Del The Funky Homosapien has been a name that hip-hop fans have long cherished, well before he gained notoriety for adding a verse to the iconic Gorillaz track “Clint Eastwood”. Before then, he’d already released an album as part of the Oakland hip-hop crew Hieroglyphics, the first Deltron 3030 album, at least four studio records and too much else to list in just one paragraph. The man is profilic to say the least. And always full of surprises.
Two such surprises came in 2013 when new records were released from both Hieroglyphics and Deltron 3030, after 10 and 13 year absences respectively. And now Deltron – his project with DJ Kid Koala and producer Dan The Automator (Handsome Boy Modeling School) – are finally making their way to Australia to bring us material from their latest record Event 2, and the original Deltron 3030, after Del last graced our shores on a solo jaunt in 2011.
Those shows were his first down here in some twenty years, and on asking him about his memories of those shows, he said, “I loved it down there, it was cool. The only thing about it though is that y’all are so far away! Once you get me there it’s all good. I get edgy being up there too long. Unless you’re in first class you got no room, it’s like being on the bus without the fresh air! It is what it is, we got a job to do and it requires flying down there.”
We jumped straight into what to expect from the show – after all, Event 2 is a record with a story behind it, and a tonne of special guests. So how does it translate onto the stage? “It’s not a theatrical performance or anything like that. We’re going to pay some track of both records, talk to you a bit… we’ll have a band up on stage, Juan Alderete from The Mars Volta is our bass player. We all interact well together, so you’ll see that on stage. We’ve been performing it non-stop over the last two years, trying to get y’all to get out there and buy the record! Whether it’s two piece there or 50,000, we give it our all. You’ve got to give everyone the show that they deserve! They paid for it, you know what I mean?”
Given they’ve been performing the record (Event 2) for two years now – while he’s no doubt been hammering away on other projects, including his latest solo album Iller Than Most – I was curious as to how he felt about it now, “I like it. We did what we wanted to do with it. I don’t listen to it every day or anything, but we wanted a dramatic, rap opera, that’s what we were trying to accomplish – it’s definitely one for the history books.”
And how about that dramatic, dystopic story? What are its origins? “Me and a homie of mine called Grant James, who was directing a bunch of my videos at the time, we sat down for three hours and throw ideas back and forth on AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) which was the shit at the time – this is a while ago now – and we came up with the basis of what Deltron would be. Then I brought it to the attention of Dan (The Automator) and Kid, and we talked about it, and it took years to write the damn thing – I felt like it was my responsibility to learn how to actually write science fiction, different types and genres. I didn’t know about any of that at the time. Like anything else, there’s a lot of branches of it. So when a real sci-fi fan listens to it, I wanted it to feel authentic. It took a while though man! The music was done for ages. I already have the music for part three too! Dan’s already given me the music. So now it’s up to me to write to it. That’s how we usually work.”
That’s not quite how things happened with the first album though, so Del went on to talk about what led to the change of approach – and the eventual 13 years between records. “The first album had a lot of freestyling, with us adding some sci-fi elements here and there. But I was saying some real stuff in there. It wasn’t just bullshit freestyling. So I think that’s what resonated with people listening, the people who became the fans, and we didn’t really expect that. So with the second one, we decided to pay more attention to that. We didn’t plan for that (the sci-fi elements) to be the focal point, but we felt a responsibility to the fans to take it there, and take it a step forward. And that took some work. Now we kinda know how to do it, the way to write it, I’ve learnt it all now, so it won’t take as long for the next album.”
With so many projects happening at once, you have to wonder how he jumps seemingly effortlessly between them all, so I asked how he adapted his style moving between say, a solo record and Deltron at the same time, “I don’t really have a problem with relating on different levels. Call it a gift or whatever, but I just find it easy to relate. I’m still me, but whatever is required of that project I can get on that page. It’s not a hard thing for me to do, my mind is pretty open. I’m a unique person like that, I guess. It’s a challenge too, you get to work a little harder, when you jump into a project that’s not what you usually do! I have to make it Del the Funky Homosapien, but I can play the part that’s needed of me.”
As one of the most recognisable figures in the Bay Area hip-hop community, it was inevitable that the conversation would go towards the recent shooting death of The Jacka. I asked him how the scene influenced his music, and his thoughts immediately went to the late rapper, “It’s depressing for me… it cut me up, it was really unexpected… he was tight actually, I liked The Jacka, I liked his work. He was comin’ up too. But he got caught out there and he got hit. That’s what it is. I try not to be in one place in too long, you know what I mean? You stay in one place too long and you can get caught up in it. So that definitely influences what I write about. And my mind is always thinking about that sort of stuff, but I try not to rap too much about the street stuff like that. If you have to actually deal with stuff like that, you don’t really want to rap about it. You want to rap about something else. I can’t help but talk about it though. Y’all are smart in Australia. If you don’t have guns, you can’t use them! It makes a lot of sense to me.”
And as much as he’s known for that Gorillaz verse – and even though he had Damon Albarn appear on the first Deltron record – he’s quick to point out that he had nothing to do with the project, “I was just a hired hand – that was a work for hire kind of deal! Dan (The Automator) was finishing up Deltron with me, and he was working with Damon at the same time. He’d already gotten all the vocals for “Clint Eastwood”, but he didn’t like the verse I ended up doing… so he asked one night if I could do that thing I do and whip up some lyrics, I didn’t want to do it! But he said, ‘You know you could do something better than this in 10 or 15 minutes!’ He knows I can do that. So I said ‘Okay, I’ll do it.’ So that’s how that came to be. He just wanted some better lyrics and it just so happened that the song blew up. But I wasn’t in the studio with Damon and I had nothing to do with the creative process…”.
Though he admits that he’d love to get in the studio and collaborate with Damon properly in the future, “We’ve talked about getting into the studio and working on some stuff, he’s into that, we like each other. And his point is, if that record did so good, and that wasn’t even trying! Imagine a Del and Damon record for real! I’m pretty down with that.”
Well now, that doesn’t sound too far-fetched to me.
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Event 2 is available now. Don’t miss Deltron 3030 when they tour Australia from next week.
BRISBANE – Wed 25th FEB @ The Hi Fi
ADELAIDE – Thu 26th FEB @ The Gov
MELBOURNE – Fri 27th FEB @ The Hi Fi
SYDNEY – Sat 28th FEB @ The Hi Fi
PERTH – Sun 1st MARCH @ The Bakery
Tickets on sale nationally Monday 27th October from:
http://www.metropolistouring.com/tour.php?tour=2015_deltron3030
http://www.deltron3030.com/
