iHipHop Admin
Don’t sleep on Wu-Tang affiliate Mathematics. While RZA is the group’s more well-known producer, the man born Norman Porter has been putting in work with the Clan for years, both as the beatsmith behind classic Wu gems “Wu Banga 101” “Rules,” and with several solo albums and instrumental LPs under his belt. Lately, Mathematics has been even more busy. He takes a shot at journalism by interviewing legendary hip-hop producers on the new “Beat Kings” documentary DVD, and he compiled old Wu tracks and newer remixes for Mathematics Presents Wu-Tang Clan & Friends: Unreleased. In an interview with HipHopCrack, Mathematics talks about his latest projects, the nature of today’s hip-hop production scene, and the impending new Wu-Tang Clan album.
HipHopCrack: How’d you come up with the idea for the DVD?
Mathematics: Basically, being a producer, I wanted to go around and interview other producers. I do interviews with certain cats, and they ask good questions or whatever, but being a producer, sometimes you want to get more out there. I thought that I could get a lot of good information out of producers that the average cat couldn’t really get. That was the whole premise of it, really. Also, you’ve got a lot of up and coming producers and people who want to be producers, so I felt I could get some good information to them and they could learn a little something. It turned out to be a real great project, I learned a lot from it. That’s how it all started though.
HipHopCrack: When did you start putting it together?
Mathematics: I first started putting it together a while ago. Kanye, he was one of the first cats we did, and that was maybe close to two years ago or something like that. Then we were just getting everybody involved, and doing it. I also DJ, so a lot of times I was on the road travelling or producing, so it was kind of hard to really just knock it out. But it all came together. I had it for a while too, because I had a lot of labels that were interested in it, but they came with real disrespectful deals. So it was like, I’ll hold onto it myself and put it out on my own before I let them take advantage of me like that.
HipHopCrack: You make beats, but as far as I know, interviewing people isn’t exactly what you do. How much of a challenge was it taking on an entire project like this?
Mathematics: It wasn’t hard, because I’m a fan of music. Hip-hop music has become so diverse and everything. You’ve got your foundation of hip-hop, which is that raw hip-hop, and you branch out your different forms: your crunk music, your midwest, your west coast, and even reggaeton is a form of hip-hop. That’s why there’s so many type of producers on here, too. You’ve got David Banner, Trackmasters, Swizz Beats, Marley. The whole thing is about learning, and me personally, I learned a lot from it.
HipHopCrack: You said there are a lot of people who want to be producers. While the dream used to be to become a superstar rapper, people want to be producers more and more nowadays. Where do you think that comes from?
Mathematics: Everything goes in phases. People are attracted to (get involved in) what they like, especially when you can make money doing it. Even when you can’t make money doing it. When I first got into hip-hop, I wanted to be an MC too. I tried to rhyme, there wasn’t any money involved. When I first become a DJ, it was because I saw another DJ at a pong jam. That right there was like, “Yo, I want to do that.” So I became a DJ. But we took it a lot more serious. There wasn’t no money involved, and it was all fun. And everybody wasn’t trying to do it at the time, but those who it was attracted to, they did it. So I think it all goes in phases.
It went from the DJ, back to the MC. If you look in the 80s—DJ Jazzy Jeff and Fresh Prince, Eric B. and Rakim—it was still about the DJ. But them MCs took it to the next level. Cats like Rakim and Kane, they took it to the next level. But behind the MC was always a producer. Marley Marl was holding down the whole Cold Chillin crew. Then you have cats like Prince Paul comin, and RZA came with Wu, Dre was doing the damn thing—eyes start focusing back on the producer. It was a strong transition, and it’s still a transition right now from MC to the producer, but right now, everybody wants to be a producer. Plus, there’s big money involved, too, and everybody wants to get the big money. But you’ve got to work hard and be dedicated, and every producer ain’t gon see it, so you’ve got to do it for the love of your art, too.
HipHopCrack: Producers get a lot more shine nowadays too, as far as their public personas. What do you think contributes to that?
Mathematics: You get a lot of cats that want to put they name in, or (say) “mention me here.” Because if you’re a producer, and your name gets mentioned, a lot of people want to work with you, whatever. But me, I say that the music has to speak for itself. To me, music is emotional, it’s a feeling. So when I make beats, I do it the way that I feel, and at the same time, I want the people to feel it. Personally, I’d rather people know my music than me. Even now, Sometimes, when you’re feeling bad…”Cobra Clutch” was a mad beat, I was mad. And when you listen to it, you can tell. I don’t really want people to really know me like that, like, “What is he mad about? Why does he feel so sad?” So I had to put that aside, and just go to work.
I learned this from the DVD. A cat like Dre, he has a signature sound, but he can always step out of bounds and still be respected. Salaam Remi’s another cat, but he’s not as known as Dre. It’s like a bakery. My specialty can be a double-layered chocolate cake, but people come in and want lemon marigne pie, or a pound cake, so I’ve got to cook it for em. I can’t just try to push (my specialty) on em. I’m not just going to turn em away. And I’ve got to make sure that I make it with the same type of love, because when people cook, you can tell the difference when someone put love into it. That’s why I say that—a lot of people try to chase a persona or try to put their personality on it. I’d rather you just feel good with what you got. When you come home from a hard day of work, you put on music to relax. You put on certain music to get into a mood. I think all producers should try to do that. I learned from the old time greats too, and I think that’s what they did. That’s what made music like what Issac Hayes, Curtis Mayfield, that’s what their type of music did for people. Marvin Gaye, it woke up a lot of people. Even when you take it to hip-hop, Bomb Squad and Public Enemy, they had music that gave you a feeling, they set a whole movement. Everybody was wearing the black, green and red. I think it has to go back to the music to create movements, than to be about a person or about self.
HipHopCrack: What producers have you been influenced by?
Mathematics: Of course by the RZA, Dr. Dre, Pete Rock, Premier. A lot of those greats I have (on the DVD) influenced me. As well as Issac Hayes, Willie Hutchins, Norman Wickfield, David Porter, Stevie Wonder, people like that. They made good music, and good music is timeless. You can still listen to it and be like, “Wow.”
HipHopCrack: What was it like interviewing these cats who influneced you for the DVD?
Mathematics: It was great. A lot of them I had already admired for certain reasons, whether it’s Havoc—I always loved Mobb Deep’s music—or Trackmasters, Trackmasters did some of my favorite joints from back in the day, like “Ill Street Blues” and “Shootouts.” “Shootouts” is one of my favorite beats of all time, that’s the joint they did for Nas. Even though more people would associate them with other joints, that’s that baking the cake, they know how to bake a cake and put it where it needs to be. But it was a great feeling to go into the studio with some of these cats.
Certain cats I already had history with: RZA, of course I had history with. Rockwilder, I had history with because he worked with Redman and Method Man a lot, so I’ve been aroudn him for a long time. Salaam Remi, we went to the same high school, we were in the same art class together.
HipHopCrack: You said you learned a lot from them during the interviews. What are some of the things you learned?
Mathematics: You’re going to see them in my music. After I did the DVD, I was going to do a follow-up album to The Problem. I had already started recording new songs. then once the DVD was finished, I had learned so much that when I started hitting the board, my music just started going to a whole different notch, it went up a level. So I was like, I need to just sit down, I need to put all this new stuff together that I’ve got. I’m going to go to the archive and get some stuff I’ve got in there. So I found some remixes I had did that never surfaced, I found some old joints, and that’s the Mathematics Presents – Wu-Tang Clan and Friends: Unreleased LP. I wanted to get all that out my system so I could hit them over the head with all this new stuff I’ve been working on.
I learned a lot. It gave me a love for music again. After a while, it starts getting like too much business, it’ll bring you down sometimes. Even with the DVD, when I finished, a lot of people that were interested, but they didn’t want to give me what I wanted for it. Most of them just wanted to take it and rob me. So I’m like, ‘Naw, I’d rather hold it than do that.’
HipHopCrack: What are your top five Wu-Tang joints that you’ve produced?
Mathematics: Ah, man, I’ve got a lot of joints, I love a lot of ’em. My top five, I don’t know. “Cobra Clutch” is always one of my favorite joints, “That’s That Shit” is one of my favorite joints too, with Method Man and Reman. “Bang Thangs,” “Rules” is definitely one of my favorite joints. “Strawberries” was one of mine too. See, I could keep naming. I’m a fan of my music, because I think that you have to be. Anything you do, you have to love what you do, you can’t just be doing it just because.
That was my point before. The business and everything gets you down, and after a while, you don’t even want to hit the board. After I did the DVD and spoke to all these producers, the love for music came right back. Even DJing for me got (boring) for a while…don’t do a show, everything is repititious. But now, I’m back on the board crazy, I’m loving it, I’m loving the music, I’m loving what I’m making. And I’m DJing crazy again too, I’m having fun again doing that again, like when I first started. You’ve got to have the love for it, man.
HipHopCrack: With instrumental albums like Soul of a Man, do you make beats like that exclusively for the album, or were they beats you had already made?
Mathematics: The majority of them were exclusively for that album. It was a couple of discs, and the second one was instrumentals that were off of some of my albums. But the first disc, a lot of them were exclusively made for that. What I was trying to do was like, when you listen to certain jazz albums, and the theme, and the way it kept going and kept moving, I was trying to do the same thing. They did an era where they put up a disc, and they put the two-second pause between each record. It wasn’t supposed to be no pauses, it was supposed to flow right through from the beginning to the end. At the end it got a little mixed up, but yeah, most of the stuff was made exclusively for that.
HipHopCrack: Do you think there should be more instrumental albums?
Mathematics: Yeah, I think so. Like I said, jazz albums, you can catch a “Midnight Love” album all instrumentals, too. I think so, but are the people ready for it? Cuz right now, it seems like all they want to hear is somebody bragging on a track. I won’t say everybody, but the way they make it seem, the majority of people, that’s what they want to hear. So are the people going to really appreciate it? The way I tried to do Soul of a Man, I was doing it because I wanted people to really appreciate it. And I hope they did, whatever the case may be. But yeah, that’s another thing, getting people to really take the time to realize what’s going on.
HipHopCrack: The group recently announced they were making another album, The 8 Diagrams. How excited are you about that?
Mathematics: I’m excited, like, “Yeah, let’s do it again.” Everybody’s on the same page right now, and another reason why I’m excited is because from the music that everybody’s doing right now, everbody’s in their zone once again. If you hear the joints RZA’s been doing lately for Afro Samurai, if you peep some of those, you hear how he’s coming. The Raekwon Only Built 4 Cuban Linx 2 album is off the hook, that right there alone is going to be a classic based upon the fact that you’ve got two great producers working on that, Dr. Dre and RZA. And I’ve got a track on there, so listen out for it. If you listen to Ghost, he had the Fishscale album; the Method Man album that was slept on, 4:21; the Masta Killa album. I like to throw my little shit in, I hope people feel the same way about my joint. So yeah, I think everybody’s in their zone. It’s about that time too, especially the way the music is right now. We need something right now to fill the void.
