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Rewind: DJ Shadow & Black Eyed Peas on Reinvention, Activism, and New Worlds · Kyle Meredith With...

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's easy to hear your favorite artist on WFPK from wherever you are.
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  [SPEAKER_02]: and welcome to another edition of Kyle Meredith with.
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• 1:02
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• 1:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: Again, D. Tartakovsky, you know, him is the legendary animator and creator of Dekstra's Laboratory in Samurai, Jack, and Star Wars Clone Wars in Hotel Transylvania.
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• 1:23
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• 1:39
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• 1:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's me, Kyle Meredith.
• 1:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: Today is a special rewind episode.
• 1:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: Looking back on my interviews with both DJ Shadow
• 2:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: And one half or two thirds of the black MPs, however you look at that.
• 2:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: DJ Shadow, of course, the California turn tableists who turn crate digging into an Olympic sports.
• 2:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: He built his rep on sample heavy, genre melting records like introducing.
• 2:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: while also making himself a go-to collaborator for artists who like their beats both cinematic maybe a little dangerous and then from the black eyepiece taboo and apple d app as again it's either half or or two thirds whatever area you're looking at but but either way they've been riding the pop rap roller coaster since the late nineties from the underground LA club gigs to topping every chart in the hemisphere sometimes with anthems sometimes with earworms that you'd swear might be designed in a lab
• 2:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: that's what you're looking at today for this special rewind episode and we're going to start in twenty seventeen with DJ Shadow.
• 2:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: He called in to talk about at that point the record the mountain will fall his first artist show tour in four years again at that point.
• 3:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: He explained the difference between DJ gigs and full-on performance of his own music, how revisiting old multi-tracks felt like cracking open a sonic diary, complete with long forgotten scratches and experiments.
• 3:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: He discussed breaking away from being sample heavy, avoiding backward-looking nostalgia, and keeping his sound forward thinking.
• 3:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: We also got to talk about him working with Timothy Leary samples on three routes, the song, and introducing the world to rapper Ernie Fresh.
• 3:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: praising his early nineties inspired style all that a more part one of the special rewind episode it's Kyle Meredith with DJ shadow loving the album the mountain will fall fantastic another fantastic record for you and you're on tour right now right yeah i'm uh... out near up to ten show so far yeah and yeah here for another few weeks uh... i guess i read that uh... it were the first show of the tour this was like your first show in four years
• 4:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well it's what I call the first artist show and the reason I phrase it that way is that because you know I'm a DJ and I make records as well and I'm restless and I like to do different things to keep myself entertained and fresh I do like an artist show in the traditional sense just like a rock band would wear you know it's all my own music a little bit of the old little bit of the new
• 4:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: with visuals and stuff like that.
• 4:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I haven't done that since when my last primary tour ended.
• 4:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then since then I did a lot of DJ gigs where I'm just playing a lot of other people's music just like any other DJ would.
• 4:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: So that's the differentiating the difference between the two description.
• 4:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Is there still nerves that go into this though that you know I guess you know when you're playing the other people's music there's a bit of that crutch but here it is it's your own stuff like this far in and especially after a four-year gap you know how long does it take for the muscle memory to kick in and you I got this yeah yeah I feel like a few weeks or least but I also think that
• 5:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's the last couple of tours or any indication.
• 5:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: It kind of evolves slowly over the course of like a year or two years.
• 5:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: It depends on how long I'm out on the road.
• 5:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean obviously the primary goal is to continue to, you know, be inspired when you're up there because the last thing you want to do is get people the impression that it's not difficult or it's not challenging or that you're not pushing your own
• 5:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: your own boundaries, so I mean, I think it's necessary to kind of switch it up a little bit over the course of its work.
• 5:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so do your songs evolve live?
• 5:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do they change course from what the album is?
• 5:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I mean, the show as it exists at this moment is, you know, it's format is a pretty complex
• 6:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: makes of a lot of different elements of a lot of different songs of mine.
• 6:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: And one of the reasons I was able to do that this time is that since the last tour I transferred a lot of my old eight-at-tape, my old multi-tracks down, for a long time, a lot of the multi-tracks of my songs were kind of in limbo.
• 6:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: And a few years ago, it took a couple of months out just to kind of do that process.
• 6:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I have access to a lot of elements from the songs that I haven't had access to for, you know, any of the other tours.
• 6:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: Finding like your old, your old diaries right there.
• 6:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it was intriguing.
• 6:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, there's definitely, and there's, you know, tracks where
• 6:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: I tried different scratches or different ideas in the mixed process just decided that the track was stronger without those touches.
• 7:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: So it is kind of funny to go back in time and pry open those multi-tracks and see what was left behind.
• 7:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, do you have any just big grimace moments?
• 7:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like no, that still has to stay left behind.
• 7:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: That was there for sure.
• 7:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, but it's not like I was, you know, trying to guitar solo or anything like totally out of character.
• 7:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: You've been doing this for a very long time at this point, probably over twenty years, is what I'm kind of gathered.
• 7:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, how long did I spend for single camera?
• 7:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: How hard is it for you to find new directions for music and innovations?
• 7:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: I know the big catch for this album is, you know, you got away from being so sample heavy and the word, which I find fun contemporary keeps popping up, which is just an odd word I think to put in the DJ world contemporary.
• 7:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, for what you're doing though, how hard is it to find that new direction and to try to figure out how to reinvent yourself over and over and over?
• 8:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, I mean, I feel like as long as I take a long time between albums, it's not really that hard.
• 8:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, fortunately, I didn't get into doing music to be in the conventional, you know, every year and a half or two year album cycle, because I just not the type of artist I am, and that's, you know, fortunately I've always been on labels that haven't forced me to be something that I don't want to be.
• 8:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so I take a long time between albums because I'm listening and learning from my peers.
• 8:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I mean, for example, my last record was composed in mostly in two thousand nine and two thousand ten.
• 8:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: When I think of all the ideas, just an electronic musical loan that didn't exist.
• 8:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: that exists now that didn't exist then, you know, it pretty much guarantees that my album is going to be completely different, you know, from the last one.
• 8:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I feel like that's what I need to continue to evolve is just for the creative energy of my peers to kind of light the way for me and then apply my own ideas in my own personality to the new landscape as I understand it.
• 9:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: it's interesting because the electronic music and the world of electronic music like works so differently than just about any other genre for that fact right there I mean you can take time between records and you can come back and people are still interested in what you have to say where
• 9:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: if you were a rock band or a folk band or a country band or anything like that like that doesn't usually happen like once you're gone for five years or more you know you sort of become time stamped in an era and you've been able to escape that I mean do you give that to the genre or you know hopefully as well to the strength of your music
• 9:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I think that if your goals are popular in it or kind of mainstream oriented, I think it's pretty clear.
• 10:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's in the music that you make.
• 10:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's in the way that you carry yourself.
• 10:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I think it's pretty clear that's never really been my intent.
• 10:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's never really been my
• 10:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, I didn't get, I didn't go to, you know, any kind of show this school or get any kind of show this training.
• 10:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's pretty obvious, you know, when you look at the way I dress and the way I carry myself and the music that I make, I mean, I don't, I don't really have a lot of interest in crossing over or being a mainstream artist.
• 10:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I think that lends itself to a certain
• 10:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: credibility within the sandbase, you know, in a certain understanding with people who are attracted to my music that there's a genuineness there, hopefully, you know, because of all the other things that I do as a DJ and the mixes that I do and that, you know, I have a label that's free label that, you know, all the music is free to download and I think
• 11:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: If people are interested in my music and they want to explore further what I have to offer, I think that what they find is, I'm a genuine musical lover and a music fan.
• 11:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I think that for other music fans that's something that I think people appreciate.
• 11:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we'll be right back right after this.
• 11:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: Welcome back, it's Kyle Meredith with DJ Shadow.
• 11:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I was talking to, you know, rock singer the other day and they were talking about how it ages them in pop music, you know, is something that they have to fight against, but again, in electronic world, I never find that's a problem.
• 11:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, here you are, you're forty four.
• 11:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, sound as relevant as ever in people treat you or so it seems to me and you might have a different take, but people treat you as relevant as, you know, when you came out like it doesn't seem like you have to battle that as much as the pop singer would or something.
• 11:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I suppose there's some truth to that.
• 11:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, probably because for one thing, I don't really push my face as an asset.
• 11:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, I mean, or as an asset.
• 12:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: I've never really put my picture on my album cover or, you know, done a lot of things where it's like, look at me because that's not really what it's about for me.
• 12:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so as a result, I think a lot of people don't know what I look like and they don't know how it changed through the, so it's less of an issue.
• 12:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, you know, I also think that some of what you're talking about, I think also happens to artists when they decide that they don't want to pursue an agenda of the making music that's evolving.
• 12:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, I think
• 12:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's a big challenge to regardless of the genre for people who make music to continue to be inspired and to continue to find inspiration.
• 12:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I think what happens a lot of times, particularly with genres who I think, you know, the glory days are to some extent in the past, like I would argue rock and roll or blues or chas or
• 12:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: you know a lot of music that and maybe even hip-hop I don't know but I think that eventually what starts to happen is people just kind of go you know what I miss my roots so I'm gonna go back to my roots that's all well and good but I think those artists shouldn't be surprised when a large portion of their audience kind of tunes out because
• 13:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, I think people deep down want to be inspired by new ideas.
• 13:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think the past is seductive and the past is wonderful, but there's a lot of lessons to be learned from the past and a lot of good ideas that got lost in the past.
• 13:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: But I think if your music becomes backward thinking and backward looking rather than forward thinking and forward looking, I think that's the point when a lot of artists complain about ages and because I feel like they have
• 13:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: kind of corded that in their actions.
• 13:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm such a huge fan of the song Three Ralphs on this record and that just that the time has come are you ready Ralph?
• 13:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Who's voice am I hearing there?
• 13:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: What is that?
• 13:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's actually Timothy Leary and it's certainly not the most original sample I've ever pulled up but it's great that the amazing thing about
• 14:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, yeah, the amazing thing about sampling is that, you know, you can listen to a record that's been used and before and you can kind of go, well, okay, that doesn't really resonate with me right now, but then you can listen to it just a few years later and go.
• 14:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: Actually, that's kind of funny.
• 14:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: I just started working on this song, you know, with a sample, this is three Ralph's.
• 14:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, here he is talking to someone named Ralph and I wanted to take the track in a different direction.
• 14:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's actually one of the kind of technical themes of the record is playing a little bit with arrangement and making things, you know, breaking things up a little bit and having the arrangement be a little more free form and almost like songs within songs.
• 14:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: rather than your traditional, you know, build, drop, build, drop out, which, you know, is the basis of so much electronic music.
• 14:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, yeah, that's who that is in that sample.
• 14:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, maybe it's the unconventional nature of that song as a reason why I like it so much too, because it does, it just gives, I mean, all your music's given a mood, you know, throughout every album, and this is just a new mood for this song, and I don't know, for whatever reason, it really connected with me.
• 15:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then the other one, you've introduced the world to Ernie Fresh.
• 15:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, like this.
• 15:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, he, he, he, I basically, uh, friend of mine, uh, an artist named Malfono, who I put out some of his music on my label.
• 15:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: He played me a demo a couple of years ago, and it was kind of a drum machine thing, and I had a rapper on it.
• 15:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: I listened to it and I said to him, it's really hard to find someone who knows how to write authentically old school without resorting to a lot of old school clichés.
• 15:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I guess to put even a finer point on it, usually when people try to evoke an old school ceiling, they go back to the eighties, whereas he went back to the early nineies and there's kind of a big difference.
• 15:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, he writes in a very kind of cool G-Rap way.
• 16:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: And ever since I heard that demo, I kind of talked it away in the back of my mind, like, hey, if I ever come up with something that won't work with this guy.
• 16:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: And this track, this demo just kind of came up out of nowhere while I was working.
• 16:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I liked it.
• 16:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I thought, wow, I think I'm ready to do another scratch track on the record.
• 16:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: I kind of feel like it would be.
• 16:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, we were kind of way relevant, more so now than maybe at any other point in the last ten years.
• 16:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I decided I wanted all the scratches to be unusual and off the bottom path.
• 16:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: I didn't want to use the same old scratch sounds that would be used as scratch tracks.
• 16:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then similarly with the wrapper, I didn't want a big name.
• 16:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: I didn't want anything like that.
• 16:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I approached Ernie and yeah, we knocked it out.
• 16:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm really proud of the track because it's one of those times when you know what a track could be if you can get to the finish line and make all the right decisions.
• 17:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: And the three days or so it took to get all the scratches down the way I wanted to, you know, it was worth it.
• 17:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's fun.
• 17:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 17:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, it's one of my favorite songs I think I've heard this whole year and, you know, I'm so happy it's on there and that you pull the amount.
• 17:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: And congratulations, by the way, you had your, you got your first number one, right?
• 17:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: For the dance electronic charts.
• 17:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, I take all that kind of stuff with a grain of salt because
• 17:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: you know it's it's it's it's I do explain to my mom actually she's like hey number one and I'm like well it's not number one number one it's like number one as a particular type of chart but it is a number one and you know that's we need to take any moment you know for good points in the age you know and so I agree I mean I'm trying to get better about like that
• 17:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, we'll be here to help you.
• 17:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'll celebrate this album to the mountain.
• 17:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: We'll fall DJ Shadow Josh.
• 17:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much for calling today and for the record and the music and everything and hopefully we'll see you around.
• 18:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 18:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely.
• 18:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: Hopefully I'll be there soon.
• 18:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 18:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: All right, man.
• 18:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: We'll take care.
• 18:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Take care.
• 18:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 18:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: We'll be right back right after this.
• 18:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Welcome back.
• 18:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: Alright, for this part two, we head back to twenty eighteen when I jumped on the line with Tebu and Apple Dapp of Black Eyed Peas to talk about street living, calling it a return to the socially conscious style of the early Black Eyed Peas and a raw diagnosis of America's current climates.
• 18:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: from immigration reform to the prison industrial complex this interview might be what is that seven years old or so but it's the exact same things the exact same things are happening in today's climate and we got to discuss there on the ground activism from standing rock
• 18:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: to opening schools in the Philippines and how art and activism form the core of this latest chapter of theirs.
• 19:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: So let's get into this part two of this rewind episode.
• 19:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's Kyle Meredith with Taboo and Apple Dapp of Black IPs.
• 19:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hi, guys.
• 19:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: How are you?
• 19:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm doing well, man.
• 19:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: I was like, step the gym trying to get our fitness in.
• 19:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: Get ready for Black IP touring in the summer.
• 19:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: I didn't know the tour was happening.
• 19:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's exciting.
• 19:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: Well, we're just getting ready, man.
• 19:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: We're just getting ready for all the exciting things that are to come for for the PE.
• 19:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: One of those exciting things that I definitely want to dive right into this is the new single Street Live and which I got to say was instantly maybe my favorite black eyed piece song I've ever heard.
• 19:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm not kidding.
• 19:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: Thank you, man.
• 19:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's a very reminiscent of our early work.
• 19:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: When we first came out in the United States, we were inspired by a lot of folks in over in jazz, which we incorporated with hip hop, and we've always been a socially conscious group, and it was only right that we came back with these huge messages of the state of the climate and the U.S.
• 20:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: but also around the world.
• 20:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: It hits on a lot.
• 20:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I got to say there's probably still loads that you could have pointed out, which is crazy.
• 20:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like when you're trying to pull a focus on it, how did that all come together with this song?
• 20:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: Basically, it's the mood of our tonight and what's going on.
• 20:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's like a cancer that's been going and we just wanted to diagnose what's going on and put it in the forefront and send our message out.
• 20:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: As people were being we're like being decentralized with all the you know distraction in front of you from social media but you know then things happen and then you you can't forget it forget about a real fast and it just keeps on happening and we just wanted to point that out I mean there's always plenty to push against for you guys does it feel different with this administration than anything you know that you've dealt with before
• 21:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: Definitely, you know, with everything that's going on, I feel like people are more, people didn't really like paying attention into politics until now.
• 21:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: Now, it's like, everybody's really tuned in and having opinions.
• 21:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: So, you know, that's what you just got to reveal and what's going on.
• 21:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: We always say that street living is kind of like the diagnosis of what's happening, you know, with all the craziness, with the immigration reform, to the prison complex, to all the things that we address in street living.
• 21:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's like when you go to doctors office and they tell you you have high blood pressure.
• 21:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: or worse you have cancer, a lot of people don't want to hear that, you know, you get a sense of reality and you get trapped across the face like, oh holy shit, this is some real stuff that's happening and that's what we get with street living is maybe it might not have been as nice as where's the love as far as like the commissation of narrative.
• 21:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: But we had to come up with something that was wrong, and genuine, and show the world exactly what's happening in the US with the craig units going on.
• 22:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: And, you know, it's good that people know that the first thing that put us on the map was where's the love of our fallen, and we're looking conscious and how to mess it.
• 22:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: And us coming back in two thousand eighteen with the message.
• 22:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's a direct section of that time here.
• 22:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: And you get you all have always had a good history of working with the community, you know, hidden streets in the pavement, as they say.
• 22:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: But I know two, especially, noteworthy things of lately.
• 22:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, taboo, you were at Standing Rock and Apple, you've been opening some holes in the Philippines, right?
• 22:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
• 22:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, you know, so beyond the storm, you know, we're putting in action ourselves.
• 22:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, we come from that environment.
• 22:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: and we were giving this opportunity.
• 22:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: So we have to start in our community.
• 22:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: Our kids are able to, and we are as blackout piece, we make sure that we provide that opportunity and education.
• 22:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: to the youth because that's because I think that's where we have to start fixing it because when people don't have opportunities they result to negativity and that's what's happening in our inner cities and also like all the individual
• 23:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, work that we have been doing in communities kind of prepared us for this beer fight, which was calling out the the primate as far as what's going on in the US because, you know, when we, when we took a height of two thousand and eleven, we all had been doing individual work, but preparing
• 23:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: for this, you know, reemergence of Black IPs.
• 23:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: And we did it in the way where, you know, we didn't follow the same formula like trying to go after radio spins and trying to get on every single television show and every trying to compete with the stuff that we did in the past.
• 23:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: We just said to ourselves, like, let's do art and activism to the best way of our capabilities so that
• 23:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, art and activism in the crossroads of this new Black IP project, which encompasses the graphic novel, Master of the Sun.
• 24:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: It also has the augmented reality and virtual reality that is part of this whole presentation.
• 24:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: And Street Living was just a soundtrack for the sentiment of the graphic novel, Master of the Sun.
• 24:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'd love to hear more about that.
• 24:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: What is Masters of the Sun beyond just a graphic novel?
• 24:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: So, Masters of the Sun started as a screenplay that will, I am, was kind of formulating a couple years ago.
• 24:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: And along the way, the team started formulating.
• 24:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: We got Ben Jack and Office to help facilitate the writing of it.
• 24:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: We got Damian Scott, who did Spider-Man.
• 24:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: We got him to illustrate the graphic novel.
• 24:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then along the way of putting it all together, you know, our team
• 24:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: created the gold embossment, the paper lay out so that it's a collectible.
• 24:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: And, you know, along the way, I built a partnership with Marvel, going to Comic-Con, and I held onto that relationship for a long time until the right moment presented itself.
• 25:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: And this was actually like a perfect way to bring in Marvel and Black Eyed Tees was an amazing experience.
• 25:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: And what I didn't know is that
• 25:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: When I am had been working on some partnerships with technology as far as augmented reality and virtual reality and our in-house team actually we created the whole you know that the tech side and the creative side all together we were in-house and we like to look at it as the first virtual reality studio and augmented reality studio in the black-eye pink camp
• 25:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: And I hope a story of methods that sounds like about the complexity and hip-hop, how it started in New York in the
• 25:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then the community would flag with crack and violence and weapons.
• 25:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then there's the Sukhuk Auto, the blast masters and the Zulu accent of blast masters.
• 26:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: Basically, they're a crew that try to take over their community back from this alien entity that flagged the community.
• 26:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: And also it has Egyptology and has Concerstration Theory.
• 26:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's like, oh, you know,
• 26:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's not common, but it's also parallel to what's going on.
• 26:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: But we made it more like, you know, it's zombies, on a crackhead.
• 26:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's like a, a second blockbuster in his punk comic book.
• 26:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's cool.
• 26:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: And also, it was cool.
• 26:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: Along the journey, we were able to bring a board an amazing cat to actually be the voices of the augmented reality, the virtual reality.
• 26:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, from Jason Isaacs from Harry Potter, to John Demazio, to Ricardo Dawson, Greela Tiefa, Carrasquan, Rockham, and a lot of other hip-hop artists.
• 26:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then when we got the question, they have Stanley himself, either the narrator, that was when we knew that it was a really, really special in the comic book world.
• 27:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now are you guys going to be releasing more music through this or is or is street living kind of the only one that ties to it?
• 27:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: Now yeah we got a whole we got a whole uh what we call the soundtrack for the comic book we got a whole uh album and it's in that album it's it's kind of like in that book it's kind of like in that book it's kind of like in that book it's kind of like in that book it's kind of like in that book it's kind of like in that book it's kind of like in that book it's kind of like in that book it's kind of like in that book it's kind of like in that book it's kind of like in that book it's kind of like in that book it's kind of like in that book it's kind of like in that book it's kind of like in that book it's kind of like in that book it's kind of like in that book it's kind of like in that book it's kind of like in that book it's kind of like in that book it's
• 27:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: or like behind the front, they're bridging the ground.
• 27:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: We're doing, of course, with a hunts simmer and teeth areas and black IPs to explore the entire virtual reality and how many realities.
• 27:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: So that, you know, you'll hear music when you experience the graphic novel.
• 27:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: But a lot of that music also has actual songs that we've created that will be part of the whole experience.
• 27:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then one of the things you know if people are confused about is you're also paired down to a trio is that is that the way it is now for for this yeah we actually started a trio you know and and we decided to make it about about the graphic novel and you know creating new characters that go along with the experience so that it's not it's not a reflection of what we've done in the past is actually something new we want to create new right characters
• 28:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: for the Black IP experience and you know, it's always cool when you're able to just recreate this new project and that was what we wanted to rely on, like, cool, you know, who's front and center or who does what?
• 28:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: It was more about the graph level, it was more about the partnerships with Marvel.
• 28:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, and for us, we just, we're blessed to be able to continue doing what we do, and we're excited to bring this new graphic novelties for us.
• 28:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: For us, we're glad that we, you know, we're family, so we're beyond, we're beyond the three of us.
• 28:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: We got, we got, we got like a pet key, and we still have a ring with other, other, you know, different upcoming things.
• 29:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: There are, and Ferguson is a family.
• 29:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, he's doing a thing right now, and I'll be supporting that.
• 29:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, it's always going to be family though.
• 29:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, you know, Black Eyed Peas we've always had, we've always had different pieces to be equation.
• 29:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: The foundation has always been legal.
• 29:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: I am an apple.
• 29:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, when we first started, we had Kim Hill, we had Macy Gray, a sterile, no ice gag, we had Terry Gachner.
• 29:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: So we've always been different components.
• 29:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: On this album, we're featuring different artists, upcoming artists, artists that are already in the industry.
• 29:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: Just to always continue the rotation of the characters so that you always get something new and refreshing.
• 29:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: And that's the cool thing about Black Eyed Peas is we are a family, we're an enterprise that wants to provide opportunities for other artists that are coming up as well.
• 29:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: I love what you guys do.
• 29:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's always exciting to kind of follow you all and see what's happening.
• 29:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: This project here sounds like one of the coolest things you pulled off yet though.
• 30:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: Thank you man.
• 30:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: Very exciting.
• 30:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know something new for us.
• 30:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: We started to see us moving.
• 30:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, thank you guys.
• 30:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: It was a pleasure talking to you.
• 30:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: I look forward to hearing and seeing all the rest of the stuff.
• 30:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you, man.
• 30:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Cool.
• 30:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: And there you go.
• 30:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: My thanks to Taboo, Apple, the app, and DJ Shadow, and my thanks to you for checking out the episode.
• 30:21
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• 30:23
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• 30:26
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• 30:33
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• 30:36
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• 30:37
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• 30:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: and leave a review while you're at it.
• 30:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: And after that, you can head over to WFPK.org where I do a show every week, starting six PM Eastern, four hours of classics from the eighties and nineties, the best in new music, bonus interviews, lots of music news as well.
• 30:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: In fact, one of my recent shows features in classics and favorites from Liz Fair, crowded house, the wonder stuff, Debbie Friday, modest mouse, Jenny Lewis, primus, Samara Joy, the Buggles, Levin rockets, flock of dimes, a Reath of Franklin, Paul Weller, Brian Ferry, and my interviews with Dell the funky homo sapiens, Corey Taylor of Slipnut and actor Michael Shannon.
• 31:19
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• 31:21
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• 31:22
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• 31:25
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• 31:28
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• 31:30
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• 31:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: I do hope you like and follow along and that does it for another edition.
• 31:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm Kyle Meredith.
• 31:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'll see you next time.
• 31:50
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• 31:52
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• 31:56
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