HipHopFiend Interview: The Ting Tings on how Hip-Hop has influenced their music…0

Whether it be in different lifestyles or background, musical genres or mediums, hip-hop music and culture has become a wide spread art form and mind-set that has gone on to influence artists working beyond simply beats and rhymes.

I met up with them before their recent show in Newcastle to talk about their love of The Beastie Boy’s Paul’s Boutique album, the influence of hip-hop on their music, the ‘playlist mentality’ of consuming music and their deal with Roc Nation…

Me: One of your main influences for the new record, Sounds From Nowheresville, is ‘80’s Hip-Hop.’ Where did this influence come from and which artists or tracks specifically?

Katie White: Mainly kind of just one off tracks like (Roxanne Shante’s)‘Roxanne’s Revenge’ and all those kind of tracks. Then we got inspired by the Beastie Boys; like the whole album, Paul’s Boutique, somebody recommended we listen to it, and as soon as we heard that our minds just got blown with all the sounds and the textures, so we had real fun on our album. We don’t use samples but Jules especially had lots of fun trying to make stuff he’d just played in sound old like a sample.

Then we stumbled across Cypress Hill we played with them in Germany, and that was the best live show we’ve seen in a long time isn’t it…

Jules De Martino: Probably ever…

Katie: I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t realise they were so good live and they had so many hits. I thought they’d be like two older guys, chilling, eating a burger… But they weren’t!

Me: Yeah, it’s often difficult for the legendary acts like that, who have gotten a little older to live up to their legacies…

Katie: But it was one of the most inspiring things I’ve seen. So this record has definitely been influenced by that.

Me: You’ve also mentioned a few times when you’ve been talking to the students (the Ting Tings have been working on a project with local art students), Blondie’s ‘Rapture’, which was obviously an important record in bringing hip-hop music to a new audience. What was the relevance of that with regards to your new record?

Katie: Well, we kind of got influenced by that on the first album as well really, I’m not sure how strongly that came through in the records. But it was definitely like a Macolm McLaren, Tom Tom Club, Talking Heads, Blondie ‘Rapture’ that kind of ‘post-New Wave’, punky type thing; but they seem to have some rhythm in there somewhere, it doesn’t just feel like its ‘rock’, it feels like it’s got something in it, and I kind of like that. Like ‘Shut Up And Let Me Go’ its kind of spoken, I wouldn’t say I rap, I just shout and talk badly, but it’s so rhythmic. But like ‘That’s Not My Name’ got played on so many hip-hop stations in the States and I think it surprised our record label, but it is because it’s got a rhythm and people just click into it.

Blondie – Rapture

Jules: And we’re putting our music together not traditionally on one instrument, so it’s not a like guitar based band where Katie’s playing guitar, I’m playing keyboards and we can sit here and (play.) We’re editing a lot, we’re cutting a lot of our own loops that we create. Sometimes a song is born out of a loop, I get on the drums, Katie’s doing some kind of weird distortion stuff and then we write a song on that loop. It’s a very, kind of, hip-hop attitude about writing songs. I’m not saying we’re hip-hop, but there’s a construction about the way we make our records that’s not dissimilar to the way a hip-hop track is put together.

Me: You mentioned that you don’t use samples, but I thought I detected a sample of Billy Squier’s ‘Big Beat’ on your new single, ‘Hang It Up’. Was this intentional? Did you play that in to make it sound like that?

Jules: (Laughs) Yeah I played it in. Basically I’ve got so many drum sounds. So what we do (is,) we’re recording it and putting drums on there and were just looking for snares and kicks, and they just stood out. And we just put them on pads and I’m playing (makes drum noises). As soon as we put it down everybody in the studio was like, “This sounds like that so much.” And everyone said the same thing, so in effect it is. Because once you know it sounds similar to something you want to keep it that way, that’s the inspiration there…

Billy Squier – The Big Beat

Katie: We’ve got like, on one of our tracks that’s not been released yet, we’ve got this flutey-keyboardy sound, we were like high-fiving in the studio at one point because he made it sound like an old fucking vinyl, and that was the fun part I think, to try and recreate a sample feel.

Me: I read in NME this week that you were aiming for a ‘playlist feel’ for the record, rather than doing something that fits into a specific genre. Why did you decide to approach the album in this way?

Jules: We’ve listened to music for three years on the road on our mp3 players. We can’t carry records around with us (because once) you put seven CDs in your bag it’s full up already! So we have to just have everything digitally downloaded, I’ve got a big vinyl collection, but ultimately we now live where everything’s in these (points at Macbook) or on our MP3 players. As we started to listen to music like that from three years on the road we realised that we didn’t listen to albums anymore because you create your own playlists. I mean occasionally an artist who you really… Paul’s Boutique is one of those examples that you play from start to finish and its really kind of, its so wide, its not just the same thing every time; its so live…

Katie: They’ve got like country on one part of Paul’s Boutique…

Jules: There’s so many influences in there. But generally when you’re listening to an album it’s kind of quite narrow and you’ve got the same thing all the way through. So we tend to start listening to a lot of playlists or making up hits, you know, our favourite record singles, and they create an album, they create your mood when you’re travelling. You go, “Oh yeah, I’m going to like everything on this playlist.” So we kind of wanted to make an album that did that, rather than always sticking to a sound we were into and make everything like that. We could make a track that was very TLC and then the next day we’d be listening to, anything from R.E.M to AC/DC to something else and be like, “We can do that.” And then the next day we’d be listening to something really rock, like a Nirvana track or some sort of rock track…

Beastie Boys – Shake Your Rump
Katie: I think that’s what a lot of hip-hop musicians do that’s why we get influenced by that, because they are so free, they can do whatever the fuck they want. They’re not like, “Oh no, we’re five guys and a guitar and we just play this amp sound”. They just take and take and take and it’s much more interesting for us to listen to.

Jules: It’s been a phenomenon for the past like, decade, that hip-hop music has been able to fuse so much music into one genre. The only thing that I think has been consistent is rapping and beats through their music. But everything else if you actually listen carefully is like, “Wait a minute you’ve got like theatre, orchestration, hip-hop, rap, rock, soul, punk, funk.” And they’re able to bring it altogether. With any other genre of music that’s really difficult to do without getting slated. We were talking about this, if Kings Of Leon tomorrow came up with a track that was very TLC or very “girl-band’ or anything, they’d get slated, because they’re not doing their usual (sound.) But I think hip-hop breaks that down all the time, so we’re not a hip-hop band obviously, but we’ve done the reverse process where we use that theory to a degree.

Me: You also have a deal with Jay-Z’s company, Roc Nation. Can you talk about that and how it came about?

Katie: I think people get a bit confused, because for our record deal we are signed to Sony Records, and then what happened was about a year and a half ago we changed management and met loads of different management companies that wanted to manage us; we met Roc Nation and we just thought they were the most interesting. They were so, like, up for anything and so smart. It was almost like a risk for us to do it, and it was the only one that didn’t feel safe and boring. So we went with them as management. It’s not like Jay-Z is suddenly producing our records; because our whole sound, the whole feel of our band is because we do it all ourselves, so if we went with any producer they’d completely change our band. But it was more just going with the whole team of people, including Jay-Z and all of the people he has around him, that are just up for having a go and trying stuff you’re probably not supposed to do, and people say, “Oh that can’t be done.” They just go for it feet first and we got that from them.

Me: Do you think that the way you are working, and trying out new things, correlates with the way that Roc Nation works particularly well?

Jules: Yeah I think it does in terms of… it was automatic when we go around looking for new management, the people that sort of bolted or connected with us instantly was Roc Nation. I think the work ethic of that company is obviously run fundamentally by Jay-Z and then he has his team of managers; and when we met Jay Brown and John Meneilly who are obviously really smart guys who work for them all the time, they are obviously taking on this management role and expanding rather than it being all about Jay-Z, he’s doing his thing and they’re going, “Alright, lets get some more acts involved.”

They chased us down in Norway. We were doing a gig and they said, “We hear you’re looking for new management.” We hadn’t thought about Roc Nation, that’s not true to say, but they came to us. Out of maybe fifteen managers that took us out for dinner and wine, and they were the ones that, just on a personal level, struck the bell straight away. And then of course we thought, “Well hang on, this is really weird because we listen to a lot of hip-hop fused music, we listen to a lot of rhythm, our music is based around rhythm- you know, it’s drums and vocals predominantly, Katie plays guitar on top of it, we use a lot of loops live with there being only the two of us.” So we just though, “This is really interesting that that’s why they’re probably keen; because they’re seeing something in our band that we maybe hadn’t spotted.”

So we entertained it, we went out and met Jay-Z, he’s a fucking shockingly interesting guy, we thought he was going to be a bit of a bully, hip-hop (type of guy, but he’s the) smartest guy on the planet! (He’s) well read, he’s a gentleman, absolutely loves his music, all different genres. And the more we hung out with the whole team, particularly John Meneilly, the more we realised that these people were about; doing something different all the time, they live and breathe it. It was obviously commercial and about money, but there’s a lot of it from the roots, from Jay-Z’s point of view, and that’s how we work and it just felt like it was a match made in heaven. And then the more we recorded stuff and played it to them, they gave us the best reaction. From Jay-Z’s point of view, he’d always give us some support on our tracks and when building a new album its important to have people liking it from the ground up. They just felt like the right people, and of course we got more and more connected with them and here we are now working with them, and it’s wicked, it’s amazing.

‘Sounds From Nowheresville’ will be available in February 2012 on Columbia Records…