Who'da thought little Jodi Root from Argyle Wisconsin would be chatting up legendary LA indie hip hop artist MURS on the same day his album drops. (Not me, probably not my old english professor Mr. duVair, either). But I did. And while I was a bit intimidated (or suffering massive caffeine overload), I managed to pull off my second phone interview for Chicago Innerview earlier this week. Gots to love my McGyver handheld video cam/speaker phone combo, here's the entire conversation transcription - the official Innerview version is much more condensed to 600 wordcount and cleaned up quite a bit, but in case any ya'll wanna read my nerdy questions and his abrupt "I'm tired of doing phone interviews whos is this nervous little girl I'm talking to" answers, you can check it below. MURS was totally polite, well spoken and you can tell there's a reason peeps is voting him president.
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When asked if he was nervous or excited for the official drop of his new album, Los Angeles indie hip hop leader MURS just laughed. Sounding incredibly cool and collected, he explained “Nah, I’m pretty calm.” I suppose when your philosophy is to Making the Universe Recognize and Submit, you’ve got much more on your plate than silly nerves. (Murs headlines Lincoln Hall on May 12th)
Congratulations on the album release! Fornever officially hits record store shelves today, (April 13), are you pretty excited? Do you get pre-release jitters or anything like that? Have you been busy making all sorts of other press calls today?
Nah, nah, no pre-release jitters, I’m pretty calm. Yes that’s what today’s been all about, (press calls).
Would you mind describing the recording process of the new record? Since you’re based out of LA and 9th Wonder North Carolina, do you two actually meet and record together or do you send a lot of your work through the internet for production?
Yeah we always only do it face to face, a lot of quality time together, no phony audio, we only do real talk, reality TV. (recording process) We’ve done the past two records in North Carolina with this record we did it in Los Angeles for the first time. it went really well, I thought, I felt really comfortable for once, usually I have to bring a lot of my LA energy to the east coast with me but this time it was a lot more organic, it’s like being at home, you can kick your feet off, walk around with your shirt off that type a thing.
You do a cover/tribute of Common’s “Used to Love H.E.R” and re-release of 9th Wonder’s original remix on the new album. Are there any other artists you’d like to cover or re-work in the future? Or would you ever re-work some other past works of your own with other partners?
Oh yeah, I got lots of covers coming up, I hope everyone’s receptive to it and enjoys it but I think that’s something that hasn’t been done enough in hip hop so I’m happy to do it. Instead of just incorporating lines from other records, you know, I’d rather just do it just adjust it by covering it. You can definitely look for it, hopefully one cover an album from now. Marky Mark, Queen Latifah, the Bangles, Rancid – I’m all over the place.
Are there any artists you’d like to hear cover some of your material?
I would love it, it’d be weird, I don’t know if any of my – I’d love; I never even thought of this, spur of the moment, impossible one – Frank Sinatra. I would love for Kid Rock to cover Road is my Religion.
What’s your favorite track on the new record?
Vicky Veil – wife was there when recording song, (asks wife) did you like it then? (pauses) No, (asks wife)do you like it now? (pauses, laughs) No; it was my favorite beat when he first played it. We did it and we needed someone to sing and the guy who engineered the record, I never knew he could sing sing, you know he sang like I used to love her and then he came out of nowhere and was like ok I’ll go do it and he sounded amazing to me, it filled up the, like, it was crazy because I didn’t think the song was, I thought the beat was good but I didn’t think it could be what he took it to so I think that’s why I love it, not so much the subject matter, umm,
So much has changed in the scene from the early/mid nineties to now from when you started in the rap game, how would you say the difference in the genre has influenced your personal style?
I don’t know that it’s influenced me at all, I think the genre has definitely changed and I fortunately and unfortunately at this point in my career am the same, you know, I do what I do, I can’t start doing auto tune, I’ve tried. My jeans have gotten a little bit slimmer, you know, but I think that’s a good thing because of all the bullshit I used to be able to fit in my pockets. I also think the independent scene has changed my lifestyle, being underground and independent like this genre or a stable genre with the help of Atmosphere, Tech 9, Brother Ali we’ve created our own little world with a lot of diversity but there’s a common work ethic and that didn’t exist in hip hop ten years ago and we solidified it and we made respectable - I mean, Ice Cube has to know who I am, Rick Ross has to know who I am, or they’re uninformed, it’s not like, oh who cares, like, they all know who tech 9 is and some of them are actually using our business model and read our interviews so I think that’s changed.
I’m proud to be indie, I’m proud to be underground and I’m proud to be Murs and I think it makes Murs fans a lot more proud they don’t have to feel like, oh I listen to obscure – you know, when I listened to underground rap background, it was all obscure and no one heard of it. but now these kids are able to say, oh I see atmosphere on TV along with Nikki Manaj and Lil Wayne, or there’s Murs on MTV along with Drake and all these other people so I think it’s a lot more, it helps me encourage me to stay myself – back to the original question.
As the leader of LA’s underground hip hop scene, are there any other cities you’ve felt a connection with?
I love going everywhere but I think I’m more surprised with like, Omaha Nebraska. People show up in small town that you don’t think you’d have anybody in, but they turn out to be the best shows.
I’ve read in interviews that you are huge with having creative control in your work. Yet, your last few projects were collaborative efforts with Slug/Felt and now 9th Wonder. Your newest release, Fornever, hosts a wide array of featured artists including Kurrupt, Verbs and 9thmatic. How does the addition of artistic counterparts, specifically the reoccurring projects with slug and 9th wonder, contribute to the creative process?
I def love creative control, that’s why my fans are like Murs for President. so whether, but I give so much creative control to slug and the producer, like this time Aesop Rock and 9th Wonder, and every few years I have to do something like the my regular end to the beginning like Murs Rules the World or Murs for President was just beats I pick and I do whatever the hell I want b/c doing these collaborative projects, I don’t really get to steer the ship and that’s because I want to do a project, I don’t want to argue a bunch of times, I just want to sit back and learn – I think I have a lot to learn from slug, I learned a lot from Aesop rock, so I feel like a better rapper. Slug has consistently helped me refine my skills, refine my work ethic, refine my opinions on life and he’s helped me so much. The same thing with 9th wonder, I learned so much by allowing myself to be shaped or controlled or manipulated or however you wanna put it, by letting myself be experienced in having a captain on the ship – if you don’t have a driver, we both can’t take the ship where we want to, but if I go on your journey I can learn from you and that’s how a lot of my business relationships are. I try to learn as much as I could and be a team player and if you’ve never been a team player, you can’t be on a team and I think rap is full of so many leaders who have never been willing to be a part of a team.
What are some artists that you think our readers should check out?
There’s this kid from the west coast, Don Kennedy and Nocando, all the featured artists on my records like verbs – (what have I heard recently that’s really good?) anything by Doomtree I think is really really good and that’s just rap. As far as punk rock goes, I think you should check out whole wheat bread, they’re really awesome.
I’ve read that MURS has a variety of meanings in its acronym, which one has the most meaning for you?
(Pause) I don’t know, I guess the first one making universe recognize and submit, it tickles me so that’s probably my favorite one. I have a shirt with 35 or 36 of them on it.
I gotta say, I’m also a huge fan of your work in Felt - Just out of curiosity, where does the Inspiration for the Felt heroines stem? Lisa Bonet vs. Christina Ricci vs. Rosie Perez? Who’s next?
I think that’s the end of the trilogy, I don’t know if there’s going to be any more felt. Christina Ricci started off with, that’s how me and slug got to be as close of friends as we are now. I hope he considers me a friend, just kidding, but our journey to be coming good friends, families, almost, brothers, we both have made songs about Christina Ricci and we had this fascination with her so we finally decided we’re going to do a project together he wanted to name it felt and I said cool as long as we can call it a tribute to Christina Ricci and its kinda like you know, the first step to putting out two worlds together so then we were like we gotta do a tribute for this one and we didn’t know who we were gonna choose. And then I was really into Lenny Kravitz at the time and we were all talking to ant and we were like how amazing of a woman she got to be for him to write that song for her, you know (It’s not over until it’s over – wigging out, lord have mercy, couldn’t remember) But anyway we thought she was amazing so we were like, yeah she’s perfect and then the other one we came up with so long ago I don’t know how we came up with it but it just made sense. It’s all like b-list actresses that people haven’t heard from in a while, you know what I mean? Outside of the mainstream but people know who you are kinda thing.
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