Kid Capri Interview
Door: Karst Jaarsma
Fotografie: Jasper Suyk 07-04-2010
David Anthony Love, voor velen beter bekend als Kid Capri, mag beschouwd worden als een van de meer gerenommeerde hiphop DJ’s. Geboren in 1970 in de Bronx kon Kid Capri niet om de hiphop heen, later vervaardigde de beste man onder andere als vaste DJ in Def Comedy Jam en via zijn vele uitgebrachte mixtapes wereldwijde bekendheid. Uiteraard had de MC/DJ/Producer tijdens zijn weekendje roken in Amsterdam nog even tijd om, nuchter, met House of Hip Hop van gedachten te verwisselen.
You have been born in Brooklyn and raised in the Bronx, in what way has your neighborhood influenced you musically?
I first started with DJing when I move to the Bronx. The first time I heard hiphop was in the Bronx, when I moved there it was not even out yet. It started right after I moved there, that was the beginning of me doing hiphop. I watched someone else who was shooting dice and saying: “Yes, yes, y’all. To the beat y’all. Throw the dice to the wall.”
That is when we started the block parties and that’s how I became who I am now. If I would have stayed in Brooklyn I probably would not have been DJ, because I was not living in the home of the hiphop. So the move to the Bronx was probably the reason why I started with hiphop.
Hiphop was getting bigger at that time.
It was not getting bigger until later. Once the first rap records started coming out it was getting bigger but not BIG, you know? It was getting big when Run DMC came, they were the first to do hiphop on a big level. The hiphop was only big to us, to the kids, and it got gigantic to the mass when Run DMC came out.
Before the records were made, we had our own mixtapes. We had tapes with Cold Crush, Fantastic 5, Jazzy 5, The Furious 5, Force and Deceased . Those were the tapes we were listening to. We went to an party and we got the tapes when the party was over. Or we got the tape from this guy named Tapemaster. These parties were the main events in the Bronx, that was before the records were made.
What is your most memorable memory from the Bronx?
It was the Block. Everybody used to call me from everywhere because they wanted to hang out on my block. I got a lot of education from my block, I got a lot of education out there.
What is the most important thing you have learned in the Bronx?
To stay out of trouble. The fact that I should not do what everyone else was doing. And like I said if I had lived somewhere else I would not have been what I am nowadays. I probably would have been a drug dealer in Manhattan or a Gangster in Brooklyn. I also learned how to do business. Next to that I learned how to get myself together and how to play the people.
Then you decided to start DJing, why did you decide to DJ?
I always was into the music, but not on the microphone that much. I always played the drums and liked to make beats. So after having produced a few things I wanted to become a DJ. As a matter of fact, the DJ was bigger than the rapper in that time. It was all about the DJ and that probably was another reason why I was attracted to the DJing more than the MCing. Nowadays it is all about the rhyming, but back then it was all about the DJ.
DJing is the most expensive element of hiphop, how did you handle the high costs back then?
We just did it! We had jobs and you had your boys in the neighborhood. They bought one album, I bought one and we put it together. I had a mixer that had no headphone holes, everyone had his own part of the equipment and we just put it together. That’s the way we survived doing it and we did it. Years later, when it got bigger, this all changed . But first we did what we had to do to get in.
Do you consider the turntablism as an art? Lots of people do not see DJing as real music.
Why shouldn’t it be real music? How do you want to dance on a party where there is no DJ? Are you just going to stand there? It is stupid to say such a thing, it is the DJ who keeps the party going. If the DJ is wack, you just can say he is wack.
When you come to my party has that nothing to do with the records I play. It is all about me, that is what it is about. Everything else is futile. It is not about what hot record I am going to play, it is about myself. That is the way you should sell yourself as DJ. You are not a dude who is just playing some records, you have to stand out! And that is what I do, I stand out as an artist. When people come to my parties they do not hear me, they feel what I am doing. They know I am really trying to give them a good performance. Without the DJ there would not even been hiphop, we invented it. It all came from the DJ. So how can people say that?
Do you see a changed respect towards DJs?
I see more respect for the DJ. The DJ is getting a lot of things nowadays, it was not getting before. DJs are getting album deals, endorsements, big radio shows and more stuff like that. You had to be a radio personality to have a radio show. Nowadays DJs become a personality.
But if you are not looking at yourself as an artist nobody else will, that is the reason why some people do not get the respect they deserve. They feel like they are just doing what they are doing, but fuck that! You should feel that you are the greatest, that is what I call myself at least. But your talent needs to live up to that status. That means that you should be able to go to any city, any state and any hole no meter where you are and rock that place down.
The audience should call you legendary, because of all the work you put in. A lot of people do not put their work in it, so they do not have the experience and do not really know if they are good in what they do. When you take them out of their comfort zone and put them somewhere else you will see how good they really are.
You are working on a new album right now. It is called ‘The whole world is behind David Love.’ your latest album ‘Soundtrack to the streets’ is from 1998. Why did it take you more than ten years to start working on a new one?
Because I did not want to do another album. I just did not feel like it. It takes a lot to produce my type of album and I was busy with everything else. Being on the road, doing my television show, handling my clothing brand, I have been doing different things. But now I am feeling to do another album.
It is going to be the craziest shit you have ever heard. You will hear a couple of oldskool things, but I am also moving to different things now. It is going to be way better than my last album. The music is bigger, I stand more into it than ten years ago. I consider myself more as a CEO now than an artist. I have got LL Cool J, Akon and Jadakiss already featured on my album.
The first single is called ‘I turn it out’. We shot some video for it in Switzerland, tomorrow we will shoot some pictures here in Amsterdam. Only 10 per cent of the album is produced with samples, the other 90 per cent are beats where I have started with nothing.
You will see that I am going into different directions with the album. I am not trying to sell to the hiphop audience, I am selling to the world. That is why the album is called: ‘The whole world is behind David Love’. The hiphop audience does not buy records. Nobody is actually buying records, I am just trying to show that I can reach Amsterdam, Germany, Indonesia and Africa. I am trying to show that I can reach people in different places.
Will you also be rhyming again on ‘The whole world is behind David Love’?
I never was a rapper, but I knew how to rhyme. I rhymed on my whole first album. Back in the time it was not possible to get a record deal as a DJ so I was forced to rhyme. My second album was more about me being a producer. I only rhymed on two songs on that album, I had featured Jay-Z, Busta Rhymes and others. I wanted different people on that one so that people knew that it was all about my beats. On ‘The whole world is behind David Love’ will I be rhyming again on a few joints, I have a verse on my first single.
You also recently released a new mixtape, can we expect more soon?
That is not my focus, I do not feel like that is something I have to do. I did that mixtape and I now have to move on. As strong as these mixtapes are nowadays I know I have to release one every now and then. Just to keep everything fresh. But it has to be classic, that last one definitely was classic. I would not have released it if it was not that classic.
There are different rappers in the game who release mixtape after mixtape, how do you feel about such rappers?
Once you have heard one, you have heard them all. A lot of them are hot, but a lot of them are having the same freestyles over the same beats on different mixtapes. A mixtape will be hot if you put original music on it. But when you are releasing five or more different versions of a beat than it will not be what I want to hear. I want to hear originality, I want to hear new shit. I do not want the same record on different mixtapes.
The last tape I put out was released with Christmas and people still download it. Why? Because it is classic. That is why my tapes from the beginning period lasted until they lasted because they were classic. If I had made them in a different way it would have been over in a couple of weeks.
Since you have started with hiphop lots of things has changed, the digital revolution has in fact changed the whole way of producing tracks. How do you feel about this?
You have to change with the times, that is why people are called oldskool. They are stuck in their way of thinking. You have to be innovative and move along with what is going on. That is how to keep up with things, that is how your sound stays fresh. That is how your whole state of mind stays fresh. If you were the man back then does not automatically means that you are popular nowadays. Everybody is going to get over some day, there is no question about that. But the fact that you are over does not mean that you are out of hiphop. If you are stuck in your oldskool way of thinking than you stay back there in the oldskool. You have to keep going, keep going, keep going!
You have also done a few radio show, what happened to these radio shows?
I have been on the road, doing what I was doing. Radio kind off sticks me to one place, that is not what I want. It would not be good to me to be on the radio all time. Nowadays I can go anywhere I want and do my shit, I cannot do that when I am stuck to one place. That is why I never focused on the radio.
You started the ‘No kid’n records’ label in 2005, how is the label going?
I’m doing my album right now on my label. I want to bring the attention to me with that one and start it off from that point. I now have signed, beside me, one other artist on the label, she is called Natalee Imani. I started that label because I know what people want to hear. I have been playing all my life on parties all around the world. I know how to come up with the right thing.
Other labels do not know what the people want to hear?
I am not worried about other labels. There cannot be one DJ, there cannot be one producer and there cannot be one record label. I start to make a difference with what I do. When I was only focused on other labels I would not be able to make a difference.
Nowadays face lots of labels difficulties with the dropping record sales, this was not such a big issue when you started ‘No Kid’n’ in 2005. Would you nowadays still have started your own label?
I probably would have started it, but in a different way than I have done it now. ‘No Kid’n’ records does not have iTunes. I discovered what you can do with iTunes recently. Tony Yayo and DJ Woo Kid explained me yesterday everything about iTunes. I am now focused on my album and will start worrying about the business part later. And then I will start to use Itunes.
You also won a Grammy for the song ‘It is like that’ which featured Jay-z, how has this price influenced your career?
I do not talk a lot about the price, as a matter of fact are most people surprised when they hear that I got a Grammy. It was a great recognition for me, it is definitely something that most people do not have. That was the shine I got for my contribution to the business. Now it is about getting a Grammy for my next album. I have made it when I will win one again.
What has been the best part of your career so far?
That I was able to do what no DJ has ever done before. Before me you had DJ’s like Jam Master Jay, beautiful people, but I am the one that made the DJ a star by itself. After me DJs did not need anybody to help them, the DJ was a star by himself. I was able to earn 10.00 instead of 1000 for a show. That is what I achieved and what I was able to add to the hiphop.
