Headnodic: Beats On The Brain

Headnodic: Beats On The Brain

Written by Luke Muyskens. Published: Wednesday, July 20, 2011.

One of the most unique producers to surface in the last ten years, Headnodic has produced for countless underground notables, from Mr. Lif to People Under the Stairs. He broke into the scene in the late nineties with the group Mission, which later became Crown City Rockers with MC Rashaan Ahmad, Woodstock and Max MacVeety on the drums, and Kat 010 on the keys, who have released three albums and four EPs over the course of the decade.

He ventured out as a solo artist in 2000 with his instrumental LP Headnodic Beats Vol. 1, then followed it up two years later with his Crown City-loaded Tuesday EP, and again in 2005 with a short EP entitled Now A Daze. In 2007 he formed a group with Lateef the Truth Speaker of Latryx and Blackalicious’s Gift of Gab for an album with Def Jux featuring underground legends from Damien Marley to members of The Alkaholiks and Jurassic 5.

He also teamed up with Boston MC Moe Pope to form the duo Megaphone, and dropped and album and an EP, along with a couple of unique mashups combining Moe Pope’s vocals with instrumentals from Bjork and Depeche Mode (succinctly de-Ded as Depeche Moe).

On July 26 he is releasing a highly-anticipated album called Red Line Radio, which will be his debut full-length solo effort, and has been in the works for quite a while. The album features longtime collaborators and newcomers including Rashaan Ahmad, Gift of Gab, Mr. Lif, Latryx, Lyrics Born, People Under the Stairs, Sadat X, Moe Pope, Myka Nyne, P.E.A.C.E., One Be Lo, and many more. This culmination of years of work is guaranteed to boast Headnodic’s signature eclecticism, and each beat will no doubt be something fresh and new. We checked in with Headnodic to get the low-down on the new album, what it takes to make a Headnodic track, and a little bit of hip hop history.

AGM: First off can you just introduce yourself, your region, and your crew?

Headnodic: I am Headnodic from the Crown City Rockers and The Mighty Underdogs, and Moe Pope and Headnodic. I originally started in a group called Mission in Boston and then moved out to Cali with Crown City Rockers in’99, so I’ve been repping the Bay Area ever since.

How did you first get into hip hop music?

I spent ten years in Wisconsin and me and a homie Benzito, who actually got on my new album, started in the early nineties. I was probably writing terrible raps around 1988, and then I met up with him and we started making shit in the basement, we had a four-track and one turntable and a pile of tapes, and then it just blossomed from there slowly but surely.

How would you describe your style of producing?

I guess it’s eclectic, one of the things I love about hip hop and beatmaking within hip hop is that it is a challenge to find as many kinds of music that you can twist and meld and chop and freak and turn into hip hop. So me as a music listener and lover of music and collector and musicologist, I get inspired by every genre possible, so when I start making beats I remain true to the form of music that I’m sampling. If I’m sampling a jazz record I can incorporate a lot of the mood, so by the end of the album it’s pretty damn eclectic. Some people dig that, some people don’t, but I’m very heavy into eclectic choices in music throughout an album so that’s the one word that comes to mind.

Who are some of your musical influences?

It changes every couple years. When I was young P-Funk was the greatest group that ever lived, and from there I’ve changed a hundred times as to who I’ve listened to the most, but as far as beatmakers, it’s a laundry list and it’s always changing. I think the people who have a lot of influence on me are the people that I work with, so Kat Ouano and Max MacVeety, my own crew, they inspire me. I couldn’t name specific producers that aren’t on everybody’s list. Pete Rock and Premo, Dilla of course, but I get inspired by absolutely everything and elements of all music.

Do you have a specific process you use when you are producing a song?

I don’t really. On Red Line Radio it was very much me running the gamut of processes. I’m a beat digger, I love digging for records where the sample is just raw, and sometimes that amounts to looping it up and then chopping it up and deciding I want to replay it, so I start from scratch and get a drummer in or play drums myself, play bass guitar and stack the whole song again, and take it in a new direction, or sometimes I’m just like this sample is so frickin’ raw that I just want it to sit there and I won’t even add a hi hat. And everything in between. I think for this record it’s a lot of going back and forth between being a musician and being a beat digger and finding the balance for each song as to where that song fits.

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