Black Music That Lasts

Rockwilder has been making beats for Redman since 1992 but no one knew who the hell he was until two years ago. Nobody really cared until he gave Redman and Method Man a joint so ill they had to name the song after him. As soon as “Da Rockwilder” dropped, the Def Squad affiliate rose to hip hop super-producer status (read: at least 30 G’s a track), but more importantly a new style of beats had emerged. All of a sudden, the combination of fuzzy bass tones, sloppy hand claps, tweaked 808 sounds and synthesiser stabs equated to a sure-shot Tunnel banger. Now that he’s laced everybody from Prodigy to Janet Jackson, Rock takes time to reflect on a career that really started with Redman giving him shit.

VICE: I heard your seminal “Rockwilder” beat came about as a fluke.

Rockwilder:

What happened was, I had made a joint for Redman and Method Man which was like a Y2K version of [the Run-DMC classic] “Sucker MCs.” I thought it would have been hot with Red doing Run’s verse and Meth doing DMC, but Redman didn’t feel it. He sent me back home to work on something new and I was like “yo, don’t put a brother out like that, give me another chance.” The beat I made after that was the first one I made of that style and it started a whole trend. I guess people was really dancing off my anger.

Do you plan on sticking with that signature sound for a while?

I don’t want to stray away from that sound but I’m trying to add some longitude to it. Keep what I got but make it a little more simple and rich. A lot of people, they got to do intros, this and that, sound effects, you know, kill yourself to do a beat, and then Dre comes out with a kick, snare, hi-hat and a guitar and sells five million. The simple stuff is what lasts. I’m telling you man, the worst thing for me would be to come up in the studio, try to play my joints and just because of a trend being faded out, people wouldn’t buy my tracks. That would hurt me. But that’s how this industry is, they only suck you up for a minute. Swizz Beats told me that, he said “when they’re through with you, they’re really going to be through with you”. Nobody’s using Swizz tracks anymore and to me he’s still the hottest.

And meanwhile you got people like Puffy running around with fake-Rockwilder joints.

I don’t know if that’s good for me or bad for me. The imitators, you know, I don’t understand them. It’s just crazy how people aren’t saying “don’t do that, that’s a Rock track.” But what kills me even more is the player-hating. We just don’t support our music like we should. These rock groups, they battle with double, triple platinum. Most of us don’t even sell like 200 000. Look, a guy like Ozzy Osbourne could come out on a tour right now and lock it down, sell out everybody. But Smokey Robinson couldn’t do it.

Hey are you a closet rock fan or something?

I listen to everything but I’m a Kiss fan, straight up. “A World Without Heroes” off The Elder, that was my shit. Back in the day, my man used to come by the house with the dolls and we would draw Kiss cartoon characters all the time. On Halloween, he was Gene Simmons and I was Peter Criss.

BUSTA NUT

Look for Rockwilder bangers on Red & Meth’s upcoming

How High

LP as well as on Method Man’s solo joint. Also keep an eye out for Rock’s compilation album on Columbia.