A physically imposing figure, he’s a familiar sight to those who go to The Local Performance Hall. Behind the tough exterior is an artist. Known as Lord Subliminal, he’s not only a poet, but a hip-hop artist who tears down what people commonly refer to hip-hop down to its roots and rebuilds it the way he see it should be. After all, he is Lord Subliminal. The son of a veteran of the Navy and Black Panther /blackstone ranger movement, Lord Subliminal has been a part of Chattanooga’s eclectic music scene since the early ‘90s. How long has music been a part of your life? I guess ever since I was a little kid, I would always recite other emcees rhymes so i really got a feel for hip hop early. Around 1987 my older cousin taught me how to rhyme, just fooling around. I started writing my own rhymes about late ‘86/’87. It was a game to him, something to do. For me, it was more serious than that. I kept developing my skills, and I kept working on it. 1993/94 was when I learned how to freestyle. I kept working on that. Freestyling helped work myself into something bigger. Prior to your cousin teaching you, were you familiar with the genre? Who were some of your favorite artists? Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five, I like the Fats Boys, Curtis Blow, Houdini, are my favorite groups. KRS-1, The Last Poets is what I was raised up on. I really attribute that to what real hip-hop was. With hip-hop, you’ve got rap. Rap is an extension of it. Rap is rhythm and poetry. It was basically what they were doing. They had rhythms going, as far as the drums, and they have poetry to go over the top of it. It fit with the music. Which comes more naturally to you, the rhyming or the musical aspect? As far as my lyrical skill, it really comes more naturally to me now. I can write. I’ll sit down and write, but with writing is a longer process, so I can draw up and structure of how I want everything to be. I’m more leaning toward the freestyle aspect, because then it’s right off the top of the head, and I can spin through a whole four-minute song freestyle off the top of my dome and keep it going. Is there a beat that gets you going or a specific thought? Usually when I’m freestyling, we might have an instrumental on already, or it might be somebody else’s stuff that they’re rhyming over, and we just rhyme over what they’re rhyming over. Or it’s an a cappella thing to a beat box, you think of something in your head and you keep it going – like move to your own rhythm, kind of make your own janga. What do you having coming to mind when you start lyrically? Do you have a specific agenda? Oh, yeah. I’m very political. It’s usually bases on politics and Islam, which is my way of life. It’s based upon that as street struggles when I’m freestyling. Sometimes I’ll take the freestyle to another level, which is called Battling. Battling, the focus on that is to tear you down lyrically to nothing and then reconstruct you in a new image. A lot of the stuff you do is freestyle. When you want to make a recording, do you write down the lyrics ahead of time? What I do is, I usually get my head right. After I do that, I’ll sit and listen to an instrumental, absorbing everything about the instrumental. Okay, how do I want my delivery to be? If I do the delivery this way, what kind of emotion am I going to get from it, because I like to strike up peoples’ nerves and emotions, as well as I like to make people stop, and say, “You know, that guy was right.†That’s the key behind subliminal. I’m going to mess with your psyche. I’m going to drill right into it. But I’ll write out all my stuff and the writing to merge with the rhythm. I know a lot of artists don’t do it. Some people just write to a beat. I ignore that, because I may have written something that I don’t want to go with a beat. Then I’ve got to restructure a song to fit to this beat, when I can just write to it, and then it goes a lot better. Do you have anything in particular that you dedicate what you write or does it just depend on what hits you at the time? It all depends on exactly how I’m feeling at that moment. Sometimes I get an inspiration, and I’m on a roll, it doesn’t stop until I’m disturbed. But it usually doesn’t stop. Sometimes I’m in writer’s block mode, and I’m trying to think of new material, or something else to come up with that’s a little more prolific than the last thing. I try to top myself. I put myself in the place of a consumer, because I’m a consumer. Why would I buy this album? What about this album is different from everything else out there? Did I learn something from the album? How was the beat to it? That’s where I pride myself. I’m my own worst critic. I’ll continue to nit-pick at everything that I do to make myself better. Even if the crowd is, “Damn, this is one of the hardcore shit we every heard,†I’m going to be like, I didn’t like it. I thought I could have done a lot better than that. You’ve been in Chattanooga for 13 years. What influence has living in Chattanooga had on your music? Since I’ve been in Chattanooga I’ve experienced a lot of different things from being homeless and living in train cars. Some people can’t say they’ve been through that. They chastise people that live in those conditions from what I see - things that I experience. I’ve experienced a lot of different things. I write about things that have been an oppression on me since I was here. You’re going to hear a lot of this in this album. All that’s going to be heard on this album as well as how I was raised in a military background. My father was into the Black Panther movement. I was raised with this militant vibe. That’s why I’m the way I am. I am militant. I have gone down for the cause a couple of times. Do you feel Chattanooga has been accepting of your music and politics? You know, it’s fifty-fifty on that. I’ve gained a lot of good friends that stick behind me because I am behind what I believe in, but then I’ve gained some enemies in Chattanooga at the same time. You have to take that if you’re going to lay it out. I will say that I am respected, whether I’m like or disliked. I m respected. There are some that don’t respect me at all because they have no clue of what’s going on. They think that George Bush is really here to help everybody – that kind of situation. So if I say something like is support Marxism and communism, they look at me crazy– or if I say something about Halliburton gets smashed down. People look at me like I shouldn’t say some shit like that Some people say they’re glad that you did say that – because nobody else is. Do you find it difficult to get booked? Not necessarily because of your politics, but because of your musical style? I think that has a lot to do with it. The Local is pretty much the only place I perform here in Chattanooga. I’ve done open mics elsewhere and tried to get booked as an opener, but the owners would say no, but we’ll keep you in mind. I don’t know what that means. One place wouldn’t allow me to curse. I can respect not smoking or drinking, but if you expect me to censor my words? No. Do you think you have to endure a lot of prejudice because of your music? That and I seem to go through some kind of prejudice. The mode of thinking here is with the hip-hop scene – it’s all about being gangsta here. It’s not about uplifting anybody or teaching anybody a message, it’s about “I’m so icy.†“I’m blinged out.†“I’ve got 24s – I’ve go hoe's.or I’m a pimp.†That’s what it’s all about. Even at The Local – and I love The Local, but it doesn’t really seem geared for hip-hop – not any real hip-hop. Chattanooga just doesn’t seem like it’s geared for real hip-hop like that. But if it’s anything else like an extension of that genre like the gangsta style, the blinged out style, the bootie music – that’s more acceptable. But if you come with a message, then only a small percent will hear you and feel you on that. I think a small percent, like I go out to The Local and do a show to 80 to 90 people, maybe 100. That’s the small percentage of people that hear the message. If I was doing some thumped out rap, then I’d probably have a real packed out house, and everybody’s coming in, and start wildin , and shoot outs break out. I don’t want that kind of thing happening. I’m not telling everyone to put their guns away, by far – no. But don’t turn them on yourself. Don’t bring it to a club when we’re trying to keep a club open and keep a clean scene where you can come to. But it seems like this club is geared more towards rock and roll. For the longest, hip-hop didn’t get any love at The Local until I came. And then it kind of made the way for others to step up. It kind of opened the door for more real hip-hop to come through the doors to play now. How did you become Lord Subliminal? When I was living in El Paso I had a group called Public Syndicate. I gave my deejay the title DJ Subliminal. After I moved on from there I got here and went under a few different names DMS was the one I sued first before this one – Divine Master Savior. One day I thought about it. Subliminal, subliminal – I’m going to use that name. I’ll go by the name Lord Subliminal. It’s been Lord Subliminal ever since. That awakening came somewhere about ’94. Tell me about the album (Subliminal Thought) that you’ve recorded. Was it a long arduous process to go through? I went into getting bumped down at the studio. All the people coming in, and I had stuff to do. I had to push the album date back. I went through all kind of stuff that usually smolders out anybody else’s fire, and just say the hell with it. I have to get this out. I have to do this. I can’t stop it now. In the process of all of that I had other offers, and I linked up with a label called Iron Chamber from out of New York that’s backed by the Wu-Tang Clan. Things have happened within that process with me pushing things back. Things happen for a reason. I’m not mad now. I just want to have my stuff out. Even if I don’t go multi-platinum – if I can get 100 people to buy my album, that 100 people can let another 10 people hear that. That’s how my name spreads. Then I’ll go out of town and get a warm reception. “Oh, that’s you? I heard that. I’ll be there.†That’s the whole joy of it. Sometimes when recording the people were not dependable. You’re working with other people, and you’re depending on somebody else – especially in my case. I went through so much frustration and rage, man. Is the album Spoken Word or did you have musicians in the studio with you? I recorded over tracks. The Beat Masons, they are the ones that put most of the tracks and sequences together. They were more of the producers. I was kind of co-producing some of the tracks. We took it to VJ Max at Subterranean Studios to engineer and mix everything down. It sounds of Middle Eastern-influenced music. If you’re a video game addict that if you listen close you’ll recognize. What do you think most people don’t understand about Lord Subliminal? What most people don’t understand about me is my Islamic nature. They don’t understand why I’m so militant and why I’m so angry. People don’t understand what motivates me and what pushes me, and what my drive and passion is. Nobody understands what I’ve been through, and seen, and experienced. People are saying the cops aren’t bad. You say that. Have you had one harassing you? I had one draw a pistol on me just for walking alley to alley to use the bathroom when there was no place open for me to go to the bathroom. I came back from the alley and he drew his weapon on me. There were several witnesses that had seen this. But if you've never been through stuff like that, but of course the cops aren’t bad. Until you’ve been in those shoes, it can be hard for you to understand that. You won’t understand why I would be so militant. What would you like people to come away with after listening to your music? A firm understanding of my understanding of what hip-hop is - a firm understanding of my background. A firm understanding that I’m going to do music, but it’s not going to be music that you want to hear, per say, but what you need to hear. Things are going on behind the scene that you don’t know about that I touch on. I want you to be able to listen to it three/four years down the line and pick up jewels you didn’t pick up the first time you heard it.
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