It’s not too surprising that JC Poppe followed up his 2009 debut Sleep Therapy with two simultaneously released records. The Milwaukee rapper, who blogs about local hip-hop OnMilwaukee.com and promotes and manages local acts on the side, has never been a man of few words, and he uses his new albums Shadowlands and Tea Party to vent with abandon, sharing stories, some of them almost uncomfortably personal, and naming names as he weighs in on the state of both American politics and modern rap with equal conviction. I checked in with Poppe in advance of his Jan. 24 record releases and his album listening party Thursday night at the Cactus Club.
Can you tell me a little bit about the recording process for these albums?
Recording these albums really was a very long and involved process. It was made to be so because of all the other stuff that was going on in my life at the time. Back in December of 2009 I signed a deal with HiPNOTT Records and that signaled to me that it was time to get back into the studio and I did, with Dave Derrilykt who runs Audiopilot Productions out of his house. I went there because my good friend SPEAK Easy was recording there and Raze, the engineer of Sleep Therapy, was slated to be super busy recording House of M solo projects, and to be honest I think that he and I were pretty sick of each other after everything for Sleep Therapy was all said and done.
After a couple of months and the eventual dissolving of my contract with HiPNOTT due to timetable issues and their inability to make more time to foster the growth within me that they wanted to see, my desire to record flew out the window for a little while. I know this bothered Dave because our sessions weren’t as smooth as he’d have liked them to be to begin with, but then I started going longer and longer between even talking to him about getting more recording time.
|
|
Shortly after this I began managing the House of M and while I dedicated a lot of my time to creating new interest in them outside of Milwaukee, I pushed myself to go back to the drawing board lyrically to see what else I had to say. Dave and I had recorded probably around eight tracks or so but there was a lot of stuff festering underneath my skin that I knew had to find its way out and so I started getting more beats from different producers to see what would flood to the surface.
After a couple more months of writing I knew that it was time to get back into the booth and when I did, I went back in with Raze. My dealings with the M had me knee deep in that world anyway, so it was natural to go back to the Danger Room. This obviously pissed Dave off a bit and that’s understandable. The move had nothing to do with Dave’s abilities because if you listen to the work that he has done and the work that will be released into the world very soon, he does great work. It was really a matter of proximity, at first, but after several sessions of chaotic and experimental vocal demolition, a very solid chemistry with Raze developed. So, that’s why I give him an equal amount of credit for Shadowlands and Tea Party because without the insane amounts of “try this,” “hit this word like this,” “stop fucking yelling,” “spit that line harder,” on-and-on, the albums wouldn’t be what they are. That’s not to say they are going to be received well, but I’m extremely happy with them because those tracks are 100% authentic to the way that I wrote them and I just needed some coaching to make them sound how I heard them in my head.
At what point did you realize you had enough material for two records?
I was sitting at home one day just taking stock of where I was, and when I looked at all of the songs that I had written I began to notice a pattern in my songwriting. The songs were either completely personal and introspective, or they were about a belief that I might have.
As I navigated though them and started trying to envision how the record would sound with those topics woven in and out of each other I started to see how completely disjointed everything would actually end up being. So, I more or less borrowed the rule that I once heard Edgar Allen Poe used for writing his short stories which was to try to maintain one central mood throughout an entire piece and separated the music accordingly. If I am wrong about Poe, I apologize. I never Googled it. But, whether I am right or wrong about that fact, that’s still how I decided on doing the two album platform versus one very long album.
How did your experience covering the hip-hop scene shape these records?
The Milwaukee hip-hop scene in my mind is undeniably the most overlooked hip-hop scene in the country, and it is the gross amount of talent that Milwaukee has within it or associated with it, that drove me to step my game up when it came to my writing. What I did on my first album was fine, but when you are friends with people like SPEAK Easy, Raze, and A.P.R.I.M.E., among others of course, you quickly start to become very self-aware of your place on the metaphorical depth charts of the scene.
That has served as a very strong motivation to improve so that I don’t essentially get completely left in the dust. It also opened up for me the ability to see exactly what kind of artist I am. I am not best served as an overly braggadocios rapper, I have no desire to rap about sexual encounters, and I am not smooth on the microphone. Seeing those who rap so well in all these other areas helped me to see my lane, so to speak. It allowed me to just go with exactly what I wanted to write about and not worry about making a certain song to fit in with this group or that group, though it would still be my voice and influences writing the track. Seeing exactly how the Milwaukee hip-hop scene truly is a hodge-podge of whatever helped me to feel a lot more freedom.
How do these records differ from Sleep Therapy?
The very first thing that sets them apart is the intensity with which I approach each track. You get a little of that on Sleep Therapy’s first two tracks but nowhere near what is found within the two new ones. Sleep Therapy was often very much rapping about rap or about how good I was at rapping, with a few other themes sprinkled in there, but Shadowlands is nothing like that.
It’s all personal stories ranging from how I came into the scene in 2004 thinking that getting my name out there would be easy, to talking about my battle with depression, to reflecting on how important my family is to me, to covering (partially) the catastrophe that nearly killed my wife in a “real time” approach.
Tea Party takes a little of the consciousness presented on Sleep Therapy and goes further with it. I am really taking a firm stand on a lot of things, letting my feelings be known. There is no way that people can misinterpret the meaning of my lyrics. Whether they like what I have to say or not, I’m sure there will be an equal amount of both, but I just had to commit to what I truly felt inside and it is not in agreement with the political party that goes by the same name. Republicans are going to hate what I have to say, and the funny thing is that I’m not a Democrat. I’m not a Republican either. Believe it or not, my politics are almost dead center, but it’s going to be hard to catch that from the aggressive songs that I ended up writing. My frustrations with how the last few years have shaken out had to go somewhere, and since I write lyrics, that’s where they went.
What are your plans for promoting the albums?
My plans for promoting the album are similar to what everybody should be doing that has a negative to none following, and that is a full multimedia launch of everything and anything to everybody and anybody. I hate to be vague but people watch what I do very closely and I don’t want to spill the beans before I take care of my business so they can find a way to get there first. I am all about sharing and helping, as many people know through my behind the scenes work with them, but I’d rather get there first… or have AUTOMatic or Raze get there first.
However, I do plan on being much more proactive with YouTube and other video sources. That’s no longer the “future” avenue of the game. It’s the “now, get your stuff up there A.S.A.P. before you are too late” avenue of the game.
