Actual Proof (HipHopFiend Interview)100

This Saturday marks the release of 9^th Wonder’s intellectual duo, Actual Proof’s new EP entitled “The Talented 10^th,” a conceptual project which they describe as their first fully focussed project. Two days before they drop this important release, I caught up with them to discuss the group’s origin, their approach to recording, the new project as well as their favourite albums of 2010 and their ambitions for 2011…

So starting from the very beginning, how did the group form?

Sundown: When I moved to North Carolina, I pretty much moved basically across the street from him (Enigma,) and his brother, and they were two of the first friends I ever made. Back then there was no thought of making music; we just ran around and played basketball and ran around and caused trouble, that’s all it was.

So when did you begin making music together?

Enigma: A few years back I was rhyming with another dude, his name was Search, he’s now a Professor over at North-Western, but I was previously rhyming with him, and we kind of went our separate ways because he was doing things, and I was in the military at the time, and we were just rhyming for fun for leisure. And `Sundown here, and Amp who handles the majority of our production along with the Soul Council; they were making beats, just alone, occasionally rapping here and there, and pretty much when I got out the military I met 9^th Wonder. I went to his class at central and I did a joint with him, and I immediately called Sundown and Amp and said “Yo, bring your beats drop what your doing, I don’t care what you’re doing, drop everything and bring them beats.” You know, because there was a lot of people in there at the time, they happened to come at the right time where 9^th got the chance to listen to them, and that’s pretty much how we became Actual Proof. We built a relationship with him, he liked our chemistry on the mic, but Amp, he wanted him to be in the Soul Council which is Amp, Khrysis, Eric G, Fatin, E Jones and Kash, along with 9^th Wonder to forge the sound of the whole label, and the two of us became Actual Proof.

How was the response to your last EP, and how do you feel about the project in hindsight?

S: The response was cool, but there wasn’t a plan to make that EP, the only songs that were made specifically for it were “Moves Over Here,” “The Look,” “Coast,” not even anywhere close half of it was made specifically for that EP, so it was just kind of thrown together…

E: And the response was, we got an overwhelming, good response from it, that was unexpected because it was not a necessarily focussed project. These are all joints that we’ve done over the year prior to the EP being released, that we all pieced together the week before the EP dropped. So the response that we got was surprising, because it was just us having fun doing jams like we normally do, put it together for a project, because people didn’t know who we were. Boom. We’re Actual Proof, this is our sound. But this “Talented 10^th” that’s coming out on Saturday, is a focussed project, and it’s becoming a very important project for us right now.

How would you describe the difference between the two EP’s?

S: I know the subject matter seems like its real serious and there are songs that talk about specific events from the civil rights movements, or just about black history in America, but not a lot. We didn’t want to hit people over the head and be too holier than thou or nothing. You know, there’s still fun songs on it, there’s silly stuff said on it, there is still stuff to lighten the mood, but there are some songs that are going to make you think…

E: And that’s what we wanted to do, because this is a concept album, and when you have a concept album there’s a certain feel that’s generated with it,  along with the music; being that if you understand the concept along with it, you are taking in a whole bunch, more than just the music, you’re taking it all in…

S: If people could see behind the scenes, the making of this project, there was maybe like two serious moments, even if something serious was said, something in the song that was serious, as soon as we were out the booth we were back goofing around…

E: …It’s jokes. So it’s that same music, same feel of the music, but there’s an overall feel with the project, that I think is going to resonate with some people real well. Especially people in the black community. And its good timing too being that black history month is coming right upon us, Martin Luther King’s birthday is January 15^th, 9^th Wonder’s birthday is January 15^th, so it’s a significant date being able to release it this Saturday.

So how would you describe the concept, and what made you want to pursue it?

S: We were in DC for Howard Homecoming, and we had the song “Super-Genius,” the remix for “Genius” and 9^th decided to release it while we were there for Howard Homecoming. He didn’t tell us, but when we saw the post for 2Dopeboyz he said it was from our forthcoming EP, and he called it “Genius: The Talented 10^th” and when he said that I asked him “are you sure you want to call it that,” he was like “yeah,” so we were like “alright fine.” So I guess the whole theme started just with the title, and it was only going to be only ten songs, but we thought that wasn’t enough, so we decided to do a Martin Luther King side and a Malcolm X side, just because they are two figures from the black community that people view on from different sides of the spectrum, but when you really look at it they were both fighting for the same thing.

E: It just gives you two sides, and they did it this way because we make so much music that it’s going to help separate the harsh, from the chill music, that we make. And being the two type of personalities that they were; Malcom X was more hard about it, so the majority of our Amp, Khrysis, boom bap like hard scratches and all that, that’s going to be the Malcolm side, and the Malcolm side is going to be thought provoking, but the Martin side is going to get you to sit down for a minute, have a seat, and think about some things while you’re listening to the joint.

S: The other day a kid on Twitter said that he was Googling the talented 10^th, and that was the whole point of the project, just to make people want to go back and look at some things and read up on it. And even people who know about it with the pictures we’ve put on the posts online, you know if you don’t know who Gwendolyn Brooks or Lewis Latimer is,  you know, just go back and read, know your history. And you don’t even have to be black to buy into it, or to care, or want to know why, we just want to shed a light on things that have happened in the past, so we don’t forget about it.

E: We’re not doing it in a scary way either, there’s two ways to do this. If people do it in a fearful way it’s not going to be accepted.

S: Like Dead Prez, they can push certain people away…

E: So we’re doing it to where everybody will be able to empathise with the joint, and feel where it’s coming from.

So will that “Super-Genius” track be on “The Talented 10^th”?  And how did that track come about?

S: Yeah absolutely. 9^th brought the idea up to us and we said yeah sure lets go ahead and remix it, but as far as who he wanted on the project he just released a statement on Twitter like, “hey, I’m doing this remix,” and he would hit people like, “hey send me your verse for it,” and some people did, some people didn’t, and the people that did are the ones who wound up on the project, thankfully.

E: So people who question whether 9^th likes other peoples music and listens to other peoples music, or try to help out other people, he dropped a statement like, “hey, you say you trying to rap, anyone who’s doing something right now, if you’re an up and coming artist and your hot send me a verse so you can get on it,” some people sent; and like he said they were the ones who wound up on it.

S: Mac Miller sent a verse, but he sent it after the deadline, and I think he was the only one who got left off, and we wanted him on it, but we had to finish the song and send it out so unfortunately that didn’t work out.

So how was the production distributed across the new EP?

E: Production will be handled by the Soul Council, so its heavy productions, 5 or so joints from 9^th, Amp has about 4, Khrysis has 3 or 4, Eric G has about 3, Fatin has 1, Kash has 2, and E Jones is out of town working right now…

How would you describe what you do, to someone who had no prior knowledge of Act Proof?

S: That’s always a hard question, what do we do? Rap music…

E: Rap Music! Nah, we are inspired by the people we grew up on, listening to, The Roots, that same lane, Tribe, Little Brother, even some Mobb Deep, Black Star… Black Star, that’s the lane that we’re in. But trying not to do it again in a way that’s over people’s heads, it’s too much you know, we want to try and grab everybody.

My introduction to you was when “Skate Kids” dropped last year, do you still get time to skate? Is that something that inspires you?

S: I haven’t been on my skateboard in a year, just because any free time that I get I’m going to the studio. And I also don’t want to pay doctors bills, because I’ve gotten hurt before and I’d rather rap than fall down a set of stairs.

E: The thing about “Skate Kids” is its not so much (about) us skating, we‘re narrating for skaters, for skate kids who don’t have a voice.

S: Like a week before we did the song I was driving to see my parents, and I was driving past where we used to go to middle school, and its not the best neighbourhood in the world. One of the first things I saw was three young black kids out on skateboards, and we wouldn’t have seen that growing up. The only kids that skated were white kids when I was growing up, so that was just cool to me to see those kids in that neighbourhood skating. And when we decided to do the song, it just came out like we were speaking for kids like that.

Would you say it’s more to do with the merging of cultures rather than necessarily skating then?

E: Yeah, like if you listen to the verses the whole verse isn’t just about skating either. When the song came out we took a hit from some people, some skaters who were like, “these dudes don’t skate, y’all ain’t skaters.” One problem I had with that was, “you don’t hang with me on my days off, you don’t know if I’m going to my house and I don’t get my skateboard and skate.” I don’t see how they came to that conclusion that we do not skate. Somebody’s argument was, “If y’all were skaters you’d be skating in the video.” We are! I’m not about to, on camera, start trying to do kickflips while rapping. “Can you do that?” that’s what I wanted to say, like we are on skating a little bit but it was to highlight the skaters that are in the video, the actual skate kids that are doing other stuff.

S: And the little kids that are in the video, they are like the kids that I saw on the corner. They are little kids who skate, and they come to the skate shop that we shot the video at like everyday because they love skating so much, and you know their boards were really old, and their shoes were kind of worn in, but the thing they have in common is they love to skate, no matter what their equipment was or where they had to do it. So the reason a lot of them just have shots of themselves in it, is because we wanted to highlight that it’s ok to want to skate, you don’t have to look a certain way or be from a certain place to do it.

Where did the name, Actual Proof, come from?

S: When me and Amp were making beats together, when we started off we didn’t know what we were doing, I hate to even think back to… if any of those beats ever got out it would be very bad, very embarrassing. So we were trying to download songs to sample, and we found a song called “Actual Proof” and we were like, “that sounds like a really cool song,” just off the name, so then we downloaded it. And I guess whoever put it up mistagged it, because it was a country song, and we were like no we can’t use this. But we were like, this name sounds pretty tough, lets go ahead and keep that, not thinking at the time, you know, about Herbie Hancock, but by the time we realised what we had named ourselves it was kind of too late because 9^th had already labelled us as a group and the name just stuck around the studio. And there’s a band in Charlotte, North Carolina with the same name…

E: Shout out to them…

S: Yes. But at the same time 9^th was like, well it’s too late now we cant change the name so…

E: So sometimes you will hear us referred to as Act Proof, in the songs we’ll be like Act Proof, you don’t really hear us say Actual Proof a lot, we do, but Act Proof works as well…

S: Just so you know, he’s eating (turns the camera left onto Enigma eating a plate of food)

E: I’m sorry, I’m so hungry right now, that’s why I’m leaning off the camera like that. Why you got to treat me like that? What you know about hungry people out there?

S: (Laughs)

E: He don’t treat me right! He burns me in the booth every time, every time I come out the booth everybody be like, “aaah, Enigma that’s hot!” Then he goes in the booth and he’ll say, “Fly pigeons in the plaza/ Italiana/ Grazie,” who says that in rap? Tell me that? Who uses Italian words?

S: Raekwon… Oh yeah, I mean’t to tell you a very big influence; Wu-Tang, huge influence, I just remembered that from the question earlier.

E: Whatever… Let me know if this is unprofessional at all…

It’s cool, this is a written interview, so people won’t see you eating…

S: So I could have done this interview shirtless…

Where do you aim to be a year from now?

E: Over there. where you’re at!

In the UK?

E: Absolutely

S: UK, anywhere, doing shows, having an album released, continuing to make more music, seeing everyone on the label do well, producers, artists, staff, everything, just trying to do what we do now, but on a larger scale.

E: I’d also like to see this hip-hop stuff grow back to what it can be, you know grow the way it can be, what it used to be, that’s what we want to do, more of a balance…

S: We love ignorant music, just like anybody else…

E: We were listening to some stuff last night… (Does a dance to demonstrate)

S: Yeah the stuff we were playing in the studio last night would surprise people, if they walked in, they’d be like whoa, 9^th wonder and his team listens to this?

E: We don’t do it often, but it gets a little run in the stu, it gets a little run…

So what were you listening to last night then?

S: We listened to some Donnis…

E: We listened to some Big Meech, some Rick Rawse, some T.I… Big Meech, UH, Larry… (dances holding up a can) this is root beer just in case you wondering, I ain’t drinking no alcoholic beverages…

S: We listened to some of “Ashes To Ashes,” we stayed up really late so its kind of a blur, we listened to some old Eve…

E: Oh some old Mos Def, some Roots

S: We listened to a lot of stuff last night, a lot of stuff, we were bouncing around and enjoying music about selling drugs and shooting people and shit, and I like it, I grew up around kids that do that and they’re still close to me, and its still a part of us.

E: Just because we don’t make that type of music doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy that kind of music from time to time…

S: Fuck that, not from time to time for me, I listen to that shit all the time…

E: From time to time for the god, I can’t…

S: I just said fuck that shit, that ain’t intelligent!

A lot of people are putting out their top ten of last 2010 lists at this time of year, what were musical highlights of last year for you?

S: I liked “Fornever” Murs and 9^th Wonder, I guess I’ll throw “Death of the Popstar” (David Banner and 9^th Wonder) since it came out at the end of the year, aside from everybody on the label, I don’t want to just shout our own stuff out…

E: Kid Daytona

S: Daytona’s project, Nottz, “24 Hour Karate School,” Curren$y’s “Pilot Talk” was good. “Thank Me Later,” Drake, a lot people can say whatever they want about him but he’s incredibly talented…

E: If you ever get a chance to see him live, it’s a show man!

S: Oh, “Teflon Don” big fan of that! And production-wise I wasn’t really into Kendrick Lamar’s release but him as an artist…unbelievable!

What is the set-up like at It’s A Wonderful World Music Group? With regards to studio sessions and schedules etc?

S: The way it’s set up, some days it’s, “hey, here’s a beat, who wants to rap on it?” And that will happen five to ten times in a week, and all those songs, they are either pushed to the side or forgotten about because the same thing will happen next week. So there’s a ton of music that may never be heard, but we are always doing something. Now that everyone’s doing projects it’s a little different because, you know, you don’t want your project to be too feature heavy, but just last night we realised that we didn’t have a lot of features, and Tom Hardy was in the studio, and he jumped on a song, and that’s going on the EP. So the way it is now everybody’s more focussed on their own stuff, but if you need anything, from anyone, all you have to do is ask.

E: I don’t know how most labels are set up when you have a staple of artists like that. But we are literally like a family, its not like I cant go talk to somebody, because we’ve been all together for a while, before we were a label too. Before it became an official label we were making music at central, as just a group of talented people, and we all gravitated together because of our love for music. And 9^th explained to us last night that how it came to be this, and he just realised this, he believes that all of his artists are in some way an extension of himself. Like in one artist he might see this, and that’s that side of him. Like for example if he was speaking on us, he told us last night that we are his intellectual side, Rapsody is his love for music, HaLo is his disciplined side… He went down the line like that, and we all make up 9^th Wonder, which is wild because… Nah that’s crazy, I don’t know, I was blown away by that, we were all blown away by that. After every session, we’ll finish a session at 4 in the AM, and we don’t leave until 5 in the AM, because there’s always a wrap up, and not a scheduled wrap up either, its just that after all the music is done we just sit down and talk. It’s not like we just come in here we do music and we’re out. Half the time when we come in here to do joints we don’t even start on the joint until 12, and we get there like 8 because we’re just laughing and goofing around.

S: If people knew the things that went on, we could have a reality show…

E: It’s so funny man, if you set up a camera in there…

S: Or a comedy sketch show, that would probably be better.

E: Because all of us have different personalities and all of us are clowns in our own way.

S: But that helps the music making process, because everyone’s comfortable with each other.

So does everyone attend all of the recording sessions, as a group?

S: Not necessarily. In the past two weeks, I wouldn’t say we’ve had priority, but everybody knows that, “hey, they have a release coming soon, so whenever they need to record, that takes precedent over anything else,” but as soon as we finish tomorrow, that’s HaLo’s time, because HaLo has a release coming out later this month. So when HaLo needs to do something, he’s got whatever he needs, anyone he needs a verse from, anyone he needs a beat from, he needs to get in there and record, or he needs to be in the room alone writing, he’s got it. Because we know he’s got something coming out and he needs to focus.

E: With me, because I’m into everything, I got a lot going on, it’s exhausting too, like recording, it takes a lot out of you mentally, and emotionally too. Especially with this record, because it is a focussed record, and we have to go places that’s normally just in your subconscious. Like I don’t just usually walk around thinking about the stuff we write, you know, so when writing it is exhausting because you have to bury yourself deep into the song to where you come out like, did I get everything I wanted out of that song? And when it’s a focussed project, and its compact like it is, as far as the amount of time that we started working and everything, it takes a lot, so I know after the release on Saturday it’s going to be like…

S: Strippers and cocaine!

E: He is wild… (Answers phone)

S: See this guy is so important, he just picks up a phone call in the middle of an interview. Strippers and cocaine; he’s setting it up… And he tells his drug dealer he loves him!

E: I know it’s going to be a huge relief just to be finished and completed with it, because I’m up at like maybe 7.38 in the morning, then I’m doing all this stuff during the day, all this stuff during the day, then when I’m done with all that stuff and I’m tired, then I go to the studio at 9 o’clock and I stay until 5 in the morning, and then I’m walking into whatever household I’m walking into, and I got to get up 2 or 3 hours after that, and I got to do it all again. I’m going be excited about going into the house at 9, you know, for a few days, you know. I’ll still go in and support HaLo recording, but I’m not going to have to stay until 5 in the morning.

“The Talented 10^th” is available here…

Follow @ActProof @Enigma_ActProof and @SundownActProof for more info…