Interview with Sloan.

State what you go by, age, and your mission here on earth.

Haz- I go by “Haz” I’m 25 right now and my mission here on earth is to leave some shit behind that’s going to inspire someone to do some similar shit basically.

D Dand- My name is “D Dand.” I think my mission in life is to just leave that legacy that I was lucky enough to find in the ones before me. So the people that inspire me, I want to do the same for those to come.

Tell us about the Beat Lampers. Where are y’all from, how long have you been making music together?

D Dand- I’d say in the late 2000’s, I was in a group called Pyramids, which was already Beat Lampers but it was just under a different name and not everyone was involved yet. So Beat Lampers is D Dand, Haz, Volition, Grits (Party Hat), and 99, our DJ. I’m thirty so I’m a little older. 99 is my age, we both have a mutual friend John Vizzone who went by J Viz and he was the producer in Pyramids. We were all friends and Pyramids just turned it into Beat Lampers I guess. Antonio Gayle was the key piece who connected everybody.

Haz- I’m a little bit younger, but we all grew up in the same place. We were all making music, but D Dand, Volition, and 99 were making music separate from me and Grits. I was looking up to them for a minute and first met D Dand as a fan. First thing I ever said to this fool was, “Would you happen to be D Dand from the Pyramids?” He was like, “Yooo you heard that shit?” We all linked up and would just be chillin all the time making hip hop. Everyone was making beats and everyone was writing rhymes and that was pretty much how it went. The name Beat Lampers, if I remember correctly, was something Antonion Gayle came up with and we decided to run with it.

D Dand- Yeah, super creative guy. He wrote graffiti and made beats and raps, so he was hip hop as much as anybody else who was actually trying to seriously pursue it. He was joking a lot of the time but he was hip hop.

Haz- Antonio passed away suddenly in 2011, rest in peace. After a while, it basically turned into some shit that we are doing in his honor just out of love that we all have personally and together.

You’re about to drop a new album, so let the world know about that.

Haz- my first album came out in October of 2015 and it was called “Just advance”. It was fitting because I’ve always viewed him as a big homie so for him to lay down that platform for me to really get some shit off my chest really meant a lot. I was real proud of that album. It took me a minute to build up the energy and confidence to follow it up. When the pandemic rolled around me and D just rolled up in our cribs like “Well we aren’t doing nothing else, might as well start putting this together.” He would just send me hella beats, hundreds and hundreds of beats in my email and I would try to write a track everyday. I wrote like 30-40 songs for this album and recorded them on this shitty little mic I had on my laptop, and sent the demos over to D to talk about them. After a couple months of that we finally met up at his spot. He was living in Washington Heights at the time so I would drive out there from North Jersey and lay out a bunch of songs in a day. We would go on like that for a couple months until we had hella songs laid down, narrowed down the track list, and the shit is in the mixing process right now. We are working on a bunch of videos and I’m super proud of it. I feel like I have progressed as a song writer. I feel like D has progressed as a producer. I’m very hyped to share it with the world. It’s going to be called, “Otherwise Time Gon’ Tell” so look out for that.

I think skateboarding is like a brotherhood, if you skate, I skate, we skate, a lot like hip hop. What do you think it is about hip hop that makes those quick, solid connections with people?

D Dand- With hip hop, especially the type of hip hop we make, there is so much vulnerability and raw emotion and you connect with things that are not just surface level. It’s implied almost in the music, the tone, so when you can connect over that shit it’s a no brainer because it is so much more nuanced.

Haz- True, and it’s not always easiest to infiltrate that community. I feel like if you meet someone else and can tell they put their time and effort in to get to a point in that community where they can be respected, it’s like okay we been through the same kinda shit. Like a head nod kinda thing.

How important do you think it is to be well rounded in this craft?

Haz- It is very important. You get into the hardcore hip hop conversation of what it means to be an MC versus what it means to be just a rapper. An MC is basically someone who can handle any situation, that is how I feel about it. I care about this, at this point, I have spent most of my life doing this. I just want to get as good at it as I possibly can and cover all aspects of it. I feel that is highly important to me and the type of music I’m doing.

You guys keep it really true to the game with no flashy gear, over produced beats, and, well thought out lyrics real hip hop; the way it should be done. How did you develop your style, how do you manage to stay in your own lane nowadays, and stay true?

D Dand- I listen to a lot of old shit honestly. I try not keep up or get caught up in what is new. I listen to my own shit a lot so I’m constantly thinking on how I can get better instead of worrying about what someone else is doing. Sometimes I need to get inspired and its dope. I’ve been realizing I don’t need to look up to these famous people with these platforms, I have friends that are immensely talented. Whenever I need inspiration I just look to them. 

Haz- What D said, I think getting inspired by your own circle really has a lot to do with that. If you are reaching outside of your life to get inspiration, it is going to take your shit in a whole different direction. That is one thing and I think another thing is being consistent. I have had this conversation with a whole lot of people and its just picking your lane and staying consistent in that lane while improving at the same time is always a going to pay off. It might take a minute but you gotta be patient with that shit and keep doing what you’re doing.

What other hip hop artist out there new or old influence y’all?

Haz- Man I got so many influences. I’m just going to speak to major shit that directly influenced my style. My first big influence was Black Star, that Mos Def and Talib Kweli album, some of the imagery on that, like the song Respiration, some of the imagery on that album really blew my mind at a young age. I was really fascinated by trying to create that same type of imagery in my own rhymes so that was real important to me. I got really into Guru or Phife Dawg and Q- Tip a little later down the line. For me that was okay less can be more sometime. You don’t necessarily need to pack a bar with the most syllables to make it hit the hardest. You can keep things simple and still have it be dope and come across clean and pack a punch. Most recently, rest in peace Sean Price yo again, just simply clever shit. That is the illest out.

D Dand- I agree. Sean Price is one of the best because the way he rapped was the way he was in person. That type of transparency is just dope to me. My influences were Black Star, Big L, Redman, a lot of the classic shit. Gang Starr, Black Moon, and more recently I would say Wiki. He’s been a pretty big influence to keep my sword sharp as far as rap.

Do you feel like hip hop is being well represented in this day and age?

D Dand- I don’t wanna sound like a hater, I think it is a yes and a no in a lot of ways.

Haz- Yea, I think there is ill shit coming out for sure. I think one of the dopest things in hip hop is that there has been a resurgence in people putting out vinyl records and that is super dope to me. That speaks to there being a lot of people that still care about keeping the scene going as it was originally. Also they are putting a modern twist to it. For example, DJ Muggs has a new album with a bunch of dope MC’s. I think that is really cool. I think there has been some cool cross over between old school legends and newer people who are trying to keep it going.

When you’re writing, how much of it is on paper or in your head?

D Dand- It used to be on paper back in the day especially in highschool when having notebooks and shit just filling them with rhymes. That was dope, it became a thing. You wanted to have a notebook, and then the iphone just made it so easy with all the freestyles.

Haz- For me it was so funny because I used to cary this backpack around when I would skateboard around and it had like a gallon ziplock bag in it with a bunch of folded up pieces of construction paper and they all had versus on them. It was like thirty versus in this bag that I would carry around. Gritz would come through to make songs and I would dump the bag and spread em out on the floor and try to pick one. Then like D said, the smartphones came around, I would write on my phone for a long time. I still do sometimes but recently I’ve been trying to fill books up again because I think it makes you a little more thoughtful of what you are doing.

Do you remember the first song that got you hooked on hip hop?

D Dand- It was probably 50 Cent “In Da Club” or some dumb shit, I was like thirteen and was super impressionable at that age. I don’t know…

Haz- The first rap song I really really like was “We fly high (Ballin’)” by Jim Jones. Then what got me into hip hop for hip hop sake, this is kind of funny too but it was “Kick Push” by Lupe Fiasco, or “Jesus Walks” by Kanye. I could spit both of those word for word at any time you want.

Rest in Peace Define aka Tone G.