Nick: I’d like to bring up someone who I interviewed earlier this year, who credits you as the reason he’s back in the studio, revitalizing his career. So because my interview with Kiki was the first to leak this to the public along with some feral unreleased material from “Genuine Dexterity,” I’d like to ask how “Buffet Boys” is coming along?

 

Fatboi: Funny thing, that shit is a straight inside joke with Kiki because it started, I want to say, I had did the song we got on the him and Kenny album, the “Season of the Sickness” Joint. That's a real popular song on the project. Everybody was coming up to us like, “yo, you want Ki, you gotta do something.” So we were saying like “all right, let's start crafting some things right now that's still slow cooking.” That's definitely some down the line stuff for sure. But right now we are just building on the idea for now. But yeah, “Buffet” came from an inside joke between me and him. That's definitely not gonna be what it's called (laughs).

 

Nick: I feel like it'd be a great name in my opinion but I get it if you wanna do something more serious

 

Fatboi: We gotta figure it out. Like I said, I think we might have knocked out maybe one or two joints that came out. Super fire. We kind of just gotta put that to the side for now, because I'm working on a line. I stay busy. Kiki working on a line. He got a bunch of new amazing music he working on

 

Nick: Oh yeah, he was telling me about it.

 

Fatboi: Yeah, he's got a lot of stuff going on. Like I said, powerful music is timeless. So when the time is right, we'll definitely tap into that for sure. But shouts to Kiki man. 

 

Nick: Living legend. Speaking of living legend, I've heard you mention in your past interviews that you are heavily influenced by emcees like Pharaoh Monch and Mr. Lif to name a few. Would you consider Kiki to be part of that list and why? 

 

Fatboi: Oh yeah. I just was telling someone this earlier, like coming up within music, music was always played in my house for my grandparents, aunts, uncles. So I'm hearing stuff from the 70s, I'm hearing stuff from the 80s, me getting into my own as a kid. Obviously, Hip Hop was always around me, but being younger, I was more super into Heavy Metal and Punk Rock and Black Metal and a bunch of–all of that type of shit. So for me, when I started hearing a lot of the more underground emcees from the Pharaoh Monches, the Mr. Lifs, the Killah Priests, that's what super connected me to Hip Hop where it was like, “yo, I wanna do that. That's fire!” Like I always say, I always was influenced myself that I was like, “yo, that don't seem easy to do. That don't seem like anybody could just do that.” To this day, I still keep them same values and still inspired the same way by those artists where it's like you gotta be as as original as possible. Like your style gotta be such your style. Can't nobody ever try to touch it or try to copy it.

 

Nick: Let’s go even deeper into this discussion. This is an aspect regarding East Coast rappers and producers like K-the-I??? that I’ve been thinking about while preparing for this interview. Do you think emcees and producers like that who came up around the turn of the century up to around the mid 00s, took the risk to give the East Coast a weirder, more alternative side in a way that wasn’t possible in the earliest days of the scene, laying the groundwork to show you that it was possible to push the boundaries while still maintaining a successful career and a dedicated fanbase?

 

Fatboi: Yeah, definitely. Again, we talking about a genre, which is Hip Hop, that's just celebrated 50 years. You can time it back even back further from the late 70s from graffiti and break dancing and B-Boy and all of that. Even from the 80s, it was always if your ear in the right place, it would be certain left field artists and certain left field things that would cut through and have big careers and always reinvented theyself musically. So yeah, definitely I would say like the mid to late 00s, 90s, early 00s, it was big in that. But I've been here from the beginning and it was just kind of about what you was listening to and who you was paying attention to. 

 

Nick: To loop it back to “Buffet Boys,” I’ve heard from your other interviews that the time between agreeing on putting together a project with someone, whether that’s Roper Williams or Noface, and officially dropping said EP or full-length, takes around a few years. So should we expect this K-the-I??? Collab to drop sometime next year or 2027 or even further? 

 

Fatboi: I can't even say for now 'cause like I said, it's still slow cooking. We had maybe one or two conversations about it, but we both finishing other stuff we got before we even get into that. But you'll definitely hear us doing tracks with each other for sure, whether you hear something on my project, something on his project, but a full thing that's down the line. I can't even really put a timestamp on it for right now. 

 

Nick: I think it's best we rewind it back to a much earlier time in your career. Walk me through where you were in your career between graduating college and the recording of “Age of Extinction.”

 

Fatboi: Hell yeah. I want to say around that time period…shout out to my homies, Cause & Knowledge, we had a crew going around that time called Strange Colors, us three, my brother ‘89 The Brainchild, were around that time. Those were my first early recordings. So that was like 2011-2013 and from that I started “Age of Extinction” where I connected with my partner at the time, Sydetrak Imperial, at a Hip Hop event in Jersey. We both were in the Cypher and we both kind of hit it off in the Cypher. From that we did three tracks and then we started building like, “yo, maybe we should do the duo thing” and “Age of Extension” was born through that. That was a great time period. Big big shout out to the “Age of Extension” fans. Still, like a lot of people got put onto me through that. That was probably from like 2015 to 2019, something like that. We was doing “Age of Extinction” stuff like 2015, doing a lot of shows and stuff before that and in 2016 the project dropped and I want to say we separated like late 2018, early 2019. So it lasted like four years. 

 

Nick: I guess while we're at it, what college did you attend and for what reason? 

 

Fatboi: I went to Union County College for Communications.

 

Nick: You’ve mentioned in that 2018 Heritage Hip-Hop interview alongside Sydetrak that both “Age of Extinction” and “Ape Twin” begin that extinction scope within Hip Hop and then expand it to the rest of the world. What compelled you to link the two albums in that way?

 

Fatboi: I would say, honestly, like how a lot of the things that you hear, people complain about now within the Hip Hop field which is that certain stuff gets spotlighted outside of the music. A lot of artists getting celebrated might be pushing more of a negative image than a positive image. Like to me, I was like keeping all of that from back then. So I wanted to make a concept project out of it with “AOE” and then it went into “Ape Twin” where that was the next level of that, but more on a solo tip.

 

Nick: I know in that interview you guys expressed a lot of very strong–mostly Sydetrak–very strong opinions about where the mainstream was at the time.

 

Fatboi: The funny thing is it is interesting hearing people give their opinions on it today because you get people that's kind of mixed with it. So you get people that say it's in a great space, you just gotta listen to the right stuff. Then you'll have people that say it's still terrible. But if you listen to the underground and independent, then you just got people that's like, “yo, it's good stuff” and everything. So you just gotta search through it and find the right thing. So to me, that's a constant argument that never fully gets solved. The people always have various opinions on it.

 

Nick: Going back to the question, what made you want to take on that concept within Hip Hop and then in “Ape Twin” apply it to the rest of the world? 

 

Fatboi: Just 'cause I didn't see anyone doing it at the time and with that being my first debut project, I kind of wanted to come out strong and have something to say. Come out conceptual and just keep building through the rest of my career. Even certain things I might have said on “Ape Twin” might have got revisited in “Ghandi Loves Children.” Just like “Ghandi Loves Children,” it might have been certain things said that might have got revisited in two or three projects later. So that's one thing I will say when I create projects, I kind of do 'em like one big puzzle that spreads out.

 

Nick: I also wanted to shine a light on the cover art for both “Ape Twin” and “Age of Extinction.” I really liked them. What were your intentions with these depictions and what exact comic series did you pull inspiration from to make them? 

 

Fatboi: Oh yeah, for sure. Both of those were done by a kind artist who, to this day, still do a lot of dope art. I wanna say around that time period we both started getting cool with him and met him around that time period and I knew he did art. So both of those ideas was kind of just his ideas. So I came to him, I gave him the music, let him know what the project was about and kind of was just like, “do your thing, what you see from it.” So I didn't even really go into it with a particular vision for the cover. Every other project from “Gandhi,” I did but those two was freeform with the animator, to tell you the truth. 

 

Nick: It's definitely interesting, the pregnant dude and stuff. It's like it kind of album cover that stops you in your tracks if you see it

 

Fatboi: Yeah that's definitely to this day still some of my favorite art I've got.