Havoc - "What's Poppin' Tonite" (mp3)
I hadn't thought about it in a while, and literally didn't even really remember it recently until I had popped Havoc's new solo album, The Kush, into my car's CD player and got halfway through the first song, but I actually interviewed the guy about a year and a half ago. Back when the late great West Baltimore record store Sounds N Da Hood was still open, a few months before they relocated down to Atlanta, I'd been building with the owner, Rome, and he asked me to do some writing for his magazine, The Hook-Up. A lot of major label artists came through to do in-store appearances at SNDH, so Rome was good at networking with them and getting interviews for his mag, he just needed writers to be around to come out and do the interviews. So right around the same time frame in the Spring of last year I did an e-mail interview with Chamillionaire (which I think I only ever mentioned here in passing), and a Mobb Deep feature. That in and of itself was kind of an interesting window into how the unpredictability of rap can really fuck up the long lead times of print mags: when I started working on the issue, Chamillionaire had a recent album on the shelves and Mobb Deep's release date was months away, so it made sense to put Cham on the cover. When I finished the articles, Cham's album had sunk down the charts and Mobb's album was one of the most anticipated of the quarter, so Mobb got the cover. And by the time the issue was actually done, Cham had a #1 single and his album had gone platinum, and Mobb had the biggest bomb of the year.
I don't really know if the issue itself ever came out, or at least I never saw a hard copy of it, I assumed Rome kinda dropped the mag when he moved to ATL. I thought about reprinting the articles or some interview excerpts on here, but for the most part they weren't that interesting, standard press junket questions and answers. Plus I'm not a huge fan of either artist, I mean, I like some songs and have The Infamous and everything, but I'm not gonna geek out over them. I went out to SNDH for Mobb's in-store, but I mostly kinda stood around and talked to Rome or whoever while they were signing autographs and shit, and when they left everyone cracked jokes about their height. After they jumped in their promo van to go off and do some interviews I was given Mobb's manager's cell # to call and do a phone interview that night. It still weirds me out to look in my phone and see a number for "Mobb Deep." I've done dozens of interviews at this point but barely any with musicians who can be considered famous in any mainstream terms. I actually prefer talking to regular people who happen to make music, but obviously I'd be happy to meet more famous people if I had the chance, they just don't tend to be great interviews in my experiences.
Havoc pretty much did the whole interview with me, apparently he tends to handle that stuff and never passed the phone to Prodigy, which was alright with me since I generally like Hav as an MC better and respect him a lot as a producer. The interview was standard pre-release hype, optimistic statements about Blood Money that were still plausible a good 6 weeks before it tanked like "it's gonna turn into a classic, it's an album that can't be denied." It's interesting that at the time Havoc was downplaying both the idea that he'd improved as an MC over the years ("they try to say I stepped up lyrically, so I guess I did") and the possibility of dropping a solo joint anytime soon ("I would like to do a solo album, y’know, one day").
And the fact that a solo album seemed to be the furthest thing from Havoc's mind a year just a year before making The Kush might be the reason why it's a pretty mediocre album. More likely after the miserable failure of Blood Money both he and P were presented with the reality that the G-Unit hit machine wouldn't be providing them with a steady stream of projects to work on, nor would it support their solo and side projects, so they started putting feelers out to Koch and other indies. This has been a pretty prosperous year for producer/rapper albums where the creator indulges as an auteur would for better or for worse (Graduation, One Man Band Man, Shock Value), but The Kush isn't that. It's just Havoc burning off a few half-decent beats with weirdly proggy keyboard samples, and half the tracks are dominated by guest verses, mostly by random Mobb Deep weed carrier dudes (and one appearance by Prodigy). "What's Poppin' Tonite" is pretty much the only beat where Havoc breaks out of his minimalist groove and lets some uncharacteristic Space Invader bleeps squeak in at the beginning of every couple measures and then thicken into white noise at the end of each phrase, and it's by far my favorite track. Prodigy isn't the MC he used to be, and this year could've been Havoc's chance to finally come out of P's shadow. Instead, P got with a more consistent producer, Alchemist, and dropped a much better album months ago, and that one's only supposed to be a warmup for his 'real' album. It's a good thing these guys are gonna be brothers in arms making mediocre records well into their golden years, because if they were in competition, Havoc lost.
I hadn't thought about it in a while, and literally didn't even really remember it recently until I had popped Havoc's new solo album, The Kush, into my car's CD player and got halfway through the first song, but I actually interviewed the guy about a year and a half ago. Back when the late great West Baltimore record store Sounds N Da Hood was still open, a few months before they relocated down to Atlanta, I'd been building with the owner, Rome, and he asked me to do some writing for his magazine, The Hook-Up. A lot of major label artists came through to do in-store appearances at SNDH, so Rome was good at networking with them and getting interviews for his mag, he just needed writers to be around to come out and do the interviews. So right around the same time frame in the Spring of last year I did an e-mail interview with Chamillionaire (which I think I only ever mentioned here in passing), and a Mobb Deep feature. That in and of itself was kind of an interesting window into how the unpredictability of rap can really fuck up the long lead times of print mags: when I started working on the issue, Chamillionaire had a recent album on the shelves and Mobb Deep's release date was months away, so it made sense to put Cham on the cover. When I finished the articles, Cham's album had sunk down the charts and Mobb's album was one of the most anticipated of the quarter, so Mobb got the cover. And by the time the issue was actually done, Cham had a #1 single and his album had gone platinum, and Mobb had the biggest bomb of the year.
I don't really know if the issue itself ever came out, or at least I never saw a hard copy of it, I assumed Rome kinda dropped the mag when he moved to ATL. I thought about reprinting the articles or some interview excerpts on here, but for the most part they weren't that interesting, standard press junket questions and answers. Plus I'm not a huge fan of either artist, I mean, I like some songs and have The Infamous and everything, but I'm not gonna geek out over them. I went out to SNDH for Mobb's in-store, but I mostly kinda stood around and talked to Rome or whoever while they were signing autographs and shit, and when they left everyone cracked jokes about their height. After they jumped in their promo van to go off and do some interviews I was given Mobb's manager's cell # to call and do a phone interview that night. It still weirds me out to look in my phone and see a number for "Mobb Deep." I've done dozens of interviews at this point but barely any with musicians who can be considered famous in any mainstream terms. I actually prefer talking to regular people who happen to make music, but obviously I'd be happy to meet more famous people if I had the chance, they just don't tend to be great interviews in my experiences.
Havoc pretty much did the whole interview with me, apparently he tends to handle that stuff and never passed the phone to Prodigy, which was alright with me since I generally like Hav as an MC better and respect him a lot as a producer. The interview was standard pre-release hype, optimistic statements about Blood Money that were still plausible a good 6 weeks before it tanked like "it's gonna turn into a classic, it's an album that can't be denied." It's interesting that at the time Havoc was downplaying both the idea that he'd improved as an MC over the years ("they try to say I stepped up lyrically, so I guess I did") and the possibility of dropping a solo joint anytime soon ("I would like to do a solo album, y’know, one day").
And the fact that a solo album seemed to be the furthest thing from Havoc's mind a year just a year before making The Kush might be the reason why it's a pretty mediocre album. More likely after the miserable failure of Blood Money both he and P were presented with the reality that the G-Unit hit machine wouldn't be providing them with a steady stream of projects to work on, nor would it support their solo and side projects, so they started putting feelers out to Koch and other indies. This has been a pretty prosperous year for producer/rapper albums where the creator indulges as an auteur would for better or for worse (Graduation, One Man Band Man, Shock Value), but The Kush isn't that. It's just Havoc burning off a few half-decent beats with weirdly proggy keyboard samples, and half the tracks are dominated by guest verses, mostly by random Mobb Deep weed carrier dudes (and one appearance by Prodigy). "What's Poppin' Tonite" is pretty much the only beat where Havoc breaks out of his minimalist groove and lets some uncharacteristic Space Invader bleeps squeak in at the beginning of every couple measures and then thicken into white noise at the end of each phrase, and it's by far my favorite track. Prodigy isn't the MC he used to be, and this year could've been Havoc's chance to finally come out of P's shadow. Instead, P got with a more consistent producer, Alchemist, and dropped a much better album months ago, and that one's only supposed to be a warmup for his 'real' album. It's a good thing these guys are gonna be brothers in arms making mediocre records well into their golden years, because if they were in competition, Havoc lost.
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on Monday, September 24, 2007 at 10:13 PM.
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