How many masks are currently in rotation?
There’s like four in rotation right now.
Are there differences between them?
Oh, yeah. No doubt. Different accessories, different upgrades. One may be more lighter. But I don’t want to go too much into the technological side of it. I don’t want no leaks of information, know what I’m saying? But there’s definitely different technological differences in each one, weight differences, some is for black-tie affairs, one is maybe for more of a Wetlands-type show where you might jump in the crowd.
One of my friends worked on a Philly show with you a while back at Fluid. He said you were a cool cat the whole time – until you threw the mask on and completely changed. Is that accurate?
Well, I’m like this – I compare it to a robbery. That’s the best way to describe it. Right before a robbery, you might be staking out the joint. Go in there, eat a sandwich or whatever, play like you a patron. Scoping the scene out, you don’t want to bring too much attention to yourself. But once you throw on the mask and you grab the heater – it’s a stickup! It’s different; the dude sitting there isn’t the guy that robbed the store. Once he takes the mask off, he goes back to normal. So in a way, it’s true. It works like that.
According to Danger Mouse, DangerDoom was under construction for almost two years. But between this, MM…Food and MadVillain, you’ve been really productive. Is there some sort of work regiment you use?
It’s weird. Sometimes I look online or I might read an article and it says there’s a lot of stuff coming out. But to me it don’t seem like it’s that much. I could be doing more. But when the creative spurt does happen, it’s like “Baow!” If you know how to do something, you just do it. It clicks, automatic. I plan to increase the productivity at this point; I feel like I’m kinda slacking. I’m trying to get more into my studying -- to have more things to talk about, to broaden my range a little bit. I hope the party people out there ain’t getting too tired of a nigga. I know they seen a nigga name here and there, but I’m like, “Yo, anything y’all hear definitely gonna be different.” The rhymes is gonna be on point. I ain’t really just throwing records out there to hear myself talk. I don’t even want to hear myself rhyme, really. But, when it’s time for them to cop, there will be updated info and new styles and all that good shit.
Why don’t really like hearing yourself rap?
I’m not the kind of cat that don’t like hearing his own voice – I mean, I like it -- but I spit it once, I hear it, okay, fine. I’m not going to keep listening to it. I do that shit, put it to the side and go do the next one. You know how you got that cat in the circle, he’s just talking and rambling on like he gotta hear his own voice? Or cats that put records out with that bullshit? You know records that be like that. It’s the same thing. For me, I’d rather not speak; I’d rather hear what the next cat got to say – [he might] drop jewels that come around to me. If it comes around to me and I got to add on, I’ll add on.
So you don’t get in the Doom Mobile and there’s a bunch of Viktor Vaughn shit there?
Nah, nah. Definitely not. My wife will tell you: I get in the truck, she turns that shit off. She and the kids listen to it all day – I get in, that shit come out. I don’t want to hear none of that, that’s work. Throw a beat on, some instrumental music, Jazz, whatever, anything else besides that.
Besides the music we’ve heard, do you have Tupac-status vaults of material sitting around?
Hmmm. That’s an interesting question. It’s weird, I’ve got a bunch of notebooks with mad shit in them that I ain’t ****ed with yet. So, in a way, I do have shit sitting around, but it ain’t refined enough to put out like that. I still got to put it through the editing process and all the difference processes I put it through to make it to that point. So, in a way, I do got it stocked up and in a way I don’t -- ‘cause lately I just been using just new shit off the top, boom. So shit is piling up. Right now I’m been giving them the spontaneous, come-off-the-top, thought-about-it-that-day, kinda rhymes. For the DangerDoom project, it was half and half. Some premeditated with the notebook, but when I hear the beat, I’ll write it right there in a few hours from scratch. As opposed to a Doom album, I’ll take more time and each song will have a topic and it’ll be more structured. You can tell it’s not as spontaneous as MadVillain, which was 100% “throw the beat on” – I didn’t have nothing pre-thought of or no type of format. [DangerDoom] wasn’t too tied into the cartoon theme, but it’s got enough references. Did you hear the album?
Yeah, I heard it.
So you already know the thunder. [laughs]