Pound: Honkey Kong has been getting great responses from critics and fans. How are you feeling?

Apathy: I’m excited. I’m so happy. I’m overwhelmed with the response! I knew it would be a dope album. I had no idea it would be so critically acclaimed as it was and people really love it. I mean 95, 96 per cent of people have a positive response. People are calling it a classic, people flipping out over it. I’m excited I’m really thrilled with what I accomplished on this album.

Pound: What made you want to make such a raw underground album?

Apathy: Fans wanted to hear the hardcore shit, which I have no problem with. I wanted to listen to them and do something for them, being that they are the most important factor in this whole thing. I wanted to craft an album that was hardcore, that was grimy, that was just dope like even the fly songs on there have a harder edge to them. And that was really important to me.

Pound: So we can say it was for the fans?

Apathy: Oh yeah, definitely for the fans.

Pound: I love the name, where did it come from?

Apathy: It was from me just fucking around and being silly. I don’t take myself too, too seriously. It’s like the the play on that I’m a  humongous white guy so its like a Honkey Kong, bionic gorilla motherfucker, so that’s where the title came from. I told Phonte from Little Brother and he was like “greatest album title of all time,” and people were really responding well to it so I was psyched from the beginning.

Pound: You kind of touched on another question that I had. You are hardcore, you are intimidating and known for your battle rhymes, but you’re so funny. Why do you incorporate humour into what you do?

Apathy: It’s just who I am as a person. We joke around constantly we're always joking around we are cerebral intellectual dudes – my whole crew, pretty much everybody. Its just the natural flow, 90 per cent of the time were joking around or cracking jokes on each other or just fucking around.

Pound: You have a lot of interesting and big names featured on the album. What made you decide to have so many guest appearances?

Apathy: That’s an important question. A lot of people have been wondering about too many guest appearances but I never give a fuck about that. I have no problem flooding my album with tons of people I want to work with because, like I said, I do this for the fans but I’m doing this for myself as well. If I am going to continue to make albums I’m going work with people who I look up to, or who I idolize, or who have made a huge impact on my life. I dream of doing songs with dudes like Smiff-N- Wessun and dudes like Mad Lion. I think the problem people have with tons of guest appearances is that most artist will just do them in an obligatory fashion. Just having them on there just for the sake of having a guest appearance. When I do, everything is very calculated. I make songs and I craft songs. I have Steele and Mad Lion on a specific song, over a specific beat, with a specific hook, with a specific concept in mind that’s all pre-determined. I’m not like yeah jump on this beat and kick a 16. I do a lot of guest appearances and have people I want to work with because that’s the body of work that I want to leave behind, it’s the legacy I want to leave behind and those are the people that I want work with to keep myself excited about music.

Pound: I understand having DJ Premier on this album was huge for you. What was it like working with him?

Apathy: Unfuckingreal. It has definitely been the highlight of my entire career. I’ve done so much cool, crazy shit, but working with Preem and getting to be friends with him is just unfuckingreal to me. It’s a surreal experience. He’s the greatest producer of all time, hands down, and one of the most hip-hop dudes I know. He’s someone who maintains his integrity and his character over all of the years. Even though the music industry as morphed so much he maintains what he does and he has carried along his brand.

Pound: You’re doing a lot right now (producing, solo work, groups, a new record label) How do you keep it all together?

It’s tough quite honestly, it’s absolutely insane. I’m not the greatest multi-tasker in the world, I just am very, very fucking motivated. I tend to be scatter brained and all over the place. Last year was particularly hard for me. I had a fucking nervous breakdown. I had a meltdown. I developed severe anxiety and agoraphobia and I was like trapped in my house like straight up. My panic attacks were off the fucking chain. I didn’t leave forever; it was like an extreme, extreme case. And I went on manics that a doctor prescribed and that made everything worse. I finally got into an anxiety clinic and they took me off all the meds and they gave me the proper skills to mentally cope with it and I figured it all out. Once I came out I started rebuilding and I started this label Dirty Versions I feel better than ever. I feel reinvigorated it’s crazy and a lot to deal with because I just always want to do so much.

Pound: I think that’s great that you speak out about what you went through. I’m sure a lot of people have identified with it. You talk about it so openly why do you feel that is important?

Apathy: I think it’s cathartic to discuss it. When I hold it in and I don’t say anything it creates bigger problems for me. Once I started coming out about it there were thousands and thousands of people who are like “Oh, I suffer from that too,” “I feel like that too,” and you start to get a better understanding of this crazy fucking problem that so many people have. Another reason why I talk about I is because if I do have any status as an artist or somebody who fans look up, especially the younger dudes, I don’t want people feeling like depressed or don’t have any hope or any options or anything like that. I really want kids to realize that this shit happens and it may happen for a minute but it doesn’t last forever. And you can pull through it easily without drugs and shit. You can do it naturally and it’s just really important for me to talk about it.

Pound: You have had great success and a continuing growing fan base, and have done so by staying true to underground, which is difficult to do in the industry these days. Any advice?

Apathy: It’s really hard for me to give advice. It’s a case-by-case basis, I’d have to see what that artist is doing, but for the most part I just think that people need to do something different. All these new artists want to make things sound all fucking you know – I’m down for hip-hop evolving but it’s gotten to a point were it’s becoming so far away from what hip-hop used to be. It’s just turning into pop. There are a lot of these newer kids that don’t have a grasp on that because they grew up just now, listening to mostly 50 Cent and this and that. Most of them don’t really have a strong understanding and a firm grasp of Kool G Rap and Gang Starr and Tribe. Maybe they know a little bit of Wu Tang but probably some later shit. It just hurts because the studying and the paying respect to the old school isn’t there. So I think it’s very important for kids to study and pay homage and keep true hip-hop shit in their music. Like I said, evolution is always cool and good but once you get so far removed from it you can’t keep calling it hip-hop because you have nothing else to call it. Might as well call it fucking pop-hop or some gay shit like that.

Pound: Being around since the early 90’s, how have you seen the hip-hop industry evolve?

Apathy: I think that the biggest thing to ever happen to the industry, and I don’t think that anyone can argue with me on this one, is definitely the Internet. The Internet and technology has completely shifted everything about this and what it is. I hate to be the old man who keeps being like an old angry curmudgeon, but when I was young I had to research shit and I had to find out things. There was no Google to search for things. So, when I wanted to find out De La Soul’s discography, I had to look it up and listen to all of it and record it and find it and link up with DJs and other dudes and go buy magazines like the Source when it was good (cause all of those fucking magazines suck now) and spend time reading articles about these motherfuckers. Nowawadays if I’m like “what’s Red Man’s middle name and his mother’s address,” kids would be like chchchchchch typing into the fucking thing and have the answer in 1.2 seconds. That’s crazy! It’s wack because when you don’t have to work for something you don’t have any sense of respect for it.

Pound: Speaking of the Internet; there’s been some controversy about fans illegally downloading Honkey Kong. Would you like to speak on that?

Apathy: Yeah, and the thing that blows my mind is that these kids feel so entitled and they actually condemn and talk shit about me complaining about it. Of course I’m going to fucking complain about it you fucking idiots. Like you guys are straight-up stealing my shit. And, I love how these young kids who don’t know a thing, are trying to tell me what do. Like “oh well, just do more shows and sell more merch and that’s where you will make money.” It’s like who the fuck are you to tell me how to do shit or what is supposed to be done.  I always supported artists and bought albums and I’ve bought shit blindly. So, like what the fuck makes you so different than me. The kids are trying to tell me what to do. You can hear my tone right now because you’re talking to me but these kids read what I write and they think I’m pissed off and sad and upset, but I’m just stating facts. Like I’m as cool as a cucumber right now. I’m calm, I am just saying “yo, it’s wack that people steal shit.” And it’s definitely wack that people steal music because we work so fucking hard and put so much money into it.

Pound: What’s bullshit to you?

Apathy: What is bullshit to me? Uhh… I think delusions of grandeur. People think they are way more important than they are and they take things too seriously. Our time on this earth is so short. Humans in general, if they would just pay attention to their own lives as opposed to everybody else’s and stop stressing the fuck out – life would probably be a lot better on this planet. I think people believe that they are far more important than they are and they sweat things that they shouldn’t and that’s across the board for everybody. You see society in the way it is, we all believe we are so fucking important. Man, we are just fucking like germs on a fucking tiny molecule floating in the universe – it’s a joke! And we’re alive for the blink of an eye. I think people just need to fucking smell the fucking flowers and breath in the fucking air and just, you know, appreciate what they have right now. I think the fact that motherfuckers stress about ... whatever, just makes life shittier and I think that’s bullshit.