Updated correction: Website is www.supremetrackz.com not supremetracks.com
Wow.
That’s what I thought when this interview ended. Ahead of me was the arduous task of transcribing a whopping fifty minute phone interview into a condensed article. However, I didn’t mind.
I wanted to listen to this interview again…and again…and again!
You guys thought Ambush Vin made SciFiMusic? Wait until you read this interview.
I almost rushed to the basement to find my old Daniel-san costume to wear during this interview. I felt like the grasshopper.
I was the pupil. However, this time…I didn’t mind being schooled!
(Gong Crash)
Supreme Trackz
Website: www.supremetrackz.com SoundCloud: soundcloud.com/supreme-musik
What’s good Fam?
Supreme: What’s up Man?
Man, I didn’t even realize that you were a producer for Psychodrama. I f@$# with Psychodrama hard fam.
Oh yeah man, I produce for all of the stuff for Buk, Psyde, and Newsense. I’m also going to be on the Psychodrama reunion album coming out at the end of this year. I’ve produced for them, Face Mob and a lot of cats from Texas.
Face Mob? Wow, so you’ve been in this game for a minute huh?
Man, I’ve been making beats since like ’94.
We’re from the same school of hip-hop then! I can tell that by the soulful melodies of your music. What is your inspiration?
The inspiration I got was growing up and my parents played a lot of Isleys and Al Green and stuff like that. I grew up on that stuff. As I got older, I just wanted to utilize what I listened to. That music stuck with me. I just felt like soul music had a certain type of feel. You don’t get that feel now with the Electronic music. It’s a completely different frequency.
Yeah, you know what you’re right man. It is a different type of vibe.
It is man but everything changes. It’s at a point now…rap music is at a point now where everything is going back to the ’80s. This is where we are at right now. If you remember, the mid-80’s with Kurtis Blow, the beats he made were similar to the beats now. His beats were mostly drum machine too, but it was party music. So it’s really no different. Everything goes around in a full circle. So now we’re back to the mid-80’s. Now, the next craze that comes up, I don’t know what it will be. Maybe it will be gangsta rap, maybe pure hip-hop, but it’ll cycle again.
I didn’t even look at it that way but you’re making a valid point here.
Yeah man think about it. All of Run DMC’s beats up until the late 80’s, take My Adidas for example. That beat was all drums. Similar to the beats now, but it was uptempo.
Speaking of the new school, are there any artists that stand out to you right now?
I really only like a few songs. I bang Jeezy because Jeezy has that hardcore, gangsta, Geto Boys sound I grew up on. The problem is, nobody is making classic songs anymore. Everybody’s making songs for right now. When you think about it, the old school songs, they put their heart and soul into it. The problem is now, everyone thinks their a producer. They think anybody can do it now if you have a computer. However, when you listen, the vocals aren’t up to par. The quality isn’t there. The bad part is, a lot of younger people have gotten used to that sound. You couldn’t do that in the 90’s. You had to have good quality. You had to actually be able to rap. You HAD to be on point with your lyrics. Or else, nobody would listen to you.
Man, that’s real! Reminds me of my 17 year old daughter and some of the music she listens to. I can’t even enjoy it because the quality is horrible.
Yup, that’s how my daughter is. She’s 19 and she listens to the same, watered down music. That’s what they’re used to. So when they hear a good track with great quality, their minds can’t even accept that!
You know I’ve been thinking about how, in the 90’s, we watched hip-hop explode in the East, the West Coast, the South just dominated for like 15 years, but when it seemed like it was our time in the Midwest, nothing happened on a national stage.
Nope.
Out of that era, in our world of Chicagoland, who would say you felt the most?
Man…Psychodrama, Crucial Conflict, Triple Darkness, all of the Westside (Chicago) groups. Back then, it was a split between the Westside and the Southside. The Westside rappers brought that gangsta shit. Either that, or some laidback pimp shit. You knew a Westside rapper when you heard one. Then you look to the Southside and you had… Common. Back then, a lot of the Southside rappers sounded like they were from New York. When you heard a Westside rapper, you knew they were from Chicago. I believe the labels were confused when they came here because on one hand you have Common, and then on the other hand you have Do or Die. They probably thought, “This is too different…I don’t understand”. (laugh)
So, fast-forward to today, how can our generation contribute to the movement the younger generation has going today in Chicago? What separates us from them?
Two things. The media and the generation gap. As far as the generation gap, it goes back to what I was saying earlier. How we identified with hip-hop and what they have today. Our parents were from the Motown era. When disco got thrown into the mix it was like, “What the fuck?”. They tolerated it though until 1980 or ’81 when rap started getting popular. Then they were like, thats it, we’re done. However, there are a couple of artists who are trying to connect that bridge. For example, Psyde from Psychodrama is one of them. He does a lot of work with the yoinger artists. We need to be able to mingle with this generation. Especially with how the media portrays us. Hip-Hop has so much power, they are going to do as much as they can to destroy the movement. What they can’t destroy, they will try to capitalize off of.
Speaking of movements, I think there is another movement happening in hip-hop right now. We had a more race-based movement with Public Enemy and X-Clan. Their movement seems to be more urbanized or community based.
Man! I’m glad you said that. My daughter thinks the same way. We were talking about that and to me it’s like these Millennials are just saying, “We just want to be heard!”. I understand that. Our movement was not long after the Civil Rights Movement. It was race-based. Our parents lived through that so thats what they bred into us. That faded out. Now their movement is gonna be different from ours.
Man that’s some deep stuff.
Oh man I can get deeper than that and talk about how I make beats.I could get way deeper and really blow your mind.
Let’s talk about it! You have a different type of process?
Yeah. It all boils down to science. You have to hear me out because it’s gonna make a lot of sense, aiight?
I’m listening, go ahead.
I study and read a lot. I’m going to try not to get too deep. Everything around us vibrates, right? Everything moves. Molecules in the air vibrate at a certain speed. So it’s like I’m looking at my couch, and it’s vibrating so fast that you can’t tell it’s vibrating. However, air vibrates so slow, that’s how we’re able to move our arms and legs through the air So, it’s the same way with music. In the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s, when they were playing live instruments, they were playing those at a certain frequency. That’s when you had hippies and people were smoking weed, feeling good when that Motown sound came on. Everything, that vibe, was from those live instruments, depending on what frequency they were playing at. All live instruments play at a certain frequency. Now, think about it. That’s why Hip-Hop was so good in the late 80’s and early 90’s because they started sampling from that frequency. We started nodding our heads to it. We don’t even know why we were nodding our heads! Now, we get to the 2000’s and the electronic sounds. The electronic sounds don’t have the same frequency as those live instruments. That sound, the electronic sound, is a lower frequency. It’s not natural. Lower frequencies cause depression. They cause anger. Look at the youth today with all the violence, the shooting, and the killing. You know what I’m saying? Those lower frequency sounds contribute. Man, people don’t realize that. If you had a spectrometer you could measure say, an electric piano. Get a pair of headphones and put them on a monkey and play that electric piano. You’re going to see it’s movement and behavior change. Now, if you play a real piano, the monkey would be good. That real piano is a part of nature. It’d a natural frequency. The electric sound frequencies are outside of nature.
Man, that is deep!
I told you. I can go deeper than that.
I believe you can! Let’s switch gears and talk about the album you have coming out. Tell me about it.
Well the album is made up of people that I’ve worked with. I produced the entire album. I got Face Mob on there, Psychodrama, K-Rino, I got a few cats from Denver, and the rest is pretty much Chicago rappers. A lot of songs people may have heard already, but I just wanted to compile them onto one album. I got a solo song on there too.
When do you plan on dropping it?
Hopefully I’m going to drop it by June or July. I’m gonna finish doing the promotion for it. I’m gonna shoot a couple of videos for it. I want to treat it like a real album. Making this album, it wasn’t so much about me producing it. I wanted to make something different with this album. All of these artists I worked with, if I could put them all together on one album, and and let’s promote the hell out of it! The people who like Buk, they are introduced to this dude named K-Rino. They’re going to be like, “Man! I like K-Rino. Let me see what else he’s got.”. Then the people who like K-Rino are going to be introduced to Psychodrama. It’s going to be more of a fan thing where people will gain more audience just by fans listening to good music.
Well, hopefully, before you drop it, you give me a heads-up and let me give the exclusive review here on AltWire!
Oh yeah, oh yeah
Well, bro, it was good talking to you man and I’m looking forward to the album and I will make sure I promote it hard as well! Appreciate the interview bro!
Alright Take it easy!
Check out some tracks from Supreme’s SoundCloud!
