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A Haze Wafts Above the Suburbs

(No Cover Magazine, October 2001)

By Robert Welborn

To call the Kottonmouth Kings an enigma would be wrong.  They are an enigma, wrapped in mystery and baked into a brownie that you pass amongst friends on the left-hand side.

In an era where the rap-over-rock thing is just played out, along comes Kottonmouth Kings with punk over hip-hop, reggae over punk, and things you’ve never heard of layered over drug humor and techno.  They saw where the rest of the pack was going with this genre and veered sharply.  Apt steering, shrewd management, and wry talent has helped elevate the Kings into underground icons.

These days, the Kottonmouth Kings are: 

·         Brad “Daddy” X, executive producer and lead vocals;

·         D-Loc, vocals and the one that is always jumping in pictures of the band;

·         Johnny Richter, yet more vocals, but usually doesn’t jump;

·         Pakelika, some sort of thing that dances on the stage;

·         Lou Dog, drummer and the owner of much hair;

·         Bobby B, their multi-talented DJ

If you haven’t had the pleasure of catching the madness that ensues in one of their sold out shows, don’t worry, you’ll get a chance soon.  The Kings are close to releasing their 4^th full-length album and heading out on tour.

Brad “Daddy” X took some time out just before his first show on the new tour to talk to me.  It sounded a little something like this:

NC: Last year, I first heard the song “Daydreamin’ Fazes” on the radio, but I never heard the name of the band.  Literally, two minutes after hearing it, I was on Napster [there used to be this thing called Napster…], downloading everything that y’all had ever done. 

The next song I heard was “Dog’s Life”, and I said “this band has serious range”. I went out and bought Royal Highness and High Society the next day. Are people shocked at your breadth of sound?

Brad “Daddy” X: Ever since the incarnation of the band we’ve crossed so many styles…from hip-hop to punk to techno to reggae.  We don’t put boundaries on ourselves.  We’re all about breaking down boundaries.  People kind of dig that.  We’ll do a hip-hop song next to a reggae song next to a punk rock song and it feels organically “Kottonmouth Kings”.

NC: Why does the press have so much trouble trying to describe KMK?

BDX:  We fall into that “gray zone”.  I heard on Power 106 (Los Angeles), “D12 [Eminem’s Group] is going on tour with the ‘rock’ band Kottonmouth Kings.”  They called us a rock band because we are white.  It’s funny, because if anything, we don’t consider ourselves a rock band.  That’s the gray zone.  We’re too hip-hop for the alternative stations and too alternative for the hip-hop stations.  The root of it is definitely imbedded in hip-hop.

NC: Your new album, Hidden Stash 2, is due out in stores on October 9^th.  Your second album was called Hidden Stash, Is this album a sequel?

BDX: Our first album was a five song EP called Stoners Wreaking Havoc that’s now out of press.  Royal Highness was our first full-length album.  We have our own label called Suburban Noize. We released Hidden Stash,  this collection of b-sides and stuff that didn’t make the first record. So, now it’s out of print [It’s a collector’s item if you’ve got a copy, kids].  High Society came out last year.

<Long Story Short Effect>

Capitol Records gave the Kings permission to press up a limited batch on Suburban Noize.  Capitol Records has had three presidents since Hidden Stash was released.  Not many bands can survive three new record company presidents.  Along with a new president comes a new staff.  The guy who signed your band is likely taking up fly-fishing in Central China, compliments of his severance package.

KMK, however, has Suburban Noize, which is a joint venture with Capitol Records.  They can do their own marketing, print their own t-shirts, schedule their own tours and put their own albums together.  Daddy X received permission from Andy Slater at Capitol, the latest president, to re-release Hidden Stash with some new songs.  “Some new songs” turned into 14 new songs and fans lucked out.

NC:  On top of those 14 new songs, you cover “My Mind’s Playing Tricks on me” by the Ghetto Boys.  Is this a shout out to the “nasty kids from Houston”?

BDX:  We love the Ghetto Boys…we grew up on them.  The history of that song, there was this compilation CD called Take a Bite out of Rhyme.  We were supposed to do a song for that record, and that song jumped out to us as supremely appropriate to Kottonmouth Kings.  We kind of did a re-write and we put it on that.  We played it live and a lot of the fans really liked the song.  So we put it on Hidden Stash 2.

NC:  What can we expect to hear from Kottonmouth Kings this time and how is it different than what you’ve done before?

BDX:  With the “Kottonmouth form” you’re going have a lot of different musical styles.  You’re going to hear hip-hop, you’re gonna get some punk rock, you’re gonna get a little bit of reggae.  The way we approach this record is really kind of raw.  It’s evolved too in the same sense.

NC:  Speaking of raw, on “Dying Daze” and “Bi-Polar”, you are joined by your other band, a punk band, called Humble Gods.  What is the relationship between these two very different bands?

BDX:  Humble Gods is a joint venture.  Lou Dog and I’ve been playing in punk bands since back in the day.  My brother is the Corporate Avenger, another artist on our label, and a member of Humble Gods.  Lou’s brother Ricky Vodka plays guitar.  Doug Carrion is the 5^th member of the band and he also runs the daily operations of Suburban Noize. 

It’s just kind of a family band.  We just have a good time.  Kottonmouth Kings has taken up so much time that Humble Gods has just kind of become a “for fun” project.  It’s like a bowling league. 

We were talking about recording a Humble Gods record.  I just looked and said some of these songs are coming out in a way that I’d like to merge them with some different elements. D-Loc and Richter were totally into it, so we experimented a little bit to see if we could bridge punk rock and hip-hop.  Push the boundaries!

NC:  Boundaries?  Like when you write songs like “All About the Weed”? 

BDX: Yeah.

NC:  Do you find yourself laughing or sad that you’ll never hear this single on the radio?

BDX:  We don’t ever anticipate that we’ll here a Kottonmouth Kings song on the radio.  There is always something to laugh at in all of the songs we write.  We don’t want to take ourselves too serious.  I don’t ever put the effort it making our records for the radio, because I know that as long as people hear it and dig it, I don’t need to.  That’s all I care about.

NC:  You’ve got like a hundred fan web sites out there.  I’ve been to your shows, and you’ve got kids tattooing your logo on their bodies.  Hot girls with KMK permanently on their fore and aft cleavage.  Did you mean for it to go this far?

BDX:  No.  We were just doing something that felt good to us and that we were having a good time with.  The fact that people are responding in this way, validates what we are doing.  It keeps us motivated. It really started off as kind of a studio fun project. It eventually evolved into this…beast. We never thought that it would get this far. 

It’s really killer because we have Suburban Noize label.  We tour with all of our artists, from Too Rude, the Corporate Avenger and The Judge.  D-Loc has his own record Shaky Bones; Bobby B, our DJ, has two albums out 99 Rips Beyond and Built from Scratch. Pakelika, the masked man, has his own group, Dysfunction.  It’s cool, to have a great platform to be creative.  When we are not touring we are doing studio work non-stop.  Not too many people get to do this for a living.

NC:  And what a living it is…you’ve had the chance to play with the guys from Insane Clown Posse, Cypress Hill, TSOL.  How do you like doing these collaborations?

BDX:  It’s always great to collaborate with artists you respect.  Definitely, when we did the collaboration with Jack from TSOL on “Peace not Greed”, he was such an inspiration to me.  That was such an honor.  Insane Clown Posse, we go a long ways back.  Getting to do a song with them was great.  Like, Johnny Richter just went and did a track with Mellow Man Ace.  He was telling me “Dude, I can’t believe I’m in the studio with a guy I used to listen to when I was growing up.  It’s kinda surreal”.  It’s an honor to make music with these guys.

NC:  You produced this album, you run your own label, you control your apparel and accessories sales, you have like an entire empire developing underneath you.  Is this distracting you, is it becoming too much like a “real job”?

BDX:  Well, no.  It’s all about self-empowerment.  We do a lot of delegating.  This organization is like a family, though.  Everyone wears different hats.  Everyone contributes to the production too.  We’ve got three studios that we work out of.  Everyone is bringing different things to the table. 

I’ve done real jobs.  I’ve loaded boxes into hot trucks, delivered pizzas, you name it, and I’ve done it.  I can’t call this a real job.  To do what you love doing and to do it with people that you love, that is the greatest experience.  From the school of hard knocks, promoting for nightclubs and being in bands all these years, I’ve learned to be self-empowered. 

It’s survival.  I don’t look at this as an empire.  I look at it as a necessity.  I wish more bands could learn from bands that kind of take this approach.  Then they wouldn’t be victimized by the industry.  Artists have to take some responsibility too.  The only ones we have to blame are ourselves, but at least we did it our way.

NC:  That sounds like good Sinatra cover.

BDX:  We might do a version of “I did it My Way” one day.  That would be more like the Sid Vicious take off.  Seriously it’s not a distraction.  Everyone plays a role in it.

NC:  What collaborations can fans expect to hear from KMK at the Cypress Hill Smoke out in October?

BDX:  Have you seen the line up for that?  When you are playing with that many killer bands, you never know what to expect.  Those huge festivals are usually a trip.  I can’t even tell you what to expect.  It is going to be a day to remember in history.

NC:  Your tour schedule contains very few locations in California.  Is this a new experience?  Are you worried about how the rest of the world is going to take KMK?

BDX:  We’ve done tons of touring.  We’ve been touring for the last 4 or 5 years.  We even have a good cycle going where we tour for a couple of months, then we come home, record, then go tour again.  As long as people want it we’ll keep doing it.

NC:  Have you been overseas yet?

BDX:  Yeah we’ve been to Japan and Europe and stuff.  We’ve been to Japan three times, and Japan is a trip.  We have a great time over there.  We show up and I don’t know how, but they know our lyrics.  It’s insane.  To see this whole Japanese crowd singing “Bong Tokin Alcoholics” is just very funny.

NC:  Besides the new album, you also released a DVD a few months ago called Dopeumentary. What’s on the DVD?

BDX: With a band like Kottonmouth Kings, our main stream exposure on MTV and on the radio is really limited.  That said, we’ve made a ton of videos.  So we thought that we’d give people a little deeper insight into what this whole thing was really about.  So we shot this documentary and it plays along with the videos.

NC:  Willie Nelson tours with three busses, the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria.  The first bus halls the band and instruments. The other two buses hall his pot.  How many busses are y’all bringing?

BDX:  I love Willie Nelson.  He’s great.  He’s a true pioneer.  There is this promoter in Las Vegas who’s tried to hook us up a couple of times, but we’ve always missed crossing paths.

NC:  I’d love to see that collaboration.  Either KMK doing country or Willie doing punk or hip-hop.

BDX:  I would love to do a song with Willie Nelson.

NC:  Is Kottonmouth Kings going to show up on any movie soundtracks any time soon?

BDX:  I hope so, because we get paid.  We’ve had some good exposure on soundtracks so far.

NC:  What movies have your songs been in?

BDX:  The Scream 2 with “Suburban Life”.  We were on that Lost and Found soundtrack with “Dogs Life”.  It’s killer as a songwriter to get your stuff up there.

NC:  The first leg of your tour starts on October 6^th in San Bernadino, CA.  Any previews of what’s to come?

BDX:  Well, it’s called “The Smoke Out” so use your imagination.  The first half of the tour is with D12 the second half is the Suburban Noize “On the Run Tour”.  We just signed this new band from San Diego, the Midget Mob and they are gonna come with us.  Too Rude, Corporate Avenger, and The Judge are going to be playing with us.  We are going too tour up until Christmas, then hit the studio and start recording again.  Our new album is probably going to finish up in the springtime and come out next summer.

NC:  Thanks for talking to us.