Halftime: Dres, one thing I’ve always liked about you is that your flow and style is unique. How would you say your style developed and who were your major influences?

Dres: I kinda give homage to two emcees really, one of them being Just Ice. I feel like Just was commanding lyrically and felt like he was intelligent. And he was hood. I believed him. The other was Tito from the Fearless Four because I always felt like he was mad witty and his delivery was nice. Me, Lawnge and our friends at the time all studied everything. Since we were down in North Carolina it was the type of situation that everything that came through that was all we had. We didn’t have radio and there wasn’t a block party coming through so whatever record that hit the turntable or that we could get our hands on we studied them. So those were two emcees I really, really liked. But as far as my style I just do what I feel and try not to get trapped in anything or feel that I can’t express myself in any form or fashion as an emcee. There was definitely an evolution as well. I feel like I have a long way to go but that I’m a nice emcee.

Halftime: Now on the production side I heard some of the stuff you were doing back then was real intricate at the time you were coming up since you didn’t have as much equipment as you got later on in the years. Could you go into detail about how you guys would go about putting a track together?

Lawnge: It basically starting from many different bits and pieces from many different albums and I’d fold them together like cards. Then I’d take them to the studio to use the equipment I didn’t have like Akais and all that and then direct the engineers on what I wanted to have done. Each piece of each record went down on its own track unlike today with the sequencers flying in and out. Everything back then we did manually. It wasn’t because the equipment wasn’t there that was just how I came into the game looking at the Jbeez and Tribe. That’s how they did it.

Halftime: How did you two go about blending your ideas together?

Dres: Different tracks just spoke and said different things. He would pass me different tracks and that’s where they went. I don’t know I can’t really put my finger on it. We were close at the time as far as where we lived. We live kinda far away from each other now. We always saw each other and it just felt like the track just spoke. I can’t call it.

Halftime: So ideas were never thrown up before hand it was just like here’s a dope beat? Ya’ll never bounced ideas back and forth?

Dres: I think it was some of everything. Song came about so many different ways. Sometimes we’d be in the studio or other times we’d be in the crib but not without music. It was a good thing. It was free. It wasn’t a time where we were stressing what other people were doing. We were just doing what we felt was hot.

Lawnge: Yea, it wasn’t no real science to it we just did what the fuck we felt like doing. We’re not following nobody’s format we’re just doing what we think is hot and keeping it moving.

Halftime: How did ya’ll come up with “Flavor of the Month”?

Dres: Man that was about 15 years ago. I was probably smoking a lot of weed and wanted some ice cream. I can’t even tell you. It was just some young boy having fun shit.

Halftime: What kinda message was ya’ll trying to send with the “The Choice is Yours?”

Dres: Basically, don’t feel that you have to be pigeonholed in any format of anything. There’s options to everything especially music. So making that song was like a statement. You can get with this regardless of what you’re messing with?

Halftime: I was reading in an interview that the label actually encouraged ya’ll to take “Strobelite Honey” from a skit and make it a full song. That’s probably the first time I heard of a major label actually encouraging anything original or creative. What was the label situation like for ya’ll or the first album?

Lawnge: He can take that one.

Dres: On the first album I think they were involved a little bit. One of the guys was Dave Gossett and another person named Lisa Cortez. Dave was a young cat and I felt like he was pretty involved in the project. That being said when we turned it in that’s what it was. The label got behind us and that’s how it was. We had the option at that point but we didn’t feel threatened by it. We didn’t want to do it as a single but we didn’t feel threatened by it so we did it. That wasn’t really big but it wound up being something big.

Halftime: How did the situation change on the second album?

Lawng: Dave went to EMI.

Dres: So now Lisa was the new point person. I don’t know the label folded soon after the album came out and it was just a new staff. It was bad timing as far as the project. It really wasn’t promoted well in my opinion and it didn’t do what they wanted it to do.

Halftime: There was a joint around that time that came out where you guys dissed Hammer which I thought was hilarious. What sparked that and did you ever meet up to settle whatever started it?

Dres: He had some song that dropped. You know what I hated to do that song because I felt like we’re really not gonna get props for this but I also hated that he said our name in his song. I never looked at it as something we were gonna get props from but I was like if we’re gonna do it then let’s do it. I bumped into him a couple of times but he never said anything. It ain’t no biggy to me. We both were young and can easily be cordial. It ain’t no thing in my opinion. It was never anything that I felt threatened by.

Lawnge: I thought it was hilarious. Like he said if he didn’t say Black Sheep there wouldn’t have been a problem. That could have been anyone at the time if they had said Black Sheep then it was gonna be that. That’s hip hop. We ain’t run up in Hammer’s house and stick a gun in his mouth or all that other mess like the madness that goes on now. We kept it on records.

Halftime: Was there ever a time in your career where you felt like ya’ll should get a bit more raw based on what was going on around you?

Dres: Nah never that. I feel we’re from the streets anyway but we’re a little bit more intelligent in how we present it. I don’t think we’d be able to say some of the things we say if we weren’t from the streets. We come from a place where we don’t stress that stuff and it’s not by accident. Anybody who’s really real isn’t gonna say stuff like that.

Halftime: There was definitely a shift from the first to the second album where you had cats like The Legion. Was that a conscious change or were the lyrics just affected by the guys you were around at the time?

Dres: Some of both. We were definitely progressing as artists and because of the people we were around we were doing different things. We wound up putting some stuff together. Kinda reaching out to friends so to speak.

Halftime: Do you still keep in touch with The Legion?

Dres: Yea, no doubt I speak to my man Cules From time to time definitely. We just had him come onstage at BB Kings two weeks ago. I speak to Cules often the others, Smash and Cee-low, not as much but from time to time.

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Posted by Jbutters on Monday, December 18th, 2006 and is filed under HIP HOP ICON SERIES.