SD Reader: Gonjasufi Interview

January 18, 2012 by Quan Vu Leave a Comment


Not written by me (I’m not a huge fan of the Reader after reading about these shenanigans), but The Reader published a short interview with Gonjasufi in anticipation of his upcoming album, MU.ZZ.LE. It’s a pretty entertaining read. Check out a snippet below and read the full article here:

Is MU.ZZ.LE following in that vein?

That one’s all singin’, you know. Anyone who follows my older shit, MU.ZZ.LE is more like Sumach than anything. I feel like this is my first record. I love this shit, man. I have my wife on two songs with me, and I’m working on her record right now [BlackHaleMary]. All the production on MU.ZZ.LE is me and Psychopop from Daygo. He’s part of a group called Skrapez.

But, essentially, at the end of the day what I want to be able to do is put out my own records the way I want to put ’em out without having to conform to anybody’s box. And in order to do that — and I love Warp, I nurture that relationship — but I can’t allow any label to box me in and suffocate my expression. Know what I’m saying? So as far as Warp putting out the record that I want, ultimately, the complete me, I don’t know… That’s what I’m working toward and I’m hoping that they’re open to that shit. I’ve turned in a lot of songs lately and they’ve shown interest toward piecing together another record to follow up after MU.ZZ.LE. So, we’ll see, man… I don’t want to have to make up an alias and shit, and this is this style and this style. I just want people to grab my record and know it’s all kinds of crazy, different shit, and that’s why they love buying the shit, because it’s just whatever the fuck.

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Interview: Old English On Rap Name Origins

October 20, 2011 by Quan Vu Leave a Comment

Photo: Mike Herana

I threw up yet another portion of my interview with Old English over at SoundDiego. Here, they talk about the origins of their rap names. I also reveal my subconscious prejudice towards rappers in assuming they named their group after malt liquor (on the other hand, I’d like to make it clear that THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG WITH 40 OZ. OF MALT LIQUOR). Check it out below with cussing added back in.

Steve Martinez and Nelson Bautista–better known as Saviorself and Nothin’Less, respectively–make up the rap duo Old English. Like their music, the two rappers’ monikers are anything but run-of-the-mill. Saviorself and Nothin’Less sound a little bit more unique than, say, Lil’ Steve or Young Nelson might. I sat down with the National City-based group to talk about the origins of their rap names.

SDRaps.com: You both have very unique rap names. How did you come up with those names?

Saviorself: I came up with “Saviorself” just jotting shit down at the pad. I think I was 17. I was just at the house writing names. I was thinking of an MC name. I came up with a couple wack ass ones like, “Yeah, I’mma Rock With This.” Then two days pass, I’m like, “Nah, that shit’s wack.”

SDRaps.com: What did you come up with at the time?

Saviorself: Wack ass shit. Sensei. Or some corny-ass shit. And I just wrote that down–Savior. Then Saviorself. It has a whole meaning to me. That’s the way I live my life. You gotta save yourself to teach others. Instead of preaching to motherfuckers, you gotta lead by example. Save yourself first, then turn and save others.

Nothin’Less: When I first started to rap, it used to be Nada Negative. It pretty much meant ”nothing negative.” Out of all the people in our neighborhood, we were the only ones doing positive shit, trying to bring a positive light back to hip-hop besides gangster rap. At the time when we started, we were heavily influenced by underground shit. We would go to the scene. So I was like, “Yo, Nada Negative,” on some peaceful vibe.

But as I started progressing, I changed it later. It ended up being Nothin’Less a few years later when we dropped our [Under the Hood Vol. 1] mix tape–just because I thought it was more fitting for what we were doing. It was a name I could take farther with Old English. And “Nothing Less Than the Best,” “Nada Negative.” It’s the same fucking meaning.

SDRaps.com: What about Old English? I mean. I just assume you’re big fans of Olde English malt liquor.

Saviorself: Nah. Old English is originally the language of rhythm and romance. Taking it back to the old school.

Nothin’Less: People get that confused a lot, thinking we’re trying to advocate a gangster lifestyle, trying to advocate ‘hood products to fools.

Saviorself: It’s also like O.E.: Over Everyone, Oddly Even.

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Interview: Dannu of The Visionaries

September 18, 2011 by Quan Vu Leave a Comment


I published this interview with Dannu last week over at SoundDiego but it only got like 5 Facebook Likes, which is pretty much how I gauge an article’s popularity on there. Dannu is the lone SD native of The Visionaries crew. After 15 years in the game, he put out his first solo album, Virgo Summer, early this year. And I finally got around to publishing this interview. You can buy Virgo Summer on Amazon (sorry, Access is currently out of stock).

SDRaps.com: It’s been a long time since you started rapping, and now you’ve finally dropped your first solo album, Virgo Summer.

Dannu: I’ve always been a team player-type person. I never thought that I would want to be a solo artist, but everyone was always telling me, “Hey, why don’t you put out a solo?” And I never wanted to. But once we had our little “break” from doing Visionaries stuff — everyone started doing their solo stuff — I started doing songs with certain people. I did a lot of songs. I chose all these for Virgo Summer because they had this mood. I finished it completely — mixed, mastered — I wanna say, 2009. And then something happened with my masters: They got jacked. Imagine your life’s work on your computer and it just crashes. It wasn’t a crash, but it got jacked. So I had to re-do every song from the ground up. At the time, I was pulling my hair out, but it actually worked out, because the time it took for me to build to that point, I had memorized most of the lyrics already. So when I went back to re-record them, it sounded better because I wasn’t reading from my book. I was able to express it more.

And I actually was gonna put it out myself, because I was already working — nothing to prove. I was like, “Let me put it out so people know a little bit more about me outside of the Visionaries.”

SDRaps.com: But it got put out on Soulspazm, right?

Dannu: It got put out on Soulspazm digitally. And Fat Beats picked it up and produced some CD’s for me. And that was all from the help of DJ Rhettmatic. He was one of the ones that was really encouraging me to do my solo. He’s basically the co-executive producer for my album. He got a lot of things done on the outside of making the music. And, of course, he did some tracks on there.

SDRaps.com: You mentioned you were aiming for a certain mood. Can you expand on that a little as far as what sort of mood you were aiming for?

Dannu: Basically, everything I wrote was always during the summer. The way I am, I’m not like a super-aggressive kind of personality unless I get pissed off. I basically wanted to make it like–I mean, I like groups like Dwele, like “vibe-y” kind of music. That’s what I wanted to shoot for.

SDRaps.com: Like the neo-soul school?

Dannu: Just soul, period. When I grew up, that’s what we used to call it. We didn’t call it rap music or hip-hop music. We called it soul music. I wanted to give that vibe to where you can sit back and chill to it and drive to it, or clean your house to it. There’s some songs on there where I’m a little more aggressive, but I kind of wanted to reach more toward the people that wanted to chill. And, really, I was directing it really toward females, the hip-hoppers that are female that like to chill and listen to vibe music like that. When you go to concerts like Erykah Badu and Jill Scott, you look in the crowd, and there’s mostly females. And to me, they’re the most critical out of all music lovers because if you’re wack, they’re not even gonna listen to you. And for me, I wanted to reach that crowd because we’d already reached what we did with the Visionaries. I just kind of wanted my own lane. I’m not trying to be like LL Cool J. But I wanted to be me and just chill.

And that’s what San Diego is. A lot of people say that we’re real laid-back, and it’s true: We are. It’s our culture over here. We’re not too far from the beach. We’re not too far from the mountains. Downtown isn’t that far, there’s no traffic. We’re not always trying to rush to get somewhere, like L.A. is. We’re just like, “Alright, we’ll roll. We’ll go out and do something. Let’s go out, have a BBQ or something.” I was trying to bring that out in my album.

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Interview: CJ, President of Wrongkind Records, pt. 2

August 2, 2011 by Quan Vu 4 Comments

We continue our talk with CJ, president of Wrongkind Records. In part 2, CJ runs through San Diego rap music history from Gangsta Ern to Filtered Souls. Then we shift gears, speaking on the gang injunction and its relationship to the recent spate of violence in Southeast San Diego.

SDRaps.com: Let me go back. You said you used to work at Fam Mart. You probably know tons of San Diego rap history.

CJ: And another thing: I know whose CD’s really sell and whose don’t. [laughs]

SDRaps.com: I don’t even know where to start. I wanna ask you who has been hot every year since–

CJ: The first three rappers that I could really say in the early ’90s that had city-wide recognition: Big June from Skyline, Green Eyes from Lincoln Park, and Gangsta Ern from the Brims. Gangsta Ern by far was the city superstar. He was HUGE!

SDRaps.com: This was way back.

CJ: This was ’91, ’92. These dudes go back to ’91, ’92.

SDRaps.com: They were first rappers with city-wide recognition–

CJ: –that put out CD’s. You know, because there were dudes that rapped that didn’t have a CD out. When Gangsta Ern had a CD out and he was a superstar, people knew Black Mikey could rap. And you heard Black Mikey rap but you heard Black Mikey rap in person. He might be at the playground in Bay Vista, there might be 40 people around him listening to him freestyle. You knew Damu could rap. But they just didn’t have records out yet. But yeah, those were the first three that really had a song that people knew throughout the city. Gangsta Ern had a song where, when you threw it on at a party, the party went HAM. The party would explode when you put that on. Read more of this post

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Interview: CJ, President of Wrongkind Records, pt. 1

August 1, 2011 by Quan Vu 1 Comment

Wrongkind Records turns 10 this year. To celebrate, Wrongkind is re-releasing the album that started it all for them: Mitchy Slick’s debut, Trigeration Station. I spoke with CJ, the president of Wrongkind, a couple months ago. I published some highlights last week on SoundDiego. But here’s the full interview in two parts.

In part 1 of our interview, CJ talks about the origins of Wrongkind and Mitchy Slick and the interesting ways in which their popularity has spread nationally. After you’re finished, be sure to continue onto part 2.

SDRaps.com: Why did you feel the need to start your own label in the first place?

CJ: I actually had been living in Los Angeles. I was staying with Xzibit. From being up there and around his situation, I picked up a lot of information about the music business and about the industry — how things are done. From being around the industry, I figured I had gained enough knowledge to start my own situation. Also, I worked at a record store for awhile. I was the type of person where I really studied the game, studied the music business. And I saw that one of the people that really had a lot of success, businesswise–and coming from a city where there was really no music business there previously–was Master P. Read more of this post

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Interview: Parker & The Numberman talk ‘Shortbread’ and ‘Lorna Doone’

July 4, 2011 by Quan Vu 2 Comments

Photo: Tony Maristela / Star In The Sky


You may have seen this already on SoundDiego but I don’t think it got enough shine. Parker & The Numberman just released the Lorna Doone DVD available at Access. I talked to them about the visual aspect of their work including Lorna Doone and the Shortbread movie. This is part of a larger interview that also included DJ Collagey but I gotta save the rest of it for the time being. Peace to Tony for the ill flicks though.

SDRaps.com: What is the Lorna Doone DVD?

Parker Edison: Lorna Doone is like a video presentation of the last year. It’s seven video clips and as you watch them, it really does cover like the last 14 months. We got the original Parker & The Numberman shirts, which Access–big shout to Third Bird Studios and A. Rogan. They did the first set of shirts. Then it really became this grassroots thing. We really started taking control. We’re gonna kinda direct traffic and make some things pop off. And that’s what Lorna Doone is, you get to see it as it happens. It’s kinda like this weird documentary thing. But it’s based off pushing the Shortbread EP. I say–

10-19 The Numberman: Hah, that’s not really what it is! We were playing with some ideas, I don’t know how we got started. And from Shortbread, he took it to Lorna Doone and that was just the flyest s**t. It was based off the shortbread and the cookies and then the Lorna Doone snacks. And it was just … natural selection. Evolution. Read more of this post

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Access Sez So: Interview: Sergio Hernandez

April 24, 2011 by SDRaps.com Guest Leave a Comment

Later than expected but well worth the wait, here is another installment of Access Sez So. In an ideal world, Wes would’ve gotten a journalism degree and would be covering local hip-hop for CityBeat, The Reader, etc.

Originally I had set out to do a mini review of the Strange Habits EP by Sergio Hernandez, which dropped late in November last year. EP’s are short in nature, so I found myself struggling to review the release and thought that it’d be a lot more interesting if I got to know Sergio a little better through an interview. The result was my unprepared disorganized self asking a lot of questions out of sequence that turned into much longer conversations about music, art, beer and me trying to relate his upbringing in San Diego to my experiences with hip hop growing up as a teen in small towns on the East Coast. As I realized interviews were a lot harder than planned, he agreed to come back to the shop to finish up the interview and the next day he presented me with a bottle of beer that exceeded 10% abv, I assume so I could relax a little and get focused, and so I basically reworked my entire interview based on the previous day’s conversations. This turned out to be a much better call then shorting SDRaps.com readers with a quick review, where you would have missed the parts about this OG San Diego graf head and an extremely talented individual.

Sergio Hernandez “Roaches” [prod. MRR]
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Interview: Black Resume, pt. 2

September 7, 2010 by Quan Vu 2 Comments

About 9 years later, I decide to post the second half of our talk with Black Resume. In this part, Guilla and Young T of Black Resume speak on their mixed feelings about their San Diego Music Award nominations. They also give us a glimpse into hustling in Mira Mesa. If you missed part 1, read it here.

SDRaps.com: Black Resume has been nominated at the SDMA’s for both “Best Hip Hop” and “Best Hip Hop Album.” There’s been a lot of controversy over the years within the hip-hop community. How do you feel about your nomination this year?
Guilla: I’ve been keeping up with the SDMA’s for the past 4-5 years and everytime it comes up, I’m one of those people myself: “This is some bullshit. They should be nominating better acts.” It was a shock to me when we got the nomination. Because I don’t know anybody that connected with the San Diego Music Awards. I didn’t submit the music for it. I have no idea how it’s run. But they sent us over the email [notifying us of our nomination] and I was like, “Damn, that’s what’s up.” That’s a good look on us. I don’t really see too many other artists out here doing the same, as far as grinding goes, like we are. But I feel like some of the artists on there shouldn’t be nominated. There are a lot of artists that should’ve been. But it’s the fucking San Diego Music Awards–what can you do? Read more of this post

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Interview: Black Resume, pt. 1

August 24, 2010 by Quan Vu 4 Comments

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. Read more of this post

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Digging Into The SDMA’s: Interview: MC Flow and The SDMA’s

August 19, 2010 by Quan Vu 2 Comments

We conclude our chat with MC Flow. Flow’s fiance, Kelly Dorsey, was also present to assist during the interview. Here, Flow directly addresses the San Diego Music Awards, the SDMA nomination process, and her views on its biases. If you missed it, check out part 1 where Flow speaks on her background in hip-hop.

SDRaps.com: In 2007 when you were first nominated for a San Diego Music Award, there was a story in the San Diego Reader. Another local rapper, Ricasshay, his main gripe with you was that you hadn’t paid your dues in the hip-hop community. What’s your response to that?
MC Flow: Again, I think a lot of people don’t know that I actually really did have my birth as an artist in a community of real hip-hop heads. I think a lot of that comes from misconception.

But I don’t know how I feel about the concept of “paying dues.” Read more of this post

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