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12/05/2005 How are you doing Adam? I'm good, very well. I've been busy, busy working. I'm in London now, just working hard. You got another Redman joint out ("Rush the Security"), how did you guys get back together? He came to me. I've been working on a project in Brooklyn and until May of this year was living in Jersey, doing production for J Records and Jive and different people and mixing stuff for people in England, and he just hit me up for a track for his album. He said he needed another "Smash Sumthin." He wanted me to come to the studio with my funk. He was about to go out on tour in Europe. I went on tour with him in Europe and his Gillahouse crew. I started messing around on some tracks for his Gillahouse mix-CD, doing voices and just having fun. I sent Red some beat CD's and just wanted to make something that would be banging. That's how the process went. I've also been working a lot with DJ Craze. It's a mix of Drum-n-Bass and Hip Hop. The fusion is there. We've been on tour and all that. I was working with Red, and Craze had an idea, and I had an idea, and that's how "Rush the Security" was born. We also did the video for it in Brooklyn. The last track Red and I had done was on the Def Jam "Vendetta" game. He's been following all the stuff I'm doing. We've talked about starting a band together as well. What's that about? It's a mix of things. It's sort of a rock-fusion. Craze is doing cuts and was heavily involved in the production. It's like a whole metal band with the Hip Hop thing. It's mad fusion. It's predominantly English musicians apart from Craze. It's a very animated live show. It's very edgy, hard stuff. Red's been loving that, he's done vocals on that. I also have my own label over here as well, Breakbeat KAOS. It's been going crazy off of acts I've been signing, like the group Pendulum from Australia that's just blowing up over here. We've just shipped 65,000 units of their album. It seems like you and Red have real good chemistry together… Yeah! Chemistry is the key thing. I think it's because I like to have fun and fuck around, generally. I'm still amazingly professional and Red is a very hands-on person. A lot of people think Red fucks around all of the time. He's very hands-on in the studio and into producing art. He'll cut and scratch himself, do the mix himself…we're very professional. I had my crew come on tour with him and we had fun. I've done skits for him with my [English] voice. We just have fun. We're friends and we have the same dry sense of humor. We get on well in the studio and I think that's very important. It makes it much easier on me and we both have all sorts of ideas. We did a new "Soopaman Lover" with some crazy porn music. I like to push Red to do things that he thinks "it's not me." I think he likes being challenged and that's what helps us to get along so well. Do you have any other cuts for his album? We've done other songs but I'm not sure if they'll be on the album. It depends because his album is in its final stages. What did you want to give Red with "Rush the Security"? I wanted to make a banger that would work over here and over there, and it's still very, very Redman. He wanted his first single grimy. I've done other songs, but whether they'll be used or not I'm not sure. We've done a lot of fun tracks. What's the difference between how the U.S. responds to "Rush the Security" versus how the U.K. does? As far as the DJ is concerned, there are no particular differences. It's a hot Redman record. In the States, Hip Hop has a bigger appeal and there's a bigger market over there than here. Apart from that, as far as club play is concerned, it works on both sides of the water. Do you spin songs like "Smash Sumthin" and "Rush the Security" during your drum-n-bass sets? Yeah, sometimes. I'm known for doing shit like that when I work with Craze. I have mad intros and sections in a set where I like to do mad shit, twist it up, and push the envelope. Sometimes when I do drum-n-bass, I like to do it like a Hip Hop or dancehall set, where you're more animated and you work with the crowd. That reflects in the new band I'm doing as well, the way it's presented on the stage with a variety of genres. With the emergence of Southern music and the presence of drum-n-bass sounds in that music, have you found an increase in demand for your services? To a degree. That is everything that I have a background for. It's also present in the soul stuff I've done too, like Carl Thomas. I've gotten a lot of interest not only because of the sounds but also because of the instrumentation. Do you think that being in the U.K. gives you a wider view of what's going on in the States? When you grow up in a culture and you're surrounded in the music, it reflects that. It's a lot more personal to the audience and the people. When you go to another country, you have to spend quite a bit of time to understand where it's coming from and the relationship it has to the environment. As a producer, I definitely have different tastes. It shows in the three years I lived in Brooklyn and Jersey. It's definitely connected to me more as well, on a more personal and emotional level. It helps to work in the market you are instead of looking at it from a production point of view. It helps to analyze the production point of view and where the producer is. I'm sure my take is different than if I was always in the States. Some of the English stuff only works in England. It's nice to be able to do both. I can come back to my lab here and do stuff that would never work there, and vice versa. It's all real when you're making it. You have experience in a lot of different genres of music. Does your state-of-mind change when you switch genres? It doesn't actually change that much because I'm always trying to make something that will catch me off guard. Drum-n-bass, rock, Hip Hop, they're all about being edgy, even if certain things are more musical or song-based. I still want to make stuff that is cutting edge and unpredictable in a way. I take the same approach. Obviously it changes if you're making it for the club or it's a personal track. My mind changes when I do film scores when you have to create music that goes with the visuals and emotions of the film. It alters the approach and it's a complex thing to do as a producer. The rest of it pretty much stays connected in a way. Sometimes, yeah, if I'm going to be making a certain type of music, then I'll probably spend a bit of time living that music instead of just having random stuff go in my head. At the same time, having those random movements always keeps me open-minded. I might try something like going to a Capone-n-Noreaga track after a drum-n-bass track. Maybe I'll take a sound out of a drum-n-bass track and try to flip it into a Hip Hop track. I like it because it's challenging. It's good working between the genres. With the emergence of grime music in the U.K., can we expect to see you get down with that? Right now, one of our singles features Capleton, from the dancehall scene, and the other side is a grime track featuring Dizee Rascal. As a label, we're releasing it, but as a producer, I haven't gone down that route yet. I've gone through every genre and I'm not leaning towards a certain one. I'm for working with anyone that wants to push the boundaries and is passionate about making music. How important is it for producers today to be well-rounded? I don't know. There's nothing wrong with doing one thing right and just sticking it out. I didn't make a choice to work in different genres of music, it was an uncontrollable passion of liking lots of different genres of music. I didn't really have a choice. It's just the way destiny is taking me. It seems that if you are able to be diverse in your creativity and life, you have more opportunities available. You can only be an artist for so long. My take was always to take different angles as a producer. It's important that whatever you do, you do it right and focus on it. If you have the talent and opportunities to be diverse, it's just a great asset. It seems that a lot of producers follow trends. Do you pay attention to trends and does that influence the music you make? Producers are responsible for creating a trend and the record labels follow them. The Neptunes, Timbaland, they make the trends. Then you have the people below them trying to do their sound. A super-producer is the one that's setting the trends. A lot of producers can pump out tracks all the time, it seems like you take more time with what you put out… I'm not prolific like that where I can put out tracks all the time. I would rather have quality over quantity, although some people can do both. Some people suffer for the amount that they do. Some people take their time and may make three to five beats per week and some can do three to five beats per day. Neither amount says that all the beats will be used either. I think that's a personal journey that you have to decide to take as a producer. Having a lot in the market is good for staying hot and having people want you, but at the same time, you can burn out. At the end of the day, you can be gone for awhile and come back with a killer and then you're back on top. I don't really plan it out. I like to feel things out naturally and work with artists and let it develop. When can we hear some stuff from your new band Malpractice? You can expect to start hearing some stuff probably around March. You're getting into the acting too, how's that going? That naturally evolved from doing music videos to bigger projects. Along the way, they'd say "I want you to be in this." I started off just being in videos for music I made. The thing with acting that used to intrigue me is the wholesome theory behind it and the practice that goes into it, learning about a particular time and character, really studying the character, and becoming that. It's an interesting challenge for me, as far as the actual work process behind it. It's got nothing to do with being famous. I just like the actual challenge of trying to become something and studying it. It's something that I've always had a passion for. I like things to happen naturally and to have a few natural things happen here is good. I'm just going to continue working. It seems as though producers usually play the background, why do you think that is? I started off being a singer and songwriter, but I've also produced a lot of tracks. People think of me as more of a producer than an artist. A lot of producers don't like to take the heat. As a producer, you can move from project to project, but if you're an artist and you're not hot, they just move on to the next one. A lot of producers probably keep it like that because they don't want the limelight but they want to stay behind successful projects. Your resume is already deep…who are you looking to work with next? To be honest, I'm looking to get things back to where they started. I want to get this band going, go on the road, do festivals, do shows. I really enjoy and miss going out on the road. That's what me and Red did. I want to have some fun, do some tours around music. I still want to look at certain production projects. My label Breakbeat KAOS is really blowing up, so I'm going to be concentrating on making that a priority because that's doing really well. What are your goals for 2K6 with Breakbeat KAOS? To just continue to expand in the next three to four years. We've got all types of people coming to us from rappers to DJ's…it's so nice to put it back on developing artists. We can use this as a springboard to a major situation. It's about supporting the underground and up-and-coming artists with different ideas. We've got three to four albums scheduled and a DJ-mix series starting too. There's a lot of big plans for Breakbeat KAOS. What do you want to say to everyone out there? Check out Breakbeat KAOS. Keep supporting the underground, because that's really where it's at, that's the springboard for everything else.

By Brian Kayser

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