Big up Impose Mag.
The craziest thing about the Devin collaboration is me and Sleep [of Oldominion] are in a group called the Chicarones. We go to SXSW every year after meeting there in 2000. We met a guy [name unintelligible] who, as the years went on, became influential in getting Devin the Dude’s name to a wider audience. He understood, as I did, that a lot of the people outside of hip hop were into the more melodic sounds of the genre that also included that personal and funny style. He felt that Devin’s Rap-A-Lot fan base wasn’t going to get him as much as all these little niche groups who were starting to get into what he was doing.
He thought I was straddling that line as well and thought me and Devin would get a long. It was totally crazy because I was a huge fan of Devin since the Odd Squad days. Some random Chicarones summer package got sent to Devin directly, he heard the record, but I knew nothing because no one ever gets back to me about anything. I run into him at a conference for Pop Montreal randomly on the street. I see him and I was like, “hey Devin, how you doing? Why don’t you come in here?” I was being wined and dined by a Canadian label at the time. They had 10 people in there buying steaks and whatever. I invited him in like “don’t worry, this shit is not on me. Let’s get some steaks!”
I hadn’t really introduced myself, but somehow he figures out that I am Josh Martinez and he clearly knows me, which was crazy to me. But then, he started singing a Chicarones hook. You’ve got to be kidding me! This idol of mine knows my music and tells me he’s been playing the record all summer.
Right away, we got along like a house on fire. I’ve brought Devin to Canada three or four times for shows. Eventually we got invited down to Houston to do a Chicarones show in the Fifth Ward. We got on stage to a bunch of gangsters in the front row who were like “ohh hell no!” We felt screwed, but by the second song there was that one guy who (you know how sometimes in crowds there’s a leader?) ended up going ape shit after we did some really fast rhyme. All the sudden the crowd was on our side, we did two encores for the hoodest crowd we’ve ever played for.
