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 ew musical genres seem so blatantly managed by a handful of kingpins as hip-hop does. But this has been in the works since long before Company Flow, the '90s hip-hop group of which Mr. Len was one-third. When Company Flow disbanded at the end of the decade, its experimental, dark, sometimes awkward beats continued to reverberate, yet indie hip-hop remains sidelined in what is now the highest-grossing segment of the music industry.Nevertheless, the work Company Flow left behind is now looked upon as a hip-hop milestone. It bucked conventional wisdom at a time when the industry was hell-bent on mainstream dominance. "People take themselves way too seriously in hip-hop now," says Mr. Len. "Somebody needs to sit most rappers down and say, 'Stop'." Now, with his own label, he's in a position where he can do just that. "I can be the asshole, too," says the nascent record executive. After a decade as indie's DJ laureate, the CEO of Smacks Records — nearly thirty years old, living in New Jersey, and worrying about his overhead — is taking hold of the mic to give orders. — Will Doig Did you make up that phrase "Dummy Smacks" or does it have an etymology? I did an album in 2001 on Matador and the actual whole title was Pity the Fool: Experiments in Therapy Behind the Mask of Music While Handing Out Dummy Smacks. And people just really liked the idea of dummy smacks. Like a game you'd play when you were little. Somebody would say something stupid and you'd smack them. Is that something you played growing up in the Bronx? Actually, I was born in the Bronx, then I moved to Brooklyn and lived there for twelve, thirteen years, and then moved to New Jersey, where I am now. I still go back to the Bronx fairly often. My mother-in-law lives there. How has your old neighborhood changed? It's gotten better. Back in the '80s, it was kind of rough. Now someone tells me that such-and-such got $300,000 for that half a duplex he had, the one we used to write on the walls of. I'm like, What the fuck? The city's a bit more buttoned-up now. Yeah, there's a lot of things you can't do at all anymore because of 9/11. Last year, I left my suitcase unattended at the airport and when I came back for it the cops had a big German shepherd sniffing it. A while back, I was starting to shoot a little documentary on the Pulaski Skyway [in New Jersey] and I had the camera out as we were driving down this stretch toward the Holland Tunnel. That whole day went by and I didn't even think about it. And then I got home and there were four Feds waiting for me on my front porch. America gets creeped out easily now. I was in Japan recently, and if you're in Tokyo, it's crazy, but then you go out to the country, to Kyushu, and everything is serene. I hung out with a Buddhist monk. Were you meditating with him? No, he was a DJ. You're a large person. You must have seemed huge in Japan. I was frigging Godzilla. People were running from Tokyo! The city is leveled. You're wading into the sea, live electrical wires dragging behind you . . . And it sucks, because they've got fresh-ass sneakers in Japan. Doesn't matter if you're in Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto — there are fresh sneakers everywhere. And I would walk into a store, and before I could say anything, the girl would be like, We don't have your size. One dude dropped to his hands and knees and put his hands around my feet and just said, So biiiiiig! How does hip-hop translate in other cultures like that? I went to South Africa in 2000. I think we were the first official hip-hop show post-Apartheid. In the eighties, in America, when we were all getting into our pro-black phase, we thought, They must be extra-righteous in Africa. But when we went there, they were like, Don't pin that shit on me. Just play the records. Let's have some fun. There were white kids in the crowd, black kids in the crowd. No racial tension whatsoever. You recently teamed up with Kimani Rogers of Masterminds to produce an album under the moniker "Roosevelt Franklin." Roosevelt Franklin debuted on Sesame Street in 1969, but his character was discontinued after eight seasons. He had an Afro and a skit called "Rhyme Time." Roosevelt Franklin was loud and obnoxious. But you know, Sesame Street is all about a tall, bald black guy talking to a bird. Where I lived in Brooklyn, in the projects, everyone thinks it was all black people. But in the next building over was [a white, Jewish guy named] Michael Cohen. Michael Cohen! I thought, if the black guy on Sesame Street can talk to the bird, I can talk to Michael Cohen. You also have a song called "Muppet Love", which is not for children. "Muppet Love" is probably the raunchiest thing I've done. A lot of people don't understand my verse in it, turning cooperation into sex. "Do you wanna get felt?" And I hear about this play called Avenue Q. It's about Muppet sluts. Is that what that is? Well, I think there's one Muppet who's a slut. That's classic. So much sex and Muppetry. Is it a recent phenomenon? Remember Maria? From Sesame Street? Maria was fucking sexy. Every guy growing up thinks, just once in my life I gotta find a woman like Maria. Even as she got older, you were like, hmm. What's it like running your own label? I used to work with Jive, do little deals with Polygram, and my thing was to gather as much information as possible. See what people do right, see what people do wrong. What were people doing wrong? The biggest thing I'd see labels do wrong is not explaining things exactly to their artists. There's no right or wrong way to push a record. Some things hit and stick, and others just hit the wall, slide down, and fade into obscurity. But you need to explain to your artists what you're comfortable spending money on. I'll tell artists that I don't feel comfortable spending money on something, and if they really feel that I should, it's going to come out of whatever money they make. I'll tell them, hey, the fact that you have a six-page insert in your album cover: that costs money. You sound like a CEO, but I guess that's exactly what you are now. Is it disorienting, going from artist to management? It's a strange leap, but it's forced me to see it all for what it truly is. As an artist, I could sit back and be abstract. I could be like, The world is just full of colors and flowers, dude. As a businessman, you think, Shit, flowers cost money. I'm going to be thirty next month. I'm not seventeen anymore. It's changed your whole worldview. Now when I go to Amsterdam, it's not because I want to smoke weed. I go and see what the vibe is like, what's working and what's not working in that market, find out why certain records sell and certain ones don't. The fact that 50 Cent can sell a million records in Japan and N.E.R.D. can only sell 30,000. Why? This is making me sad. It doesn't make me sad, because I'm still an artist. There's still a side of me that puts out records that I like, and there's certain records I feel like I have to put out because they make money. I'm not a P. Diddy or a Russell Simmons. I don't want to be that serious. I have nothing to lose. I was a Spinal Tap fan. Love Spinal Tap. I had the movie and the record. I want to be the answer to Spinal Tap. I want to be the way the Weinsteins are. I want to be that for my label. Are executives at big, mainstream record labels dumbing down hip-hop, forcing their artists to de-politicize? Four years ago, I would have said yeah. But the fact that the attention span of the average listener has gotten so much shorter, now I'd say no. The deeper you go into a subject, the surer you are to lose a thousand people every minute that goes past. Hip-hop is crammed down my throat and I hate some of the shit that I'm hearing. I like other genres of music. I'm like, Hey, Interpol has a new album coming out. And people are like, Who the hell is Interpol? They're those depressed guys in the suits. One of my favorite artists ever is Frank Zappa. And people say, I don't know any Frank Zappa songs. If I were to play you some Frank Zappa songs, you'd say, Wow, this is really good. And to me, that's what made him great. He probably never went platinum, probably never went gold. The Grateful Dead, one of the most popular groups ever, just barely went gold. These are guys who set the tone. All these artists came out listening to them and tried to emulate them and put their own little twist on them so that they could sell platinum, so that they could sell gold. But without Frank Zappa, a dude named Zappa would just be a dude with a pretty strange name. Mr. Len is a pretty strange name. Some people think I'm a pretty strange guy. n° 
© 2005 Will Doig and hooksexup.com. |
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