There’s nothing complex about Hip-Hop. If you have good beats and solid lyricism; more people will be prone to join your movement—and for MoSS and Eternia, it’s a formula they learned a very long time ago.
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Getting her feet wet back in 2005 with her debut album, It’s Called Life, the Canadian MC who now makes New York her home emphatically proved that there is a place for women on the microphone without the use of sexual exploitation. She then followed her initial project up with more contributions such as Where I’m At – The Set Up, and now her collaborative effort in At Last with beat specialist MoSS.
As for the Toronto native MoSS; his production credits stem to artists such as Joe Budden, Obie Trice, Ghostface Killah, Kool G Rap, Joell Ortiz, Smif n Wessun, Sean Price, and many more. Now he puts forth is effort once again with Eternia for the aforementioned At Last album; time to get to work…
MoSS: We really didn’t go into it with any expectations other than making an album… We weren’t trying to target a certain demographic, make a hit, or anything else like that… We just wanted this album that people would like, really… So that was basically our goal…
Eternia: So basically, if you like real Hip-Hop— cop the record…
MoSS: Um, not really…
Eternia: [Laughing]… Actually I would like to clarify that and say that the actual recording and creating the songs; we were pretty much on the same page…
Eternia: I hate to this; but we’re like brother and sister… We have a real love/hate relationship… We respect each other ultimately, but our personalities are quite similar, and that’s because we both care the same amount for the project…
Eternia: I was very adamant that he be there for all recordings and creation of the album… But he lives in Toronto, and I live in New York… So I’d go home back to Toronto once every 3-4 months, and we’d bang out like three songs… So basically the whole creative process was put on hold, because we’d only record when we were in the same city, which only happened a couple of times a year…
MoSS: I would prefer to do that, because I think when I shop—actually I did Obie’s record after I did At Last… It’s kind of weird, because I did that record with Obie back in the 90’s… Then I did At Last… But I love shopping beats, and I love getting placements, because that’s part of the game… But you have to adapt and get into their comfort zone… When did At Last with Eternia, I gave her beats in her comfort zone and some outside of her comfort zone…
When it comes to shopping beats to a company like Def Jam, they probably won’t buy it, because they probably wouldn’t let the beat finish… But for me, that’s the kind of music I like making because it’s a little bit different… I don’t need to make beats that sound like Alchemist’s beats Pete Rock’s or [DJ] Premier’s… Those guys are already up there, and they don’t need clones…
On my beats tapes, I usually put the most unique music in the front, but people bypass it… But Eternia will listen to it, and say, “That’s dope…” So yeah, I’d prefer to do it like this now, especially with the way record sales are… When there aren’t a lot of hands in the project, you can still make a living doing this… As long as you stay focused and not go around throwing money away on useless things…
Eternia: I don’t feel as I’m completely one hundred percent accepted… The reason why I say that is because people will post things online saying, “Who is this chick?” “I never saw her before.” I’ve been rapping long enough, and it’s not their fault that they never really heard me on records…
Plus I don’t feel the need to compete… I’m in this comfortable zone, and I don’t think I’m the best MC on the planet, and I won’t rap that I am… But I’m very comfortable with my talent and ability… I do feel like I have things to say, and no one can experience it, or say it like I can; no one…
So I do think there’s a place for me in this game, and it’s a good place… I’m in a comfortable medium ground, and I’m creating for the sake of creating…
Eternia: It was just as much MoSS as it was me… One day he sat me in the studio, and was like, “Who are your dream collabs?” “Who would you like to be on the same track with?” And there were some people who I named that didn’t get on the record, and there were some people that I named who did…
It wasn’t really about just working with female MC’s because I just like rappers who are dope, and they just happened to be chicks… But those people were dope MC’s that I wanted to record with, just like I wanted to record with Joell [Ortiz] and Ras Kass… I think it’s also important to reach out to people who are friends, friends of friends, or just people who respect the work; so it’s not just a business collaboration…
MoSS: I think everybody in Hip-Hop right now is struggling… I can’t speak for Eternia, but can’t tell you how many MP3’s and links I get a day… People come up to me, and ask what can they do to get in the game? My answer back in ’94 was to move to New York and try getting a manager, and getting some beats out there. But now I don’t know…
Between Face Book, Myspace; my four-year-old niece has that… I want to see what happens 10-15 years from now, because we’re still adapting to the Internet, but it’s really difficult right now… The mixtape game is coming back to the industry, and it’s good, but it’s also a poison because if you keep giving it away people won’t want to pay for it anymore… I don’t know what’s going to happen, because it’s too easy, and there’s too much to get…
