Breakdown FM- Paris-The Making of PE’s Rebirth of a Nation

 On the Line w/ Paris-The Making of PE’s Rebirth of a Nation

by Davey D

original article: Sunday, April 02, 2006 

We sat down with the Black Panther of Hip Hop-Paris and spoke to him about the array of projects he has coming down the pipe on his Guerilla Funk record label. That would include the ‘Hard Truth Soldier’ album Vol 1 which includes socially conscious songs from MC Ren, Kam, Dead Prez, Mobb Deep, KRS-One, Cypress Hill, and the Conscious Daughters to name a few. He also has an album from new artist T-Kash out of Oakland which is also set to drop.

We also spoke with him about the current state of Hip Hop, the art of emceeing and of course the making of the new Public Enemy album ‘Rebirth of a Nation’. For people who are unfamiliar Paris not only produced but he wrote all the lyrics to the songs featured on the PE album. He spoke about how he and Chuck D came together on this ambitious project. He also spoke about the type of chemistry they developed and the type methodology used which would allow Paris to effectively write lyrics from one of Hip Hop’s most gifted and insightful political icons.

Paris explained how he wanted to recapture a moment in time when PE put out some of their most groundbreaking work as exemplified on albums like ‘Fear of a Black Planet’ and ‘It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back’. He talked about how he used records like ‘Don’t Believe the Hype’ and prophets of Rage as a template.

We also spoke about role Flava Flav played in this project as well as the type of dynamics that currently exist in the group and how it may have effective their recording process. Paris talked about sampling versus playing live instruments and how that factored into the new album.

Also in this segment we spoke extensively about the art of emceeing and how conscious artists don’t always get recognized for their rhyme skillz…