MUSIC INTERVIEW: SCROOBIUS PIP

Alternative Hip-Hop Star in Ascendency Talks Religion, Rhyme & Social Reason

By: Ben Kharakh

October 14, 2008

 The hip-hop duo of Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip has been bouncing around between America and their native England for the past year in support of Angels, their debut album. The Vs, in their name, may suggest that the duo is in conflict, and while both Le Sac and Pip are talented musicians in their own right, their individual skill sets compliment each other perfectly. Scroobious Pip delivers clever word play, socio/cultural commentary, and quasi-philosophical investigations over Dan Le Sac’s dynamic production, which mixes elements of acoustic and electronic instrumentation. The result is an album that enthralls upon first listen and reveals greater rewards with every repeat.

Ben Kharakh: A friend of mine recommended your album to me, I listened to it, and I thought it was very good. What I usually do when I see something that I think is good is I find a way to share it with other people — usually lots of them through a magazine. So when I began to read about your work, I also read some reviews of your work. Do you read reviews of your own records?

Scroobius Pip: Yeah, we do. Because we’re a new act, it’s still impossible to relent. When we came out in the UK, we got far better reviews than we were expecting across the board, so it was really nice. Print magazines seem to have higher standards. Anyone online, people will come in and write stuff just to get noticed and to get hits on the website. The Pitchfork one, for example, was brought to our attention because it’s a big website and it was a big review. They seemed to go for the shock factor. If there’s a 0.2 stars review, it’s going to cause more interest and more of a stir than a 3, 4, or average rating.

BK: Yes, maybe that was something that the author didn’t expect, that people would now want to hear it even more. But one thing that I thought was strange is that he says, “Some bizarre target audience this thing courts,” speaking in reference to “Thou Shalt Always Kill,” “people ‘elitist’ enough to sneer upon corporate brain-washing yet simple-minded enough to surrender themselves to the ethos of Scroobius Pip.”  I thought it was strange because, in that song, you make it clear that you shouldn’t listen to other people, but you shouldn’t listen to you either.

SP: Yeah, that’s the whole point. Again, the guy kind of tried to pick up on contradictions without picking up on any of the real ones. The whole track is about contradictions. You shouldn’t be able to actually agree with everything on there. That’s the point; you have to kind of make your own mind up and think for yourselves. There’s a line saying not to put musicians on a pedestal, but then early on saying don’t say the names of Johnny Cash and Joe Strummer and all that in vain. So it’s all kind of banging heads with itself along the way, so that’s kind of the whole point of it. I think the writer missed that.

BK: I think I’ve noticed, in a lot of reviews, not just of you guys, but in general music reviews, authors often fail to evaluate the album in the context of what it’s trying to accomplish artistically, which I think would make more sense. It seems like maybe the writers are unclear about what the artistic intent is. Do you think this is something that the artist should try to articulate explicitly?

SP: No, not at all. We put the record out and then it’s there for people’s own interpretation. The reviewers are missing the point of it, however. I wouldn’t want to make an album that everyone loves, because then it’s not going to be a challenge at all or trying to push things. Generally, we’ve only had a few — what I’ve seen anyway — negative reviews like that, and they’ve all been reviewing it as a straight hip-hop album, which it’s not. We’re not trying to be that. We’re trying to just make the music that we make at the end of the day. When it comes to all the albums I’ve bought in the last ten years or so, I hardly looked at any reviews before I bought them. I was interested in the acts. And then I made my mind up and kept the receipt and was able to return if I don’t like it. So we know now that you need having to read tons of reviews and be certain that you’re going to love this album before you listen to it. You can’t just listen to it and make up your own mind.

BK: As someone that’s worked in a record store and is a music aficionado, how do you think being able to download mp3s, individual tracks, has changed the listening experience?

SP: It’s tough. Whilst I maintain that, like most real musicians, I will still be going out to own the record — it is something to have the whole album and to own the actual artwork and all that — but one of the great things that I felt about working in a record shop was having all this music at my disposal without necessarily having to invest straight away, with having the option to listen to all different kinds of jazz and then deciding what you like without having to spend all the money…which is kind of what the Internet is about now. You can go on there and have access to all these different kinds of music.

BK: A number of the tracks on the album are stories, with you assuming the role of either an objective or invested narrator. Are you, when out and about, on the lookout for something to write a song about?

SP: Definitely. You always try to observe things. We come up with different things that people are aware of, like suicide or racism, that don’t get covered in music much, particularly in the UK, particularly in mainstream music or what’s generally available.

BK: Why do you think these topics aren’t covered?

SP: It’s tough. I guess because it’s not commercially acceptable. I see interviews with a popular band where they’re being really political and socially aware. Only 10% of their fan base reads the interview, but 100% hear their songs, which are just about their girlfriend or whatever relationship they’re in. If you truly believe or wish to be political or just, again, socially aware or talk about these subjects, then why not put it to your lyrics, which 100% of your fans are going to hear?

BK: Are the topics on the album things you’ve personally been affected by?

SP: My life in general and what’s discussed on the album seem to keep completely separate. If you listen to the album, you think I’m probably quite an angsty, stressed, psychotic person, whereas I’m quite laid-back and relaxed. It is subjects that I’ve experienced or at least witnessed in my life, so most subjects broached are personal subjects, but yeah, it’s not things that plague me as such. But I’ve also taken that a bit further from simply just observing it. If there’s a subject that I want to tackle and I’ve not seen enough or don’t have enough information about it, as opposed to just writing about what I know, I’ll spend some time researching the subject and talk to people and build up a good understanding about it before trying to churn something out.

BK: What is a time that you’ve done that?

SP: There are a couple of tracks that I’m working on for the next album. There’s one about a heroin addiction and it’s something that someone I know had some rough times with, so it’s been a case of speaking to that person and speaking to other people who have been through the situation to try and understand an addiction like that. The general perception is that he’s a wasted, weak-willed lad. It’s far more than that. He’s not just some scumbag; it’s a case of addiction, which anyone can suffer.

BK: When it comes to tracks like “The Magician’s Assistant” or “Angels,” are those things you’ve personally experienced?

SP: Yeah, in a way. The way I like to write, I don’t like to tell a specific story. If someone close to me has been through a rough time, I don’t want to then be cashing in on that and writing their troubles on the page and making them my own. I’ve combined a few different experiences. “Magician’s Assistant” was a combination of a relationship I was in a while back and the situation where I lost a good friend of mine. It was a case of creating a new story grounded in reality from the emotions of the time.

BK: The track “Letter from God” makes me wonder what sort of role does religion play in your life?

SP: I’m not particularly religious. I had a Catholic upbringing and all that, so I’m aware of religion and Catholicism. It’s using religion as a template, and because everyone knows the stories of Christianity and all this, it’s a good way to make a point about society. That way, it’s not a typical “have a go at the government,” but having a go at this. It just kind of set it in a different light, which I think we have to understand, but then hopefully they’ll get it.

BK: It’s interesting that you mention the government, because sometimes people project onto the government many of the qualities of the Christian concept of God, such as omnipotence, omnipresence, etc.

SP: It seems like that’s been the message for a lot of governments and organizations to allow that because they have a growing need for wanting to know where everyone is at every moment. It seems like it can be some kind of God complex there. It’s strange and worrying.

BK: In “Waiting for the Beat to Kick In,” you say, “I sleep a lot, it’s as simple as that.” Some people enjoy sleep, but others don’t because they feel as though it keeps them from being productive. Looking around, it seems like there’s a lot of emphasis today on being productive. I think there are a variety of reasons. Some people might have a hard time finding meaning in the modern world so they look to the things that they do so the more they do, the more meaningful they feel they are, or there could be an influence from the Protestant work ethic perhaps. But whatever the reason for why someone may do it, there seems like there’s a bit of a stigma to just hanging around and enjoying yourself.

SP: Exactly. People seem to feel a pressure to be productive and do a lot, but it doesn’t mean you’re doing anything particularly

productive or good. You could do one thing in the whole day and that thing may be more productive and of worth than somebody who has been doing a million and one things. I agree with what you were saying there. There’s nothing wrong with just taking time out and taking things in, and relaxing and observing. That’s kind of my hobby.

BK: What do you think of the quest for meaning in the modern world?

SP: It’s tough. The quest for knowledge, I think, is great, but having to have the goal of understanding everything is the thing that slips people up or makes it impossible, because then they think that we can understand everything. It’s really evident now with the Large Hadron Collider . The whole point of it is to collide atoms and try to recreate the Big Bang in a smaller way, and the reason they want to do this is because all of our theories on the way that the world works and physics and everything rely on the fact that this one element exists that we’ve never actually seen any evidence of. So the whole point of this is to validate all the work that thousands of the greatest minds have done for years and years. We could find out that we’ve been mistaken in our understanding of how the universe works and have to return to trying to figure it all out again. I like the idea of a misunderstanding of things, of us not being able to grasp something and having to just keep striving for knowledge.

BK: Some might say it’s the search for knowledge itself where a lot of the importance is.

SP: A hundred percent — I couldn’t agree more. With the education system, I can only speak of the UK — I don’t know what it’s like everywhere — but it’s so test-based. It’s not education, it’s memory. It’s people being trained to remember things and learn how to pass a test, where most of this stuff, as soon as you’re a year or two out of school, you’ll forget or it’ll have no value to you. I think real education should be instilling a passion for the quest for knowledge as opposed to, “Here’s how you pass a test. Here’s how you get a good grade, and therefore get a good qualification and therefore get a good job and have a nice house and a nice family and all this stuff.” It should be just more of a subjective and abstract question, discussing in class things that can’t be explained, discussing theories and ideas that there aren’t answers to, and there’s not a right and wrong — there’s simply opinions and views and ideas with the emphasis being the quest to learn and having your own opinions and views.

BK: On the same track, “Waiting for the Beat to Kick In,” you list the characters you encounter — they’re various characters from films…

SP: Yes, a lot of people haven’t got that. I’m really pleased because I was tempted, in the line, to mention it or something. A variety of characters from films which was partly because, personally, I don’t read that much. A lot of my education has been from either actually talking to people and TV, film, and documentaries. I think the time is gone now for the TV to just be the idiot box. There can be great things of worth and value that you can learn from documentaries and just from different films as an art form. It can be a beautiful, wonderful thing. We still perceive it as a negative thing. It’s just because of the amount of poor programming all over the place, but it’s just seen as this ridiculous waste of time, in a way, or purely entertainment, where I feel it can be much more than that.

BK: The same can be said about books. Not every book is a classic; a lot of it is rubbish.

SP: Exactly. It’s far more respected to be well-read, even if it’s reading bad books or having a large book collection, than it is to have a large collection of DVDs.

BK: The one character who was difficult to figure out, for me, was Billy Brown.

SP: Billy Brown — yeah, he’s from Buffalo 66 by Vincent Gallo, which is one of my favorite films of all time. When I saw that, I started to look into Vincent Gallo at university. I took cinematography and I was toiling over cinematography because I liked film and I wanted to do the music and writing, and I was trying to make the decision. And when I saw that film, I realized that Vincent Gallo wrote it, directed it, starred in it, operated the camera for a lot of it, and he wrote the music. I realized you didn’t have to confine yourself to one thing; you could just try as much as possible and vary it.

BK: Is expressing yourself in all sorts of different mediums something you’d like to explore?

SP: Yeah, definitely. It’s been annoying, for one, because obviously the focus is music at the moment, but for years I’ve had films written in my head, but I’ve never sat down and gotten them out because I’m not a screenwriter. I have not learned how to or even attempted to do that. So at some point, I’d like to take some time and try to write a couple of these things or maybe work with a script writer. What I try to do in the music is essentially storytelling. There are a couple of stories that I can’t fit into a song or onto a CD, so I’d like to attempt them somewhere else.

BK: You did mention, a few times, that you are working on a new album. What information can you share about that?

SP: Actually, it’s very early stages. We’ve got two tracks, at most, written, but I’ve got a lot of lyrics, I’ve written about a lot of topics. We started touring in January and then we’ll be doing a few gigs here and there, but the main focus then is going to be writing and recording in order to, hopefully, have something for the summer. But we don’t want to set any targets or dates because so much of the first album, a lot of it was written over many, many years. Dan and I had only been working together a month or two, but Dan had been making beats for a long time and I had already done my solo album and such. We had a really strong basis already, so it was almost a “greatest hits of our lives thus far” kind of thing. So on the next album, we want to make sure we take the time on it, and it could turn out we turn the whole thing out in a month, or it could take a whole lot longer.