The much-talked about interview with Lil Jon in the last issue was amazing, and once again the interview with crunk superstar David Banner in the new 2nd issue is so trill.
Here are some excerpts of note, but you should get out there and buy the thing yourself. (Kanye is on the cover, and the interview with him is pretty nice as well.)
Excerpts from the interview w/ David Banner:
“Blues is the foundation of where I’m from, but when I started sampling heavy I really got into jazz the average person my age wasn’t into. Really abstract stuff like Sun Ra and Jack DeJohnette. I was always trying to get some violas, chimes, and oboes, stuff people wouldn’t normally hear. I was just grabbing some spacey type of sounds and adding that into what I was doing.”
The similarities between Lil Jon and David Banner’s interviews are striking - they’re both searching for new sounds, unfamiliar sounds in hip-hop, pushing sonic boundaries. David Banner’s scope seems much broader than Lil’ Jon’s, however, to the extent that it seems a Lil Jon:Neptunes::David Banner:Timbaland comparison would not be inappropriate.
Describing the southern sound, Banner goes into an important step he took to make sure his music would be heard outside of the south:
“When I was a New York homeless producer I learned why a lot of cats wasn’t digging our sound initially. Most cats don’t travel in cars and most of our sounds are in 808s. Headphones can’t register those low tones so when they listen to our music it sounds incomplete. Most East Coast music has rock-like drums, solid kicks, and loud heavy snares and that’s irritating to our ears because we roll in Chevy Caprices and Cadillacs with 18-inch woofers in the back. Understanding that, I sort of layered solid kicks and 808s togetherso no matter who listens to it you’ll be able to enjoy it…”
The vital point made in this interview is what makes Crunk such an exciting genre of essentially limitless possibility - its socio-geographic permeability. But maybe the most interesting thing is Banner’s insistence that he wants to “go pop”, which I can imagine the hip-hop crowd isn’t too down with, at least at first glance; but his reasoning touches on the heart of what makes his music so exciting. He wants the freedom that comes with being a pop artist rather than a genre-limited producer (which is why the Timbaland mold fits so well, I think). “You’re able to experiment more when you do other types of music,” he says.
Anyway, I highly encourage everyone to pick up this magazine, or better yet a subscription; the interviews are top notch even when the rest of the magazine is a bit more iffy.