Hungry Mobsters Mic Crenshaw of Hungry Mob, Womb Dialectic and volumes of solo work has teamed up with beat-master, neo-rapper Gen.Erik. They talk about watching Portland hip-hop grow, the politics of battle-rhyming, and getting involved in your scene. by Ishmael B. “The punk DIY ethic set a good model for what hip-hop should do now,” says Mic Crenshaw, veteren rapper of Portland’s hip-hop scene. Having started as a spoken word artist when our street scene was hardly 10 souls deep, Mic has learned a few things about the DIY ethos. During the hey day of DJ Chill, Soul Rhythm Records, A Black Clan, Quadralyrical, Pete Miser, Mestiso and several others, he was getting respect among a very tight knit group of artists. Tell me about your history in Portland, and as an artist in general. As an artist, I started rappin’ when I was about 10 years old. I think I heard Rapper’s Delight and The Breaks and Double Dutch Bus; those were the first three rap songs that I remember. I was already taking nursery rhymes and dirty rhymes off of bathroom stalls and the back of the bus and putting my own words in. So around that time I discovered I could freestyle. So it was always a hobby that I did for personal entertainment as well as to entertain friends and family. But it wasn’t until I became a teenager in high school that I started battling. But it wasn’t until I moved [to Portland] from Minneapolis in 92, and I started doing poetry slams that I started to come into contact with different musicians. In 1994, David Parks, one of the musicians that I collaborated with, came to me and said, “Let’s start a live hip-hop band.” That was the birth of Hungry Mob. [That] was really the beginning of my hip-hop career, as an independent rap artist, trying to make a career out of it. Did you do all the music on (Mic’s latest EP) The Strugglah? E: No. I wasn’t involved in that at all. So, are you guys able to support yourselves through your music, or are you working other jobs? M: We’re working other jobs. In your time here, Mic, what evolution have you seen the music scene go through? M: In my time here, in the local hip-hop scene, I’ve seen it go from a small group of people, to an even larger, small group of people. When I first got out here, the group that I recognized was A Black Clan Records, which was DJ Chill and Soul Rhythm Soldiers. And they’re still doing their thing, as far as I know… There were things just budding and developing.
In that time have you seen any crossovers between the hip-hop scene and the rock scene? Yeah, definitely. With Portland being a small music scene, there was always collaborations during independent music fests. There’d be places like La Luna or Berbati’s who would have hip-hop, rock and experimental music all sharing the same bill. You’d have rock musicians laying down tracks…bass lines, guitar lines, helping along electronic music as well. How do you describe your style of hip-hop? There’s the stuff I do with Hungry Mob that’s always been kind of socio-political and spiritual edge to it, lyrically. It’s a live band, guitar, bass, drums, keyboards. Hungry Mob’s music draws from all types of black music: funk, reggae, jazz, R&B, as well as forms of rock music. We even have stuff that was like thrash metal that we were messing with at one point because our musical taste reflects a broad spectrum of music. Talking about battle rhymes, there’s definitely that sense of self-aggrandizement that’s been around as long as this type of music has been on the charts. Even in underground music, and more specifically, in your music, there’s a certain level of it. Even though you are a socio-political artist, what kind of thought goes into using that technique and what separates the way that you talk about yourself from how mainstream rappers talk about themselves? There’s some subtle things that I do that I don’t know if I want to talk about too much, just ‘cause I like to keep certain ingredients to myself. However, I will say battling is something I enjoy. But recently I’ve been struggling with the will to go out and battle, per se. I don’t really have the desire to prove myself in that manner. First of all, since I am coming from a socio/political/spiritual context, there’s always a battle that I’m aware of that exists on a lot of different levels. Like, just the everyday war that a working class person has to go through, as far as the battle between doing what’s practical and trying to do what you love as an artist. That’s a battle in and of itself. That’s a fight that I’m always fighting. There’s a war to be fully aware and in control of what we absorb, as far as energy that we’re surrounded by in our environment. What we do, as far as, is it healthy, is it unhealthy, from what I eat to staying physically in shape to the way I think and look at the world. I just try to be, as much as I can, on point within myself, based on an understanding that my life is on a path. So if I’m going to try to be the best person I can be, then I’m going to try to be as healthy as I can be, as clear as I can be, as strong as I can be. So that’s just something that I live every breath. And it seems like that’s the first level of getting respect, but to people outside the scene it kind of sounds like a couple of guys going back and forth. E: We’ve had a lot of discussion lately on this, about the repercussion of your lyrics that you put out there. I think you have to be aware of what’s
Some booty. Some booty or just some gratuitous shit to appeal to their base instinct. That’s cool for the kids… You can come up and disrespect me, and you can do it real loud and the crowd might go, “Ooh, did you hear? He just disrespected him.” But the thing is, I’m going to outwit you in a way that’s going to take some thought, and some understanding to actually figure out. You’re going to actually want to sit down and listen to what I said. And I don’t remember what I said. It was improvisational, but that’s the effect I’m going after. And that’s the effect I’m going after when I put the pen to the pad. I want to provoke people to think about things. So how do you take that sense of improvisation, and that energy required to outwit somebody else, and sit at a bus stop or at your kitchen table, and put it down on paper? What’s that process like for you? M: For me, it’s mainly about deconstructing the enemy, the adversaries that I see as formidable obstacles in my life. That’s what I’m battling against, more so than “the man.” The man that might want to come up and disrespect me and compete with me, for positive or negative, is a symptom of the problem. But I’m actually battling against the problem, and that’s something that requires a lot of thought and time and energy. It’s an ongoing thing that will last me for the rest of my life. It comes from a heritage that was here before I was born and will continue after I’m gone. And so this is just how I take my place in it. Presently, I do it through the lyrics and the educational work, but later in my life, if I was to not be a lyricist any more then I would have to figure out another way to channel my energy into breaking that shit down. That feels good to hear. Right on. Ok. One last question is: What would a fully actualized music scene look like in Portland? E: I think it’s in development right now. Like Mic said earlier, it’s been years in the waiting. People don’t realize that when some of these artists come out on a major record label that they sold 100,000 copies of their record on their own, and they toured all over the world. I think that Portland artists are starting to realize what it takes to get out there, because not many artists in Portland have gotten to that level. But the internet is coming increasingly more effective; college radio, local radio stations like KBOO, community stations, and there’s a lot of networks where you can meet other artists from around the world and vibe with them and set up networks throughout the world. It’s just a matter of getting off your ass and doing it. A lot of artists sit around and talk about how much skills they have, but people who work their ass off; they get to where they are for a reason. I think you have to look at yourself in the mirror, and if you’re not happy with what you’re putting out then you need to either step it up or not be in this business, or just decide to do it for a hobby, because it’s competitive. Everyone and their brother wants to be a musician. So, Mic, same to you: what would the music scene in Portland be like if it were to come into its own? M: Well, that begs another question to the person who asks that question: I would have to ask what expectations are you putting on it? To me, there’s already a music scene here. There’s a strong independent scene in a sense that there’s a lot of independent artists that don’t have major label support that are all hustling to do it on their own. Yeah, maybe they don’t have heavy rotation on some Clear Channel controlled radio station, maybe they don’t have some video that’s got some heavy rotation on some video network, but they’re out here doing it like blue-colored artists. They’re playing live. They’re producing, recording, marketing… They’re reaching an audience. That’s a really good idea. Yeah, I like that idea. I hope that we can do that. You’re going to play anyway. And we play all the time for no money, just to pay the club. So if we start supporting, and bringing each other’s crowds to the shows, including putting a collective effort into promoting, we will get more people. Mic and Gen.Erik are on tour right throughout the Northwest. Cow towns abound. See the list of cities and sample some songs from Gen.Erik’s solo album: www.aerosilo.com/generik.htm |
going to happen based on what you put out there. A lot of people, I think, are unaware that when they talk about shooting people it’s going to have an affect on kids. Whether they like it or not, they’re going to look up to them as role models, whether local or national or international. I enjoy battling in a sense that I enjoy the art of people putting together words in a way that people haven’t thought of. A lot of people, when they battle, just say, “I’m the best and I’ll kill you,” and they’ll talk about each other’s mom or they talk about their guns, and that’s not really where hip-hop comes from. That’s not where battling comes from. It comes from being clever with your words, and outshining someone in that sense.
Not necessarily in that order—but independently, because there is no major label support here. No major labels are coming and asking us to jump on board with them and giving us huge cash advance so that we can be the next rock star or whatever. I don’t foresee that happening. Even though I used to fantasize about that happening a lot more, the longer I do this, the more educated I become about how to sustain myself as an independent artist. And yet, even though I’m not doing it completely right now, that is the more foreseeable goal for me than me being signed to a major label. Just because of the reality that I see every day, and the blood, sweat and tears that I actually put in where I have control over the outcome.
M: At that point you have to ask yourself, “What can a major label do for me that I haven’t already done for myself?” Then, I imagine, it gets really interesting because you’re like, wait a minute, if I continue to do this on my own, I have full control over everything that I do, but if I get some deal am I still going to have that control, and how does that affect my longevity as an artist? Because, what if they put me at a certain ideal and then later they decide to pull the support? It happens all the time. Most artists I could look up to in the industry, they’ve been through at least 2 or 3 shady deals with the majors before they got to the point where they’re at.