 |
Edan In the grand scheme of things a shy white kid from Boston rapping about smoking aluminium doesn’t sound like a hip-hop revelation, but Edan’s debut lp, “Primitive Plus”, was so fresh and raw that you couldn’t help sit up and take notice. The album sounds like it was recorded in one summer day session, an electric clash of scratchy vinyl cuts and beats, all strung together by Edan’s distinctive carefree drawl. Although a homage to the old skool ethics of DIY production and party rhymes, Edan’s style on the album and his various EP’s is anything but retro, sounding more vital than 99% of the hip-hop on the shelves. Back in the studio after his global success, Edan has just cut his new album, Beauty and the Beat and Pixelsurgeon caught up with him as the promotional bandwagon starts rolling, “in the middle of nowhere in the US man”.
PIXELSURGEON: How have things been for you since Primitive Plus came out?
Things have stepped up but I’ve also chosen to sort of absorb life and take a step back and balance that out with everything so I’m not trying to go full steam. I’ve done shows and had several wonderful experiences due to putting out the record and having some fans, but I’ve seen other of my contemporaries go at it at a harder pace trying to get their career cracking. I still feel like due to the strength of what I put out I still have a lot going for me, and I’m ready now to step it up and get more tenacious. I’m going to do it to the fullest with this release.
Did you find approaching the second album after your success was daunting in a way?
A little bit, I mean you just know that your only dialogue with your greater audience is these records, so you can’t fall off. You gotta maintain an enthusiastic approach to being an artist and prove every time out, I mean there was times when I didn’t want to f***ing do it, but you gotta stay with it. I’ve grown as a person since the first album, I’m not the little kid who was excited about everything, you know, but my excitement is still there, and my enthusiasm has expanded towards other things as, or more, important in life. You grow, and I still love music to the fullest, but there were some moments were I was hard on myself because I know what’s at stake.
I’m never really sure, you know what I mean, it’s up and down man. Sometimes you love it and sometimes you don’t even feel like f***ing with it, but overall you know what you gotta do. With the first one I sort of blindly just went with it, but I think after putting out that initial release you see how people react and that everything you do sort of gets scrutinised by certain people that write about you. There’s nothing with that because it forces you as an artist to figure how to get your true message across knowing what they will interpret and what they will say. If you stay true to yourself and you take some of the constructive criticism on, maybe that does help improve you as an artist.
What’s different about this album?
The first album, I wouldn’t call it a melodic record, this one I would call a melodic record. The music that first really inspired me wasn’t even rap it was just like the Beatles and Rock and Roll , shit like that, so always in the back of my mind I wanted to make music like that, and I do make music that’s not even hip-hop where I play guitar and write songs in that pop / rock sense. So as I try to forge my identity I come to find that I just end up making rap records that have that have that rock and roll sensibility, it’s like a Bambaataa things where you take that rock and roll mentality and say ‘that shit’s hip-hop anyway’. So yeh the record is different in that sense, the textures are gonna be different, and hopefully every record I put out can have a different flavour to it.
On this one I wanted to make a short record. I realised that I was listening to my own LPs, listening to like a 15 minute side of a Kinks album, and just being, like, satisfied, maybe I’ll wanna put on a different record after that. So I basically made this record about 32 or 33 minutes long so you can just throw on a side, if you wanna throw on the other side you can, but it’ll never really seem taxing. It’s like a punk rock thing where you get in, you get out, and hopefully you leave people charged and wondering what’s gonna happen next - but hanging on everything that’s goin on in there.
Do you think your album dropped at a good time, like hip-hop needs a breath of fresh air right now?
(Laughs) Maybe you know, cos either it’ll just get slept on… or it’ll be considered refreshing, but you still have to push hard. You know I think if you do anything of quality then you got potential fans everywhere, what I have to do is to try my hardest to get myself heard without, you know, sacrificing my integrity or making stupid decisions. I don’t know if the times have changed, but I know that definitely in popular music there’s a lot of redundancy being thrown down your throat, so I’m sure people are down for something fresh. It’s down to those major players, major businessmen, if one of ‘em takes a chance on something unorthodox and it blows up then the rest are just gonna follow in line.
Were you always confident of sticking to your own style and still making a living?
Yes, definitely, I always felt like ‘I’m going to do this for a living, I love it this much’, and right now I am making a living off of it, but as you get older you start to think about the potential for family, and so like just now, after this record I’m going to really start to push, doing other things like mix tapes, which I’ve been doing all along, and more collaborations and production and we’ll just see where it takes me. I don’t want to say that I’ll be doing this or that down the line, I just try to keep an open mind and stay on my toes.
Are you doing the paintwork on the album cover?
Yeh! You know you do all this work that has this sonic vision to it… and when it comes time to having it presented visually with artwork you don’t wanna hand all that shit over to somebody else and have them do some shit that don’t really complement your scheme, you know? It’s a question of like ‘Do I let somebody else do this or do I just give the people me, to the fullest?’
Yeh, ‘Edan do it himself’ like the bio on your website - had a choice reference to Lenny Kravitz in there!
(Laughs) Again, another dude tried to write some bio, and I just felt like I could represent myself better than him! I even have a line in this song I wrote where I’m sort of dissing Lenny Kravitz, but I don’t really mean to diss Lenny Kravitz, like, individually, it represents a sort of artist who has the façade of being a vital artist, but really turns out to make no difference in the history of things, you know what I mean? (Laughs) You know… Sheryl Crow? I don’t give a f*** about that! Plus growing up on Jimi Hendrix, I have that in the back of my mind when I scope somebody out, and so I know what’s what.
Are you going for battle raps on the new album?
Nah I ain’t getting at rappers, I don’t think that one individual is worth goin’ at unless they really disrespected you, and even then that should never really enter the realm of music because music is intended to raise people’s esteem and make them feel good. To put your personal politics in music that don’t have anything to do with raising people’s spirits is sort of stupid, in my mind.
A motherf***er doesn’t play the flute and then hit you over the head with the flute when he’s done, that’s cos he’s trying to make you feel good! (Laughs) Well you know, cos this shit is God’s work… and I don’t mean that in a Christian, or overly crazy way, I just know when I see the universe that there is something that connects all of us, in the music, and so going after some dude in a rhyme is kind of… missing the point.
So are you sticking to the wordplay of your earlier work on this album and avoiding ‘issues’ in your rhymes?
Well there is subtle, like, ‘good versus evil’ references where it’s just kind of ‘do the right thing’, and that applies to all that shit, but I’m promoting love on this record you know? The shit’s called ‘Beauty and the beat’, and on certain songs, like ‘I See Colors’, it’s like ‘things are beautiful, don’t forget to notice that’. That’s my response to all that shit, just promote beauty and what you think is beautiful in your art, and do it proud, and that’s good enough.
Has that been your inspiration for the album?
I’m not sure man, I’d have to say the music itself man, I’m just hearing it, and what it did to me as a young boy (laughs). I have a big hodge-podge of influences and inspirations, not necessarily within music. In terms of particular artists, I just enjoy the diversity of it all. I think I have a love for life, not everybody has a sunny outlook on life, but for the time being, as crazy as it may be in various regions and parts of the world, I still feel excited about the possibilities.
|
