Interview - Liquid

Recently I had the distinct privilege of sitting down with Liquid. Before we began the official interview process, he shared his life story with me. A kid from the bad part of Philadelphia, surrounded by drugs and all the wrong kind of people.  He will tell you, it’s amazing he’s still alive, much less living his dream. Doing what he loved, and surrounding himself with other people who were passionate about music too, opened a lot of doors for him. Eventually, he moved to Nashville to further pursue his dream. Since then, Liquid doesn’t really have to look for work, it seems to come to him.

He’s not at all what you expect from a guy with a name like “Liquid.” He may wear the clothes of a rough and tough rapper, but his speech is that of a skilled, educated and passionate poet. He immediately pulls you in with his warm smile and humble heart. Though he hangs out with the likes of Toby Mac, he remembers where he came from and is grateful for God’s plan for his life.

His tales inspired me in so many ways, as a writer, a musician and a follower of Christ.  They reveal again and again how God directs us to the right places at the right times to become who He has ordained us to be. All of that isn’t in this interview, but it is in his music. Check out his 2006 release Tales from the Badlands to hear the whole story.

Key:
L>Leah
LQ> Liquid

L> So, Liquid…tell me about this great single you’ve just released with DJ Maj. How did that come about?

LQ> Well, I’ve toured with Maj a long time, between the KJ-57 tour and everything. What happened was, I was doing a record for a guy that kind of fell through. So, I had all this music from that. So, what I did is I took the live drum track from one of the tunes and I moved it over to a new track cause I liked it. I just turned the keyboard on, and pretty soon I had like half of a tune. So, I sent it to Maj, and just told him I was giving it to him for whatever. He called me back, and through phone conversations and email we got it to a point that he really liked it. I had already written a chorus, but he wrote to it too, and it turned into this song and it’s doing really good. So, now Maj has to do a record. Ha Ha

L> So are you going to be involved with that any further?

LQ> Yeah, I’m sure. He’s working on a couple things I’ve sent him already. Probably one or two more things.

L> So, what about your own solo stuff? You released a record back in 2006 with Gotee called Tales from the Badlands, but do you have any plans to do another one?

LQ> Well, I’m working on a four song thing right now, but it’s going to be for film and TV. It will be on iTunes, but it’s going to be mostly geared towards movies and stuff like that. Will I ever do a volume two of Tales from the Badlands? I’ve been thinking about it. The only thing is I’ve got to decide if I want to do the artist thing again. I have people asking for it all the time.  God would have to send another deal to me.

L>How do you get inspiration for your beats?

LQ> I don’t know. Ha Ha It just comes sometimes. A lot of times it just comes from me sitting down and at the keyboard and playing around. A sound can inspire a line, a line a song. A drum track. It just depends. I don’t really have a method.

L> Does the beat tell you what the hook should be or the hook tell you what the beat should be?

LQ> Most of the time the beat and the music tells me the hook. “Crazy,” from my record, started with a horn line that I had been singing in the shower for months. Finally I did all the programming stuff.

L> What instruments to you play?

LQ> I play the guitar enough to write and keys. I play a little bit of drums. I can’t seriously play drums, but I don’t think I can seriously play keys either.

L> Ha Ha Well…it’s good enough..you seem to be doing alright!

LQ> Ha Ha Yeah…

L> Do you have a studio at home? Where do you record all this?

LQ> Yeah..I have a very humble studio in my house now, but I actually recorded Tales from the Badlands in the apartment I lived in at the time. I recorded everything in a walk-in closet. I didn’t have to put pads up or anything, because all my clothes padded it.

L> I love that!

LQ> It worked out pretty good. Even the horns..everything you hear was done in the closet.

L>So, songwriting for Rap and Hip-Hop breaks a lot of conventional writing rules, but the rhyme patterns and the out of the box lyrics make it super creative and impressive writing. I personally have learned a lot about songwriting from listening to your kind of music. So, what kind of music do you listen to? What do you learn from?

LQ> Well, whenever this question has come up in the past, I would say anything but country, but my wife is from Texas and she’s put me on to a lot of stuff. Rascal Flatts is pretty cool. Keith Urban, and stuff like that. I even like Patsy Cline. Obviously the Patsy stuff isn’t very modern, but I’ve been able to pick stuff up from it. I think sometimes I struggle with doing Urban music the way I want to, because I’ve got Coldplay in my head and I’m listening to Violet Hill three times a day.  What I get from Frank Sinatra is the inflections and the way he delivers. Then you listen to Rascal Flatts, and you pick up the story telling. The cool thing about country is that sometimes it’s simple, but it’s just painted so well. It’s so visible. It just sort of all mashes together like one giant pot of mashed potatoes.

L> Ha! Well I’m sure that is part of what makes you so good at what you do.

LQ> Well, it makes me fearless. Sometimes people don’t get it though. Ha Ha They’re like “where are you going?”

L>  So, what would you say to people just staring out in the industry? What’s the most important advice you can give them?

LQ> Work and don’t stop. When my grandmother gave me my first keyboard, she would have to take the plug away from me to get me to go to bed. If I wasn’t in class at school, I was doing music. I was at church finding somewhere to play. For songwriters I would say, do what I never did…read books and listen to music.  For aspiring producers…listen to records. You have to listen. It’s learning for free. If you’re a guy, stay away from girls, and if you’re a girl, stay away from boys.

L> Don’t get distracted.

LQ>Exactly. You’ve got to do it, do it , do it.  If you want to be good. If you want to do it for fun, do it a couple hours a week. If you want to be good, do it four or five hours a day. Not necessarily sitting down at one piano for five hours straight, but five minutes here, and hour there, half an hour in a room downstairs in the basement while everyone else is upstairs. It’s like a sport. If you don’t jog every day, you won’t be able to run fast. You’ve just got to do it as hard as you can. A boxer has to train before a fight. He won’t make it through the first round. Then there is no second round. Maybe you’re born great, and you can just sit back and collect the checks, but if not, you have to work at it.

L> That’s great advice!

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