I had the chance to interview MC Moore at the Jack Richardson Music Awards last month. You can listen to the interview right here, you can read the transcript, or you can download it for free. Enjoy!
Chase: “Alright everybody, this is Chase March and I’m here with MC Moore. You’re nominated for a JRMA tonight.”
MC Moore: “Yup, for the second time.”
Chase: “So you are in a few different groups and you’ve released some solo material as well too.”
MC Moore: “I haven’t really dropped a solo album since ’07. I dropped a mix tape in ’08. I’ve been doing a local hip-hop night every two weeks in London. I got the Mullet N Steps out now and the band that I’m in, The People, we just dropped an album and toured it too.”
Chase: “You’ve worked with some underground legends like Fritz the Cat, Fresh Kils, and Ghettosocks.”
MC Moore: “That whole crew just took us right under their wing and just completely took care of us in the best possible way. I have nothing but good things to say about the whole Backburner posse, Alpha Flight, and Top Billing posse. We did one track with Toolshed with Fresh Kils and that lead to that whole album pretty much.”
Chase: “So how long have you been emceeing?”
MC Moore: “I did my first show when I was 18 but I’ve been rapping for almost 10 years now. Ya know, ya freestyle for a couple years, then you get into writing raps, and doing songs-”
Chase: “And then you get a bit more serious about it and then it takes off from there. You said you just came back from a tour?”
MC Moore: “Yeah, with The People. We just did 7 shows just in Southwestern Ontario and had a great time. It was our first tour and it was a lot of fun.”
Chase: “What kind of a response are you getting on the road?”
MC Moore: “It’s awesome. We’re quite the mix, I mean, we all rap but our guitarist sings and out drummer was in a punk band. We have a bassist who raps and plays bass. We have DJs. So we have people who don’t like hip-hop who seem to be feeling what we’re doing. And of course, people that are into hip-hop feel it too. So, it’s working for us.”
Chase: “That’s cool. Do you have an online presence?”
MC Moore: “I’ve basically been off the Internet for a few years now. I’m just in a big transition period where I haven’t dropped anything solo in a while. I’ve been all over the place and I’m just really enjoying making music with The People and I’ve just been letting my solo stuff slide, which is getting fixed in the next year.”
Chase: “It’s good to see you making moves but you do need to be on the Internet in this day and age because if people hear about an artist, that’s one of the first places they go. And when I went there to check out your stuff, all I found was your old stuff and had I stopped there, I wouldn’t have paid you much attention. I’m glad I looked further though and met you because I really like your Mullet N Steps disc and work you are doing with The People.”
MC Moore: “Mullet N Steps is on MySpace. We have our own website for The People at thepeoplesmusic.ca. That’s all taken care of, you know what I mean? Rappers are lazy, man. Like it or not, rappers are lazy. I’ve just been letting my own, the MC Moore stuff-”
Chase: “It’s not just rappers, it’s musicians too because a part of this weekend’s events were seminars. I went to one on how to market yourself as a musician and it was primarily musicians there. I think I was the only one from the media. Anyway, it was interesting to see because they asked the audience, ‘How many people have an email list?’ and no one put up their hand. So I guess musicians in general want to focus on their music, they don’t want to focus on the business side.”
MC Moore: “Exactly. You need people. But it’s a natural progression where it’s gotten to the point now where I’m looking for someone to take care of that for me. I’m looking for that, all in conjunction with working on a new solo record. But like I said, I’ve been up with the Mullet N Steps and The People lately and been having a lot of fun with it.”
Chase: “So how do you go about writing your songs? What’s your process?”
MC Moore: “For years I used to just take a beat and sit on it and try to figure out what that beat was saying to me. Ya know, what that vibe was on that beat and trying to match the proper vibe with that beat. That used to work until recently. We’ve gotten into digging records now, we’re sampling, we’re making our own beats instead of getting beat CDs from people we know. We’re taking it back and I’m really enjoying that.”
Chase: “Yeah, I think sampling is something that has been missing in hip-hop lately.”
MC Moore: “I see it coming back. Look at Kayne West. He’s sampling soul records.”
Chase: “Of course, the only problem with sampling is that people want to be greedy and charge you crazy amounts to use a sample.”
MC Moore: “In the game we’re in though, no one is suing you unless you’re making money. Canadian hip-hop, especially people that are sampling, it’s pure. No one’s clearing samples. How many labels are there in Canada even that are pushing it out on the radio, know what I mean, and getting it heard to the point where people will pick up on it.”
Chase: “Even so, I think that sampling has its place and sampling is not necessarily wrong. I mean, if you’re taking some old sound and you’re making it new or you’re chopping it up so that it’s almost unrecognizable, but someone recognizes it, ya know, you’ve done something new with that.”
MC Moore: “Yeah, you’ve made a new composition. Have you see the movie ‘Copywrite Criminals?’ That movie is out right now and I only caught the tail end of it but that’s what the whole movie is about, taking something and turning it into something new and whether that’s a crime or not.”
Chase: “Well, that’s been done all throughout history in every art form. What’s interesting is that I read a blog post recently where there was a book released where somebody took other authors’ works like paragraph for paragraph and put in into a new book, a completely different thing, and just footnoted them all at the end. I think rap needs a footnote system because if we credited them so people could see it then maybe we wouldn’t have to pay for it.”
MC Moore: “You gotta think too, if it wasn’t for hip-hop, would people even be paying homage to this incredible artists? Really? I mean, of our generation? Would people even still be buying that many records? All the heads I know, they got crates and crates and crates and crates of records, and they know their music and they know who played bass on what record and would did drums there.”
Chase: “And that’s missing today because everyone just downloads and there’s no liner notes, nobody knows anything about it. The music almost, to me, doesn’t mean anything unless I have the product. I appreciate that you gave me your CDs here because I can flip this around, I can read it, I can touch it. Ya know, with an MP3 you can’t do anything with it really. I think that limits some people’s perceptions on the music because music is just everywhere. It’s like, ‘Oh, I download this, I don’t care about it,’ move on to something else. So if you have the product and you go to a show and meet the artists, then you’re more invested in it as well.”
MC Moore: “It’s getting tough now too. I mean, people are selling download cards and gig sticks. It’s getting to the point now, do you buy big bulky boxes of CDs or a business card case full of download cards.”
Chase: “I prefer the CDs.”
MC Moore: “I prefer the CDs as well. I would love to have a 12-inch at every show but your whole CD collection can also go right here now.”
Chase: “In your iPod. Yeah. Those things are tiny now.”
MC Moore: “I went to the pawn shop to buy a Discman because of my CD collection but I couldn’t do it. Am I gonna spend $30 on a discman or $40 on an iPod. I mean, I just got rid of my walkman 5 years ago.”
Chase: “I love cassette tapes. Before I got this laptop, I actually recorded the Classified interview on audio cassette. I took it to my friend and she put it into the computer for me and digitized it. He thought that was hilarious because he used to have the same tape deck.”
MC Moore: “I miss tapes.”
Chase: “Yeah me too. The problem with tapes is that they do get old, they wear out, and then they stop playing.”
MC Moore: “But so do CDs, so do records. But you can’t beat the sound quality. All the tapes I have in my car, I can’t put them past half.”
Chase: “I remember when CDs first came out. I was like, ‘I’m never buying a CD ever. Compact? How is this compact? I can fit five tapes in my jean pocket, I can’t fit one CD in my hip pocket.’ I used to go out with tons of tapes in my pocket, my walkman, and extra batteries. That’s how I rolled. Nowadays I’ll see kids in my class that have an MP3 player and they only have 20 songs on it. ‘Aren’t you bored of those same 20 songs?’ because I had like 200 tapes and I used to change them all the time. Even with my MP3 player it sucks because I don’t change songs around on it often enough so it’s the same thing all the time.”
MC Moore: “With tapes and records, it also seemed that you had to have a better product. You could listen to the whole tape. You could listen to both sides of the tape. You could bump that tape for six months.”
Well that ends Part 1 of the interview. Come back tomorrow to read Part 2. You can click on the player at the top of the post to hear the entire interview right now. You will also hear some great music by MC Moore and as an added bonus, a nice mix-set after the interview. Check it out and leave a comment below. Thanks!
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