Swollen Members: Dec 19, 2002 Interview

By Joshua Ostroff - Eye.net

Swollen Members' second album, Bad Dreams (released jointly by Nettwerk and SM's own Battle Axe imprint), earned the duo a second consecutive Juno and an armful of MuchMusic awards. More importantly, the Moka Only-assisted singles "Fuel Injected" and "Bring It Home" made these cats the most omnipresent Can-rappers since Maestro's glory days.

With the crew swelling to include Moka and Rob the Viking as official members, they kept up the momentum with album "two-and-a-half," Monsters in the Closet, a collection that features B-sides, rarities and their latest hit, "Stepping Thru."

But it also boasts the upcoming single "Breath" -- featuring a hook from Prev's high-school buddy Nelly Furtado and video direction from Canadian Spawn-creator Todd McFarlane -- which Mad Child hopes will open even more doors.

You and Prevail have spent a long time on the road this year. What kind of toll does that take?


Madchild - Well, we can make a new song called "Heavy Drinkers."

Bad Dreams has now gone platinum. Did you have any idea it would blow up like that?


Madchild - It was a snowball effect, but because I was going through it every day, it seemed fairly gradual. Did I expect it was going to get this big? In one way, no, in another way, yes, and in still another way I think it's going to get bigger, because we're about to do a deal in the United States. It's always a crapshoot, but if it works in the U.S., it's going to get bigger everywhere.

Are you concerned about maintaining your street cred?


Madchild - I think it's really important to remember where we came from and stay grounded, remember our roots. I've been writing for the next album, just hibernating lately, taking it back to a militant mind state that I used to be in before [2000's] Balance even came out. I wanna make sure there's enough stuff for the underground kids. I wanna make them happy that they believed in us first.

So what are the plans for album three?


You have to think what got us to this point. First, it was guys who were stoked on our lyrics and the darkness of Swollen Members. Then more guys heard about us by word of mouth. Then some girls started liking us, then a bunch more girls liked us because the songs got played on the radio and there were videos, which made some of those first original guys stop liking us because all of a sudden their little sisters had us on their compilations. So you gotta take a step back and say, "What is it that people like about the group?" But once you figure that out, you gotta push everything away and just say I'm just gonna make music and do what I do.

It's interesting because you have these underground collaborators like DJ Vadim, Dilated Peoples' Babu and Jurassic 5's Chali 2na, but people now have this impression you're commercial rappers.


Isn't that the whole idea? To bring up our movement of music so people have another outlet to plug into? Isn't that a good thing as long as people stay true to what they're doing? I'm not going to stop making songs that could become popular. That would suck.

December 19, 2002 [Eye.net]


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