Category: Music

After working with The Roots and sharing the stage with Gil Scott Heron and the late, great Nina Simone, poet and spoken word artist Ursula Rucker took time out after busy visits to Germany and France to talk to Sam Hesketh about the Wu Tang, the burden of writing and being labelled as a “conscious artist”.

So let’s start with the basics – when did you start getting into poetry and slams?

Actually, I never got into slams, I don’t really agree with them. I did one, but that was to support friends who were putting it on. But I started writing really young, but didn’t realise I was a poet until I had enough sense to realise it and then started going to readings in little book stores and places like that.

Is it a good scene in Philly for poetry then?

It was, it was really nice when I started because nobody was trippin’ on anything, it was just a natural thing and everybody was friends. I don’t know what its like really now because I’m not in there as much but every once in a while I see a reading in the local paper and I wanna go and do it, just to have that special feeling again.

And the music followed pretty soon after?

Yeah it did. You know, the minute I started having the courage to start sharing my stuff from home publicly, everything kinda fell in with it. It was like “Woah, this is crazy”, and that was 12 years ago!

At the moment there are more poets getting into the hip hop scene, Saul Williams and Benjamin Zephaniah for example, do you think that’s important for poetry?

No, I think its nice that people get introduced to poetry in that way, when they realise it can be acceptable, because it’s really like a community. I mean, you can learn it in school and the teachers tell you its all about rhyme and meters and shit, and that can really turn people off, I mean I don’t operate that way. So yeah, it’s nice, but it’s not necessary.

Listening to your stuff, it seems really powerful because its so different from when you turn on MTV and see the rap stars throwing money at the camera and women shaking their booty in hardly any clothes. Do you consciously go out to be different to that?

I don’t consciously do that, but I am conscious y’know? We get put in a box negatively, I mean people like me, Mos Def, Talib Kweli as “conscious”. I’m just conscious like I’m aware. Different people are pre-destined to see and care about different things, from a young age. I had to grow into being a rebel, because I was shy and I had to be brave enough to make a comment, it’s what’s around you.

So, have you ever felt like, you’ve seen something on TV or in your community and you HAVE to write about it?

Yeah! It’s funny you should say that, I’m sure I’m not alone, many people feel like that, artists or not. I was watching something on the TV and I just thought, why do I let things affect me? Why can’t I turn it off? I just can’t! This morning even I flicked on the news, I saw something saying “30 people blown up in Baghdad”, and everyone is de-sensitised to it now, but it’s still such a heavy thing, and I think about how many were children or women or old people y’know? And I’m included, like you hear it every day and you’re just like [hand over face] this. And that’s what I care about, in an age where phones can do everything for you, be your prom date, all kinds of shit, it’s such a time to call on people to pay attention to people.Even if you don’t share your stuff with any other person, if you know in your heart that you’re that type of person, if your art is personal, you’re still progressing as a human being.

Working with The Roots and sharing the stage with real greats, is there anyone that you would absolutely love to work with?

Always the same answer. I had a list, which I did ages ago and I write his name on it like, if I write it enough it’ll happen for 15 years – The RZA. Since the first time I was recording for an album, which didn’t come out as something happened with Sony, and I had to make a wish list for people to work with and RZA was top then. Even if I haven’t always agreed with everything they’ve said about women, as a unit, they are what hip hop is all about, getting together and keeping it constant with good quality music. I like that whole thing, they always take it to the next level.

Well RZA did a world rap album not long ago, with French and German guys on there, so he’s willing to go places other big names don’t go.

Exactly! You can take that shit from the hood, and I mean seriously the hood, you know they are from where they say they are from! And he takes that and doesn’t change who he is when he goes off. He gives who he is to these other people to work with, I love him.

So, when you write your stuff, I guess the poetry comes first and then the music follows?

It works both ways, I mean in my mind the poetry comes first because that’s the major thing, but sometimes I need some sounds, when I’m working on a project. When I work on personal things, I don’t obviously. When I was on this last project, I was bogged down with life shit, and I wasn’t in the right place to write poetry all the time, so I asked Ant, the guy who did most of my album, that I might need music upfront, but I told him the themes beforehand. For this album, I wrote everything in the studio, the day before we recorded it, because I so gridlocked in life. I had to get it where I could get it, and I’m not even really a spontaneous person.

It must be hard then coming over to Europe when you have four sons then.

Its hard, but most of the time its because I’m trippin’. I’ve done this a few times, one kid, two kids, three kids, four kids. They don’t like it when I leave but its only a short trip this time, but its mostly because I’m trippin’. My eldest son is 11 now but he’s into hip hop and everything so it’s cool.

In my dissertation on “Hip Hop and Communication Theory”, I read a theory that even if you only touch one person, in all the billions of people out there, its worth it. And I always get that from hip hop, do you feel that way about it?

That’s what I always say , it’s important like that.

I mean, even my mum likes the album!

That’s the real shit right there. When people play it to their parents and they dig it, that’s the biggest compliment you can give me!

You’re music touching all sorts of people then!

Well that’s it, if someone asks me to describe my audience, I can’t do it. A lot of people might think because I’m black or a woman or a poet, I’ll have a certain audience. But you can’t put it down like that, especially at a live show. When I go to a reading or a University, I reach people on different levels, its all important and all relevant.I mean, I know poetry isn’t on the radar like other things are, but I’m so happy to be here right now, it’s amazing. I have mentors and I know the long lasting reach of poetry, and it allows me to get my shit off and let people know this is what’s troubling me, or what makes me happy and that’s the best thing. It’s all about that urgency of the moment you’re in and you get to write it down.

It’s cathartic as well to write all that down.

Oh yeah, I can’t stop, I have to chase things down wherever I go. I liken it to if I were a photographer, because you know they carry their cameras around everywhere. Or if they don’t have it, they see something they want a photo of and they’d kill to have it, and it’s that moment I’m into.Well, thanks for talking with me, I hope the rest of the day in London is cool.

Thanks so much, make sure you tell a neighbour about the CD and get to a live show next time I’m over!

After the tape stopped, and Ursula found out this was going on a skating site, she told me that her eldest son was into skating and she’d make sure he’d check out the site. On top of this, as I was leaving, she told me that the skating scene in Philly used to be great as the Love monument was used by all the skaters, but the city then closed that down for skating and she felt it was a shame because it was an awesome community to have around.

Ursula Rucker’s upcoming album, “Ma’At Mama” is out on February 6th, on K7 Records.

By Daniel Crouch on December 3rd 2005 at Oxford Brookes Uni

How’s it going today?

It’s going good thanks, I’ve just eaten my duck and cashew nut dinner, which tasted like shit, but yeah I’m good today!

How’s the tour been going so far?

Great! We’ve been touring since June pretty much, so it’s a long haul, but for me, playing live…it’s always good.

It’s been only a couple of months since you were last here in the UK.What made you want to return so quickly?

Well it’s always been the plan to come back and hit the cities we didn’t get to the first time round, which is why we’re playing places like Exeter and Oxford instead of the usual London, Manchester, Glasgow schedule. Also, we wanted to play the Mean Fiddler in London the first time round to drum up the support and get the numbers in to sell out a show at the Forum the second time round.

You’ve been touring pretty hard on the back of Ghost Reveries – from the likes of this tour now to the summer you spent on Sounds of the Underground in the US. What’s the general reception been like to the album so far – both live and critically?

It’s been good, very positive so far. I mean, Europe is always a good market for us, but the US is better, obviously as there are more people there, so it’s great that we’re going to places and seeing twice the amount of people there than we would usually expect to see.

Are you getting people whinging at you to play certain songs off the new album you’re not playing?

*laughs* Yeah, well we obviously have to play new songs, but we have 8 albums of back material too; there are people who moan because we haven’t played this song or that song…like over here in the UK now, we’re playing all these smaller venues, and maybe 20 people are going to 2 or more shows, and obviously these are the more dedicated fans, and often the ones that go on the internet forums afterwards and say “Why didn’t you play Ghost of Perdition?”, but we have to be thinking of the other people at these shows who won’t have seen previous shows and play a setlist that reflects the entireity of our music…but…yeah, the reception to the album has been great.

Is it possible for you to play a completely different set each night, similar to bands like Dream Theater?

*looks horrified* Oh no! We’d have to rehearse and practice all the time to do that, and we haven’t got the time really. We have maybe 14 or 15 ‘live’ tracks, which we’ll rotate round in setlist that has 10 songs in it each night, just so there is a bit of variety in our sets.

My theory is that Dream Theater are probably actually robots…

Ha! Probably.

Sounds of the Underground must have been quite a weird experience, seeing as many may argue you’re a band best suited to a smaller venue and not a larger outdoor event…

Yes, it was. I mean we’ve played the big festivals before over here in Europe, like Download over here in the UK, but it (The Sounds of The Underground tour) was a touring festival, which is unheard of in Europe, so that was a totally new experience for us.

How were the headlining and main support spots sorted out? Did you have some guy poke his head round the door first thing and shout “Right, you’re on in five minutes guys”?

Well we got to headline once in Montreal, as we have a big following in Canada, but for the most part Lamb of God headlined, and the main support act position was rotated around….we were told usually in the morning what the schedule for the day was, so we were always prepared.

What was it like to share a stage with such a diverse line-up? Obviously bands like High on Fire and Madball are a mile away from yourselves in terms of genre etc…

Well we certainly stood out a bit, which isn’t anything new for us, and we mostly didn’t really pay any attention to the other bands on the tour; we tried to concentrate just on ourselves. Most of the other bands were, what do you call it…’metalcore’ bands, who in my opinion mostly sound the same really…..that’s not to say they weren’t all nice people, but it’s just not really my thing. But no..it was good, as we were turning a few fans towards our music, so it was good for the band.

So come on, just how many songs did you manage to fit into your set each day?

laughs* Oohhh, about 3 or 4. In festivals like that you usually only get about 30 minutes to play, and with our music we can’t really play many songs in that amount of time.

Like at Download, where you managed to get through ‘The Drapery Falls’ and about two other songs?

Exactly.

But it’s all good value for money?

*laughs* Well I hope so!

So back to the latest album, how would you say you’ve progressed musically since Deliverance and Damnation?

Well we never really set to purposefully progress our sound, it all happens naturally just from ideas and stuff we’d have floating around. Obviously a big change from the Deliverance and Damnation records is the addition of a permanent keyboard player, but also we had more time to prepare and rehearse before we went into the studio, unlike previous albums.

Actually before I came here tonight I was watching the ‘Lamentations’ DVD documentary, which showed up the problems with recording the previous two albums…

Yes, we wanted to prevent that happening again; we were determined to get it right this time.

How did you approach writing the album whilst in a transition period between labels?

Actually the album was written and recorded before we signed to Roadrunner. But we had decided we wanted to sign for them before we entered the studio, so it had no impact at all on the making of the album, we just wanted someone to put the cd out….we certainly don’t trust any of these labels with ideas concerning direction etc; we don’t want some American boss telling us to change our sound and gel back our hair to some style, we’re always wanted to do it our way.

Speaking of Roadrunner, how have things been thus far between you?

It’s a good relationship I think, we just want them to put our album out. They did complain about the length of the songs, but you’d expect that with them wanting to put songs on the radio and make videos..but that’s nothing new as our previous labels Koch and Music For Nations were the same. But we’re certainly trying to keep away from being told what to do.

Roadrunner seem to cop quite a lot of flack from within the metal community. Why do you think so many people seem to have such a vendetta against them? Is it simply their success and popularity?

Probably. I mean Roadrunner ten years ago was full of classic metal, but now because they’ve signed more commercial bands and metal is getting popular again, people are slagging them off. I’ll bet these people were the same people who listened to Korn back in the day though. Roadrunner having Nickelback and Slipknot on there doesn’t affect us at all. It just seems they’re being criticised for making money.

I think a lot of people assume that such a relationship may turn your sound a bit more commercial so to speak. Do you think such an assumption is a little ridiculous given that this isn’t exactly the first time you’ve been on a major label?

It is ridiculous, I mean, if people think after 8 albums we’re going to suddenly change just because of a label swap they can fuck off. We’ve always been non commercial, the only reason we’re doing more press and interviews now is partly because of Roadrunner yes, but also because we’re getting more popular, so obviously we’re going to get more exposure, but that has no effect on the music, we’re still writing ten minute songs.

It’s a bit like the Metallica syndrome; they make a video and suddenly they weren’t ‘cool’ anymore…

Yes, I only didn’t like Metallica when they changed their sound to be more popular, but people are always going to love your band when you’re unknown and relatively underground…but they don’t want everyone knowing about you and you being successful, it’s a little crazy really.

So presumably, if next year we see you guys in a video surrounded by gold chains and bitches, we officially have permission to twist your nipples and pull your hair?

*chuckles* Ha ha…yes, if we start gelling our hair into spikes and rapping……well, we’d deserve it.

So what’s next for Opeth? A bit of relaxation time?

Oh no…we’re on a four week tour now. Yesterday we played Exeter, today Oxford, and tomorrow…or tonight, whatever it is..we’re going to Holland, and then back to Sweden. I think I get back home just in time to do half a days Christmas shopping pretty much. We’re having a month off in January, and then out again until maybe October…it’s certainly very hectic, I’ve only seen my wife for about 30 days since June.

It’s a case of music not just being a job, but a life then?

Definitely.

Well thanks for taking the time out to do this Peter, I’ll leave you to enjoy your duck and cashew nut dinner…

Actually I’ve eaten half of it already, usually the guys have pizza every night after the shows…so I’m trying to avoid that tonight.

So there’s no travelling Opeth chef?

Noooo…maybe Lenny Kravitz has one, but not at this level. People probably don’t realise we’re actually working all day, not just for the show. We get maybe 20 minutes before we go on stage to eat, so there’s a lot of fast food!

Does that mean there’s a lot of bad smells floating about on stage?

*laughs* Oh yes, but I’m the only one who doesn’t fart! But Mike…well…he has his very own smell!

Daniel Crouch