iHipHop Admin
The Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame might be located in Ohio, but by any means, don’t mistake the Buckeye State for being rock-oriented only.
That’s because there are also Hip-Hop roots being planted as well, and native MC Illogic happens to be one of its signature gardeners.
Starting the earlier half of the 2000’s with a strong industry buzz from the help of projects like Unforeseen Shadows, Got Lyrics, and Celestial Clockwork, the lyricist with the complex thought pattern took a sabbatical from music to focus on more important things in his life.
Now with a recharged battery and zeal for the music, he returns with his latest opus, Diabolical Fun.
So what’s been going on in the mind of one of Hip-Hop’s most multifaceted thinkers? All the answers lie ahead, just take the logical step and find out…
iHipHop.com: What part of Ohio are you from?
Illogic: Columbus, Ohio…
iHipHop.com: How was it like growing up there?
Illogic: It’s cool… I grew up in the quote-un-quote ‘hood… When I was in the ninth grade, we moved to the suburbs, and it’s cool…
It’s a nice little city, and there’s always something to do—for as much as the people here want to hate on it…
iHipHop.com: Are there a lot of urban music outlets out there?
Illogic: A lot of the outlets that are here, we had to create on our own because there weren’t a lot of outlets for Hip-Hop… So we had create our own thing, like do our Hip-Hop nights, and we had to fight to get into a lot of venues and do shows…
It’s a really big rock town, and I’d say over the last 5-10 years it’s become a really good supportive Hip-Hop community… Now there’s always some Hip-Hop going on when it comes to the weekends, but when we were first starting back in ’99 it was hard for us to get into a lot of clubs here…
iHipHop.com: You just released your most recent project Diabolical Fun not too long ago. What’s the concept behind hit?
Illogic: The concept behind Diabolic Fun was really to make it more of a hyped and up-tempo record… I wanted to do that just to show people that I haven’t lost a step, even though I haven’t put a record out in the last 4-5 years… I feel like I always have something to prove, so I wanted to show that I could still have fun on a record, but still be raw…
iHipHop.com: So that was the whole meaning behind the title?
Illogic: Yeah, that’s definitely the meaning behind it… I wanted to come back raw and diabolical with the lyrics, but still show people that I could have fun and do an album that wasn’t dark and depressing like my previous work…
iHipHop.com: You just talked about not putting a record out in 4-5 years, was there any reason for your musical hiatus?
Illogic: Really, I just stepped out of the game because I wanted to concentrate on my family, and taking care of my children because I have three sons and a wife of eight years… I was touring heavily from 2000-04, and my home life was suffering…
So I had to make a choice between my family and nursing my Hip-Hop career, so I chose my family and I think I made the right choice… So I just took a step back to reevaluate things, and I think I came back at the right time…
iHipHop.com: So you have a quarterback, a point guard, and a pitcher? [Laughs]
Illogic: [Laughing]… Yeah pretty much, I have a nice little beginnings of a team started… They’re excited about the music stuff too, and they always look forward to hearing the songs, and that’s a good sign when the kids like it…
iHipHop.com: Did you have any studio rust when you went in to make Diabolical Fun due to the fact that you took all that time off?
Illogic: I never really stopped recording, and I have like three unreleased albums I did in the course of that 4-5 years… I always kept my blade sharp, but I just didn’t feel like it was time for me to release anything…
It wasn’t the stuff that I wanted people to hear, because I wasn’t there yet, and it wasn’t the right music… So I never really got out of the game, I just took a step out of the light…
iHipHop.com: Every song is produced by Ill Poetic. Was that a conscious decision on your part to go with one producer the whole way?
Illogic: Yeah it was definitely a conscious decision, because [Ill] Poetic and I go back a ways… He had wanted to do some songs with me for a while, and I think we started out by doing four songs… Then, we liked how they sounded, so we went back in and did more…
We ended up with 20 songs or so, and that’s how the One Bar Left EP came about, and we still have 4-5 that hasn’t been released yet… But it was definitely a conscious decision, because he had a sound that my words were looking for…
iHipHop.com: How would you describe your work to someone who wasn’t familiar with you?
Illogic: That’s a great question… I would tell them that I’m influenced to everyone from Radiohead, to Jay-Z, to Outkast, to The Beatles, to Aerosmith, to many more…
So all of that is basically mixed into one, and I listen to so much different kinds of music… So I think all that reflects into my music, but I don’t think I sound like anybody else out there…
iHipHop.com: Does it annoy you when people automatically tag you as an underground artist?
Illogic: I can understand it, because it’s not like I’m rapping about the things that the big players in the game are rapping about… My lyrics do challenge people, and they do make you think a little more than the average…
So if they want to put me into that category, I don’t take offense to it… Maybe you’re just not smart enough to listen to me; you know what I’m saying? [Laughs]
Maybe they don’t want to take the time, and they just want to have fun, which is cool too and I don’t mind, because I don’t always want to be challenged… But it doesn’t bother me when people put me in categories, because I feel like they’re going to listen to it, and get out of it what they need to get out of it…
iHipHop.com: How do you feel about the game right now? Do you as if there are plenty of opportunities for independent acts to get their voices heard?
Illogic: I think now is the time for the independent artist more than ever… Because the record industry is not making that much money, and the bigger labels are trying to get a cut of the artists shows nowadays… So now it’s time for the independent artist to flourish, because we get our own T-shirts made, and we press up our own albums.
Everything that the big machine does, we do on a smaller scale of course, but our overhead isn’t that high… We don’t spend as much money; therefore it’s not hard to recoup that money… So it’s easier for us to make money, and when we do shows, that money is ours…
So now’s the time for us to make headway, and really make moves because I think in another 5-10 years the big machines aren’t going to be here anymore… There’s going to be no reason to make a major record label deal, because the independent artists are the ones who are going to flourish…
I think it’s going to be more of a distribution thing more as opposed to a record deal thing… Then you have the digital aspect of the game flourishing as well… So the time is now for us to strike…
