Artist Of The Week - brokeMC

He recently completed a nationwide tour with Domer and The Metermaids. Upon returning home to Brooklyn he immediately finished up his latest solo album, Make It Better, which was released this past week and is the follow up to the underground smash Spillin' My Guts and his collaborative effort with Domer, the brokendomer album Do You Copy?. All this has been in addition to his work as a member of the Mindspray crew. He is one of the hardest working men in Hip-Hop today. He is brokeMC, and this week I caught up with him to discuss all of his projects, what one of his biggest artistic fears is, and his thoughts on whether any potential fame could lead to him not being, well, broke.

Adam Bernard: Your musical output over the past year has been fairly incredible with a solo effort, a Mindspray effort and a brokendomer album, not to mention a national tour. How have you seen yourself grow as an artist thanks to all this work?
brokeMC: When I first came to NYC and started to pursue Hip-Hop seriously I was all by myself, but I was driven enough to just press on and self-produce an album and just put myself out there. Now, five years later, I am benefiting from the amazing influences of my Mindspray family. Breaking out of my own solitary shell and finally having some heads to bounce ideas off of and learn from has really helped me grow. Even so, I am constantly struggling to discover ways to make my music and my art accessible to a wider audience. I second guess everything I do. Every song I finish faces a harsh personal critique. There's so much music being made these days, and that's a good thing, but there's also a flood of mediocre music that's clogging the arteries of the world's musical bloodstream. I'd hate to wake up one day and realize that that's all that I had accomplished, and it's a constant fear of mine. In effect, I am constantly changing and striving to reach new levels of ultra-super-nasty-dopeness. The music I'm starting to make now is veering away from traditional Hip-Hop. What I've found from my experiences in New York and on tour is that the only cats who care that you're a really dope rapper are other rappers. And chances are they're more interested in getting you to listen to their CD than trying to support you as an artist. So as I move forward with my production and lyrical content, some Hip-Hop purists, AKA rappers and rapper wannabes, may frown and shake their flat-brimmed caps at me, but people who are interested in some different music from an original voice, and who aren't as concerned with genre-fixation, might jump on the wagon.

Adam Bernard: Your new solo effort is titled Make It Better. What are you looking to make better?
brokeMC: I'm fond of double-entendres and this title came to me awhile back. Basically, as I was working on this album I kept stopping and saying to myself, "not good enough. Make it better." That’s one side. On top of that there's the broader social context of our planet and the problems that we cause and amplify unconsciously through what's typically accepted as ok in our day to day living. It’s our duty to start taking responsibility for our actions, so to quote my album, "do it harder, man, like you mean it, like you seen the demons, make it better than it's ever been."

Adam Bernard: With your solo work, Mindspray work, and brokendomer work, do you have any worries regarding over saturation with so many different albums out at the same time?
brokeMC: At my level I don't feel like there's any problem with being prolific. I still don't have label support, or management, or anybody doing anything for me except myself and the artists I align myself with, and I feel like name recognition still has a lot to do with people's tendency to pay attention to you, so I just keep making music. Also, the brokendomer album is a completely different beast from either mine or Domer's solo albums, so I don't see it as a hindrance in any way. Do You Copy? doesn’t fit the traditional Hip-Hop format, and all the connections I’ve built throughout my career are Hip-Hop connects, so Domer and I have this album that we both think is pretty dope, but don’t really have any idea what to do with. We’ve got stacks of copies in our closets, and for right now we’re just sitting on them until hopefully one of our solo efforts gains enough recognition to fire some interest back to the stacks. I feel like everything comes in time. I'm not going to put money into a marketing company until I have a product that really gets some strong local attention. I'm not trying to kid myself like "my album will be platinum if enough people hear it." There are no guarantees in this industry, and crowds can be very fickle. I’ve paid a fair amount of dues, but for some reason I’m still flying solo. I kinda suck at the business end of the music game, and I‘m not really tryin to be good at it. I don’t wanna have to buy label reps drinks and comment on their fine wrist watches. So I’m gonna keep makin music until I finally make the joints that get them buyin me drinks.

Adam Bernard: For those who’ve never seen you perform live, tell everyone what a brokeMC performance is like. Please go into detail, paint a picture for these cats that haven’t been out their houses!
brokeMC: Take a panther fluent in Aristotle's early works and a kangaroo with a penchant for graffiti, dose em both on meth, cover em in jello, strap jetpacks on em and make em tangle in front of a crowd of people equally hopped up on wine and mushrooms. That would be pretty cool. My shows are fun too.

Adam Bernard: Finally, when all is said and done, if you become wildly famous, how will brokeMC still be broke? Is it more a mindset than a financial state?
brokeMC: My name is a statement about the game and my position in it. Most mainstream Hip-Hop is caught up on all the wrong issues. My name is my way of getting up in the stereotype and saying "broke is okay too!" The focal point needs to shift, and voices from all corners of the world and all socio-economic levels need to be heard and celebrated. All this "get rich and famous or kill or die trying" mentality is a poison to our younger generations. I'll always be "broke" because I'll never give in to the money-comes-first mentality. I'm all about people, people doing their best for each other to make this world better. We have the ability to take care of everyone, but not enough people are emphasizing that in their art.

For more brokeMC check out brokemc.com, myspace.com/thebrokemc, reverbnation.com/brokemc & youtube.com/videos/brokemc.