Circle Of Lords: Lords Of The Underground Talk New Single, Album

New Jersey’s own Lords Of The Underground dropped their new album, So Legendary in April produced entirely by the Snowgoons. They discuss the new album but first give some background on their start in the game.

Um, well, I guess I’ll go back to the beginning, man. Um, you know, I’m originally from Cleveland, Ohio. A lot of people still don’t know that to this day.

They think I’m from New Jersey. But, um, you know, I went to, uh, Shaw University, which was down in Raleigh, North Carolina. I was a communications major, uh, radio TV.

And, um, you know, I had a radio show down in, uh, Raleigh at Shaw University. And, um, you know, I used to play on, um, first of all, I had a jazz show. The format of the radio station was jazz.

So I played, I had a jazz show. And then I moved up to a gospel show. And then, um, you know, and I did that for like a year, man.

And, um, you know, but my heart is into hip hop. I love all music, but, you know, my heart was into the hip hop. You know, reggae, house, R&B, you know, funk.

And, um, I talked with my program director, and, you know, I told him like, I would like to do my own show, you know, playing hip hop, and just playing what I like. And, you know, he granted me, you know, my wish, which was he let me do my own show and play what I wanted to play, which was unheard of back then. And, you know, I got a great response.

People from all over the, you know, the area in Raleigh, you know, was tapping in, you know, checking out my show. And I used to have different MCs, come up and rock. And Do It All was one of those guys that, you know, I used to let come up and rock.

Also, my man Joe Bananas was from St. All. Rest in peace. He used to come up and rock.

But, you know, a long story short, man, a good friend of mine by the name of Derrick LA. Jackson, he was a year older than me. And he was a capper, actually, too.

And, you know, I used to bring him to my parties also. I taught him how to mix and stuff. Like, when I got tired, I would let him just get on it and finish rocking.

And, you know, when he graduated, I’ll never forget that summer when he graduated, he was like, yo, jazz, I’m gonna look out for you. I don’t know how, but I’m gonna look out for you, man, because I appreciate what you did. And come to find out, he was Molly Maw’s cousin.

And that summer, he went, he went to work with Molly. He was like, man, I’m about to go work with my cousin, Molly Maw, at the House of Hits. You know, when you go back to school, form a group and send me a demo tape, you know?

And, you know, that’s what I did. I got a call when I was in Cleveland, Ohio, with summer break. He was like, yo, I’m at, I’m at Molly’s.

“When you get to school, form a group and send me a demo. I’ll let Molly check it out. And we go from there and see what happened.

So, you know, I went back to school and I hooked up with Do It All. And I hooked up with Funky because I always wanted a three man crew. And, you know, I always wanted to be, I love Houdini, I love, you know, Run DMC.

So it was always just something that I wanted to do, have a three man crew. So, you know, that’s what I did. And we did, went to my little studio, I had a four track and we laid down like four or five songs and Psycho was one of those songs.

And I sent the cassette tape to my man LA and he hit me back like a week later and was like, yo, Molly loved that Psycho shit and he want to meet y’all. So, you know, we hooked up a showdown in Raleigh, North Carolina. Mind you, like a couple of days before that, it was like a bit, it was a big brawl, you know, at my school and dude’s arm got messed up.

So he had a cast, his arm was in a cast and he had a sling on his arm. But I was like, yo, we have to rock this show, man. Like, you know, you got to get out there, give it your all because Molly’s coming down or whatever.

So, you know, we ended up tearing this place down, man. Molly was in the place and I’ll never forget, you know, Molly was in a DJ booth with me. He was like, yo, man, y’all have to come to the house of hits.

After seeing us perform, you know, how energetic we were, and, you know, just the response from the crowd, man, he was like, yo, y’all got to come to the house of hits. And that’s basically how we got, you know, put on with Molly.

Jazz, catch us up on what’s happening right now. Like, the energy of the new project and what are y’all working on?

Yeah, well, we just completed, well, we completed the album that we’ve been working on, man, with the Snow Goons. They’re a production crew out of…

Peace, peace. What up, Lord Jazz?

Can you hear me?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There you go, Mr. Funky. All right, what up, brother?

What up, y’all?

So, yeah, we hooked up with this production crew out of Germany. And we did this album while we were basically touring in Europe. And I’ve known these guys for a long time, always wanted to work with them.

They strictly boom bap. So if you like that early 90s, that kicks and snares and loops and scratching and all that stuff, this is them. And it was just like a marriage, man, because we were out there and they were out there.

So after we would finish the show, we would go to the studio and just knock out songs, man. So it was like we really didn’t get a lot of rest while we were on tour in Europe. And we just took advantage of the time that we did have, man.

And we end up putting out a great project with the Snow Goons, man. It’s called So Legendary if you don’t know. Check it out if you don’t have it.

And I’m glad to see my brother, Mr. Funky, in the building. Looked like he just got out of the weight room. So say, what’s up, Funky?

Peace, peace. What’s going on, y’all?

So he was just asking how, what’s going on now, you know, with the project and with the album, how we got that going and, you know, and all of that. So I was just telling him a little something about how we got started with that.

Oh, no doubt, no doubt.

I mean, without, you know, going too far into what Lord Jazz already talked about, like, it was just an easy fit. It was a natural occurrence, actually, because we were out on the road together, doing, we were doing a lot of tours, not just a lot of shows, we did a lot of tours with Manu and the Snow Goons. So, I mean, they had beats, and whenever we weren’t performing, we were in the studio.

“We didn’t get any rest. Jazz said we didn’t get a lot. No, we didn’t get any rest on some of those tours because of our, we’re all geographically challenged, you know, on any given year, we all live in different continents.

We live, you know, jazz overseas one year, and I’m on the West Coast, and Dua Dao’s on the East Coast, and two years from now, that’ll probably be switched around. But, you know, the stars kind of have to line up for us to get together sometimes, man. And luckily for us, you know, we were able to create enough instances where we were together to finish this project.

Where we did it the old-fashioned way together. We were together. It wasn’t like, we planned, planned, vocals everywhere.

Like, we were together in this thing.

That’s the thing. We could have used e-mails. We could have used all of that shit, but, I mean, it just, to us, it wasn’t real.

It didn’t, like… One of the things that we tried to do with So Legendary is kind of not so much in the sound, but just in the feeling of it. The process by which we recorded.

We were always having fun. We were, you know, for that little bit of time, we wasn’t at Shoreline University, we wasn’t at school, we didn’t have any responsibilities other than hip hop. And we recreated that type of energy every time we were together, so that we could record this project.

Right. That’s right. What’s the name of the new single?

The new single is called Circle Of Life.

All right. So talk to us how that one came together.

You know what? Me and Do It All was just talking about this the other day. So the way that the record is kind of being received right now, it really wasn’t the way that we intended.

When a lot of what a lot of our process now is, we sit with music and we write how it makes us feel. And that’s a little bit of a little bit different from the way that we originally started making music. Because we started making music, we didn’t care.

You know, it was it was just about emceeing and rhyming and, you know, at what time. Yeah, there wasn’t a lot of introspect put into a lot of our early work. I mean, of course, we’re older now and, you know, more mature.

And we we think about things. We think about how how things make us feel. And when we heard this, heard the beat, it was just, you know, just.

We didn’t intend for it to be as as lyrical as people are receiving it. I think that’s a good way to put it. I mean, it’s not.

Trust me, we appreciate all the love. Like, I mean, it’s actually a little overwhelming. Like, this particular song has touched quite a few people.

And I’ve been feeling it. I’ve been catching the sponsors from people and the emails that everybody sends. And there’s something about this record that’s different from everything else that’s on the album and the energy that it’s…

And again, if you look on YouTube or you look on any of these websites where they’re talking about the videos, they’re saying things like… They’re talking about the lyricism. And we really weren’t trying to kind of put that at the forefront.

We weren’t trying to do that. So I think that’s what it is. I think that’s why it’s unexpected for us.

I think the beat is catchy, too. It kind of catches you that first… Dun, dun, dun, dun.

You know, and we kind of gravitated towards that, man. We’re getting a lot of love, man. A lot of love and appreciation for this whole project, which we’re grateful for, man.

We’ve been doing this for 33 years.

Check out the new single, Circle Of Life, below.