A conversation with 8Ball & MJG
8Ball & MJG play the Pimp C tribute showcase on A3C's Main Stage in Old 4th Ward tonight (Sat., Oct. 11) at 8 p.m.
Memphis hip-hop legends 8Ball & MJG play the Pimp C tribute show at A3C's Old Fourth Ward Main Stage on Sat., Oct. 11 (tonight) at 8 p.m. Before the show, they took a few minutes to talk about Memphis, recording two new records, and watching hip-hop come full-circle.
I’ve often thought of 8Ball & MJG as one of the first groups that really built the framework for Southern hip-hop — using the same elements of traditional East Coast hip-hop: samples, scratching, and lyrical creativity. But the sample choices and the Southern drawl created your own lane. Does that seem like a fair assessment? Were you conscious of that sort of thing, or did it develop naturally?
MJG: We kind of did both. It happened naturally, but we thought about how we wanted to use this kind of music, where we came from, and how these things influenced us. You can hear that in a lot of the samples we use.
8Ball: We left Memphis with a suitcase full of our parents’ records — he had a suitcase, I had a suitcase — full of records. We went to Houston and created Coming Out Hard, On the Outside Looking In, and On Top Of the World with these records that we got from our parents — it was all what we grew up on in the house.
MJG: We used a lot of those records for samples, but even the sounds and the music we created on our own were inspired by all of these things. When we was coming up, one minute all of the music we heard on the radio was mostly R&B, soul, and disco. Then bam! Hip-hop came into the picture.
8Ball: “Rapper’s Delight!”
MJG: Yeah, all that stuff. What a lot of youngsters don’t know about hip-hop today is it’s really come full circle. We was listening to Kurtis Blow the other day — talking about how a lot of what he was doing way back when, cats is just catching up to it now. His was just more of a raw form.
8Ball: It was status quo, man. Back then, it was just like it is now, but kids and new artists don’t realize that they aren’t doing nothing new. Even though it sound like a robot …
MJG: It might sound like a whole new thing, but it’s been did.
8Ball: If you rapping in an awesome way, using dope metaphors, it’s still not new, you know what I’m saying?
MJG: Hip-hop being polished, basically.
8Ball: Yeah, but with Kurtis Blow, back then, if you didn’t sound like Kurtis or Kool Moe Dee, you weren’t doing shit! If you’re not like this guy, you’re not doing shit! And that’s how hip-hop is to this day. People don’t realize that if you don’t sound like Future or Rich Homie Quan or Thugga Thugga, you’re not doing nothin’. If you don’t sound like Lil Wayne or Drake, you know? People think, “Man, you’re not doing nothing!” The art of it has flourished, but it’s the same rotation, man.
So even though technology has changed drastically, and the sound has evolved with it, the nature of the beast hasn’t changed?
MJG: It’s hard beats and music, you know? Music still comes down to music. There was a lot of hip-hop that was all beats, but from there early days of hip-hop there was synths and drums and beats and singing. A lot of people look at it like singing just came along. Really, though, disco just morphed into hip-hop.
One difference is that hip-hop has become such a dominant force in pop culture. When Kurtis Blow was coming up it was underground music. Now it’s a universal musical and cultural reference point.
MJG: That's true, but it’s still the new baby. It’s been a new baby for the last 30 years.
8Ball: Everything’s been affected by hip-hop — clothes, other forms of music.
MJG: It has brought more people together — beautiful cultures. Hip-hop is like the universal language. It don’t matter what language I speak, if we do hip-hop together, it’s gonna have common ground. There’s a lotta rap coming from different languages, and even if you don’t understand what they sayin’ the vibes and the rhythm and the music and everything is all the same.
Do you guys still live in Memphis?
MJG: We live in both Memphis and Atlanta.
Do you go back to Orange Mound when you’re in Memphis?
MJG: Yeah, all the time — when we’re in town.
8Ball: I got family there. Both of us do.
How has Orange Mound changed since you put out a record like Comin’ Out Hard in 1993?
MJG: Mostly just certain landmarks are gone, you know? A lot of real estate has been torn down.
8Ball: The houses we both grew up in, they gone. That’s the biggest change for people. And I’m not being racist or nothing, but it’s more Mexicans in Orange Mound now. In ’93, like it was probably this one Mexican family there, and you knew them! “That’s where the Mexicans stay at,” you know? Now they’re a fixture in that area. That’s really the biggest change, but the people are still the same.
Where your houses torn down to make room for condos or some kind of mixed-use shopping thing?
8Ball: [[[To MJG] Did they ever build anything over there? I grew up in a row of duplex houses.
MJG: [[[To 8Ball] You know Wayne momma? She’s the only original person there, and I think there’s two houses on the street now. They’ve torn down about half of them. But I think there are two residents on the street now and one of them is Wayne momma. She lives in the same house. She’s the only original original, from before we were born, that still stays on the street.
8Ball: You know them kind of neighborhoods, some of that stuff they tear down just to make room for new stuff and hopefully sell the property to whoever buys it. Then they rebuild newer type houses or whatever. I think that’s what they do.
MJG: Yeah it’s really a lot of that going on in Orange Mound. Brand new houses getting built from the ground up. Modern houses.
Did it feel like there was a strong hip-hop scene in Memphis when you were growing up?
MJG: There was!
8Ball: Memphis was like country town New York. We literally walked around with radios and jogging suits.
MJG: Radios in the wintertime, you know [[[[[[[laughs]?
8Ball: Mother fuckers from different neighborhoods would battle break dance and freestyle — rapping with cats from other neighborhoods. It was literally this Crush Groove scene going in Memphis, like for real. That was in like ’88, ’89 when we was in high school. That evolved into the Gangsta Pat era — a whole different era of Memphis music. Studios was popping up, record labels, talent shows, stuff was centered around Memphis hip-hop.
MJG: It was flourishing.
As someone who’s totally removed from the Orange Mound that I hear about in your records, I’ve built up a mental image of what the neighborhood is like — a mythological place, which I’m sure is nothing like the real Orange Mound.
8Ball: [[[[[[[Laughs] It’s small town USA — Ghettoville.
MJG: It’s one of the largest black neighborhoods in the United States.
8Ball: It used to be like an orange grove, and it was one of the first places where black people started making neighborhoods in the old South.
MJG: And owned a lot of businesses and land.
8Ball: Black people congregated there, bought the land, and settled there. Just like how Beale street and downtown Memphis were sort of the first of their kind, Orange Mound was one of the first of its kind.
8Ball: You can go to PBS and they have these shows all about it. We got a buddy doing a documentary about Memphis history, like each neighborhood: South Memphis, Orange Mound, North Memphis, Frayser, and the history for each section. How Germantown got its name; stuff like that.
I don’t know Memphis super well, but I know Cooper Young because that’s where the Goner Records store is, and Shangri-La Records is nearby. I always see the Orange Mound sign, but I haven’t been there.
8Ball: Cooper Young is where white people feel safe. It’s a cool hippie type area.
MJG: It’s a music area too, it’s pretty much Midtown over there.
8Ball: It’s a dope mixed area, all kinds of eclectic art — one of those kinds of areas.
MJG: We record a lot over in that area. It’s like three or four studios we record at over there.
How has the hip-hop scene in Memphis changed since those early days?
MJG: It’s still strong. It basically changed because hip-hop changed.
8Ball: What we came up on was Memphis music. It’s still strong, people still love their roots. It’s just different because now you have Yo Gotti and Young Dolph doing their thing.
Are there similarities between Memphis and Atlanta?
8Ball: Memphis is like a little Atlanta. Memphis has 240. Atlanta has 285 — the big circle around the city. If you're on 240 it’s just like 285. Stay on 240 and you’re just gonna do a big circle around the city.
What is that giant pyramid in the middle of Memphis all about?
MJG: It used to be an auditorium-coliseum where the Memphis Tigers used to play. Then the two Mike Tyson fights was there, and then they used to have free events there. Then they just let it go for a minute.
8Ball: It’s just been a landmark for the last five-ten years.
MJG: It’s supposed to be Buck N' Bass. They’re building on it now. They were holding off but they’re really supposed to be finishing it this time.
It’s going to be a hunting and sporting goods store?
MJG: [[[[[[[Laughs] That’s the construction they’re doing on it right now.
That seems like such a waste of a gigantic monument like that.
8Ball: Shit, definitely.
You’re in the studio working on new songs now?
8Ball: Yeah, we got a live album getting ready to drop. It’s a bunch of our old stuff like “9 Little Millimeta Boys,” “My Homeboy’s Girlfriend,” “Comin’ Out Hard,” but with live drums, guitars. That’s next. Then we got another studio album coming together called Timeless.
Do you have a label or are you doing it independently?
8Ball: We don’t know yet.
Would it make sense to go independent with it at this point in your career?
MJG: It all depends — it’s like sports. Every deal and every contract is not the same. And you know the old saying: “Time is a bitch.” And it’s for real. It could be for the better or for the worst. Time is a bitch and if you’re in the right place at the right time, and the right person presents the right opportunity, then run with it. But you know how fast hip-hop moves. Every two or three years it’s something different. The industry isn’t structured how it used to be. If you sign a deal in 2013, the pretence that you're signing under and the style of how things were going might be totally different next summer.
8Ball: Right now we’re trying to create music without the pressures of all that — just make great music first and let it be what it’s going to be. The fans will make it what it’s gonna be. The proper channels, if any, are going to make it be what it’s gonna be. We wanna make this great project without all the pressures of what label we’re going to put it out on, and when’s it gonna be released? Let’s make a great album and think about that later.
Is it difficult to put distance between that sort of thing when you’re in the studio, or is it always creeping up in the back of your mind?
8Ball: We didn’t come up trying to shop a demo, or trying to make somebody listen to our song. Every entity that we have ever been involved with, from Suave House, to to Diddy to TI’s label, we always just did the music and got it out there some type of way. Not by running behind some executive or somebody that’s got a label job, you know what I’m saying? All those projects was just us doing us, and it came our way.
That could make your life more and less difficult now. It seems like a lot of people and labels that were into the music industry strictly to make a lot of money have gone away because there’s not a lot of money to be made selling records now. So the people that are still putting out records are there because they are truly passionate about music — which presents a whole new set of challenges.
MJG: There is a lot of money to be made off endorsements, and everything you do around music. That’s what’s really getting the money.
It’s kind of like how sports is now when compared to the old days. I look at me and Ball like the Dr, J’s of the game. Cats like us and cats before us molded the game — invented the three-point line and the dunk, and took it to the next level. We helped invent the game but we didn’t get the big fancy contracts. Now you can have one song and make as much money as boys was making off one album. It’s a different time: You can come in the game quick now and if you got two hits you’ll be up millions up. In our time to make that same money you had to grind out a couple of albums. But we were laying the blue print. Cats now take it to the next level.
8Ball: There’s more merchandising and things like that — the extra stuff is really a bigger part of it than it was when we was coming up. Now, if an artist gets a hit single it’s expected for them to make some shoes or some clothes or something else to run with. Not just the music.
Even in the ‘90s that was something that a lot of musicians publicly looked down upon, like it was a sell-out sort of thing.
8Ball: Yeah, but even a lot of those guys still sold merch at their concerts. Those same guys that was talking had a T-shirt or something else they were selling. It’s just at another level now. There is power in that culture that has to have a T-shirt from every great concert or some kind of memorabilia of their favorite kind of music that they go see live, or things of that nature.
MJG: Through it all, though, we just try to keep our passion for the music. We understand and notice the changes in hip-hop and the evolution of hip-hop, and where we fit in. At the same time, we try to keep up and do all the right things for hip-hop in the present, but still truly love the music. Even if you making bouquet, but really love the music for real.