A Quote by Ad-Rock
The tapes we were making would jump around with different styles, just quick parts of different songs. Hip-hop to jazz to funk to whatever else. And in a way, 'Check Your Head' ended up being like one of those pause-tapes.
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I grew up in the time just when cassettes were waning and CDs were growing. And so mix tapes - and not mix CDs - mix tapes were an important part of the friendship and mating rituals of New York adolescents. If you were a girl and I wanted you - to show you I like you, I would make you a 90-minute cassette wherein I would show off my tastes. I would play you a musical theater song next to a hip-hop song next to an oldie next to some pop song you maybe never heard, also subliminally telling you how much I like you with all these songs.
Some artists are definitely trying to do different styles. Some, not a lot. But even from what you've seen [of] Outkast, Kanye West, and Lil' Wayne, and different people expressing their way of evolving in hip-hop. In the evolution of hip-hop, they're doing different things. And you've seen hip-hop have more of a global presence and impact on the world.
The real reason we ended up getting into that type of music was our dad worked for an oil company so we spent a year overseas when we were young kids. Because of that, it was all Spanish TV and radio so we ended up having these '50s and '60s tapes, tapes of that music.
I listen to all those kinds of music, from classic soul to hip-hop to Brazilian music to, you know, jazz to indie to alternative... And for me, when I'm making music, it's all in my head, and all those influences in my head. So if something comes to me that's a reference from a different genre then people are used to hearing from me, I'm not afraid to go there with it.
Nobody uses skits at all anymore, so it seems like I use a lot. That's how I grew up on tapes. Biggie tapes, Biggie albums would have skits. The Lox would have skits. Mase would have skits. All the dudes I grew up on in Nineties rap would have skits on their projects, just to make you feel like you were right there with them.
I've had a couple tapes out and they weren't really tapes, it was just some songs that I had made, and then I would throw them together as a compilation and put a name on it. And then when I would release my next thing, I would just delete it.
I grew up a hip-hop kid doing mix-tapes.
When I was in high school, I started getting into Japanese wrestling. For me to watch those matches, I had to order VHS tapes through catalogues, and these tapes were, like, $20 each.
Jazz is all about being in the moment. Whatever the music is making you feel, jazz gives you the freedom. That's the same genesis as hip-hop.
First thing you have to understand is that freestyling is much different than making hip-hop music: there's another whole element to being a hip-hop MC.
While a lot of hip-hop was inspired by jazz or James Brown samples and was made to be played live in the clubs, I made hip-hop that was made for MCs to eat the mic up. It was an aggressive form of hip-hop. It was made just for hip-hop. It's not made to sing or dance to, though you can if you want.
All forms are complex once you get to a really high level, and jazz and hip-hop are so connected. In hip-hop, you sample, while in jazz, you take Broadway tunes and turn them into something different. They're both forms that repurpose other forms of music.
All the skateboarding brands that I was into had graphic T-shirts. In the '90s, there were different styles that went along with the different influences in skateboarding, whether that be hip-hop or rock and roll and grunge. And that's what I was into, so I was following all that.
My family lived in West Texas. We went to Houston and Laredo, ended up around Fort Worth - really just made the rounds. And I took in all of those different styles of music.
You basically have to play everything (in New Orleans), because you're getting calls to play gigs of all different styles, from classical to R&B to funk; modern jazz to traditional jazz.
I had a boom box with a dual cassette deck and a mic, so I used to make pause tapes. I think a lot of people started like that because it was all I had. I would just take rap records that I liked and just loop the beat by pressing pause and record and make, like, five minutes of these beats.
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