Pitchfork

Pharoahe Monch's second solo album has been a long time coming. After a run of three records with partner-in-crime Prince Po (or Prince Poetry) as Organized Konfusion, Monch closed out the 90s with the release of his first solo album, Internal Affairs, in 1999. The album-- on underground hip hop powerhouse label Rawkus (also home to Mos Def, Talib Kweli, and Big L at the time)-- cemented Monch's status as one of the genre's premier lyricists. And he followed it up by effectively disappearing.

Label politics played a part in the disappearance, though an exact explanation of his absence from music is still seemingly non-existent. No matter, since last year Monch started making noise again, leaking songs and making videos and a mixtape to promote a (finally) forthcoming new album.

That album, Desire, will finally arrive on record store shelves tomorrow, June 26, via SRC Records. It's an ambitious record full of Monch's trademark tongue twisters and extended metaphors as well as an Elvis homage of sorts ("Body Baby") and a partial Public Enemy cover ("Welcome to the Terrordome"). Last week, Monch spoke to Pitchfork about the album, his writing style (and some of his more illicit metaphors), and how his near-lifelong battle with chronic asthma has affected his career path.

Monch has a couple weeks' worth of tour dates this summer, most of which are part of the Rock the Bells festival and tour. His next show is on June 29 in New York City.

Pitchfork: How does it feel to be releasing your second solo album almost a decade after your first?

Pharoahe Monch: It's awesome. It feels great. I love the record. The time thing is really not an issue with me, because I feel like if I would have released this record under Geffen or [in] another situation, it wouldn't be what it's going to be. And it's going to be really good.

Pitchfork: Is this the record you would have wanted to release as a follow-up to Internal Affairs?

PM: It's taken a lot of different forms, and I think, as my second effort, I wanted it to be what the people are getting right now. I wanted the proper control, and I didn't want to worry about putting the current, trendy r&b artists on a chorus, none of those things. A lot of times when you're steadfast [in] your integrity you have to have patience as well. As [much] as the hiatus was [because of] regular label politics and things gone wrong with the label situation, I was just enjoying my freedom for a good period of time, touring and having a good time.

Pitchfork: Do you feel like you play a different role in the scene now than you did eight years ago?

PM: Definitely, because of the way things have changed. I think my attitude when I signed with Rawkus was kind of similar to now. I was like, "Yo, I think I can give you two to three records that can compete in the marketplace with what's going on currently and give you tangible music that's on the cusp, but still ahead of its time," and I was just so enamored with how wack things were then.

I just was like, "Musically, it's such an easy thing to compete," where before, when you had Tribe and Brand Nubian and Leaders of the New School and the Pharcyde, and all these different artists pushing the envelope, it was like, "Uh, maybe we should go back to the drawing board. Uh, maybe we should uh--." That was good for the barometer of hip-hop, because it kept pushing the envelope. Every time one of those albums came out, you were like, "Wow." They stretched it. Whether they stretched it politically or stretched it musically, they stretched it at the time. In '99 I think Rawkus-- I don't want to say it was easy for us, but it was nothing to be competitive with what was out there.

Pitchfork: But that actually inspires you?

PM: Yeah. Before I signed with them, I was like, "I can give you records that can more than compete with what's going on in the industry, business-wise," and [it's] the same thing now. The difference is, this record is a total reflection of all that I am emotionally, without being concerned with what's going on in the industry. And you can call me a fool, and I know the label will hate to hear this, but I'm not really concerned with what's going on in the industry right now. From what I hear from the complaints and what I hear when I do turn on the radio once a week, it's pretty fucking bad.

Pitchfork: And you feel like it's your job to offer a positive alternative?

PM: People should listen to whatever the hell they want to listen to. I just want a fair share at showing people that there are alternatives to the approach to making hip-hop records and expressing yourself. I only get frustrated when the equality of that is taken away. Even on my side of things, let's say the record goes double platinum and people say, "How the hell did he do that in an industry that's not selling records? He just came through with this record, and it caught on and spread through word of mouth, and people love the record." Let's say that happens and record labels are like, "Do you have anything that sounds like that guy, Pharoahe Monkey or whatever his name is?" and people start sounding like my shit. I'll be the first one to say, "Come on, let's get off the ride-the-wind, trend shit," and that's what you get a lot of. Whether it's the East Coast or the West Coast or down South or the hot producer, it's just bad for the culture, for the musical form to be like, "Pharoahe's hot right now. Let's get him to produce some..."-- you know? It's just ridiculous, man.

Pitchfork: It seems like opposing trends can put you in a lonely place. So much of current mainstream hip-hop culture seems directly opposed to the kind of sentiments you lay out in a song like "When the Gun Draws" and its video. Does it feel like a tough battle?

PM: You know, I think that the business respects profit, and I just think that even now, that's a great record, and I feel that it still has a chance to go as far as it can go. That's what's great about art. I say that to say I think there are still a million people out there who would appreciate that song and that video if they saw it or got wind of it. If I was able to get them to place their eyes upon it, I think they would have a bit of respect for the artistic value of the visual and the approach to the song. But that's what we're dealing with.

I think everything can be sold; to what degree right now in the climate that hip-hop is, who knows? But I think you could package that as well as anything else and sell it. But what brings a great satisfaction with that song was, it wasn't just done for the provocative nature or shock value. It's actually tied into something that's tangible. We actually do work behind that project as well.

Pitchfork: Tell me about your writing process on songs like "Let's Go" that have lots of internal rhymes, extended metaphors, and consistent themes throughout. Do you free write and then tighten them up, or do they come out nearly complete?

PM: You know, as a writer, whether it's scripts or books or whatever, you have a bunch of solid ideas, and then you have a bunch of ideas laying around. For example, the second verse of that song was something-- pieces of it were laying around for, you know, "If I get a beat that sounds like this, I'll take this approach and try to do this"-- and the first verse, half of it I had already. And so I was in Detroit, and ["Let's Go" producer] Black Milk was playing a bunch of shit, and he actually played that beat, and I was like, "Hook it up now! Let's go right now! I'm ready! Turn the mic on!" and laid the first part [down]. And then [for] the second part I was like, "Okay, that was high energy. Now let's give people something to think about."

Pitchfork: So it doesn't come out fully formed; you have to tweak it?

PM: Oh definitely, I do a lot of tweaking, which is something that we didn't have time to do with Organized Konfusion. It was so experimental and so like, "All right, since we're making music, taking records to the studio and spending so much time and money in the studio, we don't really have time to revisit these songs, so they kind of are what they are," which is why it's kind of brilliant in a way, but this time the hiatus helped me to be like, "Is this what you really want to convey? Well...let's change those last few bars."

Pitchfork: You tend to use a lot of really intense, extended sexual metaphors...

PM: Like...?

Pitchfork: Like "I protect my name like your anus in prison" [from "Desire"].

PM: [laughs]

Pitchfork: Or the entirety of "Rape", on the first album. Even though it's a metaphor for your skills on the mic, are you aware of the possibility of mixed messages going out there?

PM: Yeah, when I recorded the "Rape" song-- the problem with my approach is on some acting, writer shit. Like, "Okay, you really need to embody these characters," which I don't think people in hip-hop have really got a grasp on anyway. I think for a long time it's been [that] you are who you write and you write who you are. And I've always been a person who was like, [if] you're a nerd with two-inch-thick glasses and you're making a great song, I'm going to buy into your product before I'm going to buy into somebody who's fresh out of prison who actually murdered three people and has an album and it just sucks, like I'm buying it because of the artist or the story.

That being said, with "Rape", I was like, "Okay if you feel like this song is that dark and you're going to become this serial rapist killer, you need to embody the vocal tone and the attitude," so I tried to write words that had attitude and sounded twisted, and I put pictures of the beat on the wall. If you were to come into my apartment, you would see all these pictures maybe of mp3s, because that was the metaphor of these beats that I fantasized about raping or killing. But I got into the shit a little bit too much, because when I played it for Rawkus, they were like, "Ah, my god," and the girls at the label were like, "Look man, we understand you're speaking metaphorically but still--" And I was like, "Hey you know, it's not a female thing. Children get raped; men get raped in prison; businesses get raped, artists get raped; companies get raped. It's a metaphor." And they were just like, "No. No, no, no."

Pitchfork: So how did you finally get them to include it on the album?

PM: I was just like, "Fuck that, I'm not changing it." I have to admit that I was, in a percentile, I was probably 75% wrong, because a lot of female fans were like, "You're fucking crazy. I'm not fucking with you," and I kind of learned a lesson from that. Like, if you're going to go into it that hard, some people are not going to be able to differentiate what you're trying to do on that level.

Pitchfork: What inspired the "Welcome to the Terrordome" cover on this record?

PM: That was not as difficult. A lot of times I get a beat, and a lot of producers who are DJs run a cappellas over the track, an old Rakim or [Big Daddy] Kane a cappella or something to just see how rhymes fit into the mix of the beat. So what I do is what anybody would do. I get the beat and start doing some freestyles or whatever, some old rhymes of mine that I know verbatim, or O.C. or Rakim or Mos Def or whoever, just to get a feel for it, see what direction-- "How are you going to make this marriage, and what would Kane do? What would Rakim do? What would Kanye do? What are you going to do? Who are you?" And I started singing those lyrics: "I got so much trouble on my mind..." and the music just felt powerful to me, and I ran through the verse because I know it, and I was like, "Oh shit, this shit sounds kind of good, energy-wise."

So I called up the producer and told him what I was thinking about doing, and he was like, "Yo, that's a good idea." And I was like, "We should try to at least recreate it, sample-wise," and I laid the verse. I sent it to Chuck, and I was like, "If I get a thumbs up from Chuck D, I'm good." He gave me the thumbs up; he sent a text, so I wrote the second verse. We implemented all the samples that the Bomb Squad used, but unfortunately we couldn't clear all the samples, because back then you know, you could just take somebody's whole song and rhyme over it. So it's not 100% what I wanted it to be, but I think those lyrics need to be heard again and revisited again. And in fact, my friends who are 24, 25, I played them that song and they were just like, "It's hot," but I was like, "It pales in comparison to the original." And they were like, "What original?" And I was just like, "You know what? Fuck it man, hip-hop is what it is. How could you not have a copy of Fear of a Black Planet?" But whatever.

Pitchfork: It seems like a lot of the beats you use incorporate more traditionally rock-- or at least guitar-based-- sounds. What is it about those sounds that draw you to them?

PM: That's what I grew up on, being in a home with brothers playing Sabbath and Zeppelin and Blue Öyster Cult in the basement. Pop's got the gospel, Mom's got the Tom Jones, sister's got the Jackson 5, but later on, filtering through all that, I really gravitated toward Zeppelin and Rush and a lot of rock bands, so this album I knew either had to be soulful or rock, or embody the two of those things together. And I knew I wanted to do singing vocals, whether they be eerie or soulful, to help bring the feeling across. Before I even got you listening to my lyrics, I wanted to try to provoke a certain emotion for people who even take music that seriously.

Pitchfork: In the first full song on the new album, "Free", you say, "Now Google Pharoahe Monch, search triskaidekaphobia," which is the fear of the number 13. Are you really triskaidekaphobic?

PM: Nah, I love the number. I embrace the number. In fact, it's a big part of why I am, because I contracted asthma at 13 months and just growing up, chronic [asthma] alters what you can and cannot do. So just making job decisions, I'm like, "All right, you can draw a little bit. I think you need to go into the art field because you won't be lifting any heavy garbage bags and doing much manual shit, being a chronic asthmatic, and working out in the elements," so I went to art school for that reason. And then from there, that brought me to art in general and expression in general, so when I embarked on MCing, it was like, "This is my way of trying to defeat this inner demon that inhibits my breathing, and I'll try to do that by having a complicated rhyme flow, to show it that it can't defeat me."

Pitchfork: Does your asthma ever affect you during live performances?

PM: Definitely. I'm backstage like, "All right, let's run through these breathing exercises and...make sure you have your inhaler." [laughs]

Pitchfork: Do you still draw?

PM: Yeah definitely, all the time.

Pitchfork: Have you or do you plan to publish or exhibit any of your stuff?

PM: I'm going to do that, because I'm always being told-- I'm always drawing on shit in restaurants, and I'll see somebody from four years ago or on tour and they'll be like, "I kept your napkin!" you know? And I'm like, "All right..."

Pitchfork: Well, that's all of my questions. Is there anything else you'd like to add, that you want people to know?

PM: Just-- everybody who's stuck by, man, through the wait, thanks for being patient, all the heads out there.

Desire tracklist:

01 Intro
02 Free
03 Desire [ft. Showtyme]
04 Push [ft. Showtyme, Mela Machinko & Tower of Power]
05 Welcome to the Terrordome
06 What It Is
07 When the Gun Draws [ft. Mr. Porter]
08 Let's Go [ft. Mela Machinko]
09 Body Baby
10 Bar Tap [ft. Mela Machinko]
11 Hold On [ft. Erykah Badu]
12 So Good
13 Trilogy (Act I ft. Mr. Porter, Act II ft. Dwele, Act III ft. Tone)

Dates:

06-29 New York, NY – Highline Ballroom *
07-17 London, England - Scala
07-18 Montreux, Switzerland – Montreux Jazz Festival #
07-19 Dublin, Ireland – Tripod ^
07-20 Galway, Ireland – GPO
07-26 Mansfield, MA – Tweeter Center (Rock the Bells Tour)
07-28 New York, NY - Randall's Island (Rock the Bells Festival)
07-29 New York, NY - Randall's Island (Rock the Bells Festival)
08-02 Atlanta, GA – HiFi Buys Amphitheatre (Rock the Bells Tour)
08-03 Charlotte, NC – Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre (Rock the Bells Tour)
08-04 Miami, FL – Bayfront Park Amphitheatre (Rock the Bells Tour)

* with Cool Kids, Black Milk, Polyrhythm Addicts
# with Wu-Tang Clan
^ with Jeru the Damaja, DJ Tu-Ki