DON'T MISS TODAY:

Back to DJs & Producers Section

4/10/2006 Interview with Panik (Molemen) What's good, Panik? I'm all good! How did the Molemen come together? We got together in the early '90s. I heard about these Hip Hop meetings in Southside Chicago. That's where I met Vakill and a lot of soon-to-be Chicago Hip Hop legends. I started building with them and me and Vakill got real tight on some music shit. Everything started with me meeting Vakill and building off of the music. What did you see in Vakill back then? The same way he spits now is the same way he was spitting back then. That's what caught me. I met Vakill in '91 and I knew I had to record with him. He reminded me of G.Rap, Rakim, and Big Daddy Kane. Are you happy with how his album "Worst Fears Confirmed" is doing? Yeah. It's getting a lot of buzz. That's one of the main objectives when you put out an album. A lot of people, including you guys, have been supporting. The sales have been pretty good for an independent album. The three main things I wanted to do is put out good music, have people be aware of the album, and have the album sell decently. Those are happening as the days go by. How is Vakill in the studio? Since I've known him for so long, it's nothing. We see eye-to-eye with each other 99% of the time. We're usually thinking the same thing. We wanted to be more concerned with a complete album this time with a nice variety of subjects and beats. We wanted to make the best album possible instead of making the best songs possible. How have you grown with Vakill since the '90s? So many different ways. Vakill has kids and I don't. (laughs) We're getting better with age. As the years have gone by, I think we started making better songs and now we're making better albums. We're trying to expand the Molemen and let people know across the globe about us. How do the Molemen work together on beats? Actually, to be honest, we don't. We do our own beats and present our beats to projects. For Vakill's album, we'll let him hear all of our beats and let him pick what he wants, but we don't work together on one beat. How important is the team element in the Molemen? We look at it as the Molemen. That's how we look at it. When it's a Molemen album, we all pitch into it. We're pretty much hands-on with everything, from the promotion to the mixing…We all feed off of each other and we report to each other on things that we're doing. We do so many different things, so we all have to know each others' jobs, but at the end of the day, we're all contributing to the Molemen. What have you guys been up to recently? We have this annual event called Chicago Rocks. It's Chicago's version of Rocksteady. We're trying to make it a yearly thing where people can look forward to seeing the best artists. We've been working on this year's event and it's becoming pretty big. We've got Lupe Fiasco, Rhymefest, Naledge...That's on May 13. We're also working on "Chicago City Limits" which is our album with all Chicago artists. We're going to drop that at the show. We're in the finishing processes of the album and the show. How would you define Chicago Hip Hop? Chicago Hip Hop is just a reflection of Hip Hop in general. We have what people call emo, backpack, and thug rap. Being in the Midwest, we're a little bit of everything. We're a little bit country, a little metropolitan…I think we have a lot of talented cats here in the city. What's going on with your "Killing Fields" compilation? We've looked at a lot of different labels, but we couldn't meet anyone that matched what we wanted to do with it. We're going to put it out ourselves this summer. That will be our next release after the "Chicago City Limits" album. How important is it to be able to put out your own music and not have to rely on a label's support? When you're dealing with a major label, you have to have a platinum single or else you're just going to keep getting pushed back. When you're doing it independently, you're in total control of how your music is done, where it's going to be marketed, who you're working with, and everything else. You're in control of the whole thing, but the drawback is not having the financing of a major label. Plus major labels have a lot of good connects with distributors. If you're a smart independent person, you make sure that buzz is big and eventually somebody will hit you up, and you'll be more in control when you go in and bargain with the big boys. What's Longshot been up to lately? We're probably going to get back in the studio with him soon. He's signed to a label called Easy Records. He's putting out his music through them. He has two projects dropping and he's going on tour. He's definitely family and we're going to do some more work with him in the future. The Molemen have put out a lot of beat-CD's in the past. How important have they been to you? They've been very important to me. I started doing it in '88. Me and my partner PNS used to work at a record store and I'd put those tapes up and eventually they just started moving. Then CD's came out and I converted them to CD's. They spread around pretty good. People liked listening to just beats and it helped out in many different ways. We reached people all over the world with those CD's. It also keeps me on my toes as a producer to keep that fire going. Where do you see the Molemen progressing to? For years, people consider us as the backpack Hip Hop guys. But really, ever since the beginning, we've been more concerned with making music. If it happens to be one style or another style, we don't care. All we're concerned with is making good music. That's my main concern, and to get my business better as time goes by. It's a hard thing to balance them together, but I think that's my main goal. We want to make music and just reach out to people. What's your beat-making process? The first thing I ever did with Hip Hop besides listening and buying it was went digging for records. That's my main thing. I'm just trying to find good samples. That's what gets me going. At the end of the day, anything could affect me as to getting me going to make beats. It could be a sound or old music that gets me in that mood to start making beats. This is my main job. I don't have another job and my equipment is at home, so I can make music at 5am or 3pm. I can make beats whenever and just block everything else out. What equipment do you use? I have an MPC, a Yamaha Motif, and I'm just now starting to work with different computer-based software like Reason and Logic. In the future, I always want to balance hardware with software. I don't want to be the computer-making-beats-guy and I don't want to be the guy that can only use hardware. I've always messed with MPC's and I see myself using my MPC for a long time. I'm definitely going to dabble in other computer programs. I also want to learn how to play a couple of instruments. One of the things that I want to do is keep things interesting so the fire doesn't burn out. It doesn't matter how long you've been making beats, there is always something to learn. What advice do you have for young producers? It's the same advice I give myself. Don't ever think you know everything because there is always something to learn. Once you think you know everything, then you're just going to stay in one zone and you're not going to grow. The other thing with making beats is that you have to keep a balance. Don't stay in one mood or tempo. You have to switch it up. Try to have as many styles as possible and master each style. What do you want to say to everyone? Check out molemen.com and stay in tune with what we're doing. We've been around for awhile and we're going to be around for awhile. If you want to hear some good music, hit us up.

By Brian Kayser

[989] REACT TO THIS INTERVIEW