Photo by Mollim000
“I want to move people with the new record, I really aspire to move people,” says American hip hop artist PHAROAHE MONCH aka Troy Jamerson of his yet untitled record in progress the follow up to current solo sophomore release, Desire.
The New York beat maker and producer from Queens has had a respectable and acclaimed career in hip hop’s underground since the early ’90s making his debut as part of the intelligent rhyming, groundbreaking hip hop duo Organized Konfusion. “Early on I really just wanted to be a part of hip hop. I wanted my peers to hear the rhymes and acknowledge them,” Monch explains of his start, “I wanted to keep pushing myself to be a better artist.” A mindset and motivation he acknowledges he still very much embraces today.
Being an artist means everything to the emcee known for his complex delivery and multi-syllabic rhyme patterns. It is an idea that he takes very seriously. “I don’t think that you can use that term loosely in the art world,” he says, “I don’t think everyone that calls themselves artists is that. You could be an act signed to a label but that definitely doesn’t define you as an artist. To me an artist is a person who is instrumental in being groundbreaking, trying to push the envelope and that are very instrumental in what they write and the music choices they make. They’re definitely not cookie cutter.”
2008 looks set to be the year Pharoahe Monch finally comes into his own and will perhaps achieve mainstream success a la contemporary Common’s release Finding Forever which debuted at 1 on the US Billboard Charts last year. Success in pop music culture is something that Monch flirted with back in 1999 on the hype generated from hit Simon Says featured on the Charlie’s Angels soundtrack. Then, almost without warning the hip hopper on the rise seemed to drop off the face of the musical planet. It was the beginning of an eight year hiatus from his solo career between the much hyped and acclaimed Internal Affairs and his highly anticipated return with 2007′s Desire.
Monch confesses that, “Great friends, a beautiful family and caring words that are uplifting” helped him persevere during these difficult times also enlightening that the experience was the inspiration for the title ‘Desire’. “It’s about this desire to push forward and a desire to be free,” he adds.
A long time advocate and believer in ‘freedom’ artistically and otherwise, not one to be ‘boxed-in’ Monch explains, “Even from Organized Konfusion, even just going back to the name, it was something that we thought ‘Let’s just try some things that are different’ ’cause the majority of people are going to go straight ahead. It’s more fun to be left sometimes.”
A major source for of Monch’s inspiration lately has been found outside of music in film. “[The persona] Pharoahe is so layered that it allows me to be a creator and a director, a director who does sci-fi as well as realistic films. I want to be able to produce I Am Legend or I Robot as well as Pulp Fiction, cop movies or real to life dramas as well as comedies. It all comes from the source of who I am.”
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