Interview: Talkin’ Music and Film With the Constant Deviants…

By Adam KG • On Interviews , , ,

ConstantDeviants

How did you guys meet, and fur­ther­more what led you to form the group Con­stant Deviants ?

We met at a col­lege that a mutu­al friend of ours went to. Cutt would go there to dj parties and I would just come up there from Bal­timore to be in New York chas­ing my dream.. We linked at a party he was dee­jay­ing at, I jumped up, got on the mic and the rest is history !

You guys release through Six2Six Records, the label you set up.  What do you think are the pros and cons of oper­at­ing through your own label com­pared to being signed to someone else ?

I don’t see any cons in it in this day and age for us. Maybe years ago, or maybe for someone who does­n’t have any idea on how to nav­ig­ate the “do’s and dont’s” of the game, there was more value to being signed to a sep­ar­ate deal. In that case you’re hav­ing more taken care of for you, but of course there’s a flip­side to that in what you give up.  For us in our situ­ation now, oper­at­ing with our own label is the only way at this point. We have com­plete con­trol over what we do and how we do it!

So what was your exper­i­ence of grow­ing up in Bal­timore and New Jer­sey, and how did that com­pare with your time liv­ing in Brooklyn?
Grow­ing up in Bal­timore, it pre­pared me for all of life’s tri­als and tribu­la­tions. When I lived in New Jer­sey I real­ized how both places were so sim­il­ar, every­where has good and bad sides to it. Liv­ing in Brook­lyn was cool, but by that time I had become the per­son I am, so it was just anoth­er chapter in the story. Like I said, I was already pre­pared and at this point. Your homet­own moulds you, so now I can fit in any­where I go

So look­ing back, if you could give one piece of advice to your­self before you star­ted your music career, what would it be ?

Nev­er change your dir­ec­tion for someone else’s vision!

And look­ing for­ward, where would you like to see yourselves in 5 years time, and what’s the plan for achiev­ing that?

I’m cool with the fact that we have a fan base that grows organ­ic­ally. I would like to still be rel­ev­ant to them and maybe a few oth­ers 5 years from now.  Our plan is to con­tin­ue to cre­ate what we do best, but we always look to put a little extra twist into the next thing, just like we did for the concept behind “Omer­tà”.

OK, mov­ing onto your new album “Omer­tà”, you’ve applied a theme and adop­ted the char­ac­ters of Luciano and Lansky. What inspired you to take that “role play­ing” approach?

It was just some­thing we wanted to try. We like to do some­thing dif­fer­ent every time around and chal­lenge ourselves. We always wanted to do some­thing based around our Itali­an and Rus­si­an back­grounds but earli­er in our career it was too obvi­ous and over­done. Mean­ing spe­cific­ally the por­tray­al of a mafiosa life­style, wheth­er that’s as rep­res­en­ted on film or artists assum­ing that per­sona. So we felt the time was right and ran with it.  I wanted to speak on that life­style from a more tra­di­tion­al storytelling stand­point, and also use it meta­phor­ic­ally to com­pare situ­ations. It’s like a series of short stor­ies on one record.

Your pre­vi­ous album “Avant Garde” was only released last year, how­ever we’ve heard that both were con­ceived dur­ing your time in Switzer­land.  Tell us more about that and what would you say are the key dif­fer­ences between the two releases oth­er than the theme of “Omer­tà”.

Well they were inspired at 2 dif­fer­ent times in Switzer­land but they are totally dif­fer­ent pro­jects and approaches. I would say there is abso­lutely noth­ing sim­il­ar about the pro­jects oth­er than the fact that we gave the audi­ence exactly what we wanted to give. The pro­jects are like yin and yang, “Omer­tà” has a much harder edge son­ic­ally and matches the over­all theme.

M.I., tell us more about the move into act­ing and film pro­duc­tion.  How did you get star­ted with that, what upcom­ing pro­jects do you have and is this some­thing you expect to do more of in the future?

It’s just growth for me as an artist. As much as I love mak­ing music and will con­tin­ue to do so, I want to grow into more than that. I don’t want to live in a box, so I will con­tin­ue to expand. Like, shit, I suck at paint­ing but I do that also !! I just want to cre­ate and leave a leg­acy. It’s kinda cath­artic. We have 2 films in the works right now. “Six2Six” the movie and “Can­’t Live Without My Radio”.  The former also has Treach (Naughty by Nature), Syleena John­son and Chief Rock­er Busy Bee in act­ing roles.  We found out recently that the Hip Hop Film Fest­iv­al will be screen­ing it at the Nation­al Black Theat­er in New York dur­ing the first week of August, then we’re plan­ning to release it later in the year.  “Can­’t Live Without My Radio” is still a bit of a work in pro­gress, but it’s a com­edy centred around a radio station.

Look­ing at your music and film work, who would you say would be your top three artists / groups and act­ors you’d really like to col­lab­or­ate with if you were giv­en the opportunity

That’s such a hard ques­tion for me because I am just an artist. I don’t pay much atten­tion to any­one else and what they are doing. All of that is cool and I’m not being arrog­ant, but col­lab­or­a­tions are in my opin­ion over­rated. All of that said, I’m com­pletely open minded, if someone got in touch look­ing to col­lab­or­ate I’d be down to look at that, see what would come out of it.  But I don’t have a list as such.

What’s you guys’ favour­ite meal ?

It depends on what day it is… Lol. I don’t think in all hon­esty that there’s a meal that isn’t my favor­ite !!! But just so long as there’s no pork.…

If you could live any­where in the world, where would you choose?

At the top of it.. Only friends and fam­ily invited!

And finally, what do you feel you’ll have gained most at a per­son­al level from your careers as hip hop artists and run­ning a label ?

We have had a chance to make a state­ment and live etern­ally through our art. If we left here today I feel I have had a chance to say some­thing that res­on­ates with at least one per­son and will be quoted at some point. Thanks for the love!

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Adam KG

Adam KG, is con­scious Hip Hop artist hail­ing from Lon­don City whilst walk­ing the world’s pave­ments. He is inter­ested in the enter­tain­ment and media sec­tor, youth work and hol­ist­ic health.

About Adam KG

Adam KG, is conscious Hip Hop artist hailing from London City whilst walking the world's pavements. He is interested in the entertainment and media sector, youth work and holistic health.