Trademarc of East Coast Avengers: Hunting Bill O’Reilly

Trademarc is one of the authors of a ravenous diss track that has been circulating the web for the past few weeks. In the song by East Coast Avengers (Trademarc, Esoteric, DC the Midi Alien), the Massachusetts bred MC flings around scathing lyrics like, “I’ll stalk your house, knock you out, gag your mouth, drag you out…,” and, “F**k making fun of you in punchlines/I’d rather kill your family in front of you by lunchtime.” But the target is not some other rapper, it’s actually infamous conservative pundit Bill O’Reilly and the song, available on their album Poison Planet, is called “Kill Bill O’Reilly.” Needless to say, it has ruffled some feathers. AllHipHop.com: You got quite a song buzzing’ out there. What about Bill O’Reilly gets to you?Trademarc: He’s a bully and will air footage in order to make himself look better. He’s one of the most ignorant human beings and that song is a stand against that in general.AllHipHop.com: Are you comfortable with people having this song as their first introduction to you?Trademarc: Yeah absolutely. It lets people know we’re not afraid to stay away from things that a lot of people wanna say, but won’t say. AllHipHop.com: Concerning the different media outlets, how big has the controversy been? Trademarc: There were some serious threats. Michelle Malkin was one of the first people who came after us. She was totally stereotyping saying, “Don’t you have a plane to steal, don’t you have women to slap, and children to neglect?” But for the most part, people didn’t say anything about us aside from these political sites, who were getting down right racist and nasty. They figured that we were Black and we weren’t white. So they were attacking us on that level and it was kinda funny to see their reaction. They were calling us monkeys and calling us all these names without anything viable to go with it. AllHipHop.com: Have you got any invitations—either TV or radio—to explain the song?Trademarc: We were on a public radio station here. It went actually pretty well. The woman asked me to explain my point of view, but then again we got phone calls of people wanting our real names so they could come and fight us. I told them, “You know where I am right now. I’m on the radio station.” They were stereotypically trying to lump us into a group and they were wrong. They thought it was three mindless savages making a song, [but] we’re intellectual people that know the score, are well read, and can back the stuff up.AllHipHop.com: Are your political views liberal in general?Trademarc: I would say technically more liberal, but I would also say if I was gonna label myself, probably independent. Those labels separate people and that’s exactly what the government wants. They want people to separate themselves because they’re easy to control. The same thing with organized religion. As soon as people choose religion, they already separate themselves from each other. It’s like culture, color, religion, and now it’s Democrat and Republican. As soon as they separate you, they already won a small battle. AllHipHop.com: How did you come up with the concept for the video?Trademarc: Brainstorming. The guy that did the video had done some creative stuff before. I wanted to keep it kind of Sin City-ish. We didn’t want to get too flashy. We wanted to keep it gritty. We didn’t have a lot of creative control over that. We added a couple of things, but it was mostly the guy we worked with.AllHipHop.com: Did you feel comfortable with having the Bill O’Reilly stand-in in the video?Trademarc: It’s funny, he didn’t really look like him. No one said anything and he was cool guy too. It was fun to do. AllHipHop.com: If you were to run into the real Bill O’Reilly man-to-man, what would you say to him?Trademarc: Just stop. I know everybody has a right to free speech, but just stop. Stop with the lies. If you’re gonna be on TV, respect the integrity of what you should be doing which is journalism. AllHipHop.com: How are you gonna use the controversy from the single to fuel the album?Trademarc: We gonna plug it away with politic tracks. We got some stuff lined up we’re hoping will blow people’s socks off more. We can have some hardcore Hip-Hop bangers that let up on the politic stuff so that the underground heads can get into but we also have the politic side of us, which is a huge side of what we are. We’re representing the people who want change and I think that that it’s a wide demographic. That’s not just Hip-Hop kids, that’s not just 40 year olds that have 401Ks and worry about retirement.A lot of people hate Bill O’Reilly too. A lot of people call him out—Jay-Z, Luda… it’s good to see these major artists doing stuff. I think Young Jeezy’s new record has a lot of political stuff on it.  I haven’t had a chance to peep it yet, you know it’s really a good thing to see that, hopefully we’ll embrace that too and we’ll see a little less singing and dancing a little more political stuff.