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R.E.U.B. - The Black Rapper Show
Interview by: Nikki Drag
 R.E.U.B. is on a mission. He talks to us after he has just put in a long day as a behavior manager at a school for troubled teens. He looks like an average guy in jeans and a T-shirt, unlike most artists; he is absent of obnoxious bling and the air of grandiosity. This Virginia native is not only a lyricist, but also a producer who along with his crew, The Clinic, is getting ready to release the independent album entitled, "The (Black) Rapper Show" in late July. "Everyone says they are going to change the game. I am not even talking about changing the game. We are gonna make music that people will love. We are not going to put out garbage records, our quality control is good," R.E.U.B.explains.
R.E.U.B., which stands for Real Entrepreneur in the Underground Business of hip-hop, has been in the game for a while. His debut album, "Pair-a-dice, " was distributed independently in Germany and he has recorded over 100 original songs. He confidently says he doesn't have to write anymore rhymes if he didn't want to because he has about 30 notebooks full of rhymes waiting to be dropped. R.E.U.B. has been recognized for several awards in producing and was selected by Rawkus Records as one of the 50 next important hip-hop artists for 2007.
 The music on "The (Black) Rapper Show cannot be described, only felt whereas hope with originality of raw talent is what the masses have been starving for. With a guest spot from Smashtime Radio's Clinton Sparks, and a comparable verbalization to Common, R.E.U.B.'s mission is clear.
Nobodysmiling.com : Chuck D. once described hip-hop as black America's CNN, an underground network for news about life in America, that is not being reported elsewhere. Do you think that is still true today?
R.E.U.B. : It is true. Is it prominent No. And was it prominent, actually no. Really if you look at there was only a couple times in hip-hop history when there were a lot of cats who actually talking about a lot of stuff. Think back to Common's record, "I Use to Love H.E.R,." that wasn't a hit record. That was an underground record then and he was talking about how sick of the situation he was all those years ago. There has never been a time when the prominence in hip-hop was the people who were really speaking on the culture. Even the cats who personified some of the negatives in hip-hop, they will even refer to hip-hop being this medium where they can express themselves, but in actuality the ones who are expressing the themselves are the ones who never get to do those interviews, except for like a KRS and people like that.
Nobodysmiling.com : Tell me about the song, "Hip-Hop"; it sounds like you're pissed off? Are you?
R.E.U.B. : I think going into that song I was thinking about a bunch of things. I remember we (The Clinic) were having a discussion about beats. I kept making a point that I didn?t want to rap on soft beats. I feel like a lot of a who talk about stuff, their beats are not soft as in they're whack, I mean soft as very smooth, J-Dilla-esque beats, but hot. Really smooth beats 9th Wonder style type stuff like that. People were hitting me up, e-mailing me telling me to do that.....That kind of affected me. There was a youngen in the neighborhood who was outside and I was playing the track over and over and he was over there saying you gotta go hard. I was like you wanna talk dumb stuff, I am gonna talk some real stuff on the track and make sure people can hear me. Then ideas started flowing out. I am talking about the fact that alot of artists do positive things, but they don't get any media for it. Lil Wayne and Cash Money they are very much in the mainstream, they did alot of positive things during the whole incident with Hurricane Katrina. You never hear any press on positive things, it may be the artists' fault, it may be the mass media's fault cause that's not the image their publicists' want. Whose ever fault it is, it doesn't get publicized. I watched this tragic story on the news about a Katrina victim and felt so sad about it and then right after I watched Master P on MTV's Cribs and he has golden shit all over his rooms and he is having his fun. I mean whatever, I just think it is bad programming. Don't put that on, because to me it makes us look like buffoons. That don't sit right with me. No matter what, the lyrics are drawn from something that just happened.
Nobodysmiling.com : Do you make beats for other artists besides yourself?
R.E.U.B. : Yes. I just like making good music. I love producing, I love writing, I love rapping, and I think I have been writing rhymes longer than making beats. If we make a whole bunch of music together and I can't listen to that in my car, if I don't want to put the CD on then why make it? I have done that, though. Good Example, in just networking with people, we got in contact with Smif-N-Wesson, I did a track for Tek and the song's called, "G-Walkin'", I was pretty happy about that situation. You know you get to work with somebody who you grew up loving their stuff, man, I would of done that track for free. Through other connections, I did some tracks that ended up on the score of one of Mehki Phifer's independent films.
Nobodysmiling.com : Tell me about the hook-up with Clinton Sparks.
R.E.U.B. : A partner of ours works at a label now and he always believed in my music. He was like R.E.U.B, I need you to go to Boston and meet up with Clinton Sparks. It was suppose to be an hour, two-hour meeting, tops. We just went there kind of blind. We showed up, he was cool. Instead of being nervous about it, we just started kickin' it with him, just joking, being stupid before we even started working on anything. He does a version of the Smashtime Radio show where is interviewing me on the album, just like he does on the radio.
Nobodysmiling.com : Can we hear Sparks at the start of the album in the interlude?
R.E.U.B. : No, because we didn't want it to come off like a mix-tape. Because on alot of mix tapes that's how the format is. We put a lot of work into a lot of work into this album; it's definitely an album and not a mix tape.
Nobodysmiling.com : What can we expect from "The (Black) Rapper Show"?
R.E.U.B. : First thing I would say is there is a lot of actions on the album. By that I mean I think people already know that I am going to talk about a lot of things. The beats, that's a big deal to me. We wanted the album to bang. I haven't listened to an album in a long time, honestly that was beat after beat that had a chill joint, that chilled the right way. Every joint on this album I feel confident, that if you only heard one song from the album, any song. I would feel that you got the idea about this album. There is no one song that I think is weak. The first single for national radio is "Lamborghini Doors". For underground and college, we are pushing, '"Hip-Hop".
Nobodysmiling.com : Where did the idea for "Lamborghini Doors" come from?
R.E.U.B. : I heard the beat. When I first heard it, I kinda felt like I knew it was going to be a single for the album. Because I thought it had a sound that would work for today. It doesn't sound like regular records right now, but it has some elements I thought would make it work for radio. Every time we do a track that has some major purpose to it, it takes me awhile........ Years ago when I started rapping I was rapping for the same reason as everybody else, it was cool , it was something to do. I'm so far past rapping because it is fun, it's more purpose than that. I told myself this is gonna be a hit, so the first thing to do is to be able to build a melody for a hook that sounded good. I needed to be able to reach all the youngens. I don't want to rap for people my age or older.
Nobodysmiling.com : Do you feel like that with all your music?
R.E.U.B. : No, not all of it. I just feel you're missing the purpose if you're rapping for the people who grew up on Premo or Pete Rock. Because they can still listen to Premo or Pete Rock records, the old ones and new ones and they still do. The young ones don't even know about any of that stuff and it's not their fault, it's just not popular anymore. We grew up on that stuff, that was popular. They don't know because it's not popular anymore. Whose the little kid that's wants to listen to what's unpopular? They want to listen to what's hot. I am not going to compromise my lyrics and I am not going to rap and say all this guns and crack and ice and all this stupid stuff just to be popular. But certain types of melodies are hot. I know they want to hear something that sounds like what they have been hearing but how many times can you flip a line about ice? That's been done eight million times. Somehow the idea about Lamborghini's and how the doors open up and I'm like damn, that's what I do with my music all the time. I tell people all about myself , all the time. I didn't even have a hook yet, but when I finally came up with the hook, I was running around stupid all through the house. I didn't even have it recorded it yet, I just knew I had a two-part hook, it's long. I really made that record to have fun with. I felt like mission accomplished.
Nobodysmiling.com : When all is said and done, do you want to be known as an ill lyricist of diverse producer?
R.E.U.B. : Both. I wanna be so good at both that you will need to do two interviews (laughs). I want in every single interview after each album questions about which one of us produced the hottest track. The three of us are not going to have a situation where we are talking that dumb shit with each other, we all know that we do tons of projects together, we might do some separate, but either way it's The Clinic. We are going to put a lasting impression in the music business.
Nobodysmiling.com : If you could choose to have dinner with someone living or dead who would it be and why?
R.E.U.B. : My answer off the top of head head without thinking too deep into it would be Bob Marley. I remember reading this quote, I think Peter Tosh said it, he said, "Bob Marley never made a bad song." They were talking about who was the best Reggae artist. Tosh was like everyone has made some shitty songs. He was like, "I was in recording sessions with this guy when he was just fucking around when he was sitting on the porch. Everything he writes, everything he comes up with sounds great." (Bob) comes up with most of the melodies and Tosh said he always winds up with something incredible. I would ask him about his mission. I love the fact that he was on a mission, it could of been about putting gun powder in more guns. I don't care, he really carried it out to the break. And the fact that he was great with music, I would just like to know what he thought about it. It would have to be real candid, I wanna know what it is like to rock in front of a stage of eight gillion people who know every word to my music.
For more info on R.E.U.B. and "The (Black) Rapper Show", check him out at: www.myspace.com/reubmuzik1
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