The Pharcyde Interview

By Dirty Backpacks, producer of Late Nite Noise, Buffalo, Toronto, and Western New York’s #1 Hip Hop TV show.



Audio
Mixed Greens
Knew You

Videos
knew You

Review
Read our Review





It really has been a bizarre ride for The Pharcyde. After dropping their classic album Bizarre Ride II The Pharcyde, which spawned the hit singles “Passin’ Me By” and “Yo Mama”, they seemed poised to become sort of a West Coast De La/Tribe Called Quest hybrid, but with their own style and their own sensibilities. The world was excited, but their 1995 follow-up Labcabincalifornia did not generate the kind of notoriety and sales that were expected, though the album was vastly underrated and loved by most purists. Then, first Fatlip, and then Slim Kid Tre, left the group and The Pharcyde became a duo. Some thought it was over, and that they couldn’t survive, but here we are – 2005 and they return with guest appearances, solo projects, and a hot new single – “Knew U” – off their 4th album, Humboldt Beginnings. With a confident attitude and a focus on the tasks at hand, they re-emerge with an album that just may surprise you. So, what is their place in history? How do they fit in to today’s Hip Hop world? Read on as The Pharcyde discusses Lauryn Hill, Jay-Z, their love for the “herbal essences”, their thoughts on music and Hip Hop as a whole, and if this album is their last hurrah.






Dirty Backpacks: Y’all dropped a gem on the consciousness of Hip Hop back in 1992 with y’all phenomenal debut Bizarre Ride II The Pharcyde. Now 13 years later and two members lesser, y’all return with your 4th album Humboldt Beginnings. A lot of people don’t know the exact details of the story – what happened in detail that took the Pharcyde from Imani, Fatlip, Booty Brown and Slim Kid Tre, to just Imani and Booty Brown?

Booty Brown: I would just say it’s time…and basically, they just figured out – I think they just wanted to do they own thing, kinda sort of. And that’s just basically it. With time involved, and money involved, and a lot of things involved, it just wound up being the way it is.

Dirty Backpacks: Are y’all still cool with the former members? Is there any hope for a reconciliation or a reunion?

Imani: I look at it like this….it was cool, you know. We planned to do 3 records altogether, that was the whole thing with The Pharcyde. When we first came out, and people started being like “aw naw, y’all joking, y’all gonna do more than that.” It was like, naw – we gonna do 3 records cuz we felt like with the personalities that was involved and the ensemble and the situation of how it was just looking we was like – if we able to pull off 3 records, it’d be incredible if we even do 3 records. So actually it wasn’t even like “oh my gosh, oh my gosh.” I mean, we did 2 records and around the third record…..

Dirty Backpacks: Let’s get to the album. How did the album come about? And what does the title Humboldt Beginnings mean?

Booty Brown: Basically, it’s just a play off of Humboldt County which is a county in California, and Humboldt Beginnings just means we’ve never been big or anything….we’re always approachable kind of people. So, we kind of just wanted to intertwine those two things together:

Dirty Backpacks: The album is definitely fresh and original, and it doesn’t sound too much like anything else out there, yet y’all still got that original Pharcyde feel and attitude. Was that a conscious decision?

Imani: A conscious decision to be yourself? (Booty Brown laughs) Naw, I don’t think it was a conscious decision. We just do what we do. We always just try to not concentrate on what’s going on and really just do us.

Dirty Backpacks: Do you think it may hurt you to not conform to and to change to the current trends in Hip Hop, and you guys worried about no longer being relevant?

Imani: We never were relevant.

Booty Brown: (Cracking up) Not to that point!!!

Imani: Not me, because, to people on the outside looking in, I guess, it seems like we were bigger than we were, but our biggest record – we had a gold record. Which is really like….nothing in these days standards. I mean, we was a cool group, and people liked us, but it was more like a cult following and people just really felt us. I never really felt like that; it was just a small amount of people that really got into us and they loved us like we was supposed to be hella platinum, and then it didn’t matter. So, as far as being relevant, I feel like we in the same position – we never was like The Fugees, the type of group that’s selling like hella platinum around the planet, or say, a Das EFX even, or an Outkast. We was just like a little group, you know – people liked us, it’s cool.

Dirty Backpacks: Aight…the 1st single off the album is “Knew U”, am I’m loving the video. Is it true y’all jacked the equipment from “XXX: State Of The Union” to film it?

The Pharcyde: (Simultaneously bust out in laughter)

Imani: Daaaamn! How did dat ni99a get that sh**….

Booty Brown: (Cutting him off) Hey, I can’t, uh, we can’t uh, say nothing about that….

Imani: (laughing still)

Booty Brown: …if that was sent out – I don’t know who sent that out, but we can’t say nothing about that, know what I’m sayin’? You get people in trouble!

Dirty Backpacks: (Chuckling) Aight – I’ll leave that alone….

Booty Brown: Man, you got some top secret info?!? Where you get THAT from?

Note: The Pharcyde, at no point during this interview, confirmed the interviewer’s claims, nor did they admit, state, or claim that they or anyone associated with them was involved in any questionable or illegal activities when it came to the filming of their video.

Dirty Backpacks: The album is musically diverse, and has a very melodic feel. Who produced the album, and who’d y’all work with?

Imani: We worked with 88 Keys, Ace Boy, Boogie X and (Booty) Brown….Brown handled most of the production.

Booty Brown: It was tight-knit; not a lot of outside, crazy producers or super-big names, or anything. The same way as The Pharcyde always do it.

Dirty Backpacks: It seems to be an underlying theme throughout the album of an appreciation for, why don’t we say, “herbal essences”.

The Pharcyde: (Both chuckle)

Dirty Backpacks: Y’all even got a recipe for special enhanced brownies with the album! And while that ain’t new ground for The Pharcyde, all y’all worried that the album might be classified as a weed album, or criticized for it’s subject matter?

Imani: No. We’re not ever worried about anything. Whatever we feel like doing we just do. Brown had an idea of doing a concept record, and how we look at it is – we not trying to outdo no record, it’s just like….this is the time period that we living in, and this is how we represent ourselves for this go-around, as far as this album collection. I mean, we gonna look at the whole – everything – when we finish making records and step back and look back, but this is just where we at right now. It’s something we wanted to do.

Booty Brown: I feel like that’s just something that we know. There’s a lot of aspects around that whole topic as far as the essence, you know? We just know IT. We know how IT effects people, how when your money’s low you want IT, just everything about IT. Sometimes I think it’s kind of double-sided out there, because basically….people can talk about pimpin’, they can talk about this, they can talk about that, but yet, just talking about something that’s real….it’s like, this is wrong. Like, “that’s wrong, but this is right.” I don’t never worry about that kind of stuff.

Dirty Backpacks: When y’all first came out, y’all was like a breathe of fresh air in a sea of West Coast, like – for lack of a better term – “gangsterism”. And nowadays, the trend would be to talk about to talk about rims, and money, and honeys, and, once again to some extent, “gangsterism”. Do you think that you guys can and will stand out?

Imani: Standing out? It’s not about standing out. Cuz it’s easy to stand out, but it’s just about will people even get a chance to see you cuz it’s so much going on, and it’s so much about money and being on the big screen, on the big stage. People don’t really pay attention to what’s going on expect what’s going on on the big stage. So, that’s more my question – will we even get a chance to compete?

Booty Brown: You know, that’s hard to say. Basically, there’s just a lot of things. I mean, it’s basically all into the song. The song is everything. I mean like Lauryn Hill – I go back to The Fugees – when Lauryn Hill had her song, basically it just broke EVERYTHING as far as a lot of things; the way a lot of people feel about music and what people started listening to. It’s hard generating a song – who’s to say who’s going to come up with that song. I can’t say when it’s going to break. The big stuff just has alot of money behind it.

Dirty Backpacks: Are y’all concerned about a lack of exposure on MTV and BET and that lack of exposure effecting the album sales?

Imani: I can’t be concerned about things that I don’t have any control over. It’s hard to be upset about things that’s out of your control.

Booty Brown: Of course it’s going to be effective. I wouldn’t lie and say “no it’s not effective”, but at the same time, you do what you can. You do the market, and you do you. I mean, you can’t really be chasing after everything. Some people are going to decline you, some people are going to accept you – that’s just how it goes in the whole music industry.

Imani: It’s only so many spots on MTV and on BET. And if those spots are taken….there are so much power and money behind those spots, it’s just like buying ad space in a magazine. There’s only so many spaces in a magazine, and the people that have the biggest money are gonna have the best places.

Booty Brown: And we get, like, the corner page, the back page! The corner page by the classifieds! (Imani chuckles)

Dirty Backpacks: My favorite songs on the album are “Choices”, “Knew You” and “Mixed Greens”. And “Mixed Greens” is original in that it kind of starts out on a Hip Hop type tip, and then it kind of flips to like a Reggae/Dance Hall joint, and then switches back. How did y’all come up with the concept for that song, and who’s that doing the Reggae part?

Booty Brown: Aw, man! We just was like going through different songs, different ideas. Like “okay, we want to do deal with the topic of love”, with weed, we wanted to deal with the topic of hunger. Then we was just like “let’s just make that Dance Hall cut.” But we wanted to slide it in, not just make it all obvious. So, that’s just the way we kinda did it.

Dirty Backpacks: Imani – word is you have a solo album in the works, and I heard Booty Brown on The Gorillaz “Dirty Harry” off their new album. With both of y’all doing side projects and your own things, is this album the last we can expect to see of The Pharcyde as a collective? Will there be more Pharcyde albums?

Booty Brown: I mean, I think so! Definitely!

Imani: How I look at is, like- okay, we got the Humboldt Beginnings thing crackin’ and we got to do things to bring more attention to us as well. So when it’s Booty Brown, it’s The Pharcyde. When it’s Imani, it’s The Pharcyde. We just extensions of it, so when people see us, they see The Pharcyde.

Booty Brown: Yeah, I think right now, our side stuff is to keep things going and for us to have like, solid projects, but at the same time, just to have other projects around so we can have singles coming out, guest appearances, and things of that nature. Since we were under our deal under Delicious Vinyl, we wasn’t able to put out music all the time. We had to wait; we had to get things authorized. And so, just like….not necessarily current trends, but just in music in general, most people are turning out an album a year, while we were turning out an album every 2 or 3 years or even LONGER, just because of all the stipulations that going on. So now, I just feel like I just want to keep turning out music. Like with the singles, you don’t know where you heard it from, but you heard it, you gotta get it – that type of stuff.

Dirty Backpacks: You guys are veterans in the game. What is your take on the current state of Hip Hop?

Booty Brown: MASSIVE. It’s just massive, it’s big and a lot of things come with being big, bad AND good. So, I’ll just say Hip Hop is massive. It’s bad and good, and I don’t think one outweighs the other, being that back in the day, it probably was harder for you to support a family, whereas today you CAN support a family. You can support other workers! Hip Hop is even people that do software….it’s just not music, and it’s just nor people you see rapping – it’s people involved with everything. Now you got people that specialize in Hip Hop as attorneys, you got people that specialize in Hip Hop as far as building equipment, music equipment. So, I think, in all aspects it’s just MASSIVE. People just look at it from the music aspect, but that’s just really one part of it, as far as Hip Hop is concerned.

Dirty Backpacks: Aight….another question, kinda bouncing off that question. Who do you respect – what MCs do you respect, or groups do you respect in Hip Hop today.

Imani: You gotta respect anybody that’s on they grind. I mean, that’s like a trick question. Do you respect them as business individuals, do you respect them as Black men doing they thing in AmeriKKKa….that’s why I say it’s a trick question. We respect everybody doing they thing.

Booty Brown: (cutting in) I would say Jay-Z. I would have to say somebody like Jay-Z, just for the simple fact that it seems like he won the triathlon. As far as – he was the MC, he did that. He had his own label, did that. Now he’s like, president of another label! That’s like the triple go-around stage in Hip Hop! He could just go on forever now, depending on how he does his job. So he set himself in a position …he did it, he did it hard, so I would say somebody like that.

Dirty Backpacks: One last question, guys – finally – what do you guys want to say or get across to both the fans and the public?

Booty Brown: WE ALIVE!!! (both break into laughter)

Imani: Through this interview, or through the music?

Dirty Backpacks: Both.

Imani: That The Pharcyde still makes music. It’s definitely a different situation, but it’s still a valid situation, and we definitely still make music worth listening to. That’s how I look at it. Do you and have fun with it. We just straight L.A.-type ni99as doing the thang, been in the game since ’92. I never would’ve thought we’d still be doing anything 13 years down the road. We just want to have fun with the people, get our music out to the people.

Booty Brown: Yeah, man, I could honestly say….it’s been a hell of an experience! One day we gonna drop the full story, let people know about some stuff. But right now, we not finish with our own story, so we can’t just….drop the bomb! (starts laughing)

Dirty Backpacks: - Aight, I’ll leave that alone. Thanks fellas, I appreciate the interview, and the album’s dope.

The Pharcyde: Word up! Spread the word!