Post by Adam B on Jul 19, 2005 10:45:52 GMT -5
Insanate Interview
by Adam Bernard
Last year Danger Mouse rose to the top of everybody’s hot list when he combined Jay-Z’s The Black Album with The Beatles The White Album to create The Gray Album. Considered a conceptual masterpiece, the album became an instant classic. This year there is another extremely distinct album that takes the idea of the conceptual album one step further; Insanate’s Production 9401.
Production 9401, released earlier this year on UVInk, is a lyrical remake of the movie Psycho, which was named Production 9401 before it became Psycho, and is something Insanate feels could only have been done through Hip-Hop. “With Hip-Hop music in general, and what I liked about it, that was different from every genre, is that on a Hip-Hop album they can do a lot of stuff that shows they're really lyricists. With subject matter alone, Hip-Hop is one of the only genres where you can talk about anything as long as it’s done in a clever way or a personal way.”
Originally Insanate, who was born and raised in P.G. County, Maryland and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, was just looking to make his debut album cohesive as he explains “I knew when I had the idea for the album I knew it was going to be a story to some degree but I didn’t know how much. However I figured out how to freak the story around it I would have to put every song I planned for the album in it.” He continued, adding “I had never planned the album, or thought about the album before as an audio remake to Psycho but all that just fell into place.” A few songs into recording he noticed “I can freak my story around this.”
The Pyscho concept wasn’t the furthest of stretches for a man named Insanate, in fact, he notes “I already knew what the album was going to be called, cuz the name Gnorman Insanate Bates. I wanted to do an album called The Bates Motel.” Insanate thought The Bates Motel might have a lot of connotations and expectations attached to it, however, especially for a debut album, so he decided “for the first album I couldn't call it that, but I knew about Production 9401. So before I make The Bates Motel there would be Production 9401.”
The album features Insanate answering a psychiatrist’s questions in the form of a patient getting interviewed for his possible release from an insane asylum. He says of the idea “that seemed like genius without pushing it too far and people won’t get it.” His main problem isn’t people not getting it, but rather people taking it too literally. Insanate has had more than a few concerned people ask him if Production 9401 is based on personal experience. “People ask me that more often than I thought they would,” he explains “a girl asked me that and I was like wow you are not going out with me.” Guess that’s the one drawback from calling yourself Insanate, though he notes “I’m as approachable as I think anyone on the planet is.”
Insanate came up with his name a few years after he started rapping. Though he felt the itch to rhyme in the ninth grade it wasn’t until his junior year in high school that he became Insanate. “I was a big Grave Diggaz fan back then and this chick broke my heart so I just told myself I was gonna just start rapping this whole bunch of crazy stuff from now on and just be out there. And Insanate sounds pretty cool, it’s a pronoun so it sounds like a name.” Eventually, however, rappers all started using aliases. “I didn’t want an alias,” he remembers “but if I don’t have an alias what I’ma be called?” The search was on. “Insanate, what would go well with Insanate? I’ll make Insanate my middle name. Freddy Insanate Krueger? No that doesn’t sound right. I wanted something that sounded like a real name. Gnormen Baites, that sounds real! In the movie, in the simplest form he’s a guy that loves his mother.” Suddenly Gnormen “Insanate” Baites was born and Insanate had created a longer name so his actual moniker, Insanate, became his alias.
While Insanate’s Production 9401 is a concept album, and he hopes he has an influence on the hip-hop community he doesn’t want the idea of a concept album to become a fad. “I don’t have a problem necessarily with seeing more and more doin it,” he explains “but if it gets to the point where it’s like hip-hop videos that are taken from movies then you weren’t just thinking to do it you did it because it was acceptable to do it and other people are doing it.”
Even if people don’t grasp the idea of a lyrical remake to Psycho Insanate notes he has another goal for his work. “I want people to be like ‘wow man that was really really just personal, he put it out there. He had the guts to come completely from left field and make it work and he can spit like crazy.’ A lot of times people will put you in one category like ‘oh he does a lot of cool conceptual songs,’ but I want people to be like ‘he can spit!’”
by Adam Bernard
Last year Danger Mouse rose to the top of everybody’s hot list when he combined Jay-Z’s The Black Album with The Beatles The White Album to create The Gray Album. Considered a conceptual masterpiece, the album became an instant classic. This year there is another extremely distinct album that takes the idea of the conceptual album one step further; Insanate’s Production 9401.
Production 9401, released earlier this year on UVInk, is a lyrical remake of the movie Psycho, which was named Production 9401 before it became Psycho, and is something Insanate feels could only have been done through Hip-Hop. “With Hip-Hop music in general, and what I liked about it, that was different from every genre, is that on a Hip-Hop album they can do a lot of stuff that shows they're really lyricists. With subject matter alone, Hip-Hop is one of the only genres where you can talk about anything as long as it’s done in a clever way or a personal way.”
Originally Insanate, who was born and raised in P.G. County, Maryland and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, was just looking to make his debut album cohesive as he explains “I knew when I had the idea for the album I knew it was going to be a story to some degree but I didn’t know how much. However I figured out how to freak the story around it I would have to put every song I planned for the album in it.” He continued, adding “I had never planned the album, or thought about the album before as an audio remake to Psycho but all that just fell into place.” A few songs into recording he noticed “I can freak my story around this.”
The Pyscho concept wasn’t the furthest of stretches for a man named Insanate, in fact, he notes “I already knew what the album was going to be called, cuz the name Gnorman Insanate Bates. I wanted to do an album called The Bates Motel.” Insanate thought The Bates Motel might have a lot of connotations and expectations attached to it, however, especially for a debut album, so he decided “for the first album I couldn't call it that, but I knew about Production 9401. So before I make The Bates Motel there would be Production 9401.”
The album features Insanate answering a psychiatrist’s questions in the form of a patient getting interviewed for his possible release from an insane asylum. He says of the idea “that seemed like genius without pushing it too far and people won’t get it.” His main problem isn’t people not getting it, but rather people taking it too literally. Insanate has had more than a few concerned people ask him if Production 9401 is based on personal experience. “People ask me that more often than I thought they would,” he explains “a girl asked me that and I was like wow you are not going out with me.” Guess that’s the one drawback from calling yourself Insanate, though he notes “I’m as approachable as I think anyone on the planet is.”
Insanate came up with his name a few years after he started rapping. Though he felt the itch to rhyme in the ninth grade it wasn’t until his junior year in high school that he became Insanate. “I was a big Grave Diggaz fan back then and this chick broke my heart so I just told myself I was gonna just start rapping this whole bunch of crazy stuff from now on and just be out there. And Insanate sounds pretty cool, it’s a pronoun so it sounds like a name.” Eventually, however, rappers all started using aliases. “I didn’t want an alias,” he remembers “but if I don’t have an alias what I’ma be called?” The search was on. “Insanate, what would go well with Insanate? I’ll make Insanate my middle name. Freddy Insanate Krueger? No that doesn’t sound right. I wanted something that sounded like a real name. Gnormen Baites, that sounds real! In the movie, in the simplest form he’s a guy that loves his mother.” Suddenly Gnormen “Insanate” Baites was born and Insanate had created a longer name so his actual moniker, Insanate, became his alias.
While Insanate’s Production 9401 is a concept album, and he hopes he has an influence on the hip-hop community he doesn’t want the idea of a concept album to become a fad. “I don’t have a problem necessarily with seeing more and more doin it,” he explains “but if it gets to the point where it’s like hip-hop videos that are taken from movies then you weren’t just thinking to do it you did it because it was acceptable to do it and other people are doing it.”
Even if people don’t grasp the idea of a lyrical remake to Psycho Insanate notes he has another goal for his work. “I want people to be like ‘wow man that was really really just personal, he put it out there. He had the guts to come completely from left field and make it work and he can spit like crazy.’ A lot of times people will put you in one category like ‘oh he does a lot of cool conceptual songs,’ but I want people to be like ‘he can spit!’”