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3/20/2006 What's good M? I can't complain. I'm on this tour right now in Boulder, Colorado, just trying to handle a little business. How's your tour going so far? It's going. We're knocking them down. We've had eleven straight shows. Me and Ghost are killing it. Everybody is happy because they're getting their Wu fix on and their DP fix on. It's a good cross-section of listeners. It's a win-win situation. You've also got "Confidential" dropping. What do you want to tell people about the album? It's a new chapter. There are some new pages written in the revolutionary book. I think it's a diverse album. Get it on March 21, and if you miss the 21st, go back on the 22nd. On the real, I want people to get into it and to know that we're still here and we're not going anywhere. At this stage in your career, how important is it for you to drop a solo album? I think it's very important. I think it's important for all those who want to hear more music in the lane that I'm in, the lane of people who are saying something and stand for something who want to change the destiny of music by bringing back some of the most important community aspects. That's what I think this album will represent and I think it helps people to not pigeonhole dead prez. We've also got a strong movement with groups like the A-Alikes. I'm proud to be first out the gate with this solo joint. stic recording his solo album inspired me to go out and record mine. How was it recording "Comrade's Call" with Styles P? Oh man! That was exactly what I wanted it to be. I could not have picked a better way to do something that I always wanted to do. We had a vision of the track that we wanted to do. I had actually previously approached him about another track to see where his head was at. We're good enough comrades to communicate what we want to do. He wanted to do some street shit and I wanted to do some radio shit. I thought he could have done that because the streets already respect him. He didn't want to do that. I ended up hooking up with my man Agallah the Don Bishop from Purple City. We blew some of that purple piff and we took them on a street journey with revolutionary principles. Styles P is no stranger to that. It was great. It was something that I had been wanting to do. There are a lot of people out there that I have wanted to work with but have never been able to. Who would you consider your comrades to be in this Hip Hop game? My comrades are always the people on my album, but there are others. I consider my comrades Styles, the Outlawz, they're also my family, I got mad family in the Bay Area, like JT, San Quinn, Deuce, E-40…a comrade is not just somebody who's your friend and your homie. It's also someone who will be there for you when you're struggling. It goes back to street code and the RBG code. I just want to shout the sisters too. There's a number of us. Dave Chappelle is a comrade. Why did you want to go through Koch on this record? I wanted to do it as independently as possible. I wanted autonomy over my career. What Koch offered was hard for me to pass up. Besides selling it out of my own trunk, Koch was the most viable option to do. Before this album, we did not have a great relationship with Koch. I intend to take this album to its fullest extent. What's your relationship like with Fabrizio Sotti (founder of Koch Records)? I respect his business mind and his musical space. He's a great guitarist. He's worked with all kinds of Grammy Award-winning artists. That doesn't make his music better than someone else's, but I respect his work. That's how I was able to get Cassandra Wilson on my album, because he had produced her album. He's a cool dude with a good vision who likes Hip Hop. He used to produce like Swizz Beatz and Puffy, but his ear is on the real shit, even though he tries to make himself commercially viable. I thought it would be a good match for us to do something that was real street with some real stringy guitars and to put it together. It's probably going to throw off the radio a little bit. How is your solo album different from a DP album? I think a lot of people assume that me and stic are attached at the hip. However it seems, I just want people to know that the ideas that have come and that are related to dead prez are different from M1. The process of making the songs is different. When me and stic make music, the formula is different. You've heard "Hip Hop" and all the other songs on "Let's Get Free." I didn't even get to produce much on this album. I wanted to executive-produce it. The politics are still the same. Hopefully I employed a new strategy that has some different characteristics. Do your fans expect a certain sound from you? I do think people expect a certain kind of sound from M1. The thing is, I don't think people are very familiar with what that sound is because when you say "dead prez," you think more of what we say than what we sound like. There really is no true definition for dead prez. This album is letting me expand the sound because it's very diverse. Some people could consider our music Dirty South and others would say East Coast/New York. We're growing into our sound. Everyone knows you for being political and outspoken. Do you ever just want to have fun on records and does that balance ever get hard? It does. Basically you have to keep it all in perspective and just show people the human side of not only trying to be a revolutionary but also an artist. I'm conscious of that. I live in that life. I tell myself, "Man, sometimes you just have to have fun with it." If you don't, you lose sight of the whole objective. That's the whole thing. I've been trying to express the human side of our struggle for the longest time. I don't think people have gotten that, but they will. The biggest complaint from people that don't really get into your music say, "dead prez doesn't like white people." How do you respond to that? I'll put it like this. My comrade Fred Hampton, Jr. from Chicago said this: "No investigation, no right to speak." What that basically means is that if you haven't done your research, then you don't deserve the right to make comments about anything. For those people who do listen to dead prez, I think they need to find themselves checking people who say that and tell them, "You don't know what you're talking about." Why is it racist when we want power? Everybody wants power in their community. The Chinese man wants power. The Japanese man wants power. The white man has power. We all need empowerment, but when I talk about empowerment, it becomes racist. I think it's an understanding of the politics. I think certain people that feel a certain way feel that way because they know there is still a group of black people who still represent a resistance and want control over our lives. I've never said, "Fuck white people" or "Fuck the white man." That's not my politic. I say, "Fuck the system." Yes, it is the white man's system. Me saying what I'm saying means I'm being real about the situation. It's not being racist. Anybody out there who has these misconceptions needs to check themselves. Check the catalog. If we say "cracker," imagine how many times a white man has said "nigger." How prevalent should race be in Hip Hop? It's partial to the culture that we live in. It's not everything that you can take out of that context. Hip Hop is the voice of the oppressed African. Let's make it clear that that's what emerged here. Why wouldn't I say that it has something to do with the African drum? It's true. It is our culture. Does that mean that white people don't belong here? Of course I'm not saying that. Our cultures are transferable. I've learned things from European culture. I haven't learned a lot of good things from European culture, but I have learned a lot and I think Europe has definitely gained from African culture. dead prez has a lot of white fans. What is the appeal of dead prez to white kids? I think the appeal to certain white people is that these guys are willing to tell the reality. We're willing to set that free and claim it as a part of our culture. It is the illest weapon out. It's iller than the neutron bomb. I think that people have an affinity for that. We're not stupid. We all see the shit on the news and know it's bullshit. How many rappers in the game are on your level of skill as an MC as well as wanting to change things? You'd be surprised how many people are faking the funk. Sincerity is hard to find. A lot of times when you find that sincerity, it's not in the rappers but in the organizers. That's a delicate line to balance. You have to be an artist that is the illest rapper out and still carry the weight of the hood on his back. That's our hero. I don't do what the rest of these rappers do. Will you and Saigon be doing some music in the future? Hell yeah. That's my homie. I've got mad joints with Sai. We've been doing joints since he came home. We're on his album. That's family. Just your mention of him lets me know just how wide of a voice we have. I love that people associate dead prez with Saigon. That's beautiful. What is your relationship with Immortal Technique today? We're comrades. We organize together. I met him on the political sense. We're a part of some of the same organizations. I think he has a beautiful approach to the game. We need that whole void to be filled. Plus he's representing the Latino community from a revolutionary perspective. That's my dude. What's up with your organization G.A.ME? It's a Hip Hop labor union. I take that shit very seriously. Everybody wants to be an MC and people think that rapping is getting political. I see that happened, so I developed the Grassroots Artist Movement concept and Technique was around. We had been organizing so much in the streets together and we are both spokespeople for the organization right now. Are a lot of rappers neglecting certain things like health insurance? Look at Dilla. It's not that he's neglecting anything, but life happens. We make this business $40 billion a year. That's a lot of gooba. We just need to make sure that we can be here to be a good slave for master. At least make sure I can stay alive. That's some bullshit. It comes down to the same basic questions that you can't escape. People think that rappers have it made. That's bullshit. What else are you working on right now? There are a few things. Of course a new dead prez album is right on the horizon. dead prez is my favorite group. I'm going to do some more acting. I got a movie that's about to develop into something. It's called "Broken Rhymes" and it's really my first movie. It's a full-length. It's about to come to the world through DVD. I did it out in LA. If you get a chance to look at it, you should. It has a good message. I'm just going to keep it revolutionary. When will the DP album drop? Maybe October or November. Look for it around then. What's Tahir been up to? He's still in the grind in Florida. He's still involved in the music thing. He's doing his thing. What do you want to say to everyone? Free Aaron Patterson. Aaron Patterson is a political prisoner that has been recaptured in Illinois. Google the name. He's a courageous fighter. Get to know about him. To the youth, take your sacrifices right now and rumble young man, rumble, because the system can't afford to have too many youths rising up. Sooner or later we'll have power. www.kickgame.com

By Brian Kayser

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