A talented beat maker in his own right, a good portion of the album's production is credited to Grip himself. Track Listing: 1. Showtime That's Entertainment 2. Hip Hop Classic 3. Win The War 4. Tomorrow 5. Handle That 6. But Anyway 7. Paper Cup feat.
Percee P 8. A Penny feat. Richie Cunning Out Of Service Poppin' Pockets Remix feat. Versatility Unlike Sixto Rodriguez, Grip was fairly easy to track down.
He has his own website. And that website has an email address. So I reached out. He responded and was actually putting the finishing touches on a new album. We ended up talking for three hours. Below is a small portion of our conversation. Searching For Brokeland: An Interview With Grip Grand Jesse Taylor speaks with the rapper, producer, and budding instrumentalist about his intriguing new project and a lifelong dedication to the art of hip-hop. By Jesse Taylor August 24, How would you describe the album and what inspired you to make a project like this?
Grip Grand: Ayyy, thanks for the feedback man, much appreciated. Any artist of my stature is always appreciative of anyone coming out to talk about my art.
I do only things that I love and that I want to do for myself. In what way? Grip Grand: Most of my projects these days are about putting some restrictions in place to really challenge myself. It was in the year leading up to the last presidential election, and I wanted to put something positive into the world. We have plenty of darkness in the world. I am a self-taught musician with limited musicianship.
My only training is 15 years of choir, going back to when I was like 6 or 7 at the San Francisco Community Music Center. The vocals on the album are all from me. With the instruments, not being trained, I had to play and record one bar at a time.
It was really painstaking. A lot of digital correction and editing of wrong notes. What it ended up being is me sampling myself and creating something that I hope the ear will be fooled into thinking is a band. The other restriction was using only instruments I had around my house. A lot of baby rattles and miniature tambourines. The album took me back to some classic hip-hop songs.
Did you purposely choose songs that were famous, or in some cases not so famous, because of the rap songs that sampled them? So Outsider Art is an album of covers. I had to look it up on WhoSampled. I added drum breaks to mine, for example. Just one of many great songs I first discovered through skate videos.
It has way more s than the Band of Horses version. Do you see yourself making albums like Broakland or Brokelore again? Grip Grand: I just make music for me. If other people are into it, dope. If not, whatever. I wish I was. Why I did it was because I had to do it. Art can be whatever it wants to be. Art should have no rules other than the artist wants to make it.
Creating art is not a choice. You need to get it out there. It feels external. Right now, the stuff that I can get down on paper and that I feel comfortable getting down is stuff that comes directly from my personal experience. Rap stuff comes out because part of what we do when we are creating is we are processing what we see in the world.
It goes through you and we put it back out. But not every song can be that. Nobody wants to hear that. Sometimes you just need to go at it and try to blow each other off the stage. Not everything has to be serious or political. Or even, do you wonder if it might get rediscovered and appreciated today for how good it is? To have anyone talking about me at all.
The discovery system today is a lot different; you can go back a lot further and wider. I control the catalogue. People are still buying Welcome to Broakland from Brokelore was lost in the shuffle when it came out. It hurt my heart. There were a number of factors why. Record label financial issues. We put all this work into something I thought was really great and that other people thankfully have told me, now, has had an impact on them. But at the time it just … it just … nobody heard about it.
It just came out and there was no follow up. The way I am, staying in a basement making music all the time and making art is my strong suit. All the business afterwards is really a struggle for me. So I would have done well in a label environment that could handle all that for me. That could book a tour and force me to go do it. If not for the record label issues, Brokelore would have done that for me. And I was ready. AG was going to do a European Tour with me.
That would have been a good tour. It would have been a good look for me. But then shit was just done. I always have to lift myself up a little bit. No one else is going to do it for you.
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