Back to the Blues

Cincinnati native, 1200 Hobos crew DJ and former bar bouncer Mr. Dibbs is now gaining a healthy amount of exposure thanks to his relatively new position as DJ of Atmosphere, the indie hip-hop duo fronted by Minneapolis rapper Slug. Things should really get moving in the summer for Dibbs, as he is set to appear on the 2003 Warped Tour with Slug, where impressionable young alt-consumers will get a full load of the group’s talent and Slug’s sexy, sensitively dysfunctional appeal. But aside from manning the wheels of steel behind the king of emo rap, Dibbs most certainly is not a nobody.
Though the Midwest doesn’t seem like it would be a hotbed of groundbreaking independent hip-hop, Ohio is emerging as a wellspring of quality rap. Def Jux instrumental artist Rjd2 and his MHz / Weightless crew hail from Columbus, and producer Fat Jon and his group Five Deez, like Mr. Dibbs, call Cincinnati home. From this burgeoning scene, Dibbs started making waves as a solo DJ with deft scratching abilities in the mid-‘90s, and over time, grew into an inventive mixer whose sets were full of punk, hardcore and rock breaks, broken down, juggled and reconstituted in unorthodox and unpredictable ways. His solo work is intricately constructed and multi-layered, though as Slug’s DJ, Dibbs displays an ability to ride a beat with the requisite amount of restraint.
He is also known as a bit of a thug. People say that his gruff demeanor and menacing appearance contribute to that perception — Dibbs is a pretty big guy, both arms sleeved in tattoos, a cleanly shaved head and an 8-inch goatee framing a trademark scowl — but the most assertive testament to his ability to kick ass are the scenes in his home video, Scratchapuncture, shot during his tenure as a bar bouncer, in which he and his bar crew viciously attack people who had been thrown out of the bar, mostly, he tells me during the course of our conversation, for assaulting the bar’s owner. Contrary to the rumors, however, I found Dibbs to be friendly, forthcoming, articulate and generally pretty open. In fact, the following interview was pieced together from a conversation that lasted much longer than the average phone interview and covered a lot of ground.

How did you come to the title, The 30th Song?
It’s from the old story that, during his Texas recording sessions, Robert Johnson recorded 30 songs, and one of them got lost. On The Texas Sessions, there’s only 29 songs. On my album, on that “Delta Bound” song, all the vocals are Robert Johnson, so that’s kinda where that came from. I’ve never told anybody that before, either.

What’s the difference between making a beat for Slug and creating an instrumental piece?
Doing beats for an MC — and the new record that I’m working on now has some MCs on it, and some kids screaming too, because I wanted to see If I could pull off production on a hardcore record — is different because when it’s just me and it’s just a DJ song, I have to compensate for the fact that there’s no vocals on it, so it’s always over-produced. When I do the shit for an MC I have to back off, like I’ll get to that point where the beat sounds good but I could still add something. Well, I just don’t add anything. You gotta remember that there’s probably gonna be a chorus on there with the verses, and you don’t want it to sound too muddy.

Why did you choose Fat Jon, Jel and T-Rock to appear as guests?
Well, Fat Jon is from Cincinnati, so I’ve always done a bunch of shit for Five Deez, like a bunch of cuts and scratches. He had that beat and I was like, ‘I want that beat,’ because it’s dope and he’s a homie. With Jel, I’ve known Jel probably longer than I’ve know Fat Jon and Pace and them guys. Me and Jel had already done the Pressage album together, and actually I think that song [“Rhythmic Soaring”] was supposed to be on that. But Jel used to come down to Cincinnati every weekend and we would work on shit. When we finished the Pressage album, we did a couple of other things, like “Invitation to Hell,” which ended up on a Future Primitive record.
See, dude, a lot of the stuff on this new album is at least three years old. The album was originally 35 minutes long…35 to 40 minutes long, and it was going to come out on a couple of different labels at one time or another, but never did because I never got the money that they said they were going to give me up front, so I never gave any of them the record. But by the time I ended up on Rhyme Sayers, the record was already three years old, and some of it is four years old. I like it and everything, but dude, I’ve heard it for four years. There is some shit I still like, like the T-Rock thing, which is the newest thing on there. It’s less than a year old, recorded kinda recently. There’re a couple of songs that were in that Transworld skate video, and those are newer. So I had all this extra shit. The record was 40 minutes long and it ended up being 74 when I added all that extra shit.

Is not getting paid a pretty standard in the indie record label game?
I don’t know about everybody else, but it’s always been my experience to get fucked around except with Rhyme Sayers, and I’m not saying that because I’m on Rhyme Sayers, I’m saying that because when Slug said “I’ll give you X amount of money for an advance,” it was there two days later. But I’ve been promised all kinds of shit. I mean, there are other labels that I fuck around with a little bit, but they all pay me, so those are the only kinds of people I fuck with. Like, if you tell me the check is in the mail, it better be in the fucking mail. I figured out a different way to handle that shit, and it’s not really pretty or attorney-driven. I don’t give a fuck about the money. I would rather whoop your ass.

Does it work?
It used to work all the time. I haven’t had to do it in about year…no, two years. You’d be surprised how many people who owe you money will send you a check when they hear that you whooped so-an-so’s ass in his office.

Is there a theme on The 30th Song?
Originally, it all had a blues feel to it, with “Delta Bound” being the anchor, being the title. When I first put everything in order, I tried to arrange it right like that...but I mean, I guess there’s no definite theme any more, because I ended up making it 74 minutes long. So the theme is ‘music that 15-year-olds don’t understand.’ Kids who post on message boards and sit around on the Internet — they don’t get it.

Really? Why not?
All the new shit, the stuff I’ve been releasing on tour up to when The 30th Song came out, is really much more aggressive, and this record is laid-back, which was kind of a curve ball. When The 30th Song came out, motherfuckers were like, ‘you can nod your head and get high to this’ or whatever — it didn’t make sense and it was not what everybody expected.

All your newer stuff is definitely more aggressive, edgier and rooted more in rock music.
Yeah, and I started doing that shit because I live in Cincinnati. You go to a hardcore show in Cincinnati, you’ll see half the kids there at the hip-hop show the next night. Those scenes are kinda wrapped up in each other, so I pull both crowds at once by doing hardcore shit. That shit on The 30th Song was four years ago. If you listen to it, that’s kinda where I was four years ago with everything — my demeanor, my personality and my music. I’ve just progressed, but I guess it depends on who you ask. I mean, I suck ass now according to some kids.
But starting with the blues thing, to me it’s the natural progression of music, the blues being the backbone of everything. So it’s not a big deal for me to use hardcore and metal and punk in my music because all that shit is a derivative of the blues in one way or another anyway, so it all just kinda makes sense to me.
When I was young, I would only listen to one kind of music, but when you think about it, that kinda ends up sucking because you only listen to this or that, and when someone else plays something new, you’re like, ‘what the fuck is this shit?’ I think kids would be surprised if they heard the kind of shit that gets played in the Atmosphere van on tour. There’s hardly any hip-hop just because we hear it every night at every show, so we listen to just about everything else but hip-hop. And honestly, there’s not that much good hip-hop out right now, anyway.

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