IMMORTAL TECHNIQUE: UNDYING METHOD Pt. 2 of 3

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 […]

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