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6/14/2006 What's up? I'm suffering from allergies right now. It's kind of a pain in the ass. It's been a few years since your last solo album… I know. It's been too long. Are you excited about Mo' Mega? Yeah, I really am. I'm really looking forward to it. It's another chance to get some thoughts and ideas out there. I get to go out on tour again and bring the music live and direct to people. It's cool. It's also going to give me the opportunity to perform songs I couldn't do on the I, Phantom tour. It's going to be a lot of fun. I'm just really, really looking forward to it. Are you happy with how Mo' Mega turned out? Yeah. It's been a process of me really growing with the records. It's like when you're so close to the making of a project, you can't get perspective on it. I guess I'm a very sensitive person overall. There might be a million things going through my mind and I'll be thinking about how I felt making the song instead of how the song came out. Sometimes I judge the song based on how I felt. Now I've had a healthy amount of separation time from this record because I turned it in in March. I've had time to sit with it and step away from it. There are some days when I don't even listen to it at all. I feel like I can comprehend the record now and I'm real happy with how it came out. What was your inspiration for your single "Brothaz"? The situation in Darfur was really a huge thing. I feel like a broken record and I always feel like I want to give people something different in every interview, but it's really hard for me to get around the fact that I'm addressing a very obvious plight that exists in black communities here in America and comparing them to situations overseas. There is so much disarray in communities everywhere and the government and other communities completely ignore it. It's just something where I was like, "Hey, let me shed some light on it. Let me just reiterate the fact there is an emergency situation for young black people in America." It should be treated like an emergency. Do you see things getting better? You would hope so. I hope that the black community collectively responds in a positive way and gets their hands on some money. I hope a good deal of money goes into the black community especially for education. There is definitely a damaging effect to not having good schools you can access. If you have teachers who don't even want to go to the school because they're afraid of some of the kids, the kids who want to be there won't get the education they deserve because of the teachers. I think there needs to be an effort. All these rich black basketball players and actors need to form a coalition. If you're making over $500,000 a year, you should help out on building a prestigious school or something. Everyone should start with one community and build it up like that. I haven't done a lot of research on it and I know it's not going to be easy with zoning laws and everything. There are all types of things that can go wrong, but maybe it's worth the effort. Maybe it's worth 5% of your income to just go into a black community, maybe do two communities a year, and just go into the city and create a stronger educational system with a stronger support system for minorities and build a stronger future for minorities. So much self-esteem is built through education. If my parents did not send me to a great school, I would not be where I am today. Do you ever get frustrated the majority of your fans are white? It's frustrating to not have diversity. I love my fans, but I'm just like, "Where are the rest of them?" Not only do I write music specifically aimed at the black community, but my music also has a universal scope. It's not like someone can't relate to "Brothaz" just because they're not black. It's just out there for everyone. I have a lot of songs just talking about the human situation on earth. I definitely don't just try to target one community. I make music for everyone. I made "Live from the Plantation" for everyone who's ever had a bullshit-ass job. I don't know what I have to do to change it, but I hope that it does change. The music is out there and I have to figure out with my label what we have to do to diversify the agenda and diversify the people buying the record. Are you leaving Def Jux? I have no plans of that. I have no plans of that at all. We have to figure out our contractual issues. We're going to take our time and make sure everything's going where it needs to go. That's my family. It's my sixth year rolling with them and I obviously have a lot of respect for what's going on over there. Maybe I have to do some research on my own as to what I have to do to diversify things. I just have to get all the things taken care of that need to be taken care of. I need to make sure I'm in magazines that reach out to different people. Maybe we need to look at promotions for the tour. There are a lot of things that need to be reinvented and looked at. I have to balance my own energy because it takes so much for me to keep my career afloat. It takes so much energy just to keep this thing going. It's almost like I have to do double the amount of work. I have to promote to the white community and also go into areas of color and make them aware on my own. After listening to "Fries," I'm guessing you're not going to McDonald's anytime soon. Nah, bro. We all have our vices, but I avoid that shit like the plague. We have our dark moments on tour, but we usually try to fuck with the Cracker Barrel because you can get that home-cooked feel. Sometimes it's two in the morning and dudes are starving and we might have to drive through the night. It's happened twice in the last three years where cats have to fuck around with some McNuggets. The song is also about if the government wants to wipe out the population, all they have to do is put a slow-releasing death medicine into the McDonald's food. Obviously my song is very extreme because cats are keeling over in the parking lot. But if motherfuckers were keeling over a month later, they might not even know why. A million people served would be a big dent to the population. The second verse is where I'm waking up in an insane asylum. America is the predominant country at the forefront of the world and a lot of people never leave America because our culture makes you feel so much like you're on top of the world and you're 100% right all the time. We're a country based on intimidation and a lot of the things we're involved in are very cult-like and very unhealthy. We're living out our attempts to play God. Out of all the living things, we're obviously the ones who aren't living in harmony with nature. That's why at the end of "Fries" I say what I do. We're basically all looking the other way. What I liked about Mo' Mega is you can go from "Fries" to "Murs is my Manager" and get a completely different vibe. For me, "Murs is my Manager" is just a much-needed bugout. It's in the middle of the album. There are five songs before it and five songs after it. Murs and I were bugging out one day, and dude was on some shit like, "Yeah man, I'm going to manage you." I regularly get really sound advice from Murs on a lot of things. He's from the Bay Area and they're really on their grassroots grind. He started out pressing up his own CD's and sat outside Amoeba Records and sold his own shit. I have a lot of respect for the Living Legends because they really came up on some real independent shit. When I did Sleepyheads, he advised me on how to do that and he linked me up with the guy to manufacture my CD's and we've done other business. That's how the whole management issue came up. That's why he was calling up asking for a verse from Eminem but we didn't have no dough and we would need it by tomorrow. It was just some wiling out shit. We had the perfect beat for that and it just fit that part of the record. How do go about balancing the sarcasm with the educational element of your music? I think that all those things are so much a part of me that it's just very natural. This record was going to be a comedy album at one point in its conception. That was the way I was rolling. I wanted to make a comedy record. There are a lot of really funny jams that I recorded that aren't on this record that I'll probably put out later. What kind of beats did you want from El-P on Mo' Mega? He did every cut on the album except for "Wash It Up," "Murs is my Manager," and "For You." I just wanted him to do whatever he felt comfortable with. It was really a collaborative effort between him and me. It's not like I was going to him asking for certain tempos and things. I wanted him to feel he represented himself on this album. He would send me some drums for me to lay down any verses I had prewritten, and then I ended up having that verse from "Fries." That first verse I had is a couple years old. I remember you doing that at a show three years ago. Yeah. I had that one for awhile. I had that one verse and I was assuming it would never find a home. I hate to waste verses, especially that verse. I felt that was a very visual verse and is obviously very out there. I wanted to have that out there somehow. I'm just glad it got out there on this record. How do you want Mo' Mega to be different from I, Phantom? I think the biggest difference is I didn't make this a record that is as conceptually strung together as I, Phantom. I think I'm going to go back to that concept for my next project. I have a few ideas already. I think with I, Phantom, I was hiding behind characters and it was hard to tell which songs were personally about me. A lot of people asked me what songs were about me and what songs were about the characters. People had their assumptions. This album is just me being ultra-personal. I figured I had a four-year hiatus and I wanted my fans to know exactly what I was going through and to see how tough it is to live up to your own standards. One of the biggest things holding me back was my standards. I, Phantom was a great conceptual album. Thanks. I'm just glad that it had the success that it did. When I passed it in to the label and gave it to the publicist to send out, cats didn't really say anything. There was a very eerie silence. Of course I understood it because it was my record, but the publicist didn't understand which way to work the record. Once people saw the liner notes, they were like, "Oh shit, there's a method to the madness here." I think that record could have come off as not relating to anyone, but luckily people connected with songs like "Live from the Plantation." I think that was the main song people connected with from the album. Some people liked "New Man Theme." "Success" was another song like that. "Friends and Neighbors" was probably my favorite song. I was trying to get twenty stories wrapped up into one on that song. That's a very personal song. I really like "Iron Healer." I considered that a masterwork because it took so much out of me. It required a lot of separation for this record so I could live down what people were saying about it and stand far enough away from it so I could finally feel like it was time to make something completely different. Did you ever think about shooting a film for I, Phantom? That was something that was being kicked around for a little while. I wanted to do a video movie for it where we shoot a short video for every single song. Things weren't right so we opted not to do it. Are you happy with how your Perceptionists' album Black Dialogue did? Well, I think all of us in the camp felt like it should have done a lot more, but ultimately, it was rewarding to get together with two of my best friends and make a record. I feel there are 20,000 other people out there who would buy the record if they were exposed to the album in the right light. As a group, we couldn't get our act together to really put our full force behind the record. Fakts One dropped out of the group before our first tour started so it was kind of hectic and I know it didn't go as far as it could have. Is everything cool between you and Fakts today? Yeah, we just don't talk as much because I don't know if he's even into the music anymore. I was telling Ak and Fakts to come to Jux and they [Definitive Jux] have their act together. It was an opportunity I was able to provide for two of my best friends. It's hard when you have goals and aspirations and you're trying to work out the kinks and someone drops out from the beginning and takes a completely different route in life. We had been on the road together for the past seven years. Will you and Akrobatik do some more work in the future? Absolutely. That's something I have to talk to my manager about, but we're planning another album for 2008. How important is the live show to Mr. Lif? I think especially in this age of digital downloading, the live show is an artist's biggest asset. They can listen to your music, but there's nothing like being at the venue watching the show. I personally do not know too many artists who can rely on label money and not tour and be financially stable. It's a very important thing. I always try to make sure people enjoy the experience when they come out to my show. What would you be doing right now if you weren't rapping? I'd probably be learning how to build houses or a goalie in the NHL. What do you have to do from here on out to make sure Mo' Mega is successful? I've done a couple things. I've gone over to Europe to do a press tour. I went to Paris, Berlin, and London. I sat in the hotel lobbies and just talked to as many press people as possible. I just did interview after interview after interview. I was telling my girl one thing is that overseas, people are more open about asking me about songs influences and long-distance relationships and things like that. I don't know if cats are uptight about sexuality over here, but it's funny to me. I know people are clearly not ready to hear certain songs from me. They're clearly not expecting it and they probably don't want it. When you make political music, it's a dangerous, dangerous thing. People really try to castrate you. I don't know. It's weird. I've been fighting to stay out of this torture box where I'm confined and can only move certain ways. That's why I did Black Dialogue. I have songs about relationships and I'm way more into that than I am into watching CNN. Maybe me and my lady will watch CNN together, but there are a lot of things I'd rather do than that. I'm in a long-distance relationship because I'm a musician and I'm always on the road. Even if I'm living in the same house as someone, we're apart and life gets compartmentalized. If I go out, I may come back for a couple weeks and there's a lot of pressure on my partner and me to show and prove. We maybe have one week to completely remind each other why we're in this relationship and why we love each other on top of what else we have to do. If you don't like those songs, I challenge you to leave someone you're intensely attracted to for three months and then see how you feel. What do you want to say to everyone? It's been a long, amazing ride for me. I've been doing this for nine years. I can't say I've appreciated every moment because it's easy to get bogged down once you realize the reality of the business. When you go on tour you have to think about a lot of things and there's a lot of pressure on making records, but I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. I've really been blessed in that regard. Although I'm a nine-year vet, I feel like this is my first record. I'm hungry like that. I feel like my whole approach is savage and brutal. I feel like I have to kick in the door again. When you take a four-year hiatus, you have to come back. On every track I have a sound that's different from everything else. I'm looking forward to the future and addressing issues we're facing and I can't wait for the shows. Come look for me. It's like a big party. I appreciate everyone's attendance. Download Mr. Lif's single "Brothaz" free: http://www.definitivejux.net/mp3/brothaz.mp3

By Brian Kayser

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