Ground Lift Magazine Interview with Thes One

Interview by: Jeff Min

Date: March 2007

Waiting patiently to see where the pendulum swings...

The undeniable progress of each PUTS album, in both production and lyricism, gives us enough reason to believe that perhaps there's more to their music then just a party and a good time, and with Thes' new solo album, 'Lifestyle Marketing', I knew that there was a story brewing beneath the surface of it all.

To understand the concept behind 'Lifestyle Marketing' a little better, one has to understand the circumstances under which it was made. To hear the label's side of the story, when 'OST' was first released by OM the critical and commercial response was less than stellar. This information was far from accurate, and OST's success wasn't fully realized until PUTS jumped to Tres Records, when their booking agent clued them into how many units they'd been moving. As much of a relief as that was to Thes, the damage was done as he became skeptical about ever making another Hip-Hop album. It was during this time that he discovered the music of composer and Minnesota native Herb Pilhofer and dove deep into a world of production, attempting to wash away the sour taste 'OST' had left in his mouth.

Herb Pilhofer, who has worked with an array of artists including Bob Dylan, once was forced to create commercial jingles to pay the bills. Needless to say, this didn't sit well with the classically trained musician whose talent far exceeded the world of advertising. The result was series of 'audio business cards' that carried a sinister aggression (featured on disc 2 of 'Lifestyle Marketing'.) The connection between Thes and Herb occurred over a 7 year period beginning and ending when Thes ran across LP copies of Herb's jingles, once in 1994 and then in 2001. Being the veteran digger that he is, Thes realized that an album with several volumes must contain some sort of musical depth, which prompted extensive listening/beat making sessions.

As one beat turned to two the momentum built, and the third signified a bona fide project, the result: 'Lifestyle Marketing'.

Thes One, Double K, and the aura of PUTS represent an aspect of Hip-Hop that is rapidly disintegrating under the weight of a restless society consumed by hype, and one hit wonders. But with ambassadors like these, we can rest assured that the purity of Hip-Hop will always be preserved. Just keep your hands off the sunglasses.

Ground Lift was lucky enough to catch Thes on a break from his tour with EPMD for an in-depth Q&A. Discussed are PUTS' relationship with OM, staying progressive, and why European fans need to check themselves...

I wanted to start from the beginning and ask, who were some of your biggest influences in your life that sparked this passion for music?

Man, it's kind of a loaded question because it's one of those things where as soon as early on in my life, or as far back as I can remember, music has been the only thing for me. I've had hobbies, but music has been my primary focus and I've always had some sort of drive towards it where I was just able to put my head down and get into it. I've had people around me who liked music, but they just didn't feel the same way.

Was there anybody in your family specifically that helped drive you?

Yeah, my dad. He was big into Latin music, he played the congas, and every Saturday morning he would play a local college radio show that would play Salsa and Tropical. So as I grew up as a teenager I would wake up a little bit annoyed to the music blasting in the morning. My Mom was into rock and what I think happened was my Dad got into Zapp & Roger from her; and between Roger, Zapp, and Latin music it combined into my love for Rap music because Latin music has the core, the right bass lines that move in a very Hip-Hop fashion. The format of a Latin song is very similar to a Hip-Hop song; it just doesn't have any drums. The programming of drums I got as a kid from Zapp & Roger. So when it came to Hip-Hop, it was something where I could say that was my music. My dad had Salsa, my mom had Rock, and I had Hip-Hop. I was like, this is mine.

So all these influences just melded perfectly.

Yeah, and even more specifically, I've been trying to figure out why I like LL so much. I think it was because when I was a kid Run DMC, Flash, and all those people were from a different generation, they all seemed old and like superheroes then, but when you watch Krush Groove and see a guy like LL, LL was just a kid. Even though he wasn't my age, he was a bad teenager dissing Kool Moe. So for me, and a lot of people from my generation, we identify with the second string of artists that came from Def Jam. It also became a second wave of influences after the ones you got from your parents.

Yeah, it seems like it spoke directly to the culture that you were influenced by and existed in.

Yes, and then after that I got into sample based music. I still remember the moment when I put two and two together: that the music was coming from an old record. I was listening to Big Daddy Kane and it was the Staples Singers "I'll Take You There," and my dad had the 45 and I would always play it. I remember going downstairs and playing it and saying, 'no fucking way.' So from that moment forward, everything changed. It became all about records and I was like, 'What's a sampler?' 'How did they do this?'

So with family being such a strong influence on you, was an album like Stepfather a homage to them and your past experiences?

Well, Mike and I are some sensitive dudes you know and with PUTS, as a group, we never had a persona. It's been kind of bad in a sense, but great at the same time. What I'm trying to say is we never adopted a persona when it came to making music. We're always making music as the people that we are. We rapped about the things happening to us and sometimes it got a little too close to home, we would write about a break-up with a girlfriend and that would end up in a song, but with Stepfather we felt an enormous amount of guilt about the lifestyle that we live.

Why?

I mean it's just weird to be this person. I definitely felt some guilt

Do you mean living the experience of a dream?

It's just really humbling to think that without the fans and people that supported us there is nothing separating us from anyone else. There's a contingency of people that go out of their way to support what we do artistically, so now we have this obligation to these people not to disappoint them. It's funny because being what it is now, where we're making this music that's so personal, when we travel I meet fans and some of them deal with us well and some don't. Those are the times I wish we had a persona because some fans make it so personal they feel like they know us and they think we should be these people that come and hang out all the time. It makes it difficult to keep an arms distance from them at that point. We have to remind them that we're not going to their dorm room and we're not going to party all night and freestyle on their couch.

Sure, some fans can be a little too selfish about the necessary distance between the artist and the fan.

Yeah, on our last tour in Europe it got to the point where I felt like we were being seriously disrespected by people who were wearing the badge of PUTS fan a little too heavy for my comfort. They would steal shit from us onstage like they didn't have any rules. For instance, we were in Japan and this guy that was a sunglass designer made Double K and I two pairs of the most fly white sunglasses, and all he wanted us to do is wear them when we party. These sunglasses meant a lot to me and I would wear them every night on stage during [the tour] Hang Loose. Through the course of the tour in Europe, the glasses got stolen three times. We got them back twice.

The second time they got stolen we were in Leeds and I remember I took them off onstage, turned around, and they were gone. At that point I stopped the party and said, 'Whoever took my fucking sunglasses, you need to come back,' so I go through the crowd and start hitting people up and I'm like, 'Yo man, someone needs to give me back my glasses.' Finally, it's this kid who's like, 'Yo man, it's my birthday. I support everything that you do,' and I tell him to give me my fucking sunglasses, so he says back, 'I knew you were the dick of the group,' and that's where it always ends up. People cross the line and when you try and regulate they think you're not the person that comes across in the music and they start questioning all the personal shit.

It's like they look at you as some fantasy character rather than a real human being that has boundaries.

Absolutely, and the irony behind all that is the real human being is what creates the music. They want us to become a character and that's precisely what we haven't been and that's what made our music popular. It's weird because the younger generation of music lovers, they don't have a respect for music because of MP3's and downloads. I don't think they understand as much as those who had to go out and buy records and CD's.

That leads me to my next topic. With each album from PUTS the fans have seen growth, especially in the production aspect. Has your philosophy on beat making changed over the years?

I know exactly what it is; I felt it when we were making Stepfather. We would be in the studio making a track and Double K and I would love it, but then we would look at each other and think that the fans are going to hate this. At that point we were thinking, 'damn should we even put this out?' What was happening with Stepfather was we were finding our own direction, our own sound. We weren't ashamed to admit influence by Pete Rock and Premier, and our first two albums were representative of those influences. We became good at expressing ourselves through those constructs, but they weren't really our ideas. OST was the best album that I could make within those lines, particularly with the New York style of beat making. So when we made Stepfather we moved homes, moved our studio, and I wasn't listening to Hip-Hop and everything just stopped. All of a sudden we knew what direction we were going in, and it was our direction. Stepfather was our step outward and we had some people say that this wasn't us, and I was thinking that this was more me than any Jazz loops I've ever used. They're just not used to hearing it because I was never really confident to put forth such an effort.

Well it reaffirms the personal aspect of your music. You also keep alive the responsibility to preserve a particular part of Hip-Hop while still remaining progressive.

Yeah, instead of rehashing the same shit.

And it's unfortunate how digital worlds like MySpace can create a fan base without going through that self-discovery process or acknowledgement of predecessors.

Definitely. My experience with Hip-Hop, when I really felt like I was part of a movement, was really based off of going to shows and being around a community of people, and I don't care what people say, MySpace is not a substitution for that. It's not the same thing as meeting people hand to hand and sometimes people would get into fights, but it was still a community for better or for worse. It kept us on our toes and eager.

So tell me about the new solo album Lifestyle Marketing and where the idea of working with Herb Pilhofer came from.

I had the original records that were basically audio business cards. Herb was recording music and he told me that you can't keep a studio open by just doing the music you love; you had to do commercial work to stay afloat and just try not to compromise yourself. So these people loved music so much that when they started doing commercials, they took it in a direction that was just very bizarre.

So Herb made these audio business cards that were these montages of commercials and I was in Minnesota around 1994 visiting family when I found one of these records. I thought it was dope, but it never really did anything for me and it just stayed in the crates up until 2001 when I found volume 2. It was then I thought, 'oh shit, there's something to this' and it forced me to sit down and give it a listen. At the time I had just gotten done making OST and we were dealing with all the fallout, drama, and press from the album. So, the first beat I made I just wanted to make something that couldn't be rapped over. I just wanted to get away from all of it because there was a lot of drama from OST at that time. So making that beat was like a refuge for me, an escape really. I knew I only had to use the music from the commercials.

So the idea of not having a rapper on the album was a direct result of the drama from OST?

Yeah, it was a xweird time because a lot of people were keeping us in the dark about how the record was doing and as far as I knew the record was bombing. I had no idea that the people really liked it. See I wish somebody would have told me that because at that point I couldn't deal with rap anymore. I didn't think I could make another Hip-Hop album after that.

So if you knew how successful OST was Lifestyle Marketing may not have happened.

No, it wouldn't have happened because if I had the sales figures and I knew what was happening I would have been excited about the record and been ready to move forward. It was a real questionable time because the record label had us in limbo in more ways than one; they didn't let us know how well the album did. It wasn't until Stepfather that our booking agent said, 'Do you know how many units OST sold?' and I told him I had no idea. Once he told me, that prompted me to get off of OM because we realized, 'holy shit, where's the money?' For 3 or 4 years we were in the dark and that's why there was no PUTS album being made. We didn't think it was worth it.

Were you able to reclaim any of that money?

We were, but it was difficult because not only did we need to get the money back but we needed to get off of the label. We still had another record to do with them, which would have been Stepfather, but we weren't motivated. So we just kept touring and time kept slipping by. So finding out what the record sold, getting of the label, and doing Stepfather, all happened like a chain reaction. In the meantime though, I was working on Lifestyle Marketing because I was done with Hip-Hop.

Did you work directly with Herb on the project?

I worked in complete isolation and the record developed a vibe from that because the music was speaking directly to me. It had a very dark undertone. I can't pinpoint it, but when I listen to the music it's not happy to me, it's like a fake smile. I don't believe that they were happy to make the music in order to sell products and it sounds very sinister. I thought about it and maybe they just weren't happy having to make commercials. This guy Herb Pilhofer is a classically trained musician and he didn't want to be wasting his time making jingles. It's funny because he was telling me he threw all the music away, he didn't have any of it. He wanted it out of his life because of what it represented and this is so interesting to me, how all this music spoke to me at that time. So I worked in isolation on the project and I didn't tell anyone I was doing it. I would just make a beat here and there and after the third beat I realized I was doing a project. So after a while it became a project in my head and that gave me motivation to work within the confines of commercials.

So time went by and when Tres started they wanted to hear some stuff that hasn't come out and I emailed them the beats and they asked if anyone was going to rap over them. I told them no and I explained to them what it was and they thought it had the potential to be a great release, but I wasn't sure. I didn't want to release it because it was from a special place. It was just really personal because it was a refuge and I was just putting a lot of emotion into the tracks. It meant a lot to me. It was all so calculated, every decision I made on that album came from a very personal motivation. It's about someone reviewing it, I know how the game works, and the last thing I want to do is go through that same experience again with this record.

Has Herb heard any of the album?

Halfway through the project back in 2004 I contacted him and told him I was thinking about doing this project, and he told me that some guy from Britain wanted to do something with it also. I told him I'm not sure what's going to happen, but I just wanted to make sure it was okay. So we worked up a contract and it was all cool, but unfortunately I moved and I lost all my contact info. Honestly though, a part of me is a little bit scared of what he would say.

I understand, it's because it works both ways. It came from such a personal part of you, and him as well because he was forced into it financially.

Exactly. I don't want to disrespect him and say, 'hey look what I made with your music.' Even when we were working on licensing there were songs where he said to not put this out under any circumstance, and I just had to back off because I didn't want to pry. See, I understand now how music can be that personal.

I like how all that comes together and you can turn a bad situation and flip it into some great music. Especially in this case where this album bends the traditional expectations of what a Hip-Hop producer can create.

Yeah, I think the suspended time it was made in has been an advantage. I've changed since I started the project and I've changed as a producer, but haven't changed as much as Hip-Hop has. The whole fallout from Dilla's unfortunate passing, the whole fallout from everybody buying Donuts and the direction of Hip-Hop is just changing. I think that it highlights just how different Lifestyle Marketing really is. If it came out when I was working on it, it wouldn't have been as different as it is now.

I think it's also important to mention that Lifestyle Marketing is a sarcastic album both in its title and what it represents. The hype machine and the whole marketing system that people are using on the Internet, MySpace, even the Gnarls Barkley album is very incestuous. As I had mentioned earlier, the state of mind I was in when making this album, just imagine the anger. It was great for me to make these commercials into something, and I wanted to keep the tagline. I still wanted it to be a commercial, but it's so funny to me that I spent all this time making commercials for a product that doesn't exist. So in a sense it's my way of flicking off Vice magazine and the whole marketing of hipster culture. The ultimate irony would be if Target actually wanted to use this. I hear the hipster music they're trying to put in their commercials and it's too funny to me that it's right under their noses. It's definitely my way of saying 'fuck you' to the cool kid syndrome.

Absolutely, it's one of those situations where people are waiting to be fed what's "cool" and what's not.

Yeah, everything that's happening in the magazines, and even in Hip-Hop culture with the same producer's names being heard over and over again. I'm not dissing any one, but you hear the same names because of the hype machine; just because someone heard about them on some Internet thread as a hot producer. I don't feel like Double K and I have ever had the hype machine because I know how to do it and what it costs. We don't ever hire the $7,000 publicist who wines and dines all the magazines and gets features. It's just a disgusting to me that a lot of the music gets bought and sold and deemed good when it's just a result of hype.

It's ridiculous on a grand scale, but at the same time we live in a capitalistic society so it comes with the territory. To see it happen in music though and underground Hip-Hop, something that's supposed to be a sub-culture that goes against the grain of American capitalism, that's even more hilarious to me. These magazines will give a great review because they're [indie record labels] paying for the ad space and that space is going towards their corporate ad space. I can understand a big shoe company, but I have a hard time with the indie record labels doing it.

Corporation's way of killing independent thought.

Yeah, things seem to be getting more homogenous with the way they are boiling things down. It's like the whole Donuts phenomenon; a lot of people have accepted that as the new sound of Hip-Hop. I hear so many producers now biting Dilla's work and they don't understand how he got to that point as a producer. They're biting it and exploiting it and they're acting as the machine. The most unfortunate side effect of the hype machine, the hipsters, and all that, is the regional music and the regional styles are dying. It's all boiling down to one sound that's accepted as hot or not.

So having the experience of using Herb's music, do you have any other dream collaborations?

Well, after having George Clinton on our record that's kind of it. I think it would be difficult to top that. Mike and I have never been collaborators because everything we work on is so personal and if we don't know you it's kind of difficult to work with you. I have people around me making music, but it just doesn't work like that when I'm expressing myself. There are some people that I would like to work with like Hieroglyphics and I'm sure it would be as easy as a phone call, but it just doesn't feel right. I mean the whole George Clinton thing happened literally when George and Double K were hanging out getting high and the mic just happened to be turned on. That's how it should be, it's the old school spirit rather than my manager emailing you or I saw you on MySpace.

Is a new album for PUTS in the works?

Definitely. I think Stepfather was very important because it was a break from the old label and all the experience we gained has given us motivation to move forward, but at the same time the experience we had with the fans in Europe kind of made me not to want to make another album, I don't want to have an obligation to them. There definitely is another PUTS album in the works and it'll be interesting to see how this weighs down on us.

So knowing what you know now if you had to speak to Thes One 10 years prior, what would you tell him?

It's difficult, I don't know. For fear of changing the future I don't think I would tell myself anything because I would be afraid that I would change where I'm at now. It's a bit of a time space continuum thing, but if I said something and changed where I'm at today it would be upsetting to me because I don't have any regrets. I'm okay with the way everything turned out. I'm still upset and still angry about certain things, but I recognize it as all part of a process. What's difficult is not to let any of the stuff that's been said about us in the press effect us. The toughest thing though, is to get into the studio and still make the music with the same excitement of a 17 yr old like we did with The Next Step.

To frame that question, where do you see yourself 10 years from now with Hip-Hop and consumer society?

Well, whatever the hype machine decides to focus on and whatever style it decides to pick up on will be where Hip-Hop will go and it'll have nothing to do with what people are making on the streets. So as far as that goes, if the pendulum swings in our direction on whatever sound we're making that'll mean great financial success for us, but more than likely that won't happen and we'll keep our small contingency of fans. As far as the direction of our music, it's going to get more and more interesting. The more we pull away from where things are at the more interesting it's going to get; it just may be a little uncomfortable.

Last question. You always rap about food and good eats, where does Chicago stack up on your menu?

I'm going to tell you straight up I haven't spent a whole lot of time in Chicago, but I know you guys are definitely holding it down. When I come to Chicago the first place I have to go is that place across from that janky ass McDonalds. They have these fries, not waffle, but crumble cut fries and a chicken croissant sandwich. After that I'm ready to get on with my day.

You should try some of the Mom & Pop Mexican restaurants around Pilsen.

Dude, I thought I knew Mexican food. In fact, no, I know Mexican food and one of my top five Mexican restaurants is in Detroit and how that happened, I have no idea.

The whole Midwest has it down, but the south has awful Mexican food. You could kill yourself, it's disgusting...