Lord Finesse – The Unkut Interview

At long last, I got around to interviewing the great Lord Finesse officially. I’m also deep into completing the first proper book of Unkut interviews, so I’m saving the second half of this piece for print, along with a whole bunch of recent follow-up interviews that I’ve been doing. That being said, I didn’t want to hold back everything, so I had to drop a chunk this discussion with the Funkyman to keep your ears ringing until the print edition is released in early 2015. Lord Finesse needs no introduction, as he’s the man who built on the punchline foundations laid down by Big Daddy Kane and paved the way for the next generation of MC’s. We kicked it about his experiences with record labels, his love of the SP-1200, plans for the future and the and the infamously misunderstood Mac Miller lawsuit.

Robbie: Did you feel like you were prepared when you started making Funky Technician?

Lord Finesse: C’mon man, you can listen to that first album and it was dope, there was structure, but nobody was telling me, ‘You should do sixteen bars here, you should do sixteen bars there!’ I was rhyming forever on some of those records.

Nothing wrong with that!

[laughs] Most of that album was written while I was going to the studio or the day before. Some of it was freestyle stuff, but connecting it and doing it all together I had to write rhymes around some of the stuff and make ‘em songs. If you listen to the battle with me and Perc you’re hearing a nice amount of Funky Technician in that ‘89 battle.

So they were your stock battle rhymes?

When it’s time to make records you take ‘em and you re-craft them for the record.

Did any labels try to make you compromise your sound or image?

I didn’t even get that far. I went from Wild Pitch, which was a label with really no money and no promotion to take artists to the next level at the time, to being at a label with a lotta money. They got everything to take me to the next level, but they don’t understand who Finesse is as an artist! It’s like the popular gun that everybody’s talking about, you’ve gotta have the gun, not because you’re a shooter or you go to the gun range. You just want the gun because everybody else got the gun. Then when you get the gun, you don’t know nothing about the gun, you don’t know how to shoot it! You don’t know the mechanism’s of the gun so you kinda toss the gun to the side cos you don’t what you purchased! That’s how I feel when it comes to Giant. I’m there, but they don’t really know what they got! ‘This is the dude everybody was talking about! OK, we got him! Now what do we do with him?’

I ain’t have no A&R overseeing me so I had the freedom of control to do whatever I want, which is a good thing but can be a bad thing. To be a successful artists you’ve gotta give the label what they want and you have to be on the same page and have the same destination in mind. Otherwise they’re gonna go one way and they’re gonna go another! They’re the ones with the power and the money, so they’ll go, ‘We don’t know what to do with him, so we’re just gonna drop him.’ Majors will just drop you. Independents will hold you as a chip, like trading a player from one team to another.

Return of the Funkyman is my favorite Lord Finesse album. How do you feel about it, looking back?

I think it was a good album. I don’t think it was my best effort, but to put it as a package? The Awakening is probably my favorite album, because I was in the zone when I was doing that album. I knew what I wanted as an artist. If you look at all those videos from that album, I wrote the scripts for all the videos so I was more comfortable. When I did ‘Return of the Funkyman’ and we shot that video? I wasn’t comfortable. What he depicted in that video wasn’t what I wanted it to be. It’s a cool video, but it wasn’t like ‘Hip To The Game’ or ‘Actual Facts.’ I was having fun in those videos! I was more being me. I’m a private person, the only time people can really get to see me perform is on stage, so I was always awkward shooting videos because they was always somebody else artistic creativity, it wasn’t my thoughts what I wanted the video to be. ‘Return of the Funkyman’ and ‘Strictly For The Ladies’? It was aight, but ‘Hip To The Game’? This is what I wrote. When you watch Cold Chillin’ videos back in the day with Kane and Biz and Kool G Rap, those videos felt alive, they felt real! I wanted a real touch, and that’s where The Awakening came in. Because the director say, ‘In this scene, I want you to act hard!’ It’s hard for me to do that, because I don’t act. Lord Finesse is not an actor so I have to do videos that make me comfortable and keep things in my element. ‘Hip To The Game’ and ‘Actual Facts’ are closed-off videos, they’re not streetwise videos where I’m performing and people are stopping and walking by. I’m kinda shy in that aspect. But if it’s closed-in and the focus is on my and there’s not no outsiders looking in? I can be me. When you’re a person that’s not out in the public like that – most rapper’s carry a certain persona, but it’s mainly entertainment and acting. You acting hard, you rolling with thirty dudes but you’re really soft! You’re a cornball! That was never me. I was around some of the craziest people you could ever imagine, and they always told me, ‘Yo Finesse, just be yourself. Don’t act tough, don’t act gangster, just be a cool dude. Demand and command respect, but you don’t have to do it by making people fear you or acting this tough role.’ I always took that and tried to be real cool and make people gravitate to who I am as a person.

With The Awakening, I was in my zone with that, everything about that was me. Neil Levine, the president of Penalty, personally signed me. ‘Finesse is available? We can get him? OK!’ He said to me, ‘Finesse, I don’t want you to worry about this and that. I just want you to do the records you wanna do, and we’re gonna build around that.’ That’s what I did, I had fun! That’s why I like that album better than Return of the Funkyman, because I was still learning a lot, especially production. I wasn’t whole yet as a producer, I was just hollow. With The Awakening I knew what I wanted as a producer, as an artist, the image about it. I wanted it to be melodic, but at the same time I could make it dark. I could take jazz basslines and horns and dictate the picture I’m painting, musically. So some of the stuff sounds soulful, some of the stuff sounds melodic, some of the stuff sounds dark, but I’m doing it with jazz! A genre creating other genre’s within that album.

You really found yourself as a producer on that album, but I feel like Return of the Funkyman showcased your rhyming talents even better.

Lyrically, as an MC, I don’t lose the hunger. Anytime I’m in public or I dropped a verse on something, it had to be dope. I ain’t never really cruise-control on nobody’s song or on my songs, because I know I’m being judged, I’m being rated lyrically on my performance. Every time I’m trying to top my performance, and if I can’t top my performance I don’t really want to half-step and give my fans and followers a shitty performance. That’s not who I am. That’s why when people say, ‘Do an album!’ It’s not that simple to me. A lot goes into that, I’ve gotta see what I’ve done before, I’ve gotta see where I’mma go with now. I don’t wanna do club and radio records, so I’ve gotta do music that can compete against those records or destroy those records! But don’t do, ‘OK, these strip club records are hot so I gotta do a strip club record.’ I don’t operate like that, I’m just into good music. I’m into what I do, so when you hear it, it might not be what everybody else is doing but you’re gonna say, ‘Damn, that shit is dope! I can’t shit on this. What was this dude thinking when he made this?’ Because that’s what I always thought! When I heard Kane’s ‘Raw’ – the lyrics and the music – I was like, ‘What the fuck was they thinking of when they did this?’ When I heard Tribe Called Quest Midnight Marauders album, I’m sitting there stuck, like, ‘How did they put all this together?’ That’s how I look at art. You can always tell true artists from people who just throw it together.

Rapper’s today look at our era and say, ‘Y’all too lyrical! It’s about having fun. Hip-hop shouldn’t be so technical, y’all shouldn’t take it so serious.’ Now the fuckin’ lyrical bar for hip-hop is on the fuckin’ floor! Everybody look at the precedents that these simple rappers are making and everybody feel they can do it and now we’re being over-saturated and overrun with bullshit that’s simple! The more simple it is, the more people think they can do it. They trying to dumb it down! Like I said on my new album, ‘Lyrically, they tryin’ to put the planet to rest/What y’all niggas say is extraordinary? Shit, I say that’s standard, at best. Y’all ain’t all that smart/Lyrically you finger painting. Shit, you call that art?’ The stuff I’m saying now is gonna be very profound and prolific, cos I’m coming from a grown man state of mind now. I don’t have time to joke and play no more, I just got facts and jewels right now.

There was a period where you were killing it with your guest appearances, like the records with Trendz of Culture and Ground Floor. Did you feel like you were really in the zone?

That was during the time of The Awakening and I was definitely in the zone because for once it was like being a producer and being a rapper. I’m buying records, I kinda know what I’m gonna rhyme to. As a producer, I can sit in the studio by myself to create something, nobody’s there, and do these songs. Then leave the studio and play ‘em for my peoples and ask what they think. Go back into the studio myself, or one or two of my friends would go with me. I just felt better because I didn’t need nobody to oversee me. A lot of the stuff I would be up in the house, messing with it for a week, and then when it’s time to go into the studio I’m ready to lay this beat, I know the beat is tight and I’m excited because once the engineer EQ’s it, this is gonna be dope! If it sounds good in the house the shit sounds phenomenal in the studio. That was always my theory. If it sounds great here? It’s gonna sound extraordinary in the studio. I’m listening to it in here on small speakers – I might turn it up in the big speakers to tune certain things – but once it’s time to lay the stuff? Oh man, y’all will see. I started working on this new Lord Finesse project and y’all will hear the difference, musically. It’s still gonna be hip-hop, still gonna be Boom Bap, but sonically? Musically? Nah! I can’t wait, man! Let these dudes be doing their simple beats, I’ll show ‘em what it is.

Was working with Dr. Dre part of the reason you moved on from the SP-1200 to get that fuller sound?

People always get it misconstrued. When I used the SP-1200, it was never for the sound. It just happened to be that was the best sound available in the 1200, and it gave us a distinct sound like a 1200. But we never looked into it like, ‘Oh, we’re gonna get the 1200 for that sound!’ No, we wanted the shit to sound better! We would spend six to eight hours trying to get that shit to sound right, because the hiss and you gotta add more bottom – shit, you gotta do more work in the studio! The 1200 is the brain. It was always the brain, it controlled the 950. It sequenced all the sounds together, it was the mastermind of the whole track. That’s why it’s called The SP-1200 Project because it was made with the brain of the SP. When I put discs into the SP-1200 and the 950 – yes, I’m using the 950, but without that 1200 the magic can’t be created. From a sequence aspect, from a programming aspect, from how you’re hearing the songs echo – the 950 don’t do that! You using the SP-1200 as the mastermind. We never looked at the 1200 for the sound, I looked at it for the swing and the style, because it was very simplistic to work and the funk that you got from the drums? How you could make them drums bounce? You couldn’t do that with no machine. Even now, you could try to do it with the Renaissance and the 3000, but you have to make this go later and you have to shift the swing, it’s not a natural thing. You gotta know the algorithms and the swing of the 1200 to reduplicate that sound and style.

You did that ‘Soulplan’ song with Roy Ayers, that must have been a big moment for you.

I just seen Roy last December when we was in Paris and he brought me up on stage. He’s one of my favorite artists, who don’t love Roy Ayers? By far one of my favorite artists – him and Stevie. To work with him was a dream come true, like, ‘Fuck the record, I’m working with Roy! This is crazy!’ We had fun, man. That’s one moment that I wish I coulda captured on video tape, but I wasn’t thinking that far ahead. That vibe was so smooth, the shit me and Dink and Roy was doing, with Dink rocking the Fender live and then you got Roy on the vibes? Shit, I thought I was back in the 70’s! It felt beautiful, man. That vibe was dope that all you needed was have somebody have a motherfucker bring a table in there with a table cloth, set-up a candle and order some food and you and your girl could’ve just sat there and y’all have felt like it was a motherfuckin’ romantic dinner! That’s how that vibe was. I plan to work with Roy on this next project. I got a lotta surprises on this new shit, trust me. I’m just tryin’ to make it the best shit I can make it.

‘Kickin’ Flavor With My Man’ might be my favorite Percee-P verse.

That verse is crazy, that was towards the end of Return of the Funkyman. I liked how ‘Yes, You May’ came out so much that I called him in to do another song with me, and just recently gave it new life on Slice of Spice. I wish that was the beat back in the day! [laughs]

T-Ray told me that he wanted to put a hook on the ‘Yes, You May’ remix. Is that true?

I wouldn’t say all that. He originally want to submit the beat to Biz and I’m like, ‘I need that right there, man. Please, let me get that. I need that!’ It was what it was. He ain’t have nothing else in mind, he ain’t never bring it to my attention, like, ‘Look man, I think we should do this.’ We did both of those songs in one day, we did the ‘Party Over Here’ remix and we did ‘Yes, You May’ in one shot in D&D.

Where did you get the Grandpa Finesse character from?

I got inspired by Marley Marl.

He got that from Ohio Player’s Granny character, didn’t he?

Oh wow, I never knew that. I just thought it was a good way to start off songs and have a character bug out. I’m good with characters, just how I opened up The Awakening with the sermon and i act like I’m a pastor or a preacher. I like doing things like that, that’s what gives your album or your project character. If you’re just rhyming you’re not letting people know you have a sense of humor or you’re a jokester or something different about you. You need skits to glue it all together.

Have you got a release date for the next album or are you still working on it?

I’m working hard on it right now, so tell people to stop asking me when I’m doing a new album. It’s not a microwave thing for me, I can’t just do something and throw it out cos you want it. It doesn’t work like that, cos if it’s trash it’s gonna hurt me more than it’s gonna help me. I see so many artists prolific artists throw out albums and that shit be gone in two months. They don’t work it, they don’t go do a promo tour for it, they don’t really up their sleeves. They don’t even care about their own movement, and that shit is disturbing to me. To know you’re prolific artist and you aren’t even supporting your own shit, so how can you expect people to support you? You aren’t doing interviews, you ain’t describing what made you do this project, ‘I wanted to do this and I wanted to do that and I hooked-up with this producer.’ You’re not even describing the direction of your shit, you’re just throwing it out there. That’s corny to me. It hurts the music, because you’re looking at the music as so disposable. I don’t look at my craft and my music and my lyrics as disposable, man. Everything has a purpose, it has a meaning. Certain things I like to tell my fans, I know how bad you want it but it has to be dope! People say The Awakening, ‘That’s a classic, man! That’s one of the best albums in the world!’ A lot of people didn’t appreciate it until now! I always tell ‘em, ‘I’m doing my new shit. I hope it don’t tell you ten to twelve years to appreciate my new shit.’ Some people don’t appreciate things until they’re not here. Then you talk about what was, ‘You should make another album like The Awakening!’ or ‘You should do another Return of the Funkyman!’ I was at different places in my life when I made those, you’ve just got trust that I’mma be at another place in my life to make a classic.

I remember with that whole Mac Miller situation, I was visiting you when that first became an issue and they had promised to pay you for some beats on his album, which never happened. I assume that whole lawsuit worked out OK for you?

I’m glad it’s over. The only thing that disappointed me with people was that one side of the story was told and everybody was just dumb enough to just listen to that side without doing research for theyself to find out what the true story was. To this day I still get people that try to relive it and keep it alive, and my whole thing is if you don’t know the true story? Just shut the fuck up. You coming at me with this out of pocket tone and you tell, ‘That was messed up what you did!’ And you really don’t have a clue what went down and now it went down, and you judging me and you convicting me based on that. Then when you hear the facts all you wanna say is, ‘Oh, I ain’t know.’ But when you’re coming at me outta pocket it don’t make me want to respond and talk to you, it makes me want to punch you in your face. ‘That’s fucked up! You did this and you did that!’ I’m looking at you like, ‘Who told you that? Do you know this for a fact or this is what you heard? So you run up on somebody on some shit you heard?’ You don’t do that in the hood, cos that gets you fucked up. I don’t see it no different being in the industry. You’re coming at me and you don’t know what you’re talking about and the tone you’re taking with me? I find it very offensive. When you slap somebody and you pop ‘em in the mouth then it looks like you’re the villain once again! You ain’t gonna run-up on somebody and be like, ‘Yo, I heard you murdered so and so.’ We in the world of cut and paste, nobody does research. Everybody repeats what they’re told. Most people don’t have a mind of their own. Like, ‘That doesn’t sound like Ness. Let me do some research.’ I don’t feel like a lotta people did that, I just felt like a lotta people said, ‘He’s mad, he’s bitter, he’s old! Old bastard!’ They called me all types of names and shit.

That was disgraceful, everyone was talking shit and they didn’t even know the situation.

They still don’t know the situation. I’m a person that grinds for everything that I got in the industry and I just wouldn’t let anybody take my music and exploit it. I didn’t let AT&T do it, I didn’t let nobody do it, so why am I gonna start now? I t was exploitation of the music, it wasn’t what everybody put out there. ‘He’s suing for a mixtape!’ People didn’t know the whole story.

You mentioned that Stevie Wonder is one of your favorite artists. Can you speak a little bit about him?

For him to start off at some a young age? I’m inspired by his duration during the decades. From the 60’s, the 70’s, the 80’s, the 90’s, the 2000’s. Artists like him and Quincy Jones and Roy Ayers and James Brown – these dudes were going through different generations and different times and they tweaked their music. Like Michael Jackson, they all tweaked their music to go with that generation and that time without really doing something they ain’t wanna do. That’s very important with music – to do things that are naturally new and be able to adapt to the time without going overboard or going off the deep end and doing something real silly. You get to Stevie Wonder and you look at all his albums – all of them joints got classics on there. Watching Quincy Jones do all the the soundtracks and work with Michael Jackson on Thriller, and ‘Razzamatazz.’ Me and Dre had a talk about that, cos he said it in an interview one time. People try to equate your age with the music, and he was basically, ‘That’s bullshit, Ness. Quincy Jones didn’t do Thriller until he was fifty!’ When you look at it from that aspect, how can people tell you, ‘You too old to do something!’ Or ‘You should quit! This is a young person’s game.’ Fuck outta here!

Do you feel like you get pigeonholed into making music like you did in the 90’s?

I just want people to appreciate my music and appreciate what I’m doing as an artist, and trust and believe that I’m gonna give me best effort. I don’t have to repeat a certain time of my life to come up on music. Trust and believe like how I did Funky Technician and how I did Return of the Funkyman and The Awakening. Trust and believe that it’s gonna go up another notch. I don’t have to recreate those efforts to do so. I can look at certain elements and ingredients in those efforts, but I don’t have to reduplicate those efforts to be great.

What three Lord Finesse songs would you play someone who hadn’t heard you before?

I would give them a taste of everything, from ‘Funky Technician,’ ‘You Know What I’m About,’ ‘Brainstorm,’ ‘Hip 2 The Game.’ I even like my verse on the Bas Blasta joint, I be performing that some times.

This interview is also available in the limited-edition book, Past The Margin: A Decade of Unkut Interviews, available here.