Necro - Death Rap and Rebirth
The Brooklyn bred underground MC and producer gets open about coming into his own.
"Since melding hip hop esthetics with metal content in the early 1990's and starting his own label, New York's Necro has been steadily letting fly with a slew of underground recordings, luminous beats and lyrics to make you think twice."
As time puts distance between hip hop's inception and the present, hindsight begins to yield lessons, not the least of which are the many pitfalls the music industry has in store for any new artist. Feuds with major labels, artists getting dropped after their first album, the shady side of contracts - all hazards of dealing with a machine who's bottom line is profits rather than culture.
As the independent approach to promotion and distribution comes to the fore with the detonation of the Internet, the constriction of having a massive talent pool screened through an industry interested only in money is finally beginning to relax. Meet one of the forerunners of the homegrown movement, a man who has been scaling Mt. Hip Hop since the early 90's in Brooklyn's Glenwood Projects.
Seven years after establishing his base-camp, Psycho+Logical Records, Necro is poised to summit. Besides dropping unprecedented recordings from the likes of Goretex, Mr. Hyde and Ill Bill, Necro has been concocting world-class beats and honing some of the most brutal rhymes ever heard. When our new Earwaks UK correspondent, Louis Soul caught up with him at a hotel in London’s King's Cross, he had this to say about navigating the industry on his own ship, hooking up with fans and artistic integrity.
EW: So why did you start making hip hop, because you used to be into heavy metal, didn't you?
NECRO: Yeah when I was 10 or 11, I was doing death metal, opening up for Sepultura, Obituary and all these metal groups.
EW: That was with you band Injustice right?
NECRO: Yeah that's right…and we were doing that in '88 and '89, and what happened was we tried to get deals with metal labels, but we weren't really getting the response we wanted, so we were also doing the hip hop because of where we lived…in the Glenwood Projects in Brooklyn…so we were rapping and getting into it and felt we were good…this was in the real early stages of demos, like 1990, and we just kept working on it…I'm talking like demos where the first ones sounded really amateur, and by 1992 the style started to develop. By '93 I pretty much had my whole brutal style down…because on the rare demos and freestyle tapes that I had put out, you could hear me in '92, '93 rapping real brutal, evil shit. So it kind of evolved very fast from death metal to hip hop. The influence was from death metal but it was still hip hop.
EW: So it was quite a progressive transformation?
NECRO: It was progressive yeah, because it was hard to go from death-mode to rapping, with the hip hop influences that were around at the time, because all we were listening to was Rakim or KRS, but we were also listening to Main Source, A Tribe Called Quest, and Large Professor. The first rhymes were a mixture of Native Tongues style mixed with a bit of G-Rap mixed with a little Kane and then we incorporated our own style into it, so by '94 we fully had our own style. I listened to everything, but big influences for me were Rakim, Kane and KRS-one as far as hip hop, but in terms of metal influences, Metallica, Slayer, Mega Death, Sepultra and Obituary are the groups that I personally was influenced by.
EW: How about the Psycho+Logical Records label and the progression you're making with that?
NECRO: This year will be the most progressive because in 2004-2005, I dropped 14 albums in 17 months on the label and then I got a little burnt out because I had been dropping so many albums and I was in the studio non-stop, but from a business perspective I did good, I grossed over $1.2 million independently in those 2 years. And then, figure in that I was making money in 2000, '01, '02, '03 because of "I Need Drugs" "Gory Days" and "Brutality Part 1" - all those records brought in a lot of money, they all did like $20-30,000 each. So I racked up a lot of money in 5-6 years. I grossed over $1.5 million in record sales, but that doesn't mean I got that much in the bank, because it almost cost that much to make it. I spent so much on promotion. You know, every dime I get I pump it back in.
EW: Did you set up Psycho+Logical because the major labels were not showing interest?
NECRO: People were being shady through the lawyers I had, people were just talking about how other people were getting signed and I was like what about my shit? But people didn't want white rappers then, it was a lot of stupid shit.
But then I would read a lot of Master P interviews and he would talk about how he was doing it independently and giving advice to people, showing the youth stuff that other people weren't talking about. You couldn't catch Russell (Simmons) giving you actual advice, but you knew he was a big guy by reading his interviews, giving the money break down of the CD and what it sold for. So when I started hearing this from Master P I thought you know what, if you can do it, then I can do it, so that's when I started the label. I pressed up a thousand "I Need Drugs" CDs and I got rid of them pretty fast, then I made a hundred kids fling CDs for me. Literally, I had a hundred kids working for me, all fans…I would get them to write their names on a pad at a show, and then I would call 'em up the next day:
"Yo, what's up, it's Necro. What up man, you got a job? You wanna work for me? Alright you got a job selling "I Need Drugs" CDs. You're gonna be like a legal drug dealer, you make $5 dollars off each CD."
So I would give them 10, 20, 30 CDs and they gotta pay me in 30 days. Some kids took 10, some 20 and some 30, and out of the 100 kids that worked for me, maybe 5 screwed me over with money.
EW: Was that just in Brooklyn?
NECRO: No, all over the world…I had kids from Australia getting down with the programme, kids from the UK, and kids from all over America, everywhere. What happened was, anyone I would speak with, I got their email, and so I was always in contact with fans on emails, message boards and at shows. Anybody that emailed me, say a kid from the UK emailed me… actually one of the kids from the UK was one of the 5 who ripped me off.
But yeah, whatever, it was cool. I definitely know he promoted me, so at the end of the day, even if I didn't get the money from the CDs, I still got promotion from him playing it and giving it to people. He just kept the money - it probably cost me $30 for him to give 10 CDs to 10 fans, but back then I didn't care, I was at a grass roots level, I answered every email I got, even when I opened my Myspace account, I answered every message I got.
EW: Do you still try to do that now?
NECRO: I can't answer Myspace messages because I just don't have the time… I only answer to girls. To be straight up, I'll answer bitches because I fuck bitches from Myspace. I get pussy. I fucked over 5 bitches from Myspace before I went on tour, and after the tour I fucked 10 bitches from Myspace in 2007 alone.
EW: Well one of my questions was actually…have you got down with many…if any, porn stars?
NECRO: Well they all blew me. I could have boned them, but these are girls I know have been fucking everyday, so I opted out! I could fuck my own groupie fans that I know are fucking, but not everyday. These girls are boning everyday though, you know they get tested and use rubbers sometimes, but I don't trust
those bitches and I gotta be careful! I'm not saying I wouldn't fuck them - I just wasn't there long enough.
EW: Are the days of making songs for people like Cage well and truly over?
NECRO: I did beats for the dude and I haven't done anything for him in 11 years, but everyone seems to bring that situation up because what I did with him was monumental and crazy back then. People loved it so much that they still want it, but our relationship wasn't working out. We weren't really clicking like that. I'm more of a thug and he's not really like that…he's more of a different style which is his own. I was more barbarian - and honestly, it was back in '96, so to talk about it now is funny, because I was asked about it earlier today as well. Yo, it was 11 years ago. That shit had a big impact because people were loving it when it came out... but its cool, because people love what I'm doing now, and in 2001.
EW: It's probably good to know that people are still giving you recognition for work you did 10-11 years ago…
NECRO: Yeah because I never blew up. So I don't think people look at it like 'Oh look at Necro, he blew up'. Some people say I'm as big as I'm ever gonna be. People don't understand that I grossed over 2 million in 2004/5, they don't know what goes down behind scenes. They just see banners on websites, ads etc… They don't understand that I drop records, I have a catalogue. There's many things I do that get dough.
I'll explain it like Wal-Mart. It took them 11 years to get that dough, but now, Wal-Mart is the number one biggest company on the planet. So if you analyze it, its like this dude is doing almost as good, if not better than Wal-Mart did in the same amount of time. But you see artists that come out, drop their first album when they're 23 years old, they blow up really big but then get dropped before their next album and the next time you hear about them, they're 35 and only
selling 2,000 copies.
EW: Is that why you think you get a lot of props from the underground scene?
NECRO: I think its because I have a lot of integrity, I don't sell out. I don't just go and take a deal from someone and go and put out a bullshit album, I don't just drop an album that's going to be whack. I've invested too much in what I do. They say most businesses don't last a year; even fewer last more than five years and most never make ten. I'm already in my seventh year and I just added a new team.
It's like you're a company climbing and the industry is throwing rocks at you. The first year you're gonna get hit by all these rocks but now you're strong enough. They just throw other shit down at you. I'm in my seventh year now. The move I just made will mean that whatever you throw at me, you can't knock me off. Sooner or later I'll be so indestructible you'll never knock me down.
Whereas some dude just gets signed and hover-crafted to the top of the mountain. He's weak and didn't have the strength to do it on his own, so when things don't work out, the label knocks him down. He hits the floor, he's ten years older now, and he had to sit with them through their bullshit deals that had no promotion. He's fucked now. I might because of the snowball I'm building and the way I'm going, its like by the time I'm 33, its gonna blow up in a way that will last forever. Some people might not like me, but the people that do like me are going to be with me forever, because I didn't try and put out a record just by signing with some dude to be commercial.
EW: Do you think your style of rap, and the explicitness of it, has helped you in any way?
NECRO: I don't think it's much about the explicitness. I'm not really dropping shit for the sake of making money. You see rappers who just drop records for their $5,000 advanced cheque; they'll put anything together. Whereas regardless of whether a CD of mine is good or not in the opinion of anyone else, I felt it was banging when I dropped it - I wouldn't have dropped it otherwise.
I think a lot of people in the game will drop shit that isn't banging, and they know its sub-par but they will, just to get some sort of money. It happens all the time, so you know…that shit ain't good for them because that one album could be the album. Like Mobb Deep, they dropped a few albums that were kind of 'meh', and I think it affected them because now I don't think I'll ever get that Murda Muzik feeling again, because they already fucked up so many records. Maybe after the first one I let 'em slide, but then they keep coming with the crap: Amerikaz Nightmare sucked, The Infamy was 'meh'and Blood Money was the worst. For me, its like my fans can't say I've dropped anything that's weak. They like everything. It keeps me steady…
When I get to the top it's going to be solid. This may sound egotistical or whatever, but I'll be the type that will be sitting on $50 mil' because that's what happens when you build your own business. It can happen to anyone who does this and constantly backs it and pumps money behind it. Not just some dickhead that says he's doing it. I really do it.
Every CD of mine is in chain stores, I own every master recording. When I talk rugged street shit it ain't a lie. Ain't nobody in the game can say they played me or anyone I rolled with…hasn't happened….if somebody wants to test that, we just look at it as another opportunity to show that we're rugged. That's one of the things that the kids love. Kids want to know that there's white kids that are rugged and can represent them. American hip hop, you look at it on TV, and all they do is diss white people. When kids see a guy like Necro, who's from Brooklyn and white, who's rugged and ain't having it, they get proud.
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fuck necro
mobb deep mother fucker...you will be nothing more then a shock rapper who aint reppin real hip hop...
shut the fuck up...
necro is the shyt
mobb deep is sum shyt necro can spit yall fucken buster cant handle his sick and wicked raps he makes all his own beats i mean cum on that cat is fresh on the fucken mic he brought rap and rock 2 new levels i dnt give a fuck what yall have to say
sick
STD is the best Necro track ever
ill
necro you have got to be one of the most ruthless illest fuckin rappers ive evre heard in my life your style is like nobody else, fuck all them fucks who say your whack , they can choke on a fuckin dick
BROOKLYN
WHAT UPZZZ? ILL;BILL I SAY YOUR MUSIC AND
Death Metal Hip-Hop
Death Metal and hip-hop? I will have to check this out. I am a metal fan and thought the whole Rap/Metal thing was all right. Anthrax/Public Enemy, Run DMC/ Aerosmith and Ja Rule with Metallica so I will check it out. Sounds all right actually.
can't touch this
as sick and twisted as necro may be...you can't hate on an artist who produces and flows equally as good. it took one live show for me to pick up 4 of his cd's after. maybe being white helps my appeal...?