It's like when a ball player is doing low post moves and hook shots, and then some European comes in and starts shooting three's. You start saying “basketball ain’t real no more.” You have to learn how to shoot the three's and do everything better than him. Thats the mind-frame I stay in, and thats why alot of the producers that came in when I did are not around anymore. They don’t want to shoot the three.illRoots.com: No ID?
No ID: Yes sir.
illRoots.com: Hallway, illRoots.com.
No ID: Hows it going?
illRoots.com: Truthfully, I am sitting on my porch with some Kool Aid, eating a piece of cake.
No ID: [Laughs] Thats good.
illRoots.com: Yea, its pretty comfortable. First off thank you for sitting down with me today this is definitely a pleasure.
No ID: Not a problem, Not a problem.
illRoots.com: How do feel about music right now, your everyday opinions when you listen to the radio or turn on the TV?
No ID: Truthfully I don't listen to the radio too much so I feel pretty good about it. I don't watch alot of TV, I really just look on the internet from time to time and listen to my itunes it has like 30,000 songs on it so I'm always happy with music. I don't let all this going on really effect me, but I will say I'm happy the fact the internet opened the game up more so you can really hear music from around the world without going through the labels or none of that. In that sense I feel it, I like it.
illRoots.com: I do too man, right now too me if you want to put a golden era on anything this is it, and the more global it gets the more local it gets. If I want MY hip-hop then I could just get MY hip-hop anytime of the day, I'm not sure I was just a little guy back in 85-86 but I'm pretty sure you couldn't do that.
No ID: Thats what I'm saying maybe like in the late 80s when I was getting into Hip-Hop it was hard for me to get my hands on it. I literally had to have somebody send it from where ever they are at on cassette to get it. It used to special to have certain stuff and the people that knew were the main people to have that stuff first. Everything is so promoted well that it never has a chance to just sit with the groups of people that really should have it first. I'm not really for all that 5 million records in one week, thats cool for the money, but that is whats killing music.
illRoots.com: I think the musicality in the game is so far away. Everyone is so afraid.
No ID: I'd go as far as to say that the concept of record company's putting music out. That has been on people so long, to think that you need a record company to put music out. When really the number one distributor in music is you pressing send on a computer and everybody thinks that you can't do it without a company that has a system designed to distribute and promote your product. Everybody feels like if you don't get a record deal than your not a real artist.
illRoots.com: Exactly, whats your opinion on commerce and art.
No ID: Two opposite things. I do art and then I do what I do for a living. If I was a painter and somebody said paint 10,000 red stop signs then I'm going to paint them like that and do what they say but my art is just my art and I'm not changing that for anything. I kind of look at it like that and I never really have to compromise either one.
illRoots.com: I think right now they don't know where to blur the lines. I raise the point because music should be made from what you feel and not from what your paid to do. I think sometimes when I put MTV Jams on and can't relate its hard for me to say that this an artform I want to support.
No ID: I mean I agree, and everything your saying I agree but I think the balance of what I've learned to accept is that its an imbalance in either direction that causes the problem. You have to have fun, you have to have marketing. The reason its a recession is because of the lack of growing business so you can't stop doing what makes more money occur. If you hear a storm is coming and you don't plant anything in the gardens or the fields and the storm really doesn't do what it was going to. Then your field is bare and you don't have any food. I think the problem is there is an imbalance, there might be not enough art and too much marketing. We don't want to get rid of all the marketing and just be art because then we are back where it was when Hip-Hop couldn't reach the world.
JD, Jay-Z, Usher, & Anthony Hamilton in the studio.
illRoots.com: Thats why I think what 08-09 is building up to be is so great because you have your art and still have that big business.You can get your backpack stuff or your club stuff. I know you crafted the new Usher feat Jay-Z song. How did that come about?
No ID: Oh man [Laughs] Its a weird back story, when me and Jermaine work together it goes like this. He will call me and say "Lets work on this", I'll come over we'll work and I'll leave my idea and leave it for him to finish up or vice versa. So in this specific case it was done so long ago that both of us forgot about. So if you go maybe less than two weeks before the record even came out. He was even trying to figure out what was origin of the whole beat. My point is that it was a weird thing because me and his relationship is just so casual its not like a technical business relationship and we just do things and don't even remember things. We'll go to the club come back and pull it. It was really just a shock at the end of the day that it made it on there. We are going through a thing right now with a record that Nas wants that we have forgotten and gave it to somebody else yet it never came out. It wasn't like we all went in and worked on it, he was probably looking around for beats and it was something in the computer then Johnta wrote it. Then it probably wasn't going to make the cut then maybe it went to Jay-Z and turned into that record. So it really was an accident that happened to turn out good.
illRoots.com: Sometimes thats the best way to make music though.
No ID: Yeah, definitely.
illRoots.com: Alot of people go back, and you mentored Kanye. What was the first thing that ran through you mind when you met this guy?
No ID: Oh man you don't want to know that. Actually the first thing I thought was "Ohhhh my god, why did my mother tell me to help this guy", because if you ever do your own history on him he's hammerish. I was older and I was a hip-hop guy and this little commercial guy. The first thing I told him was "Get rid of all of that, here's some samples" and he was like "ughhhh man thats it". Yet he was so smart that I could I always see that he could figure out stuff real quick. So other than that the first time I met him I was like "uhhhhhh let me do this favor for my mother" [Laughs]
illRoots.com: [Laughs] Thats whats up. Honestly man, after the few months of running the site and I've noticed how people get idolized so much, its like Wow man thats how music is. Its good to have these celebrities but they are regular people and those platforms and standards that we hold these people to is ridiculous sometimes. Busta Rhymes for example I went to a listening session and for all the flack that this guy gets from the media he is a genuine person, and a very nice guy. I think if we would use simple manners in this industry things would be so much better.
No ID: You know that's my whole theory about whats missing out of music anyway, manners. People don't have manners anymore. People worry about the curse words in rap, its isn't the curse words its the manners to know when to curse. Its the manners to know when not to curse and whats appropriate and not appropriate and just actually caring about more than what you think. I think thats really the problem with music, nobody has manners anymore its just "whatever I gotta get this money and whatever I have to say and do to get this money I'm going to do". I think at the end of the day thats the biggest problem and its just to much politics just do music because its just music. I'm not nobody special because I do music, to be honest. I may have done some special music but I'm not special because I did it.
illRoots.com: Thats where it goes back to me saying these are regular people and a regular conversation from one person to the next is something that is almost extinct. Everything is so impersonal, I mean its an "i" pod not a "we" pod. You know? [Laughs]
No ID: Definitely [Laughs] I definitely agree.
illRoots.com: Your a big sample guy and you know tons of samples but give me one song that you didn't do that you would redo and flip the sample differently.
No ID: Lets see. People have flipped the "Its A Man's World" sample and I feel like no one had flipped it right to me. My thing with a is that I like to make people say "I wouldn't have thought to do that", thats my whole thing. Alot of people sample it and they just sample it but my aim and goal is to make it creative. So alot of times I'll hear songs and be like "Okay you looped that up, thats a good sample", and usually those are the ones that I say "I'm going to go get that and do it better".
illRoots.com: All my people who produce say "I could have flipped that so much better" all the time.
No ID: On my blog, its called noidvstraxter.com, and I post a sample and tell everybody to flip and put your version on it. So we just did "Nautilus" just to see who would flip it the craziest. I about to put another sample up there tonight and the aim and thing is to see who will flip it the illest. I'm a hip-hop dude and I'm on some this has nothing to do with money, promotion, or any of that. This has to do with art and competition.
illRoots.com: In your line of field what would you say to a younger producer?
No ID: I think just right now is the ground floor for business venture, being creative and getting your buzz out. This is the beginning of a new era. People are still talking about the "record" business and there is no more records its songs now, records was a physical thing. Its not CD's they are phasing out, now its just songs, so its a day when you can make a song without a studio and send it to the world immediately. The thing now is who is going to take advantage of it and come out with something creative and new and make people interested again. Somebody invented the vinyl and made it interesting and its just a matter of you making something to bring interest. Apple made the ipod, laptop, iphone and all this and people wanted it.
illRoots.com: If we could find a way to track downloads, then your golden.
No ID: You can't track nothing right now, who is to tell that Itunes tells you the right amount of sales you got?
illRoots.com: I don't trust them at all, I looked at it in the beginning and questioned it. Yet I did find www.soundloadmusic.com down in Texas that is pretty dope.
No ID: My thing is at the end of the day its still all computers, so whatever the computer says I guess you have to believe.
illRoots.com: Thats another thing too, Is the format of putting a collection of songs out and releasing them on a certain date out dated. Say for instance you go to Itunes and there is Flo-Rida "Mail On Sunday" and the song "Low" has one million downloads then the next track may be just as good if not better but it has one thousand downloads. Wouldn't it make sense to put out a single, promote it, make your money, then move to the next single.
No ID: I think its not because nobody has come with anything better yet but I think its tired. I always said that the albums that we used to like were not produced by ten different people. Most urban music or popular music within the last 10 years went to this "Let's go get the hottest producer, and make this song". Before an album had a sound, direction, and theme. It was a work all together that made you want to hear it together. You don't want to hear a N.W.A. album split up, you want to hear it together. If Michael was doing "Thriller" and was like "Yo Quincy I'm too hot, you can do the whole thing". Right now we are looking at a bunch of over produced singles that are trying to be made albums. Thats why the whole album format has lost some of its luster because people are just skipping around for songs.
illRoots.com: My friend K-Salaam, him and Beatnick are so talented but their album and mixtapes are so sonically and musically great because they sound like them and not like 10 different people. One of the worst things I hear today is "Hip-Hop is wack now, I'm listening to alternative"
No ID: Its like when the ball player is doing low post moves and hook shots and then some European comes in and starts shooting threes out the gym and you losing then you start saying "Ohh basketball ain't real no more". Then learn how to shoot the three and do it better then them and do everything. Thats the mindframe I stay in and thats why alot of the producers that came in when I came are not around anymore. They don't want to shoot the three.
illRoots.com: If you can't adapt then you get moved on. When you first to came into this what did you expect to get out of it?
No ID: Nothing, just a little respect. From a city where you didn't get much respect for Hip-Hop. We weren't really looking to make money and that is what I didn't like about "One Day It'll All Make Sense" is that I felt like it had a little taste of too much going on over the thought of money. Where as "Resurrection" was I'm doing these beats like this and your rapping like this and we are going to get respect. Just respect thats it. Maybe ten years into this I said I want to be a little bit more on the commerce side but I never really lost my love for art and the respect of it and thats all I really want is to make a living and do my art.
illRoots.com: Thanks again to Serge for setting this up and my man No ID for coming through with the knowledge. This right here is an OG in the production game so everyone needs to press rewind and read this again. As well everyone who helped this interview go through is welcome back here anytime just wipe ya feet. Hallway.....
