Termanology is celebrating his 50th album, Time is Currency, in collaboration with DJ Nastee. The Boston-to-Brooklyn elite MC discusses experiences in the music industry and his top five rappers. DJ Thoro and Chuck “Jigsaw” Creekmur also talk to Term about the power of his brand, Good Dad Gang, which aims to empower and motivate fathers to be present in their children’s lives.
Term emphasized the importance of staying true to one’s style and not conforming to popular trends in music. He expressed concern about the future of Hip-Hop, noting that many young artists appear to be practicing in front of audiences before they are ready.
The spirited conversation below is a heavily edited Q&A, but watch the video for the entire talk.
DJ Thoro: Where do you enjoy your inspiration from to put out 50 albums? Because that’s a lot of songs, recordings, ideas, concepts.
Termanology: Right. And that’s just what made it, because it’s a lot of stuff that never sees the light of day. But I think that, to be honest, bro, I just love being in the studio. It’s my passion, you know what I’m saying? I love being in the lab, clearly. Yeah. And to be honest, man, a lot of the stuff that I do doesn’t show up on the scoreboard. Executive producing, co-pro producing, ghostwriting. I’m doing all kinds of stuff. I just love being in the studio, you know what I mean?
Chuck Jigsaw Creekmur: What keeps you lyrically motivated? What keeps you lyrically moving and shaking and sharp?
Termanology: I just love Hip-Hop. If it’s nothing out that’s moving me, I’ll go back and listen to classics. When I first got here, we were talking about Capital Punishment and Ready to Die. If I ever feel like, ‘Damn, I don’t know what to say right now,’ I’ll go listen to albums like that and be like, ‘I’m going to have to try my hardest.’ And it still might not even sound half as good as that. It’s like when I look at those type of legends and the artistry and that level of lyricism, I be trying my hardest to just be a 10 out of 10 with it every time.
Chuck Jigsaw Creekmur: I’ll never forget when you said “I’m a young Rakim with the bars.” That’s audacious.
Termanology: I was talking heavy when I first came out. I was talking, that was like 2006, too. Yo, when I first came out, bro, I was trying to make a name for myself from a relatively unknown city. Lawrence Mass, it’s next to Boston.
And I moved out to New York and I trying to get people in New York to respect my bar. So doing shock rap and just punchline rap was something that really helped me because people, when you dropping some names and you’re saying some crazy s###, people were like, “What the f### you say?”
DJ Thoro: It’s funny that people would do this at Boston because Boston is entrenched, enriched in Hip-Hop. Guru from Gang Starr, he was from Boston.
Termanology: Ed O.G.
DJ Thoro: I always said New York artists, it’s a crowd of rappers watching you…goons.
Termanology: Goons depending where you at, and they’re not going to fan out for you either.
DJ Thoro: Does Boston have a sound?
Termanology: I would say Boston Hip-Hop always had the New York sound. We are only four hours away and we do boom bap. So who was from Boston? Ed O.G.? Right? Guru, Big Suge. That’s Gang Starr, Almighty RSO, who was doing their beats Hangmen 3 (production Ray Benzino, Jeff Two Times, and Johnny Bananas). So it had a New York sound. It was just New York’s cousin. And now it doesn’t because now it has the sound of whatever is popping, the homogenized sound.
DJ Thoro: Now switching gears, I’m a father man, and it’s something I want to commend you. I want you to speak on it. Your brand, the Good Dad Gang.
Chuck Jigsaw Creekmur: I’m a father, as well.
Termanology: No doubt, man. We all are in here. Good Dad Gang is the coolest thing I’ve ever done. And I’ve been able to help fathers get back in their kids’ life, help fathers deal with a lot of stuff. Yeah, it’s real stuff. It’s real stuff. There’s a crazy misconception in this world that fathers don’t care. Fathers don’t want to be there, specifically Black and Latino.
DJ Thoro: Right? We go through a lot of s###, bro.
Chuck Jigsaw Creekmur: Say it again.
Termanology: We go through a lot of s###, man. If there’s 8 billion people in this world, right? I’m sure there’s a lot of bad dads, but there’s just as many good dads, especially in 2024, right? In my era, you didn’t see your dad. You know what I’m saying? Ever facts In this era, when I go pick up my kid from school, that s### is at least half dads. So it just, we’re in a different era where we know better and we doing better. But for some reason it’s so many people out here that still have that stigma.
There’s still on us. So I’ve been working so hard to turn that s### around. And if you go to Good Dad gang, if you go to my page on Instagram, you’ll see thousands of pictures of dads doing real s### with their kids. You know what I mean? So you can see what it is. And it’s like, yeah, a picture could lie. You could be a dead dad and take a pic and act like one. But you got to look in the mirror and your baby mom knows. Your kids know and people know.
DJ Thoro: So for anybody that don’t know, do you have music that talks about this subject? Do you have music that touches on exactly what we’re speaking on right now?
Termanology: Yeah, I do. Some of the songs. My catalog is so crazy that you might have to search for it. But some of the songs talk about the stuff I went through in court. Some of them talk about just that. I love my kids and I spent time with them. Some of the struggles I went through as a young dad, for example, I had to take a parenting class and my baby mom, we both didn’t know nothing about kids.
I’m the only one [forced to take classes]. She’s like, oh, he’s not fit. Well, you not fit either. OK, so he got to take a parenting class then to take her kid— but it’s our kid. It’s unfair. That’s a whole ‘nother story, it’s crazy. But the good part is, it’s like we’re doing great.
We did a collab with DJ Premier, “Good Dad.” We had all the fathers come out with their kids on Father’s Day, Times Square, big billboard, just doing positive stuff. We do backpack giveaways every year. In my hood, I give away a thousand backpacks and Lawrence, Massachusetts. That’s the poorest city in Massachusetts. It’s crazy. So we’re doing good stuff, man.
