On Saturday I got on the phone with my man 6th Sense to talk about his career, producing, rapping, Super Friends, collaboration and a ton of other stuff. Despite some initial technical difficulties, we got in a good 45 minutes of tape. It went really well, and there are definitely some good quotables in here. So without further ado, It’s a 6th Sense Interview Yo!
Judge Mental: So what’s up with you?
6th Sense: Nothing much, what’s today? Saturday? Yeah, I’m just getting ready to do a session today. Getting ready for the Superbowl tomorrow. Got the kitchen fired up, you know just chillin.
Judge Mental: On Tuesday you have a project called It’s a 6th Sense Beat Yo! coming out, which is kind of an interesting project, rereleasing some of the instrumentals of stuff you did over the past year. Can you tell us a little bit about how you decided to release this, and what we should be looking forward to with this?
6th Sense: Doing beats is just something I’ve been getting better and better at, and I think that it’s easy enough for people to just overlook the fact that I’m the one making the beats. So I decided to put together a collection of instrumentals that I produced. It ain’t even half of what I’ve done, just a nice assortment, a nice variety. I feel like the quality of instrumental CDs has gone quite considerably. And even though it’s just one producer on this CD, there’s enough variety on it that cats can at least get up and freestyle to it. They can have a whole good session and cats will be able to record tracks to it. And just in general, say you’re doing some work on the computer or something like that. You don’t necessarily want to hear somebody rapping, you might just wanna hear instrumentals. So, it’s about the music.
Judge Mental: Does this mean we’re going to see a push towards seeing more of 6th Sense the producer over 6th Sense the rapper?
6th Sense: Yeah, you could put a little weight into that statement. Yeah, sure. You know, in general I got a lot of things in the pipeline right now as far as me being a producer. I love producing. I work with artists. They work with me. I am an artist myself, so when we work hand in hand there’s an understood chemistry involved. In general, I think I’m a good producer because I’m a good artist. And I think I’m a good artist because I’m a good producer. For 2009, at the moment I’m not trying to hole up in the studio, make beats, and then rhyme on them. Not at the moment. I’m gonna continue to rhyme, but I got tons and tons of people who’ve been hitting me up to collaborate with them. And I’m all for that. I’m completely down for that. I’ll come down and rhyme on anything you guys want me to rock on. And on the flipside, I’m just gonna be producing for everybody.
Judge Mental: You touched briefly on being both a producer and a rapper, when you’re rapping and it’s on someone else’s beat, is it sometimes kind more difficult to vibe with that? Is it a different process than when you know the instrumental so intimately cause you made it?
6th Sense: I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily difficult. I don’t find much of anything too difficult. If I have I have to rock to somebody else’s beat, I’m not gonna make it too difficult for myself, just cause I feel a certain way about my own beats. I think that would be kind of childish. Music is music. And if I’m working with somebody, I’m working with somebody. We gotta make it work. So it’s never too difficult, unless it’s wack. And seriously, even if it’s wack it won’t be hard. You can ask anybody that I’ve worked with in the studio that I write verses pretty speedy. I don’t let nothing hold me back.
Judge Mental: A minute ago you were talking about collaboration and how you’re open to collaborating with a lot of people. Recently you were on a massive track called Superfriends. We recently had an interview with Homeboy Sandman, and we got to ask him a few questions about that, I just want to get your perspective about how that came about for you, what was happening that day…
6th Sense: Yeah. That’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about. I wasn’t planning on doing that. I don’t think anyone was planning on doing that track. We were all out in Brooklyn, we were out in the studio and I made a comment and I said, “Yo this room is kinda serious right here.” And Print put on this track that he had. It was already him and Mickey, and [$trictly Busine$$] and Fresh Daily, and he just kind of put it out there, and he was just kinda like, yo, you wanna get on it. So that was just a real fun day. I really enjoyed doing my verse. And a lot of people said that they liked the verse. I think it’s a cool song. We shot a video for that a couple weeks ago, that’s gonna be coming soon, so look for that video. It’s gonna be crazy! (starts laughing) It’s not gonna be a regular video. You can’t do a regular kind of video to a superhero kind of song. It’s gotta be out of this world. Vid Aroyo is the director.
Judge Mental: I’m looking forward to it. I was actually supposed to come out for the shoot, but I had to fly somewhere that day, and missed it, I was kind of mad about that.
6th Sense: Yeah, it was snowing like crazy, but a lot of people came and chilled. In fact there was a lot of “quiet on the set” moments. Like, “shut the fuck up,” cause there was so many people chillin’ and hanging out and stuff.
Judge Mental: It’s kind of interesting because a lot of those people who were on the track are like, for lack of a better term, Internet MCs. Where they gained their biggest following in blogs and all that. How do you feel about this new generation of up and coming artists who’s primary means of getting their music out is over the internet. What’s your take on that?
6th Sense: I mean it’s cool. I’ve been doing music for so long. There used to be so many things standing in the way of people hearing your music. Even in one of the eras when I came up doing music, people were really shunned for being on the internet. If you had some type of following in the internet, people would mock you for that, they’d call you an Internet Rapper. Just fast forward to now, and everybody’s gotta use the internet because it’s not about a record store no more. It’s not about a live show no more. It’s just about whatever. People want that quick thing. So for me, I think it’s cool from the aspect of, I do sooooo much music. And basically I can make a song, and within an hour, I can get feedback on my song from all around the world. So that’s really cool.
As far as this whole generation I guess you could say, of rappers, I dunno if half of these guys have really cut their teeth in the grinding stone of hip hop, and music and trying to be heard. It’s like getting the ten-speed bike before you even had a no-speed bike with training wheels. You know what I mean? In order to really know how to use a ten-speed, you need to learn all the bikes leading up to that. I think it’s good. There’s a lot of dope artists out there. There’s some real real real dope artists. I think cat’s kind of got it confused with the whole internet thing too. You know I’m not trying to be somebody, I’m trying to do something. And if you keep that in mind, you can kind of put things into perspective. Making music is cool, making music is fun. But some people do this for a real reason. So, that’s the internet.
Hope you enjoyed the interview, keep your eye on the site for the rest of the interview coming soon!
1 comment:
good look man
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