It may be hard for long-time D-Sisive watchers to believe, but his latest album, Run with the Creeps, is in some ways his darkest album since his return to rap in 2008. While it may not be as sad as The Book, Creeps finds D-Sisive angrier than ever. He's frustrated with a country that doesn't support its artists, still struggling with personal loss and just generally pissed off at a perceived lack of career progress. As a result, Creeps is filled with dark, atmospheric beats, acerbic one-liners and simmering rage. Songs like "G.G. Allin" and "Jolly Good Fellow" are particularly bleak. Run with the Creeps is an incredibly hard listen, at times, but it's also very good. Apparently, anger is a great motivator for D-Sisive; his references and metaphors are as complex as ever, but his rage lends a new urgency to his rhymes, honing his already sharp flow until it's a verbal weapon. "To the Moon" is textbook perfect boom-bap hip-hop, while "Jolly Good Fellow" is an ideal example of how to make the most of a sparse, minimalist, unorthodox beat. Creeps may be harsh, dark and angry, but that doesn't make it any less brilliant.
Is it just me or is this album super-dark, even by your standards?
Yeah, I went back. What's funny about that is when I started Run with the Creeps, I started with two songs that actually didn't make the album. The whole point was that I was trying to go big with it ― big in the sense that I was trying to make something extremely commercially viable, yet walk that fine line to not make me sound like an asshole ― and I recorded two songs that I felt fit that mould. But all my albums represent where I am at that time. When I finished those two songs, I was feeling pretty good about myself and then things happened that weren't good. Anyone who knows me knows that I'm very sensitive. The slightest thing can throw me off and ruin my day; it's not the best quality to have, but I can't help that. So, negative things started happening and I felt like I was on the career treadmill. This is my sixth album and with the five that I'd released, I was just feeling like I was at a certain point and not exceeding that. I felt like I was at the same level for the past two albums, Vaudeville and Jonestown 2, but I can't even say that because this is in my mind. A lot of people would disagree, but I felt like Vaudeville kind of brought me back a few steps, where as Jonestown 2 brought things back to sea level.
Why did Vaudeville bring you back a few steps?
You know, I love Vaudeville, but I feel like, to my supporters who were used to The Book and Let the Children Die, I just don't think they were ready to hear it. I love that record, but maybe the timing was wrong. Not that calculating every step is the best thing to do, but maybe I kind of miscalculated that move. It all goes back to the line that I say in "Ceiling Fan" on Run with the Creeps: "Nobody wants to see a happy D-Sisive." I actually stole that from a review that I read of myself. I just felt like things weren't moving along and I just started writing where I was at. It was just the frustrated artist not knowing where to turn, and here came Run with the Creeps.
Are you still going to make that big, commercially viable album you started making?
Yeah, that's why I don't want to mention those songs, because I still have them in the vault and they will be released. I can't sleep on those at all; it just didn't feel right on this record. The more I started receiving the instrumentals I was using ― none of it fit. Using those two commercial songs, I hate referring to them as that, but it just didn't feel like it fit in the Creep mould; it was just feeling like another album. Maybe that's my fault for titling the album before I started working, but then that's just part of my process. I have some sort of foundation laid before I begin. I can't start working on something without that light to guide me, and once I made that dark turn, here's Creeps.
What's up with you and G.G. Allin? You've referenced G.G. on previous albums and now you have a song called "G.G. Allin."
He's somebody that I've been obsessed with, more so as a character than as an artist. I don't know if it was insanity or drugs, but just the fact that he was so... courageous, I guess? Everything about him just fascinated me. I don't really worship the music that he created, but everything else that surrounded him was just insane, in a good way. I just kind of believe that he believed everything he said. Watching interviews on Geraldo and clips like that, he totally believed what he preached. Just with the faeces throwing, it blows my mind that he did that and had so many followers. You read interviews with people saying, "I went to a G.G. Allin show, but I stayed far away from the stage." You know what's going to happen. You know he's going to take a shit and roll around in it and throw it, but they were still drawn to it.. Plus, that was at a time when there was no Internet. Everything was just word-of-mouth. There was the Todd Phillips documentary, but that came out after he died. When he was alive and doing all that, people still knew. If someone like that came out today, and there wasn't the Jackass culture already existing, the guy would have been massive.
The beats on this album are a lot more atmospheric and a lot less traditionally hip-hop than your previous work. Is that something you asked for or something that just kind of happened?
It was a combination of both. There was my request involved. "Ceiling Fan" is quite atmospheric and it was something I wanted. I remember going to Muneshine and making it with him, not that I'm some composer, but I had the idea for the drum pattern, so I'd sit there with Muneshine, like, "okay, can you program this?" We pitched down a drum loop and found some sounds. I didn't want anything conventionally musical. That's more the music that I'm into. Not that I'm by any means comparing, but I'm a huge Brian Eno fan, his solo albums. I just like trying different things. And there are some people who, with a song like "Ceiling Fan," for example, I've had friends who really, really liked it, and then I had another friend who said the snare sounds like a cat taking a shit on a tin roof, which doesn't really make sense, but I liked it. I was like, "a tin roof? Okay, weird."
(Urbnet)Is it just me or is this album super-dark, even by your standards?
Yeah, I went back. What's funny about that is when I started Run with the Creeps, I started with two songs that actually didn't make the album. The whole point was that I was trying to go big with it ― big in the sense that I was trying to make something extremely commercially viable, yet walk that fine line to not make me sound like an asshole ― and I recorded two songs that I felt fit that mould. But all my albums represent where I am at that time. When I finished those two songs, I was feeling pretty good about myself and then things happened that weren't good. Anyone who knows me knows that I'm very sensitive. The slightest thing can throw me off and ruin my day; it's not the best quality to have, but I can't help that. So, negative things started happening and I felt like I was on the career treadmill. This is my sixth album and with the five that I'd released, I was just feeling like I was at a certain point and not exceeding that. I felt like I was at the same level for the past two albums, Vaudeville and Jonestown 2, but I can't even say that because this is in my mind. A lot of people would disagree, but I felt like Vaudeville kind of brought me back a few steps, where as Jonestown 2 brought things back to sea level.
Why did Vaudeville bring you back a few steps?
You know, I love Vaudeville, but I feel like, to my supporters who were used to The Book and Let the Children Die, I just don't think they were ready to hear it. I love that record, but maybe the timing was wrong. Not that calculating every step is the best thing to do, but maybe I kind of miscalculated that move. It all goes back to the line that I say in "Ceiling Fan" on Run with the Creeps: "Nobody wants to see a happy D-Sisive." I actually stole that from a review that I read of myself. I just felt like things weren't moving along and I just started writing where I was at. It was just the frustrated artist not knowing where to turn, and here came Run with the Creeps.
Are you still going to make that big, commercially viable album you started making?
Yeah, that's why I don't want to mention those songs, because I still have them in the vault and they will be released. I can't sleep on those at all; it just didn't feel right on this record. The more I started receiving the instrumentals I was using ― none of it fit. Using those two commercial songs, I hate referring to them as that, but it just didn't feel like it fit in the Creep mould; it was just feeling like another album. Maybe that's my fault for titling the album before I started working, but then that's just part of my process. I have some sort of foundation laid before I begin. I can't start working on something without that light to guide me, and once I made that dark turn, here's Creeps.
What's up with you and G.G. Allin? You've referenced G.G. on previous albums and now you have a song called "G.G. Allin."
He's somebody that I've been obsessed with, more so as a character than as an artist. I don't know if it was insanity or drugs, but just the fact that he was so... courageous, I guess? Everything about him just fascinated me. I don't really worship the music that he created, but everything else that surrounded him was just insane, in a good way. I just kind of believe that he believed everything he said. Watching interviews on Geraldo and clips like that, he totally believed what he preached. Just with the faeces throwing, it blows my mind that he did that and had so many followers. You read interviews with people saying, "I went to a G.G. Allin show, but I stayed far away from the stage." You know what's going to happen. You know he's going to take a shit and roll around in it and throw it, but they were still drawn to it.. Plus, that was at a time when there was no Internet. Everything was just word-of-mouth. There was the Todd Phillips documentary, but that came out after he died. When he was alive and doing all that, people still knew. If someone like that came out today, and there wasn't the Jackass culture already existing, the guy would have been massive.
The beats on this album are a lot more atmospheric and a lot less traditionally hip-hop than your previous work. Is that something you asked for or something that just kind of happened?
It was a combination of both. There was my request involved. "Ceiling Fan" is quite atmospheric and it was something I wanted. I remember going to Muneshine and making it with him, not that I'm some composer, but I had the idea for the drum pattern, so I'd sit there with Muneshine, like, "okay, can you program this?" We pitched down a drum loop and found some sounds. I didn't want anything conventionally musical. That's more the music that I'm into. Not that I'm by any means comparing, but I'm a huge Brian Eno fan, his solo albums. I just like trying different things. And there are some people who, with a song like "Ceiling Fan," for example, I've had friends who really, really liked it, and then I had another friend who said the snare sounds like a cat taking a shit on a tin roof, which doesn't really make sense, but I liked it. I was like, "a tin roof? Okay, weird."