Interview: Black Resume, pt. 1
Black Resume has burst onto the scene and in a matter of months, they’ve already garnered enough attention to secure two nominations for San Diego Music Awards in both “Best Hip Hop” and “Best Hip Hop Album” categories. In part 1 of this interview, group members Guilla and Young T speak on their beginnings in hip-hop, Black Power and bow-ties, and getting props from random dudes at McDonald’s for their music. Their mixtape-album, Bar-Barian Music, is available free download here.
SDRaps.com: How did you guys all meet at first?
Guilla: Black Resume is me, [Young] T, T’s younger brother [Tipper], and one of my younger homies [LC]. We all kinda went to the same schools. Me and him [Young T], we’re in the same grade. I’ve been going to school with him since … forever, it seems like. Back in the day, I used to do music and he used to do music. We had some songs together but we weren’t together. We both rapped in different camps. That went on for a few years. I dropped a few projects. He dropped a few projects. We had moved to Arizona together. Then I ended up moving back. He ended up coming back like a year or two later. When I came back, I kinda slowed down my music. I was too busy doing a lot of other shit.
Then when he came back, we just started vibing and started going to the studio. We had a bunch of tracks together. So instead of everybody trying to do their own shit, everybody should just come together and push one thing. Strength in numbers. He had his brother who’s been rapping. And his brother is just like crazy. We were like, “We gotta put his brother on.” Our other homie, Chris, he could spit like a motherfucker. I had been rapping with Chris but he had his own shit too.
But we just formed Black Resume and we’ve been pushing it. We just formed almost a year ago. We started working on tracks like the summer of last year and we put it out like the end of the year. We’ve just been pushing ever since. We all know each other from years back. But then we just put it all together.
SDRaps.com: What high school did you guys all go to?
Guilla: I went to Mt. Carmel my senior year. He went to Mt. Carmel. Lil Chris went to Mt. Carmel–I mean, Lil Chris went to RB. Terrence went to Mt. Carmel. I used to go RB and battle motherfuckers. That’s how I met Chris. I used to ditch lunch. We used to drive over to RB and fucking be battling and shit. It was like intense battles too, motherfuckers getting into fights and shit. [laughs]
SDRaps.com: How did each of you get into hip-hop originally?
Guilla: I first started making beats. And once I didn’t have anyone on my beats, I just started rapping. [laughs] That’s pretty much how I started off. The first time I made a beat–I stayed up all night till 6 in the morning working on it. I fell in love with it. And ever since then–I would let people hear songs and they’d give good feedback so I would just keep doing it. Because I know a lot of people make songs and their homies be like “Oh! That’s tight!” They be lying and shit. I hear motherfuckers I don’t even know hitting me up like, “Yeah that shit is tight.” Like they recite lines and shit.
Back in high school, I had this one song called “Too Sick.” I had a line in there like, “Guilla T come painful, pulling tricks from every angle/ Put some Skittles on my dick and tell your bitch to taste the rainbow.” [laughs] After that song, everybody just liked the style. That just kept me to keep putting out music.
Young T: Your hood fame and shit! [laughs]
SDRaps.com: How did you get into it?
Young T: I always listened to music but I think I really got into it from … there was like a little cipher going on in my apartments. All these older guys freestyling. And I didn’t even know they were freestyling because they used to skateboard so I had no idea they used to freestyle. I just went up there, they told me spit something. I didn’t know what to say, I never rapped before. I was like, “What do you want me say?” I embarrassed myself so bad! But then they’re still like, “Oh, that’s cool” and were inviting me everywhere. They had a little studio thing set up. It wasn’t like this, it was more low-budget. But yeah, we started doing music from there. Since then, it’s like, here I am. Now it’s in my blood. It won’t stop.
SDRaps.com: How did you even get into production? That’s not something you just pick up real quick.
Guilla: I forget how it was but … I had gotten some crack version of Fruity Loops. It was way back like Fruity Loops 1 or 2 or some shit. And I started playing with it. And I don’t know. I pretty much taught myself everything and just kept getting better and better. If I could pull you back to the beats that I made back in high school, oh man! I probably wouldn’t even do that, I’d be embarrassed.
Yeah, I don’t know how I got into producing. I always had music around the house. Like we always had a piano around the house. A lot of people in my family, they do music. They just play the piano or play the guitar. Not serious but they all do music. My grandma, she used to be a piano teacher. She used to teach piano to kids. So … I don’t know. I just started making beats one day and never stopped.
SDRaps.com: Were you trained in piano too? Did your grandma teach you?
Guilla: Nah, nah. Well, she tried to teach me. But she lives in New York. She’d come out some summers and she’d force me to freaking learn songs. I used to hate it. [laughs] Yeah, I used to hate it. But she definitely instilled it in me. But I’m not trained at all. I couldn’t read any notes. I just go off sounds. Go off hearing and feeling.
SDRaps.com: You can kinda play by ear like guitar or piano?
Guilla: I can’t play guitar but I can play piano. Yeah, I just play it by ear. I just get on there and start banging on it and it just comes out.
SDRaps.com: How’d you come up with the name “Black Resume?”
Young T: Y’all let him know about Phillip!
Guilla: Yeah, the homie Phillip, right? Phillip is one of our boys from way back. He doesn’t rap but he always has ideas. He wanted to start off like “Black Resume.” He came up with the name. But he was on some Nation of Islam/Black Power shit. When we first started, when we rocked shows, our theme was gonna be like suits and ties. But he was like, “Yeah. Bow-ties!” [laughs]
Yeah, he was on some Nation of Islam/Black Power shit. But we kinda took it and formed it into what we wanted to be. Because a black resume is like a resume that includes all your “special” skills. [laughs] Anything you don’t put on a real resume. Like making beats or picking locks. Shit like that. If you wanted to get a real job, you wouldn’t tell them that. “I could hot-wire a car in under a minute.”
At the same time, a black resume is like a black person’s resume. It gets overlooked a lot. I don’t know. I just liked the name a lot so we ran with it.
SDRaps.com: You guys have been together as a group for a year now. What are your goals both in music and in your musical careers?
Guilla: Well, right now, our goal is to get our song played on the radio. If they don’t play our song, what we’re gonna do is rally up a couple hundred people and go down in front of Z90 and start picketing. If they don’t play our shit, we’re gonna start lighting cars on fire and shit. [laughs]
So that’s our short-term goal. We got a video coming out. We’re trying to get some placement on that. Our goal is just to keep building loyal fans. Just keep putting music out there, putting out more music. I don’t know, just trying to get some shine for San Diego, really.
Young T: Especially change the way that West Coast hip-hop is looked at now. Because all the jerkin music is kinda saturating West Coast hip-hop. Bring it back to like a ’90s feel when it used to be fun. Some stuff to actually listen to instead of being taught a dance.
SDRaps.com: I was gonna ask you about your “Dance Instructor” song. What motivated you to make that?
Young T: All the music that’s coming out these days, it all seems like they’re infomercials. Pop stuff and they wanna teach you how to do a dance. While it’s still in. And people buy it. Just like they see on an infomercial and they say, “Oh! That looks nice” and they go and buy that. But that’s not really music. If they’re gonna be doing that, they should put it in a different genre, not call it hip-hop. Just letting people know that there’s still people who care about hip-hop and how it sounds. We wanna let that be known.
SDRaps.com: Can you tell me about your first single, “Animals?” That’s hella catchy and real clever. How’d you come up with the concept for that?
Guilla: Me and him, we were sitting down trying to make a beat. We had been going through hella samples. We had made a beat out of the Mentos commercial. [laughs] We had all these cheesy-ass commercials that we were just trying to flip the samples. Then we came across that Shirley Temple sample. We started chopping it up. At first, we didn’t think nothing of it. Then we started building the beat behind it. Once the whole beat came together, we were like, “Damn.” The beat is just crazy. We already knew that would be the one that everybody likes.
LISTEN TO: Black Resume “Animals“
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Honestly, that’s not even my favorite song on the album. That’s one of my least favorite songs. But everybody likes that song. If you go on Youtube, it has the most plays. So we were just, “Well, fuck it” and decided to push that one. We got a video coming out for that. It should be out in the next week or two. The beat just bangs. People like it. All the girls come up, “Oooh, I like that song. ‘Animals, animals!’” If the girls like it, we were like, “Yeah, we’ll run with that one.”
SDRaps.com: On “It’s A Shame,” you say, “It’s like these motherfuckers waiting on Pac to come back.” What do you mean by that?
Guilla: I mean motherfuckers that’s like 30+ still rapping, waiting on somebody to fucking call them up and give them a deal. You gotta go out there and get your own shit. You can’t ride the coattails on nobody. That’s what we’re basically trying to do. We’re not trying to come out under the shadows of anybody. We’re not looking for anybody to co-sign us or anything like that. We’re trying to make a name for ourselves. We’ll be the people that are co-signing other people. We’re not trying to wait for them. We’re trying to make a deal ourselves. That’s pretty much what I mean by “these motherfuckers waiting on Pac to come back.” You’re not gonna get on sitting at the house and making good music, posting it on Myspace and expect that shit to blow up. You gotta really go out there. Go to different cities and really put your music out there. That’s the only way it’s gonna happen.
LISTEN TO: Black Resume “It’s A Shame“
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Especially on the West Coast. You turn on BET. There’s really no West Coast artist that’s getting love big time. There’s nobody really doing it except for Snoop and he’s old. There’s not really anybody else. That’s pretty much what I mean: go out and do that shit yourself.
SDRaps.com: What’s the response been like for Bar-Barian Music?
Guilla: It’s been nuts. We put it out–the whole thing is we gave it out for free. We didn’t try to go out there and force it down people’s throats and have people pay for it. I picture the music as a gift. Because I know if I buy a motherfucking CD for $5, $10, whatever, that shit better be the best CD I ever heard. I don’t give a fuck if you’re Tupac or Outkast, anybody. If I’m paying money for it, it better be good. I see a lot of people out there selling their CD’s. That’s what’s up, you gotta make your money. But at the same time, you can only make so much by selling them. If you give them out, you can cover way more ground and it’ll come back tenfold.
So we put it out for free. And more than any other album I’ve ever put out, anybody else in the camp has ever put out, the love, the response was crazy. We really could tell from when we did our first show. We did our first show and we had people coming out–motherfuckers I ain’t seen in years, motherfuckers I ain’t never seen before in my life–they came out to the show. We get out on-stage. Everybody’s going crazy. They’re singing along to our songs and shit. I be driving around with this motherfucker, I hear motherfuckers playing it, I don’t even know them.
Young T: Remember when we were at the McDonald’s? [laughs] We were at the McDonald’s ordering our food. Some guy–I’m not sure who he was–in a truck with a loudspeaker, he’s like, “Is that Black Resume?” Instantly, he plays our song. We hear our song playing. We don’t even know who this guy is! Like what the hell?! That’s love! I’ve never been shown that much love before on any project that I did.
Stay tuned for part 2, in which the two young rappers speak on the SDMA’s and their thoughts on San Diego hip-hop.
Reading be fun though:
