Q&A with thePhantom*
Q&A + MP3: thePhantom*
By Jason Harper in Local, MP3, Q&AFriday, Aug. 21 2009 @ 10:23AM
If anyone in the local music scene has managed to contradict his own name, it’s thePhantom*.
ThePhantom* doesn’t keep his game under wraps.
Far from inconspicuous and never known to lurk on the sidelines, thePhantom*, whose alter ego is mild-mannered UMKC Urban Studies major Kemet Coleman, has been super-active in the fray, saturating the hip-hop milieu with hella live shows (many at the newly established ScionLab) and an online presence that other rappers could and should learn from.
He first swooped onto the scene in 2007 at the tender age of 21 with the release of Release, a blitz of techno-enhanced beats and Tech N9ne-influenced hyperspeed rap that was actually his fourth album. (Yeah, dude’s roots run deep.) Earlier this year, he crafted the largely instrumental opus, Phantastic: Hummingbird Grooves For The Neo-Conscious Mind and gave it away free online. He’s currently prepping his next record, Destroy & Rebuild, for a December date, to be put out on his own brand-new label, Ripple Effect Records.
We caught up with thePhantom* to preview a track from the new album and talk about his future career and why Kansas City should not be like a doughnut.
The Wayward Blog: What have you been up to lately?
ThePhantom*: A lot of events. I haven’t really had the space to do many events in the past, but now that I’m hooked up with ScionLab, I’m able to do it. I’m trying to get the label together, and we’re going to release my next album, Destroy & Rebuild. It’s coming out December 22, and it’ll be the first release. I’m trying to build this label Tech N9ne style, where I have a partner and have some other artists on board. We’re trying to make it Kansas City’s Motown - we’ll have our own studio, do our own recording. It’s gonna be called Ripple Effect Records. So, on December 22, be on the look out for that.
Who’s your partner?
His name is Mike Frank. We’re basically high school friends putting stuff together. He has a business degree now. I work with him on everything from merch to booking all my shows. He does all the little bitty stuff that I don’t have time for.
How is this like Tech N9ne?
We’re not gonna approach radio at all, we’re gonna do it completely our way. We’re not gonna succumb to the payola and all that stuff. Our basic belief is if we make good music, people will like it and it’ll build a community. We’re not gonna compromise what we’re doing for radio play or televsion play. It’s completely independent: for the arts, for the music and for the people.
So tell us about this song, “City Lights.”
I’m trying to help bridge that gap between the newer generation of hip-hop artists in the scene with the older, more established ones. That’s why I included Reach in there. I feel like if we divide any more, progress will stop.
MP3: thePhantom*, “City Lights (feat. Reach)”
So what about your own music - will you continue releasing your own stuff once Ripple Effect gets going?
I don’t think I’ll do much after Destroy & Rebuild. I’m looking to do more on the buisness side of things, such as producing events. I’m the type of person, who when I do stuff, I need it to be inspired by something.
What inspires you now?
Basically the whole — and this is really cliché — but just the direction hip-hop has been taking for the past decade, it’s become really poppy and not inspirational. I feel like — this is a Marxist way of looking at things — but we need to symoblically destroy and rebuild. Following the rules of demoliton: if you see something like a building, and the building is no longer able to produce anything, you can destroy it and build something better. …
I’m an urban studies student at UMKC, so if you notice on “City Lights,” that has the stuff I’m touching on — this whole concept of the ctiy dying at the mercy of the suburbs. The city is becoming like a doughnut. … In the city, you can walk to any destination you want, but in the suburbs, you can’t. The lights were the non-changing aspect of the city — the lights were overlooking the changes in the city. They’re there from beginning to end; they basically watch over the city.
Based on your studies, what do you think of Kansas City today?
Kansas City has a lot of rich culture, a lot of history with jazz and blues. I don’t think everyone here realizes that in its heyday, this was really an epicenter of culture. Now it’s just a shell of what it was. Like 18th and Vine, half the buildings aren’t there anymore, or they’re painted on.
That’s not symoblic of what it was.
Also, you can’t really run a succesfull city if it’s so spread out. A lot of funding goes to highway projects, when it could be going to things like school reform and mass transit … I think it’s a canvas. We can definitely build on it and make it something great like it once was.
What’s going on with the ScionLab?
It all started with Miles Bonny. When he had Future Funk Wednesdays, he gave me those connections with Dept Zero, and Dept Zero liked what we were doing and are definitely on board with the direction we wanna take, so they gave us a space on Mondays or whenever we wanted. We bring people in and keep it art first - music, visual arts, graphic arts. That couldn’t have been a more perfect location for it, right in the Crossroads. One night, we brought out this kid, he’s 16 and a poet and has been living in Leawood all his life, and he was like, “I didn’t even know Kansas City had all this.” Most people aren’t aware and are almost scared to come to the city. You can’t excape the social aspect of a city, you just can’t do it. We need to open people’s eyes and let them see the beautiful and historic side of the city.
ThePhantom* performs this Sunday, August 23, at Balanca’s.
