Technique chemically unstable, set to explodeForetold by the Dead Sea scrolls written in codesSo if your message ain’t sh*t, f*ck the records you sold’Cuz if you go platinum, it’s got nothing to do with luckIt just means that a million people are stupid as f*ck!Industrial Revolution -Immortal Technique
At this time Immortal
began to see the next stage in his development was moving from the battle to
the recording studio. "After I got out and I won all these battles, I dedicated
myself to not just being a battle MC because I got bracketed. Put it that little
hole where people are like ‘Oh he’s a battle rapper.’ People would say that.
‘Immortal Technique is an ill battle rapper.’ I found it in the streets. I found
it at shows. And even stupid little message boards people were writing ‘oh he’s
a good battle rapper.’ I’m like oh, now I really got to write some songs. I
said to myself I don’t want to be bracketed as a battle MC because I think I
got a lot more potential. So I took a lot of the songs that I had written in
jail and I hooked up with DJ Reach and this brother told me he’s like ‘My peeps
make beats. They could hook you up with some tracks.’ So I went over there and
I ain’t have no money. I was telling people I couldn’t do nothing and I basically
got them to give me some tracks and I put out "Volume 1" and I worked
with them and they did like most of the beats but they did all the recording.
It was like off like an 1880 and a Shure mic, but they mixed it down real well.
So after I put our "Vol. 1" people were like this guy is not just
on some hardcore stuff, he’s on some revolutionary stuff. I did that at the
end of ’99 the beginning of 2000, but we put it out in 2001 and really there’s
songs on "Vol. 1" from like 1997."
Immortal Technique’s
name already rang bells around the battle scene but after several performances
his reputation a showman also began to increase. "In terms of my seasoning,
I learned the stage presence from being in the battle," said Immortal.
"I can handle a heckler in the crowd. It ain’t nothing to me whether you
want to handle it physically or you want to handle it lyrically; that’s up to
you. But the point is that you learn a lot more than you think you do about
stage presence because in the battle, even with the judges because usually the
judges go along with the crowd. You don’t win by beating your opponent, you
win by winning the crowd.
"There were
a lot of times I had to perform for free and I ain’t mind all at that because
I was getting my name out there. But as I started getting my name out there
more and more that’s when I was like alright you know what. I don’t mind doing
a benefit show but just like "The Message and the Money." I better
not be the only person that’s not getting paid because that seems to be the
deal nowadays, people want to pay their mans and them; kinda’ like a political
kickback. Whether you like politics or not politics is a part of everything.
‘Oh, I’m not into politics.’ Well then you must not be into life you dumb-ass
n*gga ’cause that’s what life is. Life is politics.
"So in that
respect I grew very angry with the scene because as the battle scene deteriorated
and I had won so many battles I got this thing called the "Unsigned Hype."
After I got the "Unsigned Hype" in The Source some labels hollered
at me. But their whole image of success was me changing the persona of who I
was. They wanted me to make the type of records that I would just feel embarrassed
spitting. I’m like this isn’t me. This isn’t who I am. This has nothing to do
with hip-hop. This is party music and why are you dictating it? You don’t know
hip-hop. You’re just using it to market a product in the future to them.
"That’s the
problem in hip-hop. That’s the situation in hip-hop. That people are using hip-hop
today to market their product to a different audience that they normally wouldn’t
have access to and when I said that at Rock Steady, the sponsors cut my mic
off. And then Crazy Legs came back and was like; nah you got to let him rhyme,
you got to let him say whatever he wants to say."
"I think hip-hop
is standing on a cliff right now and there are certain people are trying to
pull it back and say: ‘No, no, no! You’re too close to creativity. We might
lose control of where it’s going to go.’ And there are people who have decided
to just fly around in the air and tell hip-hop ‘Nah, come on. Just walk with
us. You could walk in the sky. You can live without boundaries.’ There’s good
and bad things that come with that. There’s abstract hip-hop that I think is
not hot. People just rambling with big words on the microphone that really don’t
say anything.
"I take a
p### on a development deal from Sony, or Def Jam
cuz your like all of the rest man"
-Obnoxious – Immortal Technique
Immortal’s excursions
into the music industry led to him putting himself out on his own imprint Viper
Records. On the album, along with the music industry in general, Immortal calls
out independent label Landspeed by name. "My beef with Landspeed, it’s
not like I want to kill those cats. They’re just geeky white people. They’re
no threat to me." says Immortal . "I don’t have no serious issue with
Landspeed and I say that because I don’t want them to be the focus of the beef.
There’s a lot of labels that are just like that. There’s a lot of distributors
who are just like that."
Indeed on the album
he guns for the entire underground music business. "I said it on Vol. 2:
‘Underground labels, I don’t trust you. You’re only underground until you’re
major; so f*ck you.’ All these so-called undergrounds want to be major labels
and there’s nothing wrong with that in terms of wanting to be a bigger business
and make more money and to have more impact. But now they’re assuming the practices
of these larger labels that they claim to hate. They claim oh this is why we
started our label because we didn’t want these big labels to be in control,
but then you’re acting like them. You didn’t change nothing. You just replaced
the head. You didn’t change none of the practices. It’s like saying you had
a revolution because you picked a new president. In terms of my issue with them
[independent labels] I think a lot of them have that general practice of jerking
people out of money"
"This is the
business, and ya’ll ain’t getting nothing for free
and if you devils play broke, then I’m taking your company
you can call it reparations or restitution
lock and load n*gga, industrial revolution"
Industrial Revolution – Immortal Technique
End of Part 2 of 3
