The People's Champ
Josh Martinez: The RAPstation Interview
By Kyle Eustice
Recently, RAPstation interviewed Christopher "Sleep" Tafoya, one-half of indie hip-hop group, the Chicharones, leaving readers wondering, "Well, where's the other half?" Meet Canadian emcee Josh Martinez, the mysterious other half of the Chicharones, Currently based in Portland, Oregon, Martinez began his career with 1998's solo effort, The Cracker, and since then, has released 10 albums, culminating with 2013's Blotto. He has two albums under the Chicharones name, 2005's When Pigs Fly and 2012's Swine Flew. Humor is a constant variable in all of Martinez's work. It keeps him afloat when all he wants to do is sink and helps him conquer his feelings of self-doubt or otherwise negative feelings all of us can succumb to on occasion. As Martinez and Tafoya put the finishing touches on the third Chicharones album, Martinez had some free time to discuss the making of Blotto, growing pains and the dissolution of his label, Camobear Records. Visit http://joshmartinez.ca/ for more information.
RAPstation (Kyle Eustice): Where have you been hiding? I haven't talked to you for a long, long time.
Josh Martinez: Right here in Portland, Oregon. I took some time off from music after I shut down the record label (Camobear Records) in 2014. I wanted new challenges and I got tired of the business of music. I went back to grad school and am now in the process of getting an MBA in Sustainability here in Portland. It's basically a 'put your money where your mouth is' degree. I want to help my community. I want to help build networks and institutions that make things better. All my experience has always been in leadership and public speaking. Going back to school is hell for an old guy, but I'm actually crushing at it now that I'm not on drugs, drink and/or women. As a result of moving away from music, I actually started enjoying making music again.
What led you to the decision to quit "drugs, drink and women?"
Like anything, life takes you to different places. When I wrote Blotto, I was coming out of a relationship that I ruined from excessive on the road cheating. I was needing to grow up for my own life. The confusion of having a public persona and being a private person became a dichotomy that was too hard to keep together. I needed to be by myself for awhile. I put down all the 'tools' i was using to medicate and tried to focus on being happy in the now. I also needed to grow up myself to make sure I was capable of having someone else in my life that I could treat with respect and love and not fuck everything up with. So that's Blotto. But that was almost 7 years ago that I was going through that stuff. It just took a long time to finish the record about it. In the meantime, I grew up, became a good man, and have a 4 year relationship with my girl who I love very much. She has two kiddos from her previous life and I love them like my own. I still do the weed, but that's cause it works with me and not against me. Me and my girl have been together for a long time now and I hope we continue to grow and learn from each other. That's more what life is about then getting everything you want handed to you all the time. Hard work almost always pays off. And when it doesn't, chalk it up to 'haters' and keep it moving.
On the song "I'm Sorry," you say you're sorry for being an asshole. You've never been an asshole to me [laughs]. What did you do?
The life of a performing musician/speaker/yeller is a fascinating one. No one ever tries to proposition me at the grocery store, when I'm taking out the recycling or when I'm washing my car in a see-through white shirt and short jean shorts. But when I'm on stage, or off stage after a performance, there's a whole different vibe. When you're a guy like me, you don't really get hit on very often. Mostly never. But being hit on all the time at my shows, in random cities, by women who know that you're leaving the next day, and something that's totally meaningless can happen, and mostly be whatever, but also really piss off someone very far from the scene of the crime, and you sometimes/often make bad choices just to keep it moving. You may get called an asshole. I'm not always "money" to everyone in my life.
I love that you're working with Ceschi and Sapient. How did you meet them and how long have you been working together?
Sapient has been my dude since forever and Ceschi, too. I love melodies. Sape and Ceschi are at the forefront of making dope, weirdo, genre-bending, rappy, singy new rap music. I toured the whole 2012 Warped Tour with Ceschi and he's very godlike; great man, incredible performer. Sape is a killer dad weirdo pirate, who happens to be producing my next record, titled Dual Citizen that I'm planning on finishing this summer and putting out sometime around then. They are both superstars to me at composing songs and creating interesting rhythmic melody word raps.
What about their style gels with yours?
We all use melody, sense of humor, sarcasm, hip-hop-esque styles and definitely share some similar inspirations.
Sleep said you guys are working on a new Chicharones album. Can you tell me a little bit about it?
Yeah, it's gonna be a fun record. We love making mood music and sometimes we really like that mood to be shithouse rocking bar brawl country party, and sometimes we like that mood to include heartbreak piano bangers that rip you to shreds and leave you drunk and crying. This time around, we were feeling real good about life and thought we should really put together some smash hits and upbeat dancefloor crushers. There may even be guests on the record.
How important is touring today?
Depends. If no one knows you, it's the most important. If you don't have access to major media companies’ backing, then touring is really the only 100 percent way to build and grow a fanbase. Plus, it makes you better at performing, it gives you a place to sell your merch, and once people get drunk and its showtime, anything can happen. Opportunities just get dropped in your lap. Who knows? You might be playing a Barmitzvah in Bermuda next week.
What do you like about performing?
Favorite part about touring is performing. Everything else is pulling teeth. Performing is the only time all day I actually feel normal. Being on the road, in close quarters with very complex people, is amazing and challenging. I like the performing part the most because finally we all have something to do together.
Tell me about the production of your latest album.
It started with sounds and samples that Stuey Kubrick and I worked on, and we wrote a lot of the songs, but just never got the time to finish the record properly. So one day, I decided to bring on board some more production and mixing elements I felt were missing from the record. I called Sapient and asked him to mix and help produce the record. So we worked together for six months, added a bunch of layers, gave it some shape and closed the record out. The result is Blotto, a record to hang your heart from.
Blotto sounds like a lot of songs about a relationship. Can you elaborate on that a little? What inspired this record?
It's about just being a bad boyfriend, losing a best friend and self-imposed loss. Turns out, its a lot of people's story. But its also about moving on and becoming better. It's about hope after loss. It's about living life and not being a little bitch about it.
How is Camobear going?
Shut'er down from all active new projects and maybe I'll put my own stuff on it, or maybe I'll just let it be. We still exist for internet sales and digitally for the old material. Best decision yet. The record label took all of my focus and energy trying to figure out how to find success in the music business for me and my team. I couldn't be both a full time artist and run a business that required really complex financial and accounting challenges that I had to figure out from scratch. It was tough. I love everything we put out. I'm proud of the 75 titles Camobear put out. But I'm happy not to have to be the owner of a dying business in a dead industry.
You've always had an awesome sense of humor. How important is that to your craft?
I like to think it's the most important part. The way I like to think about things is that no matter what, there has to be something quirky, or weird, or rhythmically accented and interesting in anything. I try to push myself to think about life in unorthodox ways. The things I say in songs are just jokes my close friends and I have internally, and I just jack those jokes and make songs from them.
What or who made you want to rap in the first place?
I don't know why I started rapping. Growing up in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, I loved rap, but I never figured I'd do raps. I mostly wrote wordy 'poetry' and certainly wasn't really thinking I could rap. Some high school homies and I got high, freestyled and beatboxed, but there were a lot of other guys who rapped way better and wanted to be rappers. But then one day I got on stage. I performed to a bunch of friends and strangers and crushed it, and got hooked. I love the high of performing maybe more than anything else in life. Rap is my vessel for that joy.
Josh Martinez: The RAPstation Interview
The People's Champ
Josh Martinez: The RAPstation Interview
By Kyle Eustice
Recently, RAPstation interviewed Christopher "Sleep" Tafoya, one-half of indie hip-hop group, the Chicharones, leaving readers wondering, "Well, where's the other half?" Meet Canadian emcee Josh Martinez, the mysterious other half of the Chicharones, Currently based in Portland, Oregon, Martinez began his career with 1998's solo effort, The Cracker, and since then, has released 10 albums, culminating with 2013's Blotto. He has two albums under the Chicharones name, 2005's When Pigs Fly and 2012's Swine Flew. Humor is a constant variable in all of Martinez's work. It keeps him afloat when all he wants to do is sink and helps him conquer his feelings of self-doubt or otherwise negative feelings all of us can succumb to on occasion. As Martinez and Tafoya put the finishing touches on the third Chicharones album, Martinez had some free time to discuss the making of Blotto, growing pains and the dissolution of his label, Camobear Records. Visit http://joshmartinez.ca/ for more information.
RAPstation (Kyle Eustice): Where have you been hiding? I haven't talked to you for a long, long time.
Josh Martinez: Right here in Portland, Oregon. I took some time off from music after I shut down the record label (Camobear Records) in 2014. I wanted new challenges and I got tired of the business of music. I went back to grad school and am now in the process of getting an MBA in Sustainability here in Portland. It's basically a 'put your money where your mouth is' degree. I want to help my community. I want to help build networks and institutions that make things better. All my experience has always been in leadership and public speaking. Going back to school is hell for an old guy, but I'm actually crushing at it now that I'm not on drugs, drink and/or women. As a result of moving away from music, I actually started enjoying making music again.
What led you to the decision to quit "drugs, drink and women?"
Like anything, life takes you to different places. When I wrote Blotto, I was coming out of a relationship that I ruined from excessive on the road cheating. I was needing to grow up for my own life. The confusion of having a public persona and being a private person became a dichotomy that was too hard to keep together. I needed to be by myself for awhile. I put down all the 'tools' i was using to medicate and tried to focus on being happy in the now. I also needed to grow up myself to make sure I was capable of having someone else in my life that I could treat with respect and love and not fuck everything up with. So that's Blotto. But that was almost 7 years ago that I was going through that stuff. It just took a long time to finish the record about it. In the meantime, I grew up, became a good man, and have a 4 year relationship with my girl who I love very much. She has two kiddos from her previous life and I love them like my own. I still do the weed, but that's cause it works with me and not against me. Me and my girl have been together for a long time now and I hope we continue to grow and learn from each other. That's more what life is about then getting everything you want handed to you all the time. Hard work almost always pays off. And when it doesn't, chalk it up to 'haters' and keep it moving.
On the song "I'm Sorry," you say you're sorry for being an asshole. You've never been an asshole to me [laughs]. What did you do?
The life of a performing musician/speaker/yeller is a fascinating one. No one ever tries to proposition me at the grocery store, when I'm taking out the recycling or when I'm washing my car in a see-through white shirt and short jean shorts. But when I'm on stage, or off stage after a performance, there's a whole different vibe. When you're a guy like me, you don't really get hit on very often. Mostly never. But being hit on all the time at my shows, in random cities, by women who know that you're leaving the next day, and something that's totally meaningless can happen, and mostly be whatever, but also really piss off someone very far from the scene of the crime, and you sometimes/often make bad choices just to keep it moving. You may get called an asshole. I'm not always "money" to everyone in my life.
I love that you're working with Ceschi and Sapient. How did you meet them and how long have you been working together?
Sapient has been my dude since forever and Ceschi, too. I love melodies. Sape and Ceschi are at the forefront of making dope, weirdo, genre-bending, rappy, singy new rap music. I toured the whole 2012 Warped Tour with Ceschi and he's very godlike; great man, incredible performer. Sape is a killer dad weirdo pirate, who happens to be producing my next record, titled Dual Citizen that I'm planning on finishing this summer and putting out sometime around then. They are both superstars to me at composing songs and creating interesting rhythmic melody word raps.
What about their style gels with yours?
We all use melody, sense of humor, sarcasm, hip-hop-esque styles and definitely share some similar inspirations.
Sleep said you guys are working on a new Chicharones album. Can you tell me a little bit about it?
Yeah, it's gonna be a fun record. We love making mood music and sometimes we really like that mood to be shithouse rocking bar brawl country party, and sometimes we like that mood to include heartbreak piano bangers that rip you to shreds and leave you drunk and crying. This time around, we were feeling real good about life and thought we should really put together some smash hits and upbeat dancefloor crushers. There may even be guests on the record.
How important is touring today?
Depends. If no one knows you, it's the most important. If you don't have access to major media companies’ backing, then touring is really the only 100 percent way to build and grow a fanbase. Plus, it makes you better at performing, it gives you a place to sell your merch, and once people get drunk and its showtime, anything can happen. Opportunities just get dropped in your lap. Who knows? You might be playing a Barmitzvah in Bermuda next week.
What do you like about performing?
Favorite part about touring is performing. Everything else is pulling teeth. Performing is the only time all day I actually feel normal. Being on the road, in close quarters with very complex people, is amazing and challenging. I like the performing part the most because finally we all have something to do together.
Tell me about the production of your latest album.
It started with sounds and samples that Stuey Kubrick and I worked on, and we wrote a lot of the songs, but just never got the time to finish the record properly. So one day, I decided to bring on board some more production and mixing elements I felt were missing from the record. I called Sapient and asked him to mix and help produce the record. So we worked together for six months, added a bunch of layers, gave it some shape and closed the record out. The result is Blotto, a record to hang your heart from.
Blotto sounds like a lot of songs about a relationship. Can you elaborate on that a little? What inspired this record?
It's about just being a bad boyfriend, losing a best friend and self-imposed loss. Turns out, its a lot of people's story. But its also about moving on and becoming better. It's about hope after loss. It's about living life and not being a little bitch about it.
How is Camobear going?
Shut'er down from all active new projects and maybe I'll put my own stuff on it, or maybe I'll just let it be. We still exist for internet sales and digitally for the old material. Best decision yet. The record label took all of my focus and energy trying to figure out how to find success in the music business for me and my team. I couldn't be both a full time artist and run a business that required really complex financial and accounting challenges that I had to figure out from scratch. It was tough. I love everything we put out. I'm proud of the 75 titles Camobear put out. But I'm happy not to have to be the owner of a dying business in a dead industry.
You've always had an awesome sense of humor. How important is that to your craft?
I like to think it's the most important part. The way I like to think about things is that no matter what, there has to be something quirky, or weird, or rhythmically accented and interesting in anything. I try to push myself to think about life in unorthodox ways. The things I say in songs are just jokes my close friends and I have internally, and I just jack those jokes and make songs from them.
What or who made you want to rap in the first place?
I don't know why I started rapping. Growing up in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, I loved rap, but I never figured I'd do raps. I mostly wrote wordy 'poetry' and certainly wasn't really thinking I could rap. Some high school homies and I got high, freestyled and beatboxed, but there were a lot of other guys who rapped way better and wanted to be rappers. But then one day I got on stage. I performed to a bunch of friends and strangers and crushed it, and got hooked. I love the high of performing maybe more than anything else in life. Rap is my vessel for that joy.
