Tag Archives: Hieroglyphics

Dibiase / Dibia$e

From the battle scene to the studio, local beatsmith Dibia$e

His Life’s Work

There is little escape from the sun at 3rd and Adeline in Oakland. The industrial district is flooded with bodies sweating through T-shirts and bucket hats designed with variations of the three-eyed smiley face symbol of local rap legends Hieroglyphics. The crew is celebrating its fourth annual Hiero Day and among the invitees to perform is Sacramento’s Dibia$e. It seems as though a combination of the heat and the liberal weed smoking reduces crowd participation to a steady head nod that ripples to the signature bounce of Dibia$e’s production.

Although other producers will grace the stage with the same gear at Hiero Day, none manipulate the SP-404 like Dibia$e. His production is glitchy with hints of chiptune and 8-bit, at other times soulful samples finessed with a slice that’s both Dilla-esque and entirely a style all his own.

On this afternoon in Oakland the hundreds gathered don’t move much, but they also don’t leave. Break dancers accompany Dibia$e on stage, stepping to his music and interpreting the rhythms with their moves. It’s almost as though he’s got the remote control over their movement. We are high and in awe. He’s a veteran as much as headliners like Aceyalone and Tha Alkaholiks, but he’s also remained a low-key legend that’s been present at every significant scene in Los Angeles and makes no qualms about his quiet life in Sacramento.

Days prior to Hiero Day, I met Dibia$e at Sol Collective south of Broadway in Sacramento. He was there to record a session with a local artist, but the person had bailed last minute. As we were sitting in a side room tracking the timeline of his career, he said he liked Sol Collective because it reminds him of Good Life Café in Leimert Park, Los Angeles. In the ‘90s, Good Life, a raw food restaurant by day and the rawest open mic by night, was the event for independent rappers in Leimert Park. At Good Life, if you didn’t meet their standards, attendees shouted “pass the mic,” forcing you out of contention until next week. It was in competition at Good Life, later called Project Blowed, that he first earned his stripes as a rapper and later as a producer in beat battles. Dibia$e said once he got behind the sampler to make beats, it became his MO because his friends were always in need of them, and, from winning the battles, he got his first experience paying rent off rap music.

“It was stressful because I had to win like a prizefighter,” he said. “I was the Kimbo Slice on beats.”

From the early 2000s until 2007, Dibia$e was notorious in the California beat battle circuit. His competition at Project Blowed was against burgeoning artists like Nosaj Thing and TOKiMONSTA that prepared him for greater West Coast scene. When he wasn’t competing, he met with L.A. producers like Flying Lotus, Ras G, Kutmah and Exile at a beat workshop called Sketchbook at The Room in Hollywood—a precursor to the now-legendary Low End Theory at the Airliner. In those days, he’d take Greyhound buses to the Bay Area and drive to San Diego for battles. Venues like The Knitting Factory L.A. hosted Beat Society and the Red Bull Big Tune Beat Battles. He would even travel to the Inland Empire for battles in Riverside.

“Even when I’d go to watch, people would come up to me nervous to find out if I was entering,” he said.

Dibiase / Dibia$e

He was making do from battling, but concurrently, the admiration for beat music was no longer exclusive to the small producer community. Sketchbook was conceived as a workshop to sit around a boombox and trade beat tapes like baseball cards. Low End Theory was a social event where people went to be scene and photographed; and where musicians like Erykah Badu, Thom Yorke, and Prince came to DJ secret sets. As Low End Theory took off and an arena for beatmakers outside the battle circuit became a reality, his associates from Sketchbook thought he should think big picture.

“A lot of cats used to tell me to leave the battles alone and start doing the shows,” he said. “But I felt like the battling was my market. It got me traveling. I rode that wave for a little bit. I didn’t win every single one. I’d drive far and lose battles. Lose in the finals after going four extra rounds and just miss it. Out $500 after getting that close. That’s rent money.”

In 2010 he was still competing in battles, winning the Los Angeles Big Tune event but falling short in the finals in Chicago, but that big picture was also coming into focus. He released his first solo album, Machines Hate Me, on L.A.-label Alpha Pup, run by Low End Theory mastermind Daddy Kev. That year was also when Dibia$e uprooted from L.A. to close the distance on a relationship with a woman from Sacramento. The move paid dividends. She’s now his booking agent, business partner with their label 10 Thirty Records, wife and mother of his newborn daughter.

While Sacramento did not offer the scene support he enjoyed in L.A., he expressed no regrets in his current status. His fatherhood role, which includes a stepson, structures his time spent making music. As a young producer, he would hole up in a friend’s studio and work in a weekend flurry. Now his lab time in a studio built in the backyard is reduced to a few hours during his daughter’s afternoon nap, the baby monitor at his side by the sampler.

“I can’t squander the day away,” he said. “I’ll play with her and stimulate her brain for a little bit. Sometimes she’ll sit in the lab with me, and I’ll play her some music. Put her to sleep. She sleeps for two hours. I knock some beats out a little bit. I’ll hear her on the monitor. She’s waking up and I’ll feed her again.”

To his stepson and the 6th grade hoop dreamers of California Youth Basketball League in Natomas, he’s Coach Dibia$e. He’s been a youth coach and participated in community volunteer work since his L.A. days and while he only played a year in high school, basketball was a passion growing up in Watts. He said he would play “sunup to sundown” on the public courts growing up. As Coach Dibia$e, his team struggled but competed admirably enough in the first season to maintain his position on the bench.

“I wasn’t going to do it again, but most of the kids requested me to come back,” he said. “They saw the improvement. The last four games we were close to winning all of them [let’s out a big sigh] … but didn’t. That’s that stress part I didn’t miss. But seeing those kids having fun makes it rewarding.”

He admits Sacramento is conducive to creative productivity in its lack of distractions. It shows in his output of three albums (Sound Palace, Looney Goons and Schematiks) in four years as well as several smaller Bandcamp releases. Here he’s lesser known, but his connections to Low End Theory continue to yield opportunities like shows in Australia and Japan. “The time flies,” he said. “It’s only felt like a few months, but it’s going on five years.”

On the horizon is his set at TBD Fest on Friday, Sept. 18, 2015, and more projects with greater ambition, still thinking big picture.

“I’m planning to work with more rappers this year,” he said of his plans for the future, one of which includes aspirations for a project with Detroit rapper and Stones Throw artist Guilty Simpson. Locally he’s got work completed with Chuuwee, Rufio, Wise Child and Tel Cairo.

Still, when he graces that stage, the heart of his life’s work is at his fingertips. The SP-404 is designed to be portable, weighing only 2 pounds, 14 ounces, and he carries his in a shoebox decorated with stickers of the labels who have released his records. His appreciation for the life he leads is in those details on that shoebox. During his Hiero Day set he remixes Souls of Mischief, while sporting a red T-shirt that reads “‘93 Til.” Only days prior he expressed his decades of admiration for the Hiero crew dating back to his drawing days, and that being on that stage was a bucket list item.

“Going back to my junior high days I used to draw cartoon characters of like Hieroglyphics and Souls of Mischief, all them cats,” he said. “That’s the homies and shit now … if they would have told me I would be kicking it with some of these cats in ‘93, I’d have been like yeah right.”

Dibiase / Dibia$e / Submerge

Dibia$e is a must-see artist gracing the stage at this year’s TBD Fest, which will be held in the Bridge District in West Sacramento. For more tickets and lineup info, go to Tbdfest.com. Dibia$e will perform on the opening day of the three-day festival, Sept. 18, 2015.

Meeting of the Minds

The Sleeprockers team up with Hieroglyphics on the Bay Area’s venerable rap group’s long-awaited new album

Words by Andrew Bell • Photos by Zaved Khan

Going to see The Sleeprockers live is like going to watch the hip-hop version of Miles Davis with his band. With an MPC, a mountain of turntables between them and a bunch of pedals, loopers and other alien-looking technology, the crew has taken collaborative live beat production to a new level, even catching the attention of West Coast hip-hop hall of famers Hieroglyphics.

Is it any wonder the Hiero crew would tap the five-man DJ/production crew (DJ Nocturnal, DJ Wanted, Kwes the Bess, Mr. Vibe, and Rated R) to sleeprock (yes, it’s a verb when Hiero asks you to do it) a new group album that would become The Kitchen, the first group album from Hieroglyphics since releasing Full Circle a decade ago?

“They really gave us creative control for the most part,” explained Kwes the Bess. “The more we wanted to push boundaries the more they were with it.”

Aptly named after The Sleeprockers’ practice of setting up their production equipment in the kitchen, the new album is an innovative recipe for hip-hop brought to you by some of the most seasoned lyricists in the game.

Hiero and Sleeprockers go back a few years. In 2010 Hieroglyphics put the word out that they were looking for DJs. “I hit ‘em up and told ‘em I had a whole crew of DJs who came from all different backgrounds, from party-rocking to battling and everything in between,” explained DJ Nocturnal.

In 2011, Hiero asked the crew to collaborate on a new group album that would become The Kitchen. They got busy finding samples, mixing, cutting, scratching and sometimes flipping whole beats.

In the process of recording The Kitchen, Hieroglyphics member Tajai was so impressed with The Sleeprockers’ work he asked them to collaborate on his latest album, Machine Language, which was released January 2012.

All that time, The Sleeprockers have been sitting on what is definitely one of the most anticipated albums in West Coast underground hip-hop.

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For anyone under the impression that any of the Hieroglyphics camp has lost a step lyrically over the last 20 years, have no fear. All the uniqueness and funk that you loved about everyone’s signature styles in 1993 are still there, just with updated content and more current beat production. And, of course, sleeprocked.

The bass-heavy, boom-bap revamp is apparent, beginning with the intro track, produced by The Sleeprockers and including juggling by West Coast DMC Champion DJ Wanted (currently residing in Japan), and carrying into the second track “Livin It Up,” a futuristic, funk slapper produced by Del The Funky Homosapien.

The Hieroglyphics camp flexes their own production muscles throughout The Kitchen as well with more than 11 of the 17 tracks produced by Del, Opio or A-Plus. The Kitchen is stocked with that trademark trunk-rattling Oakland funk that the crew has taken around the world.

Lyrically, the Hieroglyphics cast has always had the unique ability to represent both the “street” and “conscious” sides of hip-hop simultaneously, and The Kitchen is no different. The entire album is chock full of social commentary while still…Um… how do you say “Slumps like a MF” in journalist-ese?

After 10 years, there is a distinct development in The Kitchen. More than just a whole crew full of flavorful rappers with flamboyant personalities and flows, there is a cinematic feel to the album. This is largely due to The Sleeprockers’ influence on the intros, interludes, mixes and cutting (scratching) on the album.

So what is it like to work with some of your hip-hop heroes? For The Sleeprockers it didn’t sink in until the end. “I don’t think any of us looked at it like that when we were working on The Kitchen,” explained Mr. Vibe. “But there was definitely a moment after it was done that was like, ‘We just DID that.’”

When asked their favorite individual tracks from The Kitchen, discussion bounced around the room between Sleeprockers. The first track brought up is “That Merch.” Produced by Unjust and featuring Pep Love, “That Merch” documents the hustle involved in peddling the now-infamous third eye memorabilia at shows and how important the merchandise game has been to Hieroglyphics’ success. “That Merch” is to underground rappers what Notorious B.I.G.’s “The Ten Crack Commandments” was to drug dealers.

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“Gun Fever,” the first single from The Kitchen, followed closely behind “That Merch.” A conscious banger about America’s obsession with guns, the track features Tajai, Pep Love, A Plus, Del the Funky Homosapien and Casual speaking on their own personal experiences with gun violence.

The track was originally recorded in 2011 before the State of Florida vs. George Zimmerman case was headline news. “It was expressing what was going on in our own neighborhoods,” explained Hieroglyphics member Tajai. Released at the end of April, the music video for “Gun Fever” has reached almost 50,000 views on YouTube in only a couple of months.

Last but not least, Opio’s laid-back, classic West Coast production on “Highway 5” gets passed around the circle as another Sleeprocker favorite. A shining example of the key ingredient that The Sleeprockers bring to The Kitchen, “Highway 5” features both Rated R and Mr. Vibe bringing the patented sleeprock flavor to the track.

There are still tracks like “wShores Galore” (no, that’s not a misprint) for all of the die-hard “93 ‘til Infinity” heads, but the overall feel is an updated, kind of Golden Era 2.0. nostalgic. But for as much as The Kitchen “takes it back” it also moves it forward.

The Kitchen drops July 16, 2013 on iTunes, Amazon, etc., but you can pre-order packages now at Hieroglyphics.com including posters, CDs, T-shirts, and instant downloads of the next single, “It’s Partly Me.”

The_Sleeprockers-S-Submerge_Mag_Cover

Stay Connected

A constant collaborator, indie rapper Murs remains strongly individual

Los Angeles rapper Murs never sought to be different as an angle or platform to get his music heard. His moniker is an acronym that translates to Making Underground Raw Shit or Making the Universe Recognize and Submit. Now in his thirties, Murs is still out to make raw music, but with a grown man’s wisdom.

Murs came up in the Living Legends collective, a group of eight rappers from the Bay Area and greater L.A. area. He’s put out seven records as a solo artist, on both indie and major labels, and worked on collaborative records with Slug of Atmosphere (as Felt), 9th Wonder, Terrace Martin, and his group 3 Melancholy Gypsys. Murs related that his openness to collaborate and exclude no one from his inner circle stems from moving a lot as a kid and an adult philosophy on acceptance.

He brings this philosophy to his Paid Dues Festival, which he held last month in San Bernardino, Calif. He said he fielded some criticism from people who crusade for “positive rap” for including the L.A. collective Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All on the bill.

“Just because they’re negative, doesn’t give you the right to say you’re positive, but fuck them,” he said. “As soon as you step outside of your positivity and say fuck someone else, you’re no longer being a positive person who listens to this progressive music you’re so proud of.

The same philosophy on life has to be extended to your music and the same philosophies in your music have to extend to your life. There are a lot of people who don’t do both.”

Murs’ latest album, Love and Rockets Vol. 1: The Transformation, was released in October 2011, but he’s just now beginning to work on Vol. 2. In the following interview, Murs speaks more about the Paid Dues festival as well as his slate of upcoming projects, including a collaboration EP with Fresno-based rapper Fashawn.

What I’ve enjoyed about the Paid Dues Festival you throw, is that there never seems to be exclusion or allegiance to a certain sub-genre of hip-hop. You have no problem inviting Mac Miller and Dipset, along with Boot Camp Clique and Brother Ali–people who probably would never share a bill together. What’s your mindset in curating?
It’s started with me trying to get all my friends together. I was the guy that was friends with Aesop and El-P and down with the Legends. We all knew of each other, but I was the one who’d sleep at their houses and know everyone’s wives and girlfriends and kids. That kind of stuff. So I was able to bring everybody together.

In the same groove, I did a song with Kendrick Lamar–like before Dr. Dre knew who he was. So I was in with those guys. I was at the first Odd Future Christmas show. My former assistant is now their road manager. I have a genuine connection to so many people. Growing up I realized that people aren’t all that different. I seem to be in the center of this web. Five years before the Based God was born, Lil’ B was coming to my shows at Berkeley.

I don’t have any borders in my life. So the festival has always been a reflection of me bringing my friends together.

Living Legends just rocked Paid Dues together. You guys still make music together. Not a lot of groups can say that about their careers over the passage of time. What keeps everything tight knit amongst the crew?
I don’t know, man. Everybody is who they are. We’re a group of eight individuals. The name and the crew existed, and we didn’t even think about making a record together until Almost Famous in 2001. We’d been living together and touring together for years and never even thought about it. Then, it was three or four years before we thought about making another one.

As much as people say it, it was never Wu-Tang Clan or Odd Future or Hieroglyphics. It was something different. It works for us, but the individuality for other crews may not work.

Love and Rockets Vol. I is obviously part of a series. How is Vol. 2: The Emancipation coming along?
It’s not on a deadline. I think about it every day, write little notes for it, but I don’t think it will come out until like Paid Dues [Festival] 2013.

Will it be produced by Ski Beatz again?
Umm, probably not. It could always change. I know certain things about it I’m not ready to reveal yet. It was never intended to be Murs and Ski Beatz Present Love and Rockets. There will be another book with it. I can say that. It may be an electro record for all I know. It may be a symphony. I don’t know who I might meet next. I don’t want people read this article and say, “Aww, he said it was going to be Araabmuzik producing soft jazz shit.” I don’t want that down the line.

What are you looking at releasing before that? I saw on your wiki page that you’ve got an EP in the works with Fashawn.
We’ll hopefully have that done by the summer. These two producers, K-Salaam and Beatnick, we’d talked about doing something together for a while. My solo albums, up until my last one didn’t seem to be working out, so we’d been trying to find away to work together because I’m a big fan of their music. They suggested collaboration with someone, threw out possible members of The Lox and went through all these musicians and connections we both have.

Then, he brought up Fashawn, and Fash is a kid I’ve seen around and talked to, had him on Paid Dues, but we didn’t ever vibe or kick it. I’m a fan of Fash though, like I have his album [Boy Meets World] and the Grizzly City mixtapes. But it seemed like it might make sense as an outsider option. Randomly, Fash’s manager called me just asking for advice and just update on business. I told her it was crazy she called me. But I had to ask if Fashawn was even a fan of mine. I didn’t want to assume anything.

Have you recorded any songs yet for the project?
We recorded a song that was completely funny. We have a lot of similarities. He goes through the same things I go through. I’m associated with the backpack crowd like Aesop Rock and Atmosphere. He’s associated with The Alchemist and Evidence. But, we’re in a middle ground together of rapping about inner city and at-risk youth–but we’re both non-traditional with it. Things are naturally coming together. We’ve got way more in common ground than I expected.

K-Salaam and Beatnick have this really mid-to-late ‘90s sound they’re giving us. It’s sounding like, what I hope will be the West Coast version of [Only Built 4] Cuban Linx [Raekwon’s solo debut]. That’s ambitious, but you set the bar high to shoot for the stars and land on the moon, type thing. It will be for people who genuinely love Raekwon and Ghostface and Tha Dogg Pound.

Have you and Fashawn had the opportunity to record together or is it a project that’s emailed back and forth?
Every time we’re both in L.A. we’ll hang out for four or five hours. We got the name of the album, while hanging out with Maseo of De La Soul. Maseo basically named the record.

As long as there’s an understanding or friendship between the two it works. I used to think that we have to be sitting there and looking at each other. But, the more I’d talk to people like DJ Quik and hear about how he recorded All Eyez on Me, people can tell if there’s a true connection or if it’s forced.

Have there been projects you’ve turned down from a lack of connection?
Definitely. I wouldn’t name those projects though. There’s people I’m good friends with, but we haven’t made good music together. Brother Ali and me are the best of friends, but we’ve never made a song together. We’ve toured together. That’s my homie. That’s my brother. We’ve just never recorded a song together. It’s never even come up.

There are people I’ve tried to record stuff with and we both just let it sit there and nothing happened with it.

Have you considered updating the MURS acronym?
No. I’m not doing anymore. No more of that shit.

OPIO

Getting to Know a Familiar Face

If you like hip-hop, you probably know this underground rapper/producer and probably don’t even realize it. As a result of 15 years of “forward-thinking” and hip-hoptimism with Souls of Mischief and Hieroglyphics, Oakland native Opio’s ’90s-esque collaborations have been emulated by the likes of Kanye West and Lupe Fiasco. Opio offered up some “vulture’s wisdom” and spoke to Submerge about his most recent solo project, hip-hop philosophy and his current tour that maked a stop in Sacramento.

There is something I wanted to clear up with you, Opio. You are a solo artist, but you’re also part of Souls of Mischief and Hieroglyphics?
Yeah, you know. Souls of Mischief been doing it professionally since signing a record deal in ’93. I was with them; that’s where I started. And then, Hieroglyphics has been out for 10 years”¦ It’s not like I’m a solo artist. I’m in Hieroglyphics. I’m just putting out these projects, solo projects. I’m more well known for being in Hiero and Souls of Mischief and I’ve been down with them groups since their inception.

There were some incredible things said about your talents from other magazines. A lot of people listen to your music; a lot of people know who you are.
At this stage, when I’ve been doing it for a while, it’s just a blessing to be able to do what you love. Like the press, it’s different for me, because people who are going to listen to me, I don’t think they are swayed really to hard by what’s hot and what’s not. There’s a connection that I have with people that I’ve learned over the years. Just being consistent with the music. Some people fall off the map and don’t stay consistent.

Your new album [Vulture’s Wisdom, Volume 1] came out July 15. It’s volume one of a trilogy and you’re going to try to get all three volumes out within a year. Are they already recorded? What’s the deal?
Volumes one and two are already done. Volume three, we don’t want to overstep our boundaries and make sure that we have something that we can feel we can manipulate and want to work on it. It takes a while. Volume one was done last October, so it’s been done for a while. Volume two was done at the same time. You don’t really want the music to get old and stale. With volume three, we’re still trying to tweak it out a little bit, just off of what people say. Volume one and two we did quickly. We just had a really good creative energy and the space that we were in was really cool. I’ve worked with Architect [producer] before. Our mentality is that we want to start more of a movement than just getting people into one or two songs.

You want to try and get them to like the whole trilogy?
We’re trying to change people’s ideas about how they listen to music. Like, instead of listening to songs or a single, or trying to listen to an album and skip through every single song on your first listen. Everybody is going to skip around once you had a CD for a while, because you’ve got your favorite songs. If you’re going to pop a CD in from an artist that you like, you should want to be able to sit down and listen to it. The artist has to give you what you need as well. You don’t want to have fast-forward material. But our mentality is we’re making albums, we’re not making hot songs or a hot single that everybody can jump on and be like, “Yo, this is the joint right here.” It’s more about the whole album—more so than the trilogy. We want people to get into the album as a whole. Listen to the record, sit with it. A whole solid listening experience”¦change people’s mentality in terms of how they’re listening, at least to us.

You said you want to change people’s perspectives. What does that have to do with the album title?
The title is just coming out of conversations that me and Architect had in terms of what we were seeing in hip-hop. If you ever hear people just really disgruntled, “Back in the days, it used to be so tight, and now it’s all commercialized. It doesn’t have the same energy it once had.” That’s what people say. To me, hip-hop is just powerful. It’s more powerful than it’s ever been. Even though maybe some people are just quick to have this real apathy toward hip-hop”¦ Me and Architect still have the vision and the wisdom to see where other people see nothing, we see sustenance. They done picked away at it and left this like skeleton. But, we can still swoop in with the “Vulture’s Wisdom.” We can eat and see food where others just see nothing.

This tour that you’re currently on, The Freshly Dipped tour, it’s the 10th anniversary tour of Hiero Imperium. You’re playing with Hieroglyphics as the headliner, but are you doing any of your solo project songs?

Yeah, definitely. My album is the album that’s out right now. It’s a good opportunity for me to promote myself. People know Souls of Mischief and Hieroglyphics, but they don’t necessarily know me. It’s an opportunity to raise these peoples’ awareness of what I’m doing. Because, a lot of the people that been listening to Hieroglyphics and Souls of Mischief over the years, they know me and they’re in touch with me and they like my style, but it’s just kind of hard if you’ve been doing it 15-something years, all they know is Souls of Mischief and Hieroglyphics, they don’t really know to say Opio.