MarQ Spekt “Sometimes a treasure’s better when you have to dig it up.”

On June 9, I interviewed MarQ Spekt one of my favorite hip-hop artists of the past 15 years. Spekt had a new cassette tape of previously recorded but unreleased material dropping on the 16th, so our conversation focused primarily on his past work – the artistic developments leading up to The Grilchy Era.

On Thursday, June 11, jazz great Ornette Coleman passed away at 85. Although jazz was mentioned several times in my discussion with Spekt, Coleman wasn’t. Still, in continually revisiting his music over the following days, I couldn’t help recalling several ideas Spekt and I had touched on, about ephemerality and permanence; how a work of art is often understood differently over time, not necessarily because the piece itself evolves but because tastes, perceptions, and cultural norms most definitely do.

I thought about how some art continues to shock and confuse audiences decades after its debut, while some becomes diluted by wider social acceptance. In one particularly harsh moment of reflection, I snapped a picture of Coleman’s Twins LP and Tweeted it with the caption, “NWA is less than 30 and basically a meme. This was recorded 59-61, released 71 and will still disturb your neighbors.” For some listeners — typically, though certainly not exclusively, those of us who collect items of ephemera like limited-edition vinyl and cassettes — the idea that we are among a select group that can enjoy and understand the work of a particular artist when most cannot is part of that work’s appeal to us. We like being in on it.

And though appealing to a wider audience further down the road can and should enrich the artists themselves, perhaps the most valuable works are those that over time gain broader appeal while maintaining the hard edge that made them so divisive in the first place. They establish precedents but precedents that can’t be obsoleted by corporate co-opting, bubblegum biters, or moronic meme-ification. If we can’t say that about “Fuck The Police,” we can probably say it about almost everything Ornette Coleman ever played or wrote, and I expect someday we’ll be able to say it about MarQ Spekt’s music too.


The coming release of The Grilchy Era provides a good opportunity to reflect back on your work up to this point. You’ve been making music for going on two decades now. Tell me about the tracks on The Grilchy Era cassette. When were these songs recorded?

The Grilchy Era goes back to like 06 or 07 maybe, all the way up until a joint I did with Clever 1 of Da Buze Bruvaz a couple months ago, [“Pockets Dug”], that’s a fresh one. “Murderface Splash” is the intro, that’s [over a beat by] some producers I had met in New Orleans that I’m actually going to do a project with, like a no-sample project. That’s kind of recent, but other than that, I put [The Grilchy Era] together as a tape [for] somebody [who’s] never heard of me. I call it an easy-listening Spekt tape, because it ain’t too, too, too deep and it’s still my whole essence and aura of grilch and rawness on the whole tape.

The intro is like you go to the movies, you’re going to see a dark film and that sets the tone, but it goes other places from there. I put a piece of one of my favorite joints, “Broken Halo,” which was on my man Vordul Mega’s tape. That joint was tough. Stuff where I say the word ‘grilchy’ is also in there, from the origins of even coming up with the word like 10 years ago. It’s that kind of vibe: new joints mixed with old joints mixed with unreleased joints that are neither new nor old but unheard.

You’re one of a growing number of independent hip-hop artists who have found a market for your unreleased materials using specialty labels releasing vinyl or cassettes. Are you making a conscious effort to appeal to collectors and listeners who appreciate physical media?

Well, I’ve always been focused on art, so when I write stuff or put stuff out or package it a certain way, it’s always meant to be kind of limited-edition, special-edition shit, because that’s what I was attracted to. I’ve never been into what everybody else was into. Since 95 or 96, I’ve always tried to write for people on my wavelength. I don’t really write for everybody.

When I was first really, really introduced to the game was in Atlanta. I had to move out of Philly. Battling people in Philly, Jersey, New York, and being up on the street level where everybody at that time was hungry, I wanted to battle Black Star; I wanted to battle Company Flow; whoever was on Rawkus, I wanted to battle at that time, because I was like, ‘Yo they not that nice.’ And then, I was peeping more and more because at that time I was of the mind frame of, ‘These are my peers,’ like I’m equal to the dudes. I’ve always felt that. Even back when Common dropped his first album, I was like, ‘It’s trash.’ You know what I’m saying? Because I had that East Coast attitude where it’s like, on some MC shit, you automatically are always gonna feel your artwork is better. And it’s funny because when I met Bigg Jus, he had moved to Atlanta in 98 or 99, my man had hooked me up with him, and the first thing I told him was, “Yo, I was looking to battle you and El-P,” because I like Funcrusher and when I heard that, that’s one of those albums where I was feeling, ‘Damn, these cats is really on what I’m on,’ because I was a little more esoteric back then. You know what I’m saying? I was doing songs with Ced Gee from Ultra.

Yeah, I was going to ask about him.

I won a contest actually.

Through 3-2-1 Records, right?

Yup, 3-2-1 Records had like a little contest at a record store back in the day, and I came through humble. I wasn’t really even planning to spit, but I was watching everybody go, and the host was trying to tell everybody about they rhymes and stuff. So, in my rhyme I was kind of dissing him and breaking him down.

Who was the host?

I don’t even remember. He’s not even important. He’s nobody right now. He doesn’t exist right now. He hasn’t existed in like 18 years. So, that’s how I won, and later Fiona Bloom [founder of 3-2-1 Records and later Sub Verse Music] hit me like, “Yo, this was a contest.” I didn’t even know … I was just doing what I do. So, she was like, “You won, we’re going to put out a single for you on 3-2-1, we’re going to have you work with Ced Gee.” They flew me to New York. I stayed in Harlem with him. It was probably like 1998. We knocked out a couple cuts, had one of my mans from Philly come up there. We recorded some music with Ced; we met Spaceman [presumably Spekt is referring to Billy “Spaceman” Patterson, a guitarist who recorded with Ultramagnetic MCs and Miles Davis, among others]; I met Daddy-O from Stetsasonic; Ced introduced me to Kool Keith—

Road trips, man? I was in fucking Thailand riding a elephant back up the side of a mountain, man.

Who’d you bring up from Philly?

It was my man, Z. We had a group called Charcoal at that time — 96. He was super nice with it too, like he was doing complicated schemes on some aggressive shit back then. He used to call himself The Number Z. He was really, really crazy with it. I’ve got tapes of us rhyming, freestyling, stuff like that. Z was super, super nice, but he was crazy.

Were the songs that you did at that time the ones that ended up on Ced Gee’s Underground Show release?

Yeah, I think we on like two songs on there.

Discogs lists three: “Duress,” “Rhyming Psycho” and “Meltdown.”

Yup, yup, that’s it. Crazy, you dug, man ‘cause those are like untapped joints. I have that CD somewhere around. I’ve gotta find it.

Is Z Zoran who was on “Meltdown” with you?

Yup, that song was crazy. That was probably my favorite one we did, I think. No, “Rhyming Psycho” was nuts.

I’d kill to hear that. Speaking of which, I’ve gotta ask you about Ghostmaker. I know you always say it’s coming out.

I’m actually putting it together to drop, I think, this year, but the thing is, I think a lot of people ask about it just for the fact that it was actually me from 99 to 02 or 03. It captured joints I did from 99 to 03, and I packaged them up and sold it basically on my own back then, hand-to-hand, but the people I sold it to hand-to-hand may not even have it anymore. I think maybe one person or two people I know still have the actual CD I gave them.

A lot of people were selling CDs hand-to-hand at shows in the late 90s/early 00s.

We used to go on the road with them. Broady [Spekt is referring to Broady Champs, his crew from the time, which ended up releasing one official album on Day By Day Entertainment in 2006; this and two of their mixtapes/street albums can be streamed or downloaded via member Buddy Leezle’s Bandcamp page] used to take joints to Scribble Jam and come back with rent money, man. Especially when we were really, really doing that, we were pressing up T-shirts, CDs, we’d rent a van, and we’d just be out there flipping them joints, like $15 or $20 gets you a CD and a T-Shirt. That’s just the heart of the grind.

Ghostmaker was joints I started doing in like late 98, early 99, all the way through roughly to about 2002 or 2003, and a couple of those were supposed to be on my official release through Sub Verse. You’ve gotta realize that at that time, Sub Verse was super, super underground, even for what was out at the time. Nobody cared about DOOM, nobody cared about C-Rayz Walz, Micranots, Scienz Of Life, Stahhr — nobody really cared. We all got a little bit of money, but when you think about the potential then, I mean DOOM at that time was going to do a lot of beats on my album. Between ID 4 Winds, DOOM and Bigg Jus, that was going to be the primary producers, and my man Tef the Practitioner would’ve probably done something, but all my production would’ve been in-house between those people. So, my album would’ve been a cult classic just off the strength of the production at that time, 2000/2001.

So, when we eventually do hear Ghostmaker, are we going to hear exclusive DOOM production?

Not on that. You’ll hear that on Bionic Jazz. On Ghostmaker, I’ve still gotta find somebody to help me clean up some things, because I’m putting out a special edition of it with some songs that I had on tape, and I’ve just gotta get somebody to rip ‘em and clean ‘em up a little bit… What you’ll hear is me exactly how I was at that time: a little scrappier, a little less refined, definitely more battle tested, just raw. Ghostmaker has some joints on it that are really timeless. It’s just the audio quality [that’s an issue]; it never really got mixed and mastered the way it should’ve, not every song. You heard what was on the single — “No Desert Till You Finish Ya Vegetables,” “The Shoplifter,” and “Liquid Smoke” — but you never heard “3 Meals A Day” [and] a bunch of joints that were just crazy. It’s that rawness.

People need to understand that I transverse a couple different eras. When people were really in the streets ciphering, I was in that era in the 90s. I breathed it, I lived it, I put it down. Then when you get to like Pretty Weapons, that was a little sloppier because it was just me by myself. I didn’t have Bigg Jus in the studio, I didn’t have ID in there, I just had beats and raps, and it was just me trying to figure out how to make an album, after doing Broady stuff.

In the sense that you started your recording career working with Ced Gee and from there started working with Bigg Jus, you bridged two eras just with your features. People always talk about the transition from Ultramagnetic MCs to Company Flow and the whole underground scene that blossoms from there, you know what I mean?

Yeah exactly, and I was getting props from people like KRS-One, Rakim, Kool Keith, DOOM, and RZA, just from rhyming like nothing else. I didn’t have any manager to be their people and hook us up; people would be at spots where I’d be rhyming and come up to me or ask me to rhyme. And this is legends, man. I remember one time: It was my birthday, and KRS-One was doing a show in Atlanta, [so] he was up [at] a radio station being interviewed, and I was like, “Man, it’d be dope to just go meet KRS-One on my birthday.” This was like 2002, maybe. I had my girl with me and we went up there. Yo, the host ended up getting me on the radio freestyling with him, and we were about to leave and he was like, “Don’t leave yet,” so we go in the other room and KRS [tells me], “Make sure you give my people your contact information.” So, I not only got to meet KRS, a dude I’ve been listening to since 88, but his people called me the next day and [said], “Yo, KRS wants you to open a show for him.”

Did you ever see yourself carrying on the tradition of Ultramagnetic?

Man, I’m a compilation of all of that. Ultra was obviously a big influence in certain ways, just as far as the fact that there were no rules, and I think that’s why people listened to them: [for] bar structure, or the way you rhyme or didn’t rhyme and put songs together. Four Horsemen really defined them to me, because it was like these dudes were making up their own rules with music. I remember reading an interview back in the day in the early 90s during Four Horsemen, where they were like, “Ced Gee recorded all his vocals with his back to the microphone.”

I’m a big collector myself, so I’ve got a lot of tapes that I got off the radio when I was living on the East Coast. I definitely always respected a certain caliber, and that was the influence I took on.

3-2-1 Records basically evolved into Sub Verse through Bigg Jus and Fiona Bloom, right?

Yup, exactly.

I’ve gotta ask you particularly about [Bigg Jus’s] “Orbital Mechanics,” because I think that’s the first verse I ever heard from you, and that’s what made me go back and check everything else out. To this day, it’s one of my favorite verses of all time. Can you tell me anything you remember about recording that?

Oh yeah, first of all I’ll tell you that verse was probably done a good three or four years before it got recorded. And a lot of verses I had from back then and different times, you know, I’ll have verses that I had in the book and it just wouldn’t be right yet. The beat wouldn’t be right or anything else wouldn’t be right. This was like 2003 or 2004 when Jus was working on his Poor People’s Day album. He already got a great response from “No Dessert” on Black Mamba Serums. I think they were playing that on Bobbito or something like that, and [Jus] scooped me and was like, “Yo, I’m not having many features, but I need you on it,” and he played me the beat, and I was like, “Ohhh wait a minute, I’ve got something ridiculous for this.” That was when I still wasn’t writing 16s. I was just writing the whole page. I might flip it over and write a couple lines on the back page. I was ignoring bars, so I just read him the whole joint, and he was like, “It’s crazy,” so he requested me to lay it on there. I never heard it until a month later or something… the producer played the final version of it, and I was like, “Wow, you got it sounding really crazy.” Then it came out and a bunch of people reached out to me. Even on an underground level, this was kind of big, and I was just like, “Wow.” That’s basically how it happened.

Jus took me under his wing, and I think had I stayed on Sub Verse, I would’ve put out something incredible at that time, like 2000/2001/2002. I wasn’t as polished, but definitely the energy was there.

Let me go back even further. Tell me about how you came up with the name MarQ Spekt, if you would. MarQ was your tag, is that right?

My tag was ExP, and that’s what I used to go by before that store Express started going by EXP, like early 90s. Mark was just something I used to tell chicks during the pager era, because I always been private, and it was kind of a play on my real name. Spekt comes from when I had dread[lock]s and all the dreads would be like, “respect, spekt” this and that, so my name really derived off of respect, but I always say Mark because I don’t feel like talking to people, so I’d be like, “Yeah, Mark,” and just keep it moving… I don’t know how I bridged it together, but it wasn’t always bridged together.

Possibly as a reference to Marc Spector?

Yeah, Moon Knight. It was loosely off of that too, because he was like a mercenary that was big in Egypt and, you know, always had the ox and all that and reflected off the night time, the moon and everything, so yeah, it was definitely a play off of that as well, loosely.

Did you yourself release a comic at one point, Hardbody Deluxe?

It’s still not done, man. I’m still working on it. I wanted it to just be a comic, and then we got the comic done and I was like, ‘Yo, it needs to be more, it needs to be on some coffee table book stuff,’ so I reached out: I got Action Bronson to do an exclusive recipe; I’ve got a conversation with Styles P talking about comic books and creativity; I’ve got a bunch of different things in there; some short stories. You know, it’s just a matter of time. The materials I have are timeless, and I think I started doing it [in] 2010, but it just has to be done properly, and I don’t rush anything, so when it’s finished and it’s done totally, that’s when I’ll package it up. But, like I said, man, [with] the conversations and the materials and everything I have in it, it could be done in 2025 and it’d still be fresh, so I’m not worried.

That applies to your music as well. You’ve been holding onto stuff, but then it comes out and didn’t really age at all.

Nah, it doesn’t, and that’s one of the things that people like about MacheteVision so much. They like, “Yo, I could just turn this on and listen to it right now and it still sounds like when I first got it.” That’s what I’ve always strived for.

I know when people like something, that’s all they want from the artist, but my shit is not meant for today.

Speaking of MacheteVision, you’ve always had amazing artwork on your album covers. This latest release is no different. Who did the art for The Grilchy Era cassette?

My man, H2O. He was in a group back in the day called Mass Influence, out of Atlanta, but he’s been around forever, and the thing with me is, as far as being into art myself, I’ve always been into graffiti and I feel like art is definitely one of the elements of hip-hop. You may never see a cover with me on it myself, just a picture of me doing anything.

Who are some your favorite illustrators and graf writers?

I’ll tell you Doo [Matt Reid a.k.a. Matt Doo] from doing the essential Organized Konfusion Stress cover; I think that’s one of the best covers ever done. But if you would ask me personally, I know some of the best: Flux [C. Flux Sing] who has done MacheteVision, JustPlayWitIt, and he’s working on the next one, he’s one of my favorites. So, a lot of times I don’t have to go out of a certain sphere for different things.

Some of the rawest MCs, I know them, but that doesn’t mean I’m bothering anybody to jump on anything with me. I’d rather work with people who are agreeable and who are cool, and at the same time we could work out collaborating. There’s people I could reach out to and get a pretty big-name feature from, and I just would rather not do that, because at the end of the day I also feel like if you copping something, it’s from me, so I’d rather put you on to somebody you never heard, like my man Filadel [Castro a.k.a] Akil Nuru. He was my peer, we had a group in 1995, and he still is somebody I hit up. He doesn’t rhyme anymore, but I be like, “Yo, people don’t know you.” I come from that space where back in the day, you might get a tape and you might hear some other voices on it but you don’t know who they are…

Was that group with Filadel called Invisible Games Of Death?

Yup, that was it. You definitely did some digging on that.

I noticed you had Invisible Games of Death and then of course there’s the Invizzibl Men [duo with Karniege that released The Hidden Hand mixtape and The Unveiling album on Backwoodz Studioz]. What’s the fascination with the invisible?

Just that people could never see me, like they could never understand why I studied things. First, it was Invisible Game, because that’s how we used to move, getting things the invisible way, and you could read into that any way. It was basically broady, you know what I’m saying, broady before Broady. We might go to a spot with nothing, you know what I’m saying, broke, and end up bagging some numbers, getting trees thrown at us, and having free drinks, you know what I mean? We came with nothing and left with everything, so that was Invisible Game. We rocked out, we did a couple tracks or whatever. That was actually the first time I was in a real studio-studio. Then I moved to Atlanta, and we still stayed close. Filadel has a tape right now that, to me, if I was to play it for you now — between 96 and 98 he did this — you’ll still be blown away. Just like, lyrically I think he’s one of the best… ever.

Sick name, too: MC Filadel Castro.

Yeah, but he went by his real name, Akil Nuru. Filadel was the alias. But I feel like that with Broady too. I’ve always been around raw people who just never cared about getting the shine. They always just cared about spitting.

This is just a loose connection, but it occurs to me that you’re a Philly artist who has always had great artwork; that’s kind of in the tradition of Schoolly D, is it not?

Oh definitely, man, definitely, because that’s what I grew up around. People always try to place me in Jersey, and I lived in Jersey for a while and recorded there and definitely took it on as I lived there, but at the same time, I was already me before I moved there. My sensibilities were already intact before I ever moved. I had my first fights, I drew my first pictures, wrote my first stories, did my first poetry: all that was done in Philly, so no matter where I go, I always take that with me.

At the same time, you have lived in a lot of different places. One of the things I wanted to ask you is something I’ve asked other artists before: Do you feel that the place where you are at the time influences your writing, or do you find that when you write, in your head, you go somewhere else altogether?

The process has changed, but I think just [from] experience, it doesn’t really matter where you are. The song I did last year that featured Aesop Rock and Mike Eagle, I wrote that verse in Paris and I laid it when I got back here, but I always do my best writing, I’d say, like 30,000 feet in the air in a plane or on an island or a beach.

Why do you think that is?

Just because my chakras are open differently. I could write something anywhere, but inspiration just catches me in a different space when I’m away. I’ll listen to some stuff and find that music hits me differently too, because it’s certain things I can’t listen to at the house, but if I go somewhere, I’ll play it non-stop.

“Air Pegasus” is the name of that track.

Yup, “Air Pegasus,” I named it like that because I bought like three pairs of Air Pegasus over in Europe.

One more Philly MC I really admire and always thought it would be cool to hear you collaborate with is Last Emperor. Have you ever crossed paths with him?

I met him once during the Rawkus era, he was a humble dude, and we built, but at the same time we were in two different spaces. I think he was on his upswing when I met him. He had “Secret Wars,” [and] a bunch of things [going for him]. We were definitely fans of his pen, and that’s another thing: Philly dudes get super, super creative and visual with their stuff.

There’s a lot of people you’ve never heard and may never hear, but they’re still based in the street, and what I mean is they don’t care about anything else going on. They don’t care about going to industry events and shaking hands or whatever. As long as they’re on the block and they can just rhyme, that’s all they want, and I kind of came from that lane. It meant something just to have people respect you enough to let you spit.

I come from that era where nobody had computers in the house. You was just in your house by yourself and calling yourself anything you wanted to call yourself. I’m from the era where you have to go outside the house and go on your block, and then they call you whatever you’ll be, and if you were nice you could go to somebody else’s block and then you’d get respect like that. That’s why I say I’m focused really, really, really big on respect, because it was earned. Even to hear people rhyme and get into a cipher, you had to elbow your way in. It was physical, and then when you started spitting if you weren’t nice you could get cut off and possibly assaulted… I done seen people get punched in the face, knocked out, you know, cut, whatever, for being wack. I’m not saying that was right or whatever, but I’m just saying that’s the era I come from. You couldn’t even spit if you weren’t ill, and if you got a verse off, super-nice. So, it’s the principles that were ingrained in me where I kind of do look at this era as pussy, because you never had to do anything other than buy a mic, you know what I’m saying? You had to buy a mic, you bought a program, you stayed in the house and you made shit, and then you got a manager or a publicist or somebody to promote it, and you’ve got big songs out before you even done one show.

Who were some other artists from either the era you came up in or people you were listening to at that time who, like you said, didn’t even care if they got on or not, but were nice?

This kid Aztec was crazy. I remember he was hunting Dice Raw down. [In] the 90s, I kind of remember him telling me Dice Raw was ducking him or something. And then, my man Wayne a.k.a. Enlil a.k.a. Boureaux the Black Russian was super nice.

Wait, did you say Boureaux the Black Russian?

Man, he was crazy. He used to have this song called “Superstar Philly Gram.” It was “Super super star star Philly Philly gram,” and he killed it. It was so hood. He was hard but he had that finesse, like a Beanie Siegel type of dude, where he had straight hard bars, but he still had a little finesse. Then you had Lost Children of Babylon

I remember them.

They were super-nice. I used to be in ciphers with them. It was like five or six people, and the Hologram, Vinny Paz. Back when he was a skater kid running around LOVE Park, he was kind of soaking that up too, because that whole energy was them kids, so you know, I come from that school. Matter of fact, the first Jedi Mind Tricks vinyl, he gave me in LOVE Park, and I still have that joint and it had Lost Children on there.

Ultra was obviously a big influence in certain ways, just as far as the fact that there were no rules…

Yeah, I remember them being deep, with the craziest names too.

Oh yeah, man, they were super-, super-ill, but I think that right now isn’t really conducive to that kind of density, because everybody was reading scrolls and building on real science too, you know? And I tried to mix that in, like I always had the kind of drunken-master style but thorough and dropping gems, reading a lot, and trying to put that into the art as well.

Back to the present, The Grilchy Era cover immediately made me think of the School Of Sharks, which was born of Broady Champs. What’s the current status of School Of Sharks? Has its musical component been absorbed into Philly LoLife AllStars, or are these still separate existing entities?

They’re all separate existing entities. These are just families more so than rhyme partners or anything like that. It always exists and they’re always going to be a part of everything I do, but it’s not defined as a group. School Of Sharks: Karniege is in there, Filadel is in there, all Broady is in there.

It’s a network more than anything. I’ve always been a soloist but Broady, even that was just friends coming together. We ran around doing stuff for years before we even cut a record. Then Sub Verse had a showcase during Rocksteady. Man, we went to New York and tore it down at the Knitting Factory, prime time. Coming from out of town, being an unknown group, and you’re hearing chicks screaming and all different types of people throwing weed at you — come on, man. We thought we were the shit, and then we went to New York City, which was like the proving grounds, and then they told us we were the shit. I went to the label and Fiona was like, “I’m deaf because a chick was screaming in my ear the whole time y’all were performing.” I was like, “Man, what?!” I banged up a couple jawns, went back to Brooklyn and celebrated, but it was one of those events where you knew something and then when you saw it, realized it; just made you feel 200 times better. That was 2001. I’ve always gotten love in NYC. It’s gotten a bad rap — the East Coast in general, Philly, NY, Jersey — it’s always dog-eat-dog, but I always knew where we stood up there. And my team moved the same way. Half my team is from Brooklyn and Bronx, so that’s family more than anything.

I think, as a gem to any readers, the best groups are people who were just friends first, and the music and everything else comes extra. We’re still family even though we don’t even record. You’ll hear them sprinkled all over The Grilchy Era too. I didn’t really go outside at all. All the features are people that you’ve heard me around: Karniege, Filadel, Lex Boogie, Nyce [a.k.a. Huey P. Capone], Clever 1: it’s all people that I feel are ill who the regular general consensus doesn’t know like that.

Between the words “Grilchy” and “Broady,” there’s a very distinct vocabulary at play in your work. Even back on “No Dessert Till You Finish Your Vegetables,” in the phone message you’re saying, “Let me filtrate that.”

Well, I’m from the hood, man, and in the hood we come up with slang so crazy every day.

But how much of this is dialectical and how much of it is you yourself coming up with slang on the spot?

Like 98 percent me, because I was that dude. I would come up with different words and people would just start using it. That was always me.

As a lyricist too, you come up with all sorts of left-field references and complex multis but in near-rhymes so it’s not always precise.

I love people who think, man. I don’t like giving away everything. Sometimes a treasure’s better when you have to dig it up. I mean, if it’s just on the sidewalk, anybody can get it. You’ve gotta dig a little bit and stumble across something. [I’ve had people tell me], “Yo, something you said back in like 2004, I just understood and got it now.”

I had my first fights, I drew my first pictures, wrote my first stories, did my first poetry: all that was done in Philly, so no matter where I go, I always take that with me.

As a writer, how do you challenge yourself from a technical perspective?

I try to all the time. I don’t know if anybody realized this, but [on] my last two releases, I tried to use a different style every track. Maybe not so much on JustPlayWitIt, but on MacheteVision I used a different cadence and a different flow every song, because I don’t like when people who are talented rely too heavily on one style and rock that style the whole project. To me, that’s kind of corny, because it’s like you’re not challenging yourself at all. And a lot of ‘em sound like they at poetry night, like some spoken word shit, and I’m just like, ‘Dude, do you want anybody to feel anything beyond [those] sitting in the house with head phones on? Is that something that we could hear you spit in the street and be wowed by?’ No, it’s boring, you know what I’m saying? A lot of people just don’t press themselves.

Me, I’m just like, ‘OK, this is this beat, alright, I’ma write like this: everything’s gonna rhyme,’ or ‘Only this and this are gonna rhyme,’ or my delivery’s gonna be harsher and more abrupt, or my delivery’s gonna be smoother and calmer, or it’s gonna be faster or slow. I don’t have just one little handle and style, so I consciously try to do something different every track.

Would you say that carries over beyond the writing to the execution itself, to the performance and the recording of the work?

Oh yeah, definitely because it’s easy to get lazy and just rely on one style and be like, ‘Alright, I’m done,’ and just get in the booth. “Duh-duh-duh-duh-duh,” come out the booth, go back in, “Duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh.” I mean, I know when people like something, that’s all they want from the artist, but my shit is not meant for today. I don’t write for today. I write for somebody to get it 10 years from now and be like, “Yo, this is a gem, this is crazy.” That’s why I’m tryna release most of my stuff now. Between now and the end of the year, I’ma release a bunch of stuff and then I’ma chill, because I’m giving people enough to go back 10 years, 15 years, 20 years.

I collect records. A lot of the records I like are jazz records, like a Lou Donaldson record that he was doing in 69 where you can still feel the energy. Art is supposed to be timeless, so you might look at a picture today and be like, “This is this, this and that,” but then five year from now you may look at the same picture and get a whole totally different view, so I try to design my art like that as well.

That’s a good segue, because just earlier today in preparation for the interview I was revisiting some of your CDs and listening to Pretty Weapons. “Armor Truck Rap” always hit me, maybe initially because of the beat, but it’s the type of track that I still go back to and it isn’t aging at all; if anything, it’s getting better.

My man Hassan Chop did that beat, and he used to run around with DOOM right around that time as well. That was one where I wrote it, I was probably at one of the most brokest points of my life, back in like 2004, and when I heard that beat I was like, ‘Man, I’ve gotta prove something to everybody with this track. Every verse, I’ve gotta prove something to somebody.’ So I went in with that frame of mind, where I was like, man listen, “You are now rockin’ with the best.” And the aggression of everything — I try to say my style is like humble arrogance, because it’s a real nonchalance but it’s still hard delivery, you know what I’m saying? That’s the perfect example.

It also kind of embodies what I was saying about near-rhymes, where you’re syllabically riding the sounds of words rather than stressing if a rhyme is perfect.

Exactly, but I mean I’m a painter, though. I’m not a sketch artist. Lines aren’t going to be always sharp when you’re dealing with paint, so you’ve just gotta make it work, you know what I’m saying? There’s a precision there in it being off.

What other producer collaborations can we expect to hear from you in the months ahead? You mentioned Bionic Jazz. Do you want to touch on that?

“I done seen people get punched in the face, knocked out, you know, cut, whatever, for being wack. I’m not saying that was right or whatever, but I’m just saying that’s the era I come from.”

Yeah, Bionic Jazz is a nice little plate. It’s me and my man MOBONIX who was also in the Metal Face Akademy with DOOM. He was on Born Like This and has been my man since like 97. He’s from the West Coast. We’ve always been talking about doing stuff, and we started doing some joints a couple years ago and leaked a couple.

I remember one that you put out was mind-blowing, with some kind of warped narcotic horns in it.

That might’ve been the joint that DOOM did [“Heroin Jonezz”]. We went back in on that. We kind of scrapped it and revamped that song actually, so you’ll hear a new version of that on the project. Lex Boogie’s got a bunch of bangers on there that we cooked up together. There’s some production from me on there as well, some joints I did with Lex in the lab, so you’ll hear some of my production on there and some darts. We got beats from Blockhead, DOOM… It’s like a jazz record where you’re not expecting anything; you just hear it and get different feels from different tracks. That’s probably gonna come in the next couple months and then I’ve got a follow-up with Blockhead. I got half of it done on stash, and he sent me a new package. I’m working on it now, and I kind of wanna scrap everything and just start fresh because the package he sent me is so crazy.

Is Keep Playin’ still the working title?

Yeah, that’s the working title now. Then I’ve got a whole project with Back Row, which is probably going to be a nice EP or something: live instrumentation, lush instrumentals, I’m working on that too.

The New Orleans cats you were talking about who did “Murderface Splash”?

Yeah, and then I’ma release Ghostmaker Special Edition.

So you think a good amount of this is coming out in 2015?

Grilchy Era’s about to drop next week, I think Bionic Jazz will be out in the next couple months, and I think Keep Playin’ will be out by the end of the year. And I think that in between all of that, I’ma get a cover together and I’ll put Ghostmaker up, and I might do limited-edition CDs of that. I’m tryna release at least three or four projects this year.

There are a couple previous projects. I don’t know if these are dead, but you’ve mentioned Gutterfly Knives and one called Persona Non Grata.

Both of those merged into The Grilchy Era.. Those were just working titles, but that’s officially Grilchy Era.

I also have to ask you about Broken Mazes, man. [A collaboration between Spekt and Gary Wilson, this EP was available on Bandcamp until recently when it was taken down for reasons that become somewhat clearer below.]

Sometimes when you get done doing a project you want to relax your brain and not stress anything, and do something different. I had just done MacheteVision and, [funnily] enough, I reached out to Gary Wilson on Twitter and was like, “Yo I’m a fan,” and he was like, “Let’s work,” and started sending me the instrumentals to some songs he did. And I would go in the lab and just knock ‘em out and send them back.

How did you get put on to Gary Wilson’s music?

I got put on to him years ago just on some musician stuff, because I listen to everything. I listen to New Wave, rock, jazz, reggae, Brazilian music… I’ve always loved “Dreams.” He was telling me he’s still got the reels, and he was sending me the tracks off the reels. I was like, ‘Man, come on, who else is gonna do this?’ People probably won’t even recognize until he passes or I pass 20/50 years from now. I also put it out on some, ‘This wasn’t for everybody and it’s not going to be out there forever.’ That’s why we took it down.

On top of taking it down, you initially released that thing with no promotion. There was a trailer, but it wasn’t an event.

Yeah, sometimes you have to do stuff like that with 100 percent artistic purposes only. You’re not trying to get with a label and get them to use a publicist and people to promote. It’s not about that all the time. That was one of those projects that was 100 percent art.

That being said, I’d love to hear and own a physical copy of that, and I’m sure I’m not alone here.

We were gonna do vinyl, but Chopped Herring just ended up doing the other release instead of that, the mix of songs from me [Mark of the Beast], but we were definitely going to do a vinyl project, which would have been crazy. We were floating it around. [The owner of Chopped Herring] loved the project, but he was like, “The people who buy from me may not be that progressive. They like a lot of stuff that’s like 90s sounds.” But that was definitely progressive, because I still haven’t heard anybody do anything really like that, and it’s just challenging yourself, too. You have to challenge yourself.

What are some lessons you’d say you learned from MacheteVision that you took with you and maybe carried over to JustPlayWitIt?

Timing is everything, because MacheteVision could’ve came out and flopped. There was no guarantee on anything, and I don’t think a lot of Kno’s in-house people really dug it, because it was such a different sound from him. I think it was really aggressive, not to say that Cunninlynguists isn’t dope — they’re very dope — but they make feel-good music, so people really appreciate that. Whereas [MacheteVision] was darker, more aggressive, harder, harsher, so that came out in 2011, and there’s people that hit me now like, “You know I slept on this when it came out and I knew it was out, but I just wasn’t feeling totally into it.” They didn’t like the joint with Bronson and now Bronson is blowing up, they didn’t like the singles, and everything else. Sometimes it takes time to go back to things and realize that you missed it. So, that’s an example right there that sometimes people have to grow on their own and come back around. It’s not necessarily you doing anything wrong; it’s just the timing.

You have a very interesting Twitter account. You’ve run a couple sites of your own in the past too, but your Twitter account is off the chain. Did you ever think of compiling [your posts] into a book?

You know, I thought about that in like 2010, because I looked at what I was writing from 2010-08 and I was like, ‘Yo, I had a lot of really good ideas if you go back to the beginning of my account.’ There was a lot of wit that I was putting out there and a lot of ideas and concepts, and I thought about doing that then. I think somebody else did that by now, but I definitely thought about doing it, because it reads kind of like a book sometimes.

I’ve been through a lot and I’ve been a lot of places, so I can expound on a lot of different things. I’m not just Joe Dude that’s been in a cul-de-sac my whole life; I’ve been blessed to be all over the planet, and not just on some rap shit, like fly in, get in the fucking limo, go to the hotel, go to the show, go back to the limo and fly out. I’ll go to countries, and I’m in that country amongst the people, walking around, eating street food and restaurant food, going to different sites. Being on shit tours with other people showed me that people just generally stay in the hotel, artists especially. It’s rare you see an artist go somewhere and get out. It could be just time constraints, but I’ve always preached [that] there is no better learning experience than travel.

You do yourself a disservice getting all this free information and experience just sitting in the fucking house. It’s like going on vacation and staying at the fucking resort. You could be at the pool anywhere, down the street from your house, you don’t need to fly anywhere to go there, but there’s different things you need to see and learn, so I’ve always been a big proponent of that, plus my mom raised me to be my own man with everything, to be creative and move my own way, and don’t follow the crowd, so I never [do].

How do you think you picked up the travel bug?

From my folks; my people from the islands, so I’ve been flying since like 5 years old [or] earlier. I remember being in a Pan Am plane.

Is it just something about travel by air, or do you like road trips too?

Road trips, man? I was in fucking Thailand riding a elephant back up the side of a mountain, man. I was on a standing raft where you’ve gotta move your stick in the water. I’ve been on a train for 24 hours going through countryside up and down hills on the side of Canada, you know what I’m saying? So it doesn’t matter to me.

Anything else you’d like to add?

All I can say is I’m big on individuality. I know that I’m creating art that may not get appreciated for 20-30 years, and that’s fine with me, as long as it can survive and people like yourself are willing to dig and find stuff. And I know that there are people out there who will, because they do hit me. The amount of people that hit me about Ghostmaker is ridiculous. I get emails about that shit almost every month.

I know you’ve got to be getting sick of hearing the question, but I had to ask you about it. I’d be doing MarQ Spekt fans everywhere a disservice if I didn’t press you on it.

It’s coming and I think it’s going to be dope when it comes, because people have a point of reference now with MacheteVision and JustPlayWitIt. It’s not often where you’re gonna be able to go and see somebody who was actually in the 90s era of the underground who brings that sound and feel to it, so it’s kind of a dope snapshot for people who want to go back and appreciate it. I was actually there, and I have proof. I’m not just talking about it like some outsider or journalist that read a whole lot about it and can tell you everything about it. No, I can give you the feeling of what it was.

I’m looking forward to hearing that.

It’s coming. Everything else is cooking up, and it’s just expressing freedom through art and getting out of these bullshit constraints that people put on themselves. I think that there’s a lot people upset with me just for the fact that I don’t have any constraints, and you see me popping up with new creative projects all the time, and they may be silent somewhere. They can’t do what they want to do when they sign the contract. They gotta do what these other people tell them to do. Contract money don’t be that much, even on majors. Dudes ain’t seeing a lot of paper. So, it’s like, if you not cutting up the check why would you compromise your creativity, and people do, for pennies, because the glare of the spotlight of being out and being seen and having that perception is more important [to them] than actually being real with it.

It may be a matter of convenience for some too. People aren’t willing to individually put in the work.

Put it like this: I’m kind of signed to HipNOTT but at the same time it’s a partnership. I handle everything creatively, they handle the business, and we both come together with splashes of both. They’re basically helping me distribute my product further than before and market it a little bit better than I could have on my own, so that’s what it becomes, and for that I give them a little piece of the profit, and we move on. It’s a business deal, and I move business-like with life. I enjoy life, but I’m definitely about my business. And that goes with everything: travel, investing…

How’d you link up with HipNOTT?

Kev[in Nottingham, owner of HipNOTT records] and some writers have always shown me love on their site, always from day one, even before MacheteVision, so they had me do some showcases or whatever. We were shopping [JustPlayWitIt] around. I think we shopped it to Man Bites Dog and a couple of other people, and they declined it. And I’m looking at the stuff they’re putting out, like, ‘Yeah OK,’ so I get with Kev. I think I was like, ‘Man, if nobody else picks this up, I’m just putting it out on my own,’ and I sent it to Kev and it didn’t even take a day. He got back to me that night, like, “Yes, we want it, let’s take it.” And you know what? We recouped within a month and I’ve been getting royalties off that, so it’s like what can you say? And then you look at some of these rosters and these other labels, and they not making no money off 90 percent of the people they’re putting out.

It goes back to what I just told you: sometimes people just like to have the perception of being around certain people, even though it’s not profitable; like the perception means more to them than actually having something real. There’s people that right now will sell you their souls for $600 and the chance to be on 106 and Park, and that was “on.” They just wanted to go sit on the couch just so that they could tell people they was on 106 and Park. But the money they got was gone before they even made the trip to the couch.

Me, I don’t give a fuck about any of that. I want rights to all my stuff, I want my credit, and I don’t care who knows — it could be 50 people, it could be 100 people. We just put out a tape in 2015 and people are actually interested and buying it and supporting it, and it’s a cassette, man. People want that physical product. You want physical product? Alright, here’s a tape, yo. Whether you could play this or not, just put some value on it and get it and we’ll give you the digital free, you know what I’m saying?

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