OurStage

THE MIXTPAE MONSTER: First off, thanks so much for the interview Sum. I’m stoked to have it on the blog and to help get the word out about an insanely cool and unique project. Sumkid: Hey man, the pleasure is all mine. Whenever somebody catches wind of what I’m doin’ over here, that’s a big deal to me. For some of the readers out there who aren’t familiar with you, give us a quick run-through of who you are and what you do. My family calls me Roshmond, music folks know me as Sumkid, and my friends call me Sum. I was born in Chicago and spent equal parts of time in North Carolina, Atlanta, New York City and California. All those places are home to me, but when people ask me where I’m from, I tell them North Carolina. The older I get, the less I represent NC, but it’s a part of me and always will be. I’m a writer, and MC and a rapper. That means I craft songs and literature, I rock shows and move crowds, and I play with words a lot. I also moonlight as an astrologer, a music collector and DJ, a beer fan, a cook, a scientist, a philosopher, a Chinese internal arts enthusiast and a hopeless romantic. At any given time, I’m doing something related to the above. Now, you’ve got ties to North Cack. Being that that is where I reside, I had to bring that up. Where are you from, and what do you miss most about the Ol’ North State? I spent my young childhood in Fayettenam, then we split to Illinois for a few years and ended up moving back to Charlotte. Charlotte is where I became a hip-hop head, so I call it home, even though I couldn’t tell you how to get to my house from Panther Stadium if you asked me, cus it’s been so damn long since I’ve been there. That’s a damn shame. I love Charlotte, but I go back to Fayetteville more than I do to Charlotte. What do I miss most about NC? Well, with Fayetteville, I miss the mysterious and random military-related shootings and stabbings, since it’s the home of the country’s largest base, Fort Bragg. Stuff like shell-shocked soldiers getting up in the middle of the night slaying their families, shooting up Chuck E. Cheeses….Michael Jordan’s father found dead on the side of the road…. pregnant women coming back from overseas getting murdered in their hotel rooms. This is the stuff I grew up hearing on the news, and it’s what makes Fayetteville such a sad and amazing place. It’s the stuff novels are made of. Fayetteville is a stark reminder of how empty and cold of a monster the military is, and how it can leave the shell of a person behind. With Charlotte, people out there take for granted how beautiful a city it is. Sometimes I sit back and daydream about the drives I used to take through all the little different boroughs…the trees, the houses and architecture. Every city I’ve lived in is charming, and even though I think Atlanta is the most charming, I think Charlotte is the most GORGEOUS city I’ve ever lived in. I also miss sweet tea. You can’t get that shit out here in L.A….these fools have a problem. Haha, I have several friends in Fayettenam, and in LA that would agree with you on those points for sure. A lot of your solo stuff is crazy hot. A favorite of the Mixtape Monster Blog and its readers is “Chuck Norris On Drugs.” Can you give us some insight on that song, and how you came up with the idea? Well, thanks man. “Chuck Norris on Drugs” has a funny title and it draws people’s attention. I guess I subconsciously was going for that. The fact is, whether Chuck Norris is on drugs or not, he’s still dangerous. He will kick your ass up and down your street twice. There’s something ridiculous and funny about that. So just about everything I ran down in that song was something equal parts ridiculous and dangerous. Just so happens that ridiculous and dangerous is exactly the state of affairs in the world right now. I wanted to make a song that had substance, cut to the chase and didn’t preach at people. Plus I like to keep a sense of humor about my material, so boom. I thought about a ridiculous and dangerous image, and next thing you know, the song was born. I wrote it in about 15 minutes. I love when that happens. Billy Joel, Talking Heads and R.E.M. helped me hammer the sword on the anvil. Your new project, “The Nobody Hole” drops on Halloween, a fitting date for this type of release. Explain what the project is, and how you developed the concept. The Nobody Hole is an opera I wrote that sounds like Tim Burton took The Wizard of Oz and Halloween, mashed them up and turned it into a hip-hop album. It’s a dark fantasy epic that allowed me to be a writer, author and MC all at the same time, and it’s my most involved work to date. I’m a huge fantasy book fan, and I’ve always wanted to write something in that realm. At that time in my life, I refused to do just another album of me rapping about rapper stuff on rapper beats. I wanted to do something different, and I wanted to make something I would love to hear as a music fan. The idea started as a short story where I was just playing with the words ‘nobody’s whole’, and it involved this wild and abused boy who ran from home, and found a huge hole in the ground. The hole had a monster in the bottom of it that was half-piano, and wearing a tuxedo. The monster was urging the boy to come into the hole, because he would feel at home there….nobody was whole. Everybody in this place was half of something else. Then the story evolved into me wanting to write stories about broken-hearted people who get trapped in a spirit realm trying to deal with their sorrow. I took that concept a step further and turned it into an adventure that follows a main character, Pygmy Paul, the story of his transformation in The Nobody Hole, his friends, the killer that hunts him and the nature of his destiny. (art by Doug Hoffman) When I first heard about the project, I knew you were the perfect guy to do something like that. You take your music in so many different and unique directions, I was stoked to hear it. Plus, the artwork for the project is crazy. How’d you get hooked up with Doug Hoffman? We were living together, Doug, Badtouch and myself. We all lived in a house in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. Badtouch swears the house was haunted by his grandfather. Doug and Touch both still live there, as a matter of fact. I stay there when I go back to NYC. I never met the ghost, but I did hear random bumps in the night. It mighta just been LoDeck. I lived in the basement apartment of the house and had a job on the graveyard shift, so I didn’t see sunlight for a whole year. There was a bookshelf of old dusty books by Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe and Machiavelli. There were ancient tomes on kite-making, candles older than me and machines I can’t begin to describe…. and old toys, gadgets and furniture everywhere. Badtouch has a penchant for macabre music, I gravitate towards anything supernatural, and Doug’s dark, twisted and masterfully perverse art graced every wall in the house. Mix all that up, and you get the recipe for how to make The Nobody Hole. Oh, and throw in our African wildcat, PJ for good measure (his purrs sound like howls, or crying). I would get off of work at 3am, go out drinking till 5am and catch a cab home by six. I’d close my blinds and write stories until 10 am, having no idea the sun was up. I got Doug involved by asking him to create sketches of the characters I was creating. So we co-created a whole world. (Character illustrations by Jared Rogness) Obviously, this shit was no simple task. Tell us a little more about who else is involved in the project? Jared Rogness has brought another visual element to the table with his outstanding character illustrations. Doug is the painter that gave us a foundation and mood for how the Nobody Hole should come alive visually. His ideas were twisted and cooky. Jared jumped on board earlier this year and brings a more “nuts and bolts” sensibility to the project, making it more accessible for people, but still keeping the dark and twisted tradition that Doug started. You can see his art at www.theartofjaredrogness.com . In addition to the artwork of Jared and Doug, the music of Badtouch and my lyrics, Nzinga Kadalie, my wife, kind of strings everything together as The Narrator. She’s a writer, actor and spoken word artist so she knows how to use her voice. The Nobody Hole is such a dark and dismal place, she kind of adds the soft and soothing parts to remind the listener that the journey has just as much warmth as your favorite fairytale. She helped me flesh out some of the story parts too, because she is a damn good writer. I referred to her every step of the way to make sure I was making sense. She’s the Michelle Obama of this shit. Also, there’s a HUGE animated video contest going on right now that I’m doing in collaboration with ToolFarm. We’re combing the planet for animators to pick a short scene from the album and bring it to life. There are tens of thousands of dollars in prizes we’re giving away. More details at www.thenobodyhole.com. Sickness, I’ll link some readers to that as well. Is the story of Paul Lowenfall something that you had written already before recording, or did his adventure sort of come to light as you went along? Man, that’s a great question. It was kind of like cooking. I had a vague idea of what I wanted in the end, but didn’t know how it was gonna come out. I improvised and added different ingredients along the way, and new additions inspired new ways of thinking about the recipe. For the most part, his story revealed itself as I wrote it. Badtouch was a huge part of helping me develop the story. He’s a great storyteller himself, so he kept me on track and down to earth…or urged me to think outside of the box in ways I hadn’t thought of. For instance, the most important song on the album is near the end, “The Tale of The Nobody Hole”. I wasn’t feeling that beat at all, but it was one he kept pushing for the project because he heard the importance and epic nature in it. I’m glad he did, because it ended up being one of the best songs I’ve ever written. It’s important to close something like this strong, and I def agree that you did that here. That’s certainly one of my favorite parts of the story. What has you most excited about this project? Do you think this is the type of thing we could see more of from SumKid, or even other artists in the industry later on? The most exciting part of this project is the possibility of seeing it come to life through animation one day. The other part is just seeing the characters come to life. I have a glimpse into the pride that George Lucas felt the first time he saw Darth Vader, or when Tim Burton saw Edward Scissorhands come to life. It’s amazing dude, like “whoa, that came out of my head!?”. You will see more from me in this vein. The Nobody Hole will have two sequels; I’m working on them this very moment. I don’t want to see other artists do this, I want to see them do something better. But I do hope I can inspire folks to break out of their creative shells. Damn, I would love to see this animated and set to the story. What type of expectations do you have on this project? Of course I expect it to take the world by storm and catch on like wildfire, and movie studios and record labels get into bloody knifefights in boardrooms, and sending out assassins to off each other. Of course that won’t happen at least for another few weeks. I do expect it to keep gaining momentum from underground and cult status to explosion, because I feel with 100% of my heart that this thing is huge….just as huge as The Matrix or Star Wars. And if it’s not, I’m content with turning it on every once in a while and listening to it, because like I said earlier….I wanted to make something I could enjoy as a fan. And I enjoy the shit out of The Nobody Hole. It’s important to enjoy yourself. What’s in Sum’s MP3 player these days? What other groups or artists have you excited about the current state of hip hop? I can’t say I’m excited about the current state of hip-hop. It’s too stratified. Everybody’s worried about image….hipsters want to be cool, and traditional rappers wanna hold on to old shit and be mad at everybody in tight clothes. Magazines won’t pay attention to you unless they can see your nipples through your v-neck sweater and you have a purple Mohawk. They don’t care if the music is good, they just want it to have some electro-sounds and an 808 in it. It’s getting silly. Let’s move forward. I am excited about where hip-hop might be in about two years. There’s a renaissance happening. I am excited about music though. Two sites every true music fan reading this should check out are The Sixty One and LaBlogotheque. Two great ways to find new music. Who am I feeling? Conscious is an artist out of the Bronx that is flipping my wig right now. The dude is making music and writing songs that make you feel like you’re actually living in 2008. He’s smart, he’s musical, progressive, street, lyrical and eclectic…his music ranges from space-jazz, to electronic, to straight good-body hip-hop. If you ask me, Jay Electronica is just filler until Conscious arrives. Plus Conscious is hella fun on stage. Computer Jay is probably my favorite artist on the West Coast right now. I staunchly believe he’s the Herbie Hancock of our generation. He’s a producer, DJ and circuit-bender that’s just as comfortable rockin’ a hip-hop crowd at a cookout with traditional bangers as he is performing for video game nerds with his talking computer that raps and his programmed Atari pumping out beats. That’s what I’m diggin’ right now, artists that can travel through different worlds without effort….just being themselves. I also dig U-N-I out of Inglewood. Those guys are authentic. Don’t be fooled by their hipster appearance. What’s in my MP3 player? Leaders of The New School “T.I.M.E.”, Caribou, The Sea & Cake, Omar, Organized Konfusion, the Pixies, T.P. Orchestre Poly-Rythmo and mad Fela. “T.I.M.E” is a classic. I’m also really feeling U-N-I lately myself, they have some hot vids on YouTube as well. Your ReverbNation profile boasts (correctly I might add) that you are “definitely a cat you wouldn’t mind having a drink with after a listen.” What’s your drink of choice? Give me a Guiness and a shot of Jameson, and I’m happy as a gadfly. I’m a seasonal drinker, so in the winter, I tend to go with thick beers and dark whiskeys (Johnny Walker, Jack Daniels). In the spring, I’ll drink a good Hefewiezen like Paulaner or Hoegaarden. This summer I was on big Ketel One and tonics with two limes and an olive. In Autumn, I fucks with Sierra Nevadas, Stella Artois and Brooklyn Lager. Damn, I hadn’t planned on drinking today, but all this talk of beer…. Hey man, when you come to L.A., I got the bomb place for us to drink it. It’s right around the corner…I DJ with my boy Malkovich aka “Burnie Nowax” at a legendary West L.A. bar called Saints & Sinners. You can keep up on our adventures at www.thepalmsweekend.com. Hopefully we can get together on that some day. I’m a whiskey man for sure, but you can keep that Guiness and thick shit. I’m sure my LA people’s are gonna hit that spot after reading this. Any last words before we drop these “Nobody Hole” links on the readers? Yes. The dollar is weak The music industry Is dead and left in shambles The internet is clogged with sites galore More than most of us can handle…. If you love the arts But can’t stomach the search Through the tons of bullshit and bramble I’ve fashioned a cure Simple and pure The Good Look might be the answer. (sign up) Peace.

A discussion of SumKid Majere is a discussion of songwriting. The Lil Folk spouts from a man clearly obsessed with words. Twenty-nine seconds into “If If� Sum’s first verse helps every head in this community understand the lyrical possibility of the upcoming hour. Show me a clever, content-minded emcee in possession of an advanced understanding of rhyme, and I’ve got the only record I need to load on my iPod for the next several weeks. Sum’s cross-country melting pot upbringing distills hip-hop’s regional tendencies into a single, cohesive sound, even if his southern drawl is never far around the corner. The most obvious comparison would be to Outkast, his introspective rhymes and high-speed delivery recalls both Andre and Big Boi, but his complex use of internal rhyme places his development well beyond youthful imitation. His style puts down roots in southern soil, and sprouts New York’s self-knowledge and California’s irreverent humor from the branches. My first alert for unique songwriting is intriguing titles. On a quick scan I saw, “Sweatervest,� “Ole Gnat Grind,� and my favorite “Dude More Blue.� That’s enough for me to geek out in lyrically obsessive excitement. Sum stretches this promise from “We Be Pubbin,� the hilarious ode to neighborhood suds which lifts an Ice Cube chorus and reworks the all too familiar “In Da Club� verse to name check frothy imports, to lambasting style thieves by quipping, “Posdnuos called, he wants his style back.� Without question though, The Lil Folks’ high water mark is “Contra.� The song regrettably describes Sum falling out with a younger cousin. As the story progresses, the subtle power of the chorus creeps out in the selfless love Sum displays over a trivial game of Contra by offering up the spread gun from the first level. For the uninitiated, a single spread gun (arguably the best weapon in the game) appears in the first level of Contra. In two player games with my friends and cousins, there was a cutthroat race to reach the lower landmass of the level to grab the spread gun first. To hang back and allow someone else to grab the upgrade as it flies by is a true display of sacrifice. With only a few exceptions, “Contra� serves as the album median pushing aside side-A’s goofball humor for political issues and inner turmoil. Fittingly, the production follows suit morphing into dark, atmospheric pulsations reminiscent of Kool Keith or Deltron 3030 less the nonsensical lyrics. The overarching range of The Lil Folk is refreshing, although the disparity of individual elements can feel at odds with one another as you listen from front to back. But the organizational separation into A and B sides does help to minimize this in a way that a more random structuring may have ruined. The Lil Folk has brought me an emcee I can’t help but gush excitedly about. Sum has range, depth, and the ability to see well beyond both the mainstream and underground content conventions. Even with a number of excellent tracks there remains room for growth on the album, and for my part I plan to track that growth by keeping my eyes on SumKid Majere’s development. - Brian Hull

Hailing from the land of Little Brother, 9th Wonder, and more generally the Justus League, comes another fine North Carolina rapper in Sum Majere. The NC MC’s debut album The Lil Folk is a blend of both traditional underground hip-hop and Andre 3000-like innovation. But just when you think the album is a conventional underground offering, come the songs “Popeye’s Livin,” an energetic ‘80s new wave record about the famed fried chicken fast-food chain, or “The Lil Folk,” the title cut set over a minimal house groove. The common thread all throughout the album however is consistently honest, enlightening, and sometimes even hilarious rhymes. Definitely somebody to look out for in 2007 and beyond.

SumKid :: The Lil' Folks :: VJC Recordings as reviewed by Matt Tomer SumKid made an album about "The Lil' Folks" because he's one of them. Underpaid? We'll just say his house is devoid of platinum plaques. Touring schedule? He won't be headlining the Summer Jam next year. He's an average man who knows that, realistically, his voice doesn't matter. "Average" in the whole scheme of things, sure, but on record, SumKid's like Superman. Life moves fast, and yeah, we all watch, but only a handful of emcees, let alone human beings even think at such a breakneck speed. And SumKid dares you to catch up. "If If" might make him look a pretentious bastard, what with his metaphorical chorus ("if," and "why" represent different intoxicants), but he clearly refers to his life more than his thesaurus. It's an exploration in self doubt, everyday crises, fear, and commitment. In short, it's a fine introduction to what lies ahead. SumKid's verse can reflect everything and nothing, of cultural significance or total fiction, and often both in the same song. The Kid has a heavy chest, evident by the uprise anthem "Lil' Folks" "We in the concrete jungle shooting the documentary - with plenty of nudity - plenty of beauty for you to see the booty on the naked truth ... there's more of us than all of them." It's more delicious conspiracy theory power-snacking than Mr. Lif feeds, only to be later followed up with "the president sucks a big brown nut" on "The Down." Yet, in between sits the purely surreal "Skeleton's Ball," a fantastical narrative tracking a clan of madmen that builds into a blossoming, climactic opus. Where does Sum open up the bigger can of awesome - his cash oriented self examination on "Ole Gnat Grind,"or in viciously serving fake emcees on "Niggas & Flies?" "All up in their videos grabbin' their meat, whoopin' and hollerin' and shoutin' and bouncin' and yellin' and growlin' and flashin' they teeth." Searing and true, it's like God finally delivered the new standard for dismissing punks (sorry Guru). Not to be blunt, SumKid prefers bitter satire in telling it like he sees: "keep it coming 'cause the white kids love it." Preach. As for production, SumKid is further proof that a good lyricist can make average beats sound great. He decimates an unassuming techno pattern on the title track and rocks what would have been an equally stagnant rave party number on "Way Hard." This isn't to say there aren't adequate breaks. "Dude More Blue" provides the perfect orchestral backdrop for the Kid to roll through North Carolina, and "Contra's" slow flowing jazz waltzes step-by-step with his gorgeous flow: "but even at my all-time low my heart was in the right place, when I wasn't doin' shit, starin' off in space, depressed and down, messin' around, you came and checked on a dude when we wasn't on level ground." "The Lil Folks" is telling, raw and impalpably suggestive, but SumKid can't avoid his troubles, mainly in the simple fact that he puts forth a difficult record. By way of SumKid's versatility, it's all over the place at once. So many emotions are sprayed, so much personal buckshot is scattered, it's nearly impossible to describe. Still, even this lends to its beauty, and "Lil' Folks" comes off the express line practically emitting creativity through gaseous vapors. It's Def Jux soaked in emotion, it's Andre 3000 starved and done wrong, it's a dictionary-toting backpacker's true envy. It's one thing to give praise; it's a wholly different animal for the reviewer, keenly listening with a merciless pen in hand, to forget about the ins and outs and just enjoy. Set me free? Cliched, but in a sense, absolutely. Truth be told, it's a wild trip On "September," we find our protagonist returning to love from an unspecified absence. In his journey to, he absorbs the summer surroundings, appreciating things so small as the shades of green. But on arrival, things aren't so peachy keen. Girl tells guy "get your ish together," guy tries, but girl rejects his love. Maybe things weren't working out in bed, maybe "he" simply couldn't offer what "she" needed; it's up to the listener to decide. By September, she leaves, with only so much parting solace: "when the leaves turn a green hue, maybe then I'll need you." Deflated, Sum musters what he can to even conclude: "it was a long, long lonely fall." Music Vibes: 7.5 of 10 Lyric Vibes: 9.5 of 10 TOTAL Vibes: 8.5 of 10

One song stands out above the rest in everything I've been listening to lately - "September" by SumKid Majere, an MC and songwriter who hails from "Brookakalantalangeles." It's that combination of the East Coast, the South and West Coast that makes him stand apart. "September" is laid back and nostalgic, a traveling type of groove in which motion gives way to self-reflection. Sum is as good a wordsmith I've ever heard in hip-hop. There's nothing of the bling and boast that dominates the club scene. His lyrics are truly lyrical, with a peaceful core as well as a restlessness that drives the songs. Another track from his 2006 The Lil Folk record, "Dude More Blue" follows an even more explicit road trip, from North Carolina to Atlanta. Sum deals in imagery that's extremely evocative of place and space. Sum shifts gears on his forthcoming project The Bone Mustache Combe into a rawer sound, but doesn't lose anything on the lyrical side. "Chuck Norris On Drugs," produced by BadTouch, is downright brilliant, a collection of modern life's annoyances, crutches and ubiquitous technology, strung together in a stream of consciousness style. Sum is for fans of rappers like Murs, Aesop Rock and Ghostface Killah, so don't take him lightly. Visit Sum at MySpace to download "September," and also check out The Lone Wolf, Sum's collaboration with Belief.