ThaFormula.com - Yeah, but look at your last Soul Assassins LP, it dropped during a time when real artists were being completely slept on. That album was slept on along with so many more albums and shit like this just keeps happening to the realest artists…
DJ Muggs - That's just part of the game though man. I understood that going into the project. I knew it was an underground project. I knew it wasn't in the status quo of what urban radio wanted at that moment, so those are just the chances you take when your willing to be that kind of an artist and go out on a limb and twist things up.
ThaFormula.com - On the first Cypress album, the sound was straight grimy and hard-core, does it ever upset you that you can't do that for a Cypress album now in 2003? Because you know its not gonna go double platinum and these idiots out here ain't gonna understand or appreciate what your givin' them?
DJ Muggs - Well, there is 2 answers to that question and yeah in a sense I want to make a grimy, grimy record but people wont get it right now. You know I went and did it anyway on this last Soul Assassins album. I like records that sound like they were made in my basement on an 8 track. I just like that feel of Hip-Hop records before they got into these big polished studios so you know. I'll still go out and make my records like that, but with Cypress its like I don't think we can make records like that no more just because of the fact that its time to move on from that. We did it. That was great for the moment, but its time to move on, progress and you know there is an old sayin', "Those who cease to change, cease to exist." It's just the law of nature you know what I mean?
ThaFormula.com - I mean I know that what you are capable of Muggs, and I know that you probably got a ton of dope beats that were never used. I remember when you first started doing your shit with the first Cypress album, a lot of producers and groups bit your whole shit...
DJ Muggs - Yeah, also you got to understand another thing. Nobody wants beats like that. I got to give muthafuckas beats like that and they don't want them. I come by the studio and I play em and they don't want them. So at some point you got to tell yourself well I need to move on or otherwise I'ma be stuck in this place. I'm gonna be that ol' mad guy sayin', "oh Hip-Hop ain't what it used to be, oh this shit is changed, this shit is wack now." I don't wanna be the old mad guy. Like I said, its survival of the fittest.
ThaFormula.com - What exactly is the "Dust" album all about Muggs?
DJ Muggs - "Dust" is like a combination of Black Sabbath meets Sade. It's all female vocals like Sade over some hard ass…like picture the interludes on the Cypress Albums. Those real slow interlude tracks with a singer on them.
ThaFormula.com - When you give these MC's these beats and they don't want that style anymore, does that ever confuse you a little?
DJ Muggs - Not me, nah. I know what I gotta do. They might be confused but I know what I got to do. With the "Dust" album I just felt like doing something different for a minute with no boundaries on it. Sometimes I feel like using live drums that day. I can't put it on a Hip-Hop track because now it becomes a rock/rap track so with this album I was limitless. I could do whatever I want. I had 20 piece choirs on there and all kind of things like that. Which is creative freedom. I respect someone like Rick Rubin a lot who made great Hip-Hop albums and ventured out of Hip-Hop and went on to do great records in other genres of music and that's always how I see myself as just an artist and a producer. You know I consider myself more than just a Hip-Hop producer and especially an underground Hip-Hop producer. I'm a musician and a producer period so I like to test myself and step into other genres of music and try other things. It keeps me moving man.
ThaFormula.com - What do you feel was your best Cypress album or your best work production wise?
DJ Muggs - I like probably the first 3 albums and then I like some of the work on different ones.
ThaFormula.com - The second album "Black Sunday" was rushed right?
DJ Muggs - Yeah, the second album was real rushed.
ThaFormula.com - What would the album had been like if you would have had the time to do it how you wanted it?
DJ Muggs - Yeah, I don't know what the album would have sounded like. I know I had beats for it that I gave to Ice Cube and House of pain before that album. "Jump Around" from House of Pain and "Tear this Muthafucka Up" and "Check Yo Self" from Ice Cube, all those beats were for Cypress but I gave them away.
ThaFormula.com - Wow! That would have been a whole different album all right, those were some good times man...
DJ Muggs - Times are getting' better now. I don't live in the past man. You gotta move on. You cant sit there and you know I'm tellin' you man all these kids who wanna sit back and talk about how things used to be and never move man, are gonna stay in the past. They ain't gonna move on. There gonna be dead. Your gonna be like, "what ever happened to so and so? He's still reminiscin' about the past and how things used to be." That's cute man, but muthafuckas got to move on. That's why they wanna be in this game like a Dr. Dre or Erick Sermon or like myself and stay in the game and be around for years and not just be in the game, but be relevant. There is an art to that. There is a science to that.
ThaFormula.com - Now I always felt that you never got the props that you deserve as a beatmaker and have always been overlooked when people talk about top producers in the game. Do you feel the same way?
DJ Muggs - Oh hell yeah and the reason being is because I never went outside of the group and just did a lot of songs on different peoples albums. I stayed within my group and toured and toured and came back and did my shit. So I always had enough work where I never even had to really step out to make dough to do anybody else's shit. Now if I was on everybody's album. If I went that route and said, "ok let me get a beat on everybody's album," I think that's what people are looking at these days as far as getting your daps as a producer, but I just didn't choose to go that angle at that time. 'Cause I'm not into that. If I'm gonna sell some weed, I'm not gonna sell it on the corner with 30 muthafuckas all trying to sell a nickel bag on the same corner and that's what its like trying to slang beats sometimes in New York, niggaz is rippin' your beats off. There's 30 muthafuckas in there trying to sell the same fuckin' beats. So I'm cool with my shit man. If muthafuckas wanna come to me, here I am. I stepped out and did you know Goodie Mob, KRS, and do a bunch of shit still. It's like somebody like me and you might see somebody like a Havoc. It's the same thing. He might have did 2 or 3 tracks on somebody else's album but he does all Mobb Deeps'. He's another great producer who is overlooked and the reason being is we just never went out to, uh, the career choices we made were never to try and get on everybody else's records. 'Cause half of them producers that are on everybody's album really never had to, uh, they never even done nothin' classic yet. They just happen to have a good song on everybody's album and that's just because most of the other songs on the album are shit anyway.
ThaFormula.com - Now I could be wrong about this but I always felt that before Rza did his thing, you were really the one who set off that dirty, grimy, hardcore sound that Wu did.
DJ Muggs - Oh, I did do it before RZA did it.
ThaFormula.com - Yeah, I would get into arguments with kids about that. I always felt that you set it off first and basically others followed.
DJ Muggs - Yeah, he just had different MC's. Oh for sure you can look at somebody like that. You could even look at Mobb Deep's style of production and you can even take it a step further. Look how they took the whole "Black Sunday" album. "Black Sunday" gave birth to horror core Hip-Hop. It gave birth to the Gravediggaz. We invented a whole style of rap. Who came out at that time? The Flatlinerz too. That's all off of the "Black Sunday" imagery. Coming out with that dark, gothic, Black Sabbath imagery and these groups were like, "oh lets do that shit." So, boom, boom, boom. If you want to get blatant, on the last Wu album, the single RZA put out.
ThaFormula.com - "The Jump Off" beat right?
DJ Muggs - It was just, uh, It was my beat. Straight the fuck up. You know on the first album Cypress brought the weed into the Hip-Hop game. Cypress brought the darkness back into the game. The put your hoodie on, the put your Timb boots on Hip-Hop, and you know we brought the East Coast ghetto vibe back into the game and then B-Real brought the afro back into the game. We just brought all these things. We brought making hardcore records cool again. Second album, boom we brought touring with rock groups. We opened that door a lot more. The Beastie Boys were doing it a little, but we opened it up to where it was like everybody go tour with a rock group now, its good and we brought that imagery that just set off that whole horror-core shit. The next record we come out and I brought a whole 'nother side into the game. I brought the whole samplin' Indian records and sitars that muthafuckers are barely doing now. This is about 8 to 9 years before muthafuckas start doing it. I was already into the sitars and shit like that. Then we stepped back and moved my way into the Soul Assassin record. Right around that time I was kind of done with Cypress at that time. I felt Cypress reached its peek with "Temples of Boom" and I felt that it was done. After "Temple," I figured it was done. It becomes too easy so you go and you don't even try as much. It's like playing a little kids baseball team. Grown men playing little kids. Its just like you beat 'em and then its like why even go to the park and play again, its too easy. This is just with Cypress I'm talkin' about. It just became easy for us, but it's a group and I told them I'd roll until the wheels fall off. So what you all want to rap on, boom, I'll do this shit, dadadada. You can't do the same thing over cause people get tired of that. 'Cause you know what happens, "oh he's doing the same shit." I can go back and do that though. See what I needed to do is go reinvent new sounds and new styles for myself. I can always tap into that style forever. I'll bring it back when its time. When its time and when the game is open for it and I find the right MC and they wanna come out like that then cool. But MC's don't wanna come out like that no more.
ThaFormula.com - When you made the first Cypress album was it to make money or was it to make an album for the streets?
DJ Muggs - Both. I was broke. I'm ready to eat. At the time I thought we were just gonna sell about 300,000 copies cause every group I liked at that time was doing about 300 to 350,000. So that's what I figured and I figured wrong.
ThaFormula.com - Another nice group that you brought out Muggs, was Funk Doobiest...
DJ Muggs - Well I had a vision for Funkdoobiest. They was the jesters. They were the clowns of Soul Assassins. I had them all in the cartoon shit. I had it all real funny. They had the sense of humor that Eminem does, but they flipped. You know they came out, made a little bit of money. Came out on their second album and they didn't want to be funny no more. He wanted to be like Nas and hold Hennessey and be all cool and be a pimp daddy and talk like some Nas shit and it just don't work for you man. So I'm like, "you wanna come out like that, you sure you don't wanna listen? All right, peace I'm done with you." That's when I cut him loose.
ThaFormula.com - So you actually cut it off with them?
DJ Muggs - Yeah, you know I went in to do the second album, but I'd be like call Son to do vocals he's upstairs in the studio. They would be like, "oh Son left and he didn't tell nobody." He would just disappear out the studio. So I was like, "oh you don't want to take your album serious man, well I ain't got time for this shit man."
ThaFormula.com - Yeah at one point the Soul Assassins crew was getting' real large Muggs as far as groups and talent with Cypress, Funk Doobiest, House of Pain, Black Havana, Alchemist, etc?
DJ Muggs - Times change though man. You know everybody wants things to be how they were but you even look now at 1991 all the groups that were out. I'm looking at this thing the other day at the top 50 we was on and out of all the shit that was on there. Scarface is still around, Latifah is still around but I don't think you could really call her a rapper no more. Ice Cube is still around but he don't really make records like he used to and that's it. Everybody else is gone from that list dog. I'm talkin', there's A Tribe Called Quest on there, MC Lyte, Chubb Rock, Nice & Smooth, Black Sheep, Brand Nubian, and it's like where's all that shit at? It's hard to stay together when you're a group man. After a couple of albums it's hard to stay together. 'Cause things change man, just naturally. A lot of times what brings the people together is cause they wanna make a record and be successful and change music, then you do it and its like, "now what's our goal? Oh, our goal is to make money now man cause now we bought some houses and cars and we got to pay these fuckin' payments now." It's just the way shit happens. Some people get caught up in it, some people, but they still understand why they are in it and they can pull themselves out of it and then some muthafuckas get lost.
ThaFormula.com - Well I tell a lot of people that it takes a lot of talent to be able to go into the studio and drop a double platinum Cypress album for the masses, then go straight back into the underground and drop a hardcore Hip-Hop LP for heads all at once, and you're one of the few that have ever done that?
DJ Muggs - Well the thing is, I have been able to make records on my own terms and have success. I made my first records the way I wanted to and how I wanted to and they were successful so that kind of just gives you freedom and room to do exactly what you want. If I didn't have success for 2 or 3 records, maybe nobody would have listened to me no more and they wouldn't have wanted to fuck with me. Then I would have had to conform my whole style into trying to make a living out of this and that would have been my whole objective, but I didn't have to go out like that. When you make money you got freedom to still make your choices and do what you want cause I could have easily made the first or the second Soul Assassins album a very big record. You know I could have had stamp on this like a Roc-A-Fella or a No Limit right now if I wanted to go in that direction with the album, but I chose not to, but next album we might though. We might just have to come and put a stamp in this fuckin' game and let muthafuckas know "bam, look this is how its going." Then just flip it on them right there and just take over what's going on and just flip the whole style and sound on them.
ThaFormula.com - It was with your second Soul Assassins LP that I realized things were changing in Hip-Hop. That Kool G Rap track and GZA track were ridiculous and you seem to have got no props at all. I would read reviews for some fruity wack album and they would talk about how dope it was and then I would see them talk about how bad yours was. That's when I really started seeing the hardcore shit being shut down...
DJ Muggs - Yeah, I don't know what muthafuckas are listening to no more. They want you to sound like everybody else. If you don't sound like this and this, your wack now. I'm like, "I'm cool man, whatever." But this year it's time to take the Soul Assassins out of the underground and just really take it to that next level.
ThaFormula.com - So who is the Soul Assassins now Muggs?
DJ Muggs - It's not only a rap outfit, It's about 100 muthafuckas. Just artists. Cartoon does tattoos, Scanners does videos and takes pictures. I got my homeboy who runs a car shop. He does all our cars. He does all our rims and our systems. We're just a bunch of artists and then we have all our soldiers in the streets still on the block gang bangin' and shit. That's a whole other part of the click. Then we have the music people. Me, Alchemist, Cypress, Self Scientific, Everlast and muthafuckas like that.
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