RJD2
Third Hand, New Path
RJD2. The name is one that brings about the recollection of certain sounds as soon as it is mentioned and synonymous with dramatic hip hop sound scapes that walk seamlessly between reality and fantasy. A sampling master, RJD2 has long been credited with beat king status among underground hip hop listeners for his work with Bobito’s Fondle ‘Em, Rhymesayers and most notably El-P ‘s Def Jux recordings. His ability to leave an indelible, almost timeless signature on beats has made him not only a sought after commodity for many of the biggest names in underground hip hop (names like El-P, MF Doom, Mos Def, Aceyalone to name but a few) but also a demi-god among electronic listeners who have little to no interest in hip hop. Having held these two reputations, and identities for so long, it should come as no surprise, and has probably been long anticipated, that he would make an album outside of the hip hop sphere. Finally finding a home for his new sound with UK’s XL Recordings, the same label that reps acts like M.I.A and the White Stripes, now was as good a time as any to unleash his acoustically infused solo album The Third Hand. With the release of the album just over a month ago, people have slowly but surely begun taking notice of the new direction. With the hazy, instrumental sound along with the producer singing on many of the album’s tracks, it’s been hard not to notice. Earwaks managed to get a few minutes with the Columbus Ohio super producer turned instrumentalist/singer while he has getting ready for his current tour. Check it out.
EW: Now that the album is finished and your getting ready to tour, how have your days been?
Things are pretty relaxed. I usually get up pretty early and then I make some coffee, make some breakfast, and if I’m being responsible I’ll walk my dog and pay some bills. Since my record is done, I don’t have to be in the studio so I’m rehearsing in various spots.
When I’m done practicing I always have emails and shit to deal with and if not that then I’m probably taking something apart and fixing it. Things are constantly breaking around here.
EW: In terms of rehearsing, what kind of instruments are you getting ready to perform on?
Lately, it’s been mostly keyboards. That, along with the guitar and bass are what I’m mainly playing on this tour.
EW: How is that working out? I know you’ve done live sets before, but you usually don’t tour with this heavy of a live component.
It’s gone really good. The bulk of the rehearsals are done. And we’re getting ready to start the tour. As with any tour, the first couple days you’re usually ironing a few of the kinks out but I have the songs down at this point. The band for the most part, they know the songs.
EW: Who are you touring with?
A few local guys from Columbus that I know: Derrick DiSenzo, Sam Brown and Happy Chichester, Ohio. They all have a long standing history playing music. Sam Brown, the drummer, he’s in a band called The Suns, that used to be on Warner Brothers and he’s played with the New Bomb Turks. Derrick Disenzo is kind of a local jazz legend. He plays almost every instrument, sings, and does it all very, very well. Happy used to be in a band called Royal Crescent Mob, and Howling Maggie and he worked on the first Twilight Singers record and now he’s just doing his solo thing.
There are two keyboard stations, two guitars and an electric bass. We all move around throughout the set. They’re singing the harmony parts as well as playing; we all basically sing and play.
So obviously, the album and the live show are something very different from what you’re known for in terms of hip hop. Are you taking a lot of flack from that in the hip hop industry and listeners?
I don’t know about the hip hop industry. You know, there could be silent flack from people saying, “Oh I wanted to hire him to get on the Ghostface circuit but now fuck that dude!”
For the most part though; No, I haven’t gotten terrible criticism for doing this, but I mean, every now and then there’s going to be kids who send you messages on Myspace, saying “Duuude, what happened to you?” You can’t please everybody.
EW: Some that you’ve always sort of paralleld in terms of status as a hip hop producer has been DJ Shadow. How do you feel about the direction he took with the Outsider, basically back to the mixtape?
It doesn’t surprise me at all. If anything I feel, it’s inspirational to me to see people doing different things. I don’t think anybody was bored of what Shadow was doing before. It wasn’t that he had so many records under his belt, but at the same time it makes perfect sense to me. If you think about it, his whole thing was being kind of an outsider, so it’s not at all surprising. Endtroducing was basically the first instrumental hip-hop record. It really came from the perspective of a guy that really cared about rap music as opposed to ‘I’m sick of rap music and this is an alternative to it’. If he were to drop Endtroducing now, it wouldn’t have nearly the same impact. Hip Hop is a musical landscape; It’s inspiring to me to see someone doing whatever the hell they want.
EW: You consistently have brought out a cinematic, some times somewhat dark sound on your records. What is inside of you that brings that out?
I like drama in music. I just like drama. For me, there’s got to be an element of drama to me to get in to the music. Barry Gordy, when they were picking singles at Motown, I remember him saying something to this effect “There’s got to be some drama in the first fifteen seconds to make you want to listen to it.” I’m not particularly a melancholic person but Diplo was over at my house a couple of weeks ago and I was playing him this record and he was telling me “your chord progression is always, like, you think they’re going to go ‘errr’ but then they go ‘ERRRRRRRR’”. I’ve always been attracted to chord progressions that go where you least expect them. To me, chord progressions and the harmonics, are kind of like the soul of the song. It’s where everything starts and it’s what gives the song a vibe. I don’t want to make boring songs. I want to make songs that are exciting and dramatic and don’t sound like anybody else’s. It’s really hard for me to work in a scenario just using a typical Bruce Springsteen 1/4/5 chord progression, I wouldn’t know what to do with it because I’m not inspired by it. I would be like “Fuck, what do I do?”
EW: What was your motivation for the new album? It feels like it’s very lo-fi and is definitely the most acoustic sounding thing you’ve done.
I would say more than anything it was influenced by a lot of rock music. I’m definitely in to the Beatles. A lot of the music I listen to is kind of 60’s and 70’s ‘psychedelic rock’ for lack of a better term. Also, I’ve always been obsessed with synth bass lines. I have a thing for early 80’s black American music. The cream of the crop, for me, is all centered on the synth bass line. Like Shalamar, or Raw Silk. Any of that R&B, Post-Disco… I don’t really know what to call it.... stuff that was popular between ’80-’85 in America. So much of it was synth bass line driven. Some of it is funky as shit even though it didn’t sound anything like funk music, it’s more like club music. I tried to reproduce something like that on “Sweet Piece’ and some others.
EW: The album title seems somewhat metaphoric. Can you tell me where the ‘Third Hand’ came from?
Well I played and sang everything on the album. It’s really the first thing I did without any guest appearances. I did it literally with my own two hands, so when I was choosing the title, I was also coming to terms with music going from a personal process that you do for yourself, with yourself to becoming a public thing. You come to terms and realize that it’s going to be released and they’re going to take it, and process it and do what they will with it. So the third hand had to do with the listener; The record moving from me to the listener. But also, definitely the fact that it was a 3rd release had a tie in with the title.
In terms of the cover and the aesthetic of it, I’ve always been in to simple covers. I like covers that draw your eye to a particular thing. I had an idea in my head about the album and I wanted the cover to play on that. So many of the melody lines on the album are harmonized whether they are on vocals or guitar, or piano or whatever. They sort of help give it the warm, hazy fuzz. If you’re going to analyze it from a music theory perspective, the record literally had more major key songs on it than anything I’ve ever been a part of. So to me, the record was happy and hazy and semi-psychedelic sounding and I wanted to capture this with the album cover. I had the artist, Will Fugman, put together something that I felt embodied the hazy sound that I produced.
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