As Long as You’re Dope: Bless the Mad Interview

Chicago’s Bless the Mad discuss updating 90s hip-hop, incorporating spiritual jazz and paying homage to ancestors on their miraculous debut

Sometimes a group arrives out of the blue with an album that perfectly aligns with where you’re at musically. Bless the Mad are one such group and their self-titled debut is an organic update of 90s hip-hop that brings foundational jazz and soul material to the surface in unique, contemporary ways. There’s a fearlessness in how the Chicago duo pull ancestral threads together to create their own sound, making an offering to those that came before while forging a path into the future. Rather like ancestors Tribe, Dilla, Madlib, DJ Premier, Alice Coltrane or Sun Ra then.

I reached out to the group to discover what lies behind the music and Matthew Rivera was willing to share their story. Word of mouth on Bless the Mad is going to keep building and it’s a real pleasure to contribute towards that.

Thanks for taking the time to speak to me, particularly with everything that’s going on. I’m really digging the album a lot, so it’s great we were able to do this.

Thank you, it’s my great pleasure. 2020 has definitely been a motherfucker, but we will get through it.

Who are Bless the Mad?

Bless the Mad is Ibrahem Hasan and myself (Matthew Rivera). We are longtime friends and collaborators. We both hail from Chicago. Ibrahem, unfortunately, is from the south side. I’m from up north, but we do make it work, somehow. Ibrahem is a creative director, designer, and photographer by trade. I am a teacher and self-taught musician. We both started out making sample-based boom-bap many years ago and have since evolved into more traditional record producers, conceptualizing and recording music from scratch. We do quite a lot on our own, but also rely on help from friends and session players to take our vision to the next level. On the debut album, we leaned heavily on a roster of kind and amazingly talented people, including Edson Sean, Gaia Earthpeace, Silka, ArinMaya, Jorjão Barreto, Diego Alzate, and D.A.P.

The name itself seems to capture various angles of the music. It has a conscious hip-hop feel, there’s a spiritual component and perhaps the suggestion of a mad professor concocting beats. Could you talk a little about what Bless the Mad are about and how the name represents that? 

The name speaks to the fact that we don’t consider convention when we create. We make only what we want to hear and trust our taste. You may have noticed a heavy presence of bowed upright bass on a lot of the tracks, for example. It might sound weird, but that was just an obvious addition. We were both like, “We need bowed upright on these”. And we trust each other’s taste because we did the work. We spent years buying records. We have listened to every single terrible record known to man. All the Englebert Humperdincks. We have a deep understanding of how much recorded music there is out there and how much of it is actually dope. The good shit is rare. When you come across a Michael White record or a Doug Carn record after hearing all that other stuff, it’s like, wow, OK, this is something else. That’s why we set the bar so high. Bless the Mad is about reaching for that bar, whether or not it’s even possible or it makes sense to anyone else.

These are dark times we’re living in. How important is music in helping people get through such times? Is there any music you’ve found particular solace in during 2020?

Music is absolutely healing, without a doubt. I don’t think most of us could imagine life without it. I think for both Ibrahem and myself, jazz is generally our go to when we need uplift, especially the spiritual stuff. Ibrahem’s spiritual jazz collection is crazy. He’s actually just finished a really dope spiritual jazz mix that I will link to on the STC Instagram account when he says go. Personally, I probably listen to more John Coltrane than anything else in the jazz universe. I love all his mid 60s stuff, but I’ve been spinning Crescent a lot lately and a lot of underground 70s salsa, which is my secret music obsession.

There’s certainly a positive energy to what you’re doing, which in context brings to mind the likes of Alice Coltrane and Native Tongues. How important is positivity through music to you? 

If you think about what music actually does, what it’s really for, it’s always positive. I guess I can only speak for myself, but I like music because it makes me feel good. That’s it. It’s not academic. There are other aspects that enhance that experience – technical skill, lyrics, production, etc – but you don’t need that stuff to make music that makes people feel good. Music is revered across time and culture for that power. We can all benefit from its healing properties. When we create as Bless the Mad, we are not thinking in terms of positivity per se, but if it doesn’t feel good, we don’t make it. Feeling is the primary factor, without a doubt.

How would you describe your music and what do you hope listeners take away from it?

We are reaching for a sound in our heads. What we want to make doesn’t really exist. Over the years, we have described that sound as updated 90s hip-hop or tough soul or militant jazz or spiritual rap exotica. We are always trying to make some next shit, but there’s the chance we slip up and make something “retro” which is the last thing we want to do. We obviously hope people will connect with the music, and that they get a sense of where we are coming from, and that hopefully they can appreciate the work that went into making the music.

I’m interested in the means of production you utilise to achieve such an organic, free-flowing sound. Also what the mix of live instrumentation and samples is.

There are no samples on the record! (Well, with the exception of the short vocal snippets on the interludes.) Everything was recorded live, mostly at Ibrahem’s apartment in Brooklyn, mostly straight to a Tascam-388 tape machine. We try to bring out a 90s hip-hop crunch through recording techniques and very focused instrumental performances. The music may sound sampled, but if you listen closely, you’ll hear plenty of swing and variation from instrument to instrument and from bar to bar. For us, it has to have a “produced” feel. If it sounds too much like a band, we messed up.

Part of the “organic” nature probably comes from the fact that these are all home recordings. There’s no studio. There’s no engineer. It’s all trial and error and a lot of finger crossing. All the instrumentation is overdubbed one track at a time. Drums get two mics. Bass goes direct. Reverb and delay usually get “baked” into the tracks during recording. We do a lot of EQing. We use a lot of old and interesting gear – a Wurlitzer electric piano, a Moog synth, a Mu-Tron Bi-Phase pedal, a 60s drum kit, a homemade spring reverb unit, old bells and chimes, a baby grand piano at a ballet studio that we recorded to cassette tape. We love “real” instruments and analog gear, but we are not religious about being “strictly analog”. In fact, I mixed most of the record in the computer and a lot of the main vocals were recorded straight into Ableton. We even used some plugins! But a heavy reliance on old heavy gear is the only way to get that special sauce.

Like The Low End Theory or Paul’s Boutique, Bless the Mad is in part a sonic map of what you’ve been listening to and soaking up creatively. Do you agree with that take?

Yes, 100%. That’s the whole idea behind the record, actually. To put the BTM album in its proper context, you have to understand the 20 years or so that led up to it.

Ibrahem and I met a couple decades ago, digging for records at the Maxwell Street open air flea market, a Chicago landmark and the birthplace of Chicago Blues. This was the place to take the whole family, enjoy the day, and buy anything under the sun: tires, bananas, socks, ice cream, Playboy magazines, flowers, tacos, clocks, coins, dolls, soap, records, whatever.

In the beginning, I think we were both looking for samples to flip – not necessarily trying to get into the music that we were bringing home every week – but we quickly did get into the music when we discovered the Doug and Jean Carn records, the Impulse! records, Funkadelic, Curtis, the Blue Notes, Joe Henderson, Alice Coltrane, Phil Cohran, Michael White, Strata East, Leroy Hutson. We took chances on weird Mexican rock albums, local gospel, lesbian folk. We bought any record with a synth on it. This was before smart phones and Discogs, so it was an adventure. We bought everything. We were at Max every Sunday morning, sometimes as early as 2am, for years, rain or shine, to get that musical education. We even napped in our cars in the dead of winter if there were no vendors out yet.

I mention this because Max is absolutely central to the album and our origin story. Sundays at Max were the glue that held all of our other formative experiences together. Growing up in Chicago in the 90s, listening to HPK and NUR, making tapes, making beats, going to shows, DJing, digging, trying to dance, trying to paint (Ib was much better at both of those last two than I was) – that was the foundation. But Max was the cherry on top. I can’t overstate the importance of that place. Not just on our growth as producers and music lovers, but as human beings. The discipline, the life lessons, the haggling, the shit-talking, the 5am conversations at White Palace Grill, cheatin’ you fair, the grime, the books, the blues blaring, the history of the city at the bottom of all those cardboard boxes. Saturday nights bled into Sunday mornings. It was a holistic and well rounded education that was centered on digging, but it was so much more. It really felt sacred. If we missed a Sunday at Max, we’d feel it the rest of the week.

Bless the Mad – the group and the LP – is an expression of all of that. It’s an homage to all of that. It’s a thank you letter and a collage of all of our influences and experiences, musical and otherwise. It’s dedicated to our youth in Chicago, with the flea as the sun in that universe.

You navigate hip-hop, spiritual jazz, soul, funk and even house with ease across the album. Do you think in those terms or do the tracks come together organically without thought of style or mode? Perhaps hip-hop itself is a broad enough church to encompass all of these influences without the need to break it down further?  

Hip-hop is most definitely the umbrella. That’s our starting point. That’s what our ears are tuned to no matter what we are making. We are from the generation where all those genres are intertwined. We can’t listen to Minnie Ripperton without hearing Tribe or Jay Dee. We couldn’t do anything that’s not hip-hop, even if we tried. I think we probably like spiritual jazz so much because of how closely it’s related to hip-hop. It’s soulful, it’s tough, it’s repetitive. It takes a motif and doubles down on it for 14 minutes. Hip-hop is the cultural force that it is in part because it draws on everything and connects everything. 

Is the particular genre fluidness in part a Chicago thing? I’m digging The Clearing by fellow Chicagoan The Twilite Tone and that has a similar disregard towards any perceived hip-hop boundaries. I’ve also been reading about Dilla and Detroit in Laurent Fintoni’s Bedroom Beats & B-sides. Considering Chicago and Detroit are, respectively, the birthplaces of house and techno, does that have an impact on the hip-hop made in each city? 

I don’t know if it’s a Chicago thing, and I can’t speak to the Detroit scene, but Chicago obviously has quite a rich musical legacy. Blues. House. Jazz. Chicago soul is some of the best music anywhere, ever. There were thriving punk and hip-hop scenes. We also have Stepping, which I think is totally unique to Chicago. It’s a partner dance to mid-tempo R&B songs, which we call “steppers” or “stepper cuts”. Then there’s all the new stuff that’s coming out. It’s hard to grow up in Chicago and not be influenced by all of that.

You address the ‘anxiety of influence’ head-on with “Ancestors (Part One)”, “Interlude (for Ra)” and “Ancestors (Part Two)” where you name-check progenitors, dig into their mythology (in the case of Sun Ra) and lament their passing – all while forging ahead into the future, carrying the spirit of their works in yours. It’s done brilliantly and adds extra layers to the album, but is a bold approach to take and must’ve been difficult to pull off. What was the thinking behind addressing these influences on record? Was the intention to take stock of the past before accepting the baton?

Exactly. The whole album is an homage. We have nothing but respect. We are nothing and know nothing without the music that we have learned from. We are nothing and know nothing without our experience growing up in Chicago. This album is more like an offering to the gods than a statement of individuality.

It would have been natural to ask what your influences specifically were, but it’s as if this was anticipated, with the question being asked and answered on “Ancestors (Part One)”:  “You are as producers very influential to other home bedroom studio producers. Who are your influences?” asks the interviewer on the track. “Premier, Pete Rock, Large Professor. Y’know? Early Q-Tip and stuff like that, y’know.” This almost takes the place of liner notes and I can imagine younger listeners hitting repeat and making notes – was that ever a consideration? More generally, what impact have these figures had on Bless the Mad?

Absolutely. As a teenager I used to sit with a pen and pad and write down all the shoutouts at the ends of hip-hop songs. If I saw one of the names on a mixtape, it was an instant cop. It’s weird for me to think that some people wouldn’t know who DJ Premier is since he was such an important part of my youth, but being able to pass on the knowledge through the music is amazing. The producers that had the biggest impact on us were Pete Rock, DJ Premier, The Beatminerz, Q-Tip, Large Professor, Mobb Deep, Lord Finesse, Buckwild, Showbiz, The Beatnuts, Organized Konfusion, Prince Paul, NO I.D., The RZA, DJ Muggs, Dr. Dre, Jay Dee, DJ Spinna, and Madlib.

Bless the Mad makes skits feel fresh again. Sometimes they fold into tracks or else feel like fully-fledged tracks by themselves. There’s a definite Prince Paul thing going on – in that you’ve reinvigorated the discipline. How did you approach the interludes?

There was honestly no conscious plan to add any outside material, but at the very end, as I was sequencing the album, it just needed some glue, and a little extra context. I’m sure years of listening to De La seeped in subconsciously and we ended up adding those quick snippets to enhance the flow of the record and hold it all together.

“Fall Dead” gives me “Coffee Cold” / Handsome Boy Modelling School vibes with a healthy dose of G-funk – a stone cold future classic right there. Could you talk about this track and any other personal album highlights?

It’s definitely a special track. It bumps without the boom bap but it’s clearly rooted in the influences you mention – Prince Paul, Dan the Automator, Galt MacDermot, Dr. Dre. It also comes close to what we are going for: updated 90s hip-hop with a spiritual jazz foundation. The amazing Gaia Earthpeace, of course, makes the track what it is. Other highlights for me are “Mama’s Land” and “Ancestors (Part Two)”.

Who do you view as your contemporaries?

There is a lot of interesting stuff coming out now. Off the top of my head, DJ Harrison, Swarvy, Bad Bad Not Good, Adrian Younge, Thundercat, Tyler the Creator, Henry Wu, The Colours That Rise, Saba, etc…

Do you have any plans for a physical iteration of the album? 

Yes! The wheels are in motion. It’s a slow process, unfortunately, but we are hoping for a February or March, 2021 release. It will be a small run. Please follow Stay the Course Records on Bandcamp or Instagram for updates as they unfold. 

Sun Ra can most definitely be a god and a king, right? 

Indeed.

Bless the Mad’s self-titled debut LP is available now via Bandcamp

Main photograph: Matthew Rivera digging, circa 2002. All images courtesy Bless the Mad.