BRICK CITY KID: EL DA SENSEI

NEWARK, NEW JERSEY

INTERVIEW: INNOCENT?

VALIDATED: For those who don’t know, tell us a little bit about El Da Sensei.

EL DA SENSEI: I come from the group, “Artifacts”. I’ve been around since 1992 till today. I’m a partner with my man, Tame One, but I’ve been out for a long time, I have two albums under “Artifacts”, “Between A Rock And A Hard Place” and “That’s Them”. Me and Tame split, I did a bunch of solo stuff alone, triple albums under my belt. Gang of singles and features out there in the world. And I appreciate everybody that asked for a feature, that wanted to do anything collabo, that keeps me out there until a lot of these records get done and a lot of albums get finished and pressed up. So, I appreciate everybody.

VALIDATED: With the shift in the culture and everything going on, how do you stay consistent? How do you keep focused?

EL DA SENSEI: Well, mostly its work. A lot of times I go on tour and people ask me, “So, is this all you do?” I’m like, “That’s not a bad thing, this is a job for me.” Whereas if I’m not doing it, I don’t get paid, and I’m being paid by fans. So, I feel as though my testament to... I call it time travel, is to stay current with everything that I’m listening to. I’m a fan first, no different than how me and you got to be on a song together. I listen to everybody, as a fan. I listen to everybody as in competition in what we doing. I feel like you have to know certain producers, even if they’re not well-known, but not to be stubborn with your own sound, to open yourself up enough to know that it’s certain people you need to work with, whether it been Illmind for me when he first came out, to working with Marco Polo, to working with Khrysis, to working with a lot of people that I haven’t been able to work with, but I’ve been able to work with people that had, not say a similar sound, but an updated sound for today, and putting out a lot of records, and the different independent labels that I’ve been on, that was also a part of it.

But I also knew that it start with me first, so it’s that I have to stay—it’s like sharpening the sword, it’s like any karate movie you’ve seen, where they got to practice all the time to keep their skill up, because you never know when this dude’s going to run on to the trail and challenge you in a fight. So, that’s how I look at all of this, and if I wasn’t doing it, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation today. And again, I always give it up to the people that’s calling me to do all these things, because if it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t be able to work. But I think they see me out there, they hear my voice, it’s not so much—and this is what I see everybody else say, is I still sound kind of the same as when we first started, and you have to keep yourself up, be healthy. I work out a little bit. I just try to maintain myself enough, so when the time to get on stage and get in the studio, that I’m able to do all of these things.

VALIDATED: That’s dope man, that’s real dope. So, to go back, being from Newark, New Jersey, what’s your earliest memory of hip hop culture?

EL DA SENSEI: Man, I was living in Irvington, New Jersey, and I started seeing like homeboy characters on walls and not so much big letters and nothing like that, but just homeboy characters, we’d see little tags here and there. But then I started getting into it—because I was always into gymnastics, and flipping and shit like that, so I got into the b-boy aspect of hip hop first. And I was 11 and 12 years old, b-boying, and this is when “Wild Style” came out, I went to the Bronx Zoo. The first time I saw in New York, I was like, “What in hell, this is New York?” The Bronx looked like it was a war zone when I saw that, and I think at about the same time, I was soaking in everything, like I got off train, me and my father, and my two brothers and my mother, and we walking through the stairs, I’m turning around looking at the train like, “Oh my God, oh my God, really, really?”

So, once we got outside, that's when I see the streets, I was like, “Shit, wow!” We go to the zoo, I was ready to go out of this as when we got in, because I wanted to go back out on the street. So, we got back on the train again, just looking inside the train, oh my God, graffiti tags everywhere, this is all I heard about. Being from Jersey, you hear about these things. So, at the same time, I got home, and “Star Wars” was on, it came on at night. My father, he watched me in that train station, he watched me looking around, he get home, that shit comes on, he sees me watching them, “Do you think you’re going to do that?” He already know I’m on some b-boy shit, so he’s like, “You think you’re going to do that part? You think you’re going to be writing on wall?” I said, “I draw, I’ll find some way to do it.” but those were my early getting into hip hop years. The rhyme part didn’t come till years later.

VALIDATED: How did that end up happening?

EL DA SENSEI: Being like everybody else growing up my age, I was listening to Kool DJ Red Alert and Marley Marl, I was listening to the Latin Rascals before Red Alert came on WRKS 98.7 Kiss FM, and The World Famous Supreme Team Radio Show on 91.5 FM, I got that in Jersey, but a lot of the times you was on the radio just flipping through the dial to see if you can find any hip hop was existing somewhere, and we found it. So, it was a record store around our way, called “Moving Records”, and then this lady that had it, she owned the store. And she was on point with all of that hip hop. Every record that you needed to have in that store was in there, break records, everything, and we grew up in that store, to then to be able to have an in-store ourself as “Artifacts” in there. That store was important in the neighborhood. So, I would go in there, you’d see all the rap stars come through there, Red Alert, I seen a lot of people come in there. But that was like the place to go to, like the headquarters. So, I remember me and my man bought some records, there was only one DJ on my block named Viral, so we go to him, and we brought some record. So, we go to him and he’s like, “Aight, I see what you all got.” So, we asked him to blend the records so we could put a tape together with the substitution break. So, this is when we learned about DJ’ing, like, okay, we saw “Wild Style”, we saw “Flash”, but then we go get the record, we give it to him, he’s say, “Yo, you know what? You need two, you brought me like three records, you need six.” We’re like, “Oh, so, like he would do it in the movies.” So we went back to the store and bought the other records, but that’s when I started getting into rhyming, because I was into Big Daddy Kane. I was into a lot of other artists, like Run DMC, and LL, because I felt like that was more of a mainstream part of hip hop. So, I was listening to a lot of like early Just-Ice.

A lot of independent records was coming out at the same time, all these bigger people was coming out too. So, that’s why you’d listen to Red Alert and Marley, they would play all these records that you would wind up looking for when you go to the record store. So, that’s what got me into rhyming, because I started thinking like, “Well, I’m doing this, I know how to DJ a little bit, let me get into this rhyme thing.” That was the hardest thing to do, because I had to talk, and try to figure out how am I going to write rhymes, but the influence was already there listening to all these other people, everybody that first start rhyming sounds like the person that they’re listening to.

VALIDATED: Absolutely.

EL DA SENSEI: That was me, rhyming like everybody else, until you figure out, like I’m biting off him now. So, for everybody that I listened to, it was like, if you ever seen the episode of the Super Friends when Robin was turned into like Frankenstein, and he had Superman power, and he had Batman, he had all the Super Friends power just to save them. That’s how I was going to try to find my rhyme style. I can I blend all these people together that I listened to, but make my own style, and that took years. Even when I started making records, I was actually really nervous, like damn, I’ve got to try to figure out how to make somebody look at me like how I’m looking at my rap heros. So, I had to really figure out what I wanted to sound like voice wise, style wise, and before I even started thinking I was even good at it.

VALIDATED: How did Artifacts happen? How did you guys come together... you, Tame, and DJ Kaos? RIP Kaos, how has that been by the way, since his loss?

EL DA SENSEI: Yes, that’s been a big loss, I would say we was able to get through recording the Artifacts new album, with Buckwild. But for us to not have Kaos cuts on the record, you know, I tried to get him to do some before everything happened, but he ain’t had the strength to do it. So, Eclipse did some cuts, my man DJ Hush from Memphis did some cuts, but I will say Kaos spirit is all over the record. Before he did that, he told me—because he would come in the basement when I was playing, he’ll tell me, like this is before we was even into the mix stage or anything, he was like, “Yo, you need to get somebody else to do the hook.” he’s like, “You can’t be on all the hooks.” I’m like, “Okay, don’t worry, I’m going to get that done.” he said, “yo, I’m just saying.” So it will sound different, it’ll sound fresh, every song. So, what did I do? I got my man to do some hooks with me. I get my cousin to do some cuts, Eclipse to do some cuts. So, Kaos is all over the record spirit wise, and we dedicated the record to him. 

And before I even get into me and Tame, I’ll tell you because I’m mourning, we met Kaos at a military park in Newark, where they used to have talent shows, a festival like for new artists in the park. So, we did it a couple of times, and this year we was coming from New York, and we knew they was having this, so we were going down and then we heard some dudes rhyming before we got to the park, it was loud, and we heard the DJ cutting and everything. Then by the time we got to the stage, Kaos was about to start doing a routine, so he got Manifest, Gangster, and he juggling and shit, he cutting. I’m like, “Damn, who that black ass dude right there? Who is that?” So, we go to the stage, he’s with his rhyme crew, and we’re like, “That was hot, you all are dope. Give my man a chance.” And it was dope, but I went straight to Kaos like, “Yo, where did you come from? Because there are no DJ’s that cut like that that I know of in New Jersey from my experience being in the hood.” So, Kaos was young too, and we all was young at the time, 18, 19, we’re all in high school. So, I think Kaos was still in high school, and I got his number, and I just started calling him.

And we became friends before he was even in the group, because Kaos became my resident critic. Once we started doing the album though, I would send him songs while we were recording. So, he was hearing them before everybody, so I would play the song on phone, I’ll be at work, play some on the phone, so he heard that stuff. And then once we got to the second album... Well, Kaos was DJ’ing in the hood a lot, so we knew him even when he did that with my man, DJ Scratch.

So, one day, Raider was telling me and Tame that… Rock Raider used to DJ for me and Tame, along with Showbiz and AG. So, he said, “Look, I’m about to get in this DMC battle, so you're going to have to find another DJ, because I’m about to really go overseas.” and he did what he did. So, I was like, “All right.” So, I told Tame that we’ve got to get another DJ, I just got off the phone with Raider.” So, he’s like, “All right, well, what are we going to do?” I said, “The only person I know that cut like Raider is Kaos.” Like even somewhat like that. We were spoiled to have Raider on the road with us like that, doing all those damn tricks.

So, we got Kaos and he fit right in. I remember Raider auditioned him. Kaos audition for the second album. So, Raider was like, “Yo, I want to hear this dude, I want to meet him. Whoever is taking my place, I got to meet this dude.” I said, “All right, man, you’re going to love him though. I ain’t going to say he just as good as you, but he can do things you can do.” he’s like, “Oh, word?” Well, when they came to Jersey, Swift, Raider and Sinister, we did a showcase in Jersey, at this place called Pipeline. It’s every Wednesday. So Raider came there, I ain’t even tell Kaos, until we got there, “Yo, I got a surprise for you.” So, Raider’s there, and Kaos had no idea what was going on, he just knew it was on some DJ shit, and they was headlining. So, before we even did anything, before the show started, Raider was like “Nah, come on, we go outside, let’s get in the van, we’ll roll up.” We’re in the van listening to the whole album for like an hour and some change.

Raider did not go back in that building, he grilled Kaos, looking at him. He got to one song, “This Is The Way”, and that song, Raider looked at Kaos, he was like, “You know what? You good. El, he’s good. I’ll vouch for him, I’m saying right now, I’m cosigning him, he’s fucking good right now.” And they became best of friends throughout the years after that. So, I don’t feel as bad as I did before about losing him, but I understand now what... and I want everybody else to understand what contribution Kaos had in our group, because he was in the group, he wasn’t a DJ we hired or anything like that, he was a part of our family, and he was a part of a group, and we wanted him visually in the group. On stage, we gave him his shine. A lot of DJ’s get on with the groups after us, and be like, “Yo, that’s dope, that you all gave him his own little set time to do what he wanted to do.” Whether it be a juggle, whether it be a routine, we gave him that. And I love him, I salute him, he knows we down here rockin’ out, so he’s pretty much like… For me, Kaos speaks to me through other people and stuff that’d be happening in my regular day, and I know that’s him, and it’ll freak me out a little bit, but it’s normal. Because I know that’s him fucking with me.

But me and Tame, we got together through people we knew, my man Polo Ice, Jay Burns, they knew of him. I knew Tame through his name on the wall in the hood. But not until my man, Jay Burn took me over to my man, Randle, crib. They had a crew called the Boss Mob, so it was sorta like a Juice Crew, Wu-Tang, whatever, but I got to my man’s crib, I saw Tame’s name on the wall, I’m like, “Damn, he be over here?” They said yeah, he rhymes too. I only knew him from doing graffiti. And then he played me some of his songs, I’m like, “Damn, this nigga is just as nice as he paint.” So, I was like, “All right.” Every time I went over there though, I would never see him. He would never be there. So, one day I came, and he was actually there, so aight fuck it, I finally get to meet you. Just the first day we were there, we didn’t do nothing, but the next time we came back, we recorded a song called “Break It Down”. And we made a title of one of the songs on the “That’s Them” album to be “Break It Down”, to commemorate me being up that first time on that record.

Me and Tame, clicked immediately, and it was the vibe that we knew we had, and we just started getting into talent shows. I was doing talent shows by myself; everybody knew me just from doing that, and then once I got with him, that’s how we got our name, “That’s Them”. We would show up at auditions and after a while, cats knew me and him, so they would be like, we heard you walked in the door of the club auditioning, “Oh damn, That’s Them dude right there, they’re about to come in here and just tell us to leave.” So, we had routine, we had dances and shit like that, we were already ready, even back then.

VALIDATED: I bet, that was another thing, everybody had dancers back then.

EL DA SENSEI: Oh yeah, we damn sure did. Mine was called the Wonder Twins.

VALIDATED: Did you do the Artifacts logo?

EL DA SENSEI: Nah, a dude named Dante, and I can never remember his last name. Right now, he’s a straight up independent film maker of fucking dope ass movies that we don’t even know about. But Dante had a company called “Third Rail” back in the day, they had mad t-shirts. Actually, he did all the artwork for Cypress Hills albums, all the way up to “Black Sunday”. He did a lot of Funkdoobiest’s artwork. The logo for that, and you’ll see a lot of that stuff he did. But the “Third Rail” shirts, if you notice those shirts, even the logo, this is what his letters look like. So, we didn’t know that at the time, but this dude was like, “Yo, we’ve got a dude that say he could do some phenomenal shit.”, we’re like, “Life what?” So, he sent us a picture, he painted a wall with a piece, at the end of it, Snoop head and some other person, I don’t know who it was, but he’s like, “Yo, this could be you, and that’s going to be you.” This is like early Photoshop, 94’ Photoshop. So, he get my boy to give him some pages from out of the Subway art book,

He put that shit together the way he did on a wall, and that was all on the computer. He sent us that shit, we were looking at it like, “What the fuck? What is that?” Like, to this day, people still think that’s a real train, and when we tell them its’ not, they get disappointed, like, “You serious?” Yeah, bro, it’s straight up Photoshop.

VALIDATED: So, you all were out in the golden era. From a fans standpoint, that grew up in that era, it’s nothing like that and it probably never will be again. What was it like actually being a part of that?

EL DA SENSEI: Man, that shit was like—I’ll tell you this, a lot of people thought we was from New York when we first came out, everybody did. And that’s funny, because I guess because when you think about Jersey, you thought about Naughty By Nature, you thought about Redman, you thought about Lords of the Underground, you didn’t think about graffiti, you didn’t think about B-boys actually doing all that stuff. Because New York always thought we were just so damn far away from them. Like, no, we’re right across the river and you could see their buildings. It’s just our cables is different, our accent might be a little different, it might be Southern to them, I don’t know how, but it might did. But I get it, and even when you look at Queens niggas sound different, Brooklyn niggas sound different, Harlem niggas sound different and upstate New Rochelle, Mount Vernon niggas sound different. So, I was coming from Jersey, I just think the look of it at the time, I’m all in Lo gear, Tame had the dreads and they just thought, that’s a Brooklyn vibe, till when they saw the video, and they saw a New Jersey transit, and no police, they’re like, “Oh, Jersey.” So, it was a shock to a lot of people.

KRS did a review on Hot 97 and he said, “It’s crazy that it took some dudes from Jersey to make a song about graffiti that started in New York.” And I bugged out, when he shouted us out on the records “MCs Act Like They Don’t Know”, and “Out For Fame”. Even to this day, I trip out. I never thought he would feel like that about what we were doing. He was right though, and I felt good, because we came out… Yo, the first week we put out an album out, bro, it was us, Redman, Method Man, Erick Sermon, Keith Murray. It was like a bunch of records came out that one week. So, we were competing with it, from just our little video “Wrong Side of Da Tracks”, it was making noise and that’s what made it good for us being on Atlantic, because it was hard for them to deal with the fact that we did have a fan base, they had to deal with it, but they didn’t know how to push it, they didn’t know how to market it. And I don’t get mad at that, I’m glad we had a home back then, because we were part of a renaissance, when you look at it. Like you said, there would never be another era like the 90’s.

People were still learning what to do when we were putting out these records and was trying to perfect our style, and everybody was coming up with their own shit and that’s what made for the good competition, but it also made it for you to be fucking good and better even for yourself to be amongst all these giants that we was putting out records in that same day. That put a whole different perspective on your life, and what you was doing when you see that.

VALIDATED: So, what can you tell us about the new Artifacts album?

EL DA SENSEI: All right, the new Artifacts album is for people like you, like myself, anybody that has prayed that me and Tame was going to put out another record or get back together, this record is full of scratching, full of baselines and drums. This record is DITC affiliated, Buckwild. This record is for anybody that had any thought that underground music like the way we made it today can be brought out the way we’re going to do it to make it feel like we’re going to go back in time. This record is for you all.

VALIDATED: I can’t wait.

EL DA SENSEI: This is what people that waited for me and Tame for 25 plus years to make a new record. And they won’t be disappointed. We’ve got A-F-R-O on the joint, I’m so happy to have him on it as a young talent. That dude is fucking crazy on the mic. And there’s not too many guests, we got Ras Kas on the joint. It’s a formula, man, because we took it back to a formula of like what we used to do. And with the beat that Buck gave us, whatever timeframe it gave, like I said, time warp music, whatever year he gave us them beats from, that’s where we at on the beat, but it’s to sound today new, to sound like we stepped up a little bit, but we don’t forget where we come from, that’s what pretty much the album is about.

VALIDATED: Speaking of time, if you doing all this now, this is like going down in the history books, this album, so to speak. In 10 years from now, where do you see yourself? Do you see yourself still putting another album out? Where do you see the game?

EL DA SENSEI: I would hope to see myself sitting at a desk helping other artists do what I do right now, and using the tools that I have to apply, and I would say even five years from now. I think about what you said, I think about that shit a lot, and I think about in a way of how you look at Drew Brees. Is Drew still able to throw that ball around like the best of the motherfucking young boys? But he also know that he had to step aside and let the young boy get a chance. We can’t be Brett Favre, hating on Aaron Rodgers. We’ve got to, at the same time, look at ourselves and say, we had to look back – and no different than me working with you, I’m just looking at what you’re doing. I’m like yo, I’ll be able to... More or less to say, a lot of artists need to work with me. So, it’s like, you have to then start looking at yourself to say spread the wealth and share. I’ve met a lot of dope artists like that, and worked with a lot of dope artists like that. I worked with a lot of younger artists that don’t look at me as an older artist, and they just listened to me and respected that part and then… I know that it’s going to be a time where I’m going to have to… I can’t keep, I don't want to say keep up, because I know how I am as far as my work ethic, but I have to look at it in a way of saying, people are going to start asking me for more help than they do now, and I have a plan for that. And when I’m not doing this no more, when I’m able to stop, and I’m able to sit down behind a desk, I’m going to look at everybody to say, if you want to do anything like the way I was doing it, let’s just say that I got a package for you, I don’t want to be no manager, I don’t want to own a label, I don’t want to do fucking none of that, because I know what that is for me.

Maybe when I, I can’t even say it later on, you don’t want to be in charge of nobody’s life, you don’t want to be in charge, you don’t want to have nothing to do with that. What I will do is counsel, and I’ll say, consultant wise, I could point you in the right direction, I’m not holding your hand, I’ll tell you to go here, I’ll set this up, I’ll do this and that, but if you need t-shirts. If you need studio time, if you need a photographer, you need a video done, I got a gang of these dudes right here that I’m working with production, DJs, because once this shit opens back up, this is what it’s really going to be about. I would love to be able to be a booking agent, and send my dudes to places that I’ve been to, and that’s really what it is for me right now. I’ve done a lot of things I never thought I was going to do, and when I tell stories of all these things and the places I go to, I look at my friends, and I see what they’re doing, and I’m saying to myself, that I know they want to do the same thing. I know they want to travel, I know they want to be able to make bread for getting on stage every time you touch it, and that’s what it is, that’s what it’s about. 

VALIDATED: So, as far as the Artifacts project, what’s the timeframe? Or is there one yet?

EL DA SENSEI: Yeah, well, as for me and my big mouth, I’ve got to think like Steven Spielberg and them, I always say we making movies when we doing all this shit, I try to not put a date on something. I just say a month wise… because now I know a little bit more when it comes to manufacturing these vinyl records, it takes a minute. They could tell you one month, but then that shit is actually going to be like, they could say March, April, but it’s going to be June, July, so let me tell you that, because it is different with the manufacturer with those, because everybody pressing vinyls now. So, all the manufacturers are backed up, and that’s how it’s been since last year. So, it was like a two-to-three-month backup, but the thing I told this dude today, he said, “Don’t look like the Artifact album coming out in March.” I’m like, “No, it’ll be out bro, you’ve seen the artwork, you saw the picture, just know it’s coming, even if it’s two months later that March, April.” ...Relax, it’s coming.

VALIDATED: I cannot wait till that album drops.

EL DA SENSEI: 10 songs we did at “Illmatic” record. We did 10 joints.

VALIDATED: Nice, short and sweet. 

EL DA SENSEI: Yeah. 

VALIDATED: For the fans out there, how can they follow you on social media?

EL DA SENSEI: Well, on Instagram, you can hit me up at @SenseiFromNJ, Facebook, you know they got me with the government, so it’s Elliot Elder Sensei Williams. That’s the best way to hit me up. I got the LinkedIn bio on my page for the merch page.