Mixing Hip Hop with Punk and Noise has proven to bear some considerable fruit – just look at Death Grips. In that sense HO99O9 will probably at least deserve your attention, but it would be rather important to add that they are not, by any stretch of imagination, just another weird band… Well, they’re weird as fuck but a different kind of weird. It was about that unique weirdness, and their latest EP entitled “Horrors of 1999”, that we talked with the duo theOGM and Eaddy.
Ok, first things first. What happened with the Vans Warped Tour?
theOGM: [laughs] Shit got… All in a nutshell, to be honest with you, they just were not ready for our style, you know what I mean? Our style of performance, our energy. I personally thought that it was bad, like the show wasn’t put together correctly. With Warped Tour there are so many genres of music, so many styles of music there, and the kick off show that we played they didn’t showcase all those styles. They put like one hardcore band with like nine other soft ass bands. It’s like, if you came to see Taylor Swift and then you got fuckin’ Marilyn Manson and you would be just scared, you know what I mean? People was like, “Oh shit! I wasn’t expecting this. This is scary.”
Kevin Lyman said that you had some scheduling conflicts…
theOGM: … which that is not true. [laughs] That’s totally untrue. He just made that shit up.
Eaddy: Everybody is supposed to be political these days.
How was it like to play the Vans Warped Tour kick off show? I saw some videos and people seemed to be a little confused about your performance and music in general.
theOGM: They were very confused. It was weird…
Eaddy: Because those are fans that usually don’t see the kind of style that we play. It’s like tunnel vision. They are used to see this one band or one thing that they normally like and we just brought something new to the table. We went out there and we did what we normally do every night.
Did you have any idea what you wanted to do, sonically and lyrically, with Ho99o9 when you created the band?
theOGM: No, actually we didn’t. I mean, we’ve always been influenced by rap. I was rapping before the band was happening and we were always into art, and my bandmate was really heavily into punk music and shit like that, so it wasn’t even something that we set out to do, like “Oh, we’re going to make it rap and punk.” It literally just happened. We just started making music but we wanted to make music that we love and bring energy that we love. When we go to rap shows there isn’t much energy. I mean, we enjoy rap sonically, but we love the energy of punk music live. Those are things that we wanted to incorporate because those are the things that we love, that we’re fans of. We are really fans of going to a show and seeing a really dope show. That’s pretty much it.
When you start creating, does it starts with hip hop or with punk?
Eaddy: It’s either. You know, half of the punk stuff you can rap on and half of the rap stuff you can do some punk on. It can really go either way. Even if we don’t feel like do rap or punk and we’re just doing some minimal voice sounds… It can go either, so there’s no main function or style of trying to do it. Hip hop doesn’t sound like it did back in 1988 and punk doesn’t sound like it did back in 1988 too. There are many different styles of expressing in both genres. Many people just have tunnel vision and has to be a certain way, but the truth is that you can do anyway you want to.
Would it be fair to say that frustration is one of the biggest starting points for Ho99o9’s
music?
theOGM: Yeah man, definitely. We’re putting together shows and we were doing things like in our hoods that people are just now recognizing. We lost money… It’s so many things that we’ve done or that we’ve tried to do that people didn’t give us passes on.
Eaddy: And you got to remember, we don’t come from a clean cut cloth kind of background, we’re both from urban communities. We didn’t grow up in the suburbs, our parents weren’t rich, and we didn’t eat from a silver spoon. Shit was hard. Especially when you are trying to work a hard ass nine to five job back home and other bullshit going around… We didn’t grow up nice, and cute, with flowers everywhere. We come from the hood.
How was it like to grow up in New Jersey?
theOGM: Jersey is awesome, to be honest. [pause] How can I explain it? There are so many parts of Jersey. Obviously when people watch TV they think of Jersey Shore, the beach, further like South, but where we come from is just people working, doing like the norm. Obviously there are scenes where people party, go out, and hang out – it’s no different from anywhere that you’ve gone.
Eaddy: New Jersey is just a regular place. It has nice parts, it has bad parts, it has good people, and it has scumbags and bad people. We just happen to be the armpit of New York… We’re like second place.
“When we go to rap shows there isn’t much energy. I mean, we enjoy rap sonically, but we love the energy of punk music live.”
How do you approach the recording process?
theOGM: We have like a small production team that we like to fuck with, just like in the house. Our friends and our drummer. We basically just… We come up with sounds, man. We work on music, we work on beats, and it’s just something that fits what we are doing, or our vibe at the moment, we catch vibes or we throw lyrics on it, some energy and make it happen.
Is it usually a fast process or do you like to take your time and experiment?
theOGM: It depends. It can be a song that you can finish in a second, and it might sound cool and is minimal, and we can throw some lyrics on it, but sometimes is like a track that we build on. Everything that you hear that’s like the punk songs, everything is played live, with live instruments – guitar, bass, and drums. Things like that take time to perfect it and make sure that sonically we’re achieving our goals. It can go either way.
You’ve recently released a brand new video that’s both for “Savage Heads” and “Gates
of Torment”. First, why the decision of including two songs in the same video?
theOGM: I don’t know, it was just an idea that popped into our heads, like to make it like a mini-movie series where we incorporate all the songs of the project like into a mini-movie, something that connects, that’s cohesive, and that’s just weird. There’s definitely an interesting contrast between the songs, even if they sonically are different they go together very well. What’s dope is that on the EP the way that we put out the videos and songs there are not ordered in the same way on the EP. Like when you listen to it on the EP they are in a different order. That way you can have a different story, a different vibe, and a different experience to it.
How many hours of footage have been incorporated in that video?
theOGM: I don’t even know, man. We’ve shot a bunch of stuff, dude. Literally we spent a couple of days just shooting some weird ass shit. [laughs]
Did you take total control of the creative side of the video like you did with “Bone Collector”?
theOGM: We’re like that with every video. Any video that you see out is because we’ve approved and it has to do with our creative ideas to begin with. So yes, with that video we basically came up with some… most of the inspiration for the project it was just the director put it in the right perspective.
I read that Ho99o9’s first show at AFROPUNK Fest was quite unofficial. What happened?
theOGM: Yeah, you’re right.
Eaddy: Well, we had a booth to sell our merchandising, not as Ho99o9 but as Jersey Clan. We just brought mics, PA system, and pretty much set it up in our tent, and we waited for somebody that was actually performing finish their sets, so in between sets we would play and stop when somebody started another set. It was just gorilla style, just starting to perform outside in front of everybody.
What was people’s reaction to that? That doesn’t normally happen.
theOGM: It was shocking a little bit, I guess. But that’s what supposed to be like AFROPUNK festival. I feel that you have to push the bar on shit because shit becomes so repetitive. People were just shocked. We just had like a circle of people just going with high energy.
I’m curious to know what’s your state of mind before a show. I mean, everyone talks about how unpredictable a Ho99o9’s show is.
Eaddy: We don’t even know. We just go out there and function of the crowd. I have no idea how is it going to happen when the music starts. It’s just action that takes place in the moment. We don’t really have a mindset on what we are going to try to achieve. We just go out there and perform, and whatever happens from there… happens.
But do you need a certain isolation from other people before a show?
theOGM: Yeah, before we go out on stage I don’t want nobody in my face, except from him. I don’t want nobody in the room around me. Mentally I just want to get in my zone. That’s it.