Monday, November 30, 2009

Together Through Megabytes-The Hood Internet


Welcome to a new segment of the blog that we would like to call "Together Through Megabytes." We will be providing you with interviews, conducted via the internets, with some of our favorite bands and artists. First up, is the Hood Internet. The Hood Internet just released their 4th mixtape full of mashups earlier this month. If you've never heard of the Hood Internet think Girl Talk, but with less chaos. And if you've never heard of Girl Talk, your life is probably boring and you should stop reading this right now and re-evaluate things. If you're still reading, read on and listen to what 1/2 of the Hood, STV SLV, has to say about the new mixtape, smoking weed with the GZA, and world domination.

MRLT: Mixtape 4 was released this month, congrats. Did you guys do anything special to celebrate such a momentous occasion?

STV SLV: I emailed ABX some virtual champagne.

MRLT: What's the process you guys go through putting a track together?

STV SLV: Sometimes it's a great idea that works right away, moreso there's a lot of trial and error, but generally it's things like: isolating loops to make instrumentals, getting the vocal cadence to fall in the right place, tempo stretching, pitch bending... various permutations of those processes.

MRLT: Have there been instances where you guys try a combo and it just doesn't work?

STV SLV: Numerous. We post some of those (that fall on the tolerable side) at the end of every year. Some are too bad for that, even. I did this Doobie Brothers vocal over a Broken Social Scene track... major fail. That one probably won't get out.

MRLT: Some might say that you're trying to be ironic mixing all this Southern hip hop and indie together, but you're really big hip hop fans and Cash Money for life, right?

STV SLV: Yep. I didn't really get into hip hop until college, and I started out on that underground shit (Hieroglyphics, Rhymesayers) before I got hipped to CMR and Three 6, etc. There's so many good facets to almost all styles of rap and hip hop. Just as there are to almost all genres of music.

MRLT: Recently heard that you guys did some work with the GZA. How did that come about, and did you have WTF moment, like "he's from the slums of Shaolin and I'm from Minnesota?"

STV SLV: The GZA is a big Mando Diao fan and wanted to rap over one of their tracks, so he called on the Hood to remix their song "Dance With Somebody" so he could put some bars on it... then we flipped it and got the homie Cadence Weapon in on it too. Had a bit of a WTF moment since it's one of the biggest projects we've worked on to date, but the WTF was moreso from the amount of weed being smoked, less regarding geographic origins.

MRLT: Ever tried to get any of the artists that you use to perform together? Friendly Fires and Bon Iver could have worked at Lollapalooza... And if you could get any of the combos that you've guys have used to play live together which would you like to see?

STV SLV: There was actually a performance on the Brit Awards earlier this year where Estelle and the Ting Tings performed together in the precise style from a Hood track that had preceded the award show by 8 months.



MRLT: How'd the cover art come about and are your muscles really that big?

STV SLV: We hit up our girl Karen Tisel to make this cover epic. We were thinking: Mixtape Volume Four, we're gonna need four swords. And the only reason to have four swords is if you're slaying a fucking dragon among a bunch of other what have you. As you can see from the cover, all of the aforementioned was slain.

MRLT: Now that the mixtape is out what are you guys working on next? World domination?

In 2010 we'll be working on a Hood Internet album that's not going to be mashups. We're gonna have a bunch of original production on there with some guest spots from musicians that are our friends or acquaintances. From there, yes: world domination.

Download the Hood Internet's lastest mixtape, Volume 4, over here

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