Phonte Interviews Baatin of Slum Village: Part I

First I must say, it was an honor to be blessed with the ability to put something like this together of course with the willingness of Phonte and Baatin. There have been many interviews that have opened people’s eyes to many different things about life. Well this is an example of living life through the music. We all have heard the popular mainstream track This is Why I’m Hot by M.I.M.S. which of course stands for music is my savoir. Well for Baatin he could be a lot of other places right now, but fortunately he’s right where he needs to be, in the studio. In this first of a two part conversation Phonte discusses with Baatin the impact that Slum Village had on hip hop, the constant label shifting, and dealing with the success of making a mark as well as the pressure of going platinum on the very next album, and finally the reality of just how similar SV is to LB when comparing the life cycle of two dynamic groups with an innovative producers.

Phonte: First thing I always wanted to know, in the liner notes of D’Angelo’s Voodoo, Saul Williams talks a lot of times about how artists have to serve as their own inspiration and once you listen to all your Tribe records and all your Public Enemy records you have to serve as your own inspiration. He also said that if Prince heard ‘How Does It Feel’ by D’Angelo would he feel ripped off or inspired? With that said when you first heard Little Brother(laughs) did you feel like we were ripping ya’ll off or did you feel inspired?

Baatin: Oh not at all, there was a lot of buzz going around about Little Brother when ya’lls first joint dropped and I kind of took it as dang that’s tight and I thought ya’ll were in a whole bracket of ya’ll own. More lyrical as well, we were kind of doing the freestyle spontaneous type stuff. Once I heard Little Brother the lyrical content and the production kind of separated what people were talking about but the comparisons was honors to hear.

Phonte: When Vol.2 dropped it was literally one of the albums that changed my life. A lot of times people would ask me what was going our minds when we created it. My question for you would be when ya’ll were making Vol. 2 and if you need to go back to Vol. 1 that’s cool to; but when ya’ll were making it did ya’ll have any idea what ya’ll were on to or were ya’ll just f*ckin around and having fun and it grew legs on its own?

Baatin: I don’t know if we could say we were starting a movement or not, but we knew we had a distinct sound that differed from everybody but we had elements from all the giants that you mentioned in the beginning like Tribe, De La, Jungle Brothers, Showbiz & A.G., Extra P, and we had our vitamins from all of their albums and we just did our own thing. We would listen to the tracks back and forth and be like this is some other sh*t. We would go straight down to the club and let them play it the same night we did the song and sure enough we had our own little vibe. So I would say yes we did know, but as far as the movement me personally I did not know. Dilla probably had it in his head like yeah I know what I’m going to do with this production thing and his vision and he executed to it.

Phonte: We all heard the folklore about Vol.2 and people we’re saying Dilla made the beat for ‘Players’ in 92, and it can get out of hand on the internet but so I want to hear it from the source. How old were a lot of those tracks what was the timeline for recording that particular joint?

Baatin: I would say like 95-96 a lot of the joints like I Don’t Know, Fantastic, and some of the songs from Vol.2 were on Vol.1. We put Vol. 2 together in like 95-96 the songs from Vol.1 were accumulating and that was long after our name was changed to Slum, which came out to be about 35 songs to be exact and 23 made the Vol.1 album. In the time period Players, Get Dis’ Money, was probably the last one. Rock Music, 2U4U, I Don’t Know from Vol.1 made Vol.2.

Phonte: Explain how the whole thing happened with Interscope and A&M and that situation because the first time I heard Get Dis’ Money was at the time when Jay Dee was making noise of off Beats Rhymes and Life, Pharcyde and so forth, so I was copping anything that had his name on it like he could have done a polka record and I would have bought it. I heard a interview regarding Vol.2 where they were say that, that was on Interscope, so what happened with the label changes?

Baatin: Well Barack which was the label that signed us and Interscope was the first record label who picked us up and they signed us off of this song that was a compilation called Rock Music, Rock Music was on Vol.1 the remix of Rock Music made this compilation. Interscope heard and they felt it and they gave it a shot. So Interscope signed us and something happened where Atomic Pop the internet label had started a record company. It was one of the biggest internet website companies in the world. They bought us out of the Interscope deal. Next thing you know we’re with Atomic Pop and Goodvibe. So we went through four different labels to be exact. So Vol.2 is probably sold through like five different companies.

Phonte: The parallels between Little Brother and Slum Village are similar in a lot of ways in which we will talk about (laughs). Watching ya’ll and seeing the cycle of how things go I really think ya’ll set the model in a lot of ways for a lack of a better term the “internet group”, being in that you have a group that comes in on some grassroots type sh*t and you have everybody buzzing about them like crazy and then the album drops and they hold you up to be the next Jesus out of Detroit, I see that as the Fantastic Vol.2 period as that being one of ya’ll periods. With that, when the Listening came out for us sh*t was happening real fast so just explain to me what was life like for ya’ll when Fantastic Vol.2 came out for ya’ll.

Baatin: Oh my God, me personally I was kind of in another zone soul searching at the time. So at the time the success and praise from the album and all the promotion kind of caught me by surprise but we didn’t know that the doors would be open for us to be international, we didn’t see the vision. For one we were in our own zone making this music for ourselves and we really didn’t want to get out of the vibe we were in. That’s why I went through the experience I went through because it caught me off guard.

Phonte: There seems to be a curse with groups that have in house producers (laughs) specifically what happened with Little Brother and 9th Wonder and Slum and Dilla, hell Guru and Premo. From interviews I’ve read and stuff that has happened within my own group I can kind of piece together what happened but tell me exactly what happened that lead to the deterioration of the relationship between ya’ll and Dilla.

Baatin: I really can’t say it was a deterioration but we kind of parted ways. Dilla had a lot on his table, he was full time production house for UMA, so by the time Slum had a deal in 99 Dilla was like I can’t really sign this contract because he had so much on the table so he kind of pushed away from the Slum business aspect and stayed in his own circle and kept with his own production, but he toured with us for part of that time and we did our thing but that’s pretty much what was happening and he had a lot on his plate already but he made sure we got on and had a solid album. That’s why a lot of the songs from Vol.1 made Vol.2 because we kind of put Vol.1 vibe into Vol.2 and polished it up a little bit. He was like ya’ll tight now, off and running, got the publishing deal.

Phonte: By the time Vol.2 dropped was he pretty much doing his own thing?

Baatin: Way before Vol.2, like 95 when he had the Busta Rhymes remixes, the Masta Ace remix and the Tribe albums. You know two of the tribe albums he was constantly working. We were still in the studio during those years, we got our first check from the record biz from Dilla. Like damn we’re officially rappers now (laughs).

Phonte: I know for me being in a group with a producer, trying to explain it to people on the outside, a lot of people think the emcees get jealous. Like man their probably jealous because the producer is making more money than them. My thing is just from studying hip hop and the history any producer that is worth a damn is going to eventually go off and do their own thing. With ya’ll relationship with Dilla and his outside production work assuming that it was the same way as it was for us, what was the moment or many moments when ya’ll was like damn our man is really doing it?

Baatin: It was Tribe and Busta Rhymes, and his connection with Ahmir (Questlove) at that time as well as Common and De La that’s when we knew; and the Busta remix that Tip hooked up, we knew that he was really on.

Phonte: Explain to me the remix that came out, it was a Daft Punk joint, and this is the story I heard. Thomas Bangalter who did the Raise It Up sample. He heard the sample found the record and was like instead of me suing these cats I’ll just get them to do a remix for me because he liked the Raise It Up record.

Baatin: When they finally connected it was all cool.

Phonte: Moving to the Trinity album, one of my favorite songs on the album was the Reunion song. First of all I bought the album as a fan, but out of all the albums Trinity was my least favorite. It wasn’t so much that Dilla was gone and I even talked to El (Elzhi) from way back and he was saying it was just a real confusing time. What was the state of your life in particularly when you were doing the Trinity record?

Baatin: Pressure man, we were touring for three years straight and that ain’t no pressure but you know how it gets on tour.

Phonte: It’s a real f*cked up lifestyle and that sh*t gets old and it’s a real lonely place.

Baatin: Capitol picked up Trinity, and the pressure was to try and push Slum Village to the commercial market. Timbaland was doing a lot of remixes, Tweet, Truth Hurts were hot so they were trying to put us in the market of a lot of that hot R&B type stuff with catchy singing hooks. It wasn’t unison in our creative ideas together on making a solid album. Then Dilla wasn’t in the picture and cats was feeling the wrath from that, so it was a lot of pressure to top that first album.

Phonte: Sounds familiar (laughs)!

Come back tomorrow for Part II