Interview with hip-hop artist Rico Pabon
Posted Jan 5 2009
Besides Equal Justice, what have been some of your other affiliations?My second group, Prophets of Rage, started with me and my boy A.D., We used to call him Crazy back in the day. Not that he was, but that’s what we called him. His older brother, DJ Park, used to make a lot of the beats. He’s still around. Brother J from Portland was a part of the group. He still has his studio. The group is still around, it’s just waiting for me to pop the lid
DJ Park was in a group called DMX with a brother named Black Swan, who’s now working with DJ Icewater. Black Swan put me in touch with Park and we formed Prophets of Rage. I was still in Equal Justice at the time, but that was more of a high school group. There was not a plan after graduation. When I started to rhyme, the others in the group said they liked it and said I was an MC. They gave me the confidence I needed.
Prophets of Rage had two official albums, although we did hella demos. Crazy got off into other things, but I stuck with the music.
Of course I joined O-Maya. The dude that started it, Quincy the
sax player, would have guest MCs come through as they did shows. Zion from Zion-I did it, as did Tommy from Felonious. There was a rotating crew. He didn’t know about me, but a lot of people recommended me so he called me up at work one day, when I was still at Whole Foods. I went to the studio and they liked what I was doing, but I wasn’t feeling them and told them I wasn’t interested. Plus I was busy as I had just released an album.About a year later we did a show together, I performed, then they went. They called me on the stage and it was like love at first sight. We performed and I just looked at them and it just felt right
.My current group is Agua Libre, which is seven of the original nine members of O-Maya. Basically, the two who left O-Maya were founding members and didn’t want us using the name.
Between the time of O-Maya and Agua Libre I started a band called Project Bridge. We recorded a demo, but that was it. But many of the members in Project Bridge are current members of Agua Libre so we often perform songs from that period.
Some other people I’ve worked with are Zion I and Piri Thomas, which as a big deal for me since his books were such a huge influence on me. I’ve performed with a lot of people, but I haven’t recorded with a whole lot of folks.
I’ve opened shows for hella folks, but I’m not affiliated with them. For my first official performance I opened for Run DMC at The Stone in San Francisco. Prophets of Rage opened. I’ll never forget that. I don’t know what the crowd thought, but I felt great. I didn’t even stay to watch Run DMC. I laugh because my grandmother was there. I’ve down shows with Sizzla, Damian Marley, Tito Nieves Gang Starr, Yomo Toro. If you listen to all that old Fania All Stars, you’ve heard him playing. I was more honored to open for him than the hip-hop cats.
How many releases in total do you have?
Three with Prophets of Rage, although the third one was actually
a solo album. One with O-Maya, two Rico Pabon, a couple of side projects with DJ Riddim and some compilation albums, I did two with Hard Knock Records. I did one with Billy Jam some years back. He used to play our demos on his show and was there since the beginning. I talked to him recently and he says he still has the old tapes of when we were on his show. I was like 17 at the time. Headnodic from Crown city Rockers has produced quite a few tracks on my solo albums. I’ve done some stuff with Raashan, lead MC of Crown City Rockers.How’d you hook up with Hard Knock Records (The well-respected Bay Area hip-hop label)?
I met Nick from Hard Knock when he was in school. He brought me down to do a show and that’s how I got to know him. I don’t remember where he was going. Three and a half, maybe four years ago he talked to me about rereleasing my first album, which was self-titled. I told them that I was down, but I was releasing my second one and that was my focus so they needed to wait. Without even hearing anything, they offered to put out the second one. I hadn’t even completed any songs yet. They’re still looking to rerelease the first one, but we’ve been busy. They’re real cool. They’re in it for the right reasons, but still business-minded. They’re trying to reach the masses, but with conscious stuff. I
figure anyone that has enough faith in me to put out an album without even hearing a song, I figured I’d give them a shot. I knew they weren’t going to ask me to do any corny remixes for DJs. I hadn’t even given serious thought to releasing “Louder Than Fiction.” I was just doing what I felt passionate about; maybe give it to some DJ homies, but I hadn’t really thought about releasing it. It came out how I hoped. No negotiation, just straight inspiration. That’s my favorite album. Everything had a purpose and it’s because I wanted to do it. I wasn’t thinking about the first single or radio; none of that.What are your current projects?
I’m working on another album. There’s no deadline. I want this to be my best one yet. I always say that. I’m highly self critical. Stuff I don’t like, I try not to repeat. We’re in the planning stages of an Agua Libre album. Of course gigging doesn’t stop. I always stay busy doing shows.
Besides the Bay, where are some of the other places that you’ve performed?
I’ve performed many times in southern California, New York, Chicago, D.C., and Texas. I also performed in Stuggart, Munich, and Frankfurt in Germany.
I was involved with a program called Eco-Rap when I was a
teenager. It was ran by some older white dude who wasn’t into hip hop. He was actually a playwright. He got the idea to have people connect with inner city youth and take them on “toxic tours” in our neighborhoods to learn about what was going on. Like in Richmond, rocket fuel was being stored, which most people in the community didn’t know. They used to tell us stuff like that. The idea of environmental racism came from this. They were focused on the problems with nature and we introduced them broaden their idea of environmental racism. What about crack and violence that’s part of our environment? We ended up in Germany with one dude from Oakland, one guy from Richmond, and one from San Francisco. We performed for random people. Sometimes the audience didn’t know our purpose, they just wanted to see some rap. Sometimes we rapped for environmentalists and lefties to private shows and night gigs. We were there for a few weeks. We performed nearly everyday. Right before we went to Germany I got invited to speak based off a paper I wrote on Environment Racism. Back then, I didn’t have the vocabulary that I do now. I was just reflecting on more relevant environmental issues than the average environmentalist wasn’t dealing with. They talked about something leaking from Chevron killing me in 35 years, but I was more worried about getting shot by a bullet tomorrow. I don’t know how they got a hold of it, but I was keynote speaker at a conference of doctors and professors studying toxins in the environment. I was probably the only person without a PhD. The Eco-Rap thing was real cool and influenced what I rap about now.
What’s one thing you got from being in Germany itself?
At that time I hadn’t done a lot of world traveling. I learned to see people as people, not limiting them to their country or racial backgrounds. I was raised to be very proud to be Puerto Rican. Your roots are very important. When I went to Germany, it totally destroyed my views on the world and that culture doesn’t define a person’s identity. That and how big hip hop was on the other side of the world
This interview is great. It was a longer read than I expected, but well worth it! I feel like I might be biased, since I've been in your interviewee chair, but I still have to say your interviews always seem to reach so much deeper than any others I've read. Good job homie!