The Other Dynamic Duo

Since the shit has hit the economic fan, the recession has been the fertilizer of many new talents, especially in the music world.  A renegade lyricist named Access Immortal and his fellow producer extraordinaire, DJ Ruckspin, have formed a duo called Project Gotham to combat the rampant staleness of mainstream hip-hop.  crud’s Don Pedro sits down with them to find out more.

Don Pedro: I was listening to your track “What the Game’s Been Missing.”  It seemed like an anti-mainstream rap track.  What niche do you plan on filling in the market?

Access Immortal: If you look at artists like Slaughterhouse, I feel like they were really respected for their lyrical ability.  Back then, they were making really good songs, and now they’re getting all these offers for millions, but they didn’t really compromise anything about their substance.  I feel like we’re in the same area that Slaughterhouse has come into.  We could fall into that category.

DJ Ruckspin: Firstly, I feel like we’re gonna end up being that group where even if you’re not a fan of hip-hop, we’re going to be one of those few exceptions where people will be like, ‘I don’t really listen to hip-hop, but I love Project Gotham.’  Kind of like in the realm of rock, people are like, ‘I don’t really listen to rock, but I like Coldplay.

DP: Do you feel as if you’re trying to define your own genre at this point, or are you simply trying to branch off in a different direction from the mainstream?

DJR: We’re just gonna do whatever we want as far as music.  If we feel like making a certain type of record one day, we’ll make it.  We don’t want to limit ourselves.

DP: Some of your tracks seem funk-inspired.  What kind of music did you guys grow up on?

AI: With me, I was listening to a lot of hip-hop.  I wasn’t really old enough to buy my own stuff, so I was borrowing as much as I could.  There were a lot of R&B records that sounded like today’s house music and were a lot different from R&B in the 90’s.  They had a lot of fast beats.  Every once in a while, I would get turned on to rock music.  I wouldn’t necessarily know the name of the band, but I just liked what I heard.  It was so different from the environment I was growing up in.

DP: Do you guys have any dream collaborations?

DJR: I would like to work with the White Stripes or the Black Keys.  I love how their sound is so raw and stripped-down.  Music that’s polished and cold, as far as the way it sounds, is a turn-off for me.  I like music that has a warp and a raw-ness to it.  It’s why I gravitate towards producers like your DJ Premier or J. Dilla.  The whole sound they provide with their music, it kinda jumps out at you.

DP: One of the lines in your song is “The future of the artform is evolvin’ / As long as it’s dope, it’s something I’m involved in…”  What’s the dopest product of evolution that hip-hop has brought to society?

AI: The best thing that hip-hop brings right now is that it has so many sub-categories. It allows you to be that ‘commercial’ artist or that ‘hipster’ artist or the ‘political’ artist.  There’s so many fields there that you can pretty much exist wherever you want because of different fan bases.  Also, I think we’re past the point where everybody was braggin’ about how much money they had before the recession, and people aren’t necessarily ballin’ like that anymore.  You got a lot of people comin’ out like you know what, it’s okay for them to wear their tight jeans or to go around with their skateboards.  Now, there’s a ton of people like that in the world so now they can do hip-hop and still be accepted with a large fan base.  They can do what they wanna do and be who they wanna be, and nobody is looking at ‘em really strange.

DP: So, Access, you’re from Bed-Stuy.  What other parts of NYC have inspired you?

AI: Definitely Queens.  They have this unity that a lot of people don’t have.  Artists from Brooklyn have a loyalty to Brooklyn, but they definitely don’t have loyalty toward each other.  But in a place like Queensbridge, you can really find in early days that artists like Nas, Mobb Deep, Capone and Noreaga, Tragedy – they were all over each other’s projects.  I mean, they were just doing ciphers together and were at each other’s shows and everything.  I feel like that area right there, that small little housing section, they just had all this unity.  They were collaborating on songs together, and that really inspired me. I feel like they helped each other get to the point where they’re at.

DP: You guys have played at live venues before.

DJR: Once, but not together.

AI: Not since we really put together, but we did a show before in Providence (Rhode Island)

DP:  Access, you’re in Bed-Stuy, and Ruckspin, you’re in Providence.  Do you find that the distance creates barriers for you in terms of creativity or does it actually facilitate more creativity?  Is there an advantage to it, or does it bring about a disadvantage?

AI:  For me, it helps with the creativeness, because I feel that with the distance, he might get an idea from where he’s at, and I might get one from where I’m at since we got these totally different environments going on. He’ll be like, ‘Yo, I got a hot idea for a song or a beat’ and it’s the same thing for me. The way we record, he’ll send me the beat and then I’ll write the track, record it and send it back, and then we’ll have a phone conversation about it and try to come up with how the beat should sound.  I feel like being in two different places and having two different lives going on actually helps because we don’t actually see the same things.  

DJR:  Yo, it’s funny that you mention that, cuz looking at the situation from an outsider’s perspective it’s like, ‘Yo, how do they even get anything done.’  As far as this creativity goes, I feel like me and Acc, we are the same but different.  We think along the same lines on a lot of things, and there are some things that we think about differently.  But we trust each other enough so that when I have a weird idea for a beat, he’ll go with it and see what happens, and if he has a weird idea for a song concept, I’ll go with it and see what happens. It’s worked pretty damn well so far. I mean, we haven’t done a record that we personally don’t like or wanna throw away.  This isn’t bragging.  It just comes from trust and chemisty.  And the other thing is obviously, being from two different places we have different sources of inspiration, and I think it helps everything.  It doesn’t really hinder our creativity. 

DP: What’s in the works right now for Project Gotham?

DJR: Well, obviously, the album “Birth of a Dream”.

AI: We don’t know the release date yet, but as time goes on, we just build up a bigger and bigger buzz. We’re not trying to rush it out or anything.  But, yeah, Project Gotham, ‘Birth of a Dream’.

DJR: We’ll, we’re performing at the ‘The Blackout’ show on November 7^th, too.  We’re actually going to be playing  our latest EP, and we’re going to give that out.  We’re going to also be making a mixtape of rock tracks that Acc and I both personally like and love.  Back in the day, you heard so many cover albums, and even now you hear certain rock bands doing cover albums, but you never hear a hip-hop group doing covers of rock stuff, so we thought that was a fun concept to play with.  We’ve already done a couple tracks in that style and we’ve gotten good responses about it.

DP: Thanks, guys.  Best of luck to you.  We’ll see you at ‘The Blackout’ on November 7th.

DOWNLOAD PROJECT GOTHAM’S “THE FREE REIGN EP” DOWNLOAD LINK All images and music courtesy of Project Gotham and its affiliates.