Ugly Duckling

You may think Hip Hop is all about the rims, Tims and women, but there are a collective out there that would be found sniggering behind their hand at the idea that any of those things fell into their ideals. Long Beach's alternative hip hop outfit Ugly Duckling have been banging out their fun-time tunes since 1993. With a commitment to putting fun back into Hip Hop, Ugly Duckling may not have made waves in the mainstream, but have accumulated a cult following with their traditional MC and turntablism skills, which suits the band much better. Their dynamic live show has won fans all around the globe, with comparisons being made to old legends Zulu Nation and Native Tongues Posse. These purveyors of old school hip hop come in the form of Andy Cooper, Dizzy Dustin, DJ Young Einstein. Einstein is the owner of a certain Dookie Rope chain that became the subject of their big tune, 'Eye on the Gold Chain', which was featured on the prestigious DJ Yoda's 'How to Cut and Paste: Volume 1'. Outline's Tommy Dog caught up with Andy Cooper to discuss their impending tour and album, musical influences and inspirations, and thoughts on a heavyweight wildlife battle. Just less than an hour later, a meeting of those two minds had chewed fat and spewed forth musings, the like of which have never graced the pages of Outline before! For us, Tom Moore catches up with Ducklings’ Andy Cooper…

T: Hi Andy, how’s thing’s?A: Yeah not bad

T: Excellent how’s your day been?A: Pretty slow so far

T: What is it, midday at the moment?A: Yeah about that.

T: It’s only getting started then.A: [laughs] Up at the crack of noon.

T: It obviously feels like a while since ‘Bang for the Buck,’ but what can fans expect for you new album.A: Well we tried to develop our songs a little bit more this time, as far as the production and especially vocally we tried to approach it more dynamically when it came to the melodies, things we’ve done before but a bit more intense, personal and stronger.

T: What about the actual tempo, because I know the tempo was a little slower in your first album than it was in your second?A: This one’s probably slower than ‘Bang for the Buck,’ it definitely is, on bang for the buck we were trying to do a bunch of songs that would be really great live so I think that’s why the tempo is always increased with the music on with the album because we’d been out on the road. On the first one we didn’t perform too much so we realised that in order to do what we wanted to do live we needed stuff a little more exciting. Sometimes when we’re trying to perform some of the first songs, which we liked a lot, they’re are so much slower it’s harder to find a place for them.

T: You’re gonna be touring in the UK soon, are you looking forward to coming to Norwich?A: Oh yeah, sure. In fact I have a buddy in Norwich, he gave me a lower division football jersey one time.

T: What was it? Norwich city?A: Who’s Bury FC?

T: Oh I don’t know, what can everyone expect from the new tour?A: Ah man!

T: Is it going to be insane?A: Oh gosh, juggling chainsaws

T: Amazing.A: Pyrotechnics, everything. You know what, one of the jokes of our show as we say, we’re gonna give you down home authentic hip-hop, just two turntables, microphones, just the way it was done, as though that’s our special thing or gift. But the truth is that’s the only way we can afford to do it [laughs] no budget for anything else, but we sell it like come see the real thing.

T: It’s good, it’s raw.A: Yeah that’s what it is, raw. Sure we could get all that fancy stuff, but no man, we want to give the fans the way it should be.

T: Are you aware coming to Norfolk, there used to be an exceptionally high rate of inbreeding.A: Is that so?

T: There are literally places worse than the hills have eyes. How does that make you feel?A: [laughs] If they like the music, we’ll take inbreds, we don’t mind that. We look at it as, most of our music is inbred in that it’s all sampling you know?

T: It’s not inbred.A: We’re taking different genres of music that don’t belong together and combing them with break beats.

T: If you threw a party and someone accidentally invited Usher, how would you react?A: Usher? He’s a real good dancer. Of all the pop stars, as much as I don’t like really glossy pop music, I would say Usher is one of the more talented people, so that wouldn’t be so bad.

T: But what happens if he was having a particularly bad day, and wanted to express his feelings through the medium of R&B?A: Yeah if he was doing a real slow jam that’s not for me, like I don’t mind the more up tempo, like if it was Rhianna or Beyonce or Usher doing one of there super high powered dance numbers I don’t mind watching.

T: Yeah you just want to be a spectator.A: The lovie dovie, I wane make love to you songs would be a bit much.

T: Getting back to Ugly Duckling, what are the main aspects or influences within you life that have formed the style?A: We grew up in Long beach, California, all three of us, and long Beach is really a diverse town both ethnically and economically so we grew up around you know black kids and Mexican kids and be exposed to hip-hop since hip-hop started as we started going to school in the early 80s. So we just grew up around it and for me I played basketball, so I was typically the only white kid on the team, so that’s who my friends and social group were as a kid, so it would just always be around. Not so much like I had to cross the track to experience hip-hop the way that maybe some kids did, I never had to go against my parents, it was just the music that was around the whole time so I think for all of us that’s how we were exposed to it, and that’s also why it comes off fairly naturally for us because it’s not something we had to mimic. It’s something we grew up around, but at the same time we all maintain our identity as far as who our family were and in some ways we are suburban in that are themes are not about ghetto nightmares or gangsters, we talk about any old thing on the song. But at the same time I think we have a pretty good grasp on idiosyncrasies of rapping and beats, and you know we have some funk in it so I think it’s mostly a product of where we came up.

T: On ‘Bang for the Buck’ you had a mock battle with Dizzy, did you used to battle much when you were younger?A: A little bit but, I never sat around writing to many battle lyrics, that was kinda a fun experience I’ve always been more interested in themes than bravodosio, because I always felt goofy trying to talk about how great I was, even though that’s a huge part of hip-hop and we do that to some extent, I never felt comfortable sitting around explaining how I’m the greatest thing that ever happened, so that hasn’t been the focus of our music for the most part, but that was a fun experiment and we do it to some extent, especially freestyling and also I’d say also it evolves out bagging on people at lunchtime making mumma jokes and all that sort of thing. I think of that as more of the battle era of just playing the dozen or just trying to snap somebody to some extent.

T: If you had the chance to bring down a well know artist a peg or two, who would you battle?A: You mean like do one of those songs like LL Cool Mo D and that stuff? The funny part is that if you try to go after somebody is who is really big and famous you just look stupid, like trying to battle Nelly or something like that, or 50 cent because it’s like an ant going up to an elephant.

T: I don’t know, I wouldn’t necessarily have to be in hip-hop, you could pick anyone.A: Then I would definitely go after Joule, no I know [laughs] it’s funny that you asked that one of the focuses of the new album is we want to be real positive, and the funny part is a great deal of our career wasn’t like the classic battle rhyming it’s usually with a lot of satire, or a little samba you know was one of our better figure songs and that was sort of mocking materialism, smack on our last album was kinda a slight battle rap in a way a mocking of commercial gangster rappers and all that sort of stuff. And we decided we’re always trying to mock somebody or make fun of somebody, you tear someone down and we do it with humour, we’re not real mean about it. This album we just wanted to talk about stuff that we thought was good and cool rather than be real destructive. I think our mindset has been away from that for a little while.

T: A few moments ago you also mentioned that you weren’t particularly comfortable with the idea of battling because you didn’t want to come across as arrogant, but when you’re performing you’ve got to be on fire and full of confidence, but when was the last time you would say your confidence dipped or even deserted you?A: You do certain shows or tours and maybe we would open for the Basement Jaxx on one tour and you just got the feeling that people didn’t want to see you, they came for something very specific and you aren’t it. So you have to muster up a lot of courage to get up there and try and convince them that what you’ve got is good.

T: So do you psych yourself up beforehand? A: You know what? Yeah to some extent, I just dreaded most every night but you know sometimes you’d be pleasantly surprised that the people were open minded, they’d get into it, but that would always be a challenge and always be difficult and other stuff we done like that like performing where it’s mostly a gangster rap crowd or even a rock crowd, they have very little tolerance for rap. Even though I feel they’ll eventually understand what we’re trying to do, it’s not just trying to go up there and be a typical rap group, but it’s still like that difficult feeling we’re gonna have to sell them tonight, that’s part of the challenge of making a living and doing this, you’ve gotta be flexible and get up in front of different kinds of people.

T: Exactly, you want new people to listen to your music.A: That’s it, and it’s also just as an entertainer you have to have the ability to reach across the aisle and try and touch somebody even when they’re not in your demographic. It’s like that’s what being a professional is, if the only time you can rock a crowd is when everybody there loves you and know all of your material, anybody can do that. When a crowd is great, anybody can kill. But can you always do pretty good or always have the crowd at the end of the show enjoy what you did?

T: So it’s more about consistency?A: I think that’s one of the reasons we’re still around, we can genuinely reach an audience at a festival setting or a place where most people aren’t familiar with your material, have the ability to entertain folks. That’s always a challenge, a real tough challenge that you sometimes loose your confidence. But there one thing we’ve got going, that we don’t believe in us as icons or individuals, we believe in our music so usually once the music has started you get into a song, you just kinda go with the song and try and sell the song, we don’t feel like we’re trying to sell ourselves, we’re just trying to sell the music. And that helps me as I don’t have to worry about what a jackass I look like. Any show, because if I was really self-focussed I think I could do it

T: A lot of rappers like to emphasise that if it wasn’t for music they would have probably ended up on the streets in a life crime. If things hadn’t worked out for you the way they did, where do you see yourself?A: Yeah, I don’t know I mean it’s been so long since I made that decision, that’s hard to figure.

T: When did you actually realise this is what you wanted to do.A: Probably 13, 14 years ago, I think that’s part of the theme of this album, all three of us had the audacity to believe we could do it, and that we should do it, and that we different to all the other groups that we knew, like all our other friends that were in bands. They were all fine but we actually had something that was actually going to translate. I dabbled in being an English major, and I did go to school for two years, so maybe I would have been an English teacher, because it would involve some of the same stuff. It would involve writing, getting up in front of a class and making a presentation, so I would have been suited for something like that. T: You could have done anything.A: Either that or it would have been pimping hoes and selling crack. That’s probably more likely.

T: A lot of rappers also like to portray a tough guy image of themselves, do you think these people, like 50 cent, actually have low self-esteem or do they simply have ‘issues’

A: Well I imagine those people like 50 Cent, Kanye West, and Puff Daddy, have a desperate need to be famous and to be successful. And that goes beyond just rap because people in the corporate world are just like that, an unending drive to be in the spotlight and to be successful. Just a tremendous amount of ambition, and to some extent I congratulate them and because politicians are like that too, how can you be this driven just to be in the spotlight the whole time? I don’t understand where that comes from. Then again, that’s a theme we explore in our new album, especially in the title song. Like where do people like that get their energy or ability? Especially people like 50 Cent or Kanye West, some of these guys are not the best rappers, they’re not the worse but they’re not the greatest guys who ever took on the mic, and they’re not always really good looking or super talented it’s just that un ceasing drive to do it. And they’ll out work you, you know Little Wayne is again someone who for every song you do he’s done 30.

T: Do you think there’s any possibility, it’s just that they were beaten or touched when they were younger?A: It’s very possible, that’s one the questions I’m curious about, what starts that motor?

T: Exactly, it’s got to start somewhere.A: Yeah, maybe it’s not having attention when they were kids, or maybe it was some sort of molestation, I don’t know.

T: I think I might be on to something.A: It would be amazing to do a study of those people, to kidnap all of them all at once to do a thorough background study to check what brought about that energy. I definitely don’t have it. We like making good music and we like performing but we are low on ambition and that’s probably why we’ve achieved the level of success we have because it’s about as much as we could take. I just read this book about the magician, Harry Houdini, and someone who worked in the magic industry 10 years before he ever got it going, and just a dude who never stopped. Every day he would perform, he only stopped 3 hours a night, he did TV, movies, flew planes. He had an appetite for life that no one else could rival at the time, so maybe there’s just something, maybe it’s genetic, maybe there’s just a certain thing inside someone’s motor.

T: Maybe it’s just something missing from their lives?A: What’s interesting about the book is he didn’t have an abusive family or anything about that, but they were extremely poor when he was growing up and he had to start working when he was 10. I suppose for some people their labour defines who they are. James Brown, one of my heroes, was just like that to, he couldn’t sleep, he couldn’t stop ever. And was almost delusional in how great he actually though he was. And that’s kinda what led to all of that bravado and again that audacity to think you’re the most important thing on the planet. That’s the thing about these people, the arrogance is amazing. If at some point you can appreciate it’s sort of fun that wow, this person really believes this. Especially with someone like Kanye West, it’s like at some point I have to stop and admire the guy, it’s amazing to have that drive.

T: Do you feel like you’ve achieved everything you want to achieve, or are you still hungry for more?A: There’s the cool part about Ugly Duckling. All that stuff about being the world’s greatest, we don’t care so much about. But what we do care about is making great songs. And we think we’ve made some pretty good songs and that we’re getting better, we’re developing our skill. I definitely wanna try and make better songs, the whole group does. At some point we’d actually like to make a classic song that could stay around for a hundred years, that’s sort of a goal and I don’t even know if that’s even reachable. I don’t even know if the genre or style of music that we do is capable of having a song that could stand the test of time in that way like ‘Fly me to the moon’. But that’s our goal.

T: What’s been your favourite song so far?A: I really like ‘I did it like this’, but I don’t think of it as a classic song, in that a classic song can be covered by artists on a guitar, or on a piano, or in a different form of music. Most of our songs that are good are in the package, which we present. It’s the samples and the recording of it that makes it really good. To write a great tune that can last and work out outside of what you do, you’d have to come up with something that anyone can play. Farside, ‘Passing me by’ to me is a classic song. You could get a lounge singer up on a piano and he could play ‘Passing me by’ and it would be a good song.

T: How do you know you haven’t already written a classic? I think a lot of people haven’t necessarily heard your stuff.A: I think our music could stay around, and I think it will. There are lots of groups I love, one especially called the Free Design, who I think are the greatest group ever. And there’re from the late 60s and are a sort of a vocal harmony group and there’s just really pretty and interesting stuff they did and it’s managed to stay around. People trade their records online and they have a great reputation, even though that music ended 30 years ago. So I think we could certainly be like that, but my point is writing a song that could transcend outside of what we are, outside of our little genre, outside of our musical style.  That’s an extreme challenge and I want to do that whether it’s in Ugly Ducking or not, I mean I want to write a song like that or produce a song like that even if it wasn’t our group, so I think that’s the goal.

T: Would it still be based on hip-hop?A: Yes definitely, within our sound that we do. It’s not like going to write a love Ballard it would be like writing or producing a song within our style that could somehow translate outside of just people who understand early nineties hip-hop, that would be the challenge. To be honest on this album that’s what we were attempting to do on some of the songs, to write stuff that could maybe go outside of the reputation that we have already, but stay in the style that we believe is good. We don’t ever want to stop using loops, breaks, samples, and that sort of thing.

T: It sounds like a winning formula to me.A: Either that or a train wreck.

T: I love it, make or break.A: Honestly, you can go to our Myspace site and listen to some of the songs. Some of them are a real interesting attempt of writing a classic style song within a Ugly Duckling format, so that was the ting, this is either gonna be brilliant or it’s going to be a total, total disaster, and we’re gonna look like asses. That’s kinda the risk we took and again that’s why the title is ‘Audacity’. We would have the guts and the nerve to do stuff outside of what’s expected of us.