Del The Funky Homosapien on putting more thought into the lyrics for Deltron's new album
Was there ever a doubt in your mind that there would be a follow-up record? Has this always been in the works?
There's always been one in the works, but not from the beginning. I really started thinking about it once I started to see that a lot of my newer fans were Deltron fans. A lot of people who are younger don't know anything about Del The Funky Homosapien. If I wanted to stay relevant, I better come out with another Deltron album. A lot of it was that.
But I didn't want it to just be for the sake of that. I wanted to be into it, to have something to say. It took some time for it to manifest. Plus, the lyrics are not easy to write. It takes a while to write some lyrics. You gotta research and all this other shit. It's like writing a novel, basically. It took awhile. We'd been debating even performing it at all. It's not written to be performed.
When you go in to research a project like this, what are checking out so far as movies, books and comics to get into Deltron mode?
Most of the imagery that I'm trying to pull from is dystopian. That's the type of sci-fi I'm drawing from. Mad Max, that was in my brain, but I wasn't watching it trying to pull from it. No law and lots of criminals. Fist of the North Star was another, not directly, but it was in my mind. Some of the technical aspects, I was looking at science fiction encyclopedias and stuff like that. I was really looking how to write science fiction. I was really doing some research.
Is part of the reason why the first record still has such a following because the subject matter seems so timely now? All this lawlessness and massive corporate evil that's layered into it?
To me, if you rap about real things, real emotions, stuff that people go through -- if you go through it, then someone else is going through it too, because we're all human. But if you draw your inspiration from the truth, then it's gonna be timely. If you're concentrated on fads or whatever's cool, then that's gonna play out. That's what it is in a nutshell. You can take that truth and put it in any situation you want to, but you're still drawing from the essence...
One of the things about Deltron and what makes it so difficult, I wouldn't choose to do that all the time, because it's a lot of work. People like it, but it's kind of an acquired taste. Songs aren't really made to be like that. It's writing for a book. A song needs to be more conversational. Say what you gotta say and get on with it. That's what makes it memorable. To meld those two ideas together is ambitious.
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