There’s are a few reasons why Providence bills itself as The Creative Capital. For a small city, the music and art is incredibly vibrant. There are people that call the place home who practically crave creating; they can’t spend a single day without writing a new song, painting something new on canvas, or making something purely out of their wild imagination. This hive of thinking and initiating also breeds an activist community that’s always on the forefront when it comes to numerous social issues and injustices. What if you met someone who’s succeeds in finding a balance, a person who is just as vibrant as a creative as much as they are passionate about the issues effecting our world today?
A few people might know Jared Paul from his time as the vocalist for the political punk act Prayers For Atheists. A few others probably have seen him while on tour performing conscious spoken word poetry. You’ve also most likely seen him as an instrumental figure in protests happening around the city and beyond. He’s an artist and an activist in every sense of both words. Paul is celebrating the release of his brand new hip-hop album Get My Ghost, out via Black Box Tapes, at Firehouse 13 tonight with fellow Providence MC Medusah Black and local hip-hop collaborative The Funk Underground. Recently we talked about his relationship with Providence label Strange Famous Records, the similarities between hip-hop and spoken word, his favorite places to go perform while on tour and Providence’s future.
Rob Duguay: So Get My Ghost is being released at Firehouse 13 tonight, with it being released off of Black Box Tapes. A lot of people in Providence know you from your long time affiliation with Strange Famous Records, so what made you want to release the album with a different label?
Jared Paul: You know, I love Strange Famous Records. It’s my family, it really runs like a collective that’s facilitated and led by Sage [Francis]. He’s my favorite MC, it’s one of my favorite labels, I love B. Dolan’s stuff and Prolyphic and [Scroobius] Pip and everybody. Through the years I’ve also gotten to be really good friends with Sole from Anticon who put out a bunch of records with Fake Four. Black Box Tapes is this experimental collective that he started as a specifically anti-capitalist, horizontal way to put out music and team up. I’ve gotten more and more radical over the years, I’m not the best technical rapper. I can rap, I can hold my own but I put a lot of effort into the lyrics that I write. The concepts, the issues and hip-hop has been a guiding force in my life since I heard Public Enemy at a bus stop at age 13. Over my progression I’ve become really radical, I’m a revolutionary socialist with social anarchist tendencies and Black Box Tapes is a radical, anti-capitalist, smash the state kind of label. We’re all friends, everybody is like family and I think the whole squad thought that this was the best move.
Where’s Black Box Tapes based out of?
Denver.
A lot of stuff has been going on politically in Denver lately so it makes sense that a radical label like Black Box Tapes would start off there. You’re known in a lot of circles and communities for doing spoken word poetry. You’ve toured all around the country and you’ve done a lot of poetry sessions as well. Poetry and hip-hop are kind of like brother and sister in a sense, especially lyrically. Both are all about conveying a message where hip-hop is always accented with beats while poetry is the voice of a person with flow and prose. When it comes to doing a hip-hop show and doing spoken word poetry, do you prepare for each one in a different way or do you prepare for both of them in the same way?
Each one is different. I think lots of times the way that American capitalist expectations work in the music industry and the literary industry, folks are kind of pigeon-holed or encouraged to focus on one thing in order to succeed, to pay the bills and be successful. I’ve had a lot of success in the sense that my name is good across the country. In many counterculture circles I’m a really respected name, even if I’m not super well known or whatever. That’s because I feel like whatever it is I’m doing whether it’s spoken word, whether it’s music, whether it’s activism folks know that I’m not faking and I’m really sincere about it and I’m all in and I’m working hard for it. I feel like as an artist I don’t limit myself, I get into whatever turns me on. Hip-hop is a modern extension of the oral tradition, so is spoken word. The oral tradition goes way back, it’s older than written language.
People have been telling history through stories, traveling tribes across the continent of Africa, when it was all Pangea, when all of these continents were one continent. Traveling story tellers, traveling singers, folks in the clan unit, in the family unit, in the tribal unit telling stories and keeping history through stories. Sharing ideas through poems and through songs. I believe with all my heart that spoken word and hip-hop are the most current link in a very long and sacred chain that is the oral tradition. Hip-hop itself is unquestionably a black art invented, pioneered and perfected by black and brown artists. Hip-hop now has become the music of the working class around the country and around the world. You go to Japan, mothafuckers are rapping. You go to Bolivia, MCs are making amazing songs. You go to Cuba, you go to Nigeria, Kenya, everywhere. I think a big part of that, in addition to the power of hip-hop and lyrics, it’s just like magic.
It speaks truth and power in the moment, it cuts through all the filters and it gets right into people’s hearts and into their ideas in their minds. With spoken word and hip-hop, they’ve taken this basic oral tradition, this instinctual and intrinsic mode of communication that was commodified. Poetry became under the license of academia, it was this lofty thing where bourgeois, royalty and elite thinkers did poetry and theater. Even though the roots of performance art, the roots of poetry, the roots of old folk and the roots of traditional songs that rhyme was all from the working class. Anybody could do that and spoken word and hip-hop in my opinion brought poetry back to the working class. They brought poetry back to the people.
Hip-hop has always been the voice of the disenfranchised, the voice of the people from the streets, the school of hard knocks, and all of that. I can totally see what you mean with it bringing it back to the working class, the average human being and not some elitist person with a lot of money who felt like it was only for them and nobody else. It makes it for everyone.
Absolutely.
While on tour you perform at a lot of colleges and universities. Outside of New England, where would you say is the college, university or school that you always want to go back to?
I would say that it’s the Pacific Northwest in general. It’s my job to go and mix it up anywhere that folks want me. Anywhere where folks are looking for an infusion of radical ideas whether it’s animal rights stuff, I’ve been vegan for 18-and-a-half years now. Whether it’s anti-capitalist stuff, specific socialist stuff, anti-war stuff or organizing stuff. I go wherever somebody wants me to go. I started my own booking agency last year specifically for radical social justice oriented artists because not a lot of people book spoken word. The people that do generally want tall, good looking people who are not going to piss off activities offices. Not five-foot-five-inches screaming socialist, atheist vegan radicals. There are a lot of comrades out there who I know have gotten me shows over the years who don’t fit this mold that the agents are looking for.
The name of the agency is called Strength Of Doves and we’ll go anywhere. For me, when I’m in the Pacific Northwest, when I’m at the University of Washington-Seattle or I’m at the University of Puget Sound or the University of Oregon-Eugene, it’s not like cheating because I still work really hard but there are so many radicals in that area. If folks aren’t vegan then they are very conscious about where their meat comes from, where their animal products come from and the treatment of animals. If they’re not socialist or anarchist necessarily then they’re very friendly to anti-capitalist ideas. It just feels so good, for instance the Portland Poetry Slam is this huge weekly reading that happens. It’s so radical, I wish I could take that crowd with me. I wish I could bring the audience that’s at the Portland Poetry Slam to all my shows.
This past summer you also had the first edition of the Providence International Arts Festival happening. You have all this stuff booming, you have people wanting to come here and see what it’s all about. Numerous start ups are trying desperately to establish a home in Providence and in Rhode Island. With all of this there’s also the dark cloud of gentrification which means you’re going to have higher rents, you’re going to have people that have been in certain neighborhoods all their lives being pushed out and you have this double-edged sword happening. You have all this money coming to the state and the city but you have long time residents being pushed out at the same time. What is your reaction to all this and is there anything going on in Providence to combat this?
I think you hit the nail right on the head, it’s a scary time for the arts community and counterculture folks in Providence. There’s a fierce Providence pride, if you go to The Bay Area, Brooklyn or Chicago, obviously there’s some fierce pride from all those places. These are big places with millions of people. A lot of the times when you go to a small city people can be like “Oh fuck Bakersfield, I can’t wait to get out of this shithole” or like “Fuck Johnsville, I can’t wait to get out of here.”
In Providence there’s a real pride even though it’s a tiny city. That’s because there’s so much music here, there’s so much art, there’s so much cool shit and people are connected. I’m not going to act like it’s perfect where it’s a sort of nirvana and everyone is happy all the time but for the most part there’s real pride amongst the counterculture here and a lot of working class Providence folks. You can live here affordably and if you look it’s this sort of magical pocket where it’s almost like the freshwater in the river meets the bay and there’s this area where different types of life can grow in these unique settings. Anywhere you are in Providence the bay is within walking distance, you’re a 40 minute drive from the beach, you’re an hour south of Boston and three-and-a-half hours north of New York City. You have access to all these things and yet it’s affordable to live here and there are so many beautiful things around. Look at the bands that have launched from here, bands that have changed genres and started genres. Throwing Muses, The Talking Heads, Deer Tick.
Lighting Bolt.
Sage Francis.
Dropdead
Arab On Radar, What Cheer? Brigade, Daughters, and The Low Anthem. There’s something here, not many cities this tiny around the country are launching national acts like the way we are. We’ve missed a bunch too, there’s also Verse who are legendary in my eyes. There’s just a unique set of circumstances here where folks know each other and meet each other and you’re close but you’re not too close. The arts are supported here and the protest culture is strong, the arts culture is strong, the music culture is strong and the poetry culture is strong. It’s terrifying to me that we’re starting to pop up in these national magazines for best food which means it’s the best place to gentrify which is what it’s coming down to. I think folks need to fight like hell, that’s why I’ve picketed with the hotel workers from the Hilton and from the Renaissance. They’re in my neighborhood, I’m a resident artist at AS220 downtown. AS220 has done so much for the city and they provide a building for me to live in at a very affordable rate. What’s happening with the hotel workers is a classic example of a way to get involved. There are folks at the Hilton and the Renaissance that are cleaning 18 to 23 hotel rooms a day by themselves for multiple years and they’re only making $8.90 an hour.
That’s ludicrous.
It is ludicrous. Now the Procaccianti Group which manages those hotels for the owners are trying to build another huge hotel down in Providence. They’re ruthlessly looking to split the unions because those groups are preventing the hotel workers from unionizing. Meanwhile the different labor unions here are so starved for work and the Procaccianti Group is coming at them with contracts and they’re trying to split folks up for the new building. If you have $50 million to building another hotel, then why aren’t you paying your workers $15 an hour? Why don’t you have the money to pay them at least $12 an hour? I think using local battles like that to fight and to raise awareness is key. I think supporting folks who are fighting foreclosures, Direct Action for Rights and Equality was doing great work with that for a while, and supporting working class struggles here is really what it’s all about.
Like you’ve said, it’s alarming when Providence gets all this praise and people are saying how it’s the best city to live in with a population of under 200,000 people. It makes other people just want to make more money off it and make the cost of living here more unaffordable which effects a lot of people who are right now struggling to make ends meet. You got Get My Ghost coming out, the release show is tonight so what does the rest of 2015 have in store for you? Do you plan on going back on tour? Do you plan on laying low for a bit?
There’s a lot of touring in the future. I feel so thankful and I feel so blessed because after all these years of fighting, touring and traveling it’s easier for me to book shows than it’s ever been. Folks are more interested in what I’m doing, the word is finally starting to get out there a bit more. I think the small but loyal support base that I’ve built up around the country and in the Northeast is really going to dig the new album. Strategically for me, what works best these days is that I’m not a huge act with a tour van and agent. What works best for me is strategic, regional tours. I’m going to be playing a bunch of solid and fun shows here in the Northeast for the Fall in places like Burlington, Albany, Syracuse, New York City, Boston. I played Worcester the other night, it was a great show.
[Also] New Haven with some Fake Four cats and then I’m going to finish submitting my manuscript and I’ll be giving a few TED Talks in Colorado come January about white privilege, about white frailty and about police brutality. I’m focusing on those things while strategically booking an official Get My Ghost tour for 2016. It’s going to be broken up into the midwest and west in one run and then the West Coast and the Pacific Northwest in another run. Folks at Black Box Tapes, myself and Tommy Fox, who produced the album, we all feel like we got something special. I know many artists think that. I don’t expect this thing to blow up and be a huge commercial success but at the same time it fuses my golden era hip-hop influences with the late ’90s and early 2000s underground of the Rhymesayers, Strange Famous style along with some key spoken word elements gere and there. I got Ceschi and Guante on a track, Guante is a badass.
You also have Raine Maida from Our Lady Peace on a track as well.
Raine and I are friends, he asked me years ago to collaborate with him on a track for his first solo record. He took me on tour in 2008, we did 10 shows together and it was a wonderful time. I got to be the featured opener for a couple shows in Boston and New York for a Our Lady Peace tour a few years ago. Raine Maida just kills it on the track, he has such a unique voice. People sleep on him, he’s such an activist. He’s involved with War Child Canada and he’s done so much to help people. The stuff he can do musically, he throws his voice all over the place and he can hit notes that not a lot of people can hit. That’s why he’s a platinum selling artist. He doesn’t sacrifice the integrity of his work, I’m just a huge fan of that dude. Guante, who’s on a track with Ceschi, is blowin’ up. He wrote an album that’s pretty much going to be a classic album called You Better Weaponize. He’s a radical anti-capitalist, a two-time National Poetry Slam Champion, he’s a writer, he’s a blogger, a fierce MC, an activist. We have a lot of similarities, that’s why we’re good friends.
Picture Plane did the artwork for the album, Skyrider mastered it. It’s not like we were going for an artistic vibe necessarily but Skyrider is a musician and he’s a producer who also has mastering expertise. He was souped at the opportunity to get involved on it. P.O.S. is actually a hidden feature on the album reading aloud from Get In The Van by Henry Rollins. There’s a collaboration with an award winning Seattle poet named Karen Finneyfrock and Sole also does a track on there. In addition to that, the album is basically a memoir that covers the past 10 years of my life. Sole originally described it and I didn’t think of it at all while making the album. It’s weird how I kind of have this mish mash career where some people know me from getting arrested at protests and don’t even know that I do any music or whatever. Other people know me from spoken word and are like “Oh my god, you were in a band?”. Other people don’t even know that I rap or that I rap from being in the Strange Famous world but don’t even know about the other shit. I think this album has something for everybody and it kind of goes through those progressions from every stage in my career.
The people who do know me are expecting the album to sound like a short white kid doing Immortal Technique or a wannabe impression of a Zach De La Rocha album. I think people are going to be more surprised because the album is more persona; than it is political. That wasn’t a choice, I didn’t strategically plan that out. Tommy Fox, who I think is somebody who is going to blow up, it’s so cliche to say genius but he’s just a very, very talented musician and producer. The way it works for me is that I can either write to the beat or I can’t. When I get this piece of music that really moves me, the song carves itself out. You sit with the music and you see what comes and I was open to whatever concepts came from the beats that he was feeding me. There’s a lot of stories on the album, a lot of conceptual stuff, a lot of personal stuff. It is political too, I mean it’s me. Even the love songs are political sometimes. I know it’s not what some people expect, it isn’t even what Sole expected. He thought it was going to me more like a Public Enemy type album. At first he was a little skeptical but now he’s fully on board and he really digs it.
That’s always good.
Yeah, so big plans for 2016. We’re going to tour the country for the album and that’s the big part of the strategy. It’s more like an idea, strategy sounds so contrived. I think my supporters are going to dig these songs and I think a whole bunch of people who don’t know it are going to like it. Black Box Tapes and I feel like it’s best to let those songs resonate around the Internet so people can listen to it through their iPhones and iPods and then do the tour after people know and are excited about it.
JARED PAUL + MEDUSAH BLACK + FUNK UNDERGROUND :: Friday, October 16 at Firehouse 13, 41 Central St. in Providence, RI :: 8 p.m., all-ages, $5 to $10 sliding scale cover :: Facebook event page
