Waiting For Interviews: BRUTAL
It was over 13 years ago when I first decided to become a rapper but I didn’t go at it alone, I had a partner in rhyme and he goes by the name of Brutal. As far as influences go I looked up to all the rappers like Biggie, Tupac, The Wu-Tang Clan, Dr. Dre, Snoop Doggy Dog, Eminem, and Jay-Z just to name a few but the greatest influence and the main reason that I ever stepped behind a microphone was Brutal. There wouldn’t be a SkrapS if it wasn’t for Brutal. Unfortunately our rap careers were very short lived, we tried coming back a couple of times with our most recent and last attempt being at least five years ago. In this interview we reminisce about our past and make a couple of jokes but in all reality I wouldn’t be the person I am today if it wasn’t for my brother in Hip Hop, the one and only Brutal.
What up Brutal?
What up Skraps?
That’s about what I was expecting. So, it’s been a while, huh?
It’s been a least five years.
Yeah, so where should we begin? Let’s start at the very beginning, back in 2002, “May to June: The Oh Two Tune.”
(Laughter) That’s right.
It was the very first time we ever sat down and made a conscious effort at writing a rap song, do you remember that day?
Yes, that evening we went to a ‘Darkyst Hour’ performance. Where you there?
Yeah, probably, it sounds familiar.
I think you were there… I had come to a new place in terms of my musical awareness and just watching ‘Darkyst Hour’ playing and just sucking, it pissed me off. It just pissed me off so much that I felt that you and I could do better, we could do something. We would go and watch these idiots play cover songs of music from like the 70’s and I was like, “We can do original stuff.” So I think that night, it was late, but we decided that we were going to be rappers, basically. And we went back to my house to get my stuff so I could spend the night or a couple of days, I grabbed the standard stuff, a pillow, my backpack full of clothes. I left my mom a note, it said something like “Dear Mom, I’m going up to Las Cruces with Justin to become rappers.”
Yeah, that’s what it was, I definitely remember that. Okay so my recollection, well I don’t remember the’ Darkyst Hour’ bullshit because fuck them, but I do vividly remember the note to your mom. It’s funny because “May to June: The Oh Two Tune” never happened, it was just an idea like so many others that we just threw away. Actually our first song that we ever recorded was that remix of Jessica Simpson’s song, “With You.” Do you remember why we decided to remix THAT song?
I don’t remember why exactly, do you remember?
I remember a little about it. It was a popular song at the time.
Yeah, it was super popular, it was everywhere.
We thought it would be funny to remix a song that shouldn’t be a rap song, like a song that has no business having rap verses but I always had a thing for doing remixes, maybe because I’m lazy or because I sucked at writing hooks. You, on the other hand, liked doing original songs with original beats that you composed yourself; you had a lot of them, like way more than I ever did. My favorite original song of yours was “Living” because it was so real and emotional, all the things that made me like not only certain rap songs but music in general. It was real, it was life, but as were most of your songs. What do you think is your favorite original song that you ever wrote?
The first song that I ever did on my own was “Nothing To This” and that one remained a high bar for me to live up to, you know, to replicate. To be able to do the same thing I did on that song, which was to just be ‘Brutal.’ It’s hard to describe the style but it’s funny and controversial and… I don’t know… What would you say? How would you describe it?
What? “Nothing To This?” Or like Brutal’s style?
Yeah, I feel like that song encapsulates my style.
Yeah, it’s hard to describe in words but you definitely have a style all of your own. You had a bunch or original songs, but you never did very many remixes. Besides “With You,” is there a remix that you would pick as your favorite?
Probably just “Teenage Nightmare,” man. (Laughter) I keep going back to “Garbage Can Man.” We originally intended on doing a remix but I just re-created the beat, basically, but that was more of a parody not necessarily a remix.
So if you could remix any song, which song would you remix?
(Laughter) You’ve asked me this question before… “Girls Just Want To Have Fun.” That’s Cyndi Lauper; I don’t know why that song keeps popping in my head like a song I just need to remix, but…
Maybe we should just do it, just fucking get it over with already.
Right, just to get it over with.
So let’s get a little more specific, other than just favorite songs, what’s the best line you’ve ever heard or even wrote, one that just stands out from all the rest? One of my favorite lines is from your song “Nothing To This.”
Okay, okay.
Which is an awesome song full of amazing lines but for some reason this one line always stuck out and made me think to myself, “Damn that was super clever, I don’t know if I can keep up with that.” The line that I’m talking about, well I haven’t heard it in a while so it might not be 100% accurate but it’s something like, “Jesus Christ was supposed to be a messiah, but he only had twelve disciples, these folks that don’t believe in me can meet these automatic rifles. I got my apostles doing drive-byes on you ridding on bi-cycles.” That’s always been one of my favorite lines, are there any lines that you’ve heard and you thought to yourself, “How did I come up with that?” or “How did he come up with that?”
(Laughter) I think it was your line, the one that goes “Bitch, asking too many questions will get your throat slit, so make it quick because before you know it, I’m all up in your shit. The best dick you’ll ever have, too bad you won’t feel it because I’m a necrophiliac!” It just lead up to it in a really nice way, you built it up just right and it was the finish of your verse, just a really good finish.
Right?
A quick little snippet rhyme would be the “blood, semen, and shit on every inch of my dick.”
(Laughter)
Which came off on that one song, our Katy Perry remix. That was a good one, but there was a lot of good stuff on that song, I feel like. A lot of stuff had built up over the years from us not recording in a really long time. So your readers can listen to that song, if you’re able to post it up with this interview.
What made you want to be a rapper, rather a lyricist as we like to refer to it, to being with anyway? I guess you kind of answered that in the first question but feel free to elaborate if you like.
Well, no, I see what you’re saying, it’s more like writing, being creative, being inspired but other rappers, and what other rappers have done, and just the medium of rap is quite a bit different than rock music, or rave music, or any other kind of genre of music because you say so much, you actually verbalize so much of your thoughts and you have to do it in this creative way. So, for me because I’m a writer because I love words and I like the back drop of beats and the way you can make things sound. It just seemed to be the perfect medium for what I was feeling, probably what you were feeling at the time, which was a lot of frustration as a young man that had a lot of energy and had nowhere to put it.
Who would you say are some of your major influences?
Obviously the Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac and Eminem and Dr. Dre, but beyond that I believe there is artistry that goes into making music and so Sting is a big influence for me.
Yeah, I like it. If you could collaborate with any artist or any band, dead or alive, who would you choose?
That one’s pretty tough because so much of the stuff I listen to now is really obscure, so I have to go back quite a bit like in my mind to figures from the past that I have respected in music.
Like back to a rap state of mind?
Yea, because rap has been dead for so long, so that’s really difficult to think about. Did you have anyone in mind for who you would collaborate with?
If I were to do a collaboration with any band or artist I would obviously pick someone that I think is one of the biggest and best rappers and to me that would still have to be Eminem, but I think that would be way too intimidating, like he’s way too good. Besides anyone that knows me knows that I would rather do a collaboration with Blink 182.
Yeah, sure, you would have to. As for me, I mean, obviously, Katy Perry would be great.
Like an actual collaboration instead of just a shitty remix?
Yeah, an actual collaboration would be awesome because I think that Katy Perry has experienced a lot of what religion does to people, for example, and that’s a constant theme in my work and the things I talk about. She also has like a darker side that maybe we’ve seen a few things, but I think I could bring that out, you know?
She has done some rap collaborations with various rappers, her most recent being the song,“Dark Horse.” Do you think you could have done a better job that Juicy J?
Rather than that dude in the song, that “Dark Horse” song?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean that song sucked anyway but do you think you could’ve done better than him?
(Laughter) I could have done a better verse than that fucking idiot.
So if we were to grab your phone put on your headphones and press play, what song would we hear?
Do you want me to do it?
Sure, I guess. (Laughter) Like what song were you listening most recently?
Let’s see… The last song …
I hope it’s embarrassing.
I feel like the last song that I purposely listened to is the final track from the “Boogie Nights” soundtrack and it’s called “The Big Top” and it’s just a score. Can you hear it (Starts playing music)?
Yeah, kinda, yeah.
But the reason why I listen to this track is to get to the secret song.
Okay, so what’s the secret song?
(Fast forwarding through song) (Laughter)(Song plays)
What’s the name of that stupid song?
Its Marky Mark singing “The Touch,” the song from the Transformers (cartoon) movie.
Yeah, “You got the touuuuch!” But what is his stupid name? It’s not Marky Mark singing…
It is Marky Mark, well it’s Mark Wahlberg.
Well yeah, but what is his character’s name? If Mark Wahlberg went out and tried to record a song he wouldn’t sound that bad, he purposely did it that way since he was in character.
Fucking Dirk Diggler.
Yeah, but that was the character of his character, what is his actual character’s name? It’s like Mark Wahlberg playing as someone who is playing Dirk Diggler. I’m going to have to research this when I type it all out (Eddie Adams is the character played by Mark Wahlberg in Boogie Nights). “You got the toUCH!” (Laughter) So that’s what you listen to?
That was the last song I listened to.
Do you sing along while you’re listening to it?
Yeah.
That’s great, that’s awesome.
I’ll sing it on my own when I’m doing stuff, like doing the dishes or whatever
It’s kind of weird; I would never have pictured Brutal doing dishes.
No? Why?
Brutal seems like the kind of person that instead of doing dishes, he would set fire to the kitchen and be like, “The dishes are done, bitch.”
Yeah, everyone has a different image of Brutal in their mind, I guess.
So things have changed a lot since we were rappers, I don’t even really listen to rap anymore.
Neither do I, I’ll listen to the old stuff.
Yeah, but even then, for me, barely. What do you think of the current state of hip-hop?
I don’t know anything about it, all I know is that I don’t like the music they produce because, it seems to me, the amount of effort it used to take to make beats and music was ten times more difficult then what they do now.
I would have to agree, fucking ringtones. They try to make one super catchy little sound, it’s like one line and then they got it, that’s their whole career. They get one hit and just repeat it over and over.
This has been going on for so long with the ringtone crafting idea, that was fucking eight years ago, it’s been going on for so long that there’s virtually no merit to what these guys are doing now and they are just making songs to sale singles on iTunes, to sale ringtones, I mean, whatever.
One of the ideas that I wish we would have worked on that fell through like so many others was the post hardcore rap; I think that would’ve been good. Do you ever regret leaving that one on the table?
Can you give me a song, like what do you mean?
We never even wrote an actual post hardcore rap song, it was just an idea, I guess it was around the time when they started doing post hardcore rock and you were like ”Dude, what about post hardcore rap?” At first I was confused, but the idea was to get real mellow beats but then all of a sudden they would get all crazy for a second but go back to being mellow again. The verses were deliberate, not so many connecting words, not necessarily fast, but just a melodic stringing together of words, almost like a trance.
I think I planned to do some songs like that on layer, but it just never happened.
I think a good example would be “Here I Am Now.” I think that was like the birth of what you wanted to become post hardcore rap.
Yeah, it was a totally different mood, you could say different things that you normally wouldn’t if you are gonna be a rapper now you’re gonna have to talk about money, bitches and guns and all that stuff. Most rap now is just flaunty, you know, they just flaunt whatever they have, their materialistic things. Post hardcore rap would be after the gangster era, people are dead, people aren’t creative anymore, people are more materialistic, and when you start to think in that tone then you’re like, “Okay, well here’s the feeling of today.” But that time has passed, that time has just passed, because now everything sucks. But for some kids it doesn’t suck right now, that’s the weird thing, there are some kids that listen to rap music right now and they’re all about it. I know some kids that do still respect Biggie and Tupac and the legends and I know that occasionally there is a resurgence of the old school gangster rap or the old school hip hop guys but it’s actually them, it’s not that people are doing that style again its actually those guys who are just doing it again.
When you say old school I think of Run DMC, Rakim, and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. It’s weird to me when people say old school now and they’re talking about people like Dre, Snoop, Ice Cube and even Jay-Z who are all still making music.
It’s the new old school, because in our day Run DMC and all those guys that was the old school, but now those guys are all dying off because they’re so fucking old.
Snoop is just trying to stay relevant, I remember when he was 19 and he was the shit. Now, well…
I guess there is always some kind of music or some kind of medium that embodies the deeper sentiments of the time that people are in, it isn’t rap, it isn’t rock, I don’t know what it is right now, I don’t even know if its music anymore, it might be internet memes right now. The truth is that all those things are surface, there is no real merit and there is not real substance to what they are doing. It’s just noise. I’m sure that there are a few artists out there who are doing good music that express and embody the spirit of the times but it’s so buried under a mountain of other shit because everybody wants to be a rapper, because everybody wants to be a rock star, because everybody wants to be a fucking DJ. Those few voices that actually matter drown out, I just hope there’s a way for those people to be recognized. It’s not like I regret not achieving some measure of fame or not performing or anything like that, I don’t care about that because what I did is done and I feel like what you and I did captures the feeling of those days not only of that time but also the time of our lives and the phase that we were at.
So can we possibly expect a reemergence of Brutal in the future?
Brutal is alive in so many things that are out there, you’ll never see a rap manifestation ever again. You’ll see things; you might even hear some of the music that I have created in other projects.
Cool, looking forward to hearing some new material from Brutal in the future, in any form that it might exist. You have always been a huge inspiration to me and will continue to inspire and live forever in the tracks of our past. If anyone is interested in hearing some of our older songs they will be posted here as well as on the waiting4justin Sound Cloud page, including the “Teenage Dream” remix we mentioned earlier as well as a few other gems. If you have a chance, check them out, they are at the very least entertaining. I want to say thanks again to Brutal for taking the time to reflect on our past and sharing his thoughts. Keep killing it, brother.
Interview with my husband.
