[Round Table Conversations] A Conversation With… Azad Right

• Interview Conducted by: K1ng Eljay

Contrary to what it may seem like, this interview has been a month or so in the making. For whatever reason, I kept missing out on chances to chop it up with Azad Right and, to be completely honest, I was somewhat shocked I finally did a chance to have this interview, due to my last phone breaking (no insurance, yay) and to his hectic schedule. Somehow the stars aligned and as I got my new phone, we were able to make this edition of [Round Table Conversations] happen.

Granted, I had about an hour before I had to be at my day job, and Azad was chilling with his friend/homie/partner Jonathon Marquez in New York at Woodstock before doing hoodrat things (relax, I’m joking…kind of), but somehow we snuck in a dope, hour-long conversation that ranged from my cell phone story and his quest to get an iPhone, to childhood memories, to his encounter with NaS and his previous World of Warcraft / Diablo II side hustles.

No, seriously, lol.

Check out the R.T.C. with Azad Right, bombard his Twitter account, and be sure to download his latest mixtape “The Time Is Right” here.

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For those that don’t know, you’ve told me that you’ve done spoken word for a while. I believe you said since you were 12 or 13?

Yeah, poetry, exactly. I started when I was really young, but I didn’t take it seriously until 7^th or 8^th grade.

Has that always been synonymous with you rhyming, or is there something that made you want to switch over or what?

Honestly, in 8^th grade we had this teacher. She had us write a letter to ourselves and she was going to mail it back to us after our senior year of high school. In that letter I was writing about my poetic license, hoping I’m a happy person, and that I’ve pursued my dreams, which was at that point in time poetry. I actually didn’t get the letter back until my first year of college, and I looked at it just laughing because my handwriting’s still the same – chickenscratch – and I still wanted to do the same sh** with my life, which was write and make music.

Did you ever get back in touch with that teacher?

Nah, she lived close to me, but I was never her favorite student, you know? She just happened to follow through with what she said she’d do for everybody. It wasn’t as much about her; it was more about the fact that I wanted it back then even, you know what I mean?

I feel you on that. You said you wanted it back then, but your ethnicity…Iranian-American, right?

Yeah.

That’s not necessarily common in rap. Has it been harder for you to break through because of that?

I think there’s pros and cons. Labels look at me like “Ok, he can tap into a different demographic that maybe buying albums right now,” so monetarily speaking, they can benefit off of me. The other side of things, that might be the reason that some of these top blogs aren’t posting my sh**. Even though most of these people are corny as f**k and don’t realize that I grew up with Latinos and African-Americans and that’s who I was f**kin’ with my whole life. They might see the name “Azad” and think “Oh this looks like a terrorist” or some sh**, but whatever.

People are ignorant like that, but it makes it more rewarding when you finally do get on, you know?

Exactly, but I don’t even trip. My f**kin’ publicist hit me up and was like “I rep this girl – Angel Haze – and sometimes people are reluctant to post her sh** because she has a p***y, and for you,  I’m not gonna say it’s because you’re White…but it just seems like a lot of these writers and journalists are more reluctant to post White rappers that don’t have a major cosign.” So, whatever.

True. And you said Angel Haze, I’m actually familiar with the name. Female rapper out of Cali, right?

Exactly.

I’m thinking about when we were conversing a while back when you first sent me your EP due to my Saigon review (“Greatest Story Never Told”). You said you had something going with Adidas for their Spoken Word Campaign and it kind of fell apart. What exactly happened with that?

So I had TBWA Chiat Day, a big ad agency in L.A. that hired Poetry, who was basically the gate/day keeper of all the ill spoken word artists in L.A. They asked him to put together three or four people that could do this international campaign for Adidas based on spoken word. They called me, this chick, and this other dude that’s huge by the name of Brook Yung. He’s one of the top three spoken word artists in America. They had us come up with some sh**, and Brook actually ended up backing out because something came up last minute that he had to take care of. So me and two other girls went in and basically wrote this piece. They paid us for it, but they ended up not picking it up. I don’t even know what the reason was, or if they knew if it would be commercially viable, you know?

Things happen, I guess. Who knows, they might come back to it later or not. There’s no telling. I guess we’ll see. So about your last EP (“A Piece of Mine”), it was mad impressive. Now you have this mixtape/album. Would you prefer calling it a mixtape or an album, actually?

To be honest with you, I think that this is an album content-wise and the time we spent, but I don’t want to call anything my album until. Whether it be indie or we find a major, that’ll be the debut. We’ll just call it a mixtape for the sake of it being free, so we’ll just keep it as that.

Got you. So with this project, what’s the one thing you wanted to accomplish with it?

I feel that I was overly-aggressive on the EP. I thought that I made more raps. I made more great raps and I didn’t do that great at songs, and I told myself heading into this mixtape that I was going to show people that I don’t just rap-rap; I can make great songs that you can replay.

I felt like “A.Z.A.D.”, “Player’s Club”, “Love of The Game”, “Spiderwebs”, they’re all great songs but I felt they were lacking replay value. I feel like “Have No Fear” lacked replay value. I couldn’t play that back too many times. I’m not sure if it’s because I was involved in every step of the way from production to writing to mixing, but a lot of the songs didn’t have that “let me play it 100 times” type value to me.

I’ve heard someone say before that they make music for themselves first, and then they fine tune and release it after.

Exactly.

So I feel you on that. You did say you felt like the EP was just raps and this one has more song content, but you had a couple of songs on “The Time Is Right” where you kind of just spazz out on, more specifically “Showtime.”

Yeah yeah, definitely. I’m not going to completely step out of my box, you know? I think what I do best is…well, I rap. I guess it’s more based on the production and the songwriting aspect because I still rap in those projects, but I think the songwriting and the production… not sure if I told you this before, but out of the 17 songs, I wrote all but three. That’s what I focused on, coming up with the hooks that were catchy and universal concept-wise, and then not yelling on the verses because I felt like I did that on the EP.

Definitely nailed the hook aspect, by the way. I was going to ask you that later, but you just answered that. That’s impressive, because they’re solid hooks.

Thank you, man. I brought in three or four singers who not only are just dope singers but good friends of mine. I brought them in and I told myself that we’re not going to reach out for any major features. I had a few dope features lined up. I don’t know if you know who Laws is?

I do. The 4:57 Mixtape is crazy, and he did another mixtape sampling the Beatles recently that was kind of hot. Yeah, I’m familiar with him.

I had Laws on board; I had Big Pooh on board. I had a few people I could’ve got on this project. Fashawn too, but I wanted to keep the rap features to just myself. No rap features at all; I was just going to f**kin’ have my friends with me singing.

Usually when a new artist – and I’m using the word new relatively loosely – is trying to get on, they’ll throw features on to get people’s attention. I actually feel like it wouldn’t have worked in your case. I actually like the way you went about it, just focusing on you and the music aspect. Shows you have a lot of promise and you’re not just a gimmick, you know?

Thank you. Yeah.

Completely off track, but you said a line and I just wanted to tell you my reaction to it. I was driving and I had the iPod going, and you said “I used to think I was wack ‘cuz I wasn’t Black / so I started blacking out on every f**kin’ track.” (from “Showtime”)

(Laughs)

Yo, I almost crashed my car trying not to laugh so hard. I love that line, man. There’s no follow-up question or anything, I just appreciate that line so much for some reason.

I’ve been getting a lot of feedback about that track especially. Lot of people have been hitting me up and saying “Yo, that sh** is sick” and it means a lot because that’s my favorite track right now.

That’s your favorite?

Yeah. I mean, you gotta keep in mind that these songs go through a ridiculous amount of fine-tuning. After I hear some sh** like, 5,000 times, I’m kind of immune to it. “Showtime” was the last track we cut for that. Jon [Marquez] made that beat five and a half years ago. I was going back, like “Yo, I want some straight Hip-Hop sh** for my project” and I pulled three or four beats he hadn’t touched for five years. He said he didn’t want to put these old-a** beats on there, and I asked him to just trust me on this one.

So he went back and tightened it up and I wrote some verses to it. I remember writing it three months ago in New York, and Jon was like “Yo, that’s f**king sick.”  I took it back to the crib, went back to L.A. and recorded it. The second I recorded it I was like “Yo, this track’s a f**kin’ heater.”

• “Showtime” (Prod. by Jonathan Marquez)

How’d you meet up with (producer) Jonathon Marquez?

I met Jon in like 6^th or 7^th grade. We went to middle school together, we used to ball together. We got to high school, and I was close to him in 9^th and 10^th grade because we had class together and we used that time and used to just kick it a lot. I don’t know what happened or when he started making beats, but people knew I rap. We made our first cut together in 10^th Grade? (Marquez confirms in the background) Yeah, 10^th grade.

At this point, I was already putting out tapes in this school with like 3,400 people and they knew my sh**.  Jon started getting on his game. By 12^th grade, we were making music and recording together pretty often. One thing led to another, and I kind of quit rap for a while because I didn’t think there was any room for me in the game. I didn’t know this sh**. I didn’t think that my image would be accepted.

I came back to it a few years later and Jon was still making beats. We got back into it and made a song called “Just You.” I was in the f**kin’ bathroom straight up, just humming the melody, and Jon laid it down. He went back and laid the pads to it. That was the moment when I realized we had some sick chemistry.

So I started working at Interscope for almost a year for free for hours a week, just picking people’s brains. I would schedule meetings for Jon to come through and meet with A & R’s. We went through little stints of being managed by low-level Interscope cats. That’s the beginning of the story.

You mentioned that you quit rapping for a minute. What made you come back? What changed?

I don’t even know, honestly. This is my only way of venting. I’m not any good at sports; I used to play basketball with Jon and f**kin’ volleyball and sh**. I’m not good at football. I’m not good enough at any sport to be able to really get out there and do some damage, and I’m competitive. If I’m going to do some sh**, then I want to make sure that I’m the best at what I do.

Right.

I started off in video games heavily.  I was making dough in World of Warcraft and crucial dough off Diablo II. I got my car because I was sick; I was like a Top Three priest on World of Warcraft for two years.

(Laughs) Man, what!?

Straight up, like I know you can appreciate that side of things. I was making f**king BANK off WoW.

You may be the first person I’ve met that actually made money from flipping characters in games like that. That’s crazy.

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Make sure you come back tomorrow for part two of my [R.T.C] with Azad Right, where we talk about his meeting with NaS and his future plans for The Time Is Right.