Rass Kass changed music. It’s a bold statement that many would argue on either side. He is a
Battle tested emcee that is still relevant when discussing lyricist and “underground” artist,
particularly on the west coast. Point blank the man can still give a lyrical ass whopping in a New York minute with Cali slang on it. Others however would argue he’s just another battle lyricist that couldn’t make a dent commercially (ala Super Natural) and has fallen off lately due to personal issues. If you want to know what side I’m on this is not the forum for the discussion but to give you a hint check out “Nature of the Threat” off the “Soul on Ice” LP and get back at me. Regardless, my statement has nothing to do with Rass Kass own musical contributions to hip hop but rather who he introduced to hip hop.

Back in 1991 Rass Kass, known better as Raisin at the time was attending a hip hop convention in the Bay Area (shout out to the East Bay, The Town, Sac-Town etc) and insisted that his homeboys get down with him and blow a few trees with some record executives and just have a good time.

Scheme: I believe you got your contract with Delicious Vinyl after auditioning “Ya Mama” from what would eventually become “Bizarre Ride from the Pharcyde”, how did that play out?

Imani: Naw, we were in the Bay Area attending a hip hop convention just dancing with this cat G.O.T (Gang of Textbooks) and our lil homie Raisin, who eventually turned into Rass Kass was there. He was a hustler just dancing and getting it on at the convention. He got at us like “Dude, there’s some cats up in the room. You should come upstairs and get high with us, there’s Tommy Boy, Delicious Vinyl” and a whole gang of people. Hearing this we were a little star struck because we didn’t know anything about the record business we were just dancing at the time trying to come up. Around this time we just started learning how to make demo tapes just clowning, clubbing and living the hip hop lifestyle. So we went into the room with Raisin or Rass and we got budded and just started saying “Shit were trying to get signed” and they were like “Do ya’ll have a demo, what cha’ll do?” So then we go into the huddle and we are thinking “Okay, what should we do” because this seemed like the big chance. So once we got more comfortable we break into doing “Ya Mama” and they started falling out laughing and were bugging thinking they’re laughing at us, but once we are done they’re telling us that we need to get that on a demo and we could get signed.

Pharcyde started to take things a bit more seriously and hooked up with Paul Stewart who had a big affect on the LA music scene at the time working with the likes of Cypress Hill, Warren G, House of Pain and Coolio to name a few. They put together a solid demo tape that included “Officer”, “Ya Mama” and 2 verses of “Passing Me By”. With this in hand Paul Stewart was confident he could get the Pharcyde Signed anywhere.

Imani: When he heard this Paul was like ” Dude, I can get ya’ll signed anywhere with this Demo”. And you have to remember at this time 1991 rap was still new to a lot of people and our sound was different than any other West Coast stuff because Gangsta Rap was the sound
and people where taken back like “Wow, this is some new shit”. Us being ignorant and blind to the fact not knowing shit, we would be in the club and the chicks would be jocking to the dudes with the Def Jam jackets on so we wanted to be signed to Def Jam.

Doo Doo Brown: That’s what we were talking about; we wanted to be on Def Jam!!

Imani: Just being real, we didn’t know anything but Russell (Simmons) thought we sucked!(Russell Simmons could not be reached for a comment at the time of this interview….SIKE!!!). Everybody else wanted to sign us damn near but we wanted to be on Def Jam. Tracey Waples came out and talked to us and we were sprung off her because she was so beautiful. So we met with her and she said we were cool but Russell wasn’t interested. You have to remember at the time Russell was dealing with Onyx and was developing Horror-core (think Gravediggaz) which he thought was gonna be the next big thing so he was going in a different direction. So then we are thinking “Damn, Russell not trying to sign us” okay we’re gonna have to prove you wrong.

Doo Doo Brown: So at the time, being novice we were thinking Def Jam was the only way to go
because no other companies was making that much shine to us but when Delicious came along we were thinking that this was something that we could relate to because they had Tone Loc and Young MC. We see these guys all the time and Tone is doing good selling records, we weren’t thinking about the money or anything like that. The biggest point was they were here in L.A. and we could walk up into the place and talk to the President directly and get our business handled there, or so we thought (they both bust out in laughter).The closer it was the more “Gangsta it was!”

Scheme: So now you’re signed, it started from jumping in a huddle in that room and just performing and bringing that energy and it still shows in your stage show as witnessed
tonight. After so many years ya’ll still have fun. What keeps your stage show going?

Imani: Well our background was being in talent shows and dancing so being onstage is natural
to us. It’s fun but it’s a different game when your trying to do music because you can’t just be on stage and be a goof, you have to actually perform and be entertaining. We used to go to a lot of shows and it would be real boring. You can do the smallest thing besides just grabbing your nuts or making a mad face.

Doo Doo Brown: Or just be on stage with 50 of your homies on stage thinking that your hot. Being that we were background dancers and doing other peoples videos, it was natural for us to say “This is what we want to do, this is what we think other people want to see”. We knew we could come up with dances and incorporate it with the music. We knew we could come with a total different sound and keep it us. It’s really just a blessing to still be able to do this so when we do a show, even if there are just a few people its about looking at it like, “lets do it for the people that are here”. They still paid their money so what are you gonna do, not perform because it’s not sold out? That’s not fair so we still put all we can into it so we still feel good with ourselves and know we gave our all.

Scheme: Moving into “Labcabincalifornia” from 1995; correct me if I’m wrong but word has it that Skillz (formerly Mad Skillz) who actually performed here tonight, passed on a couple of Dilla beats that the Pharcyde scooped up.

Imani: He didn’t “Pass” on them.

Scheme: He wasn’t feeling them?

Imani: ehhhhh, get your story right! I was telling this story earlier. He was in the studio with us while we were picking beats. We already had our beats picked, he wasn’t passing he was playing other beats and other producers were coming through. I mean Diamond D was there and a lot of others.

Doo Doo Brown: You see after Bizzare Ride we started getting the East Coast love. We came
out and did some shows, we met Tip (Q-Tip) and everybody was just giving us love. It blew us back because these were people we looked up too and then they started showing love to us. So on the second album we reached out to all the producers, Preemo, Beatnuts, Showbiz because we wanted to do one of those albums, just a classic album. We had De La there. Mos Def before he came out. People were at the studio commenting on how they never seen all of these people get together like this before and they were blown back. Tip became the realest of all guys, he told us straight up that he was working on his own album and that he wasn’t gonna give us his dopest beats but he kept saying that he had this kid from outta Detroit and we needed to listen to his demo. So we go to Tips house and just put this tape on and it would come on and it would just be these 30 second beats. I mean some would even be only 10 seconds; it would come on and before you could even get your tape to the paper it would go off so you would constantly have to rewind.

Imani: How we knew Tip was we did Lalapalooza and they (A Tribe Called Quest) were on the
big stage and we were on the little stage and we got really cool during that tour. Phife used to stay on out bus and we would all just kick it and vibe. That gave us a totally different appreciation and made us go to New York and work with everyone. So they treated us good, I mean we would called Diamond D “Uncle D” because he looked out and took care of us.

Doo Doo Brown: So the thing about it is that everybody knew it they were like this kid (Jay
Dee) was gonna be the next shit. The crazy thing is that we went through a battle with the
group because Fatlip didn’t like it and the record company didn’t like it. So we would be in constant battle like “Yo, this is that next shit, you guys gotta understand this is the next sh*t” . But they weren’t feeling it. We kept getting pressure that we should get back with J-Swift (google “One More Hit” to get an update on J-Swift) and make Bizarre part II and stay on that level. It just threw my mind into the game was so crazy because they (record label) just wanted you to stay on repeat and keep doing the same thing until you just burn out. Every song they wanted us to go out there and do the high voice.

Imani: They would tell us “You can’t do this” and we’d be like “But Dawg, we’re the Pharcyde. Can’t nobody do the Pharcyde better than we can, we made this shit! The thing was we wanted each album, to be its own thing. Its like J-Swift was a nobody, and then he became somebody. Jay Dee was a nobody and then he became somebody. We weren’t tripping off the fact that he wasn’t known outside of circles at that time, we loved the music enough to know
that we knew he will be somebody and we better get these beats now!” And it’s crazy because we (Imani & Doo Doo Brown) were saying this and that’s exactly how it turned out.

Scheme: “Labcabincalifornia” came out did ya’ll sit back and go “I told you so?” because even thinking back to “Drop” that’s still one of the craziest joints I’ve heard to this day.

Imani: No because people where dissing us the whole time. No matter how many people tell you
that you are beautiful, you remember the person that tells you “You are ugly and you stink”,
so we didn’t even go about it that way.

Doo Doo Brown: Basically I thought the album was incredible, I thought to myself “This is the way I want my album to sound”. Bizarre ride was not a club album and our background is that we dance in the club, so Bizarre ride was really not a club record and we knew that. The way the songs were mixed there were only a few that you could get with at the club. On Labcabin I felt like you could play almost everything in the club. You could play “Bullshit” in the club, you could play “Drop” in the club, you could play “Runnin” in the club, it had beats that could rock the party. On the other hand the label didn’t get into it, and it was just a whole thing of people comparing Bizarre to LabCabin but you can’t compare the two. It took two stints on Lalapalooza to make Bizarre ride go Gold but with Labcabin, we didn’t have the push. We were back and forth from east to west (coast), we dropped a few videos and between those 2 albums we had 5 distribution deals that kept slowing the momentum down. We were running into issues of buyers not being able to find the album and store not being able to stock it.

Imani: Plus they really didn’t know how to market us man. Like really how do you market the
Pharcyde at that time?

“One day it’s, “You can’t sing in hip hop” and then the next day there is an amendment, “Now you can sing”, but Keyboards will not be allowed”

Scheme: I think a lot of people, especially media try to mush you to be related to a certain region or a regional sound. Thinking back to when you first came out, it didn’t even appear in my mind that you were from anywhere specifically. I always placed you into your own space just based on your sound and creativity.

Imani: L.A. thought we were from the Bay, The Bay thought we were from the East Coast, the
East Coast thought we were from the East Coast (laughter), Atlanta thought we were from
Atlanta. That gave us an advantage with the listeners and the fans because everybody was
willing to listen to us. Our sound goes all over the board, the subject matter went from singing to joking to touching on real shit. We wanted our shit to sound like “their” shit, no one in particular but just “them”.

Doo Doo Brown: Man when we came out to New York to get the beats for “Labcabin” I was so hurt because I wanted to come back with that Preemo cut, that Tribe cut, that De La cut(Imani chimes in that posse cuts were hot at the time) you know “Buddy” was out at the time and that’s what we wanted. But it just wasn’t for us, it wasn’t our path.

Imani: So we got together with Jay Dee and crafted some shit that we didn’t even know what
it was going to be the beginning of and we wasn’t even tripping off it and really created some crazy and classic shit!

“Labcabincalifornia” should go down in history as a classic, not just hip hop but in music in general. They crafted an album that meshed each track perfectly. From the beginning to the skits to the end listeners are given a sonic treat. Their video’s were refreshing and fun, the music had a touch of realness that made you experience it yet entertaining enough to keep
you enjoying it. It was also a spring board for some of Jay Dee’s best peices of work as a producer not just your average hip hop beatmaker. Pharcyde went on to record a few more allbums but along the way they have lost 2 members on their own path and now perform as a
duo.”

Scheme: So how would ya’ll describe the California sound at this time?

Doo Doo Brown: When you think of California, you automatically think of Dr. Dre and Snoop but really people just need to give the south their props because the South is the sound everywhere right now. It’s in L.A., you got MIMS out here and that’s the sound. That’s what
kids like, that’s what my 12 year old daughter likes. It’s crazy because I’ll play the most extravagant sample that I think is incredible and they’ll be bored but then I’ll play an 808 with a high hat and a clap! Oh my god they are going off like it’s the most incredible beat ever.

Imani: It’s simple, there’s nothing wrong with that. It goes back to sometimes simple being
better.

Doo Doo Brown: That’s their fun these days; we had our fun back in the day. It’s like we
listened to Melle Mel and could appreciate it but when Tribe and Beatnuts came out it attracted us away and we were looking at those guys like “ah man Melle Mel is getting salty
cause these dudes is hot.”

Imani: Now you have people our age and older talking about Hip Hop is dead and the 15 year
olds are like “Fool what you talking about”. I’m thinking these dudes sound like fucking idiots because I’m here in Philly 15 years removed from my first record, working on another album with the pro tools cracking getting a million beats a day. Turn on the radio and every station hip hop is driving everything. I think they need to rethink what they are saying because saying something is dead is saying that it is void of life.

“Real hip hop is 2 turntables and a mircrophone and blahhhh. To me Hip Hop is about learning to use what you got to make what you’re trying to get.”

Scheme: So would you say it is stagnant?

Imani: No, it’s changed and people just don’t like what it has changed to.

Doo Doo Brown: The only thing I can compare it to is Rock n Roll. Nobody really thought that Hip Hop was gonna come this far. Everyone that came up in the 80’s and early 90’s was a rebel because we were following something that everyone else said was a fad and wasn’t gonna last. So now Hip Hop is an actual music like Rock, Jazz and Classical. But just like Rock from the 60’s is not the same as Rock from the 80’s this is the same thing we are seeing with Hip Hop. People from the 60’s don’t know Poison or White Snake and guys with big hair. Now people are saying the same thing with Hip Hop.

Imani: You still got things coming out with dirty samples, no keyboard and hard rhymes and your gonna tell me that’s not hip hop? You got people that will argue to the end (in a deep voiced version of the mad rapper) Real hip hop is 2 turntables and a mircrophone and blahhhh. To me Hip Hop is about learning to use what you got to make what you’re trying to get.

Doo Doo Brown: Rock started to come back and reinvent itself when Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins and the grunge scene came through. It was a huge difference but it was still Rock n Roll and that is what is happening with Hip Hop. I don’t know what you want to call Andre 3000’s music exactly but it is still hip hop.

Imani: Hip hop has too many elements of other music to label it one thing or another. How can you say it’s not Hip Hop? Pharcyde in Unison: Who makes these rules? Who decides what’s Hip hop and what is not?

Imani: Who is the governor of hip hop who sets these rules and then make amendments. One day it’s, “You can’t sing in hip hop” and then the next day there is an amendment, “Now you can sing”, but Keyboards will not be allowed”

Doo Doo Brown: Hip Hop is the most hypocritical music of all time. I love him to death but you had Preemo calling people Keyboard Cowboys but then goes and makes a whole album with Christina Aguleria with all kinds of Keyboards.

Imani: He was hating on keyboards, talking mucho about keyboards and now he’s on the cover of keyboard magazine with his keyboards and it is not a diss it just goes to show that things change in hip hop all the time and hip hop is hypocritical but you gotta love it.

Doo Doo Brown: It is a black people music and I’ll never forget that and black people are moved by examples, not moved by words. We wanna see that shit, we wanna see what you’re talking about!

Imani: (In a Coming to America Barbershop voice) “Show me muthafucka, show me!”

Doo Doo Brown: People say the South is killing hip hop and if that’s the case, show me how your gonna change it don’t just talk about it.

Scheme: Okay, moving to Nor-Cal in the Bay you have the Hyphy movement going on, what are your opinons on it?

Imani: How we living we are far from regional, I mean we have been traveling to Europe and Japan I’m not even thinking about just Cali music right now. My mind is so global right now I listen to anything that makes me feel good, I don’t just listen to something because it’s from Cali. I won’t let them program my mind like that.

Doo Doo Brown: The Hyphy movement is tight, but at the same time I understand some things. Hip Hop has a morbid sense of things, I mean Tupac passed and we went crazy over his stuff. Biggie passed and we hopped on that. The whole Hyphy Movement is because of the passing of Mac Dre. It was getting attention when he was here but then it just blew up when he passed away.

Imani: It’s hard for me to get too excited about the Hyphy movement. To me it’s like the black version of Raves because it is a club drug induced movement (Ecstasy). It’s like the Rave movement gotta busted up and white people went to jail and black people just picked up where they left off and started dancing all crazy and acting a fool. Don’t get me wrong some people are dope and really tight with it but then you got those that are not that really make it look bad.

Doo Doo Brown: It makes me wonder if Hip Hop will ever go back to Brand Nubian and X-Clan. That was the time when the messages being sent to you were so powerful they just made you think. I remember thinking about Brother J (X-Clan), “Damn that verse just makes me want to go read a book”. People’s verses nowadays make kids want to get iced out and act stupid.

Scheme: Yeah, we really have to search for those messages today, especially if you don’t know where or who to look towards. So what’s in the future for Pharcyde? What should we be on the look out for in 2007?

Imani: You can look out for my solo album. I never tried to be on the Solo tip but a situation came up and I started liking my sound more and more and Browns been helping me out with it and I’m having fun. Its called “Black Stardust”. It’s should be out in August so look for it.

Doo Doo Brown: Also look for “Eclectic Compasion”, we can’t even say it’s a Pharcyde joint yet but it’s on some Pharcyde type shit. Like they say on their stage show “Started out as 4 now we’re only two, look at all the bullshit Pharcydes been through”. They started out just having fun, dancing and rapping and 15 years later and 2 members less you would think they just started yesterday. Now that’s Hip Hop!