Music > Interviews

Interview with Ugly Duckling

29/09/11

Californian hip hop trio Ugly Duckling have seen a lot of acts come and go during their time in the music industry, but have always managed to stay true to their own brand of old school laced good time vibes and beats. I spoke to MC Andy Cooper ahead of a fruitful October for the group, as they prepare for their latest world tour to promote their fifth album ‘Moving at Breakneck Speed’, released on October 10th, and a return visit to Norwich Arts Centre. 

It’s been over a decade since your debut album ‘Journey to Anywhere’ was released. Do you think your sound has changed in that time? How would you describe your own journey?

I think it’s one of things where we’ve held the same fundamentals in our approach to production and song creation, but hopefully we’ve developed it a bit and we’ve tried to do some different things within that same structure. For the most part I think we approach song writing and production in a very similar manner than we did when we first met each other in the early 90’s. There’s one style of hip hop we really like and we stick to it. We try and do as much as we can with it and try some different stuff. On every album we’re looking for a different angle with something we haven’t done before, but they’re more nuances and subtle things than big changes.

You’re last album ‘Audacity’ was a bit more melancholy than your previous efforts, but it sounds like you’ve picked up the pace again on ‘Moving at Breakneck Speed’. What’s the main inspiration behind this album?

That’s a pretty good evaluation. On the last album we tried to do some melancholy stuff and tried to be a little more personal. I think an artist tends to do that once in a while, where you want to look internally. But on this one, as you say, we wanted to pick up the pace again and it’s sort of a metaphor for our lives looking back at our career in music, if you can call it a career! It’s a feeling that we’re always staying two steps ahead of the law and ahead of reality and we’re just running from the industry and the reality of having to entertain people and how difficult a thing that is to do consistently. So we wanted to take that feeling of always being on the road, getting the next dollar and keeping our heads above water and put that into a storyline and dramatise it, so we kinda turned it into an international adventure story where we’re three guys on the run from this contingency of bad guys who are trying to take us down. Which is probably just a metaphor for getting older and dealing with an unforgiving business. Kind of a soundtrack which is up-tempo and exciting, but with a new angle.

Have you got a favourite track on the album?

We have one called ‘I Wonder Where She Is Now’ and it’s kind of like that Willie Nelson song ‘To All The Girls I’ve Loved Before’. It’s a funky little song and it’s got a little sensuality to it.

Your albums always have really cool artwork. Do you get very involved with that?

Yeah absolutely and it started because Einstein is a very serious record collector so he really appreciates album artwork. When we put out our first EP ‘Fresh Mode’ we didn’t just want to put a picture of ourselves on it because we didn’t think that was very interesting and somebody at the record company knew a guy called Corky McCoy who had designed some famous record covers for people like Miles Davis and he did this cover for us and we liked it, so we decided we should make it a tradition to always get an artist to do our covers for us. We were hoping we’d get all these famous guys but we never really had the budget for it, so for the last few we’ve just found commercial artists and given them a theme and worked on it with them and it’s a lot of fun, because you’re trying to look for a still image that can signify the whole album. It’s cool to put something on the cover that might inspire a little bit of thought or interest.

The new albums already out in Japan isn’t it? How’s it going down there?

It is yeah. They have a real problem with import copies coming into Japan so they always ask for a head-start because it’s very expensive for them to manufacture things so import copies are often less expensive than their domestic copies. It’s going down pretty decently though I heard. One of the guys at the label told me it was top 20 in the iTunes chart on the day it came out but that was just one day! We had a good day once!

Well one good day’s better than none! How do you think the hip hop landscape has changed in recent years?

As we make a living from hip hop and as fans as well we’ve seen a lot of cycles come and go, but the one thing that I think has changed that isn’t stylistic is that rap didn’t use to be a commercial industry. Even an album like ‘The Chronic’ which was a huge seller wasn’t on the radio and at some point it started making this transition to becoming radio music with people like Snoop Dogg and 50 Cent and that really changed the whole spirit and attitude of the thing. It’s amazing it’s become so mainstream because it’s supposed to be like punk; a rebel music that’s counter culture.

You guys are heading off on a big tour soon. Are you looking forward to dusting off the gold chain and getting back out there?

Actually we were looking at the gold chain the other day and it’s lost a bit of it lustre so we looked into getting it re-plated but it was going to cost about $750 and I think we only paid about $50 for it in the first place, so we’ll just have to put some more light on it and polish it up and it’ll be ok.

You’re playing lots of UK dates, which most American rap groups don’t generally bother to do.

We said if we don’t get to play Swindon we’re not coming!

Have you got any favourite places over here?

We like to work so we tell our agent we don’t want any days off. We like performing so why have a day off and it’s really fun too, going to off the path places. Norwich is a really fine destination and there’s a couple of good clubs there. Are we playing the Arts Centre again? It was really good there last time. The only thing I don’t like about going to Norwich is the road in, when it gets to a single lane near that big memorial (near Thetford). Every time we’ve been to Norwich it’s been a good show though.

You guys are really into Nando’s. Have you thought about asking them to sponsor the tour?

Well I like Nando’s but Einstein is obsessive about it. He’ll go there twice a day. We’ve been putting a few calls into them but I don’t think anything’s going to come of it!

What’s a typical day on tour like?

Say if we’re in Norwich we’ll do the show then sleep there and hopefully wake up as late as possible ‘cause what’s great about playing in the UK is that usually the distance to the next show isn’t that far, so you can check out at 12, have lunch and be in the next place at 3 or 4, then spend a little time there before you go down to the club at 8. Some of the shows may only be 45 minutes apart and in America it’d be unthinkable to have shows that close. Once we played a show in Manchester and another in Liverpool in the same night.

How do crowds around the world differ? Does a UK crowd differ from the States or Asia, for example?

I think English people have a special charm and wit and a love of talking and a little bit of cynicism in their humour. We work so much in the UK and I really enjoy that and we design the show so that we’re taking the piss a bit, because we know the audience appreciates that and likes it. Rap generally is such a self confident medium and there’s nothing funny about it, so the fact that we have a bit of humour and self deprecation in our show has always worked in the UK. But when we come home sometimes we’ll have a little bit of that but the audience just doesn’t get it, there’s no place for it. By the end of the show they get it, but they’re trying to figure out if we’re joking or not. So we do try and tune our show a little bit to the place we’re performing. Relating to the audience takes some little subtle differences.

I like it when bands play a few random, less well known songs in their set, as well as the hits.

What’s funny is sometimes you’re performing and you’ll get a sense that some people in the audience really like your group and some people might just have heard ‘A Little Samba’ and that’s it. So you want to entertain everybody and you’re happy anybody comes to the show but it’s funny ‘cause if you try and do too much stuff for the fan who knows everything then you isolate the person who’s a casual fan and if you just play the songs that you think people might know then you leave the other group out, who know all the little nooks and crannies of the band and want to hear other stuff. What you’re trying to do is keep everybody happy and that’s probably impossible but that’s a real fun part of entertaining. It’s like if you go and see a good band they weave it together really well and that’s the trick of live performances, is making everybody happy. One extreme is a group who doesn’t like to do the hit singles of does them different when they play live. Sometimes artists take themselves too seriously and they don’t want to play the singles, but if you’ve had big hit songs you’ve got to do them in a way that makes people happy, so it’s an interesting balance in live performance. It’s one thing I really enjoy about being in a group, even though we’re not on that level its fun to consider these things and think about what the audience might like, then perform and observe how they behave and try and make improvements and try and get good at it so you want everybody to leave very happy. We don’t play the songs for ourselves. We know the songs. We do it for the audience. The art and the rewarding part is that people leave really having had a great time and you’re the person that got to do it for them. It’s really that simple and it’s a lot of fun.

James Smith

Ugly Duckling play at the Norwich Arts Centre on 19thOctober. For tickets and information go to www.norwichartscentre.co.uk.