Slaine : The Action recon interview

A while ago I had a phone conversation with Slaine and we talked about everything under the sun. We talked about hip hop, politics, life, growing up, society, touring and a bunch of other shit as well. At the end of the phone call I had a ton of material on tape and needed to sit down and make it flow into some sort of a structured interview. Once I had done that I decided to wait to post the interview until closer to the release of Slaine’s solo record. As far as MC’s in hip hop go there are a handful of guys that I follow and none of them ever seem to let me down with their music, lyrics or realness. Slaine happens to be one of those MC’s and it was a straight up honor to interview him and spend some time talking with him on the phone. Its funny I have met people in the past that I had admired or had a certain amount of respect for and once I met them and or got to know them I no longer felt that way. Such is not the case with Slaine. He is a man with furious and real lyrics a man that has many things to say and they are all worth listening to. His music is dark, violent, and rugged, but also acts a motivation at times and a good kick in the ass. So read on and check out the interview, listen to the music and be sure to support real hip hop like Slaine.

1) Let the people know where you were born and where you grew up. When were the original seeds of hip-hop planted in your vein’s?

I was born in Boston in a neighborhood called Dorchester and I was born in the late 70’s so it was the mid to late 80’s when I really go into hip hop. Back then it was still a really underground movement. When I was growing up around that time people were bumping a lot of RUN DMC and Beastie Boys. Those were the first hip hop records that I heard. As soon as I heard them I would just sit down and write rhymes’ all the time and that was all I wanted to do. Also where I was growing up was a section of the city that was predominately white so it was not the popular thing to be doing the hip hop thing. There was a lot of racial tension going on in Boston at that time so rapping as a white kid was not an excitable thing to be doing. Because of that I never really got up on a stage until I was about 18 or 19.

2) How did you get hooked up with the rest of the guys in the group La Coka Nostra? Was the whole DIY way of promoting the plan from the start?

Well when I was about 18 I moved to NYC and some of the guys I was chilling with at that time knew Danny Boy and it was not until years later when I was around 23 that we actually met. It was no big production, just a kind of a hey what’s up deal. Shortly after that I moved back to Boston and was up there working on a solo deal and I got in touch with Danny Boy to come and work with me on the record. Nothing actually ended up happening with that, but he came out with Big Left who used to be in La Coka and we all went out to LA and singed a deal with DJ Lethal and that was kind of the very beginnings of La Coka Nostra, you know before other guys like Everlast and Ill Bill were on board. So really the short of it is, Danny Boy just connected us together and we went from there. We all met and ended up recording nine songs in the studio together with no real idea what we were going to do with them. We had the name and leaked a few songs on the La Coka Nostra myspace page and the feedback was really good and we just said fuck it lets do a record. The whole thing was a total grassroots deal from the start. We started doing the tee shirts and that paid for some studio time and more songs got us closer to a real release and new shit and it all snowballed from there.

Latest La Coka Nostra Album “A Brand You Can Trust”. Get it now.

La Coka Nostra. From left to right Danny Boy, Ill Bill, Everlast and Slaine.

3) You guys have played a lot of live shows, how have the tours been and how hard can life on the road be?

Ya touring is hard man. Really I have been basically touring non-stop since about 2005. You know I have done solo tours, tours with Special Teamz and tours with Coka so touring has been great. I mean I get to see the world and do shows and meet lots of cool people so its been fun. There is nothing like being able to perform your songs live and see the energy of the crowd and the response that they give you, but touring is also hard too. It’s a lot of time on the road and I have a wife and son so it’s tough too, it’s hard to be away from your family.

4) Long before LCN you were already a very accomplished MC. Has anything drastically changed since LCN and the new album came out?

Well I don’t think my life just changed or anything since the album came out. I mean I had a lot going on before the album with some acting gigs and the whole White Man Is The Devil mix tapes really gave me a good sort of cult following in Boston. Also with all the things I did with Special Teamz along side Edo G and Jaysaun there were a lot of people in Boston and NYC that were already like who the fuck is this kid? (laughs) So it had been a slow build to where I am at now and I am glad it’s been like that because I’ve paid a lot of dues, learned a lot, I’ve worked really hard and its all really made me appreciate where I am in my career. (Slaines son comes into the room to see what is going on. Slaine says to me with so much pride in his voice, “That’s my son.” He tells his son he will be done soon.) If I had just showed up and singed a big record deal and never learned all these things and worked with all these people I would probably be long gone by now.

Special Teamz – I Am What I Am.

Slaine – The White Man Is The Devil Vol. 2. Get it on iTunes now.

5) What are some of the collaborations you have done that really stick out in your mind?

Well to be honest my favorite collaborations are the ones that turn into groups. Like all the stuff I did with Edo G and Jaysaun that became Special Teamz was great. Same with all the colabs I did with Everlast, Bill and Danny Boy because then then La Coka Nostra was born. Those ones are the best because the chemistry is really there, so much so that we made groups out of them. Other then that all of them have been great. I mean I have worked with guys that I never in a million years thought that I would get the opportunity to work with. You know when I was a kid I never thought that I would be working guys like DJ Premier from Gangstarr, B-Real from Cypress Hill and Everlast from House Of Pain. I used to have their posters on my wall when I was a kid. (laughs)

La Coka Nostra Feat. B-Real – I’m An American

My personal favorite appearance from Slaine outside of LCN. Snowgoons – The Hatred (Feat. Slaine, Singapore Kane & Lord Lhus)

6) What is the main driving force behind your lyrics? What motivates you to write the way you do?

Well the biggest thing for me is my lyrics are never commercially driven. That is not what I have in mind when I sit down and write lyrics for a song, so I am able to be real and talk about what I want to talk about. Back in the day things were kind of bad for me, my family split apart and I was doing a lot of drugs and found myself unsupervised at a young age in the streets. All the issues and anger that I had inside of me needed to come out in a certain way and I would just write and that was the way I dealt with things. Hip-hop became the positive thing in my life and acted as a positive outlet to get all these negative things out of my head. I also never did this to become a rap star, to me when I started this that was never something that I thought I could achieve, there was no end game. Once I moved to NYC I was different there and that helped me to find my style on the mic, on paper it was no problem, but it was not until I moved to NYC that I really found my style as a rapper. I was just 100% me with no compromise. Then I went to detox and cleaned myself up a bit and once I got back to Boston all the anger and experience was boiling in me and I put together the White Man Is The Devil Vol. 1 mix tape and boom, that was when I had arrived. See it was these things and my hardships that made me find myself as a rapper and that right there is why I always stay true to that. Weather people like my shit or not, I don’t care. Because the moment you give them the power then they are dictating what I am doing and I can never have it that way. My music is what has helped me survive and now it’s helping me survive finically as well, but I always have to remember where it came from. Coming out of detox, watching friend’s pass away dealing with all that anger; that right there is what’s it all about.

7) I know that you have had some appearances on the big screen. You were in Gone Baby Gone, is this something that you are going to build on? How is acting as opposed to hip-hop?

Ya man that is something that I really enjoy doing and its kind of the same as music in certain ways, because its telling a story and getting yourself into a certain place and character. I actually just finished up a movie with Ben Affleck called The Town and I am really looking forward to that movie coming out because I have a bigger roll in that then I had in Gone Bay Gone. It was also fun to do that movie because it takes place in Boston and that’s my hometown. The movie career is definitely something that I would like to branch out on and start doing more of in the future.

Check out the trailer for “The Town” in theaters September 17th.

Ben Affleck and Slaine in “The Town”.

8 You are political in some of your lyrics. What are your thoughts on Obama and do you think he is going to be able to put American in a better situation?

Well I think that Obama got a bit of a bad rap you know. A lot of people fell under this spell that he was going to change the world in no time flat. The thing people need to under stand is that you can’t just show up in Washington and bam bam bam make all these changes right away. That kind of shit takes time. I mean he passed Universal Health Care and he said he was going to do that. We will see how that works out. Also he said he was going to stop all these wars and that has not happened yet, but its not like you can turn the switch and the war is over. Yes we should have been out of Afghanistan years ago, but we never should have gone into Iraq either. We should have finished the job we started before we got all tied up in another one. Unemployment is still high and there are still a lot of problems, but I think Obama has stopped the bleeding and will need a lot longer to heal the wound left behind by Bush. I mean lets face it Obama has a big mess to clean up. Right now we need a guy like him we need the way we do things to change. This whole country runs on ideas and an economy that is 40 or 50 years behind the times. We rely so heavily on oil and explore nothing else and that’s what all this bullshit is about, oil. The wars, terrorism, our entire monetary and trade systems are all oil and it’s killing us. American needs a president like Obama and we need more like him in the future if we are ever going to modernize our system and find new ways of doing things, because the old ways don’t work anymore. All that being said the real trick is how to do this and how to get the ball rolling, because with every solution comes another problem and we need to be careful and take it slow. You pull too big a piece of the puzzle out and the whole fucking system will come crashing down. Obama needs to set the foundation for the next president because change doesn’t just happen over night.

9) What does the future hold for Slaine? Where do you want to be at in 5 years from now?

Hmmm, my exit strategy from the music business. (laughs) Well I can tell you one thing if five years ago you had told me I would be where I am today I would be really happy. I mean this right now is everything that I have ever asked for. Shooting movies, touring the world, working with Snoop Dogg and B-Real, being in a group with Everlast and Ill Bill it’s beautiful I’m great. As far as a five-year plan I definitely have a few more records in me that I’m going to promote and tour on and do for a living. My solo LP A World With No Skies is coming out on October 26th, I want to do another Special Teamz record and another La Coka Nostra record also, but it all depends to on how those things go. See to me I really hate the game and the business side of the music. The music was something that was so close and so pure to me in the beginning, so when I mix all the bullshit of the business in there it bothers me, but it’s also a necessary evil. I will always do music, but it will be on my terms you know? I sure as hell don’t see myself touring 160 days of the year five years from now. I want to have a full body of work, the kind of thing that my son can sit down and listen to and know who I was when I first started all the way to who I grew into at the time of my last record. Getting into screen writing and acting is something I really want to do, kind of make a transition from music into acting. One way or another I will always need a creative outlet to keep my sane.

10) Any last words?

Thanks for doing the interview I really appreciate it. Be sure to check out my new LP A World With No Skies on October 26th and the single 99 Bottles from that album will drop on September 14th. I will also be releasing a video for that song soon after so watch out for that as well. Check me out on Twitter, Facebook and Myspace to keep up to date on all things going on. Peace.

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5. happy new year from action recon and thanks for all the support!!!