Stuff Interview with Double K

Interview by: Stuff

Date: 20th August 2004

Double K, half of Los Angeles hip-hop duo People Under the Stairs, lives for music and rhythm.

"For me, music is my life man," he says.

He never takes a day off and neither does his music partner Thes One.

"I'm just listening to it all the time. I can't do anything without music, man. I can say the same for Thes, too. I do everything in rhythm, man. I take out the trash in rhythm, wash the dishes, count in my head. Everything man."

Double K, who was born Mike Turner, finishes with a deep, throaty chuckle.

He and Thes, aka Chris Portugal, play Wellington next Thursday on their first visit to New Zealand. Over the past five years the duo have built up a following from playing and recording hip-hop albums, which could best be described as "old skool".

It's an important distinction for anyone who loves rap or hip-hop, but will probably be lost on anyone else whose main perception is Eminem or Scribe. But it can be put simply. Hip-hop is now so popular and has so many bands and artists that it's going the way of rock'n'roll and splitting into several distinct sub-genres.

People Under the Stairs are a bit like rock and rollers who believe they can create the best music by sticking to the basics: drums, guitar and bass - roughly the same instruments that helped start it all. In their eyes, it's the same for hip-hop.

In the early 80s - though there are earlier examples - DJs and musicians sampled music, especially drum tracks, on a variety of old vinyl records. The sounds would be mixed, looped, cut up, layered and mutilated to make new music. They didn't use keyboards, or edit with computers or plug-ins to process the sounds, and mainly recorded with analogue equipment.

People Under the Stairs create their music the same way. By hip-hop standards, Double K and Thes One have kept it simple since they met nine years ago.

"It was right after high school that we hooked up. Music wise we were on the same wavelength."

"But it's a funny story. When we first got together, we were giving each other dirty looks and being hip-hop guys, but it was the music that brought us together."

Double K says at that time the two were listening to the same artists, including The Beatnuts and Freestyle Fellowship, "all the good stuff that was coming out at the time from De La Soul and a Tribe Called Quest and all the West Coast stuff like Souls of Mischief".

Their four studio albums to date have all been based on listening and sampling a gigantic record collection, as well as fosicking around for old records in stores and from friends and colleagues. There's even a publicity shot of Thes One sitting in front of a wall of hundreds and hundreds of carefully arranged record albums.

Not once have they been tempted to use keyboards. "Not at all. We are still doing the same thing and using the same methods, man," Double K says.

"It's what created hip-hop - DJs going out into the parks or wherever they were at, and using all the great funky records and all they'd do is freestyle (rap) over them. That's how it started, you can't abandon that. Hip-hop was built with old records."

Double K says they will occasionally incorporate drum loops or other samples from records they have used before, especially the much-sampled back catalogue of James Brown. But generally, they are on a mission to find new sounds from old vinyl, and it's got easier over the years.

"In all areas. Whether it's our shows or making the music. I started out as a DJ spinning records, so those are my tools. When I was listening to hip-hop I knew that those sounds on those (hip-hop) records were coming from old records."

Interestingly enough, neither Double K or Thes One see themselves as MCs, DJs or even producers. They prefer another good old skool moniker: b-boy.

"That's a person who lives the hip-hop lifestyle in the way they talk, the way they walk and the way they wear their clothes, man. It used to be the breaker boys, but then that became a term that was used for everybody who was doing hip-hop and doing it real. You are a b-boy."

Not surprisingly, Double K doesn't think all hip-hop these days is real enough. It did take the duo some time to win over finicky hip-hop audiences.

"Out here in LA, the hip-hop crowd that we were performing to, they're kind of into that spacey, real lyrical, all sorts of big words and funny stuff. We were just coming in with the straight boom-bap."

"They were just scared of it. It took us a few shows here and there to warm them up and now they are everywhere, going crazy. I can't recall a show that we have done in the past year or two in LA that wasn't just off the hood."