Black Milk sips on a Coca-Cola, his eyes peering out the window of The WAB as cars slush by on Woodward Avenue. As he answers my questions, he’s mellow, occasionally chuckling, cracking a proud smile and nodding, but the rapper/producer born Curtis Cross keeps his pupils and body aimed towards the glass. “Just thinking, man,” Black replies when I ask him what he’s staring at.
What is on the mind of the 24-year-old phenomenon? Perhaps Black is pondering the next firecracker he’s going to produce for Slum Village, Guilty Simpson, Phat Kat, Bishop Lamont, Busta Rhymes, G-Unit, Pharoahe Monch, Canibus, Sean Price, One.Be.Lo, or Royce Da 5’9”. Or maybe his head is wrapped around the next batch of vexing verses he’ll pen for the follow-up to his breakout solo album, Popular Demand. When a young artist has come as far as Black has in such a short period of time, there’s plenty to think about. “This will be, like, the lowest point of my career,” Black says. “I done had a lot of success this past year, but each year will keep getting better and better. I can’t go anywhere but up.”
I ask Black if he feels that he came out of nowhere, to which he answers that he’s been working hard in the Detroit underground rap scene for six years, putting in time with the production trio/rap group BR Gunna that includes Fat Ray and Young RJ and getting his big break making beats for Slum Village. Black met Slum Village some six years ago while he was still a student at Cooley High — when music wasn’t his biggest passion, at least at first.
“I was more of an athlete in my high school years,” Black says. “The last time I was in a music class was in middle school. I was on the basketball team, I had that dream and vision of getting into the NBA, I wasn’t even thinking about music 'til the end of my junior year. I started hanging around people that were into music so I started writing and rhyming, and then I started buying my own equipment and getting into beats. So by the time I was graduated, I was already linked with Slum Village.”
Black’s cousin was a roadie during one of Slum’s tours and he passed them a beat CD. When the rappers returned home from the road, they gave Black the call to come into the studio. Dilla had just left the group, so Slum were looking for producers and Black fit the mold, as he went on to craft hits with songs like “EZ Up.”
As the conversation continues, Black offers that maybe he did, as a solo artist, burst onto the scene, taking everyone by surprise with the top-tier quality of his productions. For Black, he says the ball started rolling when he made the decision to go solo. By the time Popular Demand was released, he had already firmly established himself in Detroit. It was time to expand, so he went touring through North America and Europe.
Has he already conquered the D? “I don’t wanna say I conquered Detroit, but I feel comfortable and everybody knows me in the hip-hop scene,” Black says. “But I still have a lot of work to do if I wanna try and get to a certain level musically and status-wise.”
In 2007, Black packed his portfolio with a plethora of outstanding compositions. First, there’s his album, Popular Demand, a mesmerizing mix of boom-box battering-rams like “Insane,” a thunderous Titanic crashing through ice-blue glaciers as b-boys headspin on the deck, the triumphant single “Sound The Alarm,” featuring Guilty Simpson that sounds like Large Professor soundbombing on a lost Rawkus Records 12-inch with computer chips violently sparking from his robotic skull, or the shimmering soul of “Three+Sum,” where Black drops sex-raps like a suave Too $hort, ditching the mack game for Don Juan.
But there are also pimp moves with lines like: “After I done fucking did her, I ain’t fuckin' wit' her,” and it was something I hadn’t noticed the first few spins: Black discusses women quite a bit.
“I asked this girl one time,” Black says, “'when you hear my music, if you didn’t know me, what type of person would you think I was?' She said, ‘I’d think you was a guy that had a lot of females.’ I was like, 'damn, I never knew that,' but when you think about it — I got a lot of lines. I love women … if I’m not in the studio, I’m probably kickin’ it with one of my female friends.”
“What’s your take on relationships?” I inquire. “I got somebody special in my life,” Black offers. “That’s what it’s all about, finding somebody that’s your better half. I don’t know what I think about relationships, but music comes first, so it’s just as important as breathing. If I don’t do music, I’m frustrated. So if a person’s gonna be with me, they gotta understand that.”
Although a girl told Black his music might suggest that he’s a playboy, the myriad array of styles Black’s beats range from definitely concurs that when it comes to hip-hop he’s a soulful chameleon. For someone that’s as devoted to his craft as Black is, the ability to tap into other producers’ sounds and supercharge them with Motown magic gives him a wide palette to paint the hip-hop scene with.
For example, his beat for “Hard Enuff,” on Phat Kat’s Carte Blanche is a frigid fusion of Pete Rock and DJ Premier — with drums that could drill oil and keys that are as hypnotic as Gangstarr’s “Mass Appeal.” Then, there’s “Let’s Go,” from Pharoahe Monch’s Desire that ignites like a flamethrower, torching like Hi-Tek armed with a missile-launcher, creating the perfect bed of spikes for Monch to lay his most breathtaking verses in ages.
Black’s wicked mutation of classic East Coast “backpack” rap has culminated with an upcoming album with Boot Camp Clik’s Sean Price and Detroit’s own Guilty Simpson — as the three recently toured Europe together. Black’s overseas tours have gone remarkably well — perhaps the highlight was when he rocked a crowd of some 60,000 people at a festival in the Czech Republic along with rap legends Redman and M.O.P.
Geography seems to be no restraint for Black, as another highly-anticipated project is Caltroit, an upcoming album that’s a collaborative effort between West Coast rappers like Bishop Lamont and Rass Kass with hometown heroes Phat Kat and Slum Village along with Aftermath artists Stat Quo and Busta Rhymes.
“I met Bishop out in Cali,” Black explains. “Slum Village had a video shoot for ‘EZ Up’ and Bishop was there and we kicked it. He was telling me about his situation, he had just got signed with Aftermath. When Proof passed, he came to the funeral. He stayed in Detroit for a couple days, we got in the studio, did a couple songs and my manager had the idea: ‘why don’t y’all do a project with Cali artists and D artists?’”
The bi-coastal tag-team resulted in gems like “Caltroit,” a killer cut where Lamont and Black attack the mic on a beat where Black equips Dr. Dre’s hydraulic stomping snare drum (think The Game’s “Higher”) and carjacks the low-rider g-funk.
“The East Coast and West Coast show me a lot of love,” Black says. “I did one show this year in LA and the venue was packed with 500-600 people, and I was headlining. For me to go all the way out to the West Coast … I was shocked … I was surprised. I had a release party in New York and it was another packed show, shoulder to shoulder, and DJ Premier and Monch came through. I guess people appreciate the music I put out and they see it’s real.”
Our conversation soon turns to Black’s love for Prince, who he feels is the greatest musician of all time and if his wish were granted of having the chance to work with one artist, it would be him. He’d also love to work with Stevie Wonder, and, of course, he savors the chance of one day hitting the studio with hip-hop heavyweights such as Jay-Z, Nas and Ghostface Killah. Not only does he keep his ear to the streets, Black keeps tabs on the message boards and blogs (he’s recently been turned on to what he labels, “the hipster movement” with artists like M.I.A. and The Cool Kids, the latter he’s done a show with). He surmises that the days of the “gangster street rapper” are numbered, citing dwindling record sales from T.I. and 50 Cent, and that he’s trying to figure out how to evolve his sound to capture the pulse of today’s generation, without leaning too far nerdy or “tech head,” but not being overtly street either.
But, Black is, after all, a product of Motown. To compare the sounds of J Dilla and Black would be unfair to the both of them, both men have done so much for Detroit hip-hop in their own right. But, it does seem that Black is carrying the torch and picking up where Dilla (and Proof) left off. To which Black says he feels that they would be proud of what he’s doing. His parents are also very supportive, for the record. And so is Detroit, New York, Cali, Europe and so on. Black is the Artist Of The Year, and sure, he could run off his many achievements to let people know why he deserves the title, but he’d rather let his music do the talking. In an age when rappers like Lil’ Wanye and Kanye West constantly remind us in interviews how great they (supposedly) are, Black takes a cue from his hero: the late, great J Dilla.
“I think Dilla is the best producer of all time — period,” Black says. “The thing that really made him the best was you never heard him say he was the greatest of all time … and he coulda talked a lot of shit.” | RDW
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