Black Milk
by Daniel Robert Epstein for SuicideGirls (http://suicidegirls.com/)

Rapper Black Milk is only in his mid-20’s but he’s been producing hip-hop albums for groups like Slum Village since he was 17. So even though he may be best known for his beats, he formed the group B.R. Gunna in 2004 which has since broken up. Now Black Milk his second full length solo album Popular Demand.

Check out the official site for Black Milk

Daniel Robert Epstein: What are you up to today?

Black Milk: I’m in the studio right now as we speak just working on this remix CD.

DRE: Who are you remixing today?

BM: This group out of Cally called Now On.

DRE: What was the inspiration for Popular Demand?

BM: It was about showcasing good music. The vibe on there is soul. I got a few tracks on there that are rock influence, jazz influence. But it is just feel good music but with a hard edge to it and then a little bit of street edge too.

DRE: Did you produce Popular Demand?

BM: I produced the whole album.

DRE: Is it different when you produce your own music as opposed to someone else’s?

BM: It depends on the artist. Stuff I do for myself is a little different than the stuff I give Slum Village. It’s just different types of soul. Each artist has a different feel and different traits.

DRE: How is it working with Fat Beats?

BM: I used to work with Barak [Records], the label that Slum was on but I never was signed to them. Fat Beats is the first deal that I’ve had. It’s cool over there. They took what I was doing with music and made it even more better because I know they’ll push the music just as hard as if I was pushing it myself. They love the music and want people to hear it as much as I want people to.

DRE: The big thing right now seems to be mixtapes being released professionally. You’ve done that as well. What do you like about doing a mixtape with a label?

BM: The mixtape they put out for me was a lot of songs that show what I produced over the past few years. They just put all the music on one CD and some promo stuff. It wasn’t really a mixtape with new music. I really don’t do the mixtape thing. I prefer to put my effort into making an album instead of a mixtape.

DRE: Do you like your stuff to sound rawer or do you like that real produced feel?

BM: My style is a little grimy. I like to have a little dirt on the tracks that I produce. I don’t really like to have it too polished or too clean. I’m a fan of groups like Wu-Tang, DJ Premier, Gangstarr so I like the raw feel.

DRE: A lot of rappers touch on some pretty harsh things but you don’t really do as much of that. Is that something you purposely try to avoid or is that just not part of your life?

BM: No, it ain’t that I’m trying to avoid it. It’s just that I don’t live that crazy life. But I’m still cool with those boys in D12, that’s my family. I’ve worked with Denaun Porter a lot recently. Before Proof passed I was working with him too. I still work with those guys, but my own personal sound is different. That’s the thing about Detroit, different sounds for different artists.

DRE: I’m a big fan of Pharoahe Monch, how was it working with him on Let’s Go?

BM: Pharoahe Monch is real cool, man. Denaun Porter hooked it up for me and him to work together. So we went over to his studio and the vibe there was real cool, real chill with the same feeling of the music I was doing already. We put down two tracks for the album, one song called Let’s Go and another song called Bar Tap. So look out for that album; it should be dropping in April.

DRE: I read something about an unreleased B.R. Gunna album.

BM: Yeah, we started on an album before I stepped out of that situation but we didn’t get a chance to finish it so it got put on the shelf. Hopefully we can get back in the lab and finish what we started but for right now I’m doing my thing. Young R.J. is doing his thing but I’m still working with Fat Ray.

DRE: I think there’s a lot of good hip-hop out there now but a lot of it isn’t very popular, what’s the issue with that?

BM: I think that iTunes and the download sites are a factor. Now you can select certain songs without buying the whole album and I think that hurts sales. But it is good at the same time because a person can hear what they want to buy before they get it. At the same time, the songs that are out right now are targeted to teenagers but there isn’t really any grown up music. It’s taking a little bit of a turn for the better with Jay-Z’s Kingdom Come which is a little experimental sounding. Hopefully some people will take what he did and try to do the same thing and just create something new instead of making the same records and trying to get kids to dance all of the time. That’s cool, but it seems like it’s one-sided.

DRE: I know you’ve been producing since high school, have you always rapped as well?

BM: I’ve been rapping since I was about 15. I was MC-ing before I started doing beats, like two years before I started getting into production. So rhymes are second nature, they go hand in hand, man.

DRE: Were your parents into all the stuff that influenced you?

BM: My parents sung and I had a lot of aunties and uncles that were all talented at singing. A few older cousins introduced me to the hip-hop side of it. Music was around me. I grew up in the church at an early age, so I guess that’s where the soul came from. I just took it from there, man. I found my gift of music and then I wanted to pursue it as a career.

DRE: How did you first get your music to Slum Village?

BM: That came from when one of my cousin’s friends went out on the road as a roadie with Slum Village one summer and they had a couple of my CDs with them. They played some of my tracks for Slum and when they came home from the tour Slum wanted the beats they liked. I went to the studio, kicked it with them for a little bit and they picked a couple of tracks for their Trinity album. I ended up with two tracks on there and that was the first group on a real record label to buy beats from me. One of the songs was called What is This, the other song was the title track, Trinity. Ever since then I’ve been working with Slum.

DRE: What was the inspiration for that beat that turned Slum Village on?

BM: The beat they picked was from an overseas record I had by this guy named Matthew Harper. It had a lady singing crazy on there. I thought it was different, and I messed with it, trying to experiment with some new music at the time.

DRE: Are you a perfectionist when it comes to producing?

BM: I’m somewhat of a perfectionist but I still go basically from the feel. I work on the track until it feels good. I’m growing musically all of the time, from week to week or month to month but chopping up beats on the machine, that’s second nature to me now.

DRE: Are people often surprised that you’re such a young guy?

BM: Yeah [laughs]. It’s just a number thing but it does catch a few people off guard when they find out.

DRE: I read that you really feel that your rapping and producing are very separate.

BM: When people hear my solo stuff, I want them to sometimes forget that I’m a producer because I know my beats could overshadow my lyrics. I try to make sure that my lyrics are on point so the beats don’t overshadow me too much.

DRE: Are there a lot of people coming up in Detroit that are going to be big?

BM: We have a lot of talented artists. We have artists coming out with dope music over here in the past few years but it just hasn’t been part of the major wave reaching the masses. We’ve got artists like J Dilla that just passed away but he really put it down for the Detroit sound. But I feel that I could probably be the newest, freshest face with the fresh new sound of Detroit right now. I think that’s what I’m trying to hold that down, bring in the new sound and the new face, represent Detroit and bring the people something new.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

web address: http://suicidegirls.com/words/Black+Milk/