Post by Kam Gill on Apr 7, 2011 10:05:29 GMT
[glow=red,2,300]Every genre of Music has one artist that defines it. One artist, who has lived it. One artist who has helped revolutionize it. Bhangra Music has such an Artist too. That Artist is Panjabi MC.
Panjabi MC set out in the early 90's on an incredible musical journey which has seen many ups and down throughout his career. He is the producer who not only puts the 'D' in 'Desi', he also puts the 'E', 'S' and 'I' in it too. Panjabi MC has achieved what others thought were unachievable. Panjabi MC has done what others thought were undo-able.
In perhaps his most intimate Interview ever, he guides us through his Musical career and for the first time let's us close to the man behind the music....[/glow]
(Kam) Right, First of all I want to ask you, on your debut album ‘ Souled Out’ you had an intro that had a guy saying ‘ What does a rapper do when he starts out hardcore but can't sell enough records to remain in the record business? Answer.....Bhangra.’ So was becoming a Bhangra producer a second choice?
(PMC) Yeah, that is basically it. Back in 1993 I had a demo that had about five tracks on it that I had done. There was four rap songs on there like ‘ Plant The Seed’. The last track on that demo was a track called ‘Ghariya Milan Deh’ that I mixed with some Hip Hop beats. I also had an instrumental track on there with me playing the keyboards on it. I went to see all these labels that were around at the time like Nachural, Oriental, ABC, metro music and left this demo with them. They all got back to me straight away saying “Oh my god, this is incredible stuff, this is amazing, we love it.” I was over the moon because I thought they were loving my rap songs so was thinking ‘ Wow, I’m going to get a deal to rap, gonna make myself some mills’, stuff like that. People around me were telling me that it was amazing that all these record labels got back to me.
So I went to visit some of these labels and I realized that they just skipped past all the hip hop stuff and got to the ‘Ghariya Milan Deh’ mix and said “ This is what we like."At the end I chose to go with Ninder at Nachural records, which is......you know,....whatever. The first thing he said to me was that we were going to get a band and redo that song. He asked me if I had done anymore tracks like that. I had already done 15/20 tracks that mixed Desi with Hip Hop. By that time I had realized that no one is down with this rap thing. Most of the people I knew as a kid were Indian, I did know some people from different cultures and by about 1988, 1989 I was already doing shows in places like Manchester, disco tech royal. ‘Rootz’ was already out, and I was on the Hip Hop circuit but at the same time I could see the Bhangra bands and Panjabi music really taking off and I wanted a piece of that as well. That’s why I did ‘Souled Out’ primarily to say basically “Look, I can’t sell enough records in the Rap game so I’m going to try bhangra now.”
(Kam) Not a bad second choice really was it?
(PMC) Not at all. My whole life has been about realizing how strong Desi Music is. First I started off with Desi music and didn't really appreciate the difference between the stuff that artists like ‘Manak’ were doing compared to what the UK Bhangra bands were doing. Eventually I had started working with UK bhangra artists and re did the tracks that I already had done. But I was starting to realize that Desi music was like the Hip Hop version of Indian music. You know I could have gone bollywood but to me Desi Music has close roots to Hip Hop music so that is why it appealed so much to me.
(Kam) Is it true that the mixes that came out on your 3rd album, '100% Proof’ were mixes that you did before ‘Souled Out’ but you could not release them because of copyright laws?
(PMC) That is true.Those tracks were done around ‘91,’92, but I could not get the rights so the concept of those tracks were taken and used on the albums ‘ Souled Out’ and ‘Another Sell out.’ We were trying to get the rights to those songs for three years and by about ‘100% Proof’ time, we managed to secure some kind of loophole. Ninder one day came in and just basically said “Look I have had enough of this, these tracks are just too hot not to release so we are going to do just that.” He asked me to pick about six tracks from my selection of Desi Mixes. ‘100% proof’ was an album that I didn’t have to work on much at that time as most of it was done years before. I re - did ‘Lambran Di Noh.’
(Kam) Yeah, I remember on ‘Another Sell Out’ you had a mix that used the same break that you used on Manak’s ‘Yaar Meera’ on ‘100% Proof’, but it wasn’t the full song and had Surjit Anakhi doing the vocals...
(PMC) Yeah, that's right. The Manak version was already done but we couldn’t release it at the time so that track on ‘Another Sell Out’ was sort of like a trailer.I was feeling that beat but I couldn’t use the vocal so tried something different with it. I did get Vijay of Achank to re sing one of the songs but it didnt work out. I had done 18/19 Desi tracks by then so it is strange that I had done ‘100% Proof’ before ‘Souled Out’ and ‘Another Sell Out’ but it was my 3rd album.
(Kam) Your first ever release was called ‘Rootz.’ That got taken off the selves didn’t it? What was the deal with that?
(PMC) It did get taken off the selves. There was a few reasons for that, There were alot of rumours about why. One was that it offended some religions but I don’t think there was much truth in that. Also there was politics between the label that released 'Rootz’ and another label that I was not aware of at the time. Something to do with counterfeiting what other labels had released, so they blocked this record label. There was other rumours that it was taken off the market too. My favorite one was that it was ‘New Music.’ It was Hip Hop, Rap mixed with Indian styles and people were like that’s wrong, they thought it sounded controversial...So that made me laugh. So yeah, it got banned, it was in the papers, I got death threats over the phone...I’m guessing it was something to do with the label. People didn’t like the label so they threatened the artist, I dont think it had much to do with me. So yeah, that was my first release.
(Kam) It has quite often been mentioned that your vision at the start of your musical journey was to fuse both the Hip Hop and Desi worlds together. How well do you think you have done to achieve that over the course of your career?
(PMC) That is true. I have always wanted to mix Hip Hop with Desi Music. But initially when I started off I wanted to be the Rapper. I wanted the producer to make those beats, mixing Hip Hop with Indian percussion's for me. I just wanted to Rap on them beats. That was my vision. But I couldn’t find a producer who made those beats so I learned how to sample stuff myself and made a demo so that I could take it down to some producers who could then get a clear idea of what I wanted. I used samples and vocals from singers like Manak but the problem was that people didnt like the Rap. So in the end I took the Raps out and put the full Desi Vocals in there and people loved it. From then on I became a producer and although the beats were the same I started using more Desi Vocals and less Rapping because that is what people were down with. On ‘Mirza part 2’ it worked really well. When Mirza came out I thought that was it, people are loving the Rap now but after that it kind of died down again. But it changes from time to time.
For example the ‘ Jodi’ track that is on my last album ‘ The Raj.’ I did that originally without any Rap. It was just straight Manak on there. But then people in India including Manak said “ No, We want you Rapping on it, with a bassline!” But I was thinking it is a traditional wedding song so was abit reluctant. So I went to India and saw exactly what happens at weddings. In India that track works really well. They like that flex. But in the end I realized that the Rapping is difficult to get over with the Bhangra crowd. But then you can say it works both ways and say it’s hard to get the Indian vocals to take off in the mainstream media. The other day I did Ministry of Sound with ‘Westwood’ and it was just a Desi crowd. I’m talking about no R’n’B lovers, hate for R’n’B. I saw people up there trying to spin a few R’n’B records and people were just walking off the dance floor. So I just got on there and played tracks like ‘Putt Jattan De’, ‘Pehle Lalkare Naal’, and they loved it. And then Westwood came on and started playing Bhangra music, all Bhangra. He had to because it was just that sort of crowed. In my set I played a mix of ‘Balle Balle and ‘Regulate’ by Nate Dogg, R.I.P. I took the ‘Balle Balle’ off so it was just Nate Dogg running, Sick. I was watching the crowd and they were like...’What’s this stuff?’ I think the guys a legend but the crowd were not responding, not showing love. So yeah, it can be hard to completely fuse the worlds together. It is more difficult to bring Hip Hop and Rap to the Bhangra crowd than the Desi stuff to mainstream.
(Kam) We all know that ‘Mundian To Bach’ got alot of air play but your music has always had that crossover appeal. As I recall one of your earlier tracks, ‘Mapia tu Dhar’ got some mainstream airplay didnt it?
(PMC) It did. Yes, John Peel played that track. That really inspired me even more to get Bhangra in the mainstream. John Peel used to play all the good alternative music so I was cuffed that he was playing my music on his show. Other people were playing my stuff too which was great. There is a station called Radio Luxembourg and they had a presenter who was more John Peel than John Peel! He picked up on my stuff from about ‘92,‘93. I think it was one of the first European radio stations so it has always had that nostalgic audience and they pick up on some good stuff. It was good to have people like that following me. Even before ‘Bachke’ went mainstream I was appearing on drum and bass radio stations mixing drum and bass with tracks like ‘ Jind Mahi’. People were loving it. At around that time I was doing these shows I was going to start work on my first Hip Hop album. The album that I am working on now is called ‘56 Districts’ I’ll give you that as an exclusive. It has the map of Punjab on there and it’s basically a Hip Hop album. I’ve got some Desi in there but I’ve got alot of UK Rappers and American Rappers on there. So it will have more of a Hip Hop album vibe than a Desi vibe. This is the album that I was planning around 2000/2001 when I was just trying to get off the Moviebox deal. They wanted A Desi album. You don't give them an experimental album when they want a Desi album, you know what I’m saying? You got a deal with them so you give them what they want. So I was just about to do this album then the Knight rider tune blew up.
(Kam) I want to just go back abit and talk about ‘Magic Desi’ That was not an official release was it?
(PMC) Yeah, you’re right. Again those were some of the tracks I did at the start and Ninder didn’t want to release them under his own label so we just release it under no label. We were going to use the same loop hole as before to get them released. To be honest it wasn’t much to do with me. Ninder released them. By then alot of people had already got hold of alot of my old masters. There were quite a few albums coming out like ‘Magic Desi’, ‘100% Desi’, ‘Hidden Treasures’ by LL Cool Singh...
(Kam) Were all those songs yours?
(PMC) Yeah, they were all from my collection. The reason ‘Hidden Treasures’ came out was a guy called Nirmal Suri, don’t get me wrong, he is a friend of mine, claimed that he owned the rights to G.T Road and certain tracks, which no one is disputing. In those days I used to be quite happy to send people fully mastered tracks, on a D.A.T. So everyone had them anyway. Another thing to remember is that in my first three albums, I didn't play a single note. There was no keyboards, no instruments, everything was from vinyls. They were all samples on them. Everything. You can never clear those songs. So everyone had a copy of these tracks but the way I saw it was they were demos. They were not for release. They were never really meant to be released.
(Kam) Did those releases annoy you?
(PMC) I was annoyed when they were released to tell you the truth. But it is in the past now, and I don’t really look back. But at the time it did annoy me. If people had said look, here's a couple of grand then that is a different story but that never happened so I did find myself annoyed at the time.
End Of Part 1
Coming up in Part 2 ............... (PMC) “He said to me you might as well go home now and if you are lucky you will make more money out of this than me. I asked him what he meant. He said ‘Gigs.’ I Said ‘Listen, you taking the P***?”......
[glow=red,2,300]Interview By Kam Gill[/glow]
Check out Part 2
Panjabi MC set out in the early 90's on an incredible musical journey which has seen many ups and down throughout his career. He is the producer who not only puts the 'D' in 'Desi', he also puts the 'E', 'S' and 'I' in it too. Panjabi MC has achieved what others thought were unachievable. Panjabi MC has done what others thought were undo-able.
In perhaps his most intimate Interview ever, he guides us through his Musical career and for the first time let's us close to the man behind the music....[/glow]
(Kam) Right, First of all I want to ask you, on your debut album ‘ Souled Out’ you had an intro that had a guy saying ‘ What does a rapper do when he starts out hardcore but can't sell enough records to remain in the record business? Answer.....Bhangra.’ So was becoming a Bhangra producer a second choice?
(PMC) Yeah, that is basically it. Back in 1993 I had a demo that had about five tracks on it that I had done. There was four rap songs on there like ‘ Plant The Seed’. The last track on that demo was a track called ‘Ghariya Milan Deh’ that I mixed with some Hip Hop beats. I also had an instrumental track on there with me playing the keyboards on it. I went to see all these labels that were around at the time like Nachural, Oriental, ABC, metro music and left this demo with them. They all got back to me straight away saying “Oh my god, this is incredible stuff, this is amazing, we love it.” I was over the moon because I thought they were loving my rap songs so was thinking ‘ Wow, I’m going to get a deal to rap, gonna make myself some mills’, stuff like that. People around me were telling me that it was amazing that all these record labels got back to me.
So I went to visit some of these labels and I realized that they just skipped past all the hip hop stuff and got to the ‘Ghariya Milan Deh’ mix and said “ This is what we like."At the end I chose to go with Ninder at Nachural records, which is......you know,....whatever. The first thing he said to me was that we were going to get a band and redo that song. He asked me if I had done anymore tracks like that. I had already done 15/20 tracks that mixed Desi with Hip Hop. By that time I had realized that no one is down with this rap thing. Most of the people I knew as a kid were Indian, I did know some people from different cultures and by about 1988, 1989 I was already doing shows in places like Manchester, disco tech royal. ‘Rootz’ was already out, and I was on the Hip Hop circuit but at the same time I could see the Bhangra bands and Panjabi music really taking off and I wanted a piece of that as well. That’s why I did ‘Souled Out’ primarily to say basically “Look, I can’t sell enough records in the Rap game so I’m going to try bhangra now.”
(Kam) Not a bad second choice really was it?
(PMC) Not at all. My whole life has been about realizing how strong Desi Music is. First I started off with Desi music and didn't really appreciate the difference between the stuff that artists like ‘Manak’ were doing compared to what the UK Bhangra bands were doing. Eventually I had started working with UK bhangra artists and re did the tracks that I already had done. But I was starting to realize that Desi music was like the Hip Hop version of Indian music. You know I could have gone bollywood but to me Desi Music has close roots to Hip Hop music so that is why it appealed so much to me.
(Kam) Is it true that the mixes that came out on your 3rd album, '100% Proof’ were mixes that you did before ‘Souled Out’ but you could not release them because of copyright laws?
(PMC) That is true.Those tracks were done around ‘91,’92, but I could not get the rights so the concept of those tracks were taken and used on the albums ‘ Souled Out’ and ‘Another Sell out.’ We were trying to get the rights to those songs for three years and by about ‘100% Proof’ time, we managed to secure some kind of loophole. Ninder one day came in and just basically said “Look I have had enough of this, these tracks are just too hot not to release so we are going to do just that.” He asked me to pick about six tracks from my selection of Desi Mixes. ‘100% proof’ was an album that I didn’t have to work on much at that time as most of it was done years before. I re - did ‘Lambran Di Noh.’
(Kam) Yeah, I remember on ‘Another Sell Out’ you had a mix that used the same break that you used on Manak’s ‘Yaar Meera’ on ‘100% Proof’, but it wasn’t the full song and had Surjit Anakhi doing the vocals...
(PMC) Yeah, that's right. The Manak version was already done but we couldn’t release it at the time so that track on ‘Another Sell Out’ was sort of like a trailer.I was feeling that beat but I couldn’t use the vocal so tried something different with it. I did get Vijay of Achank to re sing one of the songs but it didnt work out. I had done 18/19 Desi tracks by then so it is strange that I had done ‘100% Proof’ before ‘Souled Out’ and ‘Another Sell Out’ but it was my 3rd album.
(Kam) Your first ever release was called ‘Rootz.’ That got taken off the selves didn’t it? What was the deal with that?
(PMC) It did get taken off the selves. There was a few reasons for that, There were alot of rumours about why. One was that it offended some religions but I don’t think there was much truth in that. Also there was politics between the label that released 'Rootz’ and another label that I was not aware of at the time. Something to do with counterfeiting what other labels had released, so they blocked this record label. There was other rumours that it was taken off the market too. My favorite one was that it was ‘New Music.’ It was Hip Hop, Rap mixed with Indian styles and people were like that’s wrong, they thought it sounded controversial...So that made me laugh. So yeah, it got banned, it was in the papers, I got death threats over the phone...I’m guessing it was something to do with the label. People didn’t like the label so they threatened the artist, I dont think it had much to do with me. So yeah, that was my first release.
(Kam) It has quite often been mentioned that your vision at the start of your musical journey was to fuse both the Hip Hop and Desi worlds together. How well do you think you have done to achieve that over the course of your career?
(PMC) That is true. I have always wanted to mix Hip Hop with Desi Music. But initially when I started off I wanted to be the Rapper. I wanted the producer to make those beats, mixing Hip Hop with Indian percussion's for me. I just wanted to Rap on them beats. That was my vision. But I couldn’t find a producer who made those beats so I learned how to sample stuff myself and made a demo so that I could take it down to some producers who could then get a clear idea of what I wanted. I used samples and vocals from singers like Manak but the problem was that people didnt like the Rap. So in the end I took the Raps out and put the full Desi Vocals in there and people loved it. From then on I became a producer and although the beats were the same I started using more Desi Vocals and less Rapping because that is what people were down with. On ‘Mirza part 2’ it worked really well. When Mirza came out I thought that was it, people are loving the Rap now but after that it kind of died down again. But it changes from time to time.
For example the ‘ Jodi’ track that is on my last album ‘ The Raj.’ I did that originally without any Rap. It was just straight Manak on there. But then people in India including Manak said “ No, We want you Rapping on it, with a bassline!” But I was thinking it is a traditional wedding song so was abit reluctant. So I went to India and saw exactly what happens at weddings. In India that track works really well. They like that flex. But in the end I realized that the Rapping is difficult to get over with the Bhangra crowd. But then you can say it works both ways and say it’s hard to get the Indian vocals to take off in the mainstream media. The other day I did Ministry of Sound with ‘Westwood’ and it was just a Desi crowd. I’m talking about no R’n’B lovers, hate for R’n’B. I saw people up there trying to spin a few R’n’B records and people were just walking off the dance floor. So I just got on there and played tracks like ‘Putt Jattan De’, ‘Pehle Lalkare Naal’, and they loved it. And then Westwood came on and started playing Bhangra music, all Bhangra. He had to because it was just that sort of crowed. In my set I played a mix of ‘Balle Balle and ‘Regulate’ by Nate Dogg, R.I.P. I took the ‘Balle Balle’ off so it was just Nate Dogg running, Sick. I was watching the crowd and they were like...’What’s this stuff?’ I think the guys a legend but the crowd were not responding, not showing love. So yeah, it can be hard to completely fuse the worlds together. It is more difficult to bring Hip Hop and Rap to the Bhangra crowd than the Desi stuff to mainstream.
(Kam) We all know that ‘Mundian To Bach’ got alot of air play but your music has always had that crossover appeal. As I recall one of your earlier tracks, ‘Mapia tu Dhar’ got some mainstream airplay didnt it?
(PMC) It did. Yes, John Peel played that track. That really inspired me even more to get Bhangra in the mainstream. John Peel used to play all the good alternative music so I was cuffed that he was playing my music on his show. Other people were playing my stuff too which was great. There is a station called Radio Luxembourg and they had a presenter who was more John Peel than John Peel! He picked up on my stuff from about ‘92,‘93. I think it was one of the first European radio stations so it has always had that nostalgic audience and they pick up on some good stuff. It was good to have people like that following me. Even before ‘Bachke’ went mainstream I was appearing on drum and bass radio stations mixing drum and bass with tracks like ‘ Jind Mahi’. People were loving it. At around that time I was doing these shows I was going to start work on my first Hip Hop album. The album that I am working on now is called ‘56 Districts’ I’ll give you that as an exclusive. It has the map of Punjab on there and it’s basically a Hip Hop album. I’ve got some Desi in there but I’ve got alot of UK Rappers and American Rappers on there. So it will have more of a Hip Hop album vibe than a Desi vibe. This is the album that I was planning around 2000/2001 when I was just trying to get off the Moviebox deal. They wanted A Desi album. You don't give them an experimental album when they want a Desi album, you know what I’m saying? You got a deal with them so you give them what they want. So I was just about to do this album then the Knight rider tune blew up.
(Kam) I want to just go back abit and talk about ‘Magic Desi’ That was not an official release was it?
(PMC) Yeah, you’re right. Again those were some of the tracks I did at the start and Ninder didn’t want to release them under his own label so we just release it under no label. We were going to use the same loop hole as before to get them released. To be honest it wasn’t much to do with me. Ninder released them. By then alot of people had already got hold of alot of my old masters. There were quite a few albums coming out like ‘Magic Desi’, ‘100% Desi’, ‘Hidden Treasures’ by LL Cool Singh...
(Kam) Were all those songs yours?
(PMC) Yeah, they were all from my collection. The reason ‘Hidden Treasures’ came out was a guy called Nirmal Suri, don’t get me wrong, he is a friend of mine, claimed that he owned the rights to G.T Road and certain tracks, which no one is disputing. In those days I used to be quite happy to send people fully mastered tracks, on a D.A.T. So everyone had them anyway. Another thing to remember is that in my first three albums, I didn't play a single note. There was no keyboards, no instruments, everything was from vinyls. They were all samples on them. Everything. You can never clear those songs. So everyone had a copy of these tracks but the way I saw it was they were demos. They were not for release. They were never really meant to be released.
(Kam) Did those releases annoy you?
(PMC) I was annoyed when they were released to tell you the truth. But it is in the past now, and I don’t really look back. But at the time it did annoy me. If people had said look, here's a couple of grand then that is a different story but that never happened so I did find myself annoyed at the time.
End Of Part 1
Coming up in Part 2 ............... (PMC) “He said to me you might as well go home now and if you are lucky you will make more money out of this than me. I asked him what he meant. He said ‘Gigs.’ I Said ‘Listen, you taking the P***?”......
[glow=red,2,300]Interview By Kam Gill[/glow]
Check out Part 2
