From the surface, it can read like ShrapKnel is a new, hot name that walked into town with the rest of billy woods’ Backwoodz Studioz collective. Exciting underground records featuring a fresh and left-field sound have positioned ShrapKnel as ones to watch in the new abstract scene. For PremRock and Curly Castro though, the game isn’t new. ShrapKnel marks the beginning of a second act for each of them, who have both been around since the early ’10s, making noise on the blogs of yesteryear.
ShrapKnel take a unique stance on the tug of war between traditional takes on “abstract” raps rooted in the work of El-P and his Def Jux label and De La Soul and the Native Tongues, and the contemporary innovators who intend on breaking this whole thing apart again. “Deep Space 9 Millie Pulled a Pistol,” a portmanteau of classic De La Soul and El-P tracks, sounds nothing like the two tracks it references, but it carries the same ceiling shattering spirit the classics once had on their scenes.
“Nobody Planning to Leave” is the third act in ShrapKnel’s program, following ShrapKnel and Metal Lung, released in 2020 and 2024 respectively. Made in entirety with West Coast beat legend Controller 7, it’s the first record they’ve been able to craft, release, and tour entirely free of the restrictions of the pandemic, which has marred the project since its dawn.
Following a performance at WNYU’s studios, ShrapKnel sat down and imparted much of their timeless wisdom in sprawling conversation.
My first question is about Def Jux, because you both said you immediately bonded over a love of Def Jux. How did someone get into Def Jux in the 2000’s?
Prem: Were you a day one guy? Def Jux Presents?
Castro: Nah before, when they had the one sheet, when they had one page on their website and it was just orange and gray. The only they had was Emergency Rations [by Mr. Lif], the El-P joint was coming soon, the Aesop joint was coming soon.
I think to get into Def Jux in the early 2000’s and late 90’s, it was an endeavor of individuality, because your friends didn’t like it. In the 90’s- that’s when I grew up- you absorbed hip-hop as a group. Your friend would get a tape and y’all would listen to it together. Y’all would listen to radio stations together and rush on to hear songs together. When Def Jux hit, that was the first time that I was like “I don’t care what my friends think, I like this.” That was new. It’s not that you want everybody to like what you like, but you do listen in tight friend groups. I’m from the era where they were listening to music out loud. If everybody sitting around didn’t want to hear that, they weren’t going to play that. I remember Def Jux was headphone music for me. It was my first experience with headphone music, and me being in my own world.
Prem: It took me a while, but I did eventually get them onto it. I remember when [Def Jux Presents…] with Company Flow’s “DPA (As Seen on T.V.),” the Aesop song, and “Simian D AKA Feeling Ignorant” on it. Regardless, that came out, and I was like “Alright, this is weird.” I didn’t really love it. I worked at a mom & pop CD store at the time, and this guy Jus, [not referring to Big Juss], he was huge into it from the day that it came out. He was rolling his eyes at me, telling me “this isn’t for you.” I kept cracking away at it, and when i finally got it, it all clicked at once. The Cold Vein, Labor Days, Fantastic Damage, Deadringer, Emergency Rations, that whole world was super important and influential to me.
You guys both start right around 2011/12, when that whole thing had imploded. Def Jux imploded and Rhymesayers faded, Rawkus had died a long time ago. What was being an underground rapper in the East Coast in that post-Def Jux era like? Was it hard to get a grasp on what that even meant?
Castro: I’m older, so you can date me. I was around for the neo-soul movement in 2000. When Def Jux faded, it coincided with me being an artist. I was around before that and I got to watch them in their hay day, and I was around when they started dwindling and a lot of their artists started to release stuff on other labels. Sometimes you were just caught in a wave of being happy to be in it. I remember blog cyphers, lot of open mics, lot of paid dues, if you will. Back then, I used to pay to perform a lot. Pay to be in competitions, pay to be in submissions, showcases, there was a lot of that. You had to pay to enter a battle. You had to be dedicated because you had to put some skin in the game. It wasn’t a lot of free performance. You had to want to do it because it cost money. I remember it was one of the things that I was actually willing to spend my money on, that wasn’t some comics and video games.
Prem: Streaming wasn’t a thing yet, so it was all just downloads and shit. It was just trying to perform wherever you could. It shifted into the blog era after that, where you were just trying to get people to check out your shit.
Castro: Trying to on the first page of TwoDopeBoyz. Back then, when you got on the first page of TwoDopeBoyz, you had to tell all your peoples to look at it within the hour, because TwoDopeBoyz was so crowded, you would be on page four in two hours. I remember fighting for those placements. Back then, hopefully, a placement on those websites would lead to other opportunities.
Prem: Pigeons and Planes was big, Complex was around, The Fader, Mishka, Vice and stuff like that. Before a lot of them dudes had to answer for allegations.
Castro: I will also say we were around for the death of print mags. We would try to get into them and then we watched them almost all go digital. Some came back, but…[like] Wax Poetics. They slowed way down, they would do two issues a year. A lot of us have magazine stacks in storage. Back in the day, when we were coming up, the magazines would be piled up on our tables. Every time you went to somebody’s crib, you would see the Vibe, the Source’s, the Rap Pages, Scratch. You could tell a lot about somebody by their magazine spread, you know about that!
Prem: Scratch was my favorite. Short lived magazine. It was so niche about production.
Continuing to move forward, can you guys tell me how you first came in contact with woods and Backwoodz, and when that relationship first started?
Prem: I’ve known Willie Green, primary engineer for Backwoodz for a very long time. I’ve known him for almost fifteen years now. When I first started taking recording seriously, he was the guy I reached out to. I met him at an open mic and we became pretty fast friends. He had just finished Super Chron Flight Brothers’ Cape Verde, and they were working on History Will Absolve Me. woods would have just left, or was just coming in a lot of times, and then I started to see him at mutual gatherings and he would pop up at shows. I didn’t quite get what he was up to at first, for sure. Me and him were both in Willie Green’s wedding so we hit it off as actual friends, and that’s when History Will Absolve Me came out. When I heard that, I was like “Oh this is a serious album.” I thought it was the best album of the year and I instantly became very interested in what he was up to. I was telling Castro, and everyone who would listen, about that album. People were like “I don’t know,” but it would always click eventually, if you took the time with it. Since then, we’ve always been in each others’ orbits. We started our working relationship some years ago, but that was the origin story for myself.
Castro: I got cool with woods at South by Southwest 2013. It was serendipitous because all of us were out there. We didn’t know we were out there. Prem was out there, ELUCID was out there, [Uncommon] Nasa. It was a lot of us out there. We would go to SXSW, but that was my first time going. This one was such a coincidence that all of us were there at the same time. Everybody was there. All of us just starting banging there, we was hanging out cool. I had a show opening for Roc Marciano, woods and them came to that. We were just hanging out. We weren’t working on no music or anything like that. Prem had a problem with his phone.
Prem: I lost my phone the very first day. I had eight shows at South by with Willie Green and I lost my phone the very first night at some bar. The whole time I was just trying to get a new phone.
Castro: It was more like a social endeavor, we were really just hanging and stuff like that. I think that’s when all of us got tight. It wasn’t the normal musical collaborating endeavor, we were all just there, and had different things going on. All of us had different shows all over the place. Later on, when I finally had a project I thought was worthy, I pitched it to woods. That was Tosh. That was my first project with Backwoodz. When me and Prem came up with the idea of ShrapKnel, we thought it was logical to pitch it to Backwoodz first.
The first days of ShrapKnel happened right on the pandemic. You guys put out the first record-
Castro: Yeah literally that week.
Prem: We had had a record release party planned. Just to show you about how little we knew about what was going on, they kept being like “we’re gonna push back till the end of April.” I was like “Yeah, things will be alright by then.” Oh, how little we did know. That was….it happened the way it happened. We never got to tour that album. It seemed as if it did catch a lot of ears because people had not much to do.
Castro: The fact people were sitting in, it allowed people to really do the science to our record, as opposed to fly by night. People really sat with it and were hitting us up later. We thought we would have the exact opposite effect. We were a new group. Even though we had successful solo careers, we were a new group at that point. We expected ourselves to have to tour the record heavy, so when we weren’t able to do that, we thought “Oh, this is over with.” Like really- not that ShrapKnel would be over, but we just thought “This is a bad way to start.” Our initial plan was to go on the road heavy with the record, but the exact opposite happened. We didn’t tour that record until a year and a half later. All blessings in disguise.
That one was made together in person, was Metal Lung more of a COVID project?
Prem: Yes and no, we did get together.
Castro: We got together a lot. We weren’t just mailing stuff around. We couldn’t meet up as much as we did for the first record. The first record it was a concentrated effort to do everything in person. I would come to his house, and I would stay for two or three days. I was also working, so it was a lot of midnight runs, running back down to Philly to go to work. When Metal Lung hit, e would convene at [Steel Tipped] Dove’s a lot. We would work on stuff ourselves a lot. Especially with that project, we would always come together and go over what we got. We did a lot of creative work in the studio together. Writing, we did a little more separate, but all the creativity we did that together.
This third project, then, is the first one you were able to make together, put out together, promo together, and then fully tour together?
Prem: Yeah, I never thought about that. Without the limitations of the restrictions and sanctions and things like that. Yeah I would say so.
Castro: It was our first full fledged, we’re able to do everything bells and whistles.
How has that felt, doing the whole nine’s.
Prem: With Metal Lung, we also toured that with woods’ Aethiopes record. We did do the West Coast and Europe on our own, but with this record, it was the first time we were like “let’s put out a new record and tour it immediately after. See what we got, as a draw.” It was nervewracking, in some ways, but really rewarding because everyone who came out was there to see us. Us, and also shoutout to Phiik and Lungs too, but flying on our own in a way.
How did you guys end up working with Controller 7 for the making of the album?
Castro: [Controller 7] has almost had two careers, so this is his second arc. He had done some work with us on a Wrecking Crew project called Sedale Threat; he produced one of the tracks, “Supreme Rock.” Based off that, I kept him in mind to work with him in the future. When I sent the request out to him, me and Prem were just working on an EP, we didn’t have any LP plans solidified. We asked him for some beats to contribute to the EP, and he ended up sending us a whole suite with eight or nine beats with spaces in them, just to give us an idea of how he wanted to produce it. Quickly, the EP turned into an LP and we said “you can do the whole thing,” because he had asked. Usually we’ll do a main producer and maybe have another producer or two fill in the edges, but this one, we said “Okay, let’s see what you got.” It took some convincing, we got a couple beat packs and suites, and when we started making them into sounds, then the LP idea came from that.
It really works, especially because you both claim to be “traditionalists.” I read that he had named the “Deep Space 9 Millie Pulled a Pistol” beat and sent it to y’all.
Prem: I thought it was kind of brilliant.
Castro: Producers name beats anything, sometimes. It could be a time code, it could be something they’re looking at. Sometimes thankfully, just to help out with the creative process, they give you a nudge and that might be the name of the beat.
That was an interesting citation, because you guys always talk about how influential De La Soul is to you guys. The song feels very close, but it sounds very different. That entire era of Native Tongues, you guys also cite “The Choice is Yours” [by Black Sheep] in one of your songs. Can you expand a little on how that era of alternative rap influenced you guys?
Castro: I’m old, so that was my teenage years. Tribe, Jungle Brothers, De La, Black Sheep, Queen Latifah, Moni Love. These are the cats that I’m banging heavily, pause, in my teenage years. The Low End Theory and Midnight Marauders are my high school soundtrack. De La Soul is Dead, Stakes is High, things of that nature. I reference them all the time. I was wearing out “The Choice is Yours.” I think I had a maxi-single before I bought their LP. It was my DNA makeup. I was mad when they broke up, I was even madder when Pos said the Native Tongues had been reinstated, but they didn’t really do anything. You gotta bring the JBs back. Once you bring the JBs back and they do some songs, then it’ll be a full Native Tongues reunion. And I mean, rest in peace to [Trugoy the] Dove. When we made the record, we didn’t know Dove was sick, so all of the references and the nods to De La and Trugoy himself were made in earnest.
Prem: A lot of what they did, even though I caught them on the later wind as I was coming of age, I went back and did the research, so I heard those records. They were obviously influential when I got to them, but they were bucking their own trends, they were doing their own thing. It’s funny because there’s a connector between what Def Jux was doing, because they were doing something totally different the same way that De La was. Even though I think De La was adversarial with what was going on with Def Jux, I think in an interview or something? When they came out, people didn’t quite get it either. I think it’s closer than people realize.
I think it’s interesting, because you guys openly talk about how you’re not really traditionalist, how you’re not opposed to newer music or pushing forward. You guys hang with Philk and Lungs a lot-
Prem: They keep us young.
Castro: They keep us young but we can’t keep up though. I’ll have an aneurysm.
How do you balance the two, citing old trends and sounds, but also pushing forward?
Castro: I think we cultivated a style, and it’s ShrapKnel. We’re very focused on blades, and making them as sharp as possible. Sometimes you wanna show where you came from, and we’re very referential in that, so we don’t mind dropping an idol or two, or harkening back to some old KRS-One song that made you feel a certain way in ’89. As much as De La was revolutionary, they started their shit in ’89, before anyone was doing anything to that nature. People were still rapping more traditionally. I think influences show, but we are really focused on perpetuating our style and getting our styles out there. It all blends together.
Prem: If you wanna evolve and age with grace, you gotta keep tabs on things that are coming out. The younger generation has more to teach than the other way around sometimes. Not always, but sometimes. People that are stuck in their ways, they’re gonna blink and be stale. You are. Good writers read, good rappers listen to other rap. Some people will be like “I don’t listen to rap when I’m creating/” I always found that super strange. It’s weird, they say “I’m afraid of it influencing my work.” Everything’s going to influence your work, no matter whether you’re aware of it or not.
Castro: It’s folly, they talk like if they’re listening to someone else and they’re working, eventually they’ll sound liek that person.
Prem: Calling some B.S. on that, because anything that you receive, it’s going to then be processed through your filter. Your filter is singular to you, therefore nothing will ever come out the same way.
Castro: If I’m listening to Slick Rick, my third song into a session, I shouldn’t be writing and “oh my God, this sounds like Slick Rick!” That’s not how it works. That’s weird. You’re aping someone else’s style because you’re listening to them for an hour? I’m listening to Wu-Tang for at least six to ten years of my actual life, and I don’t sound like any of them.
Prem: You can do something like, “oh, I’m having a tough time with this beat, let me listen to people who approach beats very differently.” I’ll listen to someone like Saaphir and I’m like “oh, this guy is rapping. These patterns are so crazy.”
Castro: Armand Hammer, they make us write. You listen to Armand Hammer, you write.
Prem: You listen to ELUCID, you’re not going to come out sounding like ELUCID. You might think differently. If you’ve actually listened to him, you’re probably going to approach things differently.
Castro: If you’ve got a good peer group, when they lay something ill, you’ll be like “oh bet. Alright, watch. This is the bar you raised, I see you.” You should always be absorbing material that can possibly make its way to wax. That’s my job.
Prem: If you showed Thelonious Monk some shit that’s on right now, he’d probably be like “Dope. Here’s what I’m going to do, and it’s not gonna sound like anything you just heard,” but it’ll be a different version of him, because that’s what artists should be doing.
My favorite song of yours’ is the “Mescalito” remix that DJ Haram put together because it’s so different from everything you guys do.
Prem: Shoutout Haram. The goat Haram.
Castro: She’s killer.
You touched on this a bit, but do you find being plugged into the Backwoodz environment to be particularly creatively stimulating or rewarding?
Prem: There’s a lot of extended family, so to speak, that I may have not came in contact with if not for Backwoodz.
Castro: If you wanna get better, you have to change the company you keep. We tell that to our peers, some people have friendships in the music industry, but that’s not the best company to keep. You have to be around other spitters, other bladethrowers, other people that are really going to challenge your pen. Once you’re around people that, even in your mind, you think “they’re better than me,” that’ll make you better.