A Conversation with Yas from Dead Celebrity Status
This is the original transcript of the interview, only minor editing has been applied for readability. This has been the basis for articles but has never been published in the original form.
Wortraub: I admit that I had to read up on you, since you are still unknown here in Germany. But you have been doing music since you were thirteen, right?
Yas: Yes, you know … we’re from Canada and my partner Bobby and I have been doing this music thing professionally since we were thirteen years old. Back in the days up here in Canada we were doing tours with people like Public Enemy, at such a young age, having features in such rap magazines like Word Up or Rapmasters. We have been doing it for a long time, putting things together. We haven’t had the chance to get out of North America untill very recent. We have been on the grind here, but our eyes have been targeting Europe, targeting Germany. We are stooped to finally get down there and tour.
Wortraub: What was the group called back then?
Yas: The group was called „Projekt Wyze“. It was a hip hop-group and in the mid-nineties we got tired of hip hop and changed up the sound a little bit, incorporated a punk rock band. It was punk rock and hip hop together. We ended up getting a record deal with Sony in 2000 and released an album, which did really well and went gold. We had plans to come and tour Europe and then that shit fell through the cracks and didn’t happen. We kind of got sick of that music and went back to the roots, back to the basics, back to what we really love, what was really real to us, which made us most happy, which was hip hop. We started up Dead Celebrity Status and hooked up with our DJ, DJ Dopey, who is the world DMC-Champion. Yeah, we put this project together and have been having a really great response. People are feeling it. And we hope to get a chance to take it around the world.
Wortraub: What is different about Dead Celebrity Status? Has anything changed for you?
Yas: Yeah, a lot of things have changed. For one thing, there is only three of us, as opposed to dealing with a whole band of six people. Everyone has input, wants insight and has a direction. With this, it’s me and Bobby, who have been doing this since we were thirteen, we were best friends when we were kids, we see the same vision and understand each other. It is so easy to communicate and write music. It is very relaxing and comfortable. Dopey then brings some elements to the table which are unique. And that is it, just the three of us. Along with that, when we are not dealing with a full band, the sound is different too. We make hip hop music It’s new shit, it’s different. It’s just that creatively we are able to do so many things with not having so many heads in the kitchen.
Wortraub: You stopped „Projekt Wyze“ because you had been compromised by the industry – that is what it says on the Bodog Music page. What happened?
Yas: The industry is the monster. The same beast that is has been since the days of Elvis, the days of Motown or the days of now. The industry likes to jump on what is hot. The industry likes to jump on what they think is the new trend and they jump on it, they oversaturate it, they find every Dick, Tom and Harry that they can find to create that sound, that band and flood the market with it. Wether you are real or not, you just get lumped in the mix and „Projekt Wyze“ did. When we were doing our kind of music, we hooked up with this punk rock band, it was like 1994, before anything like Linkin Park or Papa Roach or Korn or any of those bands …
Wortraub: … but there was Rage Against The Machine, though …
Yas: Yeah, there was Rage. But here is the thing, a beautiful thing about it. We were hip hop kids, we didn’t even know what the hell Rage Against The Machine was. What was happening was: we would be playing this show and doing this music and kids would come up to us, saying : „Wow, just the coolest shit I have ever heard. The only band that sounds like this is Rage Against The Machine.“ We were like: „What the hell is Rage Against The Machine?“ That was the beginning, when it was something special, something real. When we got signed though, in 2000, you had every band in the world with a rapper and a heavy band behind them. We were not some dudes that started rapping with a band. We have been rapping our entire lifes. That market just got oversaturated. We got lumped in with the rap-rock-genre and everything out there, being the same old shit, which we definetly weren’t. So in that sense, we got sick of that style, the sound and what the industry was doing. A lot of hard shit, since you are dealing with a major label. Every one love you one day and then, the next day people don’t even know your name. You gotta try and fight through that and do what you are doing.
Wortraub: Well, you do still have some rock elements in it. You still using guitars and even have guys from Jane’s Addiction coming on. So, that sound is not lost on the Dead Celebrity Status album, is it?
Yas: No, it never will be. That is kind of in our roots too. And if you really think about the roots of hip hop music it is there too. Hip hop has never been without the element of rock influence. Go back to Run DMC, LL Cool J, Public Enemy. Elements of rock, like Rick Rubin’s style, have always been in hip hop. With us, Bobby and myself, we grew up listening to metal when we were kids. We grew up with our families into the Metallica, the Beatles: all types of music. So when we make our music, we’re not necessarily making a hip hop record or a rock record, we are just making a Dead Celebrity Status record. Our musical tastes and influences shine through. If we want to add guitar to a track, it is not because we want to be cool or add the token „guitar“. We add it, because in our minds it sounds like it should be there. It is about writing music.
Wortraub: You have a lot of citations in your music, most of them from the grunge era, like Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana, Pearl Jam?
Yas: Yeah, we loved that movement. We were part of that. We had bigger brothers who were part of the whole Metallica, Iron Maiden, AC/DC movement which is really important to us. But for us, some really great things come out of the nineties, out of Seattle. We appreciate it, we love it. It is just kind of frustrating to see what kind of happened to rock music over the last six or seven years. There hasn’t been a kind of movement. I can’t handle half of the shit that is out there today. There is only so many bands that I can listen to that cry and whine. It drives me crazy.
Wortraub: So, I take it, you are not an emo fan?
Yas: I’m not gonna say: „I hate emo“, I’m not that dude either, like „Emo sucks!“ There are certain artists within the emo genre that are good and that I enjoy. But as a whole, just as I was saying about the industry, when they find something that is cool or trendy, they oversaturate it, and for a lot of the emo stuff out there, I do think it is shit, it is garbage. That doesn’t mean I hate emo, there are some good emo bands out there like Coheed And Cambria that I like a lot. But there are a lot of bands that look the same, sound the same, dress the same, act the same and because they are considered emo, they are cool. I can only deal with that in small doses.
Wortraub: Is rock dead then? Is hip hop the music for the next century?
Yas: You know what, it is hard to say. I don’t think rock is dead, it will never be dead. There are still some good bands out there, like AFI or System Of A Down or Rise Against. So I wouldn’t say rock is dead, but in the mainstream rock is completely dead. In the mainstream there is only regurgitated garbage. But if you search and go out there and look, then you are going to find real rock. Will it ever get to the point where you turn on the radio and 80% of the tracks are good? I don’t think so, at least not for now. I feel the same way about hip hop though; I think hip hop is dead, in that respect. If you want good hip hop, you can go out there and find it, like Jurassic 5 or Dilated People or Cage. Even on the mainstream like Jay-Z, it is out there, but the majority of the shit that gets played, I think is garbage. In regards to music, if you want to listen to something good, you got to go out there and look for it. Not what MTV and the radio are playing.
Wortraub: Which brings me to your intro; it mourns what people have done to music. How do you plan to revive her?
Yas: I don’t know if we have the power to revive her. I know, all we can do is our part. I think, if there are more artists out there who do their share, which is making real and honest music, then it is gonna work. That is what we are trying to do. We are not trying to live or be something that we are not. Make music that people will enjoy, something that has meaning and something that is timeless. That is how we look at our music. Really we look at it as timeless music. I don’t think that you could listen to DCS today and in two years down the road think, that shit was outdated. I think it is something that you will be able to listen to for the next ten or fifteen years, because it is good music. That is how we do our part. We are keeping it on the road; we are sticking to the live heart of music. I think, a lot of artists spend too much time in the studio, not giving enough back to the fans by getting up with their faces and putting on a show. I remember days of the old, when no matter how big or small you were, you lived on the road. In that sense, we want to keep that live movement alive. We want to keep creating real music. In that part we help music.
Wortraub: In your first single „We fall“ you criticize the image that stuff like „American Idols“ promote … do you think it is dangerous for young people?
Yas: I definitely do. I hate it. You can quote me on that: „I hate American Idols!“ There is nothing that is any good to what is happening in the music industry. I leaves a fake and phony image of what it takes to be a real artist. A lot of people have talent, it is not saying that people on these shows don’t have the talent to sing. I see them every week singing their asses off. It is just the method in which they are puppeted around which I don’t agree with, which I don’t believe in. Kids nowadays feel that as long as you get on TV for a couple of weeks you become a superstar. If you get on „American Idols“, life is great. But what happened to half of the artists on the show, outside of the Kelly Clarkson thing? They put out one record and then they disappear. Those artists will have a much more difficult time ever making it because they are pidgeonholed as „American Idol“. They don’t really understand the true ethic of working, grinding. You said early on, that you did some research and found out that we were doing this since we were thirteen. I’m twenty-nine now, so I have been doing this for more than half of my life. Half of my life working and struggling and fighting to get these opportunities. You don’t get that out of six weeks of television standing in front of Paula Abdul. I think it is not cool, it gives people a very fake image of what the industry is about. I doesn’t help our new generation of kids to focus on working, have an ethic, get out there and be grinding, to do it on their own. Every one thinks that when you are a pop icon, you can make it. People understand television as reality, but it is all bullshit.
Wortraub: Where, then, is there a space for creativity and individuality?
Yas: Once again, I don’t hate all pop music. It has been around forever, but I just think what is happening right now has gone to a level, that is not only not creative – it is very cookie-cutter. The dough looks the same, everything is the same and they take the cookie-cutter. I see that band, the Pussycat Dolls, and I don’t get it. Am I the only one not understanding what I am watching?
Wortraub: Well, you are watching a strip show, just with playback lyrics …
Yas: Yeah, exactly. What the hell is that? It makes no sense to me. I watch it and the first thing I ask myself is, what are the five other girls in the band doing? Cause all I see is one girl doing all the singing, and there are five backup-dancers.
Wortraub: Well, they are looking good …
Yas: Right, and you know who is buying into that. Young people, boys and girls, that is what they think the cool thing is. That is frustrating but you know there are pop artists out there who are doing their thing, great music. But creatively you need to dig deeper than what is on the surface. There is the room for creativeness. There is always gonna be creative people, but I think that shit takes time. Nowadays, we just have to work a little harder to find the good stuff. There was a time when good music just kind of came to you, it wasn’t hard to find. Now, it is there, we just have to dig a little deeper to find it.
Wortraub: You critique a lot of media. How about the new media, do you think it helps or hinders? Is there more to find?
Yas: I feel that new media is a great tool right now. Something that wasn’t in existence ten years ago. It has really only caught on over the last five years. And it is really helpful, it helps artists like us, the ones you have to dig deeper to find, to put their music out there, to have a website, myspace or whatever. I helps people to stumble over that on their own. It is a great tool and a great method. It is wonderful that we utilize it, they way we are doing.
Wortraub: But again, you critique media. Do you feel the media has too much power to influence us? Determines what we can consume, what not?
Yas: Definitely. Not for all of us. A large majority of our population are sheep, we watch TV, we read magazines and we strive to be like them and want to have what they put out in front of us. Really. I talk to people, keep my ear on the streets. I talk to some of these kids growing up and they are wonderful kids, but it is the way the look at things now. It really is, what is on TV, what videos are being shown on the countdown and who is showing up at those video awards. People think that is is great no matter what, as long as you are on TV, like that is the way it should be. It drives me crazy when people think that Ashton Kutcher is the most intelligent human being in the world just because he is on TV every day. It is like, I feel a lot of it has to do with reality TV and the media. We have become a lot more stupid as a nation and as a country, as a world. We don’t strive to educate ourselves, we don’t want to spend time to think anymore. Just look at reality TV. It is not a show, it is thirteen weeks of sitting around and watching nothing because it is really easy to absorb. As opposed to watching a real show that is 24 episodes long and you have to follow characters and dialog. Reality TV is the new shit right now because it is dumb television. You sit around and you love at Jessica Simpson calling thuna fish chicken. It doesn’t take a lot. This generation of teenagers are caught up in that cycle and it is difficult to get out of that. Frustrating.
Wortraub: You rap about that in „Somebody Turn The Lights Out“. It is about handing your life over to media, not going out, not communicating anymore, right? Do you feel that our society is loosing touch of other individuals, of human contact?
Yas: Yes, definitely. You are right on the money with that. With every pro there is always a con and with the new media world it is that kids nowadays don’t leave their houses, they just sit on the internet. They sit on myspace, on msn, on aim and they chat with their friends and they text-message their friends on their cell phones. People are not getting out there in the flesh to communicate, face to face and absorb what living is about. That is one of the things that we are doing, we are playing live. To us it is very important to get in front of the people and let them feed off of us because we feed off of them. We keep it very human, keep the music very human. A lot of that is being lost right now.
Wortraub: So you have a message. Like in your song „Messiah“ you say, that Kurt Cobain told a truth to America. But he died from the pressure that it put on him … Do you feel like you are promoting the ideas Kurt promoted?
Yas: We would love to, we promote them in our own way. But the things that he stood for, that he believed in, when you look at the core of it, were real, very human and pure. How he died is still somewhat of a mystery, the reasons for it, if he really did it. We would love to pick up from where Cobain and Nirvana left off. When they came up, it shocked people not because they were making shocking music; it wasn’t him saying anything that was blowing people away. It was one of the most real things that came out in a long time. He captivated the audience. In the early nineties there was a huge movement towards dance and the whole hair band thing of the late eighties, like Poison, even Gun’s Roses. It took a couple of years but when that Seattle movement broke out people got to hear something that was gritty and raw and dirty. People were shocked at that, the realness. A lot of people don’t give Cobain and Nirvana enough respect for that. What they really did was to be honest and real. That is something we also do, we try to keep it real and honest. I hope that is what the great artists in the past have done.
Wortraub: Do you feel that rebellion against the system is still possible when the system assimilates rather than fights a threat? Punk, Grunge …
Yas: I think it is the only method to be honest. The way I see it, everything that we do that is not the norm, in terms of us being sheep following what the masses feed us, is a form of rebellion. Everytime you stand up for yourself is a form of rebellion. Making music that is pure and real is a form of rebellion. The only way to be real and rebell. We are rebelling against what we feel is wrong. What we feel isn’t right in music. At the same time we are not the band that is going out there saying: „We are the only right music. Listen to us or you are a fucking loser.“ Not that – people have different tastes and different ears. But what we do, we do it from the heart and it is something real and pure. That is the main thing.
Wortraub: Do you feel like preaching? Or rather prophecizing?
Yas: Prophecizing. Or not even that. Nor preaching. We do our thing and we do it in a way that we are proud of. It is very important to us that we are proud of our music and if people out there are proud of it too, that completes the circle and that is what it is all about. We are not out there saying that we are perfect. This is just how we hear the music in our ears. Hope you appreciate it.
Wortraub: In „These Walls“ you talk about the influence that music has on kids. It is a therapy, an escape?
Yas: The way I grew up is the way most kids grow up. The one thing that we have, everybodies best friend at one time in their life was music. Music is the one thing that never lets you down, because it is there for you. There have been times growing up, when I looked at music to get me through a tough time. Or I looked at music to get me through a great time. Some of the best memories I have I envision certain songs. I bet you listen to the radio and a certain tune comes up and you get all nostalgic. Something that brings you back to a certain time. That is what music is about, about being there for you. A lot of kids use music when they are down and out, when they are tired, depressed, when they feel like the world is against them. They latch on to it and it does something to them, it keeps them strong, it motivates them. That is a beautiful thing with music. I know that our music does that with a lot of kids, because they have told me that. If this world had no music it would be a pretty fucked up place, not that it is not a fucked up place as it is. It is in every part of this world so with it comes great love and great responsibility.
Wortraub: I need to change the topic to something more political, coming to the idea of differencesbetween cultures not their universals. On „In this day and age“ you got Bif to sing in Arabic and you criticize the stigma that Arabs have in media. You all come from different ethnical backgrounds. How do you feel about the schism that is developing between the US-western world and what is called the „third world“?
Yas: It is a very frustrating issue. Once again, a lot of it has to do with the media and with what is force-fed to us. What is told to us as the truth. This is my own personal opinion: When it comes to hatred and disrespect of cultures of religion, when it comes to racism, humanity has made some great strides over the last couple of decades. It has progressed from the 70s on, from women’s rights, to homosexual rights to religious rights. But I do feel that we are no longer progressing. I really feel that we are moving backwards, over the last five years we have rapidly been moving backwards. It has almost become normal to hate again. As long as you have an enemy or as long you have people in fear we are allowed to have that hate again. I don’t hate anybody, well indivuals but not a genre of people, not a race or nationality. I hate people that do bad things. I don’t care if you are Muslim, Jewish, pure American, German, whatever. If you do bad things and try to hurt me, I probably don’t like you. But as a whole, on behalf of my people, Muslims are targeted at the moment as the enemy. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t bad people doing some fucked up things, but I really feel that that has been used as a scapegoat to be able to hate an entire race of people. Really it is. If I play word association with you and I am gonna say „Terrorist“ the first thing that comes to your head is „Arab“ or „Muslim“. That is implanted in your brain. Anything that is unholy is tributed to the Muslim.
Wortraub: But if you play the game the other way round it is even worse. I say „Muslim“ and you think „Terrorist“ …
Yas: Absolutely. In that sense it is very frustrating. There is a fraction of people out there that work very hard to keep hate alive, to keep people in fear. That is not a conspiracy, that is just a truth. People in North America live in fear on a regular basis, they check into their grocery stores to find out the code the country is in: code red, code orange. What state of fear they should be in. This is the truth because we have just been on the Warped Tour. Every gas station has a sign that tells you to check the code. It is fucked up, unbelievable. People are living scared and with that comes a lot of hate.
Wortraub: Well, let’s leave it at that. This topic could probably take us hours … thank you for the interview, it has been a pleasure.