Friday, September 21, 2007

The LPs at the House of Blues.


Emerick, Jake and Brando from the LPS
Sunday 09/09/07
The House of Blues.
Interview by Rachel Austin
rachel.austin@gmail.com

The The LPs had just opened for the GZA that night and were hanging out after the show, we caught up with them in the parking lot.

Rachel: Were do you guys comes from?
Emerick: We come from the west of Los Angeles and we all go back like rocking chairs from when we were little kids.
R:What got you guys started?
E:It all came from our friend Severen.
Brando: The son of the drummer from Little Feat. Rock folk group from back in the day.
E: He’s a DJ he inspired us all and we all wanted to make beats for him. We all were rhyming a little bit, Jake was freestyling but also wanted to make beats. So were doing it and we just getting involved and all of the sudden there’s like 7 of us.
R: What do you guys do in the band?
All: We write lyrics.
B: I write lyrics I write poetry I try to get on the blues harmonica on tracks if I can but these guys usually chase me away from doing that. I just maintain and do whatever I can.
E: We all work on beats together. I work on beats, Brando works on beats. Jake works on beats everyone works on beats together. We all MC except for Mike who holds it down on the drums.
R: Is it a collaborative effort?
E: It’s a completely democratic, sometimes communistic whole thing we got going here, and it works pretty good most of the time.
R: I wanted to ask you about the style you guys have, from my perspective I noticed it was a mixture between Hieroglyphics, Standing Practice and Sugar Hill Gang in the flow and the lyrics, so I wanted to know what your influences were?
E: Too many to name...but uh
Jake: Let me put it like that, we like the good shit that tends, but is not exclusive, to have come between 1988 and 1994 and it is a wide scope from the East Coast to the West Coast, the DITC, Hieroglyphics, the Pharcyde....
E: And such on and such on and such on…
J: We like the good shit, and we like funk soul, hip-hop, jazz music...
E: But honestly we don’t come trying to do a retro style, we don’t say were gonna bring it back to anything we don’t try to achieve in that sense, we just do what we do.
R: When guys come on stage and it’s the kinda crowd like tonight were it’s the hip hop scene. And homeboy here (pointing at Emerick) you’re wearing a flannel shirt, and...
J: Hip-hop is about being yourself and making music that you feel and enjoying what you do...
E: We all enjoy what we do.
R: How’s the feed back on stage?
E: The feedback on stage is everybody calls us old school and that’s good.
R: People will label you..
E: they always do and that’s how people work.
R: Do you like that label?
B: I'd rather sound old school than sound like what’s on the radio these days, that shit is so... its just a bunch of heartless pop.
E and J: But Pop is great.
B: Yeah, I mean if you can come up with a track that is still your style, whatever funky jazzy whatever it is and it can kinda have some kinda of poppy feel to it that people can dig whether its the hook or the sound of the drums.
R: You guys don’t ever fight?
B: We grown together throughout the years and we’ve become a lot closer and we respect each other’s opinions so we just try to sit down and talk everything out diplomatically.
Were gonna keep working on that were gonna keep working on new music and new poetry and new themes and new concepts and songs. That’s what we all love to do we wanna keep doing it. We got some kinks to work out and were gonna work them out and were gonna come back stronger than ever, people are gonna be like what?!!!

-R.A.