Stir Crazy

By Star Watson, Staff Writer April 11, 2010

Rarely do artists release literal mix tapes when the Web has outlets at our fingertips such as Mediafire and YouTube. Although these alternatives have given virtually anyone the power to rule the music industry, there are still musicians who utilize old-school methods.

ACRN chatted with Detroit native Stir Crazy, half of the collaborative effort behind Penny Dreadfuls, about releasing the latest album on cassette tape, how much mayhem using tapes these days actually causes, and the process of working with the project's other half, Dood Computer, who lives in New York.

ACRN: Describe your style of hip-hop music, production-wise.

Stir Crazy: It’s basically underground hip-hop. I don't listen to the radio, and I really don't know who's hot right now, other than Timbaland. It’s kind of like old-school stuff, maybe like Jedi Mind Tricks or Atmosphere-type stuff. We are more grimy and real, but not rapping all about the streets. We try to keep it real, but we also want it to be fun, so we have fun music with a message.

ACRN: So is that your inspiration behind “Rachel Profiling”? Or was it about an old girlfriend, a girl you know, or was it a symbol for something else?

SC: It’s all of that. It’s about some of the girls that we have met in the past, and it’s a symbol for all people who act like Rachel. They go after the wrong things and for the wrong reasons. When you hear the song, automatically you think it’s about a girl, and in the video we base the song on girl stuff, but there’s always a hidden message behind every single song we do. Like now, people don’t even listen to the words, but they’ll listen to the beat quickly. So we come up with lyrics that make people listen to every part of the song.

ACRN: I noticed that you guys sound like Atmosphere, now that you mentioned it.

SC: The reason why I describe my music like that is because Atmosphere is combined of Ant and Slug, and some other producers, so their aim at it is similar to what Dood Computer and myself did, except we didn’t label ourselves with a name for our group. So we consider this more of a collaborative effort on a project than a group composed of a producer and a rapper.

It’s more personal when you work with someone the whole time, like Snoop and Dre back in the '90s, and today there are groups like the Foreign Exchange with Phonte and Nicolay. It’s a project, it’s not just the same old single-to-single combination. But see, the difference between me and Dood Computer and Snoop and Dr. Dre is that I stray away from the limelight and let Dood Computer do his thing. I just stick to being in the studio and making beats.

ACRN: Aside from bringing back the personal aspect back to the producer-rapper relationship, what was the purpose behind the Penny Dreadfuls project?

SC: Our purpose behind the Penny Dreadfuls album was bringing two regions together. See Dood is from New York and I’m from Detroit. And there’s been a lot of problems between New York hip-hop and Detroit hip-hop for a long time now over who’s better when in reality they are all the same. So that’s why we combine, to show love for both cities. All this drama and making music about themselves and hurting others is getting old to me. There’s nothing positive about that, and these kids are gonna grow up getting the wrong messages. I’ve worked with a bunch of weird people, too, like Insane Clown Posse, but I hope kids listen to the message within what they were saying.

ACRN: How long did the process take for the Penny Dreadfuls tape, since you stay in Detroit and Dood Computer stays in New York?

SC: It took a long while to finish this project. I had completed like five other albums before we were done with our album. We started in 2005, and we recorded 43 tracks. In the end we got 15 on the tape all together. We just recently put it on CD because the radio stations were having a huge complication playing the tape. And with our tapes came a digital download so people, especially radio stations, could play our stuff on the radio or on their mp3 players or whatever, but radio stations were having trouble getting the download. The fans loved the tape idea, but radio stations - not so much.

ACNR: So why did you guys decide to go with a tape?

SC: We’re both 23, so when we were young that’s what we had. CDs and stuff were out, but where we both were from, New York and Detroit, people were still using tapes. We were kind of going back to our roots. There’s also a few other reasons. We can sell tapes while a lot of people can’t even sell CDs, and it kind of shows if you got talent, and you love what you do and push it the right way, then people are gonna buy your music no matter what.

The tape was also a gimmick because it’s something you can hold on to and not just go download it electronically. It’s something people physically buy. Like downloads are around as long as the computers work, but tapes are forever. Overseas, it was very cheap to distribute our music because it cost next to nothing to ship them out, so we got a lot of money from that. And it helps them because most of them are underprivileged and still using tapes, so they have some good music to listen to. And jails too actually. They’re only allowed certain things, and cassette tapes are one of them. Don’t ask me, that’s just how the system is.

ACRN: It caught me off guard when you guys told me beforehand that you were making tapes, and it took me back to when I started recording music off the radio.

SC: And yeah, another thing with us going with tapes was that people had to listen to the whole thing because no one really likes to fast forward and rewind through the tape. People were kind of forced to sit down and really listen to the music. And in Detroit a lot of people are still rocking the tape decks because maybe they still have the players in their cars, so people still use them. In the suburbs, people had to find a tape player from their grandmother or something. But that’s why we gave them the digital download too. Although we had to go through a mess of different codes and stuff to create it. I’m pretty bad with all things computer, although I’m a producer.

ACRN: So how have you been promoting the album with it recently going to CD from tape? Are you guys on tour right now together?

SC: Actually we aren’t on tour together. Over the four years of making the album, we’ve been promoting it in other than just performing. Dood is doing his thing promoting the album on various tours, while people on the tape were at one point in time on the Warped Tour, and other tours like that. I have been promoting the album at various shows where I was a DJ.