Wishtank

Words with Wombat — Questions for Quandary

by: Garrett Heaney

wombaticus+rex dr.+quandary hip+hop Vermont Boston

Wombaticus Rex is from the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont (aka The NEK). The group is headed by lyricist Thirtyseven and backed by producer DJ MSP, hypeman Chris Dizzy and drummer Ryan Hare. While this quad is the core of Wombaticus’s live show, Thirtyseven and MSP have recorded alone in the studio to create much of the band’s early material. On stage, however, it is not uncommon for the group to break away from a scripted set list to accommodate musicians from bands close to Wombaticus; guest appearances give this act a freestyle spontaneity where neither the band, emcees nor, least of all, audience knows what to expect. It is a free-flowing phenomenon that Thirtyseven has been perfecting for years. Hopping on stages at clubs, or on top of amplifiers at parties has nurtured Thirtyseven’s symmetrical syllable structure that adapts almost universally to an array of rhythms and beats.

I See. Photo by Charles Choiniere

Last summer during Sol Harvest Festivus in Cabot (Vermont), Wombaticus Rex was slated for a 1:00 a.m. set, following Toubab Krewe. With Miriam and Jairo opening the evening and a two-hour turntable session from DJ Equal (a North Carolina native currently spinning discs in NYC), nobody was in a rush. A few hundred people set up tents in a field where they gathered under the stars for the over-night party. Long, beautiful story short, Wombat didn’t step foot on stage until after 3:00 in the morning, and for reasons still unknown, DJ MSP’s mixer would not operate on the stage P.A.

No beats . . . no problem. After a ten-minute, freestyle session by Chris Dizzy and Harepie on the drum kit, Dave Pranksy of Toubab joined the stage on bass, along with Alex Walston (a.k.a. AWOL) on jazz trumpet. The technical difficulty turned into a blessing and the pickup band delivered a performance that kept the crowd moving and focused. On top of this, Thirtyseven dropped a fluid stream of lyrics for roughly an hour. The crowd was pleased.

More on Three Sev:

After beginning his rap career and graduating from St. Johnsbury Academy in 1999, Thirtyseven (a.k.a Justin Boland, Wombat or Humpasaur Jones) enrolled at Concordia University in Montreal, but found sneaking into classes at McGill more educational. While in Montreal, Thirtyseven combined forces with DJ MSP to form Wombaticus Rex and launch the first EP “Live from Islamabad,” under the Canadian label, Dubleplus Records. As of late, Wombaticus has been adamant about the State of Vermont’s secession from the United States of America and a free wireless internet network for planet Earth. Currently Thirtyseven is working on his next two releases: “Been a Long Year” and a project called “Algorhythms” with Boston DJ Dr. Quandary. Wishtank was able to sit down with both Thirtyseven and Dr. Quandary for a discussion on “Algorhythms,” music and life as they sense it.

Thirtyseven tells us this is one of his favorite photos of himself because it reminds him how much he looks like his father.
Photo by Charles Choiniere

Our talk with Thirtyseven:

Wishtank: What does the Northeast Kingdom (aka The NEK) represent to you and what was it about growing up in this habitat that inspired you to express yourself through hip hop?

Thirtyseven: I spent a lot of my youth in the woods by myself. I think that’s an experience increasingly few people can relate to. I think that in urban, suburban areas, people get their brains wired differently, out there reality is you and the people you relate to. All the spaces you exist within are labeled, there are words and signs everywhere, even the trees were installed by municipal workers. I can be comfortable by myself because I know who I am. I haven’t met many people who can say that outside of the NEK. I think that allows me to assess people I come into contact with a lot more honestly. I have no problem burning bridges and I never will.

Growing up in the NEK has also provided me with a few problems. I have no respect for authority, and had a very difficult time with that growing up. Authority is the weakest and most despicable form of mental illness to me and I have very little patience for cops and security guards and everyone else who thinks God put them in charge of me. It’s difficult for me because there’s no reciprocity — I don’t run around telling anyone else what to do, or controlling people’s lives or punishing them. Despite that, people still feel the need to do exactly that to me.

Now, someone who grew up in a more civilized area isn’t even capable of having that thought without some sort of drugs involved, because that authority structure is just taken for granted. It’s an unspoken and unquestioned part of their reality. What’s really interesting to me is that on the other extreme, the inner city, poverty-stricken areas, you see the exact same thing — kids growing up with an instinctive contempt and mistrust for law enforcement, teachers and the like.

I have no idea why that is, but I suspect it’s because living in the woods is a pre-civilization state and living in the slums is a post-civilization state. I see mainstream America coming a little closer to the Kingdom everyday, and I see it for the disaster it will be. I think kids in the slums see America as the disaster it’s already become.

Wishtank: What is the mission of Algorhythms? As an artist, what message will you attempt to deliver to your audience? If a first-time listener picks up this album, what above all do you hope they will gain from it?

Thirtyseven: There’s a lot of layers to that. First and foremost, we want to make good music. It’s taken a long time to nail out the right balance of obsessive precision and effortless flow, and we’ll still be working on that mix for decades to come. An album needs to breathe and be loose, but an album also needs to have something cohesive to say. We want the album to exist outside of 2007 — we’re not aiming to be the hot new sound, we’re aiming for an album that will still mean something a generation from now. The unintended side effect of Algorhythms was that it’s also the most personal collection of songs that I’ve ever done. I think people will get a much fuller sense of who I am than any of my previous work, which is odd, because I was aiming for very stylized and topical tracks. In the process, I wound up with something between a manifesto and my autobiography.

37 rocking out on bass guitar. Photo by Charles Choiniere

Wishtank: What about your life is revealed in this album that was not in prior works, and why do you think that is?

Thirtyseven: I’ve been called a functioning schizophrenic before, and I do have a lot of personalities. I juggle a lot of questions and interests every day, too. There are several projects coming out this year which will reflect different aspects of my psychosis, but “Algorhythms,” track for track, is a very diverse body of work. I think that because each track is a deliberate departure from those that came before it, the EP will wind up showing a more complete picture of who I was in 2006. Or at least, a more complete picture than a Humpasaur Jones album ever could. Dr. Quandary made many of the best beats I’ve heard, so I’m getting really obsessive about not being the weak half of the equation — insecurity is a great way to maintain quality control.

Wishtank: Who the hell’s Humpasaur Jones?

Thirtyseven: Me. With an empty case of PBR. And no pants.

Wishtank: When you started putting pen to paper and writing lyrics, what was your motivation and how has that evolved with you over time?

Thirtyseven: I started reading and writing really early, I’ve always had a deep relationship with languge. Language, or wordsound as the Rastafarians refer to it, has been a tool and a weapon for most of my life. When I was younger and more insecure, it was primarily a weapon. Not that I’m too much older now, I feel like I just finished up adolescence at the age of 24.

So there’s no deep or profound answer for it: I got into rap to get the attention of women and hurt the feelings of other men. I suspect any rapper who tells you otherwise is a liar, but I leave that up to them. Battle culture was a big attraction to me early on, the combat nature of the freestyle battle. I guess the big appeal was that it was a fight with words, and I was too skinny and too sissy to get into real fights at the time — but I have always been good with words.

Boland with good friend Matt Scott (aka Matt Fire). Matt recently graduated from Bennington College where he was studying music. He plays guitar frequently during Wombaticus shows and contributed the riffs on the Humpasaur Jones track “I don’t Know.” Boland is currently producing Scott’s first album.
Photo by Charles Choiniere

That loses its appeal, though, especially once you get good at it. I realized early on that in a battle situation you never actually confront your opponent, if you do, you leave yourself open for attack. You play to the crowd. You draw the crowd in and use them as a weapon against your opponent. Now, the problem with that is that the crowd, in almost any given situation, is mostly composed of fairly stupid people. With organized battles, onstage in a club, it’s even worse, because on top of being stupid, they’re also drunk, and you’re on some shitty PA system, so any kind of subtle wordplay or headgames you get into will just be lost completely.

That was really the fork in the road for me, the question that would eat at me while I stood on rooftops in Montreal, tripping and contemplating my life. Do I want to be catering to these idiots? Do I want to be using language just to whump on people and feed my little primate ego? More importantly, do I really want to hang out with the kind of women who are attracted to something that stupid? The answer across the board was no, and I kinda quit rapping for awhile because I didn’t see any other path.

The power of the human brain is not in the number of individual neurons, it’s in the number of networked connections and pathways between those neurons. I’d been spending a good six years writing verses about how good I was at rapping, and about how much other people sucked by comparison. Within those two simple phrases, you have 99% of all recorded hip hop. So I’d built up these pathways that took me along the safe roads, always came up with the safe rhymes, and it took me two or three years to break out of those patterns and start writing some honest shit.

It’s something I still wrestle with now. I look to tracks of mine like “Minimum Wage” and I see them as failures, because they’re mostly just that same mantra — I’m dope, you suck. I may do it in a really technical and entertaining way, but that’s still all I’m doing. If it wasn’t for people requesting those older tracks, I would retire them. I may still retire them.

Wishtank: When we originally contacted you to do this interview, and asked what was on your mind lately, you told me: “I need to retreat to the woods and eat mescaline and be a philosopher, I need to move to a city and be connected all day and make money, I need to do both and get involved with changing the world. I need to go on tour and live irresponsibly and enjoy my youth and I need to figure out which of my dozen personalities should be the executive officer, really.” How do you see your work in 2007 helping to manifest these self-affirmed personal needs?

Thirtyseven: As 2007 gets started, I feel like the most prepared broke dude on the planet. I’ve been spending pretty much every day of my life doing hours of research and laying foundations for dozens of different projects. This also means that none of those projects are finished and I still don’t have an album out 2 years after my first announced “release date.” Fortunately, I have a sense of humor that allows me to appreciate my total failure as a punchline.

As for what I told you, that was just a drunken moment of weakness. There is no executive officer, and I think that’s why I work so well. I get bored with everything eventually, so a ton of projects floating around means I always have something to move on to. I’ve been observing myself a lot in the past few years, and getting a sense of my rhythms. I’m getting better at rolling with depression instead of fighting it, because depression tends to end a lot faster when I don’t resist it. I’m also getting much better at faking optimism until my own nervous system falls for it. I used to be big on lying to other people, but I’m starting to see that lying to yourself is the key to being Master of the Universe.

DJ Multiple Sex Partners began making Wombat beats in 2000. He is currently undertaking a series of solo projects including the albums “Copyright Infringement” and “Holy Mountain.”
Photo by Charles Choiniere

Wishtank: You’ve identified the fact that egotism is nearly omnipresent in the industry and something you are moving away from in your writing. This seems wise, as there is so much beyond the self that an artist can confront or celebrate in their work. What subject matter in your music, and that of other musicians, renders successful tracks?

Thirtyseven: Well, there’s a vast universe full of concepts that haven’t been touched yet. That doesn’t mean it’s easy to find them, at all. There’s nothing more challenging than breaking new ground, and that’s why most rappers make the same song from cradle to grave. I think a sense of history is important, do your research, learn from those who came before you. I have a lot of young rappers coming up to me with these “new crazy ill nasty” concepts that they have, and I’ll burn them up a CD that’s nothing but tracks with that same message, done better than they could ever do, dating back as far as the early 80s.

If you want to innovate, you gotta know what came before you. I hear a lot of kids talking about saving hip hop or taking it to the next level, and they might as well have the word “moron” tatooed across their foreheads. Anyone who worries about hip hop doens’t know shit about it, hip hop will be just fine, always has been, always will be. Study it and learn it and find your place within it. Respect those who came before you and learn from them.

Wishtank: We’ve talked about trends in the rap industry and the lowest common denominator is quite low at this point. For some reason I can’t hold the industry solely accountable for this trend, without putting some of the blame on the culture who buys this meaningless “product,” — to use your term. It seems that the vast majority of “rap” fans are in serious need of education, where can they find it?

Thirtyseven: Every single day I pose that question to myself on a larger level. Because humanity stands right now at the most important crossroads that we have ever faced, stakes have never been this high. As Bucky Fuller put it, the options are simple: utopia or oblivion.

Three Sev and Dizzy at Nectars in Burlington, Vermont.

I think that people buying ignorant product is a symptom of the bigger disease. I’d say it’s the same disease that put Bush into office, but Bush is just a pimple on the ass of the Beast. I can’t even talk politics with 99% of the people I come into contact with. I have a lot of people tell me I have extreme opinions, which is hilarious, because I can’t even express or explain my opinions to some people, their mental framework doesn’t accomodate it. I see the entire concept of nationality to be a mental illness. Borders are meaningless. Animals cross borders every day and never notice it, you know why? Borders are not really there. They exist on maps and in the minds of the monkeys that defend those maps. The problem is, those monkeys have guns and violently insist their mental illness has to be reality for you and me. How the hell can I talk about politics with someone who’s thinking in terms of Democrat and Republican?

Burlington Vermont producer Future Methods made the beats for a Wombaticus track called “The Deal.” Photo by Charles Choiniere

Wishtank: How do you think people will wise up to the situation in which
they live?

Thirtyseven: I suspect the most reliable indication of intelligence is curiosity. All this submission, man, it disgusts me.  Most people don’t even see how many chains and shackles they’ve been crafting every day of their lives. And I’m not just pointing fingers outwards, I find bad programming and bullshit thoughts in my own mind and soul every day. Waking up isn’t a single moment, it’s a daily process that never stops.

So what’s the catalyst? How do you wake people up? I suspect the answer is, you don’t. People wake themselves up or they do not wake up at all. I honestly don’t think environment has much to do with it either, because the most amazing people that I’ve met grew up in environments that should have destroyed them if that argument is true. So is the trigger something genetic?

Timothy Leary suggested that quite often, that maybe it’s a mutation. Maybe humans like Leary are the advance guard of what humanity will evolve to in the future. Then again, maybe they’ll find a way to identify people like us and kill them all off in the next few decades here. That’s just as likely as any positive outcome.

I’m very skeptical of the new age concept of a mass awakening being around the corner. Not that I doubt the potential for massive, sudden transformations — that’s something I study very closely in terms of chaos and catastrophe theory, the complexity work that Stuart Kaufmann is doing and all the economics research that I do. But all that stuff is about complex systems composed of fairly simple and definable individual components undergoing a massive change. For example, when the economy crashes, those are dollars, stocks, bonds. Discrete and definable objects.

Humpasaur Jones has standards and substance.
Photo by Charles Choiniere

Now, a culture is composed of humans. Humans are impossible to define. Although I might have a low opinion of some humans, they’re still fascinating and amazingly complex, unpredictable entities. People forget how much potential they have, and I think that in the end, no amount of conditioning or drugs can fully eradicate that spark from any human. So I don’t think there’s any correspondence between modeling complex systems with simple components undergoing that radical transformation and modeling a global culture of six billion humans doing the same. No correlation at all. I could be totally full of shit, too.

Despite all that — despite every single word I’ve said in this interview, I remain positive. For one, being negative is a dumb strategy, period. For two, I believe that despite all the setbacks and odds against humanity being successful, I don’t think it’s too late by any stretch of the imagination. Most of the people proclaiming the inevitable collapse of civilization are just vengeful failures who couldn’t cope with reality, and I’m perfectly happy to alienate all the hippie fascists who might think I’m on the same page as them. They’re just Nazis with dreadlocks.

I think that if we can get a movement of indepedent, autonomous communities that work, that will set an example more powerful than any activism or armed conflict. Because the bottom line fact is, people aren’t happy. They don’t like their lives. The reason Babylon won’t win is because they have bad product. The product is culture, and culture is something humans need, biologically. So the solution isn’t to burn down their factory, it’s to make our own better product.

If they look to Vermont and see communities that are energy independent, that work openly and don’t play the crime and punishment game, where everyone has a millionaire-level quality of life and the freedom to explore what interests them and to do what they love, that’s more powerful than lectures. We’re not going to browbeat people into changing.

MSP blackout with Three Sev.

Believe me, I tried flat-out telling people they’re fucking stupid — for whatever reason, it just doesn’t work. Unless you’re trying to get beaten up, in which case I recommend that approach highly. However, if you can provide a better example by living it, that will get people’s attention. I do think it’s the best strategy we have right now. There’s a few others that I won’t get into because laying them out on paper renders them useless and would probably get me a lot of attention that I don’t want or need right now. I refuse to make up my mind about what the future will be, I don’t know and nobody else does. We’re building it every day. I would say to anyone reading this interview, you have no idea how powerful you are. You have no idea how much your leaders are afraid of you.

I have no patience for conspiracy theory pessimism. Mussolini died swinging from a lamp-post in the streets, soaked in his own piss. No amount of Vatican connections or CIA money could save him. The future is what we make it and we make it every day.

Paging Doctor Quandary

Quan on the N Line with Six Speed.

Wishtank: How did you and Thirtyseven meet and who’s idea was it to combine musical talents? Was the original idea to make a complete album or just work together on single tracks?

Quan: Well, actually, we didn’t really “meet” at first so much as we “started communicating.” I was going through this Wu-Tang phase and frantically snatching up every Clan-related album, EP, single, side-project and bootleg I could get my hands on. I linked up with an emcee from Burlington called J-Kwest who also had a massive Wu collection. One day I came across some tracks that turned out to be his own. I dug his shit, he sent me some accapellas to try my hand at remixing, and he and I started collaborating on and off.

Sorry, I realize that was pretty tangential, but necessary nonetheless. The long and the short of it is, one day Kwest sent me a demo of a cut he was working on called “Oumoulian,” which had been produced by DJ MSP, and I was absolutely blown away. So, I had always been vehemently opposed to the whole MySpace craze, but once Kwest finally convinced me to jump on that bandwagon I made a point of seeking out MSP, and in doing so, learned about Wombaticus Rex. Back then they still kept contact information on their page, so I decided to hit them up one day, and that was when I first came into contact with Thirtyseven.

I can’t say for sure who originally proposed the idea of us working together. Chances are it just sort of arose from our collective consciousness. Or maybe it was just plain common sense. I mean, I’m kind of an ass when it comes to doling out beats, because I’ve been left hanging a couple times in the past due to a lack of dedication, so I’ll admit, I’m selective about people I work with. I’m wary of everyone. But Thirtyseven, if anything, was even more embedded and active in the world of music than I was. So, I guess in the end it just kind of blossomed out of our mutual respect for one another. We made a couple of tracks at first, but we were so amped by what we had come up with that we decided to join forces for an entire project.

Wishtank: Who came up with the title “Algorhythms” and why do you think it represents your combined efforts with this album?

Quan: I’m pretty sure I’m the one who came up with the name. It’s sort of interesting because when we decided on it, the project had barely taken shape. Since then there’s been a lot of synchronicity involving our choices of titles. The dictionary definition of the word “algorithm” is “a step-by-step problem-solving procedure, especially an established, recursive computational procedure for solving a problem in a finite number of steps,” and I think a big part of our mission is slowly and methodically reinvigorating what we see as a dying hiphop culture, just like that — step by step. You can even apply it on a larger scale and say another part of our mission is to use music to gain enough influence to solve or at least help solve some of the serious problems facing the world today. In that way, it’s almost self defined — Algorhythms is the first step in a much larger, more complex algorithm. But at its most basic, it sort of symbolizes a fusion of art and science, as well as referencing the mathematical roots of music.

Wishtank: What was the first song of Wombaticus Rex that you heard and what were your initial thoughts about it?

Quan: Jeez, now that is a tough question, because I’ve heard so damn many at this point. I can say for sure that the “Oumoulian” beat (which true MSP fans would recognize as “Mars Hill Sundays") was the first track that I heard out of that camp, and like I said before, I thought it was pretty mind-boggling. To be perfectly honest, though, I’m not sure I remember the very first Wombaticus track I heard. I’m 90% sure it was something off of their Canadian EP “Live From Islamabad,” but at the moment all tactile titles and sounds escape me.

Quan in front of some 7th sucker graf in San Fran.

Actually, there’s a very good chance that it was “Minimum Wage.” I still remember being struck dumb by the line: “If I really spoke my mind it would involve an interpreter/ and alter the curvature of the walls and the furniture.” I had to spin that line back at least a dozen times, like, “Did he really just say that?”

It might have even been “I See.” I’ll tell you this though, it doesn’t really matter which particular track I heard first, because I don’t think I’ve ever heard one that I haven’t liked. All I know is that MSP and Thirtyseven are the best of the best, the crème de la crème in their respective fields. Rhymesayers would be wise to fire their entire roster just to pick those two up.

Wishtank: How long have you been making music, and how has working with Thirtyseven affected you as an artist?

Quan: I’ve been making music for a vast majority of my conscious life. My dad was a blues-rock guitarist in several dozen bands between the 60s and the 90s, so obviously that was a major influence, although I still think he was a little disappointed when I put down the guitar in favor of a pair of turntables. I guess that was about five, almost six years ago now, but when I started out I really focused on being a DJ and an emcee, so I’d say I’ve been making beats for about four years now.

I think Thirtyseven has been a positive addition to my musical universe. Like I tell him, it’s really interesting to find myself making beats for one of my favorite emcees. So yeah, for one, since he’s so used to working with MSP that I always feel the need to step up my game a little bit more, push the limits of production and teach myself new tricks and techniques. Another great thing is the dynamic of our relationship — I’m in touch with him on an almost-daily basis, and we’re constantly sending new beats and loops and works-in-progress back and forth, which leads to a lot of awesome feedback and, subsequently, new ideas. It’s sort of symbiotic in that sense. I’d like to think that sometimes I push him to up his game too, but that might just be wishful thinking.

Wishtank: What is the working dynamic between you and Thirtyseven? Who initiates each track, is it you as the beat producer, he as the lyricist or a continual combination of the two?

Quan: It’s sort of a grab-bag of all of those things. I mean, for example, the first pair of tracks that we did for the EP were beats that I had made and sent to Thirtyseven to check out, and he decided he wanted them and set about writing some lyrics. Then there are other times when he’ll write out a full song, or even just a treatment for a song idea, and I’ll try to produce a beat for him around his concepts and specifications. We have a whole top-secret project in the works revolving around this method.

Quan thumbing a ride back to Boston from San Francisco.

Further still there are times where he’ll unearth some song that he wrote years back that has some kind of renewed potency. There’s one track on the EP that he wrote a long time ago that just happened to work perfectly with one of my beats — even the little drops and highlights. I didn’t have to change a thing. The synchronocity associated with Algorhythms is pretty uncanny like that. We’ll make tracks or beats one week and the next some revelation or event will make them surprisingly poignant. But despite all that, I’d say the majority of the time I initiate the track — lyrics usually sound best when they’re used on the beat they were written to.

I feel like 90% of beats are like a free-form sculpture: you sort of let the marble — or in this case, the samples — guide your hand, even if you have a specific vision or concept in mind. You start with a pile of sounds that you’re attracted to and you start dissecting and rearranging them, and as you do this, that old music starts to take on new life. As it evolves, it becomes apparent that it needs a certain kind of drums, or a certain kind of bass, or other strings. Somewhere in that same process it usually becomes apparent who the beat is for, too — either a specific person who you work with or just a vocal style that would mesh well with the sound. Since I use a lot of sounds and ideas that Thirtyseven gravitates towards, a lot of the beats that I make wind up getting grabbed for the Algorhythms project. Then, at the same time, I’ve started to deliberately gravitate towards sounds and ideas that I know Thirtyseven digs — in other words, I’ve been making beats specifically for Algorhythms.  •

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All materials published on wishtank.org are under the shared copyright protection of Wishtank magazine and the original authors, photographers and artists who created them. For contractual reprint or copy permission, contact Garrett Heaney at editor@wishtank.org. Wishtank likes to share, but looks out for our contributors. ©2007 and beyond