Image via Previous Industries/Instagram
Will Schube still can’t believe Larry David got Salman Rushdie to say ‘fatwa sex’ on Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Previous Industries, a new group, which includes the LA-via-Chicago indie star Mike Eagle alongside Video Dave and Still Rift, is the union of a collaborative spirit that was already official in every other way. They just needed a name and a record. Video Dave has been Open Mike Eagle’s right arm on the road and on wax for nearly a decade, and Rift’s relationship with Eagle goes back to their high school days in Chicago.
Previous Industries’ first album, Service Merchandise, is a family affair. The talent on display is that of a preternaturally gifted poet, with the vibes like an Adult Swim show based on MF DOOM’s mischievousness. Absurdity and pathos duel like the Greeks intended. Service Merchandise sounds like three brothers drinking a little too much and shooting the shit, occasionally getting to the line that divides “fucking around” from “finding out.”
To hear the members of Previous Industries say it, their album was fueled by Mike, Dave, and Rift sitting in a room, drinking, and envisioning their first album as a trio. As Mike explains, “You can tell that what you’re hearing isn’t very different from what happened on that day.” The energy is raw and dynamic, veering from laidback and playful to intense, aggressive, and wistful.
Service Merchandise tackles the pangs of getting older, and how those pains often breed beautiful things. Mike spent some of his early 30s in Hellfyre Club and it ended on less than perfect terms.
Perhaps it was simply a coincidence, but Mike began making the best music of his career after his first group fell apart, and it seems clear that his career elevated when he came to the realization that you gotta do most of this shit on your own. Mike built a world-class discography and created a mini media empire with podcasts, livestreams, merchandise, and more. “I learned a lot from Hellfyre,” Mike explained, “But I also learned how not to be in a group.”
Previous Industries arrives at the perfect time, where Mike can use a change of pace after a run of stellar solo albums, Dave can solidify his rap bonafides alongside a world-class spitter, and Rift can introduce himself to a wider audience than previously available. This is a rap record made by rap fanatics because they love rapping. It’s pure joy, and oftentimes these three MCs stake their claims as three of the best in the game, in part because of how well they highlight one another.
As Mike explained to me during our conversation, “if everyone’s intention is to do best for the group, the egos automatically know what they have to do.” To help explain the aesthetics of Previous Industries, I had each member of the group choose five albums, singles, or collections emblematic of their vision for the project.
Open Mike Eagle
The Outsidaz Demos
Do you remember the first time you heard the demos?
Open Mike Eagle: Yeah, it had to be fall of 1999, I think.
Were you familiar with the group before?
Open Mike Eagle: I had heard Young Zee, Pace [Won], and Rah Digga. I heard them with The Fugees and then Rah Digga had a few singles with A Tribe Called Quest. Maybe by that time she’d been rapping with Busta, too. I had this very early single from Young Zee before I even knew who he was. It was called “No Problems” and it came out in like, ‘95. I heard that probably in ‘97 when I randomly bought the maxi-CD somehow.
How old were you then?
Open Mike Eagle: I was in high school ‘til ‘98, so when I first heard them I was in high school. When I first heard The Outsidaz Demos, them as a group that they recorded in the Outsidaz Basement, I was in college at that point.
Did you know you wanted to rap full time by then?
Open Mike Eagle: I didn’t know then. It was something I did a lot as a hobby, but I didn’t think of it as a realistic career by that point.
What is it about the Demos in particular that represents what Previous Industries is going for?
Open Mike Eagle: You can hear that they were all in the same room together, that they were recording themselves, and you could hear how somebody would come up with the lead idea, they would agree to it, and everyone would run with it. You could almost hear how the songs came together just by the raw energy in the Demos, especially because they weren’t refined at all.
Did you want to model Previous Industries on that rawness?
Open Mike Eagle: Not the sound quality bit, but the energy of being able to tell all these people are near each other. You can tell that what you’re hearing isn’t very different from what happened on that day.
Ghostface Killah — Ironman
Is this your favorite Ghostface?
Open Mike Eagle: Ooooh. You know what? It’s certainly in the conversation for my favorite Ghostface. I’m not sure I’d be ready to make that proclamation without having thought it through, but it’s certainly one of my favorites from him. It’s probably the one that I listen to the most.
Supreme Clientele is probably better, but Ironman might be my favorite.
Open Mike Eagle: Ironman very well may be the last real Wu-Tang solo album from that initial run. I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that’s the last one, or something that signaled a shift.
Why did you pick this record?
Open Mike Eagle: I love the cover of that album, because it’s Ghost on the front, Rae on one side, and it’s Cappadonna on the other. Again, you get this idea that this is Ghost’s solo album, but these three guys hang out all the time and make music together, and that’s why you’re gonna hear so much of them all over this. I like that. It’s like, ‘Yeah, this thing is labeled this, and Raekwon’s is labeled Raekwon,’ but these three guys have this energy and it’s not so egotistical where there can only be one guy on the cover. I really like that united front that they were putting forward, and not because they were having to defend against anything, but just because it was the organic nature of how they clicked.
Do you approach your solo albums in a similar way, with the way Still Rift and Video Dave participate?
Open Mike Eagle: I hadn’t done that in the past, but because we were making music together at that time too, it felt like a very natural fit to have them on songs of mine. In my mind it was very much like Rae making songs with Ghost and Ghost making songs with Rae and Cappadonna.
What’s it like sharing a group title with two artists who are in different commercial stratospheres than you?
Open Mike Eagle: We were all very aware of that when we agreed to do this. Internally, we got ahead of a lot of the possible weirdness early. There’s been very little that’s been surprising about it, because we all knew what that was gonna be. We knew the advantages and the disadvantages. We had to talk a lot of that through before we could realistically figure out how to do this.
Obviously, if I treat it like I’m the lead singer, it’s not gonna be a true group. Very early on, we established that it wasn’t gonna be like that. The creative process was always very egalitarian, and that’s something we wanted to bake in from the very beginning. There are business reasons why it’s good that I might have some resources or be able to get attention in some places. I can be proactive about that and use that to help things, so it’s good to be realistic about it and not ignore it. There were also some things to avoid in how we could interact ego-wise given where we’re all at.
If someone was gonna act out of pocket you probably wouldn’t be working with them anyways.
Open Mike Eagle: 100%. We started making music together two years ago. From that time to now there were a lot of offramps if it was gonna go weird for anybody [laughs].
In the press photo you’re standing in the back.
Open Mike Eagle: I think stuff like that is actually important in establishing the group. It’s not like we were using one specifically where I was in the back, but the best photo featured Dave in front. If everyone’s intention is to do best for the group, the egos automatically know what they have to do.
Odd Future — “Oldie”
You were in LA when that was happening. What do you remember most about that era?
Open Mike Eagle: I remember being very resistant to it except for Earl because Earl rapped in all the ways that I liked rapping.There was no denying the appeal. We were fighting for our lives at that point in the underground, so anything that felt like it took all the oxygen out of the room was automatically stressful for us. It really wasn’t until I saw the video for “Oldie” that I felt, ‘Oh, I got it’ [laughs]. Tyler was clearly some musical talent, Earl raps his ass off, the rest I wasn’t too sure about.
When you see them together, Lance Bangs did the video — I ended up working with Lance later on a few things. It’s a one-take video of them in a room, and clearly there’s some planning, but there’s improvisation happening with how they’re choosing to deliver the lyrics in the song. The energy it captured is perfect. It was like, ‘Oh, I see what it is. These are weird alt-Black kids who hang out and fuck with each other real hard.’ Once I was able to see it that way it was awesome.
It’s crazy to remember how Tyler was perceived back then and then see where he’s at now.
Open Mike Eagle: It’s a testament to how he’s developed. You could tell in the beginning that he really knew his way around chords and make a song have feeling. His capital-p Production has developed. You’re only seeing his vision and ambition and talent more and more with each release. It’s a better display of it each release.
Is the posse cut something you had in mind for Previous Industries?
Open Mike Eagle: Absolutely. There is a sense in which all of our songs are posse cuts. Is three a posse? Who knows. But most rap groups you think about have two people, or if there are three one of them’s a DJ. There are not a ton of rap groups that actually have three main members. The posse cut energy of, ‘We’re all gonna write a verse for this thing in our style and all try to shine the hardest’ is all over.
Handsome Boy Modeling School — So… How’s Your Girl?
Open Mike Eagle: I first heard them when I was in college, too. I gave the album a few spins in college but it wasn’t something I replayed a lot then. I was super-duper into the underground then. I could appreciate this but it wasn’t necessarily what my appetite was at the time. I grew a much greater appreciation for it when I interviewed Prince Paul about it and learned about the process of how they came together. Part of the reason why I picked it for this was because Paul and Dan the Automator had such a specific process in choosing how this record sounded. They had such an understanding of the aesthetic of the sound. It was very intentional, which is something we did, too. We knew what colors we wanted to paint with. Handsome Boy Modeling School’s album is much the same way, just from talking to the creators.
How much pre-production was there stylistically?
Open Mike Eagle: I would actually not know how to define that when it comes to us, only because we were picking beats rather than putting beats together.
How wide was the net cast? Did you reach out to 20 producers? Five?
Open Mike Eagle: It took a long time for us to find a sound that we were all excited about and expressed these feelings that we wanted to explore. Over the course of putting the album together, we probably listened to beats from 15 producers, but we ended up at three or four artists where we would listen to all of their beats because we would probably like them. Child Actor, of course, being the producer we went to the most.
Do you let the beats exist as they are? Or do you ask them to tweak things more towards your aesthetic?
Open Mike Eagle: We have different post-production pipelines for each producer based on how they work. Some are very post-production heavy, some not as much. We did what we could with the parts that we had. We would fashion it how we wanted, then give it back to them, and, for the most part, let them do what they do. It’s really on a song-by-song basis, though.
Reflection Eternal — “Fortified Live (Feat. Mos Def and Mr. Man)”
Where in the Talib, Mos Def, etc. hierarchy does this rank for you?
Open Mike Eagle: Probably number one. Well, there are a handful of songs that are fighting for number one. It’s this one, “Respiration” with Common from Black Star, “Thieves in the Night,” and then they have this freestyle on Soundbombing. Those are my favorite collaborations between the two of them, but I haven’t spent much time with the new Black Star album.
Was Soundbombing a big deal for you?
Open Mike Eagle: Huge. It was huge. It was a revelation. I had grown an appetite for a very specific type of rap music and that tape let me know that there were so many artists in New York making the exact kind of rap music that I wanted to hear. It let me know that there was a thing called underground hip-hop. It wasn’t just gonna be Busta Rhymes and Q-Tip and Hieroglyphics that make the music I like. I realized those were the major label representatives of this sound, and in New York you start to hear about the Lyricist Lounge and these dudes that obviously rapped on the street corner just like me. They got single deals, so they went in the studio and made these awesome songs. I wouldn’t have had the talent to make a song at that time, but they made songs with the spirit that I would have had if I was making music at that time.
It must be comforting for a 16 year old to hear stuff you feel seen in.
Open Mike Eagle: I can’t say that that was necessarily front of mind at the time. When I was mostly a consumer of recorded music, I didn’t necessarily understand what it meant for a nicely packaged CD to be able to reach me at my local record store. I didn’t understand the amount of resources that had to come together for that to happen. I certainly didn’t understand that it wouldn’t keep happening. As much as I loved it, I think to some degree I was taking it for granted. At that time, nothing felt limited edition. It was all at the record store, it all cost $12.99. I could buy it or dub it off my friend. I didn’t understand the economy of it. I think that’s why underground hip-hop fans were the first to murder our own genre by rampant downloading. We didn’t really understand how the economy worked and how it depended on thousands of us going to buy records. Aesthetically, there were all these new rappers to check out, and it was this opening up of a whole new world, a world I thought would keep going forever.
Still Rift
De La Soul — De La Soul is Dead
Still Rift: I like 3 Feet High and Rising, it definitely has the aesthetic, but De La Soul is Dead has a lot more cohesion that we were trying to go far. It’s my personal favorite album of theirs. A lot of people are partial to A Tribe Called Quest, but as far as Native Tongues, were more like De La Soul, but De La Soul when Maseo was rapping, as opposed to when just Pos and Trugoy were rapping.
Mike did a whole podcast on De La. Did you talk about that? Or at least your shared love of the group while recording?
Still Rift: We talk about all types of stuff. Mike and I have a separate project where we talk about records. When we sit down we actually cover the gamut well before we even start rapping. It definitely came up.
Do you remember when you first heard De La?
Still Rift: That’s watching videos on MTV. There’s “Buddy,” there’s “Me, Myself and I.” It was “Me, Myself and I,” which was on a mixtape that my aunt gave me. She lived in New York and she was visiting me in Chicago. That had to be late 80s, early 90s. I’m pretty sure I heard them in real time, I just didn’t realize how important they’d end up being.
How old were you when you realized, ‘Shit, I wanna write like these guys.’
Still Rift: I wouldn’t say I want to rap like them, per se, because stylistically my writing technique isn’t anything like that. But in terms of enjoying their albums, the one that super-clicked was Stakes Is High. I was actually in New York when that one came out. I was visiting my family for the summer when that came out.
When did you start rapping?
Still Rift: I was in Chicago. Mike and I actually started rapping at the exact same time. We made the conscious decision to ask, ‘How do you rap?’ And then we just started rapping, freestyling at each other very badly for as long as we could until we got good at it. That was the mid-90s.
The Fugees — The Score
Still Rift: We actually sat down and tried to think of as many three-man teams as possible. There aren’t that many. There are four-man groups and two-man groups with a cameo person. As far as classic three-man albums, The Score was one of the bigger ones and one of the heavier ones in terms of relevance at the time. We didn’t put any skits on this, but it was talked about, and in terms of formatting, they were smart in terms of putting it on the back of the tracks instead of the front so you could skip past it if you wanted. Being diverse in their production selection but still maintaining that groove so it’s varied was very important to us.
Did you reckon with the scope in that album in terms of ambition for this project?
Still Rift: There are a lot of albums that are good and then become part of the pantheon as time goes on. You can’t really dictate that. For us, it was just to put out the best product we could. You have to keep in mind that there’s a differential in notoriety between the three of us. Mike is Mike, and Dave has been traveling with him. I have my connections in various spheres, but in terms of the public, I’m practically non-existent. Personally, I wanted to make sure I wasn’t the weak link in the group. To a certain degree, that’s a Chicago mindset, to make sure you carry your weight. As long as I did that, there wasn’t much talk about trying to live up to anything, especially because it’s our first album.
Would you ever have to go back and re-write or record a verse after seeing what someone else brought to the table?
Still Rift: We wrote everything in the room. There was no homework. At most there were line rewrites. In terms of how we approached it, we sat in a room, had some drinks, we shot the shit, we played the beats until we could agree on one, and then we wrote to it. Sometimes it was all three of us writing verses simultaneously, sometimes one would get something done and you’d demo it and that would influence the other verses, but I don’t think any of us had to scrap something and go back to the drawing board.
That’s a fun way to do it.
Still Rift: It’s cypher-like, but it very much suits what we were trying to do. You also have to keep in mind the three of us write so differently. The skill level is the same but we approach things very differently. It’s hard for us to step on each others’ toes.
Queen Latifah — All Hail the Queen
Still Rift: For a long time I didn’t realize that half the songs I liked from Queen Latifah were on that first album. When I went back and listened to the album, there’s that one track she did with De La Soul that Prince Paul produced [“Mama Gave Birth to the Soul Children”]. I couldn’t believe that it wasn’t one of the singles because it’s one of the gems of the album. When you look at the formatting of it, they basically front-loaded all the singles and then put more tracks on top of it. That informed how we laid ours out. Our singles are front-loaded.
The mentality back then was when they were playing the record, they had to be in the record; you had to hook them in, and then they’d ride it out. It’s the same way with streaming nowadays. If they don’t like the first few tracks, they’re gonna skip the rest of them. So let’s just try to get them in as far as possible. We recorded a lot of tracks and we picked the cream of the crop for this first record. When I was listening to it, I was waiting for the skip point. I am very critical of my own stuff — I don’t even listen to my work that often — but that skip point never came. Granted, a lot of it is because it’s a group — I can geek out listening to the other two and disregard my own verses until I have to be critical — but I’m happy with it because it takes a lot of time to get tired of this record.
Did the group talk about this strategically?
Still Rift: Layout-wise? The arrangement was one of the hot topics when we were done with everything. We think very differently. A lot of the magic for us is that the thing we can agree on is usually the best thing because we don’t agree on a lot of things. Not in a squabbly way, but we see things so differently that when something finally lands in that venn diagram, it’s like, ‘Oh shit, this is the thing that’s probably gonna do the best.’
Was it ever a battle?
Still Rift: There was a debate. We are very heady, wordy, willful people. That was one of them, because it’s important to us.
Ahmad — “Come Widdit” (feat. Saafir & Ras Kass)
Still Rift: This is one of the best posse cuts of all time, it just happens to be on a soundtrack. It’s the same thing that makes our record good. We made about ten versions of “Come Widdit” [laughs]. It’s everybody in their element, doing what they do best and it just clicks. You have the more straightforward Ahmad verse, and then you have Ras Kass being all dense and complex, and then you have Saafir just styling hard. They’re completely different — granted, they’re all West Coast, so there’s that feel to it — stylistically. It’s a very good bouillabaisse, instead of a salad. You want it to come together completely instead of just being pieces of things on top of each other.
Who in Previous Industries is each rapper in this context?
Still Rift: There’s no direct analog, but I am probably the most cryptic, Dave is the most earnest and honest, and Mike is very relatable. We rotate through all of those things. I’ll say some things very directly, and Dave will have some extra third layer that you’d never know unless you had a conversation with him, and Mike will style hard and do something different. We can round robin between those three things, but those are what we’re known for.
Do you slip into your typical style rather easily, leading you to have to actively push away from it?
Still Rift: Because of how we wrote this record, I didn’t have to fight anything, but at the same time, the beat selection isn’t necessarily anything we would have chosen individually for ourselves. When you’re bouncing off other people, you take pieces of them in a certain way. There was a lot more cohesion and there was a latent influence. I’m not trying to write like them, but since I’m in the room with them and we’ve come from the same background and have the same language, we’re still gonna end up in the same lane. When I’m writing by myself, it’s purely by myself and I’ll re-write, and re-write, and re-write. It’s gonna be a lot more technical. This was a lot more organic, and since we would write and then record the demo immediately, it cemented it in this organic state for us to work on it from there, as opposed to having the chance to rethink things.
Souls of Mischief — 93 ’til Infinity
Where does this rank in terms of your favorite records?
Still Rift: It’s one of my favorites. Back during the 90s, I was part of The Acrobats, along with Mike. Back then, there was a very good relationship between Hieroglyphics when they were forming and us. When they would come out on tour it was very much kindred spirits. Granted, Souls of Mischief is a four man team, but when I look at the way they handled the exchanges between verses inside the tracks, and the way it blended with the production, that’s something I aspire to. I like the energy that they brought to a lot of their songs.
When you’re recording, are Mike and Dave just sitting there watching you? How does that work?
Still Rift: During the recording we’re all headphoned in. They’re not just sitting there watching, but at that point, it’s almost a critique of each take. Like, ‘is that a good take? How can we fix that take?’ They were critical ears on top of my ears. ‘Okay, you could do that better. Okay, you chewed up that word. Okay, everything was good but that. Do you think you can do everything the same but make that better? Or do we need to punch in?’ At that point, the final version is still at the discretion of the person that’s rapping, but really everybody has their input in it. It’s about building it up to the best version we can accomplish. Granted, it was a two stage event.
We would write and then record, just to get a demo out, because by the end of that we were pretty drunk [laughs]. The next week, after you review it and you have time to listen to the demo and you figure out how you want to deliver it, you go for the final cut.
Video Dave
The Pharcyde — Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde
Do you remember the first time you heard that record?
Video Dave: As a full record? Shit, it was late. It was probably freshman year of college when I listened to the whole record — ‘97.
Was West Coast rap something to be avoided while going to school in Illinois?
Video Dave: I was open to it but during that time I was drawn more to East Coast rap. I was listening to De La and Tribe as a kid, but as I got older I started to expand my taste. Senior year of high school I really started jumping back into hip-hop. Pharcyde was right there, but I didn’t listen to the whole album for a while. I was introduced to them through mixtapes.
What was it about their style that resonated with you?
Video Dave: The blend of humor and seriousness. You could tell they were in the same room, like on “Pack The Pipe.” I loved hearing that. Working on our record, that was something that was influential. We decided to be in the room at the same time.
A Tribe Called Quest — Midnight Marauders
Video Dave: This is my favorite Tribe album, and Low End Theory is right there. It’s my favorite just because it is. I don’t think it’s necessarily better than Low End Theory. “Electric Relaxation” is my easy answer for, ‘What’s your favorite song?’ It’s just perfect. I don’t get too heavy into which one is better, but Midnight Marauders is my favorite. There’s nothing wrong with Low End Theory either.
What’s your favorite thing about how the dudes in Tribe interact with each other on record?
Video Dave: Being able to come at the same shit from different angles is impressive, as is the back and forth wordplay, like the way they’ll use the same words and phrases in different verses. We did some of that, but that was something I really wanted to push for. I like those callbacks.
“Some DOOM Shit”
Video Dave: Mike is so heavily influenced by DOOM and I spend a lot of time with him. When I hear the way DOOM rhymes and the way he plays with words, I feel like we’re a DOOM-inspired group just because of Mike’s love for DOOM. This album was made knowing that we were making a group album the whole time. Our intention was to tour it and things like that. All that should have been a part of that from the beginning — knowing what we could get to. Madvillain is probably the best touchstone, a lot of our album being from one producer.
Is that your preferred method of doing it?
Video Dave: I love to do one producer a project. Every project I’ve put out since I’ve started working with Mike has been with one producer. My previous stuff back in the day, I used to produce everything. I like all one for an album, but I know why we chose some different beats. It adds some color. On my solo shit, I treat it like a film director, where they create the sounds. I like producers doing post production.
Were you big into DOOM before you and Mike linked back up again?
Video Dave: Naw. In college Mike used to listen to DOOM constantly. In college we all hung out together and listened to music, but we all played shit. Mike would play DOOM, but I didn’t catch on like that. It was only when I started touring with him and he would drive. Driver has control of the music, and it was like, ‘If you weren’t acquainted, get acquainted.’
The Beatles — Rubber Soul
Video Dave: One thing that I would be thinking about when making our record was how everyone got to write songs in The Beatles. You got a group with different people, and they all get to write. With our shit, everyone wrote our verses, but we would all take the lead on certain songs, in a way. I wanted to do it on some Beatles shit, where everybody gets to do everything. We would take turns writing hooks and suggest what the songs sound like and are about.
Why that Beatles record?
Video Dave: I can just put it on and listen to it all the way through. When I first got into The Beatles it was through compilations. I had to go back and listen to the albums all the way through.
When did you get into them?
Video Dave: In college. My sister and my brother were into them first. In high school I would hear it playing and I was totally against it [laughs]. I was that way with a lot of stuff. My sister and brother were on point with a lot of shit that I was like, ‘Yuck!,’ but now I’m like, ‘Man, you shoulda given that a chance instead of listening to house music on the radio’ [laughs]. I started listening to The Beatles and jazz music as a sophomore, I think. That’s when I started going to the record store and really building out my collection. I got all the new rap releases, and then I started looking around the record store and talked with the guy behind the counter. Once I discovered samples, I got into jazz and The Beatles. When I was making beats, I was sampling The Beatles constantly. Everybody made it clear that you couldn’t do that, and then Danger Mouse comes along and I’m like, ‘What the fuck?’
Quelle Chris — Deathfame
Video Dave: This came out around the time that we were working on Previous Industries. We had some beats from him and I remember listening to Deathfame and thinking, ‘This dude does whatever the fuck he wants.’ That inspired my album, too, which I was working on while we were working on Service Merchandise. I was making ArticulatedTexTiles with Controller 7. We were officially working on group shit for a while, which led me to work on my own album. I wanted all the control of something, because working in a group can be challenging. With all of that, I wanted to do my own shit, and Deathfame really hit me for both albums.
He was doing whatever he wanted to do, and you really have to remind yourself of that. I wanted to play with different styles and I emphasized saying whatever I was thinking. I was always talking about stuff on a personal level, but there’s something about Deathfame. We already had beats of his, and that album came out and I’d put that album on while hiking. We’d be working on songs, and it was a reminder to just do what you gotta do. He’s out there, and you can learn that lesson from any artist. I could have learned that from Bowie, but I know this guy. I’m on his beats, and he’s out there just doing whatever the fuck he wants to do. Sometimes you try to make these rap albums and make some shit for other people, but it’s not gonna work if you don’t remember to make it for yourself.
When you see them together, Lance Bangs did the video — I ended up working with Lance later on a few things. It’s a one-take video of them in a room, and clearly there’s some planning, but there’s improvisation happening with how they’re choosing to deliver the lyrics in the song. The energy it captured is perfect. It was like, ‘Oh, I see what it is. These are weird alt-Black kids who hang out and fuck with each other real hard.’ Once I was able to see it that way it was awesome.
It’s crazy to remember how Tyler was perceived back then and then see where he’s at now.
Open Mike Eagle: It’s a testament to how he’s developed. You could tell in the beginning that he really knew his way around chords and make a song have feeling. His capital-p Production has developed. You’re only seeing his vision and ambition and talent more and more with each release. It’s a better display of it each release.
Is the posse cut something you had in mind for Previous Industries?
Open Mike Eagle: Absolutely. There is a sense in which all of our songs are posse cuts. Is three a posse? Who knows. But most rap groups you think about have two people, or if there are three one of them’s a DJ. There are not a ton of rap groups that actually have three main members. The posse cut energy of, ‘We’re all gonna write a verse for this thing in our style and all try to shine the hardest’ is all over.
Handsome Boy Modeling School — So… How’s Your Girl?
Open Mike Eagle: I first heard them when I was in college, too. I gave the album a few spins in college but it wasn’t something I replayed a lot then. I was super-duper into the underground then. I could appreciate this but it wasn’t necessarily what my appetite was at the time. I grew a much greater appreciation for it when I interviewed Prince Paul about it and learned about the process of how they came together. Part of the reason why I picked it for this was because Paul and Dan the Automator had such a specific process in choosing how this record sounded. They had such an understanding of the aesthetic of the sound. It was very intentional, which is something we did, too. We knew what colors we wanted to paint with. Handsome Boy Modeling School’s album is much the same way, just from talking to the creators.
How much pre-production was there stylistically?
Open Mike Eagle: I would actually not know how to define that when it comes to us, only because we were picking beats rather than putting beats together.
How wide was the net cast? Did you reach out to 20 producers? Five?
Open Mike Eagle: It took a long time for us to find a sound that we were all excited about and expressed these feelings that we wanted to explore. Over the course of putting the album together, we probably listened to beats from 15 producers, but we ended up at three or four artists where we would listen to all of their beats because we would probably like them. Child Actor, of course, being the producer we went to the most.
Do you let the beats exist as they are? Or do you ask them to tweak things more towards your aesthetic?
Open Mike Eagle: We have different post-production pipelines for each producer based on how they work. Some are very post-production heavy, some not as much. We did what we could with the parts that we had. We would fashion it how we wanted, then give it back to them, and, for the most part, let them do what they do. It’s really on a song-by-song basis, though.
Reflection Eternal — “Fortified Live (Feat. Mos Def and Mr. Man)”
Where in the Talib, Mos Def, etc. hierarchy does this rank for you?
Open Mike Eagle: Probably number one. Well, there are a handful of songs that are fighting for number one. It’s this one, “Respiration” with Common from Black Star, “Thieves in the Night,” and then they have this freestyle on Soundbombing. Those are my favorite collaborations between the two of them, but I haven’t spent much time with the new Black Star album.
Was Soundbombing a big deal for you?
Open Mike Eagle: Huge. It was huge. It was a revelation. I had grown an appetite for a very specific type of rap music and that tape let me know that there were so many artists in New York making the exact kind of rap music that I wanted to hear. It let me know that there was a thing called underground hip-hop. It wasn’t just gonna be Busta Rhymes and Q-Tip and Hieroglyphics that make the music I like. I realized those were the major label representatives of this sound, and in New York you start to hear about the Lyricist Lounge and these dudes that obviously rapped on the street corner just like me. They got single deals, so they went in the studio and made these awesome songs. I wouldn’t have had the talent to make a song at that time, but they made songs with the spirit that I would have had if I was making music at that time.
It must be comforting for a 16 year old to hear stuff you feel seen in.
Open Mike Eagle: I can’t say that that was necessarily front of mind at the time. When I was mostly a consumer of recorded music, I didn’t necessarily understand what it meant for a nicely packaged CD to be able to reach me at my local record store. I didn’t understand the amount of resources that had to come together for that to happen. I certainly didn’t understand that it wouldn’t keep happening. As much as I loved it, I think to some degree I was taking it for granted. At that time, nothing felt limited edition. It was all at the record store, it all cost $12.99. I could buy it or dub it off my friend. I didn’t understand the economy of it. I think that’s why underground hip-hop fans were the first to murder our own genre by rampant downloading. We didn’t really understand how the economy worked and how it depended on thousands of us going to buy records. Aesthetically, there were all these new rappers to check out, and it was this opening up of a whole new world, a world I thought would keep going forever.
Still Rift
De La Soul — De La Soul is Dead
Still Rift: I like 3 Feet High and Rising, it definitely has the aesthetic, but De La Soul is Dead has a lot more cohesion that we were trying to go far. It’s my personal favorite album of theirs. A lot of people are partial to A Tribe Called Quest, but as far as Native Tongues, were more like De La Soul, but De La Soul when Maseo was rapping, as opposed to when just Pos and Trugoy were rapping.
Mike did a whole podcast on De La. Did you talk about that? Or at least your shared love of the group while recording?
Still Rift: We talk about all types of stuff. Mike and I have a separate project where we talk about records. When we sit down we actually cover the gamut well before we even start rapping. It definitely came up.
Do you remember when you first heard De La?
Still Rift: That’s watching videos on MTV. There’s “Buddy,” there’s “Me, Myself and I.” It was “Me, Myself and I,” which was on a mixtape that my aunt gave me. She lived in New York and she was visiting me in Chicago. That had to be late 80s, early 90s. I’m pretty sure I heard them in real time, I just didn’t realize how important they’d end up being.
How old were you when you realized, ‘Shit, I wanna write like these guys.’
Still Rift: I wouldn’t say I want to rap like them, per se, because stylistically my writing technique isn’t anything like that. But in terms of enjoying their albums, the one that super-clicked was Stakes Is High. I was actually in New York when that one came out. I was visiting my family for the summer when that came out.
When did you start rapping?
Still Rift: I was in Chicago. Mike and I actually started rapping at the exact same time. We made the conscious decision to ask, ‘How do you rap?’ And then we just started rapping, freestyling at each other very badly for as long as we could until we got good at it. That was the mid-90s.
The Fugees — The Score
Still Rift: We actually sat down and tried to think of as many three-man teams as possible. There aren’t that many. There are four-man groups and two-man groups with a cameo person. As far as classic three-man albums, The Score was one of the bigger ones and one of the heavier ones in terms of relevance at the time. We didn’t put any skits on this, but it was talked about, and in terms of formatting, they were smart in terms of putting it on the back of the tracks instead of the front so you could skip past it if you wanted. Being diverse in their production selection but still maintaining that groove so it’s varied was very important to us.
Did you reckon with the scope in that album in terms of ambition for this project?
Still Rift: There are a lot of albums that are good and then become part of the pantheon as time goes on. You can’t really dictate that. For us, it was just to put out the best product we could. You have to keep in mind that there’s a differential in notoriety between the three of us. Mike is Mike, and Dave has been traveling with him. I have my connections in various spheres, but in terms of the public, I’m practically non-existent. Personally, I wanted to make sure I wasn’t the weak link in the group. To a certain degree, that’s a Chicago mindset, to make sure you carry your weight. As long as I did that, there wasn’t much talk about trying to live up to anything, especially because it’s our first album.
Would you ever have to go back and re-write or record a verse after seeing what someone else brought to the table?
Still Rift: We wrote everything in the room. There was no homework. At most there were line rewrites. In terms of how we approached it, we sat in a room, had some drinks, we shot the shit, we played the beats until we could agree on one, and then we wrote to it. Sometimes it was all three of us writing verses simultaneously, sometimes one would get something done and you’d demo it and that would influence the other verses, but I don’t think any of us had to scrap something and go back to the drawing board.
That’s a fun way to do it.
Still Rift: It’s cypher-like, but it very much suits what we were trying to do. You also have to keep in mind the three of us write so differently. The skill level is the same but we approach things very differently. It’s hard for us to step on each others’ toes.
Queen Latifah — All Hail the Queen
Still Rift: For a long time I didn’t realize that half the songs I liked from Queen Latifah were on that first album. When I went back and listened to the album, there’s that one track she did with De La Soul that Prince Paul produced [“Mama Gave Birth to the Soul Children”]. I couldn’t believe that it wasn’t one of the singles because it’s one of the gems of the album. When you look at the formatting of it, they basically front-loaded all the singles and then put more tracks on top of it. That informed how we laid ours out. Our singles are front-loaded.
The mentality back then was when they were playing the record, they had to be in the record; you had to hook them in, and then they’d ride it out. It’s the same way with streaming nowadays. If they don’t like the first few tracks, they’re gonna skip the rest of them. So let’s just try to get them in as far as possible. We recorded a lot of tracks and we picked the cream of the crop for this first record. When I was listening to it, I was waiting for the skip point. I am very critical of my own stuff — I don’t even listen to my work that often — but that skip point never came. Granted, a lot of it is because it’s a group — I can geek out listening to the other two and disregard my own verses until I have to be critical — but I’m happy with it because it takes a lot of time to get tired of this record.
Did the group talk about this strategically?
Still Rift: Layout-wise? The arrangement was one of the hot topics when we were done with everything. We think very differently. A lot of the magic for us is that the thing we can agree on is usually the best thing because we don’t agree on a lot of things. Not in a squabbly way, but we see things so differently that when something finally lands in that venn diagram, it’s like, ‘Oh shit, this is the thing that’s probably gonna do the best.’
Was it ever a battle?
Still Rift: There was a debate. We are very heady, wordy, willful people. That was one of them, because it’s important to us.
Ahmad — “Come Widdit” (feat. Saafir & Ras Kass)
Still Rift: This is one of the best posse cuts of all time, it just happens to be on a soundtrack. It’s the same thing that makes our record good. We made about ten versions of “Come Widdit” [laughs]. It’s everybody in their element, doing what they do best and it just clicks. You have the more straightforward Ahmad verse, and then you have Ras Kass being all dense and complex, and then you have Saafir just styling hard. They’re completely different — granted, they’re all West Coast, so there’s that feel to it — stylistically. It’s a very good bouillabaisse, instead of a salad. You want it to come together completely instead of just being pieces of things on top of each other.
Who in Previous Industries is each rapper in this context?
Still Rift: There’s no direct analog, but I am probably the most cryptic, Dave is the most earnest and honest, and Mike is very relatable. We rotate through all of those things. I’ll say some things very directly, and Dave will have some extra third layer that you’d never know unless you had a conversation with him, and Mike will style hard and do something different. We can round robin between those three things, but those are what we’re known for.
Do you slip into your typical style rather easily, leading you to have to actively push away from it?
Still Rift: Because of how we wrote this record, I didn’t have to fight anything, but at the same time, the beat selection isn’t necessarily anything we would have chosen individually for ourselves. When you’re bouncing off other people, you take pieces of them in a certain way. There was a lot more cohesion and there was a latent influence. I’m not trying to write like them, but since I’m in the room with them and we’ve come from the same background and have the same language, we’re still gonna end up in the same lane. When I’m writing by myself, it’s purely by myself and I’ll re-write, and re-write, and re-write. It’s gonna be a lot more technical. This was a lot more organic, and since we would write and then record the demo immediately, it cemented it in this organic state for us to work on it from there, as opposed to having the chance to rethink things.
Souls of Mischief — 93 ’til Infinity
Where does this rank in terms of your favorite records?
Still Rift: It’s one of my favorites. Back during the 90s, I was part of The Acrobats, along with Mike. Back then, there was a very good relationship between Hieroglyphics when they were forming and us. When they would come out on tour it was very much kindred spirits. Granted, Souls of Mischief is a four man team, but when I look at the way they handled the exchanges between verses inside the tracks, and the way it blended with the production, that’s something I aspire to. I like the energy that they brought to a lot of their songs.
When you’re recording, are Mike and Dave just sitting there watching you? How does that work?
Still Rift: During the recording we’re all headphoned in. They’re not just sitting there watching, but at that point, it’s almost a critique of each take. Like, ‘is that a good take? How can we fix that take?’ They were critical ears on top of my ears. ‘Okay, you could do that better. Okay, you chewed up that word. Okay, everything was good but that. Do you think you can do everything the same but make that better? Or do we need to punch in?’ At that point, the final version is still at the discretion of the person that’s rapping, but really everybody has their input in it. It’s about building it up to the best version we can accomplish. Granted, it was a two stage event.
We would write and then record, just to get a demo out, because by the end of that we were pretty drunk [laughs]. The next week, after you review it and you have time to listen to the demo and you figure out how you want to deliver it, you go for the final cut.
Video Dave
The Pharcyde — Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde
Do you remember the first time you heard that record?
Video Dave: As a full record? Shit, it was late. It was probably freshman year of college when I listened to the whole record — ‘97.
Was West Coast rap something to be avoided while going to school in Illinois?
Video Dave: I was open to it but during that time I was drawn more to East Coast rap. I was listening to De La and Tribe as a kid, but as I got older I started to expand my taste. Senior year of high school I really started jumping back into hip-hop. Pharcyde was right there, but I didn’t listen to the whole album for a while. I was introduced to them through mixtapes.
What was it about their style that resonated with you?
Video Dave: The blend of humor and seriousness. You could tell they were in the same room, like on “Pack The Pipe.” I loved hearing that. Working on our record, that was something that was influential. We decided to be in the room at the same time.
A Tribe Called Quest — Midnight Marauders
Video Dave: This is my favorite Tribe album, and Low End Theory is right there. It’s my favorite just because it is. I don’t think it’s necessarily better than Low End Theory. “Electric Relaxation” is my easy answer for, ‘What’s your favorite song?’ It’s just perfect. I don’t get too heavy into which one is better, but Midnight Marauders is my favorite. There’s nothing wrong with Low End Theory either.
What’s your favorite thing about how the dudes in Tribe interact with each other on record?
Video Dave: Being able to come at the same shit from different angles is impressive, as is the back and forth wordplay, like the way they’ll use the same words and phrases in different verses. We did some of that, but that was something I really wanted to push for. I like those callbacks.
“Some DOOM Shit”
Video Dave: Mike is so heavily influenced by DOOM and I spend a lot of time with him. When I hear the way DOOM rhymes and the way he plays with words, I feel like we’re a DOOM-inspired group just because of Mike’s love for DOOM. This album was made knowing that we were making a group album the whole time. Our intention was to tour it and things like that. All that should have been a part of that from the beginning — knowing what we could get to. Madvillain is probably the best touchstone, a lot of our album being from one producer.
Is that your preferred method of doing it?
Video Dave: I love to do one producer a project. Every project I’ve put out since I’ve started working with Mike has been with one producer. My previous stuff back in the day, I used to produce everything. I like all one for an album, but I know why we chose some different beats. It adds some color. On my solo shit, I treat it like a film director, where they create the sounds. I like producers doing post production.
Were you big into DOOM before you and Mike linked back up again?
Video Dave: Naw. In college Mike used to listen to DOOM constantly. In college we all hung out together and listened to music, but we all played shit. Mike would play DOOM, but I didn’t catch on like that. It was only when I started touring with him and he would drive. Driver has control of the music, and it was like, ‘If you weren’t acquainted, get acquainted.’
The Beatles — Rubber Soul
Video Dave: One thing that I would be thinking about when making our record was how everyone got to write songs in The Beatles. You got a group with different people, and they all get to write. With our shit, everyone wrote our verses, but we would all take the lead on certain songs, in a way. I wanted to do it on some Beatles shit, where everybody gets to do everything. We would take turns writing hooks and suggest what the songs sound like and are about.
Why that Beatles record?
Video Dave: I can just put it on and listen to it all the way through. When I first got into The Beatles it was through compilations. I had to go back and listen to the albums all the way through.
When did you get into them?
Video Dave: In college. My sister and my brother were into them first. In high school I would hear it playing and I was totally against it [laughs]. I was that way with a lot of stuff. My sister and brother were on point with a lot of shit that I was like, ‘Yuck!,’ but now I’m like, ‘Man, you shoulda given that a chance instead of listening to house music on the radio’ [laughs]. I started listening to The Beatles and jazz music as a sophomore, I think. That’s when I started going to the record store and really building out my collection. I got all the new rap releases, and then I started looking around the record store and talked with the guy behind the counter. Once I discovered samples, I got into jazz and The Beatles. When I was making beats, I was sampling The Beatles constantly. Everybody made it clear that you couldn’t do that, and then Danger Mouse comes along and I’m like, ‘What the fuck?’
Quelle Chris — Deathfame
Video Dave: This came out around the time that we were working on Previous Industries. We had some beats from him and I remember listening to Deathfame and thinking, ‘This dude does whatever the fuck he wants.’ That inspired my album, too, which I was working on while we were working on Service Merchandise. I was making ArticulatedTexTiles with Controller 7. We were officially working on group shit for a while, which led me to work on my own album. I wanted all the control of something, because working in a group can be challenging. With all of that, I wanted to do my own shit, and Deathfame really hit me for both albums.
He was doing whatever he wanted to do, and you really have to remind yourself of that. I wanted to play with different styles and I emphasized saying whatever I was thinking. I was always talking about stuff on a personal level, but there’s something about Deathfame. We already had beats of his, and that album came out and I’d put that album on while hiking. We’d be working on songs, and it was a reminder to just do what you gotta do. He’s out there, and you can learn that lesson from any artist. I could have learned that from Bowie, but I know this guy. I’m on his beats, and he’s out there just doing whatever the fuck he wants to do. Sometimes you try to make these rap albums and make some shit for other people, but it’s not gonna work if you don’t remember to make it for yourself.
We would write and then record, just to get a demo out, because by the end of that we were pretty drunk [laughs]. The next week, after you review it and you have time to listen to the demo and you figure out how you want to deliver it, you go for the final cut.
Video Dave
The Pharcyde — Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde
Do you remember the first time you heard that record?
Video Dave: As a full record? Shit, it was late. It was probably freshman year of college when I listened to the whole record — ‘97.
Was West Coast rap something to be avoided while going to school in Illinois?
Video Dave: I was open to it but during that time I was drawn more to East Coast rap. I was listening to De La and Tribe as a kid, but as I got older I started to expand my taste. Senior year of high school I really started jumping back into hip-hop. Pharcyde was right there, but I didn’t listen to the whole album for a while. I was introduced to them through mixtapes.
What was it about their style that resonated with you?
Video Dave: The blend of humor and seriousness. You could tell they were in the same room, like on “Pack The Pipe.” I loved hearing that. Working on our record, that was something that was influential. We decided to be in the room at the same time.
A Tribe Called Quest — Midnight Marauders
Video Dave: This is my favorite Tribe album, and Low End Theory is right there. It’s my favorite just because it is. I don’t think it’s necessarily better than Low End Theory. “Electric Relaxation” is my easy answer for, ‘What’s your favorite song?’ It’s just perfect. I don’t get too heavy into which one is better, but Midnight Marauders is my favorite. There’s nothing wrong with Low End Theory either.
What’s your favorite thing about how the dudes in Tribe interact with each other on record?
Video Dave: Being able to come at the same shit from different angles is impressive, as is the back and forth wordplay, like the way they’ll use the same words and phrases in different verses. We did some of that, but that was something I really wanted to push for. I like those callbacks.
“Some DOOM Shit”
Video Dave: Mike is so heavily influenced by DOOM and I spend a lot of time with him. When I hear the way DOOM rhymes and the way he plays with words, I feel like we’re a DOOM-inspired group just because of Mike’s love for DOOM. This album was made knowing that we were making a group album the whole time. Our intention was to tour it and things like that. All that should have been a part of that from the beginning — knowing what we could get to. Madvillain is probably the best touchstone, a lot of our album being from one producer.
Is that your preferred method of doing it?
Video Dave: I love to do one producer a project. Every project I’ve put out since I’ve started working with Mike has been with one producer. My previous stuff back in the day, I used to produce everything. I like all one for an album, but I know why we chose some different beats. It adds some color. On my solo shit, I treat it like a film director, where they create the sounds. I like producers doing post production.
Were you big into DOOM before you and Mike linked back up again?
Video Dave: Naw. In college Mike used to listen to DOOM constantly. In college we all hung out together and listened to music, but we all played shit. Mike would play DOOM, but I didn’t catch on like that. It was only when I started touring with him and he would drive. Driver has control of the music, and it was like, ‘If you weren’t acquainted, get acquainted.’
The Beatles — Rubber Soul
Video Dave: One thing that I would be thinking about when making our record was how everyone got to write songs in The Beatles. You got a group with different people, and they all get to write. With our shit, everyone wrote our verses, but we would all take the lead on certain songs, in a way. I wanted to do it on some Beatles shit, where everybody gets to do everything. We would take turns writing hooks and suggest what the songs sound like and are about.
Why that Beatles record?
Video Dave: I can just put it on and listen to it all the way through. When I first got into The Beatles it was through compilations. I had to go back and listen to the albums all the way through.
When did you get into them?
Video Dave: In college. My sister and my brother were into them first. In high school I would hear it playing and I was totally against it [laughs]. I was that way with a lot of stuff. My sister and brother were on point with a lot of shit that I was like, ‘Yuck!,’ but now I’m like, ‘Man, you shoulda given that a chance instead of listening to house music on the radio’ [laughs]. I started listening to The Beatles and jazz music as a sophomore, I think. That’s when I started going to the record store and really building out my collection. I got all the new rap releases, and then I started looking around the record store and talked with the guy behind the counter. Once I discovered samples, I got into jazz and The Beatles. When I was making beats, I was sampling The Beatles constantly. Everybody made it clear that you couldn’t do that, and then Danger Mouse comes along and I’m like, ‘What the fuck?’
Quelle Chris — Deathfame
Video Dave: This came out around the time that we were working on Previous Industries. We had some beats from him and I remember listening to Deathfame and thinking, ‘This dude does whatever the fuck he wants.’ That inspired my album, too, which I was working on while we were working on Service Merchandise. I was making ArticulatedTexTiles with Controller 7. We were officially working on group shit for a while, which led me to work on my own album. I wanted all the control of something, because working in a group can be challenging. With all of that, I wanted to do my own shit, and Deathfame really hit me for both albums.
He was doing whatever he wanted to do, and you really have to remind yourself of that. I wanted to play with different styles and I emphasized saying whatever I was thinking. I was always talking about stuff on a personal level, but there’s something about Deathfame. We already had beats of his, and that album came out and I’d put that album on while hiking. We’d be working on songs, and it was a reminder to just do what you gotta do. He’s out there, and you can learn that lesson from any artist. I could have learned that from Bowie, but I know this guy. I’m on his beats, and he’s out there just doing whatever the fuck he wants to do. Sometimes you try to make these rap albums and make some shit for other people, but it’s not gonna work if you don’t remember to make it for yourself.