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New Kingdom rap about their Bee-Yatch's Brew
An interview with afroed Brooklyn rap duo - October 23,1996

by JAY RUTTENBERG--Daily Editorial Board

There are parts of New Kingdom's Paradise Don't Come Cheap LP that scare the living bejesus out of me. It's not scary in the same way that I find most rap music scary, like when I fear that Ice T or 2Pac are gonna bust their big ol' negro paws through my speakers and into my white-washed suburban enclave brandishing crack vials, .45s, and Farrakhan propaganda, but scary in the same sense that the Fall or Mercury Rev or the last Red Red Meat album are scary.

New Kingdom's brand of hip hop is sonically scary, in a similar vein to their punk and psychedelic rock cousins. The Brooklyn-based duo design their own Bee-Yatch's Brew, an addlepated musical disaster zone made stoner-friendly with urinal-grimy post-Wu sampling, live instruments ranging from lap steel guitars to clarinets, and... and then there's the pair's rapping, or is it merely hollering?

Jason "Nosaj" Furlow -- afro weighing in at 200 pounds, sideburns at 150 -- boasts a roar so ferocious it could disturb a Wookie; at least twice on Paradise Don't Come Cheap he grunts about "howlin' like a wolf," boisterously enough to make Chester Burnett sit up in his grave wondering what all the ruckus is about. More reserved is bespectacled partner Sebastian Laws -- unkempt afro weighing in at 265 -- who snarls a growl that may not match Nosaj's deep volume but sneaks up on the listener for its downright nastiness.
Bring it all together under a perennially lethargic beat and you've got yourself an album that whitey critics (all strategically armed with the phrases "Black Sabbath meets Capt. Beefhart meets Cypress Hill," "a refreshing move away from gangsta rap," and "psychedelic smorgasbord") will simply devour.

Speaking outside of Cambridge's Middle East a couple hours before New Kingdom's opening slot for Epitaph girlie-punks Red Aunts, the two rappers shy away from all the frightening tags. "Everyone says [the album] is psychedelic, which kind of scares a lot of people away," says Nosaj, playfully tossing what just a few minutes before served as his falafel wrapper against the club's exterior. "Our music is really young and innocent. If you listen to a song like 'Have you ever been suspended in air?/I have in my favorite chair' -- that's some fun shit! That's for kids! You know when you were a kid and you're just jumping on the bed -- it's fun stuff, it's fantasy.
"If you listen and just forget about anything you know about psychedelics, it's like reading Alice In Wonderland. When you were young, you just thought it was this great fantasy. Then when you got older you're like 'Oh my god! These motherfuckers were on some shit when they did this shit!' It's the same kind of thing."

So these motherfuckers had to be on some major shit when they concocted their sophomore LP. Drooling about unicorns and horses over a diabolic John Medeski organ cameo, wallowing about Kurt Cobain's death and their penchant for the Muppet's percussionist in the Funkadelic la-la land of "Animal," imploding on oddball snippet "Kickin' Like Bruce Lee" -- Paradise Don't Come Cheap isn't your typical American rap album. Man, I bet Gee Street Records imported Mack Truckloads of exotic psychedelics to Brooklyn for the LP's recording.

What's New Kingdom's Jones?
"Caffeine," Nosaj says. "I drink a lot of Jolt."

Caffeine??? Oh, what has psychedelia come to? Mind expanding music has no caffeine vibe! Sluggish, grimy hip hop has no caffeine vibe!

"But it does," insists the VU-shaded rapper. "It has that kind of rush to it, kind of like after you crash on caffeine and you can't go to sleep, but you're just like UGHGHGH, and you're neck hurts and shit."

Then what about all the stoner tags? What about all the Cypress Hill comparisons?

"Personally I don't think we sound anything like Cypress Hill, but because of when Cypress Hill came out, and the whole hemp thing was popular, and even our first album had a smoker's edge to it [so people lumped us in with that scene]. But we never said anything about weed. We never once [made marijuana references]. None. None. Cause we don't need to do that -- it's not a commercial for pot. If I smoke pot on my private time, I don't need to put that on a record, ya know what I'm saying? I make music. Everyone smokes pot. Doctors smoke pot. Who gives a fuck? It has nothing to do with music."

The question is whether or not anybody but rock critics care. By not stooping to puerile drug rhetoric or cleansing their often rough-around-the-edges free-formness, New Kingdom isolate themselves from both the "alternative" suburban audience to which they currently cater ("Say it loud," they rap, "I'm a freak and I'm proud") as well as the urban hip hop crowd which they initially assumed they'd be hangin' with (just check out the comparatively traditional full length debut, Heavy Load.)

Thrust into a different scene than was their original intent, with Paradise Don't Come Cheap, New Kingdom adjust accordingly, ignoring the barriers associated with contemporary black music and adopting a fuzzier, weirder perspective sought by American white kids. But it seems as if they've miscalculated the Alternative Nation and swam a bit too far off shore.

"You don't have to compromise" for mainstream prosperity, claims Nosaj, whose ego seems even larger than his afro. "MTV will come to you if you're the people's champion. Let MTV come to us. On the first record we went to them, but this time it's like, 'Okay, cool. You want the hot shit? We've got a video for "Mexico Or Bust" that's the bomb. You want that shit? It's all you, ya know what I'm saying?'"

It sounds a bit idealistic, but the single in question just could be the catalyst the twosome desire to join the ranks of Wu-Tang Clan and the Pharcyde -- "a brass ring song for 1998," according to the rappers. The record's opening gambit, "Mexico Or Bust" twists Frank Zappa's "Willie The Pimp" just enough to satisfy the Zappa estate, adding a blues horn section and Nosaj's slothful maverick growl. "[When I wrote the lyrics,] I was living with my girlfriend and her mom, just trying to make my record. I needed to be out somewhere. I know so many people who want to break out but they can't, and that's why you listen to music, so you can travel."

A few hours after discussing their MTV aspirations and critical accolades, New Kingdom take the tiny stage Upstairs at the Middle East in front of no more than ten or 15 fans. Their stage show, featuring a quadri-racial seven man line-up of a DJ, dancer, percussionist, guitarist, and drummer, is even sloppier than the album -- a hodgepodge of sounds and visuals all thrown together sloppy joe-style, not as covertly coordinated as are the records.

Like the new Beck LP or Quentin Tarantino film it's all very post-modern, and a little bit too self-consciously so ("My mind ain't nuthin' but a big ol' collage," they rap). Unlike those two PoMo commercial darlings, however, New Kingdom seem too sludgy to gain access to the Top of the Pops. They also seem too sonically dirty for the typical rap aficionado, which explains why the group is playing punk shows where it set out to play rap ones.

"It's in the tradition of experimental black music," says Nosaj regarding his audience's, uh, CaucasianessCQ. "In the same tradition as our jazz brothers and sisters, Ornette Coleman and Sun Ra, who always had to play to liberal white college students because mainstream jazz audiences didn't really get what they were doing because it was a little futuristic, you know what I'm saying? It's in the tradition of Jimi Hendrix. You can't really dictate where your music's gonna go. You play to the people who want to see you.

"It's kind of cool for us to be in indie spots, because a lot of times these kids haven't been exposed to the real thing. They're exposed to Beck and Butthole Surfers and Rage Against the Machine, but they're not really exposed to the real hip hop that's kind of fused to what they're used to, that raw indie feel. So when they see us it's like old school. It's like when young kids used to see the English psychedelic soul bands -- but then when they saw the real motherfuckers at the Fillmore they're like 'Oh shit! That's the real shit!'"

"So when you two hooked up five years back you hardly thought New Kingdom would wind up touring in punk rock circles?" I ask.

"No, no, no. We started off thinking we'd be hanging with one person and never thought we'd be hanging with certain ones, ya know what I'm saying? Sometimes you sit around like 'Shit, it's kind of weird.' It doesn't suck, it's just kinda strange. You can never predict how shit's gonna be."

Reviews

Heavy Load
Paradise Don't Come Cheap
Live Shows

Interviews

Jay Ruttenberg Interview - 1996

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