Feature: Ill Semantics - Droppin' tha Good Musik

When I catch up with MC Patriarch (Mark Arona), he is relaxing by the pool in Gisborne after Ill Semantics played a gig to 200 local teenagers. They are down country promoting 'Good Musik', a new album out on their own Illegal Musik label, in association with Dawn Raid subsidiary Clientele Records.

"I work seven days a week, so for a brother like myself, this is a bit of a holiday, though it's a working holiday. Why not enjoy it while you can?"

Ill Semantics well understand the need for hard work. After they released their first album 'Theory of Meaning' in 2002 the group undertook a heavy schedule of gigging. They were part of the line-up of the Boost Mobile Tour and supported Nesian Mystik for a national tour. They also took part in the Australian leg of the Dawn Raid City tour, which took them to Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane.

"It actually blew me away. We haven't done too much work over there, but people turned up in the thousands and knew the lyrics to our songs. It was crazy."

'Theory of Meaning' sold around 3000 copies here and single Highway was nominted for a Silver Scroll in 2003.

Around a year and a half ago, Ill Semantics decided to turn their attention to recording a second album and dropped out of the live scene, aside from the odd gig such as their support slot with Cypress Hill. Initial work on the album involved Patriarch meeting up with the group's DJ, CXL (Pete Chambers), to piece together the basic structure of the tracks on MPC.

"I'm a fussy MC so there's only certain beats that I like to lace, so picking the beats took a long time. CXL would ring me up and say 'I've got a beat, come over'. I'd listen to the beat and think to myself,  'What can I see happening to this track? Can I hear it on the radio?' If the skeleton beat was strong enough then we'd take it and work it up into a banging track. That was how I approached it, because I didn't want to waste my time with something that was just alright. I wanted to make sure each track was worthy of being a single and would serve a purpose on the album."

At the same time as developing the album tracks Patriarch was holding down two jobs. It was one of these jobs that led him to the first elements of what would become their first single off the new album - On & On.

"I'm the head chef at a place called The Abbey and I work down at an Italian place in St Heliers, where I help out a friend of mine who owns a restaurant there. He's got a kitchenhand who plays the guitar in a band called the Duxton Affairs. At that time I was listening to Talib Kweli and his album, 'Beautiful Struggle'. I was really influenced by his tracks because it seemed like every one of them was one that would touch you. I thought we needed a track like that because all I was hearing was, 'We're in the club, put your hands up'. That's all cool, but it just didn't feel like people were connecting.

"So when I heard this friend of mine in the restaurant playing this riff, I instantly said - I want to record that. We got him in the studio, CXL made a beat around it, and I played the bass. I played the track to Nemesis [Roimata Moore - the third core member of Ill Semantics] and she ended up writing her words before I wrote mine. I just thought, 'Girl, that's tight!'

"We also got in Lemuel who is a budding R&B artist and he laid the hook. Once it was over, I listened to it and thought, 'Now that is what I wanna hear'. I've even got my kid singing on it, that's real rap right there."

The album was put together using Cubase, DJCXL-produced with with help from Nate D. Patriarch also gives a lot of credit to Dawn Raid's in-house engineer Vitaly Zolotarev who mixed and mastered.

"He definitely deserves a bit of praise for proving to people that you don't need to mix and master an album overseas - it was all done in Papatoetoe. We spent hours listening to it in different environments - turning bass bins up in the car, referencing it with 50 Cent and Kayne West and other international acts whose sound we wanted to match up to. Let's put this in perspective. The album took 78 hours to record, but 160 hours to mix. That's how you get a phat sound. No matter what system that you hear the album on, you'll hear it all clearly. That's something I'm proud of."

The resulting album is called 'Good Musik'. It shows a variety of styles of hip hop as reflected by the guest artists featured. A 40-piece children's choir join Lemuel on the first single. Adeaze, Aaradhna and Tommy Stowers appear on the more R&B-edged tracks, while Devolo (Deceptikonz) and Flowz (Footsouljahs) appear on a couple of the more up-front hip hop tracks. Patriarch was also pleased to have NZ hip hop pioneer Johnny Sagala (Lost Tribe), involved in the design of the album.

"Me and Johnny go way back. I used to cut his hair back in the Pacifikan Decendents days. Basically he was the one who schooled me back when I was getting into hip hop, so to have him involved in this album was awesome bro. We wanted something a bit different, so I thought - why not get one of the brothers involved on the design tip. In the end, if this was our last album, we'd be satisfied because we put everything into it - from the packaging to the rhymes to the scratches to the production. We're happy with every part of it."