Ice Cream Man

After reading some aggressive Twitter posts, I wasn’t sure what to expect from my interview with rapper and actor, Slaine. However, as a calm Boston accent greets me on the line, predispositions were extinguished by the promise of a revealing conversation with the man born as George Carroll. We discuss his November 13th Hollywood show counterparts, picking the brains of his The Town co-stars, and creative expression as a lifesaver and exercise for all.

ICM: You have an upcoming up out in Hollywood, correct?

S: Yeah, with KottonMouth Kings and Big B at the Key Club.

ICM: How did you get on the bill with those guys?

S: I paid them…just kidding. Basically we’re on the same label. I’ve been extensively with those guys. We did a Bring The Noise tour last year in support of the La Coka Nostra record and we went on tour with KottonMouth Kings and Big B. I think they’ve been doing more in depth touring, but I just jumped on that little three week run there through the west coast and the pacific northwest.

ICM: It’s been a great year for you so far. Your movie just came out, The Town, and your first solo record, A World With No Skies, right?

S: Yeah, it’s my debut solo album, my first official solo album. I started off just completely independent. Not even on an indie label, but just pressing up my own tapes and selling them back in 2004 and 2005. And I kind of gained notoriety around here for a mixtape I made called White Man of the Devil. It was right after I had gotten out detox and it was inspired by what I was going through with drugs. It was kind of like a bender, a cocaine and alcohol bender. That was the theme of that and then Volume 2 was a continuation of that. Then after that I got involved with these groups Special Teamz and La Coka Nostra. And now this is a return to my roots as a solo artist. But it’s my first official solo album.

ICM: In speaking of your roots, would you say that your upbringing in Boston and relocation to New York impacted your style?

S: Oh yeah. I think every MC starts out kind of sounding like somebody. I kind of have this New York accent when I rap when I moved to New York. Especially being in New York just because I have a Boston accent, then I realized ‘Why am I rapping different than I talk?’ That had a heavy influence on me because it gave me a different style and a different sound. I still haven’t heard too many people come out of Boston with a hard Boston accent, a thick accent, as an MC. But being in New York, that is what hip-hop is to me. New York City is hip-hop. Everything else is just copying, really.

ICM: Has there been a defining moment of success for you and how this been a labor of love?

S: This has been a long time in the making. I’m the type of person that if I do something I do it a lot. Unfortunately sometimes in some aspects, with other things it works out alright. I guess I’m kind of obsessive, compulsive about some stuff. Which explains why I’m in two groups and have a solo career because I just can’t – I can’t leave the studio. I’m in there 12 to 15 hours at a time. So people come and go, I’ll do sessions with groups I’m in or do collaborations with people, but then I stay and do more stuff by myself.

So I think during the whole time I was making the Special Teamz album I was doing Volume 2. And Volume 2 ended up coming out before the Special Teamz record then the Special Teamz record came out. But during the time I was doing the Special Teamz record and recording this album I was recording the La Coka record. So this one, I’ve made so many titles for it. I can say that I have a 125 songs that I made for this album and narrowed it down to 18, but it was probably more than that. I just felt like these were the 18 that fit well together. I just wanted to put a nightmare dreamscape, a whole surreal nature that my life has taken on, and bring people into my world. Not even to my world physically, but my dreams and my nightmares.

ICM: Is there a specific ritual or approach you take in the writing and creating?

S: Like I said that I’ve recorded this record over so much time with so many different textures, I would go through periods where I would make the same kind of song and I would make like 15 of them. I don’t need to put 15 of the same song on one record, so that would be a reason to through away 14 songs. I could keep the best one of that. So it’s like a maturation process from the beginning of the album to the end of the album. Not that I’ve actually made them in that sequence, but it just reflects a lot of different tones a lot of different stuff I’ve gone through in my life. Where my mix tapes were based off my drug addiction, this if far more in depth about my whole life. Everything from my childhood to having my son to going to catholic school and not believing in God and – not that it’s Christian rap or a great revelation – but thoughts about religion and believing there is something greater than me…not greater than me but a higher power out there. There is a lot of stuff that this record covers I never really got into before. I made this record like it would be the last album I ever make. Even though it won’t be…hopefully. It’s heavy. I don’t want to make it sound like it’s not fun, but it’s a heavy, very introspective record. It’s aggressive and it’s up-tempo but there’s a lot of heavy stuff on there.

ICM: How did you make the move from being a rap artist to becoming involved with acting?

S: I just hollered at Ben Affleck, ”Yo, man, put me in your movie!” No, the Boston Herald did an article about me when I was just kind of making a lot of noise in the local hip-hop scene. It just happened to be at the same time that Ben was casting for his directorial debut. So he had seen my story in the paper and my picture then they called me in and I read for Gone Baby Gone about five times, he convinced the studio, fought with them for like a month – I thought I didn’t get the part because I never heard back. But then I got a call a month later saying they were offering me the role. That was cool, that was not expected.

The first one, Gone Baby Gone, I really liked it, but it was only shot for six days though. This one I did thirteen weeks. So this one I got to watch the whole process, whereas the first, Gone Baby Gone, I was like let me get my shit right, just do what they tell me to do, do what I’m supposed to do. On this one it was like I got to be apart of the team and see what it’s like from beginning to end. And obviously work with an incredible cast of actors, Jon Hamm, Jeremy Renner, and Ben, and Blake Lively and picking these people’s brains. Just watching different people’s approach, Titus Welliver is also a good friend of mine, too, he was in Gone Baby Gone, too. It was meant to be, I guess.

ICM: Do you feel comfortable in this role as an actor?

S: Yeah, the first thing to me with acting is that you need to be comfortable on camera and unaware of the camera really. That is probably the most significant thing. When you get on set there’s a hundred people there and the cameras – how do you ignore the cameras and be in a scene? I think that was the first hurdle for me in Gone Baby Gone. Once I figured that out, these roles…I’m not playing myself in these two movies, but it‘s not like I can’t go down the street and get an influence. These are people I grew up around and these two particular movies I’ve been in, so it’s not like I need to go home and study who these characters are, ‘where would this person come from’ or ‘what would this person talk like’ – which I will do in future roles – but for these ones, it was very comfortable for me to play these parts because I’m from here. A lot of the stuff I talk about in the music is actually what these movies are about.

ICM: With this evolving success, what have been some of the new challenges or adjustments that have come with the fame?

S: I’ve been lucky in a way because I’ve been doing the music stuff for so long and it’s been a slow progression for me. It’s not like 9 months ago I didn’t do anything and then all of a sudden I’m like ‘Woah!’

I’ve fucked up doing interviews like this before, like I would say something and then would be like ‘Why did I fucking say that?!’ when I read the interview back. I used to read all the stuff on the internet that people wrote about me and I would want to kill everyone on the internet. Then I realized it’s there, I don’t care what anybody writes on the internet about me. So I’ve had this long steady path to where I’m at, and the notoriety I got used to it just being in Boston, with my first mixtapes and then starting to get recognized off of that then getting newspaper articles in the bigger papers here, so it was very isolated. Yeah, I got a certain amount of fame here but it’s not anywhere else. And now it’s getting a little broader and now it’s getting weird.

To go to Moscow and there’s a billboard with La Coka Nostra on it and I’m in culture shock in some of these places – then there’s a Russian kid saying my name walking down the street. So that’s definitely an adjustment. At the same time, I don’t have that uncomfortable fame that I imagine a Ben Affleck or, you name the pop star, Britney Spears, where there is a huge invasion on your privacy. I still live in Boston, people see me around the neighborhood and take pictures with me, shake my hand and keep it moving. It’s not like I’m getting harassed and bothered. I’d say the bigger adjustment has been keeping a balance. I’m a father now and I wasn’t a father when I first started doing this. I got married four years ago and I have a two year old son, that’s the hardest part of it is going on the road and working a hundred hours a week, even when I’m not on the road, and trying to be there for your family. That is the hardest part for me.

ICM: You mentioned your arsenal of 125 songs, are you still writing when you’re on the road and acting?

S: I won’t write for a couple weeks. But I have my own recording studio, which is the first time I’ve ever had that, and I just go there to zone out for 15 hours at a time. But ever since I was a kid, I would write on bar napkins and my hand, but now that I have a iPhone it’s a little bit easier. But recording for me is a steady, constant thing. When I gather enough stuff that goes well together then I’ll put something out. Making a record to me doesn’t mean let’s jump in the studio and finish it in a week. It has to cook, have the right stuff, and have the right different elements to have a well-rounded album. I don’t want to put a collective of songs together and throw them out there.

ICM: As a family man, do you feel there is a disconnect sometimes between your public persona and your personal life; do you like it that way or does it magnify different parts of your personality?

S: That’s a tough question. I’m very active on my Facebook stuff, interacting with my fans a lot; it’s not that I tie myself to my image. I am who I am. I am kind of a neurotic, crazy dude, but I am a good father, so balancing that shows that there is a real duality to my life and in general. Which is struggle to me, it’s hard to go from one extreme to the other and still to keep it all together. Which basically ties into what the most the difficult adjustment is. My wife is a kindergarten teacher.

ICM: For other people out there who have suffered with addiction, do you have any advice that helps you overcome struggles daily?

S: To me, it’s been expression. The difference between me and some of my friends in jail is that they didn’t have an outlet to get rid of some the really fucked up things we went through as kids. That type of anger and depression will manifest itself in some way shape or form. What saved me was a creative outlet, not to say that I’ve beat my demons completely, but I think having that creative outlet has been key to me to getting where I’m at. When I’m angry I can go to the studio, I’m not messing someone up then going to jail for manslaughter. There’s a million different scenarios where having this outlet has saved my life. And I don’t necessarily think it’s on a commercial level. I don’t even mean that being a professional rapper, it’s the process of writing and creating. It’s not like, ‘If you become a professional rapper or professional actor you have a creative outlet,’ it’s before that. Anyone can write in a journal, anyone can create, and the act of creating is positive and a release.

We anticipate tomorrow night’s show and hope you can check out the humble artist and actor at the Key Club with his label mates KottonMouth Kings and Big B.

Photo courtesy of http://www.thatsmajor.info