Big thanks to Raashan of Crown City Rockers for taking the time to chat with We Out Here Magazine before his tour through Oregon this weekend. Catch him in Bend at the Mad Happy Lounge on the 14th, in Salem at Club Illusion on the 15th and performing with J-Live in Portland at the Crown Room on the 16th.
The man’s talents are respected all around the world. Show some love if he’s stopping in your city.
Side note: His new album For What You’ve Lost features Portland’s own Ragen Fykes, so be sure you cop it!
We’re looking forward to having you in Oregon this weekend.
Yeah, it’s about time man. I’m doing Bend, Salem and Portland.
How’d everything get set up with this shows this weekend?
It’s crazy man, I’m doing promo for my album right now so I’m doing a bunch of one off dates and I ended up doing a show in Portland about a month ago opening up for Aceyalone. It was my first time in Portland and the cat there (Leigh Feldman) liked it so he brought me back up for this J-Live show and I was like, “If you know any other promoters in your area let me know man.” I go past Oregon so much on my way to Montana and Washington, but I don’t really have any connects there. So he connected me with the Salem and Bend folks. Everyone been super cool so far and just really responsive.
I’m excited, I’ve been wanting to hit those parts in forever.
Nice. I actually live in Salem so we’re kind of excited to have something going on.
I know it’s crazy last minute too, you know. But hopefully folks turn out.
And then you have the new album For What You’ve Lost is coming out, right?
I have four different labels I work with in different continents and the US version actually just dropped. It’s on iTunes and I’m going to have some physical copies with me.
Can you tell us a little bit about it, I saw you had few guest appearances.
Yeah, I’ve been touring off my previous album, The Push, and so I just met a bunch of people. And after traveling even more outside of the US with this last album it really just kind of opened up my eyes to how alive and well hip hop is doing in the world. It kind of just brought me back to why I started doing what I do, and that’s why it’s called For What You’ve Lost.
But besides that man, just collaboration with people everywhere. Some people I’ve known for ever, like Aloe Blacc and Gift of Gab, to these new cats like Paper Plane Project I met out of Australia, and Rita J who I met in Brazil and is from Chicago. Just a bunch of independent artists. Some of them you probably have heard of and some who you may not have. I wanted to make a solid album, not just a bunch of singles that people can pull from. I’m super proud of it.
That’s what’s up man. You’ve been touring internationally for a little while now. What was your first tour outside of the States like and how did that get set up?
It’s crazy because I’ve been out with Crown City before, we went out mainly in Japan a couple of times, but I’ve been doing collaborations with artists outside of the states for awhile now. Mostly with people you’ve probably never heard of from Europe to Australia to Japan. This guy who I did a bunch of collaborations with in France invited me to come out and tour with him. The response ended up being really great and I ended up going back like maybe three times within six months after the first trip. That led to me broadening out. I ended up getting into the UK and this cat named Gilles Peterson picked one of my songs for his best of list. He’s kind of like a big DJ over there so that kind of set me up to get a lot of love internationally. A lot of people really responded to that song.
Who is Gilles Peterson?
He’s a DJ for BBC. Real cool dude. He actually invited me to the Worldwide Music Awards in London this year. Everyone from Radiohead to Flying Lotus to James Blake, just a bunch of really great artists. A bunch of that I hadn’t heard of and a bunch that I had.
So did you perform or were you invited as a guest?
Yeah, he had me come out to perform. They actually hit me up on Facebook, and I guess that because I had been doing so much stuff in France that they thought I lived in France. But I told him I’m from Oakland. But it was great man, I went from there to Australia to France to Japan. Just busy really promoting and it really did a lot for me. I’m just trying to bring it to the States now man. There are some people who know about me and know about my crew affiliations. But there are a lot of places I got and nobody has heard of me.
I still love doing festival dates, and rocking the dirty bar with like 6 people to see if I can still do it. Just to kind of keep my emcee chops up.
How is it going from performing at something like the Worldwide Awards in London to performing at a show where you aren’t really even sure how many people are going to show up?
I always like to say “Even when its real bad its good.” Even when I’m doing that I always think that I could be digging ditches for a living. Even if there’s one person there and I make a connection it’s a blessing. That never gets old to me. I really enjoy the intimacy and being able to perform my songs and get the feelings that remind me the reason I wrote them . It’s always a good feeling.
That’s definitely a beautiful thing. Also, I’m pretty good friends with DJ Flip Flop, who is Cunninlynguists’ DJ. And he told me that people overseas have an incredible appreciation for all different types of music and that performing in different countries is just a completely different experience than performing in the States. Would you agree with that?
It’s crazy man because the first time I went over there I really related to like the migration of the Jazz musicians of the 60’s and 70’s. Where you heard about Billie Holiday and Chestine Baker going over there and getting a lot of love that they never got in the states. That resonates still. The real connection with not only what you are saying but the feeling that comes through. A lot of them don’t even understand the language but they really try to connect with the feelings and they respond really well. It’s what an artist would want.
And as cheesy as it sounds man, music really is the universal language. It’s crazy. The connections that I made and the really great bonds that I’ve made with people who really don’t speak a lot of English. I’ve been to Serbia and ended up freestyling in the streets with various emcees. And at the beginning its tense but by the end its all pounds and hugs and offerings. That’s always the great neutralizer is when someone will say that their friend is an emcee I’ll just start beat boxing. It’s one of the greatest things man. I’ll never get sick of it. It’s just love man.
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