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10/5/2006 What's up? I'm good. I'm on my lunch break at work. I have to work. Got to pay the bills! Can you give us the snaPz 101? I'm just a regular MC. I'm hungry and I want to be heard in my own way. I don't want somebody else telling me what to say. If I can't say what I want in my own way, what's the point of doing it? How's the Baltimore scene right now? There are a lot of cats doing their thing. It's only a matter of time before the labels start coming down here. You've lived in Tennessee as well. How's your music affected by living different places? Usually when people hear where I've lived, they expect me to flow a certain way. I don't like assigning flows to regions. I've lived everywhere. I've lived in Texas, Arizona, Georgia, Alabama, I've basically been all over the place. I found my home now in Baltimore. I've tried to blend everywhere I've been together to where it doesn't sound too specific but it sounds recognizable. How does it feel to finally have an album out? Great. We put together a four-track demo in the past and sent it out. It didn't really work out too well so we got to work on the album. How's your album, Experimental Insanity, doing for you? It's doing well. We've had about a hundred-plus sales since we put it out in late August. Like any underground artist trying to build a buzz, it's building up slowly. What challenges did you face putting the album together? There were a lot of challenges. I knew I had a lot to say and I had to figure out how I wanted to say it. I also did all the beats on the project because I wanted everything to be controlled by me. On the next album I don't think I'll make all the beats. Why did you go under the name Mimic for production? I wanted to show the producer side and the MC side. I wanted to differentiate the two. There were a lot of original beats on Experimental Insanity. Yeah. I didn't sample too much. I think I sampled myself on one song and I think that was the only sample we used. Everything else was drums, keyboard and Garage Band. What kind of beats did you want for your debut album? The funny thing about that is all the lyrics were written before the music was so I had to make the beats around what I had written already as opposed to writing to a beat. What does the title Experimental Insanity mean to you? It's got a few different meanings. As an artist, your first project is technically like an experiment because you're trying to see what works. The Insanity part is because I wanted something crazy, outside the box and something that hasn't been heard. I came up with that three or four years ago and I kept the title. It seemed like you were getting a lot off your chest on "What Hurts." Yeah. That was about different struggles I've gone through in the past with my parents and friends. I wanted to address those issues and hopefully people will be able to relate. What was your inspiration for "KO"? Definitely Slick Rick for the hook. I was watching a kickboxing movie and that lent a lot of inspiration for it too. You have a very unique flow. How did you develop that? The first song I ever did was real monotone. It didn't really have a lot of expression in it and I didn't know how I wanted to sound. My partner EC heard it and he said I had to have more energy. It just sort of happened overnight. I woke up one day and went to the studio and recorded and he was like, Where did that come from? I don't know. It was a lot of practice. What are your goals for Experimental Insanity? I want it to be accepted by people in hip-hop as well as by people outside of hip-hop. I want to turn people on to hip-hop who say, I don't listen to that. Check my album out. Try it. Basically I just want to open people up. Are you looking for major label backing right now? We're really just looking for distribution. Major distribution is what we need to help promote it better. If a major label deal came along, they'd have to take everybody. They couldn't just take me as an artist. They'd have to take the whole crew. I couldn't just go by myself. That's loyal. Yeah. People that I've told that to before have told me I'm stupid for that, but I can't leave my boys. If my boys can't come with me then what's the point of doing it? What's next for snaPz? I have a couple shows coming up in Baltimore. We're just trying to build the album up more and sell some units. What do you want to say to everybody? Real hip-hop is very much alive. There are other sides to it other than the glitz and glamour you see all over the place. We're going to be all over the place. Thank you to everybody who's showed support already and to everyone who's going to show support later on. http://ecorecords.com

By Brian Kayser

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