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Evolution of a Funky Homosapien: Rapper's résumé covers all parts of music biz
Lake Tahoe Action
April 25, 2008
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Up through the ranks as a protégé, to a major label, to unemployment (and retail) to entrepreneurship to a position as the independent contractor of independent hip-hop.
Del tha Funky Homosapien's résumé reads like a graduate-level seminar on the music business.
"I feel like my albums up to now have been like a steady process of me trying to sort out what it is I'm really gonna do," Del said in a news release. "Now I'm at the point where I've pretty much figured it out. In between being dropped and getting our own record label and touring for hella years, that just brought me to a point where I had to really tell myself, 'If I really want to be in the music business, man, I better learn something.' "
Del, who plays Saturday at the New Oasis in Sparks, has learned to adapt not only to the hip-hop business but to the music business as a whole. His latest ventures have landed him in such genre-bending project as the Gorillaz, Handsome Boy modeling School and Push Button Objects.
"I've been studying music theory for about the last three years. I'm pretty obsessive about it. Basically any book that's about music, I pretty much try to get it. So I study the blues, 12-bar, eight-bar blues, all the way up."
Oakland native Del debuted in 1991 with "I Wish My Brother George Was Here," which his cousin Ice Cube produced for Elektra records. He cut ties with Cube before his sophomore release, "No Need for Alarm" in 1994 but stayed with Elektra for another album in 1996, but the label shelved it and released the 28-year-old rapper.
"I used to get depressed a lot anyway 'cause I'm just kinda like that," Del said. "I mean my life hasn't been hella groovy and shit the whole time. So I'm kinda used to being depressed or upset about shit. So (getting dropped) didn't really bother me like that, you know what I'm sayin'? It just kinda rolled off my back."
Del moved back home with his mom in East Oakland and took a job at a record store in Berkeley, when he got some company in the hip-hop unemployment line: Jive Records had dumped the like-minded Souls of Mischief. They, along with Del, Casual, Pep Love and Domino, reorganized as the Hieroglyphics, setting up the Hiero Imperium label and distributing music online and through the mail.
Heiro became a bastion of West Coast underground hip-hop, with lively shows, a dedicated following, a live CD-DVD package, two studio albums and five compilations. Fellow Hieroglyphics member A-Plus joins Del in Sparks.
An unlikely inspiration that thrust Del - who had crossed over before, appearing on the "Judgment Night" soundtrack with rock band Dinosaur Jr. - out of the underground and back into the spotlight. Del's mom gave him a gift certificate for Barnes & Noble, which he used to buy the book "How to Write a Hit Song."
"I bought it as a joke," he says. "But when I started reading it I was like, 'Damn! This book is dope.' The first page basically says, 'You've gotta be original over anything else, or else you ain't gonna make it.'"
The song he wrote, "Clint Eastwood," turned into a platinum record for Gorillaz - Del's collaboration with Damon Albarn of Blur, producer Dan "The Automator" Nakamura and comic book creator Jamie Hewlett.
"When I bought that book, it was like the go-ahead for me," Del said. "I used the information that I learned in that book to write the song with Gorillaz. That's the first song that I tried that stuff out on, and it went platinum. If I wanted my proof, it was right there. So I gave the platinum plaque to my mom, like, 'Here, you helped me get this.' She was like, 'How?' I didn't tell her right off the bat it was because she bought the gift certificate."
It's not a common business plan, but it's paid dividends for Del.
"In actuality, I don't really know too much about music," he said. "I got a good ear for it, and I'm lucky sometimes, but I was like, 'My luck is running out, I need to learn something.' Not just for myself, but also for the consumers that are buying my stuff, because I feel if they're gonna spend that 20 beans on my product, they're gonna want something tight or else they ain't coming back. And I feel like people have already given me a chance for me to even be around this long. So now I'm really, like, on fire and for the people that really have my back, I'm (finally going to) make my next album so y'all be like, 'Whoo, Del - he came right!' "
Who: Del tha Funky Homosapien
featuring A-Plus (Hieroglyphics) with guests Bukue-One, Counter Productive and DJs Buddha and DotKom
Where: the New Oasis, 2100 Victorian Ave., Sparks
When: doors at 7 p.m. Saturday, April 26
Tickets: $20 advance (at Mad About Music or www.ticketweb.com), $25 door
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