Mr. Lif - La Famiglia

Photo courtesy of: Coline Sperling

Mr. Lif - A Voice of Reason

Mr. Lif has always been a voice of reason when it comes to looking at the way the world turns and doing what he can to express himself and listen to the people. Over the past few months he has been releasing single songs from his new album, I Heard It Today, which is now finished and will be released the day our new president steps in to office. We caught up with Mr. Lif to speak with him about his new album, the current times and changes with in our country, and a little bit of something extra.

La Famiglia-Just to give us some background, what were some of your early influences in hip-hop? What made you decide to be an emcee?

Mr. Lif-The things that inspired me to be an emcee, I would have to just say, obviously loving the music as much as I did when I was growing up. You know, saying the lyrics to an LL Cool J song while I’m in the shower or a old Chub Rock song, that’s how I learned to emcee was just rhyming along with a record that I loved. I think that one of the big pushes that got me, like in 1993 when I first started to seriously consider actually being an emcee, it was just a powerful era. Wu-Tang Enter the 36 Chambers came out, Black Moon Enter the Stage came out, Midnight Marauders by Tribe Called Quest came out, De La Soul Buhloone Mindstate state came out, and that was all just in the winter of ’93. Then ’94 came around and you had Illmatic by Nas, you had Hard to Earn by Gang Starr, Sunrises in the East by Jeru, Return of the Boom Bap by KRS-1. It’s pretty much as if I was teetering on the edge wondering if I wanted to do this or not, those records pushed me over the edge and made me just want to swing for the fences.

La Famiglia-What did you really want to do when you grew up?

Mr. Lif-I actually wanted to be a surgeon. I was actually in college to learn medicine. I’ve always been obsessed with anatomy and physiology. That was what I wanted to go into but I wasn’t the best student as far as being able to consistently keep myself interested in everything that was being taught to me. The passion for music just became overwhelming and I just had to go in that direction. I had no choice

La Famiglia- Do you have a favorite super hero?

Mr. Lif-My favorite super hero is actually the one I am creating in my own story. I can’t reveal the title of the story at this time, but I will be telling a story over a series of albums in the future. But my favorite super hero of all time is definitely the one I have created and I think the people will see why.

La Famiglia-Can you tell us a little bit more about this project?

Mr. Lif-I feel like I have said all I can. It is science fiction. It is heavily based on the realities that we are facing right now, a lot of the long time concerns that we have or relationships we have with how we are functioning on this planet. I think that it’s pretty safe to say that human beings have been a pretty destructive force on the planet earth.

(note: due to the fact that this project has not really been introduced to the people we are really unable to fill you in on the rest of the story that we got from Mr. Lif. As soon as we are giving the word we will tell you more.)

La Famiglia-Well, on that note…tell us a about the new album you have just finished.

Mr. Lif-First of all it’s called, I Heard It Today. The goal of the project was to capture what we are living through. We now have the first black president waiting to be inaugurated on January 20th. We have the housing crisis, which was a key component on the overall economic collapse. We have the energy crisis. There’s just so many things that we are facing. So, we have that element and I just thought that it was important time to document.

So, what the I Heard It Today project does is kind of song-by-song takes on different topics. For instance the title track, “I Heard It Today”, deals with the housing crisis. A different song on the record deals with the fact that the bail out bill was passed despite a lot of pubic discontent. Then the album also deals with topics such as the prison system and the alarmingly high number of black males in the prison system. It deals with police brutality. Then it also deals with the desire that we all have with in our hearts. There is one song in particular called, “Collapse the Walls”. And this deals with the fact that we are living in a reality that we have settled for because we have been told that it is what we have to settle for. It just tries to transcend. Much like "I Phantom", this record takes the listener on a journey.

La Famiglia-How do you feel the change in the presidential office will affect the people?

Mr. Lif-Well, I feel that people right now are feeling like, we do have a say in what goes on in the government again. However, its somewhat dangerous, that some of us feel content with the fact that Barak Obama was elected because, we were supposed to have say in that all along. But I think one of the main reasons we are feeling like that is because it was snatched away from us in the 2000 election.

I’m worried that people are going to kick their feet up, despite Obama saying this is where the work begins, I think a lot of people are going to feel like this is a victory and just sit back and see what this guy can do. Rather than people being especially active in terms of seeing that this government is not necessarily designed to have a level of equality for all people. I truly believe that the gap between the rich and the poor, they will be able to mask it for a little while and make it seem like it’s not growing as fast. There will be a couple things that will hopefully be a little easier to obtain such as health care and a decent education. But why are those issues in the first place? That’s what I ask myself. Why are there millions of Americans with out health care? How did they even get to that point? It’s absolutely ridiculous.

I can’t get too much into the specifics of things that I would necessarily want to see change or an order that I feel that they should change to make our mentality healthier as American citizens. I just want people to realize that, even though yes, we do have the first president of color in the White House. There is a lot wrong with this country and we all have to have one eyebrow raised as to, why did they allow us this particular victory? That’s what I’m thinking. It’s obviously a beautiful moment, a very romantic thing. But why were we allowed this victory?

I’ve been reading this book called, A Brief History of Neo-Liberalism, by David Harvey. And one of the things that really intrigued me about what he wrote in that book was that he was sighting that in the late ‘60’s and the early ‘70’s, when the people were sighting the rising power of corporations as a negative thing and feeling that the government was overall was posing on their individuality and freedoms, the government found a way to take what we were hoping for and they crafted Neo-liberalism. If I can nutshell it, hopefully I nutshell it well, its just basically the form of free enterprise which calls for deregulation. So, they were like, ok, you people want to be free well, we are going to have government completely step out of the realms of business in terms of regulation on a state by state basis. And it really made way for the privatization of many institutions and firmly reinstated the upper class and drove the lower class further into the dungeons of society. In a situation like this, we have taken it in the chin for eight years from an administration that has very boldly said that, “we don’t care what the opinion of the people of the United States is, we are going to follow our agenda which is to create a large amount of wealth for the wealthy.”

La Famiglia-Barak Obama has stated that this is the beginning and the real work lies in the people’s hands. How do you feel that this affects the people from neighborhood-to-neighborhood?

Mr. Lif-I think that Obama has done some brilliant things. He has said magnificent things about raising your kids. No education system, no health care system, nothing that the government can do can be a replacement for a parents involvement in their children’s schooling and social life. This is very true and these are some of the things that made me support Barak Obama. Because stands up and does speak to us as a human being. He’s shared his hardships with the nation. I think that this era especially with the financial fall out that we are going through, is a an era of humbleness that I hope takes hold and remains firm in the collective consciousness of the American people. Because of this whole credit system that we have set up where you are able to walk in to a store and buy $1,500 worth of items even though you only have $500 to your name is just ludicrous. I think that we all would benefit from just buying the things that we can afford. I am completely up for us all just reeling it back in and just taking a more humble approach to the way we live in our society because right now our society is a society of excess.

I’m sorting through all these thoughts too. While I do love a lot of things that Barak Obama is projecting, as a black man it is just amazing for me to see a black man as the President of the United States especially given the history of this country. A lot of amazing and fulfilling things have taken place. However, as someone that has lived in this country for my entire life I have to ask, why were we allowed this particular victory? Because of the things I have witnessed as a citizen of this country, I have to ask myself, why is this character the one that is being presented to us at this point in time. We always have to look at both sides of the coin. I am not trying to Obama bash. I can’t look at him outside of the context of the country that he represents and the people he must of spent a lot of time talking with and kind of being trained by in order to achieve this position.

La Famiglia-Do you have any last words?

Mr. Lif-With the I Heard It Today project, I am doing this completely independently. There is no bad blood with Def Jux and myself. A lot of people have been asking about this. There is no bad blood. I love those guys over at that label. We have done a lot of great things together and there is no reason why we will not continue to work on things together in the future. This is just a project that I felt very compelled to do, just 100% in my own way. This project has really allowed me to reach out to people. Mainly via my myspace page, which has been a main avenue through which I have been able to talk to my fans about issues that really matter. And, of course The Orchard has been extremely instrumental. These songs I’ve been releasing have been coming out like every three weeks, The Orchard has been working around the clock to make sure my songs have been getting to the people. I just ask everyone out there that has supported me in the past and has thought that the work that I have done has been important or relevant, to support me on this one. Like I said, it’s a completely independent venture, and I am really trying my best to voice the opinions of the people. I hope that the people will consider me the voice of the people.

Links

www.myspace.com/mrlif

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