By Odeisel

In nature, it’s convention that the young grow and eventually supplant the old. There is no coexistence past the age of maturity and assertion.

In Hip-Hop, particularly in the East, we’ve arrived at a point where there are rappers who are holding firm to their positions while increasing numbers of young and strong cubs are arriving to usurp those same positions.

As we are people and not animals, does this situation have to take on Darwinian proportions? Is there not a way for both groups to coexist in the hearts and minds of the fans? Tanya Morgan thinks so. Their music is informed by those same long in the tooth rappers and has matured enough to match them in quality and bumps per minute. Check out how they feel about the current tenor in Hip-Hop and how they fit into the picture.

Planet Ill: Why Do You Rap?

Donwill: Me personally, I rap because I think what I gotta say is pretty urgent. I know a lot of people don’t come from a place of urgency anymore, but I got an opinion. A lot of people come from a place where they just want to say some cool shit, want to be accepted or just want to make a little money but I feel like what I gotta say is urgent.

Von Pea: I just want to be cool [laughs]. I just always liked it. I remember when I was 16 and A Tribe Called Quest retired and I just remember the way it made me feel. It made me sad like somebody had died and I just remember saying to myself if I could get emotion out of people they way they got it out of me, that’s what I want to do.

Planet Ill: When was the last time you were moved by a Hip-Hop song or an album?

Donwill: Most recently? I’m gonna say Mos Def’s The Ecstatic. It’s one of those albums that I took a while to listen to. When it’s an album I’m interested in, I like to sit down with it and play it and not give it the iPod treatment where you skipping through songs . I had to play The Ecstatic three or four times before it resonated and once it hit like…there’s moments of brilliance on there, moments when you can tell he’s paying homage to his favorite influences of today; contemporary cats like there’s a little bit of Jay Electronica on there, there’s a bit of Doom on there, and it’s not necessarily stuff that Mos Def is ashamed of doing. He’ll cover an MF Doom song live, so Mos Def is not abashed at showing love to artists. I just think it’s a pretty cool template to check out, trying to make a complete artistic statement with an album instead of making a bunch of songs that go together.

Von Pea: I don’t even know the last time I was moved as far as affecting the way I feel about a topic or whatever. I honestly couldn’t say , it might have been [Blue & Exile’s] Below The Heavens. As of late I’ve just been listening, really. Just listening and enjoying music as simple as I can. Now that we are part of this business of this or whatever, we just see what goes on and a lot of times people will do something because they know there’s a market for it, or they’re pretending that they care about something.

There’s a market for spinning rims rap, there’s a market for real Hip-Hop rap. You hear that and you find out that these people don’t care as much as you thought they did and it just makes you listen to everything different. That’s how I listen now. I listen to everything skeptically even if I like it. I don’t know what I believe anymore. I just listen now and turn my brain off.

Planet Ill: Brooklyn is home to some of the greatest MC’s of all time. How does Cincinnati enter the fray stylistically and how much does it affect your sound as a group?

Donwill: The Hip-Hop landscape is affected by Ohio in general, because a lot of the funk sessions have players in the band that are from there. You know like Zapp & Roger. A lot of those early G-Funk samples and a lot of the funk people are from Ohio. James Brown recorded at King Studios in Cincinnati. So our legacy to Hip-Hop is a little bit different, but it’s definitely one that‘s kind of important. It’s just as important as Brooklyn’s legacy to Hip-Hop. The new wave of cats need to kinda respect that and treat it as such.

Von Pea: I didn’t know about Cincinnati until I met these guys [Donwill and Illyas]. As far as Hip-Hop being one of the producers of the group, they always to me, you gotta remember to make music that people can ride out to as well. Because with the car culture, they want the music to be bass heavy, and they want it to have a certain groove and not always the have that “panic” sound that New York has sometimes. Some groups like PE we just have that certain sound. Other groups, like Nas’ music just has a certain grit to it, and it’s not always about that with our sound. We have a family vibe, like a cookout vibe to some of our songs. Just having that sound to our music is what I take from Cincinnati.

Planet Ill: As young rappers coming in this game, do you think that the older rappers have to go in order for you to shine?

Donwill: It’s not time for anybody to go, it’s just time for people to realize that we’re not going and accept the fact that there’s a lot more room and a lot more music out there to support than somebody on a major with a bloated budget.

Von Pea: How I feel about it is, they have their space. Last summer, we were on tour with Hieroglyphics and at the same time you had Digabble Planets trying to get back together and go out. Tribe was trying to get back together and go out. De La is always out. That’s the same thing as my mom saying she went to an O’Jay’s show. That’s where Hip-Hop is at now and that’s a good thing.

But so many people feel that’s the only thing, as far as the people that like the type of music that we make. They just don’t know about us. They like, “The only thing I have to do is go to that Rock The Bells show and see the Pharcyde that I liked when I was in high school because there ain’t nothing out because every time I turn the TV on they trying to show me a stupid dance.”

There needs to be room for all of us, so I don’t think it’s about kicking other guys out, I think it needs to be a better balance of what goes on, on the television and on the radio so that you’ll know that you have options. Back in the day we had options. Today they don’t see the options so they think they have to go back to the 90s and there is no Tanya Morgan; there is no Little Brother or whoever.

Planet Ill: So what do you feel about the whole Joe Budden/ Method Man situation?

Donwill: In my opinion that’s nothing more than an internet it’s out there as soon as I type it out thing. I feel like Joe respects Method Man and he respects Redman, I don’t know these artists personally or how they feel about each other. I just feel that before the internet that statement wouldn’t have gotten out. He would have said it, it would have gone through a publicist, and may have gotten edited down, it may have been reworded. Information travels so fast nowadays that a simple statement becomes a beef because it was a clutch moment where you’re thinking, “Man I should be on this list too! I’m better than Method Man.” You not necessarily thinking.

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