Matisyahu

It’s good for all parties involved that Matisyahu is a spiritual man. The typical label woes and business delays of an album release normally create a divide between artist and business, leading to fallout, public quotes they later regret and general disdain. For Matisyahu, there’s a purpose in everything and an inherent goodness to be found in the moment you live in. Therefore, even industry frustrations hold promise for lessons learned.

So Matisyahu is taking the high road while we all wait for Light to drop in stores, now set for a late August release. It’s the long-awaited follow-up to 2006’s Youth – a much celebrated blend of spirituality and diverse musical elements of hip-hop, reggae and indie rock. This time around, the collaborations and sonic divergence is much more expansive, but you have to wait to hear it.

In the meantime, the Jewish artist spends his time working with others like Crystal Method and Trevor Hall while he awaits his turn. And he also took some time to speak to Stereo Subversion about this waiting game and what’s on the other side.

SSv: I’d love to discuss the new album, but there’s been so many delays with it that I’m wondering what’s behind that?

Matisyahu: I don’t know. I finished most of the record by last August. The initial idea was to get it out by that September, I think, but there was this feeling that it was going to be rushed. Then the label didn’t want to put it out in the fourth quarter. You know, it’s mostly business stuff. There’s nothing too intriguing there. So then they wanted to wait until February because they didn’t want a Christmastime release. Then we wait until then and somehow it got pushed back to April. I don’t know the reason then.

A new president came in at Epic and wanted me to go back in and record a couple more songs – some single type of songs, which I did – and then it was going to be released in May or June. I don’t remember exactly but then they pushed it to July but that was a bad time for me for religious reasons. They wanted to release it in a time period that’s a mourning period of time. The religious community isn’t listening to any new music then, so I thought that was a slap in the face to those people. So I said let’s wait until August, but we’re going to be in Japan in early August and so now it’s late August.

But it’s not going to be pushed back any more. The songs are done. The photo shoots are done. The video is done on Tuesday. They’re already out at radio with the single and trying to get that going. So this won’t be pushed back anymore, or at least I can’t imagine.

SSv: How’d you take all of that?

Matisyahu: I think there’s good and bad in it. There’s the obvious feeling of creating something and wanting to put it out. It feels relevant to the time that you created it and there’s this feeling that if somehow too much time goes by, then it won’t be relevant anymore. You’ll be off to the next thing, so that can be frustrating. Also, you work on your record in the studio and you want it to come out and explode and be on tour and be out there with it. So you want to reap the benefits as well.

But to me, that’s more of an ego thing. So I want to keep myself in check. Why do I really want this record to come out right away? So I just try to take advantage of the time and work on a couple more songs in the studio or with other people or even work on my own character and patience and see how I can just lay low for a bit. I think there’s some kind of spiritual qualities to be gained in that process of just being quiet and holding back and waiting. I think there’s something important about waiting. I think the more you can wait and hold out, the more rewarding it will be.

With my last record, with Youth, it was the opposite. Live at Stubbs was doing really well and there was this feeling of having to hurry up and put the Youth album out there right away. We went in and recorded the songs quickly and put it out quickly and, at the end of the day, I don’t really think that was the right move. And I was in on that decision making process. I wanted it all to happen fast. So I think I learned my lesson with that, that sometimes it’s better to hold off a little bit.

So that’s the scoop. It has been a long time since March of 2006 since Youth was released. So it will be three and a half years since I last put out a record, but I didn’t want to rush anything, especially the writing. I was touring and I didn’t want to write songs on the bus or between soundchecks and stuff. I just wanted a moment of nothing except for writing songs and recording them. So I did that and spent a year really just working on the record. Of course, now it’s been another year. [Laughs]

SSv: Each album seems to blend new elements and genres, so where does Light go in those terms?

Matisyahu: Yeah, I’m definitely into blending. For me, it’s about listening to different styles of music and feeling whatever is resonating with me the most at the moment and then returning to certain things also. With Live at Stubbs, I was listening to a lot of conscious dance hall like Sizzler and Capelton and that kind of genre was my main influence. It was influencing everything including my vocals, but I became less into that and more into indie rock stuff and a lot of hip-hop and more electronic music. So it’s been combining those elements as well as things I already know – like working with other artists like Trevor Hall, a guy who I love his spirituality and voice and his guitar playing, so I brought him on. It’s just about combining those different. I don’t go in with certain concepts. I just take from places.

The song I wrote with Trevor, he just came in with acoustic guitar and it’s a singer/songwriter, rootsy, reggae, folksy kind of vibe. Then I start beatboxing behind it and we’ll record that. The beat I was doing was a hip-hop beat so we’ll build that with hip-hop drums and it might be sounding more organic or electronic, depending on the song. Then I’ll have my guitar player, Aaron [Dugan], come in who’s got more of a Radiohead, ethereal vibe. It’s got a lot of crunchy sounding guitar sounds with reverb and delay. He will lay that down and then my friend will come in and play bass. He’s got really sludgy, heavy bass lines.

So on this record, I really got into that – bringing in people that I know who have different sounds and writing things that way. I didn’t want to say that I had to play a certain instrument like a bubble because that’s what reggae has. I didn’t follow any rules on this one, but instead I just played whatever felt right.

SSv: Tell me about the spirituality on this record.

Matisyahu: For me, I feel a spiritual maturity right now. My early songs had a lot of hope and this newfound faith that I had come to, so it was sort of like a new relationship where you meet a girl and fall in love with her. This album has a lot of struggles that come up and coming to terms with more darker parts of my self or this world and perhaps parts of God and how to fit all of that together. It’s about violence and humility and patience. A lot of those themes come through the record.

There’s a rabbi from the early 1800’s I was influenced by who was a wild type of character and who was darker, so I got into a lot of his ideas and persona. That came through on the record. It’s about the insanity of being and the insanity of God and those concepts were intriguing to me.

The lyrics and the ideas on this record were something that I started building upon and working on about three years ago. I started to write after the Youth record came out and I started writing songs and lyrics and preparing it and learning and exploring ideas with a friend and teacher and I did that for a year before I started on the music. Then the music took a year of recording and writing it and rewriting it. So this record is full of ideas that are now fully ingrained in me at this point.

SSv: There are so many collaborations I hear about that you’re involved with. You mentioned being on Trevor’s new disc and I also just heard the Crystal Method track. How do you decide on collaborators?

Matisyahu: The music has to touch me. That’s the main thing. If someone sends me a track or someone wants to write with me or do something with me, the music has to inspire always. If it does, then I’m pretty much open to anything. A lot of these collaborations start out live. I’ll be at a festival and we’ll meet or someone will reach out and tell me they’ll be in New York or I’ll go out and see their show and I’ll get on stage with them and if the magic happens, then I’ll create with them in the studio.

SSv: So you’ve turned down your share of projects?

Matisyahu: Oh, yeah. Tons. Because of my affiliation with the Jewish world, every up and coming Jewish rapper is finding out where I live – which isn’t hard to find because I live in a community – comes to my door with their CD. [Laughs] I’ve had to learn how to say no and you learn that pretty quickly. “Go listen to more music.” [Laughs]

Related posts:

1. Internal Debate: Matisyahu, Light

Tagged as: Hip-hop, New York

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