By Odeisel
Ike Turner created Rock & Roll with the 1951 single “Rocket 88.” Somewhere along the line, despite the occasional Jimi Hendrix flash, Black music ventured left of Rock to carve out an entirely different destiny. The Knux, New Orleans’ own, have come to reconnect with the roots of Rock, but there is nothing emo about it. Their music is aggressive, rugged, skanky and raw; in the vein of the Rock you grew up with (or for some of you, heard that people grew up with). The Planet caught up with the Knux fresh off a Southwest tour, where they crashed the houses of their fans, got them belly full and drunk off their ass and rocked till the cops came. Literally. Hear that story and more as The Knux hit you with some chocolate covered rock. Enjoy.
Planet Ill: How does it feel to be a certified Rock Star in this era?
Joey: Wow. Thanks, my brother. It feels great because I came up listening to some of the greats; Jimi Hendrix, Chuck Berry. B.B. King, you know, Little Richard started it [Ed- Note Ike Turner Started it with the single “Rocket 88.”] It feels good. Actually it feels really good because I’m getting a good response from Black people. I think that we lost the knowledge of where it started or how it even came about. So yeah, I feel good about that.
Planet Ill: What do you think has caused the disconnect between Black people and Rock & Roll?
Joey: I think British Rock, when they kind of emulated the Blues sound and took. I think somewhere down the line, I don’t know when it started I think somewhere down the line they got lost in translation. I think maybe Punk Rock? Somewhere it got lost in translation as to who started it and I think we as a people started to separate ourselves, first off from that kind of expression; that free sort of expression with our music; we became more conservative and a little more inward in our movements and actions. That whole type of expression I think we sort of just shy away from. We don’t affiliate any Black people with that. Or if you do, it’s like, “That crazy Black dude that’s on that Rock shit!”
Planet Ill: Have you faced any obstacles or objections or barriers to entry in Rock music?
Joey: No one has actually physically said it but you always feel like you’re in that sort of position. You always feel like you gotta go harder than the normal person that’s playing Rock music but you know that’s on the other side too. Like in Hip-Hop, Caucasians may feel like they gotta do extra to gain that respect in the Hip-Hop world. So it goes hand in hand but you do get not a pressure, but mores o like you already have negatives just because of your skin color. So definitely. But we’re not even thinking about that. We’re just making music and having fun doing it.
Planet Ill: But here’s the thing. In Hip-Hop, with white performers, now you’re seeing a case where they DON’T actually have to have that higher level of skill, when you start looking at some of these acts that are coming in these days. You would never see a Rock guy that couldn’t play a guitar or couldn’t actually Rock, but in Hip-Hop you have a lot of people coming in that can’t rap. Was it incumbent on you to get your skills up just to face those objections?
Joey: I think that as a genre, I think that Rock take sit genre very seriously. I think we stopped taking Hip-Hop serious and started letting anybody rap. That’s why it got to that point. And that happened with Rock in the 80s. It fizzled out with the hair bands and the ridiculous, over the top gimmick shit. You know that happened once with Rock and I think when it got to that point, it was like we not gone ever let this happen again with Rock. And I think Hip-Hop is getting to that point. They don’t care about the genre themselves so they allow that shit. I don’t know man. If you don’t respect your own, I mean there’s cats going around like, “I ain’t a rapper!” Why you doing Hip-Hop? Just crazy stuff like, “I just do this rap shit, but I ain’t a rapper. I slang dope.” Then sling dope then.
Planet Ill: If you that great selling drugs, go sell crack.
Joey: Right! It’s like that’s the thing and it’s like in Hip-Hop, we consider ourselves artists, and not just, “Yeah, I do some rapping.” When the mentality changes , it will change up and it won’t allow certain shit to co-exist. I’m 27, I’m not real old but I’m not a young cat. When I first started rapping, there was a time when I was scared to rap because cats were just so cold.
Cats were so cold it was like I can’t do this shit, cause motherfuckers were that ill. But now, everybody feels comfortable. Your cousin down the street that do0n’t know nothing about Hip-Hop is like, “Yo, I can put a CD out.” And that shit’s because of the level of tolerance. We’re not as strict about things no more in the genre about quality music and quality material and just respecting the art.
Planet Ill: When people hear the name The Knux what do you want them to think?
Krispy: It’s motherfucking Krispy! Blood, leather, denim. Fucking Rock & Roll! The Knux! We’ll come to your fucking show, kick you in your fucking nose, hug you after and tell you we love you, smoke you out, have an orgy with your girlfriend and her friends and you’ll have a story to tell after we leave your town.
Planet Ill: I dig that man, I saw your last video; you’re in the seedy ass hotel with the skanky hoes. Loved it! But that’s exactly what Rock is about. It’s been getting very emo recently but that’ show I remember it.
Krispy: Dude, that’s how it’s supposed to be! It’ supposed to be like that dog. Everything is gritty over here dog. We do sows fucking everywhere. You think we don’t want to do shows in El Paso? We WANT to go to El Paso! We want to go to fucking Albuquerque! We want to go to St. Augustine to do a show. We like doing this shit. That’s why we did the house party tour and did it ourselves and paid for it with our own cash. Twenty grand of our own fucking cash we went to our fans’ houses and ROCKED! Gave them free beer, free fucking pizza, free wings we love doing this shit.
The weirdest thing about us, and we never boast about anything. Dude, there’s nobody who loves doing this shit more than us. We love doing this shit; we love performing. Hip-Hop acts perform because they gotta make money. That’s why they perform. We perform because we love doing this. We’re producers, we don’t have to perform.
We get checks all through the year. If we don’t want to tour, we don’t have to tour. We produce on big records; we produced on B.o.B’s album. We produced on big shit man. We do this shit because we really love doing this. We love performing. I could be still in our motherfucking project apartment; Me and Joe could be still looking out the window, still on our shitty ass project apartment, but we out here loving what we doing man. That’s better than anything to me. I get a rush off that shit.
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