Serge Fleury
A company is only as good as the people they employ, and as for Duck Down Records, they’ve been able to enjoy a strong resurgence with the help of employees like Kidz In Hall.
The ivy-leaguers of Naledge and Double-O first began their musical odyssey with Rawkus Records, but their last two projects have come on the heels of famed Duck Down imprint.
Now with their third record, Land Of Make Believe on the horizon, the MC and producer/DJ tandem get ready to show their head office once again that brining them on was a good hire.
iHipHop.com: With this being you guys’ third album, would you say the album making process has gotten a little bit harder or easier when it come to thinking up new ideas and concepts?
Double-O: It’s funny because we started working on the fourth album already… For us, there’s always something new to inspire us… What usually happens with our albums is that we experiment across everything, in terms of genres and sounds…
Then whatever rises to the top determines the album… As long as we try to improve on the design, we’re always going to find something to be inspired by…
iHipHop.com: With you two living in separate cities, was most of the album done over the Internet?
Naledge: Yeah… A lot of it was beats that he had sent… He sent over a good amount of beats, and I was in Chicago just working… I don’t necessarily freestyle, but I like to feel out the beat by putting stuff on them…
So the songs are just shells, and I made a whole bunch of shells to see if I liked the direction of where certain songs were going… But basically all the songs were recorded in Chicago for the most part…
iHipHop.com: Do any of you have a favorite song from the album?
Double-O: For me, it’s funny because I’m already listening to fourth album stuff… But I like the entire album as a whole, and this is probably the most cohesive album… So I usually listen to it in its entirety…
iHipHop.com: Seeing that you made this album without sampling, would you say that was a conscious effort?
Double-O: Yeah, definitely… Financially we would make more money by being able to license our music, and we don’t want to get clearing for all types of records that we can necessarily afford…
And anybody can sample, and not everybody can create their own sound… So that was really our point this time around too… I can go in and find a sample, and that would be cool, but so can everyone with an Internet connection…
iHipHop.com: Do you guys think there’s been a big resurgence of artist going with your format, i.e. One producer and one MC?
Naledge: Right now there’s a recession… People work with others cause they’re dope, but they also work with them out of convenience… It’s funny because that’s how our group got started…
When we were in school, and there weren’t too many people doing Hip-Hop, so we were the only ones who really serious about making music…
We didn’t intend on being a group, it just ended up that way… The whole industry has kind of become that… I mean; we found chemistry, and we found a sound, which I hope, will change the idea that people have about us…
But now the whole industry is like, “Statik Selektah is my man, and I like his music, so why don’t I do a whole album with him; cause it will be cheaper anyway?”
They like the people’s music, but it’s convenient… It’s convenient for Jake One to do a record with Freeway, then take it to Rhymesayers to get a little bit of bread, and then go on tour…
But it’s different to say, “Okay, we’re Slaughterhouse, we’re a group.” I think those four guys were like, “I think you’re dope, I think you’re dope, I think you’re dope, I think you’re dope; lets kill the game and be a group.”
At school Double-O was the only one with a studio in his apartment, and even if I didn’t like his beats; I would’ve came to his apartment to record…
iHipHop.com: Double-O, I read the quote where you talked about people labeling you guys as backpackers and hipsters on your first and second album. So does all the labeling get under your guys’ skin?
Double-O: It just makes the fans want to put you up against people… We’re all cool with these people, but all of a sudden we’re all vying for the same spot…
If a college is doing a show; and they want to have an eclectic line up, then they’ll have the marquee A-list artists, the dope rock band, and then they want to have the dope alternative hipster artists…
But there are seven hipsters artists, and they’re going to pick whoever is hot at that time… So that’s the annoying part of it, but there is a benefit to it at times…
