Fanboys
Indie rap group Plastic Little thinks Harry Potter is the shiz.
by Gwynne Watkins
September 29, 2006
You won't find Plastic Little placating middle-class white boys with gritty tales about the streets. Nor will they be rapping earnest paeans to equality.
"We have no agenda," says frontman Jayson Musson. "Making the four of us giggle is how we test the success of a song." But for all their self-deprecation, the indie outfit from Philadelphia is helping to define a new style of twenty-first-century hip-hop. Their first full-length album, She's Mature, released October 16, embraces the sensibility of an iPod on shuffle, sampling Dr. Dre and The Smiths between rhymes about club banging and Boba Fett.
Musson himself divides his time between Plastic Little and his folk band, American Sneakers, crediting his musical fluidity to the inclusiveness in the Philly scene. "Pretty much if it's good, it's good, and people here will accept it." Not that acceptance has been an issue — collaborators on She's Mature include Ghostface Killah and Spank Rock, and Plastic Little is generating the kind of internet buzz that MIA (who's shared a stage with them) once inspired. Hooksexup chatted with Musson about the indie hip-hop scene, the importance of Morrissey and why more rap artists should read Bukowski. — Gwynne Watkins
If someone asked me what this album reminded me of, my first association would be Paul's Boutique.
Paul's Boutique, awesome!
And a lot of that is because you sample some really eclectic and unexpected stuff on this album. How did you go about choosing those tracks?
Squid, our producer, puts together some notable stuff, like "The Hustle" or the beat from "Dre Day." I think it comes from knowing DJs. I always felt like in the whole hip-hop circle, DJs always had, hands-down, way better taste in music than MCs did. And Philadelphia is a really DJ-oriented city. Going to parties in Philadelphia, it's just a mix-up of kids and the DJ reading off people, so he has to have his hands on all kinds of music.
How about the song where the whole back track is The Cure song "Close to Me"?
Oh, "Get Close." The most popular Cure songs are just highly rappable. It just moves people at parties and therefore lends itself to party rap. And that's what we are: good old-fashioned debauchery. Plus, that's a good song in and of itself.
It is a good song. This album has like eighteen references to the Smiths.
Oh yeah. I love it. Morrissey is awesome. If unhappiness was an uncharted region of the country, he would be the Lewis and Clark of unhappiness. He's just amazing. He definitely dives deep into himself and his feelings, and he's articulated his disdain for other people in relationships more than anybody else I can really think of.
You've called yourself "party rap." What does that mean?
Rapping about sex, alcohol, drugs, other music — those are the elements of a party. There's a lot of levity to the music, even at it's most offensive. We're just like little school girls having fun with, you know, a new brush or something, or a little boy playing with a new Matchbox. We're kind of nerdy as well . . .
I've been thinking about that, because there are Star Wars references and Harry Potter references mixed in with all these more traditional gangsta references.
Definitely. There's a song called "Club Banger," and it's pretty much about fights in a club. But then there'll be references to Chewbacca. I don't know. We're not really super-nerdy dudes, but when someone like George Lucas or Tolkien or Rowling creates this whole world, I have an affinity toward people who go to great lengths to architect something from their imagination and really flesh it out and develop it. And it's just really funny to talk about Lord of the Rings and shooting someone in the face.
A couple of websites describe you as novelty rap, but I associate humor with good hip-hop anyway.
There is definitely a certain amount of humor to it, and because we don't have an agenda, I guess it could be said it's novelty. We don't have a mission statement. We're not here to enlighten people, we're not here to teach, or to fill a voyeuristic need of middle-class folks by telling gritty street tales. I feel like often, when it comes to black music, or rap music, jazz, people like to be mystified. Because if they understand it, they can easily move on to the next thing, so they concede to be mystified. I think that's why jazz was so prominent, because it's just this mind-blowing musical experience. And hip-hop was like that for a while. But we're not trying to mystify anybody. We essentially just want to have fun. Making the four of us giggle is how we test the success of a song.
Why don't I hear more about indie hip-hop?
Indie hip-hop is getting its share of airplay now. This is the internet age. The playing field has definitely been leveled a bit more.
Yeah, I just don't feel like indie hip-hop gets quite the same recognition as other indie genres, like punk.
Punk is based on a do-it-yourself ethic; there's a network of people who are always bringing music from a grass-roots level. Whereas with hip-hop, the do-it-yourself thing is not there. Punk bands once in a while make it big, but they're not trying to make it big. Whereas with hip-hop, it's like, "I want a hit song, I want the car, I want the house, I want the chimpanzee."
What's with the name Plastic Little?
It came from this Japanimation movie called Plastic Little. I would always see it on the video shelf, and I never would rent it. I was just like, those two words together just sound really awesome. And when I finally did rent it, I was like, "This movie's horrible." It's forty-five minutes of lasers and ships, and it's not a compliment to that genre of cartoon. But the name still sounds pretty good.
It's a good name. What rhyme are you most proud of on this album?
Let's see here. I really like when that Gang Starr beat comes in, and in the original song the line was, "Lemonade is a popular drink and still is/I got more props and stunts than Bruce Willis/A poet like Langston Hughes/I can't lose." And I just changed it to, "A poet like Charles Bukowski/I'm so rowdy." I think more people involved with hip-hop should read Charles Bukowski. He's lived a steam-roller of a life. And I really like "Club Banger" because it's so preposterous. A lot of fights seem to break out at parties in Philadelphia, maybe because we're a blue-collar city. All of the creative people, in order to survive, have moved to New York or San Francisco, so the folks who are left come from a working-class background and hate all these little art fags and want to pummel them at the parties. It's a weird dichotomy. It's funny to me, all these songs about killing people in the club. Maybe you should stay in with an Agatha Christie book or something. People are crazy nowadays, man.
You also have a folk band, is that right?
Oh yeah, American Sneakers.
What's the difference between writing hip-hop versus writing like folk songs?
Songwriting is harder, I think, because you have to say less and mean more. Whereas rap is like, you're writing to the beat in a certain way, so you can get away with throwing a lot of extraneous lard into the lyric potion. Rap is very tied up in ego. But they're both near and dear to me. I consider rap a really, really valid art, a form of expression. I wouldn't want to sell one out for the other.
So you guys probably don't have groupies yet, right?
Not really, no. Not at all. I wouldn't mind some groupies. I mean, because my sneakers are so dirty, a groupie would help my self-esteem. But you know, in Philadelphia there's enough drunk people to copulate with. n°
©2006 Gwynne Watkins and hooksexup.com