your head ahead of time and then try it, so there’s some trial and error, but it’s fun to take all the pieces to gel it into something that makes sense from start to finish. Take the best of what each person has to offer, and you can’t lose. It’s like Jimi Hendrix playing guitar, John Bonham on the drums. It’s like putting together your own all-star team, featuring the talents of each person.

If 2011 is going to bring in interviews like this, it’ll be a great next 12 months. For the rest of the piece, CLICK HERE.

Photo via BlackMilk.biz

A lot of web sites are dropping their lists of the best albums of the year. But here at Speech Is My Hammer, I’m going to scour through my archives to recount my best interviews or stories throughout 2010. The first one I’m posting today is my HipHopDX Producer’s Corner interview with Black Milk, in which the Detroit native breaks down the construction of his masterpiece Album of the Year. One of my favorite parts of the story was the creative process behind “Distortion.”

Black Milk: I wrote that song to a completely different track, but I end up coming with this drum beat and calling up Ryan [Gimpert], the guitarist for Will Sessions, to come to the studio and just play over this drum beat until I heard something I wanted to use. I just made the drum beat, looped it up, hit record on ProTools and he just started playing. I came back the next day to listen, and I found a four-bar part that I thought was that magic moment. I looped it up, and when I listened to the track, it had a dark, eerie vibe to it. I started spitting those two verses that I wrote to another beat to that particular track, and it fit way more. Doing that style of song, I knew I had to tap into a different kind of energy. I knew I had to make my voice a certain way,  and project a certain way vocally to make that emotion come across.

I think Melanie Rutherford was the glue to all that shit, because the way she sung on it, you can feel it even more. Especially at the end, when she starts vibing out and I put the distortion on her voice. Ryan was having a soundcheck with his guitar to get it tuned right, and I took that and put it at the end; it sounded crazy to me, he didn’t even play it like that on purpose. I thought the shit was dope, I put a little effect on it, and that also felt like part of the song to me, how the guitar was screaming out.

For the rest of the interview, CLICK HERE.

Whutupdoe Speechers?! I know I’ve been slacking on my credo to take the pressure of off Ketch with blogging support, but when I made that pledge I was a part-time social worker in between projects. The difference is now I’m a full-time social worker, heavily embedded in the grind.

But lets switch gears before I become less apologetic and more apoplectic with my rants about my day-to-day. I caught up with Aliya Ewing, a well-respected journalist in the hip hop-o-sphere with her sporadic trudging through HipHopDX.com, offering a very spiritual opinion on all things music while dodging the oft-misogynistic waters (all the while raising a young child). She bid the popular website adieu back in November in search of something different and that exodus brought her to her own promised land, culminating with the launch of her own brand new website, MyAliya.com. The site, explained by Ewing as a “compilation of personal reflections, [as well as] a platform for musicians and other respective artists,” aims to take the reader on a spiritual journey that permeates in and out of the consciousness of music and other works of art. Read below for the interview.

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I know the URL has ran out. Don’t worry, I’m on it – just got some real life sh!t to handle first.

In the meantime, check my article on the homie Royce Da 5’9″ for Metro Times. I’ve been told that it’s one of my best articles for the paper, and there were definitely some details in it that took a lot of effort to work out accurately. Royce has had a pretty complicated career, and I needed an article that reflected such. Some of you may say, “Well a lot of this is information that real hip-hop heads already knew!” But Metro Times isn’t a hip-hop paper, so I’ve got to use the article to familiarize new cats while still keeping relevant information. And trust, there’s still info on his The Revival EP, his Street Hop album coming in a few months, and most importantly for the moment, his Slaughterhouse album with Joe Budden, Crooked I and Joell Ortiz.

The intro of the piece:

Four years ago, the career of Detroit emcee Royce Da 5’9″ was immensely different than it is today. No one could have guessed that he’d still be prepping for the release of a long-planned album that’s executive-produced by rap icon DJ Premier. Or that he’d be ghostwriting for the likes of Diddy. Or that he’d be touring the country as one-fourth of indie rap’s premier supergroup on Rock the Bells, the summer’s hottest hip-hop show.

But Royce is doing exactly what the acronym for his M.I.C. Records label stands for: “Make It Count.”

“It’s OK to make mistakes, but try not to make the same mistake twice,” he says. “Be prepared when the opportunity presents itself. No matter how many times it comes around, if you miss the first one, make sure you’re ready for the second one.”

For the rest of the article, CLICK HERE.

Four years ago, the career of Detroit emcee Royce Da 5’9″ was immensely different than it is today. No one could have guessed that he’d still be prepping for the release of a long-planned album that’s executive-produced by rap icon DJ Premier. Or that he’d be ghostwriting for the likes of Diddy. Or that he’d be touring the country as one-fourth of indie rap’s premier supergroup on Rock the Bells, the summer’s hottest hip-hop show.

You’ve seen Smack!’s material all over this blog: whether it’s the “Maybach Music 2″ piece, various Identical Variant clothing posts, the back cover of G.O.O.D. Music artist Big Sean’s Finally Famous Vol. 1 mixtape, or other miscellaneous piff he’s completed. Smack!’s clientele is quickly growing, and with his incredible new web site SmackIllustrations.com launching on his birthday last week, he’s only got more on the way. In this interview, Smack! talks about his various projects, what prompted his interest in art in the first place, and what he plans to do in the future.

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Question for my fellow music journalists: have you ever interviewed a legendary cat, that you weren’t necessarily a stan of or anything…then when you look back a little later (whether it’s months, years, etc.), you realize how important of a piece/moment it was? Yeah, this is one of those moments. I’ve always been a fan of Karreim Riggins’ work in one capacity of another, but when I went to Metro Times web site this morning to look at the article, it actually hit me: this dude has worked with everybody. J Dilla, Roy Hargrove, Common, Madlib, Betty Carter, Herbie fuckin’ Hancock. Dude’s one of the most accomplished living musicians from Detroit, and I’m gettin’ a  check from this newspaper next week for my story on him. Shit’s wild, man.

Anyway, here’s an excerpt of the story:

Despite the opinions of naysayers, hip-hop producers often have very expansive musical tastes. Even though many of the lyrics are often spoken or rapped instead of sung, most good producers have always sampled, manipulated and used splices of songs from other genres, including old-school R&B, jazz and rock.

Karreim Riggins, on the other hand, doesn’t just sample from various genres. He actually creates his own jazz and R&B music, arguably contributing as much there as he contributes to the hip-hop genre. His varied clientele and associations have included the likes of late rap producer J. Dilla, soul songstress Erykah Badu, and even jazz legend Herbie Hancock. In other words, his musical template exceeds lines of genres.

“The music I do, I want it to be here forever,” Riggins says.

To read the rest, CLICK HERE.

In the latest segment for HipHopDX’s Producer’s Corner, I interviewed Drew Correa: the producer behind Lil Wayne’s “Mr. Carter” (feat. Jay-Z), “Prom Queen,” and several other tracks from Wayne’s upcoming Rebirth rock LP. An excerpt:

HipHopDX: First off, congrats on the Grammy nomination for “Mr. Carter.” What was it like being part of Tha Carter III, especially the song with Lil Wayne and Jay-Z?

Drew Correa: Thank you, man. It was an incredible experience. I’m glad Wayne [click to read] chose that record, and for Jay [click to read] to be on it, it was even more special. I kept submitting beats to Wayne, a bunch of ‘em. I had this weird dream where I kept hearing a hook similar to that, with a sample behind it, saying “Hey Mr. Carter.” I made it specifically for Wayne, I never expected Jay to jump on it. I had my friend Sharon, he’s a singer out here, I had him sing the hook that I wrote, and I sped it up and made it sound like a sample. Then I pretty much went in on the music.

I told Wayne that I found this record, I told him it was an actual sample. That’s how I sold it to him.

DX: So you told him it was a sample, but…

Drew Correa: But it wasn’t, yeah. He was kind of blown away. He’s like, “Where’d you find this sample?”

DX: When did you end up telling him that it wasn’t a sample?

Drew Correa: I never did. [Laughs]

For the rest of the interview, CLICK HERE.

Earlier this week, I had a piece published in Metro Times about Fluent, a Detroit emcee/poet/host. Primarily known for his hosting duties at Cafe Mahogany, Fluent is looking to get his recognition as an artist now: which is why the article is titled “R.E.S.P.E.C.T.” An excerpt:

“At this point, CDs that are classics to my ears [aren't enough]. I want to put it out there, that I’ve developed as a rapper,” Fluent says. “I have more of a sense of who I am now and how I want to say it. I feel seasoned with it. My style is totally my style, and I feel good about that. Apollo Brown has some really big visibility right now and he reached out to me. Us working together gives us the ability to make a project with a real cohesive feel to it.”

The rest of the article sees him talking about his history, his upcoming projects, and “Words And Rhythms Of The D,” his project with McDonald’s and Music Hall Center of the Performing Arts that seeks to improve reading and writing skills of high schoolers by reaching out to them through music and poetry.

To read the rest, CLICK HERE.

Last week, I posted Pt. 1 of my interview with the lovely Amanda Diva about her YouTube show, DivaSpeak TV. In the second half, Amanda goes into detail about each segment of the show, and what makes them great. Follow the jump for more.

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