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AP & Twiztid
TWIZTID: SpinThe Bottle
People like Esham and ICP and House Of Krazees had developed a unique style of music in Detroit. It's surprising that the media never recognized what was going on in Detroit.
It was definitely overlooked. It's always been like that, and in a sense, it's still like that now. It's like the stuff that we do is so underground. If you're not Back Street Boys or Limp Bizkit no one cares to pay attention to what you're doing.
Why do you think people have been so slow to wake up to Detroit?
Because everybody's scared of it. They don't know what to make of it. It's a different sense of reality. It's not drive by shootin or sellin a half pound of weed. It's more like, I'll cut your head off and kidnap both your kids. People are scared of it. They don't know what the fuck's goin on.
How did you get into that type of stuff?
We heard the wicked shit, what Esham was doin, and just added to it. We took it to our next level.
Esham influenced you?
We all grew up together. It was always in our face. We were influenced by Esham.
Detroit is the only place coming with all that wicked shit and using the rock guitars.
It's starting to go over. New York tried to copy what Detroit was doing. They had their Gravediggaz and Flatliners, whatever, and they fuckin bombed. They couldn't do it right.
What are you listening to now?
A lotta the South, a lotta Southern Rap. Some West Coast stuff like Kurupt, Dogg Pound.
What you're doing is really Rap, more than groups like Limp Bizkit or Korn.
Big time. We're not a Rock group, we're more Rap.
What do you think about groups like Kottonmouth Kingz?
Kottonmouth is good. They're my friends. They're doin their thing.
Do you think they were influenced by you and ICP?
Could be. You can see the similarities. Granted we're 10 times darker.
With your lyrics...
It's what you're about, it's what you got inside of you. Everybody's probably got it, just some people can't find it. The deeper and darker you look the deeper and darker it becomes.
Who did the artwork for your CD? It really sets the atmosphere for your music.
That's Chaos Comics. They do comic books for ICP. I used to collect comics ever since I was little, and they drew a character called Lady Death in Evil Ernie. I used to collect all their comics and they were like one of my favorite comics. When I found out they were doing the ICP comic books, we thought maybe they should draw our cover. They were down to do it and it came out beautiful. It was an honor, because they created one of my favorite comic characters.
You were really into comics as a kid?
Hell yeah. Anything to escape the boring reality that we were livin in--horror movies, comic books, all that shit.
How was it for you growing up?
It wasn't bad. We grew up in the hood. Now when we go back to the hood it's totally different. You got these little baby gangsters lookin at us like Who the hell are you? Hey man, we founded this muthafucka.
What part of Detroit did you grow up in?
East Side.
That's where Esham and Sol and a lot of people grew up?
Oh yeah, it was jumpin over there. Eminem used to be out there too. I don't know if he grew up there, but he used to come by Monoxide's house and kick it.
You still live there?
No. It's gotten so crazy down there. It's like if your face isn't on the scene every day you're pretty much an enemy, so we had to get the fuck out.
Do you have other releases than Mostastless out as Twiztid?
We did an album for Psychopathic that was like an underground style one, then we re-released it on Island/Def Jam with 6 new tracks. It's the same album with some new tracks on there so it'd be fresh for anyone who bought the underground one. We were getting like 200 to 300 e-mails every 2 days of people sayin that they couldn't find the record, no one stocked enough of it. So when we got with Island/Def Jam they had the power to get it in every store.
Twiztid used to be part of a group called House of Krazees who were legends in Detroit. Can you talk a little about how that group got started?
In about 92 me and Monoxide, who at the time was EXP and my name was Mr. Bones, we were starting a group called House Of Krazees. And ROC who is now called Sol, he had more experience with music. We had never done a record before, so we asked him to do some tracks for our album House of Krazees, Home Sweet Home. He was straight. At the time he was in another band with his cousin. Then we were like, why don't you be in our band and it'll be a lot easier. Before you knew it there was a whole album recorded with all three of us on it, that was the beginning of House of Krazees.
How did the name come about?
Probably because we were all a little bit strange. We were on some ol' weirdo type shit. It's the same typa shit we're into now. We tried to take it into a perspective where like the world is a house that encaged and entrapped all the crazy people.
House of Krazees had a lot of albums out. What happened?
We had somewhere from four to six albums. The idea was there, but there was no motivation. It was so bootleg. The shit wouldn't even come out on CD, it'd just come out on cassette. There was no heart in it. It had a lot to do with the label. Walt didn't know the first thing about music. That's a lost cause right there.
Does Twiztid sound similar to House of Krazees, or is it different?
It's a different sound. When we did the House of Krazees shit beats were provided, we would write lyrics and we'd just record 'em. With Twiztid it gave me and Monoxide a chance to get in the studio and actually have 100% creative control over our entire project. It unleashed a whole new side of us, which is now Twiztid.
How did you come up with the name Twiztid?
One of the reasons is because we're always gettin twisted, gettin high, smokin weed. We all sat down--Shaggy, Violent J, me and Monoxide--we talked it over and decided that would be a perfect name for us.
When did House of Krazees break up and you come together as Twiztid?
About '96. And the first Twiztid record, the national one, was released June 22 of this year. In between there was like a 2 year break when we were recording stuff and trying to get on our feet.
Were you using a lot of Rock guitar in your music with House of Krazees?
Since the beginning with House of Krazees we were using shit like that. Monoxide is more the Rap side of it, and I like a lotta Rock music. So we twist both sides together.
If you had to describe the Twiztid sound to someone who had never heard you before, what would you say?
I would say it's Alternative Rap. It's not Rock, it's not Rap, it's like a mixture between them. We'll go into some stores and our music will be in the Heavy Metal section. We'll go into another store and we'll be in the Alternative part or in the Rap/R & B category. No one knows how to describe what we do. I'd say it's Alternative Rap. It has a very wicked feel. It's not your average "a bottle of water and a towel on stage" Rap. It's none of that.
You rap in your music. And the beats are Hip Hop beats or Rock beats?
The beats are a mixture of Hip Hop and Rock type beats. On a couple tracks we got guitar rifts.
Who does your production?
On our album it's like a 60/40 breakdown. Mike E. Clark did some of the production, and me and Monoxide did the rest of it. On some of the tracks Mike E. Clark, us and ICP, we all sat down in the studio and banged out the tracks.
How would you compare Twiztid to ICP?
There are some differences, but nothing major. We're all part of the dark carnival. I'd say they're more comedic than we are. There's more of a comedy aspect with ICP than us. We're more on a serious level.
Do you mean lyrically or on stage?
Lyrically. They'll make you laugh. You can listen to an ICP record and crack up. You'll be laughing by the second song. With our stuff you'll nod your head and say, Damn they said some shit that really hit home with me. That would be the main difference to me.
What made you go into that direction, focusing on the darker side of life.
What we do is try to show the dark side. It's reality, it's all reality, and in our opinion reality really sucks. Every day you can look out the window to see reality, but you won't pay $7 to go to the movies and see reality. You wanna be entertained. We try to keep it entertaining, keep it dark, make sure that it'll take you to another world. You can go to the store right now and buy eight Rap albums that are pretty much the same. People talkin about how much dope they sell, what kinda clothes they wear, and shit like that. We're not interested in that. We wanna scare you, we want you to be afraid when you turn off the lights at night. We make music that we like to hear and if everyone else likes it, then it works.
People who listen to Brotha Lynch Hung or C-Bo would like your shit, but the Rap audience isn't really aware of what you're doing.
With both us and ICP, the label Island/Def Jam pushes us like we are a group like Korn or Limp Bizkit, like an Alternative Rock band. That's why a lot of the Rap consumers overlook us like it isn't even Rap, when actually it is. It just has a hint of Rock & Roll mixed into it.
You paint your faces white and black like ICP does. With House of Krazees you used to wear masks?
Mystery always makes people wonder. Who's behind that mask or paint. With House of Krazees it was a pumpkin mask. Now with Twiztid we're like dead souls, we're phantoms that walk the earth. So we don't look like everybody else, we have black circles around our eyes and white faces.
What influenced you and Monoxide to write about the subjects you write about?
We don't like to take all the good parts of reality, we take the bad aspects. Like shit you see on the news at night before you go to bed. Like 6 or 7 kids got killed in a drive-by shooting or some little girl got kidnapped. That typa shit that everybody wants to turn their heads away from, to not acknowledge it. That's what we use as fuel to write our lyrics. We wanna make music that bothers people. We use that aspect of reality. The rest of it is just stuff that we like to hear. We like horror movies so we wanna make horror movies.
What side do you take in this, do you take the side of the psychopathic killer? Is it a positive thing?
We take the side of the psychopathic. That's who we roll with. I don't see it as positive or negative. That's part of Twiztid. We're either or, we're both and none. That's why we're Twiztid. There is no middle ground, we are the middle ground. With Twiztid we don't have to have a reason. We do it cause we want to. We do what we want cause we want, we don't have to have a reason. We're not the white or the black, we're the gray. We're not the wrong or right, we're in the middle. We take both good and bad, wrap it up and that's Twiztid. It's our opportunity to talk about anything that we want.
Do you feel hatred towards people?
It's not so much hatred toward people, but more hatred toward people without open minds. If you can't listen to it with an open mind then we have hatred for you. We always have love for the Juggalos cause they got love for us. That's how it goes.
It's not like you're totally disgusted with society?
We are. That's totally true. But if like there's a person that disagrees with what we say, but listens to it with an open mind then we got love for that person. But if someone looks at us and say, I don't wanna hear that shit, that's bullshit, they're just talkin shit--then we don't have any love for them.
It's serious stuff you're talking about and there's a lot of anger too.
Oh yeah, there's definite anger. Sometimes you gotta scream for people to listen to you too.
I heard your record has been selling good.
Yeah, it's only been out for 6 months and it's already to 150,000 records. We're really impressed with how it's doing. Also it's our first record. This is just the beginning. |
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