Nappy Roots: Kentucky-fide Rippin' (Mics) Part 1

Nappy Roots: Kentucky-fide Rippin’ (Mics) Part 1

Posted On: September 27, 2011
Posted By: odeisel
Comments: 1

B Stille: I look on Twitter pretty much every day. I do that to see what people are saying and people are still checking for Nappy Roots. At least about a hundred people will say, well what happened to Nappy Roots or ”Good Day” I wake up to this song every day. To me, I believe that that’s one of our top three songs that we’ve done to the masses. Now, I’m one of those cats that I’m a digger anyway; I like to dig for music. I don’t listen to the singles off the album as much as I do the other shit that I really like so I’m one of those cats.

For people like myself, those are the people that are hip to the Nappy Roots, knowing that we got five albums and The Humdinger was our first independent release and so they might not play “Good Day” as much as other songs off the album but they know about us and they check for us. I know what that song has done for us, forreal forreal and it’s one of our best songs. I don’t think that that was a great example of being slighted because of a single but I know for a fact that for our second album that we came out with Wooden Leather, we had much more heat to bring than what Atlantic put out, but we’re dealing with an independent label so now there’s only so much we can do.

So we just kind of hope people go back and check for our music as opposed to spending millions and millions of dollars on promotion on one single and if that don’t work, we spend another two-three million on another single and if that don’t work, we hook up with so and so spend two, three million on that and hopefully that wills tick. We don’t really have the luxury independently to do that now so it’s kinda like we gotta go with our guts and the people who we hire around us.

So I really do feel for our last couple projects that we’ve made good moves or at least the best moves that we could make. But then again like Skinny was saying we are some of the most slept on groups, if not the most slept on groups in Hip-Hop and it’s kinda crazy that and I could put race in it, but you know Black folks don’t be on it. Even Rico from Organized Noise was like, “Damn, I had to go back and check and get on what you guys was on. Ya’ll on some shit!” It’s like we choose to jump on what’s on the radio and what’s mainstream now as opposed to how we used to do things, like, “They don’t know about this shit!” And turn people on like you got turned on to The Humdinger. So I think if we can start doing that, if that’s’ kind of the way that shit’s going, if we can listen to these internet radios and dig a little more, then you’d definitely be impressed with what Nappy Roots has done in the last five years.

Planet Ill: Let’s talk about Wooden Leather. What happens when you get exposed to Madden 2004 and you start getting commercial overtures and the spotlight calls, what happens to your relationships as men when the money starts coming in and things get uneven.

Fish Scales: I feel like the hardest album for any artist is the second album; especially coming off a successful freshman album, that sophomore album is probably the hardest because life just changes more than it’s ever changed in that short time period. You got a little more money, you got a little more fame; probably a lot more fame. Even more, you got more kids.

Recording Wooden Leather for me is like now I get to rap about what I want to rap about. What I really want to rap about and the way I really want to rap, as opposed to the first album. You got in your head you I gotta please this label. You know we managed to make a great album, in my opinion. The first and the second album. But the second album to me was more like, okay, we got the respect of our label. Now we just go in and give ‘em what we really want to give ‘em. And that’s Wooden Leather to me, us making the kind of music we want to make.

We did a lot of it in LA and to me, I’d rather record in Atlanta, personally. I just feel like Southern artists, you gotta record in Atlanta or Nashville. I can be honest and say I didn’t like recording that album; recording Wood & leather out in LA. That whole change was just not cool for me. But I think we did a pretty good job of staying grounded and staying humble and respecting each other’s craft on that album. But it definitely was not the same as recording Watermelon, Chicken & Gritz, I can say that for sure.

Skinny De Ville: On our first album we had to pretty much demo every song, send it to our A&R and the A&R had to go to the President or someone in the A&R department the head of that, and get the money to do that one record because we were so past our budget the first time. We did a whole album for Atlantic records that didn’t even come out in 1999. It got shelved because they didn’t even know how to market a bunch of guys rapping like a motherfucker from Kentucky. We wasn’t talking about the shit we was talking about on Watermelon, Chicken & Gritz.

We really had to go and dig deep to do something different to really stand out to really get to the marketing department’s floor to even get them to figure out how to market us. And that’s what Watermelon, Chicken & Gritz was: us going as far left as we could possibly go within our image. But the second album we got two million dollars from Atlantic Records. We sold 1.2 million, we got Grammy nominated. We had all kinds of accolades and plaques, we was touring the world and we was on the Sprite Liquid mix Tour. We was with Jay-Z and N.E.R.D. and 311, Hooverstank. Tech9ne was on one stage and Talib Kweli was on the other. So we was all over the world and we was coming from Kentucky so that was very big!

The second album we had two million dollars, a bunch of Cali kush and we did the majority of it in LA but we did it with the producers that we was able to work with. We wanted Lil John, we got Lil John. We wanted Kanye, we got Kanye. We wanted David Banner, we got David Banner. We wanted to work with Raphael Saadiq, we worked with Raphael Saadiq.

Our first album wasn’t like that. We had “Groove” Chambers and he pretty much fought like hell with us to make it hot. And that’s the difference between Wooden Leather, and Watermelon, Chicken & Gritz. Watermelon, Chicken & Gritz was a necessity. We had to fucking make that album the best thing we could have done because we might not get another shot. We had just saw an album that we made sit on the shelf because it wasn’t what they wanted or was able to market so that’s a big difference for us to learn that on Watermelon, Chicken & Gritz to say you know what? This is how we gone do this one.

And as a collective we agreed that we’re gonna step this shit up and do what we wanted to do. And it was kinda polished; I think it was very professional I think it was done how we wanted to do it. But I just think the lifestyle we was living at the time it was filled with money man. We had all the money we was going all over the world. We was going overseas doing shit. Like coming back working with William Orbit in London. That shit is eye opening for some guys coming out of Bowling Green, Kentucky, Louisville Kentucky and Milledgeville, Georgia. Which none of them have a population over x amount of people. That shit is crazy.

Subscribe To Planet Ill