Is there a reason why your album is Lo-Fi? I know you professionally do your tracks in a studio.

Well, a lot of it was sort of keeping a consistent sound sort of make everything feel like that, be muddy. I'm coming out of an underground, where you have tape hiss and you have forth generation dubs. It's kind of owed to all that music to people.
QD III heard my album, Quincy Jones son, who produced the 'Westside Connection'; he was like, "did you record this at home?" I mean a lot of people like that won't understand that sound. It's growing thin on me over the times. Six years ago, it was cool. That was the sound of the album to have some tracks that sound really clean than other tracks. I definitely like the Lo-Fi sound, but probably these days, technically, we definitely come along ways so we can create that without being so muddy.

How does it feel to be signed? Do you feel that you've reached another audience or do you still have the same audience as before?

Well, I definitely have the same audience that I had before. But I also have a lot of the new heads. It feels good but like anything, being on a label its just full of delays. Your album gets delayed coming out and then you get delayed in all aspects. You only get paid a couple of times a year. It's not the label's fault at all because if the distributor is lagging on paying the label, then you only get paid for what the distributor have paid for. It just takes a lot of patience. It's great to be on a label because they do so many things for you. They would hire a publicist and get you interviews, and they make a lot of things happen. Its tough enough to be an artist and putting all your time and energy doing your music, but if you have to do all the footwork, is just overwhelming.

Being creative and being a businessperson doesn't really mix together.

It's tough…Mush, coming from a small label, they are doing a lot of things that a lot of the bigger labels can't do.

What do you see yourself doing 10 years from now? Songwriting or directing videos.

I really don't know, hopefully the same thing, music. Maybe I've gotten to the next level, so I have a lot more toys and equipment. Maybe a sanctuary, and be able to travel a lot easier and get my music across and do my own thing, sort of be isolated and not be affected by the commercial thing that's been happening now. That's where I would love to be, where I can just be this artist who does its thing and no matter what's out there or what's popular with commercial music, I am able to do my thing and still progress.

Did you enjoy directing your own video?

No, I didn't direct the video. I produced it. Its very difficult to be the producer and the artist because so much of your energy goes to making the thing happen and troubleshooting on sets when something goes wrong and all of the sudden you need to hire 4 cops on Mother's Day, you got downtown blocked off and there's a lot of money being wasted. If I was to do it again, I will just be the artist, because I wasn't able to concentrate on showing up and doing my performance.

It sounds like a nightmare.

Yeah, it's a lot of work. Anisa, my girlfriend, directed it, and she did a good job. But it was tough to do that and I wouldn't recommend it. But it was definitely an accomplishment and it feels good being able to complete something like that.

I'm surprise I haven't seen your video on Independent Channels?

Well, we just finished it, and we're still getting it out to these Hip Hop stations.

Every Friday around 8 to 9 or 9 to 10, there's an independent show called the "Hip Hop Show."

Yeah, hopefully we get it on there soon. We sent it out in Japan, because I have a license deal with Mary Joy, this Japanese label. And hopefully, I can get it on Japanese MTV.

I noticed from observing your living room, your favorite console must be the Playstation 2. What is your favorite game?

Ahh, jumping on the bandwagon, as everyone else is playing it too, is "Grand Theft Auto 3." It's definitely the beginning, a whole new group of games. But it's just a virtual world and you can do what you want in it. Not that its good just to run around and reek havoc, but its empowering in a world to have so much control. So its cool, I definitely think that there's going to be more games around like that. It came along ways since Atari.

For you're up coming album, when is it going to be released and what is the direction that you are taking it?

We have, "Free Kamal," which is the next album that we are shopping right now. It hasn't got picked-up yet. It's a much different sound and its still drawing up on a different genre - it's a mix of different types of music. Maybe has more of a Reggae-edge to it like a soul, rare groove reggae kind of thing to it. It hints towards that but its not like you listen to it and think, "oh that is what that is."

Is it more of the Dub sound?

A little bit of dub and funk. It's got a funkier feel to it. It also has this running mockumentary, which originally we're going to put it as an additional disc. But sort of had known all these different famous people to average Joe's telling these stories about this fictitious person, Kamal, and trying to tie it into history, having each person as part of all these different real event.
I went to jail, one time when I was working on a show and I couldn't work the next day, so when I got back to the studio, there's all these signs saying, "Free Kamal." That's where I got the idea.
I'm also doing an album on Mush with Bus Driver, and I'm called, 'the Weather' which is a collaboration album with Daedelus, who's producing it - He's an experimental electronic producer.

Is it more like electronic drum and bass or more of the electronic music like Aphex Twin or U-ziq?

He does this loop surgery and reconstruction where he really flips the hell out of these loops. And it got this very surby-romantic string with these drum patterns that I'm not really used to. I wouldn't say its Drum and Bass, but he's definitely pushing the envelope as far as time signatures, and the way he distorts the drum sounds. It's not straight ahead with any of these genres. I think it's great. It's much different from anything that I've done. And I love Bus Driver. His album is coming out on Celestial, which is amazing. I can't rave enough about it. The guy is hungry. And he is just a style monster. He is full of life and he has so many ideas and he puts so much effort to his music. He is a real hard working artist. He's constantly out doing himself, so it's really a nice energy to work with.

Since you mentioned a Project Blowed member, do you hangout there at Project Blowed regularly?

No, I pretty much don't hang around anywhere. I know a lot of those guys and I've known them for a long time since the Good Life café. When you're recording and try to get a lot of stuff done, you keep yourself away from a lot of MCs, so you can do you own thing.

I notice that when you do hang around with the same crowd, you acquire that same sound, especially from that scene.

There's diversity there, but in the same context and the same place, you might definitely understand it as being the same sound. But it's because is in one place and they're rhyming over to the same beats. But actually, if you pick it apart, there's a lot of diversity going on - it maybe not the best showcase for that. I thought the Good Life was definitely more rigid sort of way to showcase these individuals who were doing these songs. Everybody was being real different and rhyming over their own beats a lot of times. And there's less battling going on, but it had more of an organic vibe.
I just have so much work to do; I just don't have time to hang out, and I'm not really into battling too much. It's part of being an MC. You put so much energy into it and a lot of times, you could be using that energy to make songs. But you're trying to bag on somebody else and they bag on you and then you get hurt. But some people just thrive on that. And you make a whole existence out of that thing. You live and die by the battle, sort of.

As far as the song, "Una Costa" is there a Freestyle Fellowship influence, especially the MC featuring on the song? It kind reminds me of Mikah-9's horn-sounded delivery.

Sesquipedalien was the guy that used to rhyme at the Good Life. Actually Sesquipedalien, who told me that you always have to do something that is you and that no one else can duplicate because is part of you. I used to live in Hawaii and I always be telling the cats out there like, "you should rhyme in Pigeon-English" because of how they talk. Because people from here can do that because is not them. Sesquipedalien is Mexican and my father was born in Mexico, and I do speak some Spanish. So that whole song is based on Latin Jazz. We took the horn line and stuff like that, and what we were using is all definitely Latin Music. So we were taking that and drawing our cultural history and to be along that vein. I mean Mikah-9 and those guys do a lot of Jazzy stuff, but for Mikah-9 to do Latin Jazz, it may not be as true to himself as someone who has Latin Blood.
It's not something that can be totally filled up by one group because it's such an expansive area of music. But people like to categorize stuff, and if we were going to compare it to any other group, no one really has done stuff like that like Freestyle Fellowship, so I would say, "Yeah, that is the closest thing that I can think of or someone that has attempted to do that," and so in that way, I can see how.

Your style kind of reminds me of the old Eligh from the Living Legends. I was wondering if you had any relationship with him or if you guys were in the same crew.

We were in the same crew. We were in the crew called, 'The Log Cabin,' when he was in the 3 Melancholy Gypsy and I was in the Universals. Him and I used to do a lot of music together - we kind of had definitely faster styles within the group. There's actually a song called, "Metrognome" where me and him sounded for 10 minutes about small-minded people. Eligh may have slowed down a lot, but the both of us did music together. So if you were to trace back to that time where we broke apart.

So if you guys were so close, how come that you don't have any recent collaboration?

We did a song together…I would say '96 was probably the last song that we did together called, "Crazy." It was a four-track song. That's the thing about crews is that we were a pretty tight crew and we just went our separate ways. We got offered a contract and a lot of things happened and there's a lot of just bad blood. I mean when you're friends with someone else and say your not friends of them. I actually ran into him a couple of times. We have so many history together that we still have love for each other, but we just went a whole separate ways. They're in the Living Legends and they got their own sound and stuff like that. Maybe got away from what he was doing before. But everybody goes through sort of their own progression.
Yeah we were in the same crew and we did music together. And him and I were the ones in the group that kind of got chastised for rhyming too fast. I remember MURS tried to threaten to disband the Melancholy Gypsy several times unless Eligh slowed down his style because he thought it was too fast - Just the little things that happened. And then MURS and I got into a big thing where somebody was talking shit on the Internet and like he thought I was doing it, but I didn't have a computer until recently. And all of a sudden when I went to jail that one time, MURS was in jail and we were actually shackled together in Inglewood jail, so that was kind of funny. He was like the only one I knew in there. I've been through a lot of shit with those guys and I will always have respect for them, not necessarily do music with them still, but it's sort of like the inevitable path. I'm so happy that everyone from that crew is doing a lot of music from the Log Cabin, where ever they're doing it, they're doing it so everyone becomes successful in their own way and doing their own thing.

I'm glad you don't have any friction between you guys. That's nice to hear.

I'm sure there's always going to have a small amount of friction. Maybe not created by us; but just people or fans petting each other or against each other, and from what I hear about in message boards like, "you know the old Scarub is better than the new Scarub." But you know like, Scarub is dope and get over it. People just like to do that. This whole chatroom thing and message boards have opened up a whole new way…. it's like a party line. It's entertainment and to get people agitated with each other. So because of that there's always going to be some sort of rivalry that's kept alive by the fans or maybe not by fans but people who don't have anything else better to do.