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By ChartAttack.com Staff (Actual Writer not Specified)
You can stop holding your breath. Heavy, Vancouver-based Swollen Members' fourth official album drops this week. And effortless as they might make it look, a lot of hard work and sacrifice went into the record's creation, beginning when now-official member Moka Only stopped listening to hip-hop a while back. Moka explained why when ChartAttack spoke with his group last week.
"Everything was sounding too formula, too much the same, right? It just got boring," says the 6'5 MC. "Just like with anything, you know what I mean? There's peaks and lows with all kinds of music. And for me, just with a lot of what was going on, it just wasn't very exciting. And that's cool, as a group, cause it gives us a chance to try to fill in that void."
The time had come for Swollen to return and save hip-hop. But there was a complication. According to Madchild, he felt as if their group's music had become "diluted" during Bad Dreams and Monsters In The Closet, due to the huge success that came not long after the release of their first album, Balance. It was time to get back to his group's raw roots.
"I just sort of hibernated, locked myself in the house we were renting in Venice for four months. And I got a chance to really become an artist again. And there was no outside influences or distractions. While everyone else was going out partying all the time, I'd just stay home and write, write, write, write, write. And I feel like I personally got four times better than I used to be again."
Newly inducted Swollen Member Rob The Viking says the isolation was good for the group and the new record.
"We had pretty much each other to hang out with. We weren't around all of our outside friends and whatnot, save for a couple of friends. But just being in that circle all the time and every day, working non-stop and having so much more room to breathe and develop our style, our group grew a lot."
The end result of this growth is Heavy, an album which is a bit of a departure for the Members. Gone are the Moka-only singalong choruses. In fact, Moka does very little signing on the album. And as for Madchild, he has advanced in a way that's reminiscent of the way Eminem advanced between The Slim Shady LP and The Marshall Mathers LP: his delivery is more confident than it has ever sounded in his career. Perhaps this confidence stems from the group's newfound comfort while recording.
"We invested in a studio, and that's, like, what a luxury!" Madchild exclaims. "To have a studio in your house, like, we can't mix the finished product there, but we can record — top of the line recording, just like any other studio. We got the best mic, the best pre-amp, and those are the most important things with digital studios these days, so we can just work at four in the morning if we want to. And we don't have to worry about time restrictions, we don't have to worry about spending money; we already spent it. We made our investment. We invested in ourselves."
"Having a home studio is the best investment ever, man," raves Moka. "Buying musical equipment, teaching yourself musical instruments, it's the best thing you can do."
The release of this album represents a crucial part of the Swollen Members legacy. As Madchild declares at the end of the track "Ambush," "That's what's up! I'll go double platinum and come back for my true fans, man! I had this shit planned out the fucking time. This shit is for you! Your little sisters might not get this shit! We made this for our fans, man, the people who fucking discovered us!"
The whole group agrees it's their best work to date. Says Madchild, "We were fortunate enough to have all the fans in Canada support us and we were given a responsibility. So I feel we've taken that responsibility and worked as hard as we can and we've come up with Heavy. The exciting thing about this album is that we didn't concentrate on making singles, we just made music. We just had fun making music. And this is just us, in our purest form."
October 24, 2003 [ChartAttack.com]