Delinquent habits interview
Door: Karst Jaarsma
Fotografie: Joris Kalma 26-04-2010
De Delinquent Habits knalden in 1996 ineenkeer de hitlijsten van ons kikkerlandje binnen met hun latino hiphop op het nummer ‘Tres Delinquentes’. Met de single, die meer dan een miljoen keer over de toonbank ging, op zak plaatsten de Delinquent Habits zich gemakkelijk tussen Latino hiphop collega’s als Cypress Hill. Meer dan veertien jaar later zijn de Delinquent Habits nog steeds hard bezig met hiphop. In oktober 2009 werd inmiddels alweer het zesde album, ‘The Common Man’, uitgebracht. Door het opstappen van Kemo The Blexican en beef met O.G. Style is Ives het enige originele lid van de clan en House of Hiphop had onlangs de gelegenheid om met de man wat te babbelen.
Can you tell us something about your first contact with hiphop?
The Fat Boys and Run DMC were the first who really made me want to do hiphop. I definitely started doing hiphop after I won a competition at our school, where I rapped against a bunch of black guys. There were no white guys in there at that time, you only had Jelly Bean Benitez but he was Latino. That is different. There was no stopping me after I won that competition. All I wanted was a record deal.
What was the part of hiphop which made you fall in love with it?
I liked the fact that people were telling stories and I liked the drive of the drums. I really loved the fact that hiphop was led by the drums, especially back then. You do not have that anymore, the music has evolved in a other direction. But I really liked the fact that these drums just drove the whole shit, that was really cool.
You started, together with the Delinquent Habits, recording Latino rap music.
We were all from a neighborhood where a lot of Latino’s, Italians and a bit of other cultures lived together. You can be a white kid in L.A. and growing up in a Mexican hood and everyone will believe that you are Mexican.
We were put in the Latino rap area because we have a lot of Latin elements, like the horns, in our music. But we never planned to become a Latin hiphop group when we started doing hiphop, we just did hiphop! We are labeled as Latin hiphop and sure did a lot of groundbreaking for new groups, but in the first place we just wanted to make hiphop!
Are you convinced with the way the Latino hiphop has evolved?
It is an overflow for me right now. It has gotten from a hiphop thing to something like a Mariachi band with some rap in it. The element of the hiphop has to come back. You should never forget about the hiphop while working on this Latin hiphop.
Which artists do you admire because they have stuck to their Latino hiphop roots?
It is easier for me to talk about artists which I do not admire. There is a guy called Pitbull, he only does dance tracks. He always talks about chicks and boobies. Doing everything that is expected from him by some kind of radio guy. He basically plugged the market with this, so called, Latin hiphop and sets a status quo by doing so. Everyone now believes that all Latin hiphop artists sounds like this Pitbull.
You will get disappointed when you like Pitbull and you check some other Latin hiphop artists out. Because that is not the kind of music you had expected. That goes the same way around ass well, you will never give a other Latin rap artists a chance when you do not like that Pitbull bullshit. Guys like him are really fucking the scene up. He is selling lots of records and makes a lot of money, that is good to him. That probably is his goal, but some people have the musicin mind as much as they have the money and that is important to my opinion.
What can artists like you and Cypress Hill do to cure the scene?
The music is never in control by the artists. The record companies, the radio stations and all the other non talented people fuck up the music for those who are talented. They believe that they know how everything should be. They were in a band once and just did not have their lucky breakthrough, but they believe that they know how things should sound. These guys are sitting behind their desks all day, not having the live they would have wanted, and thinking that they know everything. But they do not know anything in fact. They sure know how to sell the music, but they also want to be in control in the music part.
That is the same story with the people working on the radio. A lot of people that are important in the radio, or used to be popular, believe that they are the guys to make everything happen. They believe that they are the guys who can set new trends in the scene. That is bad as well.
The people who are actually making the music are the last to receive respect. We are just making the music, they are the ones who are playing and selling it. They believe that the artists are just their slaves. That is the point where everything gets fucked up. The best thing we can do is simply making music we love. It would be awesome if we can continue to make music, but maybe we will have to quit some day when we do not sell anything. You had better quit than recording something which you feel uncomfortable with, so be it.
I cannot take the chance of making a record I did not want to do and that one still becoming a flop. I would have sold my soul and still have fucked everything up. I would rather make something I like and never receive any platinum hit again. That is okay to me. I can tour, make money by selling some albums to my hardcore fans and do what I like. It will be time to do something else when I cannot live from my music anymore.
You have sold over a million records, is it possible to make a living out of these sales nowadays?
I make money with my touring, few people make money out of records these days. It is a tough market and there are many people who put our records for free on the web. We cannot sue them, so we should connect all together and kick their ass. I know that sounds bad, but the truth is that they are stealing from us. They are stealing from my family and they are also stealing from future music. It is hard for an artist, when he starts working on new material, to make something truly creative. To record something that is new, not a copycat for the radio. These bands can continue with what they are doing because they sell records and if one idiot from Limewire decides to drop this record on internet you are fucked!
We won’t make any money if 50.000 people download that thing and we only sell 10.000. Sure, we can have packed shows but that is not enough. The downloading blocks the continuity of producing records, artists won’t be able to continue making good music if people are downloading everything.
Do you have any plans to adapt to the internet in the future?
I am trying as fast as I can, you know?! I would love to find a site where I can sell 50.000 downloads in two weeks. That would be sick. The human being, naturally, tries to get as much as they can for as less as they can. So if someone gets the choice between a free record from Limewire or paying for it via www.delinquenthabits.com they sure are going to get the free one. Unless you really care, but there are not a lot of those out there.
You have released ‘The Common Man’ a few months ago, are you convinced with the selling of the album?
I am not unhappy with it, but I am not particularly trilled as well. We found too many sites who had the album for free. I am sure that for every record sold at least ten have been downloaded for free. Nobody is going to be happy if you only sell ten per cent of what you could have sold. Complete governments would shut down if this happened in other industries.
The ones that come to our shows want to have the disc in their hands and I am happy with that. They want to see the cover, they want to check out about the band and I am really thankful to these loyal people.
The album deals a lot with subjects concerning the Common Man, why did you want to deliver such an concept album?
Because that is the point where I am right now. I just think that the way you look at yourself having success is very important in live. You can say that you are a success when you make a million dollars. But you could also go sell cocaine and make a million dollars. That does not make you a success. So earning a million dollars does not necessary makes you a success. I tell the kids and the people in the crowd that being a stand-up guy is the good thing to do. You should be able to stand up in the morning, look in the mirror while knowing that you are not taking anything from no one and helping for the greater good of the community. That is the common man struggle.
People being the common man do not realize the power they have. We have got unions in America, where everyone strikes when they want something from their employer. But if there was a common man union, it would attract millions and millions of people worldwide. The rich guys up in their ivory towers with their 100 inch TVs and Rolls Royce’s wouldn’t have any money to count if we told them to fuck off. That is what I want people to memorize; it is not special to have to pay your bills or to feel desperate sometimes. Everybody is like that.
Besides, these people on the hill or the ones that are very low in poverty are just lazy ass motherfuckers wanting to use the system to get paid. Sure some people do need help, but there also are many who just do not want to work. They should get a job or get out off their Ivory tower. The common man has the power. We would all check out if the common man decided not to go to work anymore.
One of Obama’s main campaign points was the promise of change, do you already see a changed position of the common man in the states?
Yeah, we are worse off. We are doing way worse. Obama just printed 900 billion dollars. Let’s say, for example, that this recorder here is all the gold in the world. So the recorder is worth a hundred billion dollars. This recorder here will be worth a hundred times less if someone else comes up with one hundred more recorders.
That is the same story with the dollars, there is an certain amount of dollars in circulation and they are worth a certain value. These dollars have power because they are backed by the GDP of the United States. But this extra 900 billion dollar is not backed by anything. It might be helpful right now, but in three years it will be worthless. A pack of potato chips now costs one dollar, but if he continues doing this it will be 20 dollars in a few years. The dollar will only become less in worth.
It is the same with his crazy healthcare projects. It is good that people want to have healthcare. I do not have any healthcare and would love to have it. I would be really happy if he could do that without burdening my kids. But they introduced now a bill that costs ten trillion dollar, ten trillion! You cannot even count to one billion in a lifetime. My kids and even guys of your age are going to pay taxes that equals 50 or 60 per cent of their pay and nobody likes that. These guys lie and cheat, steal and take from us while they are standing on stage, smiling and pretending that they are the common man.
Then they say that they cannot let the banks fall. But businesses fall all the time. It is a natural cycle that new businesses open and get bankrupt. The only thing they are trying to do is to stay in control and that is why I am completely against Obama. I know that is not popular to say in hiphop, but I do not like him just because he is black. And I do not dislike him just because he is black. The way he acts is a big factor and he just does not act right.
Will the position of the Common man ever change?
It could change in different directions; the common man is just going to continue with surviving or the people who have all the money will see that the common man knows how to deal while times are hard and they will make times harder. Instead of having people that are rich, poor and in the middle we will only have people that are very rich and people that are poor. And that is bad.
I think that the Common man will unite and prevent that from happening while using every means necessary. I do think that it has gone that far that you will see Americans gun fighting other Americans in the streets in a few years. I hope that will not happen but I am afraid it is already that bad. Now everybody is still surprised that America has got a black president but that is actually not that great. You have got to look through the smile and the words. When you look back what Obama has said in recent years you can witness a changed opinion every year. What he is saying depends on who is sitting in front of him.
Let’s say that Israel and Holland have a serious problem. You will see that when he sits down with Holland he blames Israel and in Israel he will blame Holland. He always pretends that he is your best friend. The same goes around for Guantanamo bay. He will close the Cuba prison, but he is actually just replacing the high security prisons.
You have to chose between being someone who feels the smoke in his ass but not minding it because it is not that hot, or you could be someone who sees the smoke as a sign that there is fire somewhere. His actions can destroy our whole system as we know it. It is fine to me if you are lazy and want to be one of the sheep just following. But it makes the difference if you want to make your own. I want to make my own!
Your latest album had a lot more Mexican influences than earlier work, why did you chose so?
We used a lot of other producers this time. I found a bunch of producers in Europe and started working with them. They knew the Delinquent Habits first as fans and they brought me some beats they would love me to be rapping over and that is what I did.
Well it’s kind off funny that your Mexican sound comes from Europe.
No matter where you are, creative guys can be found everywhere. People have been taught that the only place for good hiphop music was the United States, because that is the place where the hiphop roots have been laying for many years. But that is as far from the truth as possible. The songs would be coming from everywhere if the whole world spoke English. The majority of the States speaks English and that is why a lot of them get big record deals. Lots of people will sell many more records when they start working in English.
What is the difference between European producers and American producers?
American producers are full of shit because they only care about the money. European producers are hungry to make the music and that is it. Europeans appreciate it more when their dreams come true because it´s harder to make it from Europe . How can you go wrong if you are making the music you like and having an audience, no matter how big, that likes your music?
The album also has a lot of party tracks, why did you chose so?
Because the common man is a working man. And when they are not at work they do not need a record that makes them feel bad. They need music which makes them feel good. They should party and have a good time. I want them to forget about all the bullshit.
You rap in a mix between Spanish and English, so called Spanglish. Which of the two languages do you prefer?
I like mixing both, because it gives you more words to go down with your music. There are a lot of words which you want to use in English but where you cannot find a rhyme word for. You get an extra bit of creativity if you then move to Spanish and find a worth which fits well.
Will you start working on new material soon?
Yeah, I will start real quick. I will definitely use more live band influences. My new album is going to be a twist between reggae and hiphop. I am getting a bit older and want to work on more relaxed music now.
Do you have a shout out for our House of Hiphop readers?
We have had big success in Holland, Switzerland, Austria and the whole eastern bloc. But Holland was the first country to open up and take us in. So Holland has got a big special place in my heart. Smoking weed is one of the reasons why I love Holland a lot but, since I am not smoking that much anymore, I really appreciate the fact that you gave us the opportunity. You gave us a big boost and confidence and also the ability to tell promoters that we were able to rock a show. I really appreciate Holland and your country feels like a second home to me.
