When was the last time you were at a Macy’s? Have you ever ordered something through a toll-free line? Do you remember calling into 92.3 at 11:15am to win a pair of concert tickets? Vinyl is in vogue, but what has happened to all the 8-track and mini-disc collections of the world?
On their debut record, Previous Industries, made up of Open Mike Eagle, Video Dave, and STILL RIFT, explore the realms of their past. It isn’t necessarily romantic or nostalgic view of bygone times, but a processing of the political drivers and emotional effects of the changing world. Each member entered the group with a storied career, and as a result, each of their verses are packed with references and introspection. Service Merchandise reads like a history book of a not-so-distant, Mike says, capitalism has deemed moot against the wishes of its children.
As the trio admired the 3 Feet High and Rising gold plaque hung on the walls of WNYU, it became immensely clear the set of references and influences they hoped to evoke with their performance. Service Merchandise isn’t necessarily a product of purists, but of traditionalists unafraid to weaponize their mature purview to bring a unique perspective to the rap world many consider a young man’s game.
Calling in from three different states on a uniquely hot July 4th, and returning to WNYU for a exclusive performance the following month, Previous Industries explore the emotional, historic, and political foundations of their record, Service Merchandise, out now via MERGE Records.
Watch Previous Industries perform Service Merchandise Alive in the Basement here:
When did the idea of the “supergroup” go from a thing you guys would do casually over the pandemic to something you felt you could make an album out of?
Open Mike Eagle: I don’t feel like it was much of a transition at all. I don’t think any of us are hobbyists. Once we’re writing and recording, it’s already starting at a pretty serious level.
Video Dave: We started making songs, It wasn’t just freestyle sessions.
Mike, you said before you missed rapping with others. You had a lot of this group material come out in the early 2010’s, but you said you’ve missed that presence of wrapping around others. What was holding you back from making group material in these last few years and what made it clear that this was the environment that you wanted to re-explore that lane.
Mike: Every group I had been previously involved in had dissolved by 2018/19, so I just didn’t have a group. I didn’t have people around me that I felt a kinship with that was making music at that point. Whenever I find myself in a life cycle where it’s not happening, I always want for that to be the case. In this indie lane especially, it always feels better to have some context around you, rather than trying to go at it alone.
Dave, I read an interview where you’re talking about how in the early 2010’s you were putting some raps to tapes, and then you effectively retired. But you never really stopped, did you?
Dave: No, I never stopped making music. The whole time I was living in Miami, for like four years, I was still making stuff. I was in New York for about ten years and I was always writing and doing a little bit of recording. I just wasn’t really releasing it much. I had stuff that was coming out [a little bit on Bandcamp], but I wasn’t performing anywhere. I was only going to like open mics and maybe putting some stuff out online. I wasn’t really pushing music at all for a while. Then when I started traveling and touring with Mike, it just came back up like. Oh yeah, I canstill do this.
Rift, I couldn’t find actually much information about you, but you seem to have been around all these Chicago wrap heads for the better part of 25 years now. Have these last two decades been more like Dave’s, where you’re rapping on and off all the time, or was there an actual moment where you decided to fully plug back in?
Still Rift; For the last couple of decades, I’ve actually been on the business end of a lot of stuff. When I first started rapping in my early twenties or whatever, there were a lot of infrastructural decisions that I didn’t necessarily agree with. I thought it would be better for me to be on the other side of it because not everybody has like both sides of the brain in that way.
As far as rap goes, I’ve always written. It’s not something I ever really let dull completely. I just wasn’t necessarily inclined to make it a public thing. Mike said earlier that we’re not really hobbyists. I don’t do public things as a hobby. I do a lot of shit though. So I try to keep myself active in pretty much every endeavor I’ve ever taken up. It’s just whether or not I want to push it to the point where It’s saleable as a product, which I’m definitely considerate of because I know a lot more angles than I probably should of this whole business.
In the last few years, you’ve popped up on Skech185’s album and you’ve popped up on Dave’s album. Was there a process where you had to re-tap in or was it a smooth transition into putting material out there.
Rift: I wouldn’t say it was a hard transition because honestly, I only make it a point to rap with my friends. I know Skech really well. I know Mike really well. I’ve gotten to know Dave really well. Over time, I’ve been in contact with these people, regardless, as people, whether or not we’re rapping. If Skech asked me, “hey, I want you to put a verse on my album,” it’s less of an artistic capitalization. No, my friend wants to do some fun shit that we both know how to do. It’s like, oh, let’s go to the park and play basketball. That’s literally the framework that my brain is in.
It just so happens that everybody’s in a position where people care what they do and by proxy care what I do. I’m grateful for that, but I wouldn’t say that there was a steep onramp to getting back into it or anything like that because it’s a muscle that I continually flex.
Zooming back out onto the record a bit, what was the decision to put this out on Merge rather than Auto-Reverse or Wichita?
Mike: I can speak to the Auto Reverse records of it all. When I started that label, I had a lot of ambitions of what it could be, but the financial realities of it, especially starting it during the pandemic, meant that it was never able to operate with a large profit margin. There were no investors or anything, it was literally just me and my business connections and the acumen that I had achieved by putting out records with labels, so I knew how it worked.
It never made enough money where it could have income for me and also create budgets for other albums that I cared about. We put out a Video Dave album in June 2020, right at the peak of the world being on fire. That was an album he had worked on for many years and that was a tough time to put something out, especially without even the barest bones of a budget behind it.
It sorta scared me off of taking projects that people poured their heart and soul into and feeling like I could bring them out into the world adequately. When it came to us putting a project together, I never wanted to give the impression that I was able to put it out adequately through Auto Reverse. At that point it just became about surveying the landscape and seeing where there was interest in an album for us and it’s how we ended up very fortunately at Merge.
I wanted to talk about a few people that have a footprint on this record. I want to talk about Daddy Kev. He engineers this record and, Mike, has worked with you in the past, but I want to talk about this legacy that he left on the LA music scene over the last decades. Can you talk about your relationship with Daddy, and the Low End Theory?
Mike: I’ve known Kev for a really really long time. When I first got to LA and embedded myself in the indie/underground scene, it was actually before Low End Theory started. He at that time was primarily known as an engineer. He had created Alpha Pup Records at that point and he had been a lauded producer. He had made a bunch of stuff with Awol One. Just getting into the business of indie/underground here and Project Blowed and all of that, you ended up coming in contact with him.
I first came in contact with him, because I was on Nocando’s album, now known as All City Jimmy. His debut album came out on Alpha Pup and I was on that record side, so I recorded at that studio and met Kev and started our working relationship there.
Low End Theory is an entirely different tangent. Low End Theory ended up being the foundation for the music of LA as I know it during my entire time here. I’ll have been here 20 years this September.
There’s a long story to tell about how LA rap music used to be one kind of unified thing, especially if you look at Project Blow as a location, but the rappers of Project Blow were always a little bit on the asshole side. They chased the producers away at a certain point and at that point, a lot of the battling in LA became acapella battling with no beat. The producers split off and started this thing called Sketchbook, which was just them getting together and showing each other beats because the rappers couldn’t be bothered. That got so big that they needed a different place for it. Artists from that side, like Ras G, Samiyam, and Flying Lotus started to take off and develop careers. That develops into Low End. That becomes the incubator for underground LA music as I understood it to be.
I think I’m probably the rapper that has performed there the most over the years, if somebody was keeping tally. If I’m not number one, I’m number two for sure. It became an office in a sense too. There were terrible public bathrooms in that place and no green room. Everybody kind of hung out in the club and you rub shoulders with a lot of people, you have conversations with a lot of people. The producers, the rappers, the music writers, the fans were all just hanging out in one space basically. It became very important to the music of LA.
While that develops, my relationship with Kev only got more established to where I started working with him. He completely mixed and mastered Brick Body Kids Still Daydream. Just about everything I make now, he masters. The Previous Industries album, Kenny Segal actually mixed it, but Daddy Kev mastered it.
When you talk about being plugged into the Low End Theory, you listed off so many now-huge talents and names. In the moment, 20 odd years ago, was there recognition that this a very unique space for talent?
Mike: When it comes to Low End, I think it was apparent pretty fast. You can look back at it Death Grips’ first performance being there, Odd Future’s first LA performance being there. Like I said, you got the Flying Lotuses of the world calling that place home. God, I can’t remember the name of it now, when FlyLo did his rap persona, what was it called?
Oh, Captain, something… Captain Murphy.
That night was crazy. There were just these iconic nights from early on where you saw, okay, this is where it happens. It didn’t take a long time to become like very important in the scene.
Pivoting to Dave, you’ve been in LA for just a brief moment of time, but you have that album with Controller 7. What’s that process been of plugging into a newer scene and a newer group of people.
Dave: That was done coming out of the pandemic at the same time that we were working on the Previous Industries album. That was mostly electronic. It was kind of the opposite of Previous Industries, in the sense that I was working on that album in a room with these two other guys, we would get together and work on stuff. Controller 7 was just sending me beats and I was working on that by myself.
In the past, I used to make all my own beats. From when I first started making beats, I made all the beats for my crew that we used to have in Chicago and we used to perform. I made all those beats. Then for my first few albums I made most of my beats. The album that I put out, even in the pandemic, was by a guy I knew in Brooklyn personally and got the beats from him. It was always a real personal thing for me. If I wrapped on someone else’s beats, they were someone I knew real well.
Controller 7 was a guy who I met on Instagram. We just started exchanging beats and I sent back some songs. It was a great process, I really liked making that album. But it was a reflection of me being in LA because it was just me doing this by myself, whereas a lot of the music I made in the past was with other people. I used to have a group called 3rdEyelands and that was six MCs and I made all the beats. But I always made beats in a room with people, wrote in a room with people, recorded in a room with people and that changed. Being in LA and recording by myself in my own apartment after COVID and stuff. Previous Industries was back to finally being in a room.
Rift, just to round out this one, I wanted to ask about Galapagos4 and Meaty Ogre, and all of that stuff you’re plugged into. Just a brief overview, what was that and what impression has that left on you now that you’re in a new phase of your career.
Rift: Short story is: Galapagos4 was a collective that’s turned into tell record label that was an offshoot of a few different crews that realigned themselves to use the opportunities that were presented to them. It came up at the same time as early Def Jux and Rhymesayers. They were all like cousins before the other two started taking off.
They put out a lot of good Chicago based rap, very specifically. The recording process was a very particular one, they all used reel-to-reel. It was a very- I don’t wanna call it niche, but it was a very eclectic group that was very deliberate about what they were doing. I feel like that’s rubbed off on me. The fact that I’ve known them as long as I’ve known them, and there’s a few of them that I do keep in contact with, Meaty Ogre specifically.
That was the hub of people in Chicago during the Scribble Jam era. We would be going back and forth to Cincinnati and that’s when all the specific type of intellectual battle rap was percolating a lot. As far as me in particular, it let me see enough of the back end to know how things should go. How labels work, how PR works, how to make tracks, just interpersonal dynamics, all the nuanced things that come with being an artist.
I was also a photographer at the time, so I was doing a lot of event photography and bar photography, things like that. Back then I kept things a lot more separate, and I feel like now I’m willing to let things come back together again. There’s different paths that everything that I’ve done has gone on and I feel like they’re all leading back to the same place.
When most people now think of turn of the decade, 90’s and 2000’s Chicago rap, their minds immediately go to Common and Kanye, but this sounds entirely different from that. What was that dichotomy as Chicago rap hit this on ramp, how was the underground scene bubbling and reacting to that?
Rift : I’m just thinking about how there were definite…things were way more separate. Independent rap was independent rap and mainstream rep was mainstream rap. It was almost insulting for independent artists to be considered mainstream. It was the whole selling out era. When you look at like El-P, independent as fuck. I feel like the ecosystem supported it better because, even in the press you had your XXLs, you had [The] Source, and then you had stuff like The Fader, which was just coming out, and then you had Brooklyn Magazine. There were definitely different tiers, and each one was well supported and I feel like that’s just disintegrated over time and become the internet effectively.
When I listen to this album, I hear a lot of different eras. There’s a lot of the old group dynamic, from the Def Jux and Rhymesayers era, and then there’s modern stuff like Backwoodz that’s seeping in, but I specifically want to dig into De La Soul. You guys reference Prince Paul in an interview. Dave, you reference Trugoy in the intro. Can you guys just talk a bit about specifically De La and what kind of draws that attention to them when you guys are making this music.
Mike: When you listen to those first three De La albums you hear four guys- Mace, Paul, Dave, Pos- you hear the camaraderie built between them. You hear the inside jokes, you hear the language that they have come up with just spending a lot of time together. And that, more than most groups, you really get a sound that’s more than the sum of their parts, when it comes to them. They are the most “rap group” you can be because it’s not just individual parts. You hear the time they spent together in all those records and in all of those skits. In the album packaging, in the artistic direction of everything, all of that really comes across.
I think the other thing that was always really inspiring to me. and something that I never want to lose sight of, is that they would talk about serious subjects, but there was always a lot of whimsy present, especially in those early albums. Not to speak for anybody else, but that’s something that I always want to have present in the stuff that we do.
Dave: I mean, De La is unavoidable for me if you’re trying to make a rap group and it’s more than a duo. You’re going to think about De La Soul, you’re going to think about A Tribe Called Quest. I mean, I am. Maybe other people are not. I think all three of us are fans of De La Soul, undeniably. I don’t think we have a De La focus, If it crept in, that’s just kind of natural. If people want to make that comparison, that’s great. I’m happy with that.
Rift: They’ve been around for the entirety of me liking rap. When I was a kid and I heard “Me, Myself, and I,” until I was kicking it on my own and “Stakes is High” came out. That run was very formative. They got to be the weird cool black which was honestly not a thing as far as mainstream music. I feel like their presentation, as far as the topics that they’ve always considered, has been very developed and focused. Everyone in the group has their own attack on it that still interlocks properly. There has always been a cohesion with them.
What’s everyone’s favorite album?
Dave: I mean, it’s hard. Buhloone Mindstate and Stakes is High. It’s hard to say just one.
Mike: I used to always say it was Buhloone Mindstate, but when I went back and listened to everything back to back when their albums hit streaming, it changed to De La Soul is Dead.
Rift: De La Soul is Dead. Final Answer, always will be.
Going into the themes of the album- actually first of all, what is Zayre?
Mike: It’s a department store from Chicago! You don’t know about Zayre?
I think that’s a little past my time.
Mike: It’s past most people, but there’s plenty of YouTube videos explaining the history of Zayre department store and I invite you to watch three to five of them.
Rift: Dare I say, the conceit of this entire album is that all of these things are past all of us.
You guys seem really interested in the idea of obsolescence. Not even the vintage aspects of things, but just things no longer being practical or used. What about that idea fascinates you so much? The image of the abandoned strip mall or the stereo systems that no one uses anymore. It’s not necessarily a nostalgia is it?
Rift: It’s grief. For me, these are things that we used! I understand the nostalgia aspect, but nostalgia is for people who have never experienced something to look back and be like, “oh, that was cool. I can imagine what that was like.” All this stuff that we’re talking about is literally stuff that we lived through that we just can’t do anymore because times have changed so much that it effectively took it away. Yeah, they’re dead things, but they’re the dead things that made us. It’s like losing your parents. These are the things that effectively raised us and gave us our formative memories that have to be an inside joke now because nobody knows what the fuck we’re talking about anymore. It’s like being this odd ass time traveler, and these are the only two that know. Only we speak the same language now.
Mike: Just to add on to that, an important keyi dea for me is that I rage against the notion that those things, those items, those ways of interacting with the world, those stores, those catalogs, those 1-800 numbers, that those things are no longer relevant because they failed commercially. I rage against that notion. That just fuels me to present everything that I remember regardless of whether or not people have any idea what it was, because it doesn’t matter if they knew what it was. Just one of the many unfortunate side effects of capitalism is this notion that if something wasn’t successful financially, you should forget about it. I cannot disagree with that more.
I think this is really interesting time to invoke this notion because of how, specifically with all the weakening media industries and all of this stuff that has happened in the last five years. From the 2000s when Adult Swim was pumping cash into backpack rap, or in the early 2010’s when Vice and Comedy Central were throwing out TV shows to everyone’s favorite rappers. Now, that has grinded nearly to a halt and a lot of people are mourning the lack of support or an ecosystem altogether. As people who have all been through this changing media ecosystem in different ways, can you guys talk a little bit more about navigating that financial shift and then the implications it has on the creative shift.
Dave: Rapping is something I’ve been doing for so long and something I was trying to do in a certain way for so long. I’ve been doing it for a long time and been trying to get it on a record label and make an album and get it on vinyl and get it on CDs, that was always such a goal. By the time it’s happening, by the time we’re making this record with all that stuff in mind, that’s not what it is anymore. I lost my train of thought there.
Rift: I think things are very cyclical. I think there’s an important distinction between digital and physical goods. While there was a period of time, and I feel like we’re approaching the end of it, that there was a lot of emphasis on the digital aspect of things because of its ease of use and immediacy and things of that nature. But the structure that it created is unsustainable. Ultimately, in the long run, the only things that can maintain value are actual scarcity. Actual, physical, tangible Items that create the full sensory experience that ultimately is what we were raised by. We watched it go from what we knew into this era of abundance flattening. It’s burning out.
I don’t know if it can make it all the way back. Vinyl sales are surging. People are more into experiences and they’re trying to get off social media, etc. At the same time, social media is what propelled a lot of this stuff into the public consciousness in the first place and I don’t even know if half of these artists would be successful without it. I don’t know if you could put that genie back in the box. Especially then you have the advent of AI and everything else, it is a lot of uncharted territory, but I do feel like there’s just a spirit that can be absorbed intrinsically that is what is the most appealing. I feel like our record works because, while yeah, we did go at it like we know we can make this a product, I don’t think that’s how we made the record. We just knew that could be the outcome of the record. Us in a room, being ourselves, is that that captured and that’s what people are picking up and I feel like that’s what they resonate with.
Mike, you said in an interview that this record kind of came to fruition around the pandemic, when a lot of your work on TV and media slowed down. Did that have a lasting effect on your take on this record?
Mike: I don’t know if there was a direct connection between those things. I know that, as a part of my therapy journey, part of what I’ve been able to ground myself with through all of these changes is attaining physical goods that I remember from when I was young. Being able to put my hands on things and to remember that all of the changes in the digital world we live in, and how quickly all of that moves, doesn’t necessarily define life.
That’s something that, because of all of the changes, both personally, professionally, and globally has been really important for me to anchor with stuff like that. In a lot of ways, especially when you talk about the economic shifts of things, I’m still navigating that. I think all of my output post-2020 is speaking to that in one way or another, because those are my attempts to navigate it.
The quote from 3 Stacks from a few months prior has been moving large on a lot of people. Mike, you seemed pretty upset at the idea that he feels like he can’t do anything interesting in the rap game at the age of 49 or however old he is. I think like there’s a different perspective that’s been taken with both this record, but also just all three of you individually. What do you guys see as the joy or the benefit or the experience of rapping from this perspective that people don’t usually hear from? Not just for nostalgia, but presenting new ideas entirely.
Mike: I just think there’s a danger in having rap be defined by whatever the business of rap says it should be defined by any particular time. The other side of that is a part of how that business is defined is based on people’s consumption habits. In a sense, that is the people deciding what rap should be and I get that too. But I don’t think that any of that should be restrictive in terms of what the form is used for, especially for people who have grown up in it. I don’t think it stops being useful for them to express their creativity through that means, just because they’ve aged out of whatever the business has decided the strict age group is, of what’s relevant and what matters.
Again, I think that comes back to this idea that It only matters if it is positioned to be financially successful and chart topping and all of that. That’s what I rage against. One of my missions in creating rap music has always been to reinforce the idea that my creative impulses are valuable, even if the business would say otherwise.
Dave: It’s the same thing I would say about anything else. About dating at this age versus in high school or college, where…better or worse? There’s so many ways to look at it. The better part is I feel like I have more intention. I know what I want more out of life now than I did 10, 20 years ago. A little bit of maturity, a little less naivete about life. The best part about rapping at this age is that I think I’m smarter than I was before. I feel better about what I’m writing and how I think I’m better at it than I was before. It’s just the experience part. I used to have to put more on it, put more gas into it than I do, but now, I’ve learned to operate better. Like basketball players when they say they’re better at the game now. Maybe I don’t jump as high as I used to, but now I read the defense better, things like that.
Rift: There’s a difference between the vigor of youth and the wisdom of age. I think that applies to everything. The longer you do something, the more you discover about it. The more familiar you are with its nuances. I would rather take the route of jazz or classical where it’s a mastery of an instrument. Content is one thing and it becomes stranger because we’re communicating a message, whereas most aged genres of music are conveying a feeling. We have to be more direct, but I feel like I learned more words than I knew then. I’ve learned how to use less words than I did then. I know how to say things and when not to say things, the tone of things, melody, harmony. Things that I wouldn’t even consider using before. I don’t think the growth of an individual because the market, as Mike was saying, demands a very specific product. The only reason people age out of anything, especially in rap, is because only a small demographic of people are supposed to be doing the things that are conveyed in these songs. If you’re a 50 year old drug dealer, unless you’re the head of the cartel, it’s not plausible. It’s not entertaining to hear an old man hustling on the block like that.
If you’re targeting a certain market, like a youth market, then yeah you want it on their level but I feel like there’s more of us on the planet than them. I don’t mean numerically, there’s more experiences to indulge in. Whether or not It can sell as much as that, I think there needs to be representation of all these different experiences just for it to be a holistic experience for us to be able to relate to each other in all these different ways. Ultimately, all of this has value.