NJ All Day Baby! Interview with the Armpit of America's Very Own Blunt Prophet

From the grimy depths of industrial New Jersey, comes the voice of a generation. Or at least those noble enough to call Jersey their home. Blunt Prophet is the rapper alter ego of an NJ native who started the moniker shortly after concluding his college tenure. With multiple releases under his belt, Blunt Prophet has worked his way to constructing and releasing his first full-length album, Blunt Prophet vs. New Jersey. I sat down with the Prophet to talk about how he got his career started and discuss his new album.

Dante Cooper: How did Blunt Prophet come about? What is the origin?

Blunt Prophet: Blunt Prophet started when I came home from college and I was “aloof and adrift.” I just wanted some shit to do, so I was looking to start a musical project. And on top of that I had been reading the news a lot and started to really enjoy the zany, local politics where everyone had their hands in everyone else’s pockets. And this was right around the time Bridge Gate was happening, like it had just started and then it blew up a couple of months later.

So I was reading about that and got really into rap in college. I noticed that a lot of this crimes that these politicians were doing in New Jersey could be projected on the same temple as was being rapped about. I pitched it to my buddy and he said, “Yo, you know? You should do it.” I ended up producing my beats for him a while prior to that.

I just started rapping over them. I got really comfortable with Ableton and started making more beats, writing more raps. I just got into it and, yeah, here we are. Three mix tapes, two EPs, a split.

And now a full-length album.

Yeah.

Less than a week away.

Yes. Coming out this Friday [September 8].

You mentioned the political aspect of the outfit and your begrudging perspective of somebody like Chris Christie.

Yeah, I would say I don’t respect him at all! [laughs]

What is your primary source of influence?

The aforementioned politics, for sure. New Jersey as a character, but specifically that stretch of land on the train line between Rutherford and Secaucus where it’s just like the Meadowlands Swamps and you see factories and The American Dream.

The what?

The American Dream. Xanadu.

Oh, that!

Yeah, they renamed it.

I had forgotten. Why? That’s horrible.

The terrible name? Yeah! [laughs] I think they renamed it because they switched developers. So, it was originally called Xanadu, which is like the giant-ass, hollow mansion that Citizen Kane fucking dies in.

It is very Citizen Kane.

It is super Citizen Kane-esque. I mean we could dive into the parallels, but I don’t even want to start, man. They’re going to have to give me an Oscar for that. [Anyway,] I guess they switched management companies and then they renamed it The American Dream, which, of course, is a horrible name because it’s nothing but a failure. A myth we were sold on in our history textbooks. Not to get too conspiracy theory or whatever, but it’s like the same shit in The Bible. “You know, poor people get into Heaven way faster so just give me that money!”

It’s just fucking bullshit, kind of like the structure itself. If I could describe the American Dream the “concept” using The American Dream “the building,” it’s a poorly color coordinated behemoth of misguided intentions.

It does almost represent the tombstone of the state, after everything had burned away.

Yes, exactly!

Like some horrible, possibly Trump-induced, apocalypse.

Absolutely, and you’d have this horribly, gaudy-ass fucking shit standing there.

Not even correctly shaped.

No! Oh yeah, it’s like who asked for the indoor skiing?

All the colonies of mutants out there would look at it and be like, “It’s just hideous.”

You’ll actually be able to pay in radioactive mutant tokens and they’ll let you roll down the skiing thing.

The worst mutants are the ones who have somehow survived the apocalyptic barren wastelands of New Jersey.

And then, what would be nice, would be if they are actually are achieving the “American Dream.”

But in the process we took New York with us.

Oh, for sure, or it just dropped into the ocean. One or the other is going to happen.

Now that we’ve established your future concept album…

Blunt Prophet vs. Climate Change! The cover art is just me drowning.

[laughs] How did Blunt Prophet evolve from the beginning?

It’s been weird, honestly. Obviously, I have my collaborators, shout outs to Odd Thomas, DJ Babyhands, the rest of Flannel Frat. But it’s been a very solitary project in a lot of ways. When you’re working on something like this, you face a lot of self-doubt. Especially for something as objectively dumb as, “Oh, I’m going to be a high-concept SoundCloud rapper!” And that’s essentially what I am.

I started this maybe a year-and-a-half before SoundCloud rap fucking exploded. I kind of had that year-and-a-half, two years to make mistakes. I released these albums quietly. And you can see the growth, not only in my production and story-telling, but also frankly in my voice and delivery.

Then I did the split with Slut Prophet. Which was just a lot of fun and kind of a cool, dumb idea that I was like, “Yeah, let’s do it!” And that’s how the entire thing has been and how I have kept moving forward. I will have an idea and say, “That’s so dumb. I have to do it.” Whether it’s like Photoshopping Chris Christie onto All-Time Low when his polls hit an all-time low. Like, alright! Again, objectively dumb shit, but I think from a self-esteem and artistic point of view, pursuing ideas you find funny for like no reason other than it’s super dumb and super funny, those offer you a lot of artistic dividends that make you a lot less exposed to other artistic shortcomings.

At the end of the day, you’re trying this kind of fucking dumb thing and, okay, you didn’t get a hit record but you recorded the three minutes of your friend making a sound like he’s falling out of a helicopter or plane so fuck it, why not? That has been the driving force in moving me forward. I’m proud of how it’s turned out. There have been times when you want more as an artist, you know, you want the recognition and shit, but eventually the art becomes itself. So now when I listen back to Blunt Prophet vs. New Jersey, I say, I fucking did this, I’m happy I did.

You mentioned that you did this very long distance collaboration with somebody who had a similarly named moniker. Can you talk about how the Slut Prophet collaboration happened?

This is just for the shared level of art and making your own shit kind of shines through and what has been the most spiritually rewarding part of the whole thing.

As I understand it, my friends over at this website DatPizz (shout outs to Dan!) put up my discography last year. We are on good times, we collaborate on stuff. They had posted something on Twitter about me and someone that follows them saw my name and was dating this girl, Audrey, who is Slut Prophet. And he told her about it and they said, “Wouldn’t it be funny if they did a split?”

So then she IMed me out of the blue after she had listened to my music. She’s from Calgary and she asked if I wanted to do a split and I was like, “Fuck yeah, dude, absolutely!” It was such a breeze of a process, you know? She got her songs done, I got my songs done. We just did it. Initially, she was like, I have tapes, but at that time, I had started Effortless Crush with [my friend] Mike so we just said, “Let’s just press this.”

She, as I understand, sold all her tapes immediately and she’s been playing festivals up in Canada so I hope she comes down and gets a show in New York because I would love to meet her. Also, her music is fucking weird as fuck and I love it and it’s super good. She has a cover of “New York, I Love but You’re Bringing Me Down” but it’s all meows or something? It’s super bizarre like that. She has a great singular artistic voice and I really enjoy her stuff. Definitely check out that EP.

Let’s talk about the album. I listened to it this morning, it’s awesome.

Thank you.

I just want to talk about some of the tracks. I want to start with “Monopoly,” which might be my favorite track off the album. It has this hysterical transition in it where you very much bring the listener in and then veer off to the right with this change of lyric, if you will. It goes against the grain, but in a good way. What level of humor and sarcasm goes into your music?

I just like to laugh, I just like to have fun. I’m a breezy guy! And especially with stuff like that, humor adds to the track in a lot of ways. I wouldn’t say I write it like a standup act, where I set up my own jokes, like if a joke makes sense and fits, it doesn’t even have to connect on multiple levels if it’s just like… boom!

So the Monopoly thing connects on two levels, because it’s subversion. That song “PATH 2 UR HEART” also has a good, kind of funny part where I say “We’re headed toward Hoboken/I wonder if she’s a fan of the vocal jazz.” I’m talking about an oral sex joke and also because Frank Sinatra is from Hoboken and he’s a vocal jazz musician, so it’s funny on that level too and it plays into the plot of the song.

That shit, I won’t even try for. That shit will just fall into place.

“Tourist” plays off the chillness of “Monopoly” very well. It feels very manic and hectic, as well as incredibly territorial. Was that an organic growth of the track?

I would say the hectic and franticness was born, in part, out of the BPM. I hadn’t looked at that track for a while, like a year, year-and-a-half, before I sat down and wrote to it because the it was an intimidating track. Like the instrumental is hard. It just has that nerve wracking synth arpeggio. Sitting down to write it, I did want it to be a menacing track in a lot of ways and then when the tourist concept came into it, it was an easy way to be like, “…tourists? Get the fuck out of my way.”

Also, the way it is, it’s accusatory. I envisioned it like walking down the street and you’re looking. I wanted it to be uncomfortable. Like you see somebody and they don’t fit in and you can tell they’re not from New Jersey and you just go, “Tourist… tourist… tourist…” Shit like that. So I definitely had that menacing aspect in mind and that’s where it goes. Then it breaks into this Jersey club nod at the end because the BPM was right and I love Jersey club music.

I think that for an album that’s so New Jersey, it would be indebted to the music of New Jersey. You know, I can’t hold a candle to artists like Unique, but it would be disingenuous to shout out New Jersey and not shout out the New Jersey club scene because their music is incredible. Also a very funny genre in a lot of ways, so very New Jersey in that [regard]. That’s what I do with that kind of frantic breakdown.

“Sick of Being Slick, Tired of Being Tried” has this very 80s horror movie or weird video game soundtrack vibe to it. Where did that beat come from? I thought it really stood out from the rest.

That one was from a technique I really enjoy using. I used a step sequencer through Max for Live, which is sort of a Java Script plug-in for Ableton. The step sequencer essentially takes a sample, for this I think it was a horn stab, and you can put in variations and play it back and sequence it. Maybe the pitch will go up, maybe every on fourth beat it won’t be triggered, shit like that. Eventually I was just fucking around and it came to this hard [sound] and I thought, Oh this could be kind of a trap beat.

So then I did the very sparse 808 and snare to give it that space. That’s kind of how the beat came about. I thought the kind of slower boasting would be a good move lyrically.

Could you touch on how you collect your samples and create your beats?

Yeah, for sure! Well, first of all, I have a directory on my hard-drive that’s just sample library and I’ve been collecting samples for years and years. I go through and organize it. On top of music samples, I have an entire library of stabs and drum sounds and stuff like that.

But in terms of the samples, most of the samples on this album are, honestly, artists from New Jersey. You have like Sylvia Robinson, who was the A/R who broke the Sugar Hill Gang. That’s the first song. For that I have an 4/8 bar loop and basically what that was I brought it into Ableton, identified the loop, cut it up, you know, synced the BPM, whatever. And there’s that.

And then there’s the other type, which you will see in like “PATH 2 UR HEART” which is the slicing type. So you take a clip. And for that, I ripped-off like a 45 I got from my grandma—

(aside) Rest in peace.

(returns) —so I ripped that from the vinyl and it was this artist The Fontaine Sisters who are from New Jersey but from the 20s. That was a deep cut. What I did then was slice it up, basically maps it to the midipad. And then you hit it, trigger it, hit it, trigger it, and it creates a new orchestration of these moments for you and then you add drums behind and bada-bing. You get a track like “PATH 2 UR HEART.”

So those are the two techniques I use. Basically I spent a lot of time going on New Jersey Wikipedia’s and find towns. I wanted it to be cognizant of the rap history and it is a rap album. Again, with the Jersey club. And also artists like Sylvia Robinson with the Sugar Hill Gang. That’s the first rap song. From artists like that but I also wanted to do, like I love the Screaming Females and The Ergs and bands like that. I didn’t sample The Ergs on this, but I did sample Screaming Females. Titus [Andronicus], huge. I spent a lot of time going through these bands, finding what sections I liked.

So, artists like that! And I just read stuff and listen to music and that’s what it really comes down to. And making those beats sick. I have a lot of ones I threw away, like I have an Ergs one I threw away. I have a Naughty By Nature I threw away. I was exploring the sonic textures. I didn’t want to do Springsteen again because I already have two freestyles where I sample him.

And Bon Jovi, you know I’m not going to let that son of a bitch on here…

He gave up the Jersey lifestyle for LA very quickly. And then came back. He looked way too pretty to be in this state.

He looked pretty in a very New Jersey way. Like smoking cigarettes outside a 7-11 at 6:30 in the morning after a night of drinking pretty.

So that’s what the sampling is like. I really enjoy working with samples a lot. And I would seven out of eleven tracks are sampled? And the others are original production.

“Diner Run” kind of gives some background on your youth because you’re talking about rolling up a joint and going to one of the many diners that permeate the area of New Jersey. It’s a pinnacle of the state’s reputation.

For sure. And if you follow the directions of the song, you know exactly which diners you’re going to. Obviously I grew up going to diners all the time, like late night diner runs and there was this one Thanksgiving that was a “New Jersey Thanksgiving.” A thing we did once and never did again.

I also envisioned in the terms of world building, if there was to be a safe house in New Jersey, obviously it would be the diner. Blunt Prophet would be talking to somebody in the diner, because the diner isn’t bugged. So I envisioned it like calling up his friend for a ride to the diner, going to the diner, ordering the food, laying out his plans how to get out of this trial, and boom! Take the check.

That’s a very Michael Mann-level criminal thought process. And that totally works as the de facto neutral zone.

Exactly. Also, let’s say even if they did bug, maybe the police and criminals have a mutual peace like a church.

“Bic Cheney.”

Didn’t even write down a question for that one. Where do you want me to start?

If there’s a beginning, let’s start there.

I would say the beginning was my habit of stealing lighters. Bic-ing people as it’s colloquially known. I came up with that beat and it was a real hypnotic beat. I think I had a line and realize that Cheney would rhyme with it. And then the song was like, “Gunning for the neck” cuz he shot that dude in the neck when he was hunting accidentally. And then “Call me Bic Cheney” is great for a politician because, hey, I steal the lighters. I fucking love that song, it’s probably my personal favorite song off it.

Big Cheney is such a great moniker for someone.

Oh, I’m definitely going to be using that as an aka going forward. Another aspect of the humor of it is “You can call me Big Cheney” and then “but my foreign policy better!” Like, okay! I still get those political jabs in. So I make fun of him for shooting his friend and then jab him about the fucking politics too. And that’s the level of pettiness and meanness that I enjoy bringing to the Blunt Prophet project.

Blunt Prophet is incredibly petty in his criticisms and yet very observant.

I would say so. Observant but petty because how all politics is essentially like reputation preservation. It’s the kind of “Chris Christie School of Thought” where you make the other guy look like an asshole and you get off Scott-free. And you have to be mean to be able to do that. I would say Blunt Prophet and bars I have written have been, no joke, objectively mean things. Like in “Monopoly.”

“My head’s splittin’ like I’m sitting next to Miss Onassis.” That’s unnecessary. But that bar in general, from a purely phonetic stand point, I love it. And I love that line, I will not apologize for that line. But I will just be mean because, first of all, I feel politics is a mean shit and a lot of these things that I like to talk about politics-wise have a level of stakes surrounding you. And when you have these stakes, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to be mean when someone is trying to fuck you over. Why the fuck am I going to be nice to them?

I always say, with Chris Christie? I have a very thin line where I’m going to respect the fat argument thing. Like at what point does it take for being a bad person outweigh being politically correct and me using that to my advantage to hurt you. And that is not a noble way of thinking but we’re in politics, motherfucker. I’m not looking to win a Nobel Peace Prize over here. Fuck ‘em! That’s one of the things I get most energized about Blunt Prophet, is being mean within the context of the music.

Lastly, “Newsboy” felt incredibly taunting.

Oh yes! That’s another where I just came up with that hook bored at work or something. I saw somebody do something very “extra” on social media and I was like, “Damn, this kid’s like a fucking newsboy. Extra, extra!” And I said, “Oh, that’s a hook.” That’s me being like “Get outta here. Fuck you. Get outta here, man!” But in music form. To the point where I’m talking about his girl and his girlfriend is texting me and he’s so boring “I’d be sleeping if you were lecturing” and “I’m going to wreck you like a new toy.” Reputation-wise.

That beat is kind of hard too. I love that track too, honestly. I would say hook-wise, definitely very tight. On a similar plane as “Tourist” like just fucking do it. You know what I’m saying?

Will Blunt Prophet go global and take on Donald Trump?

I don’t think so. We’ll see what the next couple of years hold in Blunt Prophet political and political lives. I hope he goes for the big time, but will he personally be taking on Donald Trump? I would say probably not because that well has been long run dry. Now at this point, are we gonna lose? Are we gonna see next week? Are we gonna fucking making it to the next paycheck? That’s where I’m at in terms of engaging with that on a political discourse.

Plus the local shit is way more interesting. There’s been less hot dumb takes on it. I will say Blunt Prophet is taking a break after this album. I’m done performing for a while. I’m working on some new guitar music. I’m going to focus on that. Focus on recording other people. I think I said what I had to say with this. With Blunt Prophet for the first term anyway. I categorized it in terms because it’s a “politician.” So this is the end of the first term.

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Blunt Prophet vs. New Jersey is out September 8.