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 Lazy
Habits
Interview
interview 0255 added
07.11.04 words: Nikesh technical:
QED
Live hip-hop bands seem to be on the rise.
There is this collective growing in London, born out of a need to express
yourself outside the box (sampler, that is). Live bass and drums and guitars and
:gulp: synths are gripping the nation. Imperial Leisure, The Pistachios,
Dirtburg and now Lazy Habits. They all form one big live hip-hop love-in with
frequent guesting and cross-band projects.
Lazy Habits, though, this one niggles and I don’t know why. They seem more of a
collective, based around BirthMark’s rhymes. A group of sub-groups and on-loan
beatboxers and somewhere in there a linking strand. Downtempo, jazzy, sombre and
almost, melancholy live hip-hop. There is a real edginess to Lazy Habits that
isn’t quite brought out by the others (discounting the BC400 branch of the
Pistachios). And on record, they sound just as focussed. Something hard to do
with live instruments. However, their need to hail samplers mean that rather
than spend hours mixing real-time drum patterns with middle eight basses, they
use the sampler to sample up their live instruments. Another anomaly. From The
Untold contingent’s eloquent and amazing rapping to the percussionist’s mad
MPC’ing and a cracking bassist, Lazy Habits are going to be the live hip-hop
band for the scene. Yes, Nikesh, you say, you’ve been full of hyperbole the last
5 interviews you’ve done. Everyone seems to be the next big thing.
 And
I mean it.
What an exciting time it is to be listening to UK hip-hop.
I caught up with BirthMark from Lazy Habits in a Canary Wharf gastro-pub on
Sunday. We chatted, and I was easy, easy like Sunday Morning…
Please introduce yourself and your crew:
My name is Plain James, BirthMark, Lazy Habits was my MC name but I got a live
crew by the same name. I guess I’m Lazy Habits and they are the Lazy Habits
collective. It’s anything between a 6-piece live band and 13/14 people on stage.
A lots of guests. We can break that down to a decks and MC show. We have 2 MC’s,
me and my boy Skinhorse. Full live band has bass, guitar, drums, keys,
percussion, MPC, decks. Extended family, there’s an outer ring and we’re jamming
with Untold, a South London crew. They MC with us all the time, especially
Compound Profound. We got a beatboxer called Wan Dan, from a Reading posse
called Precise Meeting Point. He’s heavy as hell. That’s the crew.
Describe the sound and the ethos of the band.
Sound-wise, most of the guys are jazz or funk based. I’m not too keen on the
funk element. But jazz-wise, it’s a smooth lazy vibe. Kinda loungy. It’s quite
summery. We played some outdoor venues this year. It’s quite laid back, not too
in your face. The whole point of the name was something I took on because I was
a lazy fucker and I wasn’t getting anything done. I took that name to remind me
of the things I do that stop me from being the person that I wanna be or could
be, musically. We try and keep the lyrics as true as possible, life through the
eyes of us. I don’t know if we’re setting the world to rights as such, but we’re
certainly pointing out a few inconsistencies.
"...Basically,
never stop pushing, every second you get, keep pushing..."
The EP, “Surface Dirt” is that Lazy Habits the MC or the whole crew?
It’s the whole crew, the collective. That’s everything. There’s one track on
there that I recorded and produced myself. I played bass on it, and the samples
themselves are of us jamming but I cut it up. I did on my own with an engineer.
It’s the one called “On Our Way.” The other three are collective efforts.
Tell us about the EP then…
We just kinda got together and set to work on a few tunes that I brought in. We
moved on past those after jamming them and learning them. The learning process
of getting the band together… once we got to know each other, the songs just
came naturally out of that. They were the first few songs we wrote and we had a
great vibe that we wanted to get down as soon as possible on CD. We needed to
get it out. There’s some party tunes on there, some past relationship stuff. A
slight political edge but nothing much yet.
What’s the difference between Lazy Habits on stage and Lazy Habits in the
studio?
It’s different really. One of the songs on the EP, “On Our Way” was recorded on
computer with one engineer but it has our trumpet and keyboard player on it. But
the essence of it is an instrumental approaching it from the standard hip-hop
sampled-up, loop-based backing track and laying vocals on that. The rest of the
tunes were recorded as a band in a big studio that we were lucky to get for
little money. The whole idea with the band was to make it sound like it was
sampled. So you have a live band and they’re not looped up but the idea is that
they’ve taken a section from another piece of music and looped it up so it does
sound like a sample. Somewhere between the two I guess.
What inspires you to make music?
 It’s
not so much what inspires me… I find it impossible not to. Everywhere I go,
whatever I think about, whatever I do, it’s always a rhyme or a beatbox or
planning what the next thing is going to be. It’s impossible to not think about
music and this project. It’s a day and night thing, 24 hours… I’ve been doing
music since I was 13. I never really thought I had anything serious or good
enough to put out till we had this whole Lazy Habits thing. It took years and
years to put together but it was worth it.
How did you all meet?
The whole crew took about two and a half years to put together. I moved down
from Liverpool to London about four years ago. Up there I was in a couple of
bands, a jazz-funk band with the bass player from Lazy Habits, Colin and the
trumpet player, Lester Brown. There was another crew up there, which my MC was
in. DNA, who were a bit trip-hop. We were guesting on there and knew each other
from that but we all lost contact when I moved down to London. I was fed up with
being in a band and having to compromise all the time. If you didn’t like
something in a song but because it was a democracy, you had to compromise what
you thought it should sound like. I couldn’t be fucked with that anymore. I
decided I was going to put something together based around my ideas and what I
wanted to do. It took about two years to find the right people. Lester, the
trumpet player was always going to be involved. He was the first, I had ideas of
using the other MC but he was still in Liverpool. So he took ages. Colin, I was
with in another band. All the Untold boys are friends of Skinhorse from primary
school. They’ve been rhyming together since they were knee-high. Steph, our
drummer, is 18, a jazz drummer who I met through an old dealer. I used to go
round to score off this guy and I used to see this little kid in the corner,
caned out of his head all the time…
… He made a good impression on you obviously…
Yeah, these two dealers used to buzz about how good their drummer was, cos they
had this rock band. He never used to say much, he’d just sit in the corner and
he was 16 at the time. I heard him play and he was fucking amazing. I didn’t
initially think about using him cos the beats were still coming from the
computer. All the other instruments were growing but the drums weren’t
essential. I went to Amsterdam with him and that’s where we started to click on
a level. We snapped him up. Everyone in the crew is right at the top of their
game in terms of the instruments they are playing. My percussion and MPC player
is Dan Massi, he masters for Taskforce and Louise Slipperz. He’s tapped in on
that side. He brings in the samples and his influence in the band has really
upped it by bringing the sample element back in, sooner than we expected. DJ
Itchy is from a live drum’n’bass crew called Step 13, he does all the web stuff
too. He’s a real business head and is really organisational. When you meet good
people, you just hook them up as soon as possible. It’s a case of like-minded
people with skills helping each other. If you’re feeling other people help them
out.
"...I’m
all up for downloads but think about who you’re downloading it from when you’re
doing it..."
Who are the UK hip-hop figures who inspired you?
I haven’t heard much from him in a little bit but I have to say Braintax.
Fucking square one. He’s got it locked down on 360 degrees. He’s got the beats,
MC side, business side of things. He’s created Low Life, which is a stable of
artists who are the cream of the cream. It’s pretty spot on. In terms of
lyricism, people like Klash, Jehst, Taskforce… The Untold is just something
else. People will hear it one day. The people I have played their EP to is just
buzzing about it. The Delegates of Culture. Tons of people, Lowkey is excellent,
Doc Brown. The difference between absolutely brilliant lyricists and heavy MC’s
like Yungun, Mystro… punchline galor-ists. The UK scene is just amazing. I feel
so many heads on the UK scene. I’m surprised they’re not felt on a higher
level..
What changes would you make to the scene to make sure these people were felt
on a higher level?
Some people are happy keeping it underground. Anyone who’s seen to be getting a
bit of press… recently suddenly SkinnyMan releases an album and there’s talk of
it charting and suddenly people hate that album. As soon as someone tries to
make a move out of the scene, they slam it automatically. It seemed to happen
with Jehst a little. It’s like people want to keep it underground because it’s
quite precious to them. You don’t have to go and see these people at Wembley or
where you’re packed in with thousands of people. You can see them at your local
club with 50 people there. That’s nice but it needs to be bigger than that…
 People
need to pay bills…
Exactly. People need to start buying UK hip-hop instead of ripping it off the
net. I’m all up for downloads but think about who you’re downloading it from
when you’re doing it. Yeah, if you ain’t got the money to do it, do it. But if
you’ve got the money to represent UK artists, do it. If you’re feeling it, show
them, go buy them. If something’s released and it sells, it’s gone and you can’t
get it anymore.
Maybe it’s cos a lot of stuff only comes out on vinyl, immediately cutting
off the CD buying audience. Not everyone has a record player. I know it’s
expensive but people should think about CD singles or something.
It’s a good point… I mean, you go into the dreaded HMV or Virgin, the UK hip-hop
section is formidable. They have Jehst, Taskforce, Louis Slipperz… all that.
Especially the recent spout of releases on CD like SkinnyMan or Mystro or Yungun
have all been on CD which has really helped. More people are talking about them.
But another aspect they haven’t embraced is the download market. You can get all
these things from Soulseek or Kazaa. None of the record label websites offer
downloads as an option. They could offer them for download off the net and it
keeps their overheads down. People know where to go then. I haven’t seen any of
the labels offer this stuff.
Who are your hip-hop heroes?
Since day 1, people like De La Soul and Tribe kept the vibe that the band tries
to re-create, that whole jazz thing. You can listen back to De La and it still
sounds fresh now. A lot of hip-hop dates but not them. Stuff like Tribe doesn’t
date for me. When I grew up in Spain, there wasn’t a lot of underground stuff to
get into. The first hip-hop stuff I heard was “Straight Outta Compton.” All the
swearing made it very attractive for me as a kid. I feel people who try
something different, like Mos Def, MF Doom. I know they’re not old enough to be
legends yet but I feel people who try to do something different. I respect that
in an artist. Outkast, for example, a band like that push it to the limit.
Whether you like it or not, you have to respect that. Indie bands like Radiohead,
I respect as artists because they’ve pushed from day one and never stopped
pushing. Outkast do the same thing, especially considering how major they are. I
rate people like them a lot. As I say, I rate a lot of people in the scene who
have been around for ages. Braintax has got it locked down. I respect him.
"...When
you meet good people, you just hook them up as soon as possible. It’s a case of
like-minded people with skills helping each other. If you’re feeling other
people help them out..."
What projects are you working on at the moment?
 At the moment, we are busy on the record label side. We have a tiny label called
Run’n’Jump Records. We’re busy trying to put out a few releases on that. We have
the Untold’s first EP. Hopefully we’ll get that out soon. Other stuff, I’m
working with Compound Profound from the Untold on a few tracks we’ve been given
by a few producers. A guy called Theo from Abstractions is working on that with
us. I want to put out a straight beats EP out, straight hip-hop. We got some
proper hip-hop coming out, with some production by our drummer and a few secret
UK heads. A French hip-hop producer called Grammaphone, we’re putting his
instrumental EP out in January/February. It’s about keeping the collective and
building it up. We’re also working on breaking down the live show to decks and
an MC so we can take that about. Tons of instrumentals, stacks of them. There’s
talk of a double A-side EP thing with Dirtburg as well. Get that whole live
element on vinyl. We definitely need to get our stuff out on vinyl.
Any
advice for upcoming musicians?
Yeah man. Basically, never stop pushing, every second you get, keep pushing. Do
what you do. Make links for the right reasons. When you meet people who are
talented and like-minded, get them involved. Just don’t try to get anyone
involved. Do it off your own back and keep pushing. If you want people to hear
what you’re doing, the UKHH forums are great places to show people. You get
producers like 563 and Caramac and Ghost who are on there… They’ll give you
honest and decent feedback. The scene is small so to get feedback off your
favourite artists isn’t hard and they’re happy to do it. They do it for love, no
one does UK hip-hop for money, cos there isn’t any in it. Keep doing it. Get out
of the bedroom, get down to the jams or to Deal Real, get on the mic. Keep
getting feedback, get knocked back and build yourself up. Keep pushing all the
time.
Right, finally, shoutouts and shameless plugs…
Yeah, the Lazy Habits’ EP “Surface Dirt” is out through RnJ records. You can get
that through www.lazyhabits.co.uk, Suspect Packages or Headnod. Big up to
Delegates of Culture, Untold, Imperial Leisure, Dirtburg, big up to Kobi One,
Last Rites, big up to everyone in the scene. Big up.
-
Nikesh Shukla
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