Q&A With Los Angeles Based Rapper ethemadassassin

Hey ethemadassassin! Please tell us how long have you been making music? Most importantly, how did you come up with your rap name?

I’ve been making music professionally since 2004. my artist name, “ethemadassassin,” was given to me by a college friend, Wunsun Ra (you should check his music out also). Back in those days, the cypher was an all day, daily occurrence. I never cared to just stand around wasting my entire day getting fucked up and spitting, so I was known to jump in the cypher, spit a bullet and bounce. Ra used to say i was on some assassin shit, one shot kill type of thing…and nobody knew me, they just knew I was lethal. The mad part just comes from people saying I always looked angry. So Ra put that together with my first initial, E….i put it together on some hip hop shit, ethemadassassin, all lower cases, no spaces…..

What separates you from all the other rappers in your city?

3000 miles. I moved from NC to Los Angeles to push my career further and it’s working out for the best.

In a few words, how would you describe your sound?

Bar heavy, bare bones, East Coast boom bap street music

How are you coping with this whole Covid 19 situation? Has it delayed any new music production by any chance?

I’m actually coping fairly well during the Covid situation. My grind has actually increased as it’s allowed me a little more time to cultivate new musical relationships and create video content with the streets being emptier. It has also delayed some of my music production as key people in my creative process have had family members or themselves catch Corona. So it’s really just tested my ability to adjust on a daily basis.

Tell us about your Hip Hop and/or music influences?

My influences come from all corners of the nation. From RunDMC, Just Ice, to Redman and Treach, to Ice Cube and NWA, D.O.C. to Too Short, Scarface, to Rakim to Kool G Rap to my man Binky in 8th grade who could rap. The point being is all of hip hop is my music influences and there isn’t one person who deserves all the credit.

Please breakdown the creative process of your new album “Bear Handz 4: Dark Side of the Mountain”. And tell us a little about the album cover concept!

Also who produced this project? I linked with Swedish producer Twelvebit via Facebook. We were familiar with each other’s work and I was looking for a producer who I liked their previous work, but hadn’t worked with yet myself. Just so happens Twelvebit hit me and asked if I would be interested in working with him. He sent me a beat and that first beat became “Children Of The NIght,” the first single off the project. He kept throwing me beats and we eventually arrived at the result you have now. I can write pretty fast, so the song process was easy. It took about 4 to 5 months of life shit (from Twelvebit migrating between Sweden and Thailand and back to me working on other music and dealing with my everyday life shit) and beat selection to get the songs that make up the album. Twelvebit sent me around 60 beats throughout the process. Once I heard something I liked, i wrote the song and recorded it. Plain and simple. The album cover concept was the brainchild of ShortFuzE (producer of “Bear Handz 3: Animal House”) and Dana Coppafeel. I went to FuzE with the album title and he and Dana came up with the “dark” version of the Pink Floyd “Dark Side Of The Moon” concept based on the similarity in the title. I had never heard of the Pink Floyd record nor the album title. I just had my title, and FuzE and Dana came up with everything else..wait, the bears in the background of the cover was my idea, to keep all the album covers bear related. “Dark Side Of The Mountain” is just another chapter in the “Bear Handz” series to showcase the darker side of street life and the music by going with darker tones and song concepts.

Your honest opinion, out of all the songs on the project, which is the one song you feel stands out the most!?

I think “10” stands out amongst the other songs on the project due to it being super lo-fi in comparison to the hard boom bap approach of all the records. It’s a mood record and the subject matter (staying “10 toes down” amidst all the bullshit) is delivered as a reflection of self more than a typical braggadocio type of record. The hazy production drives the point of reflection home by not beating you in the head, but more by putting you at ease while getting hit with what are actually very hard bars.

We have to ask, with all this social discourse and revolt, protesting and rioting, exposed police brutality toward blacks and BLM, how do you feel about this? We would love your perspective on the climate we are living in right now.

My perspective in all of this is actually very negative. All I’ve seen are a people who are easily divided and distracted by insects while staring into the face of a hungry wolf and nobody can agree on how to kill the wolf because random people keep talking about the insects. Lack of leadership, lack of research, lack of compassion, and lack of organization is all i see….somehow, we can’t agree with what we should be mad at and what we need to work on first….and the police are STILL fucking us up in the middle of it all with no consequence or repercussion. We can’t even agree on how to work towards controlling our covid numbers when we have other countries who have shown us how they successfully dealt with it already and now our numbers are the highest in the world and I can’t travel…We can’t even cheat off the next person’s pop quiz right…

If it came down to 1 ALBUM only, what underground Hip Hop album would you consider THE BEST OF ALL TIME!!!???……One 1 album you can choose.

UNDERGROUND hip hop? so this excludes Illmatic, OB4CL, Muddy Waters cause they’re not underground, they were all commercial releases…true UNDERGROUND shit? I’ll say Roc Marciano, “Reloaded”….

Here it is! Our most popular question! What is your definition of “underground hip hop”?

My definition of underground hip hop is anything not intentionally created for mainstream acceptance. It’s independent grind and independently funded. For me it’s not necessarily the sound, but where it comes from, how it’s made, and where it lives in the culture. Underground is not mainstream. It’s not top 40, or top 100.

Where can people find you on the web? Drop all the vital links.

I’m all over the web. On every platform you prefer. Just google me. But to make things easy: www.ethemadassassin.com, www.instagram.com/ethemadassassin, www.twitter.com/ethemadassassin, www.ethemadassassin.bandcamp.com and EVERY STREAMING PLATFORM OUT THERE…