Whilst he may not have the notoriety of RZA
or Meth or ODB, Dreddy Kruger has been with
Wu since the beginning as an emcee and originally
a dancer but foremost as the A&R of Wu-Tang
Corporation. 2005 saw him step into the spotlight
with his label Think Differently Music and the
highly successful compilation Wu-Tang Meets
the Indie Culture, a collaborative project between
the original underground pioneers that are GZA,
RZA and U-God with the stars of the contemporary
US underground MF Doom, Rass Kass, Sean Price
& RA The Rugged Man. With a part two being
conceptualised already we can only imagine the
heat, Soph got the chance to have a chat with
the man himself.
You never had aspirations to be a hip hop
artist, you were originally a dancer, can you
fill us in on how you went from dancing to being
involved with Wu-Tang?
Me and Dirty used to dance for GZA, not break
dancing though, when he was signed to Cold Chillin
we used to dance for him then. It wasn’t
break dancing, it was hip hop dancing but it
was definitely never one of my plans to become
an mc, it just happened.
How did it happen?
Just because of my affiliation with knowin
GZA and RZA, I used to dance with them and then
one time, the first time I ever kicked it was
for RZA and he really liked it and told me I
should try to take it seriously. That’s
how that really got started, I definitely had
fun doing it and made a lot of records.
Your first recording was Graveyard Chamber
on what would become a historic hip hop release,
how did it feel to have your first shit be so
monumental? And to be part of a crew that redefined
what hip hop was all about?
I was on Gravediggaz, I was on GZA albums and
I was on Wu-Tang Forever. Absolutely it’s
definitely an experience and I feel blessed
and lucky to have that background in the music
business since I’ve been in it, Wu-Tang
is a branded name, it definitely helps. Especially
when I’m putting a project like this together
when I was like calling all the other artists,
like Rass Kass and Del and all those cats, when
I first told them ‘yo I’m doing
this project Wu Tang Meets the Indie Culture’
and basically y’all gonna be mixed in
with the Wu. They loved it, they were like ‘I’ve
been waiting to do a track with Wu my whole
life’ it was like a no brainer. That’s
why I think the project became so successful
because basically all the artists that are on
there, really wanted to be on there, it wasn’t
no label politics, it wasn’t no ‘I’m
getting six figures and a big check to be on
there’, some of them did it for free just
because they wanted to be a part of it and that’s
how I wanted it to be. I could have got Ghostface,
Redman, Nas but all those artists are on major
labels and I didn’t want no major label
politics involved in my project, it can hold
things up and mess up things in the long run.
Is that why you didn’t have Meth or
Raekwon on there?
Yeah exactly because they are all on major
labels and I wanted to keep the thing what it
says, Wu-Tang Meets the Indie Culture. Even
all the bigger artists on here like GZA, RZA,
Rass Kass, all of these guys are unsigned in
a sense, they are all just putting out their
music on an independent standpoint.
You are now the A&R for the Wu-Tang corp,
can you explain to us what your job actually
entails and how it helped you to put together
Think Differently Music?
I’m vice president of A&R for the
Wu-Tang Corporation, I’m A&R’ing
the next Wu album, I also helped out with A&R
for the Only Built for Cuban Links record, we
got a lot of good music coming out in the beginning
of next year. There is a lot of technical stuff
involved but basically what I do in terms of
A&R I pick out the music, the beats that
I think they will sound good on, I help them
come up with concepts or how to attack the beats.
I sequence the albums, I get the albums mixed,
I sit in with the mixers or I’ll sit in
the studio by myself and do it. That’s
basically what my job is, after the initial
recording and just putting the rhymes with the
beats, I step in and put the album together
as far as giving it a feel. With the Think Differently
compilation, it flowed, it had a certain type
of feel from beginning to end and that’s
what I do and I learnt that from RZA and my
man Scott from Lyle Records. They finish their
job and I come in and put the final touches
on it, it’s like a salad, all the different
elements that go into a salad, I’m sorta
the cucumber part, I come in and add in the
spices and the onions and everything.
Tell us more about Bronze Nazareth, who produced
the majority of the album?
Bronze Nazareth is RZA’s top disciple
on the production standpoint; it’s an
honour if you are able to produce tracks for
the RZA. So when Bronze did some, he did two
beats on the Birth of A Prince album (The Birth
& A Day to God is 1000 Years), anytime you
got RZA rhyming on your beats its an honour
and he must really think highly of you, so that’s
what made me go check him out. I really wanted
to hear more Bronze beats after RZA, cos RZA
initially discovered him but RZA’s really
into Hollywood and the movie, he’s not
into the music business like he was before,
he’s more into doing movie scores and
doing the Hollywood thing. So I had to pick
up where he left off as far as getting a production
standpoint where it needed to be so the first
person I thought of was Bronze. He was fresh,
everybody knows Mathematics and True Masta and
all those other guys but nobody’s really
familiar with Bronze’s sound, especially
since he’s out of Detroit too, he’s
not even from New York. Bronze has that RZA
sound from like 93 – 96, he’s studied
RZA his whole life so he’s been waiting
for the opportunity to showcase his standpoint.
Bronze is signed to my label (Think Differently
Music) and his album is coming out in March,
it’s called The Great Migration and it’s
going to have production from RZA and Bronze
and guest appearances from Immortal Technique,
GZA.
Tell us some more about Byata, she is the
only female on the record.
Byata is like the first female Russian mc to
come out and really sound good, not saying there
isn’t a lot of good Russian mc’s
out there but she is probably the best out there
right now, hands down. I’ve heard a lot
of Russian mc’s, I’ve heard a lot
of different mc’s period and she definitely
stands out. Just for being a female in a male
dominated business and she’s the only
female on the compilation. It wasn’t planned
like that but she just came so good on the tracks
that she was on that I had to keep her on that,
she just did her thing. Her album is coming
out next year too on Think Differently Music
and Advision Entertainment, she is 100% Russian,
she was born in Russia, she came here when she
was like five or six, she’s been living
out in the Russian community in Brooklyn her
whole life. I met her through this mutual friend
that was telling me ‘yo I got his Russian
girl and you need to hear her, you need to hear
her’. I finally took a listen to her and
I heard something I liked, I didn’t necessarily
like the songs that they played for me but I
heard something in her voice that I knew I could
work with. We definitely never had a lot of
female mc’s down with us, so it was a
shock for a lot of people, even RZA was kinda
happy about her too, he was really psyched about
Byata, he loved her flow and her voice, everything.
You have really captured the 36 Chambers sound,
particularly with the Kung Fu skit and just
the overall feel of the production, what was
the key factor in nailing that sentiment?
For everybody who was there it brings back
a certain type of feeling, and that’s
a feeling I wanted to bring back. I didn’t
necessarily want to take it back to ’93
but I wanted you to think of that time when
Wu-Tang was coming out and the music they were
putting out at that time was some of the best,
so I wanted to take you back to that era to
let people know ‘we still here’,
we put out classic music and we’re still
putting out good music, we just need people
to listen to it. And I think that’s why
a lot of people locked on to the project because
it wasn’t just Wu-Tang, it was Wu-Tang
Meets the Indie Culture, where a lot of people
are fans of a lot of the other artists on here
as well, even more than Wu-Tang. I run into
a lot of people and they bigger fans of Cannibal
Ox more than Wu-Tang, and so to hear Can Ox
on a song with Wu-Tang is kinda like woah, they
didn’t realise we were still putting out
music on the independent and that we’re
still underground too. So it was definitely
a bid to open doors for both of us, for Wu-Tang
and for the other independent cats that’s
on here because a lot of them grew up listening
to Wu-Tang music as well so they were familiar
with the sound and the quality of the mc’ing
that we used to put out. I think it worked out
good, a lot of people are asking me for volume
two now, people want to hear a volume two with
cats like Atmosphere, Little Brother, Talib
Qweli & Jean Grae, those type of cats.
So there will be a second record?
Yeah I definitely will because it’s like
Public Domain, you gotta supply the demand,
if that’s what people wanna hear then
that’s what fans wanna hear, you’ve
gotta give them what they want. I can’t
try to go left field and try and come with something
else, everybody’s asking for a volume
two, if I come with a whole different type of
project I don’t think people will accept
that like they did this project, basically they
bought this sound, it’s hard to even get
people in a record store to buy your CD, so
now they got it and they like it I wanna see
people happy, I wanna keep the fans happy, so
if that’s what they want, a volume two,
then I’ma deliver a volume two. It wasn’t
planned and trust me I will keep it at the same
consistency as volume one, that’s the
thing, I don’t think it will come out
this year or even next year but there definitely
will be a volume two.
The track Think Differently is brilliant,
and feels straight up like a 90’s Wu joint,
what made you pick Casual, Tragedy, Rock &
Vordul to kick it together?
Because I’m fans of all four of them
and as you said no-one would ever think to put
those four mc’s on a track together but
I did because that’s what the record is
about and my company Think Differently Music,
so every record on this cut had to be a combination
you ain’t never heard before. But you’re
familiar and the artists are well respected,
so I’ve been a big fan of Casual, I’ve
been a big fan of Rock Marciano and I wanted
to make a record like Protect Ya Neck or a Triumph
type record where four or five mc’s get
on it, back to back like the Wu used to do it.
I wanted to keep it just like a Protect Ya Neck
or a Triumph but I wanted to showcase different
mc’s from different regions, so like Causal
is from the West, the bay area and Tragedy Khadafi
he’s from Queens, NY then you got Rock
Marciano whose from Long Island NY and then
you’ve got Vordul, he’s from Uptown
and Masta Killa was originally on that record,
he’s from Brooklyn. I had to take Masta
Killa’s verse off because it just didn’t
fit in or come in right. So that was my whole
idea to bring in five mc’s from different
regions of New York and around the tri-state
area and have them going in back to back, everybody
coming in right off, no hook, no nothing, I
just wanted straight beats and rhymes. Just
a five minute heat rock, like it used to be,
the illest posse cuts would always be like four,
five mc’s, no hook, just niggas rhyming
on a banging beat, just goin in and I wanted
to create that type of record because I didn’t
have that record on there either. It’s
the Wu-Tang Meets the Indie Culture posse cut.
Dreddy Kruger’s Think Differently Music:
Wu-Tang Meets The Indie Culture is out now through
Shogun Distribution
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