BHF10: Black Milk, Back By Popular Demand

Whatever doesn’t kill you makes your music stronger. That’s one of the many life lessons Detroit native Black Milk learned over the last year. The producer/emcee best known for his soulful work with Slum Village is back with his third solo album this year -- one that not only pushed his limits musically, but personally as well. It is his thirst for creativity that not only garners respect amongst his peers but also made him a shoe in for this year’s bill at the 6th Annual Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival. We caught up with the 26-year-old as he was putting the final details together for his new album and discussed what he has in store for BHF10, the situations that made Album of the Year so personal and the largest accomplishment of his career. Hint: it has something to do with another Detroit native we are honored at the Bodega Education Initiative. BB: This has been a busy year for you, performing at SXSW earlier and now you are on the bill for the 2010 Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival. Are you excited about the festival? BM: Oh yeah! This will be my first time there. I wanted to do the previous one with my last album but it didn’t happen, so I am excited. BB: Okay, let’s start with a basic question: what does your name signify? BM: Nothing, really. There is no real deep meaning to it. I was coming out at a time when a lot of dudes were doing their thing in Detroit and I wanted a name that stood out from them, one that you would remember. So that’s how I came up with that, it was just different. I figured that name would make you look twice on a flyer or an album, whether you like it or not [laughs]. BB: How did you develop your sound? What type of music influenced you the most? BM: I guess just by being around older cats -- friends and cousins that were already into underground Hip-Hop. So they exposed me to A Tribe Called Quest, Outkast, De La Soul, Common and Mos Def –- all those type of artists. So I just took to that sound, gravitated towards it. It sparked me to start writing my own lyrics and producing my own music. Once I got the bug for producing, my love for that grew bigger than emceeing. Now, I’m at a point where I am trying to create new sounds and different styles of music and incorporate it with Hip-Hop. Not just the basic beats you would normally hear or rhymes you would normally hear or cadences. You’ll see that in my project that’s coming out in September. BB: I could see the beginnings of that in Tronic. You experimented a little bit on that album, right? BM: Yeah, Tronic was definitely the start. I really didn’t go too left with Tronic though. I honestly didn’t go too far left on the new album either, it's like Tronic on steroids. The new album is just a little more musical, almost all of the songs have some type of live instrumentation on it. So it takes the music to another place. BB: So this infamous new album you are referring to is called Album of the Year. Got a release date for it yet? BM: Yes, September 14th. Just got the official date in today. BB: I know you spoke about pushing the limits musically on this album, but what else can we expect? How else is Album of the Year different from your previous works? BM: It’s kind of a mix of both Popular Demand and Tronic. People look at Popular Demand as the more soulful side of my music and Tronic as more experimental and futuristic. So this album fuses both of those styles. And like I mentioned before, I got to incorporate more live music this time using my drummer Daru Jones from New York and soul singer, Keith Morgan Staff, from Cleveland. So they just took it to another place musically. It’s hard to really explain but this is more organic than the last two albums. BB: I originally was going to ask you what made you decide to transition from producer to emcee, but what most people don’t know is you actually did both from the start, right? BM: Yeah, I was emceeing first, so the rap thing is second nature to me. I got into production later on after I already started writing. The whole process of digging for records and drum machines and creating sounds, I just fell in love with that. On this project I got a whole new respect for writing again. BB: Why did you title this project Album of the Year? What’s the significance there? BM: I titled it that because it [Album of the Year] captured the whole moment in time from Tronic up to this point. That was a crazy year for me and it came out in the lyrics. So, that was the first time I got kind of personal on the writing tip. Usually people are used to me having feel-good music but this time around since I went though some crazy shit, I couldn’t help but express it through the music. And it made the writing aspect more interesting for me, it made me want to speak deeper in the lyrics because I actually had something to say. That was the first time I feel the level of the lyricism had to match the level of the production – I was focused on both equally. BB: Yes, 2009 was crazy. You lost a great friend, Baatin of Slum village, R.I.P., and you also had your manager fall ill. How were you able to bounce back from all that and work on music again? BM: Well, I had already started recording a little bit of the album before shit got crazy. So when things did start going down, I had no choice but to write about it. Now I understand when people say artists make the best music when they go through hard times. I understand the philosophy behind it now. Not to say it’s some emo shit the entire album, but I am speaking on Baatin passing, speaking on my car accident, speaking on the situation of my manager getting sick, all that happened within a few months so I had to deal with it on the album. BB: Not only was Baatin a friend but you credit him with launching your professional career. How did that go down? BM: Baatin was the dude that introduced me and my beats to Slum Village because he was already cool with my older cousins and friends. He was always around them and they told him what I was doing with beats when I first started. So he ended up breaking them to Slum. At the time I guess they heard a song they liked and Baatin called me and asked me to bring some more by the studio. They liked a couple tracks for the Trinity album ["What Is This", "Trinity (Interlude)" ] and I’ve been working with those dudes ever since. BB: So in working with them, you’ve had the opportunity to work with J. Dilla, right? How was that experience? We are actually honoring him this year in the Bodega Education Initiative. [Is there] anything you can say about his work ethic, or him as a person? BM: Yeah, we recorded a couple of tracks for B.R. Gunna’s album, Dirty District 2 (“Stupid”, “Do Ya Thang”), and then he got on another beat with me called “Reunion” for the Detroit Deli album. Working with him was one of the greatest achievements of my career. He was just such a laidback dude, very chill and humble. He liked to stay behind the scenes as everybody knows. He just gave off such a great vibe and energy anytime you are around him. Musically, I didn’t get a chance to sit in the studio and watch him craft beats or nothing like that, so that’s a part I did miss. But other than that, what sticks out to me about him was that he was such a good dude, besides being gifted musically. BB: You’ve worked with a lot people, including Duck Down’s Sean Price as well as Guilty Simpson on the Random Axe project. How was it working with them? When will that project be done? BM: [Laughs] Yes, we toured in Europe together in ’09 and that’s the first time I got to really be around Sean a lot and get to know his personality. He’s probably one of the funniest dudes I ever met in my life. He says what he wants to say, he does what he wants and of course he is a beast with the lyrics. I think me, him and Guilty working together is just a good vibe because we all on the same page, we all kind of have the same way of thinking when it comes to the music industry and how we approach music. So the Random Axe album is about 70 percent done. Sean is going to fly out here in July after I get back from the festival to put the finishing touches on it, so hopefully we’ll get that wrapped up then. BB: How do you pick and choose your projects and people you work with? BM: As an artist, I want to say I pick and choose based on what I would want to hear. Most of the times when I am working on music or concepts for an album its mostly what I would want to hear, so when it starts off like that you end up with an album that everyone else wanted to hear too, you probably touch on some shit that been on other people’s mind already. I just go off of whatever I am feeling at that time whether I want to do an instrumental album, a collabo album or a solo album. BB: So what can we expect from your performance at the Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival? What do you have in store for us? BM: Well basically I’m going to do some new stuff off the upcoming album and of course doing some older stuff from Popular Demand. I only have a 15 minute block so I can’t really do as much as I want to. But this show is pretty much going to be my first rehearsal for the new music and the first time I’m letting people hear what it sounds like. BB: What other projects do you have in the works? Right now I’m working on this project with a female singer named Melanie Rutherford. She’s a real dope soul singer so that’s the vibe I’m on right now. I wanna do some left, Gnarls Barkley type shit right now. I’m gonna have Album of the Year wrapped up and that will be out September 14th. Other than that my main focus is just making sure the Random Axe project is right. And then I guess look for something new to do musically. PURCHASE TICKETS TO THE 2010 BROOKLYN HIP-HOP FESTIVAL FOR MORE INFORMATION ON BHF10, VISIT BKHIPHOPFESTIVAL.COM