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You want that raw and dusty hip-hop in its purest essence? Then Erik “Apollo Brown” Stephens and Jason “Planet Asia” Green have got something for you. Namely, the potent and literally stinky collaborative album Sardines. With their second collaborative project due in stores September 8th, they provide more rugged hip-hop. It might not be for everyone, but connoisseurs with a complex palate should find it outstanding.
Both producer Apollo Brown and emcee Planet Asia are amongst the most talented and prolific artists working right now. Brown has a deep discography, producing many albums in full since the mid-’00s. He has nearly 30 albums on the Mello Music Group imprint alone, including instrumental projects, multiple projects with his group Ugly Heroes, compilations that feature a roll call of some of the best emcees working, and over two dozen one emcee/one producer collaborations, all of which are dope.
One of these collaborative projects is Anchovies (2017) with Planet Asia. Asia is a massively productive artist in his own right and has been on an incredible tear since around 2010, releasing dozens of albums, EPs, and one emcee/one producer partnerships. With Anchovies, they crafted an album that Asia describes on the opening track as “so dirty if you threw water at it, it would turn into mud.” After six years, the pair decided that a second collaborative album was in order and recorded the follow-up Sardines in a Detroit studio in about a week’s time.
I had the chance to catch up with the pair as they prepared to serve up this second album. The duo discuss a wide range of topics, from the ease of their working partnership to the myth of “drumless” hip-hop to having complete artistic freedom to UFO sightings.
You both do a lot of one emcee/one producer projects. But outside of a few exceptions, you rarely repeat collaborations. What made you both want to revisit this partnership?
Apollo Brown: I don't want to say I’m against it, but I’m just never really interested in doing sophomore albums. It really comes down to the comparison aspect that we have in this industry for some reason. We can't let one album be its own entity. We always have to say, “Oh, that album is great, but it's not as good as this other one.” It's like there's always a comparison, even between artists. “Yeah, this artist is dope, but he's not as good as this one.” Well, maybe he's not trying to be as good as this one. Maybe he's his own artist. Maybe this album is its own album. We can't let artists or albums be their own entity and shine on their own. We always have to compare it to another one.
It's hard to create and craft an amazing album, in my eyes, and then try to follow that up with another amazing album that I think is equally amazing, if not better, and then get run through the mug with comparisons. “Oh, this album is great, but it's not the first one.” Not necessarily anti-sophomore albums, but anti-comparisons that come with doing sophomore albums.
You'll probably see more, because I'm starting to warm up to it a little bit. I'm starting to come around, mainly because I enjoy working with the artists that I work with, and I think I'm selling myself and that artist short by not continuing our legacy with more music. Especially artists like Planet Asia. I enjoy making music with him. I think the music that we come up with is crazy. I think it's amazing, and why not do another one? And I think we had talked about it before when we made Anchovies. We were like, “Yo, we got to make another one called Sardines.” Well, here it is.
Planet Asia: it was kind of like that was a no-brainer. Because of the first one. I just know how I am, so I knew the second go around, we were going to probably knock it out the park again. The only thing I was worried about was my voice at the time. I was just worried because I had stressed my voice from hanging out too much, and I was like, damn, I'm a little raspy. But that's just getting older. But the actual project, putting it together felt the same way how we recorded the first time.
AB: What's funny is, man, the way that we do our shit, it wasn't a challenge because it was so easy. It was so organic, man. I personally think Sardines is better than Anchovies.
PA: I do too!
Did you approach Sardines differently than Anchovies?
AB: We didn't at all. We kept the same formula. Anchovies was successful. It's funny, because when we came up with Anchovies and we knew the concept of the album, I knew that I was going to do a lot of drumless, minimal tracks. That's something I've always wanted to do, especially with Planet Asia. I knew that there was going to be a lot of pushback and we knew we wanted to call it Anchovies because I've never met a person who said, “Anchovies are okay.” You either love anchovies or you hate anchovies. I've never met a person that said, "I could take them or leave them. They're all right. If they're on my pizza, I'll eat them." Anyone I've ever met, they either hate anchovies with all their passion or they love anchovies with all that same passion.
So we knew, coming out with this album was going to be the same way, so we named it Anchovies, and we're like, yo, people, they're either going to love this album, or they're going to hate this album. You have a few purists out there that hate this album because there's no drums, or no third-party drums. I didn't add drums on it.
And you've got a couple of people out there that were upset, because they're used to Apollo Brown with drums, and blah, blah, blah. I'm like, yo, I got 30 other albums with drums all over it, man. Why are you mad at me for making a drumless album? But that was only a few people. 98% of the people out there who got the album loved the album. Even if they didn't like it at first, it took them a week, they caught on and were like, “You know what? This album is crazy. I really enjoy this album. I understand what you did here.”
So we kept that same formula for this album. It was something we wanted to do, just to kind of continue Anchovies. We got in the studio the same. He wrote the same. I crafted the beats the same. We didn't want to change anything. I kept good skits running throughout the album, good sound bites. Good interludes running throughout the album. Keeping it real interesting. You never know what you're going to get next when you're listening from track to track.
PA: And to be honest, Anchovies and Sardines are the only times I ever did something where we [recorded the album] in one week like that. It's just crazy how that process works, because it's like, damn, you can make a classic in seven days, bro.
AB: Most of that album was written in the studio. I think you only came with three or four tracks that were written, and the rest of it was written in the studio. And we were in the studio for three days. We had three 10-hour blocks or some shit like that, and we were just in there, and most of that shit was written in the studio. I mean, we were making classics in like, three, four days.
PA: And we were chilling. If you were to actually film the recording session, you're going to get more conversations than you're going to get recording.
ab: You know, we invited people up to the studio, and we were just really kind of taking our time, to be honest with you, man. And once Asia got in a groove? It was just like, come on, man.
How did you bring together the guests for the album?
AB: We brought in a couple of features. We brought in Marv Won and Ty Farris into the studio, and then we made that call to Tri-State and Sick Jacken. It's funny because any album that we do, whether we do 10 more albums, whether we do whatever, I guarantee you Tri-State has to be on that album.
PA: Right. That boy's got to be there.
So how did you decide what guests you wanted on Sardines?
AB: It had to make sense. Like, Sick Jacken made sense. Tri-State made sense. Every feature made sense.
PA: It's crazy because me and Marv was supposed to then do something together. Marv was actually supposed to be on the Rule of Thirds (2021) album that I did with Evidence, but I just never got around to doing it. Everything happens in time, on time, all the time. I mean, Detroit's got Apollo, one of the illest. Let's do it now. This is going to be a thing in the future. A historical moment.
What do you guys like about working with each other?
AB: Asia's one of my favorite emcees of all time. He's probably my favorite emcee over my beats. I mean, everything about him, man. I've always been attracted to his delivery, his voice, his content, and just the way he rides a beat. His pocket is crazy, and he's just a dope overall artist, man, and you've got to respect him. Any emcee out there has to respect Planet Asia.
PA: He don't be trying to tell me shit about what to say or nothing. The album is laid out by him, so I'm literally just blindly following the producer. But he kind of lets you do your own thing.
AB: I would never tell somebody like Asia what to write or how to say it, man. Come on.
PA: When we record, it's kind of like hanging out at the barber shop. Imagine hanging out at the barber shop, and the mic is in the corner, and you can just, “Okay, hold on, you know what? That conversation, I feel that. Let me put this right here.” That's what was happening. A lot of those songs are our conversations going into the music. Because Marv was there not just to record, he was there hanging out. And you know he's hella funny and shit. And we were talking about everything, from aliens, to them, to relationships.
AB: As always, it was mad alien talk.
PA: Matter of fact, we saw an alien while I was out there at 7-11.
What happened?
PA: You know, it's crazy. I'm glad Apollo was with me, because I'm like, he ain't the type that don't believe no shit like that. So for him to see it, I'm like, ‘See? Look at this shit.” It flew out. It flew way further than what a plane going to fly, and it was too close. It was real close to us at first, and it just flew out. And by the time I turned on my phone...
AB: It was weird. And it wasn't no drone or nothing.
PA: That was crazy. So, that was a special moment for the album.
So, what draws you to creating music that's so dirty that you “throw water on it and it becomes mud?”
PA: Everybody’s always talking about this drumless stuff, and when you think about it, all the early hip-hop, all that stuff was really drumless. Bro, it's the same tradition. We were doing drumless music. I don't know why people make such a big, big deal. There’s a lot of drumless songs out there that's not even considered drumless. It's just that it's been embedded in us as just hip-hop songs that we grew up off of.
AB: Take it back to the essence, man. Just take it back to the essence.
PA: It's the same thing. The drums are there, you just have to listen.
AB: For me, it's all about the melodies, man.
Let the sample ride, to speak for itself?
AB: Let the sample ride.
PA: And you know, it's a restaurant. This is our restaurant. If you want that other shit, go to the other restaurant.
Do you find that Mello Music has been supportive of letting you do what you want to do?
AB: I do whatever I want to do. Absolutely. I don't check in with music. I don't say, “Check this out, this is what we doing.” I don't do none of that. The label gets the album when it's done. The mastering engineer sends the album over, literally.
What's it like to have that level of artistic freedom?
AB: I mean, I think everybody should have that artistic freedom, whether you're on a label or not.
PA: But to fuck with you, I kind of always had artistic freedom, because I'm an asshole. It's hard to tell me to do any fucking thing that I don't want to do. We’re doing what the fuck we want to do.
AB: Yeah, I can't imagine somebody telling me, “Yo, I don't like this song, do it over.” What? That don't make no sense, man. “I don't like this album, man. I need you to add this and then take this off and add this, and whatever.”
PA: “I need some trap drums.” Like, “You guys are dated.”
AB: No, no, this is my album. This is what I like. I would never do that.
So what songs did you enjoy making the most?
AB: All of them.
PA: Actually, I wrote “Peas and Onions” in LA. That's the only song that actually took me more than one day to write.
AB: Because you were battling with the sample.
PA: I was battling with the sample, so I was compensating. It took me a few days to battle the sample. But that, I love. “’88 S-Curls” is just fucking crazy to me. It's songs like that that make me be like, “Yeah, this is a fucking classic album. This is really a fucking classic.” The fans are really going to go apeshit over this. If you liked Anchovies, you're going to fucking love Sardines.
Were you surprised with how things worked out?
PA: I ain't going to lie, man, I surprised myself. Because I didn't get to hear that album until like, two weeks ago. So, yeah, imagine forgetting all the shit you said, and then hearing it? I'm like, whoa! What the fuck, man? I knew I did some shit, but damn, we went crazy on this one!
So do you actually like anchovies or sardines?
AB: The actual food? No, I don't fuck with that shit.
PA: I eat anchovies and I eat sardines. I love fish.
AB: I'm the one that don't fuck with that shit, man. I can't do it. Hey, do you know that, did I tell you that this time around, the vinyl is going to smell like fish? Remember, we were supposed to do that with Anchovies? And we couldn't find a record manufacturer to do that shit. So now we got, for the Sardines, we found it, and then when you open the packaging, an overwhelming smell of fish is going to come at you.
Where did you find somebody to do that?
AB: Oh man, I can't give away the secrets.
Anything else you want to say about Sardines?
PA: It stinks!
AB: It stinks, literally. It literally stinks. Go get that, man.
So you talked about how much you enjoyed doing the second one. Is there going to be a third installment, like Pickled Herring?
AB: Pickled Herring? No.
PA: The third one is going to have beats.
AB: Hey, you know what? We might call the third one Beets, as in B-E-E-T-S.
PA: Or call it Drumsticks.
AB: Oh yeah, that's right, Drumsticks. Or Beets.
AB: And if you hoe-ass rappers try to take that concept, we know where you got it from.
So we always ask artists, what are your five favorite albums?
PA: Okay, it's Michael Jackson’s Thriller. LL Cool J's Radio. Ice Cube’s AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted. Nas’ Illmatic. My fifth one would be Too $hort's Born to Mack. Those are my elements.
AB: I would say Enta da Stage by Black Moon. Supreme Clientele by Ghostface Killah. Arthur Verocai, the self-titled album. Probably David Porter’s Victim of the Joke? And I might throw Souls of Mischief’s ’93 'Til Infinity in there.
PA: That’s one of the ones.
AB: Absolutely.
Editor’s Note: This interview has been edited from the original transcript for length and clarity.
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