ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: “All Songs Are Stories”: A Conversation with Tajai Massey about Hip Hop and Storytelling

Jennifer Maritza McCauley

When I was a college kid at the University of Pittsburgh, joy-eyed and largely a loner, I came across the album Full Circle by the hip-hop collective Hieroglyphics (which includes all of the members of Souls of Mischief, the group behind the groundbreaking 90s hit “93 ‘til Infinity”) at the Phantom of the Attic. 

To me, a comic bookstore was a magic land. Phantom of the Attic, sandwiched between University of Pittsburgh’s main campus and Carnegie Mellon was populated with fat boxes and high stacks of comics and vinyl. I stopped at the place on a weekly basis checking to see if there were any new manga volumes of Berserk or if they had a fresh issue of Hana Yori Dango. While browsing the vinyl section, I came across Full Circle. I picked up the album (along with some manga, of course) and the cashier at the front was pleased. “Great choice,” he said, pointing his lips at my new record. I smiled. “Yeah, I have a feeling it’s going to be really good.” 

I got home and listened to the record. A dizzying flurry of words spun out of the record player. As a burgeoning poet, I immediately appreciated the technical proficiency of the collective’s lyrics and their expert flows. 

It’s the linchpin
Lynchin’
Antsy inchin’ bit by bit chompin’ at the bit
My shots hit

(Tajai Massey)

I drenched myself in their bars, completely inhabited by the worlds the Hiero crew had created, and listened to the album from the beginning to the end over and again. As a writer, I loved how the crew crafted their own fully fleshed-out characters (“Maggie May”), vividly rapped about their experiences on tour (“Chicago”), conflicts with love (Love Flowin’) and cutting indictments of the mainstream music industry. I went to find their other albums and solo projects. Over the next several years I found new friendships by connecting with Souls of Mischief/Hiero fans. We would gush and glow over our favorite bars and eagerly anticipate their new projects. As Massey says, the crew created a “family-based” atmosphere. Their music accompanied my next ten years forward, their lyrics lifted me in Miami while I worked on my MFA, they soothed me in Missouri while I completed my PhD and accompanied my new adventures as a professor in Houston, where I saw Souls reunite for their 93 til’ Infinity tour. (A side note: There is a restaurant called 93’ til Infinity in Houston, named after the Souls song!) 

Massey is an ardent supporter of his fans and the larger arts community. I felt so lucky when Massey agreed to do an interview about his own approach to storytelling and style for Pleiades via Zoom. Here we talk about crafting the perfect song, rap as poetry, conjuring characters in a song, and storytelling. 

-JMM

About Tajai:
Raised in Oakland, California, Tajai first met fellow Souls of Mischief member A-Plus in elementary school and the duo began their nascent rap careers. Tajai and A-Plus combined forces with childhood friends Opio and Phesto in high school to form Souls of Mischief before releasing their debut album, 93 ’til Infinity on Jive Records in 1993. He graduated from Stanford University in 1997 with a degree in anthropology. He also graduated from UC Berkeley in 2014 with a master’s degree in architecture. Souls of Mischief is one half of the crew Hieroglyphics, along with Del the Funky Homosapien, Casual, Pep Love, Domino, and DJ Touré. Tajai has contributed to all six Souls of Mischief albums, as well as all three Hieroglyphics studio albums. In 1999, Tajai and the Hieroglyphics’ then-webmaster, StinkE, formed the conceptual group SupremeEx and the Entity, which released an enhanced CD, Projecto:2501, and in 2005, released the album Nuntype. Tajai is also a member of Crudo, a project featuring Mike Patton and Dan the Automator, who made their live debut in 2008. Recently Tajai created Rap Noir, a hip hop duo with producer Unjust from Chosen Few. They released two albums in 2018: Rap Noir and Trap Noir. Currently, he is working on two studio albums, one with super producer The Architect called BLKTEK and another with the legendary Breakbeat Lou.

JMM: Miles Davis, who you’ve credited as one of your influences, says “Man, sometimes it takes you a long time to sound like yourself.” Do you agree with this idea, in terms of the development of your own unique style? Has it taken “a long time” to fully inhabit your style? 

TM: Oh, I listen to my old stuff and often cringe at what I thought was original but it was a little bit derivative. Really, not too much because we had about 10 years of serious rap school before we came out. I started rapping in ‘83, ‘93 is when the record [“93 ‘til Infinity”] came out, but ‘83 to maybe ‘86, there was a huge revolution in rap, right? And from ‘86 to ‘89, when you got the Rakim and Kool G Rap and all that kind of stuff. We were in the danger room. We learned from the absolute best. It takes a second, of course, just as a young person, I think, to find your voice, but I really feel like it was more than that. It was more my perspective, and what it was rooted in and grounded in more so than stylistically. I think stylistically, we made a conscious effort to be different than everybody that came out. I think between us–as far as Hieroglyphics, you look at Das EFX, Grand Puba, Kool G Rap—certain guys come out and then rap changes. There’s Rakim, of course. After they came out, rap shifts and goes in a different direction, stylistically. I think we created one of those shifts. 

I mean, I can point to countless reasons why that’s true, but I mean, when you think about us being some of Eminem and Andre 3000’s favorite rappers, it’s like, okay, well, how does that happen? I mean, because they’re probably seen as the greatest in this modern era. That shows you that we had a different level of effect because we inspired people who you all consider the greatest and the inspiration was stylistic, right? It wasn’t just content too, but really stylistic, like, how do you use your words? 

And we’re all given the same words. 

JMM: Absolutely. I absolutely agree. One of the things you just said was that you were constantly trying to be different. So what ways were you trying to be different from the mainstream?  

TM: I think that every song tried to have a different style. So in each song, on our albums, I’m not trying to bring back a style at all. And you sometimes catch yourself doing that, and then I try to scrap it or catch a word, you know, okay, these both can’t go on in the same project. 

So different styles every song, different word combinations, word choice, expressions, you know, so like: Mass/ey. The other rappers weren’t doing that before we came out. It’s because we took from everybody. It’s not because we just didn’t have an original thought, it’s because I said, okay, I can take that and freak it a little bit, you know? Like a two-syllable rhyme. But the way that it is expressed makes it a little bit more flavorful than just a Mass/ey/as we, you know what I mean? 

So, yeah, there was a conscious effort to be different from ourselves too. I’m in a collective, and so that was important too; it’s about establishing yourself. Like if you look at all of them [the members of Hieroglyphics], they’re different.

JMM: You also use the jazz improvisational style called “scat singing” to map out your verses, right? The Hiero song “Heebie Jeebies” conjures the song of the same name by Louis Armstrong. That song is so fantastic. You say in How to Rap: “…My rhythms come from scatting. I usually make a scat kind of skeleton and then fill in the words.” Why are you drawn to this style of improvisation? 

TM: OK. I’m going to give you an example from “Heebie Jeebies.”

They just came out with [the movie] Dune. And they didn’t really talk about the weirding module, right? So the weirding module was this weapon that was a sound-based weapon and depending on the sort of guttural sound you’ve made through this module it shot out a laser. So in the song, I say “weirding module strength leap from the tonsils, right?/Feedback nigga tape screech through the console./You speak that shit, but they leave muy pronto/when we crash in with eight beams to your frontal.” You know what I mean? The thing about the weirding module was what I wanted to say and show is how my voice is a weapon and everything else is based on the sounds of that. So you could see how the thoughts link that way. I’m not going to use an extensive vocabulary in that none of those words are five-dollar words, right? But you have to figure out how to connect your words in a way that maintains the rhyme structure. So I think that’s really what Hiero’s secret is that instead of us trying to use these ten-dollar words, we’re focusing on one word. What I did just then…with the “feedback” [bar.] That’s a ten-syllable rhyme back to back to back. You see what I’m saying though? So I’m scatting the whole time and it’s all sounds to me and then I put the words into it. It’s not the words first. But I think most rappers probably do that, right? You’re trying to match these things like it’s Simon, where you’re trying to match the sounds and syllables in order. We have this concept in Hiero called “scaffolding.” And that’s where you can tell what somebody’s gonna rhyme. Somebody’s gonna rhyme, what they’re gonna rhyme, or what rhyme came first almost. You know, so it’s like, we try not to show our scaffolding. And I think a lot of rappers that people call great who are great—we don’t have issues personally with them—but we have issues with their style. ‘Cause we’re like, “Oh, you thought of that first and then built all this other stuff” because all of the other shit sounds like it’s building up around this one thing. And then there are different ways to hide your scaffolding. I mean, maybe you say the important rhyme first, but sometimes you say the important rhyme first and all that other stuff kind of is less important, right? You can tell it’s just you trying to continue the rhyme or sometimes the rhyme placement, sometimes it’s about coming up with better words than the actual punch line.

So for example, I gave the catalyst: “Weirding module strength leap through the tonsils.” Right? That doesn’t seem like something that’s not like a punch line, but to me, that was the biggest image out of that, but then as it grew, the next thing I said, “Feedback, nigga, tape screech through the console.” So it’s like, I’m continuing the sound metaphor. You know what I’m saying though? “They leave muy pronto,” even that, using Spanish in a poorly pronounced way, right? And when I say “muy pronto.” But it rhymes with “through the console,” right? You know, and then “when we crash in with eight beams to your frontal,” like I’m trying to show this violent sound as imagery, right? I don’t think somebody who hears that says, okay, the weirding module line is obviously what he started with. 

So that too, like obscure metaphors. We came up in that era where a lot of the rappers were referring to TV. And it’s like, that’s cool. But you know, I like literary references. Like when I see somebody with a tattoo with a literary reference and it’s not words, you know what I’m saying? Just the symbol. And you’re like, Oh, is that Kipling? 

I think all rap comes from sound. And you make an effort to make sure that you match enough sounds. You know at least one sound, that’s what makes a rap or rhymes right? And then the more sounds you rap the more complex it seems. You know I think part of the reason Eminem is so talented and lauded is that he’s able to connect a lot of syllables. That’s the same when I think about a guy like Ransom. They’re able to write regular English but connect with a lot of syllables and make it seem like it’s conversational. Yes, so that’s a removal of the scaffolding. You know like “ I’m going to hand you two/Don’t scuff up my brand new shoes.” You’re like, why did he hand him two? You know what I mean? It’s like, does he want to rhyme with brand-new shoes? You know what I mean? Like he kind of did one, you know, and my brain like picks up like, why did he hand him two? 

Oh, ‘cause brand new shoes. You know what I mean? Like, being able to be conversational is what removes the scaffolding. Battle rap is I think incredible. They do that incredibly and almost sometimes their whole goal is to show the scaffolding. Like you see this process that I’m building up, I’m building it up, I’m building it up. You see it. You see it to the point where the people in the crowd are almost encouraged to say the rhyme, because they’ve seen that structure he’s building up, then [when he delivers] they’re like, oh yeah, wow! He killed that, you know? So it’s a different perspective, but for us, we think “Let’s make it conversational,” make it so you don’t know where the rhymes are going to hit, but not offbeat, not offbeat. That’s not our thing. We try to make it so it doesn’t show the scaffolding. 

I’m an architect. When the building is done, you don’t leave the concrete forms around the building, right? However, when the building is done and it’s concrete, the wood markings from the forms remain on the concrete and give it a certain look and feel that is desirable. So I can respect the imprint of the scaffolding, but some guys just leave the wood out there. 

JMM: This is like golden knowledge right now. So I’m a fiction writer. In fiction, I thought about John Gardner calling resisting the “scaffolding” the “fictive dream.” This idea that we should be able to just immerse ourselves in the world of a piece, not able to see what the writer is doing. I guess we think about the scaffolding too.

TM: Yes. You’re trying to build an immersive world, right? With rap, in the immersive world that we’re building, we have to use tools from this planet, because that’s what everybody’s familiar with and there’s not enough time. 

But I mean, you look at it like Deltron 3030 or like my album Projecto or Nuntype or something, you can build the world, but it takes whole records. Also, rap is environmentally conscious, I mean, it’s made of scraps, right? 

JMM: That is true.

TM: So it’s hard to world-build sometimes when you’re building it out of “hey, look at this recognizable concept” and “hey, I’m bringing back this saying from the 70s.” Like imagine making a fiction book out of scraps from the last 100 years? So I’m trying to figure out how to do that so I don’t get bored. But look, I’m at home. My office has pastels and my bills are up on the wall. Like, I just dropped my daughter off at a private school, like I’m a soccer dad. You know, like I’m not some crime boss. I live in Oakland, but I’m not participating in Oakland activities. So I get excited about world-building, but I don’t want to spend time world-building. I want to already be there. I want to place you there. This new album I’m working on, “Black Hoodie Chronicles”, I’m trying to chronicle the rise of Black Hoodie from who he was before he became Black Hoodie, to when he dons the mask, to then who he is now. And so it’ll be a little bit more descriptive and explicit. For Rap Noir I wanted it to pop up in scenes. Bust it on them. As you said, fiction writers, you want to be immersive. You want to create a whole world for them to lose themselves in. You don’t want them to see tropes or know what’s going to happen in the end. That’s the great thing about books, you have the twist, right? 

JMM: On that note, do you consider your music “poetry”? For example, just look at these bars from “Let it Roll”: “Clutch the snake by the fat of his neck behind his jaws/Find a soft spot/Sink my venom and render it into him/Any and every enemy entering in the interim finna get finished to they last flimsy filament …” Do you consider rap poetry? Or do you think they’re two different mediums? 

TM: No, rap is poetry. I mean, that’s almost obvious. 

It’s the same way “Canterbury Tales” is poetry, right?

JMM: You talked about using scenes in Rap Noir. Can you talk about why it’s important to use scenes in a narrative?

TM: Humans are visual. I mean, those who can see are visual and even those who can’t have these sensory experiences that when you draw a scene, they’ll know. A picture is worth a thousand words, right? And it resonates because it’s a real thing, right? So if you could paint a super clear picture, then you’re going to have a stronger image; you’re going to build up more real estate. 

Your real estate is going to be anchored more firmly inside of the reader’s or listener’s brain. If I just say “Me and my niggas are out here plottin’”, it’s not enough. 

Rasheed Chappell said, “My audio is visual.” And that’s what I got. I want to paint the portrait. That’s why I moved towards these sort of visceral visual scenes. I’m just trying to make a cool Western film noir shit. I think videos always fall short of the imagery created. It’s the same as reading comic books versus seeing the X-Men movies. Even with the CGI, it just doesn’t [do it justice]. What I’m imagining when I’m reading in these comic books, what’s happening in between [the stills] is way more magnificent. 

Even like the Tolkien stuff, The Hobbit. I mean, they do a good job for the people who’ve read it. It’s like, oh wow, yeah, but it’s never as magnificent as your imagination because your imagination is unbounded, right? There’s a certain level of space and time that’s going to bound the visual representation. But your imagination, I always bug out that people see things different, the same thing differently. 

But you do the same things differently, too. Even to the point where you might have a Black character in a book, it explains the person has a Brown complexion and everything. Then you see the movie and the person is Black and people are angry. Like, “Who’s this Black girl?” It’s a movie. And it’s like, yo, did you read the book? She’s Black in the book, too. There it says: ruddy complexion. But I mean, it’s your imagination. It’s personal. Imagination is personal, right? So setting the scene is super important. Even in sort of the wrap up too. It’s not just the violent or action imagery. 

I think with the Souls of Mischief stuff, especially this new record, we’re doing a good job of putting people in places, like dropping people into an immersive kind of world. 

JMM: It was so cool when you were talking about in-between spaces between panels in comic books. I’ll keep thinking about that. I’m also thinking about the meta. Set in Oakland, California, Souls of Mischief’s There is Only Now is a delightfully meta album. In the record, your character gets captured, the other members of the crew, “panic struck” try to find you, you all have to grapple with Womack (a cold cat who rolled crap…and never was pro-Black). Can you talk about the process of making Souls of Mischief a character in There is Only Now? Are they a “character” or a self-insert in your albums? 

TM: Absolutely. Like, dude, we’re just like dads, you know. We’ve had awesome lives of travel. We’re from East Oakland. We grew up in the crack era. So we’ve seen all the cool stuff, but fortunately, rap kind of saved us, and having, you know, just coming from families that required excellence academically, socially, et cetera, saved us. So it’s not like we’re in these lifestyles, right? So we’re Souls of Mischief. Even the name: it’s like our bad id. I rap under my rap name but that’s just not me. 

JMM: Right. That makes sense.

But some songs when we’re talking about There is Only Now, that you know, were completely fabricated stories. There are some that weren’t completely fabricated. When we thought Domino got shot and like where Womack appears; that was a true story. But then everything from there on is completely fiction. And so I think in Souls there’s portions of ourselves in our characters, but they’re all characters. Like Tajai, the rapper is definitely a character, but I mean, I think like Drake, I think is definitely a character, which is weird because I think that for a long time, people were just like, Oh, he’s so in touch with himself. And I’m like, that’s not him. That’s Drake. That’s not Aubrey. He’s a character. And so when he’s still doing this thing, 10 to 12 years later or whatever and you’re like, he needs to grow up. I’m like, Drake doesn’t need to grow up. And Aubrey’s doing fine. He’s a billionaire. You know what I mean? But Drake is gonna be Drake. No matter what, he’s still gonna talk about failed relationships and dating models. And like, he doesn’t need to rap about his kids and shit like that. Like, he should drop that as Aubrey Graham. You know what I mean? 

We don’t always give ourselves a level of freedom, right? And as a result, we’re almost prisoners of our characters. 

JMM: That’s so good. 

Thank you. To me, that’s big. I think that is probably the biggest danger that rap has posed. You know, like Tupac was a revolutionary and a freedom fighter and an actor and a dancer, a poet, all these different things. And all the guys imitating Tupac are just tough guys. And because he was real, he died violently. He shot at the cops. He wouldn’t take no shit from his enemies and all that shit. I mean, let’s not use myself as an example. I’m just saying, like people in Poland or let’s think of a less violent country, even like Finland, they still can watch Scorsese movies and not join, want to join the mafia. I mean, there’s an aspect of rap that’s aspirational and as a Black community, we’re dealing with poverty and trying to escape poverty. And so that often requires crime. It almost always requires crime. I think that the concept that you just work hard and put your nose down that’s what’s eroding. And I think that’s what’s really eating white folks up at the seams right now, too. They’re realizing OK I’ve been lied to, everyone’s a crook. And I’m not getting my slice of the pie and I’m working hard, etc, etc. That’s a socio-economic issue that’s separate from rap. 

That’s exacerbated by the fact that people listen to this music and think that that shit is real. 

JMM: You were talking about being drawn to violence in your lyrics, but also trying to allay violence at the same time. Antagonists, anti-heroes, and villains populate much of your work and the Black Hoodie persona. In “Different Type” you say “Everybody say hi to the bad guy/What can I say I’ve got to have mine…” Can you talk about why you’re drawn to “the bad guys”? 

TM: I’m a nigga. Understand what I’m saying, though. We’re bad just as soon as that melanin starts to set in, as soon as they look at your ears and see the brown on you. As soon as they see that brown on your ears, [they think] oh, this is going to be a problem. Unfortunately from us [Black people], too. But I’m talking about the world, so I’m a nigga. I’m an educated nigga, I’m a successful nigga, I’m a good nigga, all that shit, but when we watch G .I. Joe, I fuck with Cobra. You know what I’m saying? You feel me? And I love G.I. Joe. That’s why my personal logo is a riff on the G.I. Joe logo. But I’m like, yeah, niggas, it’s Cobra. 

Like, I’m not going to, you know, go with the hard R, but I’m saying, like, I am bad, I am seen as bad. Just my mere existence. So of course I’m going to gravitate towards that shit because the mainstream hates me, wants to use me. Just by my mere existence. The mainstream wants to use me and kill me, but hates me. So I really believe that that’s what makes me gravitate towards this stuff. I don’t root for the bad guy in real life. You know what I’m saying? But as far as the characters that are interesting, you know I mean, his name is Black Hoodie. You feel what I’m saying? Who had a black hoodie? Trayvon. When all we talked about is the Skittles. The black hoodie scared [George Zimmerman.] I bet you if he had a polo on he probably wouldn’t have gotten shot. 

The character in Rap Noir is Black Hoodie, you know. But it’s the same black hoodie that Nick Cage wears with the holes in it. Yeah and we are a body inside of that. I’m saying this from an outsider perspective. Have I been affected by racism? Of course. But when you talk about life lottery like I am born of college-educated parents then by good grades and legacy, I got into that college [Stanford.] I was a rap star at 18, who, you know, owns properties and whose kids have graduated from college. You know what I mean? Like, I’m not, it’s not me lamenting, oh, I’m Black, you know, negative, oh, it’s so hard. 

No, what I’m saying is, that doesn’t stop me from being a nigga. Like, LeBron, billionaire, living in Calabasas does not mean that “nigger go home” doesn’t get spray painted on his garage. Right? 

And this is the part that I think a lot of folks don’t get. It’s like, yo, the same shit happens to us as everybody else but we have more tools to fight it or not be around it. 

You know what I mean? So that’s probably why I gravitate towards anti-heroes on certain songs. When I say [Black Hoodie] is the narrator, he’s like Rod Serling or the Crypt Keeper. So if he’s somewhere between Alfred Hitchcock, Rod Serling, and the Crypt Keeper, he’s not the character in any of those songs. He wears a black mask over his face all the time. It’s like Black Rabbit [from Ralph Bakshi’s “Coonskin”] with just a man. Like he is Nigga. You know what I’m saying? Like he’s not a nigga, he is Nigga. And he’s not a person. No, he’s a Black Hoodie, he’s a phantasm that’s sort of describing all this shit. He’s like Anansi. He’s a trickster. You know what I mean? That kind of character. He’s not the person causing or doing any of this. This is film noir. It’s Rap Noir. It’s an executioner’s hood [he’s wearing.] It’s not a ski mask; it’s an executioner’s hood. He’s Black Death. He’s all that shit. He is not a Black person. He is black. He’s just a narrator. Now I’m gonna flesh him out and build up who he is, which is gonna be interesting for the record. But it’s just for that record. He’s not going on to the third record and still be that guy. I just need to have a format or a structure right for the sound because I can’t just keep telling gangster stories. 

JMM: I’m so excited to show this to our readers. 

TM: Thank you. I appreciate you asking real questions about our art because I really feel like we don’t get them. [Rap] is poetry and it’s music. We get music business questions because we’re indie all the time, but we really don’t delve into the poetry or the literary aspect of it, which is, it’s a huge loss. When you think about Rakim or Kool G Rap, you know what I mean? Like these dudes and the things that they’re saying. It’s like, yo, this is deep-level literature and the ability to say it with fewer words is not a lack of depth or lack of knowledge or even a lack of vocabulary. It’s an increased level of skill. 

JMM: Absolutely.

TM:  So we always talk about minimalism and all these different things and I think rap to an extent, I don’t know, I guess it’s not as minimalist as R&B or the other genres because they use fewer words. So maybe it’s maximalist in the numbers of words it uses, but the depth of topics that it touches with a lesser number of words. Inside of complex rhyme structures. I’m not gonna put it above jazz, you know, because jazz is divine every time it happens, right? Period. It’s high-level literature. I don’t have a chip on my shoulder about it because hey as long as the people who get it get it. That’s all that matters. I think it’s doing society a disservice by not giving [rap] literary analysis. Like we’re getting content analysis. But we don’t talk about the devices people use. In Hiero we got a whole vocabulary for how we do shit. I mean like I got a line where I said “I feed on the feeble/ I don’t fade on the fable, right?” But that’s just me changing one vowel sound in each one of those words to get two different meanings. Like we don’t get that level of analysis. I think part of it is for a long time it was just seen as dirty ghetto music and I get that but there’s enough of a variety within the genre now where you’ve got to know that like, okay these guys are reading and putting what they read into these works. And not just what they read as well as subject matter but construction. 

I mean have you listened to Nappy Nina? Check her out. You know, some of the things she’s doing with words. Ain’t nobody done this before with words. Touching new frontiers. I think [studying rap] will enrich the academic environment in a way that steps away from just the analysis of class, just analysis of race, just analysis of politics in regard to hip-hop. 

Because hip hop now is I think part of the lexicon of scholarly work, you know what I mean, or should be. And it’s not being treated like that and that’s to the detriment of the academy and to the world really because we’re having people deal with surface-level analysis, analyses of things that I think if we did a more in-depth analysis we would provide a more enriching experience when they’re listening to shit.

Like when people ask about my lyrics and I tell them what I did and they’re like what? And I’d be like yeah what you thought I just was rhyming? I’m also like trying to push myself to where, okay, I’m going to do a whole metaphor that if you don’t know what I’m talking about, you really just don’t know, and you have to accept things like that. 

So I’m trying to push myself, like, I want to have songs where if you take every fifth word and write it down, it’s going to be a whole different thing, you know, like, I’m trying to play. 

JMM: I got into y’all because, because of your lyrics, really. Thank you for this. In an interview with Sway you say, “We tell our own stories. That’s why it’s important to tell our own stories.” Throughout your entire catalog, there is a rich sense of storytelling, of capturing Oakland and its population as it is in all of its rich complexities. You all are sort of like modern-day griots for the culture. Can you talk about why it matters to you to tell stories in your songs?

TM: I mean, aren’t all songs stories? Literally every song that you like is a story. Name a song that’s not a story. Each instrumentalist as they get their time to freestyle or whatever takes you to a place and it’s telling a story about skill, about years of practice, about how they approach music, about their feelings or how they’re feeling right then. Even instrumental music is a story. That’s all I’m saying. And because all music is a story and takes you somewhere or should, if all good music should take you somewhere, we have to take on that charge or we’re just talking, right? And that’s cool too, but that’s not what rap music is, right? 

It’s not just talking over beats. That’s what they try to hit us over the head with and it’s never just been that. So the song that brought rap to the TV screens of everywhere in the world: “Rappers Delight.” That’s a story. You know, you’re at your friend’s house, the food isn’t good, you know. They have a color TV. 

So to me, all music tells a story. And so for us to remain in the genre of music, storytelling is absolutely necessary. Now, we are good storytellers as far as narrative as well, but even on the songs that are just freestyle, even those are [full of] imagery, they’re image-laden, and the imagery takes you places and touches you, you’re showing people, you’re making an immersive world in that way. 

I think the storytelling is just music. Music’s purpose is to take you places, right? I mean, why does the soul need to create music? 

We don’t even have a reason for that, but it’s not for you to be right there, it’s for you to go somewhere, right? Whether it’s the drum pattern or, you know, the bass, like humming or a drum pattern or something, it’s for me to express an emotion and connect with another person through that emotion. And I don’t mean take you somewhere, like you feel it in the moment, you feel in the moment, but you’re going somewhere mentally and spiritually, though, even if you’re really cognizant of what’s going on in the moment, it’s taking you somewhere. 

So, music is a story and that’s why it’s important. And the better music, I say, ooh, I don’t want to say the word better. Ah, well, whatever. The best music, I would say, tells a universal story. So everybody’s like, yeah, I tear up every time I hear that song. 

You know what I mean though? Whether it’s “His Eyes Are on the Sparrow” or, you know, “Strange Fruit” or something like that. I’m about to tear up right now. Think about it, right? Can anybody hear [one of these] songs and not feel something? And if you don’t, shit, man. I’d question your humanity, you know, because this right here is some deep-level stuff. 

So the best music I say tells a story that connects to everybody. What we were talking about earlier with visual media versus the written media and the comic books, that place that it connects doesn’t look the same or doesn’t look the same to everybody because everybody’s imagination is different, but it feels, it evokes the same feeling. 

And the only way you can do that is by being immersive. [Using] image-laden, strong storytelling. And I say that even with instrumental music. Like, because sounds are colors. Words are….you know it’s like the weirding module, right?

Hey, you put this word through this incredible machine that we have–this brain–the world’s greatest machine, and it does something inside where you see colors and you smell smells, and you feel feelings. 

I wouldn’t even exempt instrumental music from the storytelling charge. They, we all, must tell a story, whether it’s with words or with sounds. 

Because even words are sounds, right?