Microphone Check

If you thought OverDoz was all about weed and women then you’re mistaken. Sure, the four-man crew comprised of Creamie, Kent, Joon, and P likes to party but -- as evidenced by the video for “Rich White Friends” and this interview -- the group’s members have a lot more on their minds than just ass and grass. Prepping their major label debut on RCA Records and boasting collaborations with marquee artists like Pharrell Williams and A$AP Ferg, the OverDoz boys are on the verge of becoming one of rap’s hottest new acts. But with all of that attention comes more scrutiny and, according to Joon, responsibility: “There’s kids listening to us that’s going to try to do everything I do.” The father of a three-year-old son himself, Joon realizes just how impressionable young people can be. “Even if I tell them not to do it they’re [still] gonna try to do it! It’s like: ‘Damn, what am I really gonna tell these kids to do?’” At SXSW 2015 OverDoz took a break from all the stage-diving and schmoozing to talk to Microphone Check about their newfound influence and a wide range of topics that included everything from losing sneakers to Booker T. Washington.

People often refer to the multi-layered, cacophonous style of Public Enemy's production team the Bomb Squad as a "wall of noise"— similar to Phil Spector's 'Wall of Sound" — but to let Squad member Hank Shocklee tell it, their sample-heavy approach was less like Spector's and more akin to a particular collage-based visual artist's: "I had a ridiculous record collection. And I wanted to prove that it was the records that inspired me. Because ... I understand scales and musical arrangements and that stuff but I didn't have — I was not a player. I'm not going to pick up a bass or a guitar or keys and I'm going to, you know, put some virtuoso stuff down. That's not going to happen. But what I do have is a turntable and records. And so I just want to create this collage, almost like a Romare Bearden kind of a painting." "Shocklee – alongside his brother Keith, P.E. front man Chuck D and Eric "Vietnam" Sadler – was an architect of Public Enemy's distinct, attention-grabbing sound, and helped sampling evolve into an art form unto itself. Racking up production credits for a diverse list of collaborators that ranged from Ice Cube to Bell Biv Devoe the Bomb Squad was an inspiration to a generation of influential musicians like Microphone Check's own Ali Shaheed Muhammad. At SXSW 2015 in Austin, Texas Microphone Check spoke with Hank Shocklee about hip-hop's underappreciated technical ingenuity and why pop music doesn't appeal to him.

The Queens rapper spoke with Microphone Check about Partition, assimilation and how the Patriot Act is used. We also talked about what success does to -- and sometimes for -- your family: "J. Cole's got a record out where's he talking about running around New York and doing his rapper thing meanwhile at home his mom's getting foreclosed on the crib. Drake dropped a song, 'You & The 6,' where he's talking about, you know, "Thank god Toronto and my mom raised me otherwise I wouldn't be prepared to handle this world." Action Bronson dropped a joint 'Actin Crazy' like, 'Ma, still your little baby. Why you think I'm out here acting crazy?' And a lot of these songs they're feeling guilty about running around the world. They're talking about coming home to their parents. They're talking about being glad that their moms raised them that way or that everything they're doing — you know, 'It might not seem apparent to you, Mom, but the reason I'm out here acting crazy is for you.' And I feel like I could relate to that. That's basically my favorite genre of rap right now, is like, I'm-sorry-Mom rap. Or, like, 'Don't look at the price tag, Mom.'"

While Microphone Check was at SXSW right after the season one finale of Empire, we spoke to Malcolm Spellman, who's one of the writers and now also a producer on the show. We talked about the show's effect on the hip-hop culture market, what it demonstrates about ongoing changes in Hollywood and the ways its storyline is particularly American. "At the core of this country, this story is appealing, including the criminality at the base of it," says Spellman. "Because on a macro level, some rough-ass people came here, served the natives, and built up their s---. And they felt righteous in doing it because they had to do what they had to do. It was problems back home, you know what I'm saying?"

Jean Grae is a rapper, a singer, a writer, a comedian and an actress. She doesn't run out of ideas. Her most recent album is called That's Not How You Do That: An Instructional Album For Adults. She spoke to Microphone Check about her campaign to help people be better, Michael McDonald and why she's moving to Los Angeles.

The 21-year-old spoke with Microphone Check in Austin, Texas, during SXSW a couple days before the release of his second major label album. He says he feels like I Don't Like S---, I Don't Go Outside is really his first album, though. "This is the first thing that I've said that I fully stand behind, like the good and the bad of it," he says. "I've never been this transparent with myself or with music. I've never been behind myself this much."

Microphone Check sat down with ASAP Ferg in February, just before he released the video for "Doe-Active," a song off his November mixtape, Ferg Forever. The pillar of New York's ASAP Mob spoke about his aesthetic choices, the way he imagines our far off future and what he's learned from Missy Elliott.

When Leila Steinberg was 25 years old, she met a 17-year-old named Tupac. She became involved in his career in a managerial role, which she had stepped away from by about 1993. The next time Steinberg agreed to a management relationship with a musician was almost 20 years later. At the request of Earl Sweatshirt's mother, she began working with him while he was still in Samoa. And then she went and got him, brought him home. We spoke to Leila about her relationships with both rappers, and the work she's done apart from them.

The week Big Sean released his third studio album he stopped by NPR's Los Angeles bureau for a talk with Microphone Check. The Detroit rapper recorded Dark Sky Paradise almost entirely at his own house, in a studio he spent all his money building. "I made a promise to myself," he says. "I would never ever not follow my heart again. That way if I rise or fall, sink or swim, it's by my own choice and my own decisions."

This week, in honor of Black History Month, we went down to NPR's headquarters in Washington, D.C., to screen Sam Greenlee's 1973 film The Spook Who Sat by the Door and host a conversation about its resonance. In case you're not familiar with the cult classic, the main character is Dan Freeman, who's trained by the CIA to be its first black agent. After he masters the agency's tactics, he goes home to the southside of Chicago on a mission to train street gangs to be "Freedom Fighters." When a young man is shot dead by the police, Freeman's trainees spring into action. What happens in the end is open to interpretation, as you'll hear at the start of this recording of our panel discussion. The members of our panel are Dr. Greg Carr, Chair of the Afro-American Studies Department at Howard University, Jamilah Lemieux, Senior Editor at Ebony Magazine, and K. Nyerere Ture, Professor of Anthropology at Morgan State University. The panel and the audience discussed the film's themes of resistance and intra-racial tension as well as the erasure of the Black Arts movement from mainstream discussion of black history. "The villain of the film," said Dr. Carr, "is the idea of the nation-state." Special thanks: Erin McIntyre, Dennis Herndon, Keith Woods, Darlene Barkley, Justin Lucas, Brittany Brown, Neil Tevault, Bobby Carter, Eleanor Kagan, Morgan McCloy, Joe Hagen and Anya Grundmann.

Last year you heard Terrace Martin's work on YG's album, Ninth Wonder's compilation, Big K.R.I.T.'s Cadillactica and, just this week, a new song by Kendrick Lamar, called "The Blacker The Berry." In the space of less than six months in 2014, the LA-based producer and multi-instrumentalist also put out a full solo album, 3ChordFold Pulse, and a Christmas project called Times. When Martin spoke to Microphone Check he teased us about that Kendrick album, professed his love for A Tribe Called Quest and told us why he makes "relationship songs." "I grew up on Crenshaw and Slauson and I grew up in the crack era and the gangbanging was really heavy in South Central," he says. "I never want, like, using my platform to talk about the same story and what's going — that s--- gives me anxiety, thinking about that era or that time. You know what I mean? Even with times going on now, it's like, the best thing I could do is really not comment and just keep on feeding the world good music. That's what I'm here for. Like the Titanic, when them motherf---ers went down with the ship, trying to make everybody else cool, that's all I'ma do."

After 24 years in the music business, the producer and rapper from Compton, Calif., knows what's going on. He told Microphone Check studio secrets, a Rick James story, and all about the funk. "You gotta get funky to make records that give people the frown face when they hear it," he says. "You know, George Clinton-style. That's what George and them used to do. George and them didn't bathe. So I started doing that. ... It's a different attitude when you go in the studio all fastidious and clean. You don't want to get down. Like, 'Hey. Look at my watch. My shoes are white. I'm not gon' party.' You know what I mean? 'I ain't finna write no song. I'm finna take some pictures of me.' You know, that's them days. But we was in there getting stinky. And it got on the music."

The Rhode Island-born producer and DJ — the MVP of the MPC — tells Microphone Check hosts Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Frannie Kelley the story of the father/son talk he once had with Cam'ron, delineates EDM and hip-hop (one is more like private school than the other) and calls out the whole music industry for being flaky.

Back in October, Detroit's Black Milk released his sixth solo album, called If There's A Hell Below. He came to New York and spoke with Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Frannie Kelley about trying to impress J Dilla, transforming his music for live shows and always improving. "Each song, I want it to have a purpose," he says. "I feel like I'm making some of the best music. I know it's certain details that I'm looking at, that I know I've grown in, that most people won't even hear."

The day after his third album, 2014 Forest Hills Drive, was released, J. Cole spoke to Microphone Check hosts Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Frannie Kelley. It was the morning before he performed "Be Free," the song he made about Michael Brown, on Letterman. Cole said he was nervous about it, but apparently not so worried that he would change his clothes. He wore the same hoodie for this interview that he did on TV. The conversation –- Mic Check's second with Cole — reveals a person newly comfortable with himself, his abilities and what needs to be done.