//Aki// What up party people?
//Troublemaker// Party people is the place to be.
//Reese// I am Mauricio Novera, the Black half of King Fantastic.
//Troublemaker// I am Troublemaker, the White half of King Fantastic.
//Aki// So, we’re downtown L.A. right now. What you into?
//Reese// We are shooting a music video for, “on cue,” a song on our album. It’s my favorite song on the album.
//Troublemaker// It’s on “Finger snaps and Gun claps” on www.kingfantastic.com. Free download, get it while you can. Free music man. Free, for now.
//Reese// For now, shit.
//Troublemaker// ‘Til we pull the card.
//Aki// Talk about the different types of videos you have made. You got the porn star trashing a mansion. You got the funny toys and what not.
//Troublemaker// Cannibalism.
//Aki// There you go. So, what’s the deal with this one? What’s the concept of this video?
//Reese// It’s about Jesus and his savior and resurrection, you know what I’m saying? People like you and your souls, and Josh.
//Aki// Not you?
//Reese// I’m going to Hell. I’ve been reprobated. That’s what this video is about.
//Troublemaker// God and drugs.
//Reese// I don’t do drugs Josh.
//Troublemaker// Yeah that’s right.
//Reese// I don’t do drugs Josh, because that’s the White man’s poison.
//Aki// What’s the Black man’s poison?
//Reese// This dick! (Laughter erupts)
//Troublemaker// Since last we talked, we have been working on an ep that we will be putting out at the end of the summer. Probably like the end of August. It’s called “The Death of Summer.” Some new tracks and some remixes. We’re doing a video for one of those songs, and that will all come out end of August. Shot a video a couple weeks ago for another song on our album called, “D boy stance.” We are shooting this video for, “on cue.” We’ll be shooting one more video or maybe two for a song called, “bonfire sessions”, which is our marijuana friendly song.
//Aki// Marijuana friendly?
//Troublemaker// Marijuana friendly.
//Reese// For people who are dumb enough to smoke weed.
//Troublemaker// Yeah, we don’t do drugs.
//Reese// Me personally, I don’t drink or smoke.
//Troublemaker// Water, strictly water, coffee.
//Reese// This is cranberry juice.
//Troublemaker// It’s very very delicious.
//Aki// You go for this clean image?
//Reese// You can tell by my gut, my health. I don’t drink or do drugs. That’s where we basically are at with ours. (Slapping his stomach). This is all.
//Troublemaker// This is legit right here. (Pointing at Killa Reese’s stomach)
//Reese// (Slapping his stomach) This is that I don’t eat, and I don’t drink. That’s how you get this fuckin’ healthy.
//Troublemaker// There’s no babes in there
//Reese// This is not fuckin’ drinking or smoking. This is being healthy.
//Aki// No guns, no drugs. Nothing bad West Coast image.
//Troublemaker// Nothing bad, only good. Like Teletubbies, Sponge Bob.
//Reese// That’s worse than what we doing!
//Troublemaker// That’s like acid.
//Reese// We’re doing clean shit here dude. We’re doing all good American Hip Hop.
//Troublemaker// Apple pies and American Flags.
//Reese// Basically, you could put this on Kids bot.
//Troublemaker// USA!
//Aki// Let’s talk about “Finger snaps and Gun claps”.
//Troublemaker// “Finger snaps and Gun claps” is our first album that we did together. It’s ten songs. Some electronic minded more Dub influenced stuff, and there’s more straight up Hip Hop type stuff. It’s kind of all over the place, but it’s a cohesive piece of work at the same time.
//Reese// Absolutely. “Finger snaps and Gun claps” is crispy. The album goes hard. It’s hard to put into words and shit. I’m not crying, I got something stuck in my throat. The juxtaposition of his beats and what I’m doing, gives you like an original sound. We got love for that fuckin’ album dude. We wiped the floor with it.
//Troublemaker// It’s not a mix tape.
//Reese// Now, we are performing it. It’s a fun album to perform. Those beats, it’s hell of oud. Wah, wah, wah, wah.
//Troublemaker// It’s not meant to be hit on a P.A. system. It’s meant to hit up festivals.
//Reese// Now, the new shit we are doing, it’s like an extension. We went further. We picked it up a notch on the “Death of Summer”.
//Troublemaker// Bigger, stronger, faster.
//Reese// It’s almost inappropriately hard.
//Aki// You’re inspired by these progressive sounds, electronica, dubstep, that kind of thing. Not to many hip hop producers do that yet. Do you see that coming?
//Troublemaker// Yeah, it’s like current hip hop is now like some pop, house music. It’s like dance music.
//Reese// It’s so gay!
//Troublemaker// If that is one end of the spectrum, if there is house music, drum and bass, dub, and all that type of music, we are the hip hop version of that compared to what you hear on the radio.
//Reese// I think the dub shit that he does, it’s just dub tinged. The base element, is that it’s just slapping, it’s hard. It’s driving. You are gonna get a lot of people who are gonna try and do it. But, it’s like a certain way to do it without it coming off on some silly bullshit.
//Troublemaker// If I grew up a fan of drum and bass music and what has become dubstep. If that’s what we are building off of, and I’m a west coast kid who listened to Ice Cube and Ice T and Dj Quik and all that stuff. If I’m able to understand both of those things simultaneously and at the same time you have to find someone talented enough to be a rapper to be on top of that music, to be able to understand that music himself doesn’t try to be too wordy or say dumb shit. You’re getting two pure things into one, and it just happened. We didn’t know each other. We just met. Peanut butter and jelly. It just fuckin’ slapped.
//Reese// Which one are you? Can I be peanut butter?
//Troublemaker// It’s cool, I like grape jelly.
//Aki// How did you guys come together?
//Reese// Shit, we were on the same show at the Roxy. He started stalking me. Decon from the 87 stick up kids. Fuckin’ ran into him at a Little Dragon show.
//Troublemaker// Really, at a Little Dragon show?
//Reese// Yeah.
//Troublemaker// Fuck! That makes it even doper. That girl is dope. A Swedish Asian. We met at the Roxy. I fuckin’ stalked him.
//Reese// I was like this is a good idea or a bad idea because of the fact that the beats were electronic. I’m a hip hop nigga, you know what I’m saying. But then I heard it. I trust myself on the project. We did the first song. I told him, wait ‘til they hear this shit. Niggaz are gonna crumble. That’s how we came about. We are on such a groove that now every time we make something, we ask ourselves, can we out do that last song? We are in this to make the dopest possible song you can make. There is no other purpose except to bow muthafuckers out of the water. This shit is not playin’ nigga, nigga.
//Aki// You guys are independent right now. Doing it all by yourselves. Album is on the website, downloadable free right now. Do you guys see yourselves selling ever?
//Troublemaker// I think the plan is with this ep. Is to sell this ep and at that point sell our old record to. We’ve given away an album for a year. I figure 50,000 downloads. It’s probably everywhere else on the internet for free. It’s out there if you know how to find it.
//Reese// We give you a lot of free shit. If you order a t-shirt from us, we end up sending you free songs that we just made. You know what I’m saying. We take care of the folks. Now, muthafuckas gonna have to pay.
//Troublemaker// We are not asking people to pay a shit ton of money. Give us $5 bucks, so we can do this, make videos.
//Aki// As you are getting bigger, are you guys getting offers from labels?
//Troublemaker// We’ve talked to labels. It’s a fine line man. Do you want to give away something you’ve spent all this time building. We have fans. We are doing festivals. We’re getting booked to do shows. People are buying our clothes off our website. So why are we trying to give that to anybody? The deals now, they want everything.
//Reese// Everything, they have to give a lot up front.
//Troublemaker// If you are willing to take my soul from me, you have to pay for it.
//Reese// It’ll be expensive as fuck!
//Troublemaker// We’ll continue doing what we are doing. We can license stuff.
//Reese// We make enough money without selling ass to some fuckin’… We sell merchandise.
//Aki// You think I could get something? Hahaha
//Troublemaker// Yeah, yeah, we can work something out. You scratch our back, we scratch yours. This video that we are shooting here. We are gonna put out a trailor and a song from the new ep. We’ll continue putting out videosfor the album.
//Reese// The thing about this album is it has life. I’ve known you for a minute, and I don’t think you’ve heard it all the wayc through yet. There are still people who need to hear it all the way through. We still need to go full blast on this. Eighty percent of the people who know about still don’t know about it yet.
//Troublemaker// We are very independent, and the way it works now, you put out a video, more people find out about you. Every time we put out a video from this album, we get more fans. More people find out about us.
//Reese// The best thing about being independent is that we release on our own schedule. He and I are end all end all when it comes to the situation. When one of us says it’s good, it’s good. There’s no red tape. If one of us says it’s ready to go.
//Aki// What do you see as west coast hip hop?
//Reese// I think there are some people I know that are fuckin’ monsters. When the rest of the United States see us in a sightly different light, we’ll open the flood gates for others. The west coast underground scene has been ripped off around the country no good or no better. It’s good, but it’s our shit, and you don’t know the artists that you’ve taken ertain styles from. I could talk for two hours on what people have stolen from Myka Nine of Freestyle Fellowship. I won’t go off into it because I’m gonna start getting into it with some people. It’s our turn again. As a person, a very LA muthafucker. But musically, I don’t like aline myself with a bunch of muthafuckers I don’t know just because we are in the same region. But I wil say, it is our time again. It’s hard to make money in hip hop here in LA. Especially with the fuck shit that they play on the radio. Yo, we have to wrap it, got to shoot the video. Getting the sign from the director. So, what what. King Fantastic we’ll be right back with more BREAKSMAGAZINE.COM. I’m Killa Reese One, that’s Troublemaker. This is the mic. 1212, peace nigga!
