Interview with a Rapper: Eyedea

By Neil Ellingson

I had the nerve to walk up to one of the greatest rappers ever and ask him for an interview. He turned out to be a really nice guy. He took all of my questions seriously, and didn’t try to make me feel stupid. So I ended up not feeling stupid, just kind of lame and passionless in comparison. This rapper is a little younger than I am, and I’m no fogy, but he has already done what most will never do: 1) found something he loves doing, 2) found other people who love doing the same thing, and 3) kicked all their asses at it. Anyway, this rapper’s name is Eyedea, and with his friend and musical cohort DJ Abilities, he has made quite a stir in the so-called “underground hip-hop scene,” and is beginning to poke through to the more luminous mainstream. Eyedea is maybe best known for his massive freestyle skills, and having won several national competitions (Abilities is also heavily medalled in the DJing arena), has helped his march into the spotlight. I caught him after Game Night, a weekly event he organized with some friends at a record store in the Twin Cities to have fun, show off, and work on their verbal improvisational skillz in front of a hometown audience. I had never seen anything like it –most freestyle events are either competitive or unstructured, but this was more like witnessing soccer practice for MCs. After the fun and games were over, Eyedea had the generosity to talk to me about what’s most important to him in the world.

Present: First I wanted to ask about what you were saying earlier on stage—that the energy changes, everything changes when people are watching…

Eyedea: You always have this thing in the back of your head when there’s people there that you need to entertain people. Sometimes it’s hard to find the balance between being like, entertaining to outside people and also climaxing as an artist. I think good jazz musicians always could do it…That’s what I really want rap to be, like a freestyle—I want it to be like a jazz jam session. I just don’t think that anybody I know is even good enough to really do it that way – there’s little glimpses of it…but you look at like John Coltrane who could just pick up the horn and play, and it’d be amazing no matter what the circumstances.

Present: So it’s like no one’s really mastered the instrument of the voice?

Eyedea: I don’t really think so. I think the difference between playing notes – a C is a C – but I can’t just go “blah” – I have to make the word make sense with the structure and it’s very similar to making a chord progression make sense, but it’s almost – it’s just different, you know –

Present: And each time you say a word it’s different…

Eyedea: …it has different meanings. But we fall into the same shit, everybody that freestyles falls into these same patterns. That’s what this night is about—is about getting away from all that and trying to really expand.

N: So when you impose the structure, how does that change it?

E: The easiest way to fall into the pattern is when you’re trying to impress somebody, right, because you’re just like, okay ‘my main goal is, I’m going there’ and then when you start going in that same place that you’ve been, if it’s working you’re like, ‘oh this is working,’ but tonight it doesn’t matter if it’s working or not because the goal is not to ‘work’ – the goal is to get it up –

Present asks a long-winded, awkward question about battling:

Yeah, sometimes they get ‘shook.’ That’s the best part about a battle. Last week we did a lot of battles, and my thing was, I’m not going to say anything about like what I can see on you, but I’m going to tell a story about making you sit in the corner and watching you pout all night, and you really start to see how that can get under someone’s skin in a serious way, not because you’re making fun of their teeth but because you’re like breaking down their confidence. You’re basically saying…I started saying shit like, ‘What, did you take testosterone pills? Why you so excited?” You know, shit like that. And that’s how like, out of L.A., a lot of people I respect that’s how they battle, they don’t do punch lines, that’s not even accepted, it’s overlooked like that, but motherfuckers will tell a story about how they’re the teacher and you’re the student and you were late to class and they’re going to beat the shit out of you for it.

Present: And then when they rap, you can tell they’ve been shaken—I mean shook…

Eyedea: Yeah…That’s the biggest thing about winning a battle—you want to make the person beat them self before they even get to you. If you can go first and make them feel like they’re not as much of a man as they were before, even if you’re not rapping about them, even if you just come off so nice that they go, ‘fuck I can’t do that’ – I’ve had people just hand me the mic – a couple different times.

Present: Do you think that being able to freestyle gives you more credibility as a rapper? Could you be a good rapper who writes but who can’t freestyle?

Eyedea: I mean, yeah you definitely could be, because it’s all about the end result, if you are a good rapper you’re good, if you’re a good musician you’re good. It’s like, are you a good musician if you can’t play?

Present: Right, but some musicians can’t improvise, but they can still play…

Eyedea: But if they could write…Naw, but I don’t believe that. I believe if you can write then you can improvise – cause how do you write? …. A chord change is very simple, physically, on a piano for instance – anybody who can play piano can make a chord change, and that’s freestyling, that’s improvising. Now, is Paul McCartney Herbie Hancock? No. Not everyone can master it at that level. It’s intertwined—I think the reason why rappers that are really good at writing can’t freestyle is just because they don’t try. They could—I guarantee any single rapper that I think is a good writer, they can pull shit out of their brain, and pull patterns out of their head, it’s just some people don’t care enough about it. And that’s cool, go do what you do.

Present: When you’re putting stuff on record, do you just come up with it off the top?

Eyedea: If I’m writing music—like right now I’m writing music—I’m writing it all from scratch, and as I’m writing it, I’m writing the words. Right now I’m writing pretty much everything from scratch on the piano, everything’s live. But that’s a record that’ going to come out probably next year. The shit that me and Abilities got coming out though there’s a lot of improv on it, a lot of rapping back and forth, a lot of shit that’s never been done with scratching.

Present: When’s that coming out?

Eyedea: We’re looking at late March, like March 23^rd (2004). On another note though, if I don’t know exactly where to go, I play the beat and I freestyle to it for two hours – and I pick out the patterns, I pick out the words, I pick out the feelings – I always record it.

Present: Do you rap everyday?

Eyedea: I pretty much do music every day. My studio’s right across from my room, I wake up and I’m in there usually. Otherwise I’m dealing with rap shit – you gotta do a lot of other shit if you want to be “self-made” and successful and shit.

Present: You’ve seen a lot of different places; do you think Minneapolis is a unique scene?

Eyedea: I really do—there’s an ethic about independent music here that was stronger in other cities earlier—but right here we’ve got some special shit going on. I don’t even think it’s just hip-hop—indie rock, art, even film—we just have a cool thing going on here.

Present: So you’re not leaving anytime soon…

Eyedea: I’m not leaving. But see, the reason I’m not going to leave is because like I said, I wake up, my studio’s across my thing. No matter where I am, that’s the goal, with a studio across the thing. Whether I’m in New York or Antarctica, I’m still just going to be in my house playing the piano and writing. And then I go on tour and I’m out for half the year or whatever.

Iceland is my favorite spot in the world.

Present: What do you think of people who call your music “emo rap”?

Eyedea: I don’t make the names. I make the music; it’s their job to put it into a category. None of that shit is my job—it’s not even my job when they start saying this isn’t even rap music. It’s still not my job to name it. None of that shit really matters.

One record that I make very soon, people will be like, “That’s not rap,” but for me, I still try to make rap music, and I try to make really good rap music, that sounds like, wow, “This is the Beatles”

To me hip hop is a bangin-ass beat and hard-ass rhymes. I don’t care what you’re talking about, I don’t care what you’re doing, just hard rhymes.

That’s not to say that a group like Anticon [a hip hop crew based out of the Bay Area that some claim is not true hip hop] is at fault for all the wack shit that tries to be like them—because there’s really wack shit that tries to. But I meet people who tell me that I’m their favorite, and when I hear what they’re doing, I’m like damn, what am I inspiring? But that’s not my job. Making rap like the Beatles, that’s my job.

Present: So inspiring people is not something you try to do?

Eyedea: I want to inspire people, I want my music to be inspiring, but I don’t want it to necessarily be inspiring them to make music. I could really give a shit what it makes people do. But I want it to move something, because when I make it, it moves me. No matter what you’re always subconsciously searching for acceptance, and if somebody’s like, you know, “I listen to your thing while I paint my picture, I listen to your thing and I’m fucking depressed, I listen to your thing and I’m fucking excited,” cause that’s it, that’s me painting my picture, being depressed and excited, you know. So I’m just like oh, okay, you are a person who can feel, you’re not as robotic as other people, word. And you’re with me. It’s basically—for lack of a better term, it’s like when you’re in high school, and your like, ‘I want people to think I’m cool.’ Why do you really want that? It’s really because you have this weird hollowness, and you’re unsure of so many things that if people are on your side about things, you’ll be like, “Yeah, maybe I got it together.” That’s what all art stems from, though.

Present: I like that. It seems like there are some people who think, “I’m this isolated genius creating art for its own sake…”

Eyedea: That is so bullshit, it’s always bullshit. Everybody that says that, I’m like, cool, go be John Coltrane but don’t tell me about it. Stay in your basement. Nobody does that. There are people who do that—I know artists who paint strictly for themselves. It’s like me boxing or something, having a boxing bag in my basement. I hit the motherfucker. I don’t go and claim I’m a boxer or even tell people about it, but when I’m frustrated, I hit the shit. I know people who when they’re frustrated, write poetry. They never read it, they never tell me about it, and that helps them. That’s cool, I’m in to that.

But when people say “for art’s sake” they act like it’s this thing, but it’s not. It’s your motivation to become greater than you are. Whether you’re painting, whether you’re writing speeches or climbing the political ladder…motivation. That ambition and that motivation stems from the discontentment you have with yourself. Because if you were content why are you motivated?

So that’s the thing is that (the background music suddenly cuts off, and Eyedea’s voice is now inappropriately loud)...yeah…that’s the way I feel about that shit.

Present: How do you feel about Anticon stuff?

Eyedea: I don’t like—I don’t think it’s—I think there’s this long problem that people have with each other on a personal level—but besides that, I just don’t feel like in general it’s artistically next-level. But that’s not to say that most motherfuckers aren’t.

Note: While rumors about Eyedea having beaten Eminem in a freestyle battle may be unfounded, if you put an Eyedea record on one set of speakers facing another set that is playing Eminem, or any other MC for that matter, the latter set of speakers will explode, and then the shrapnel will melt.

*Present Try-It-at-Home-Activity-that-is-Fun*

Eyedea Fun Facts :

“Real” name: Mike Averill

Age: 21

Stuff he’s done at a younger age than me: A lot

Hometown: St. Paul, Minnesota

Incomplete Discography: First Born 2001, The Many Faces of Oliver Hart 2002, E&A 2004, as well as numerous underground collections and mix-tapes that you’ll never find because you’re not that cool.