Go at www.playahata.com and read all that you can, that’s what I do and I’m really satisfied about it. Now ch-ch-check it out how Technique rocks the house. Enjoy and learn from it !

Playahata.com: You’ve been tearing up the underground scene for a little while now, but when did you first fall in love with hip-hop? And when did you decide to start taking it seriously?

Immortal Technique: When did I fall in love with Hip-Hop? This ain’t Brown Sugar muthafucka…I couldn’t get a job when I got out of jail, no one wanted to hire an ex-con with a multiple assault cases and so I found some temporary shit here and there when I was trying to go back to school. I started winning all the MC battles I was in, some of my peeps at hookt.com and at Rocksteady looked out by putting an unknown ni&&a in there and it got me some notoriety in the Underground for ripping kids up. But I was still broke, like the 8mile movie, so what I won a battle…I still gotta take the A train home to the same life. Not that I was living in a shack, I was paroled to my moms crib so it was cool living in my old neighborhood. I took it seriously the minute I got out the joint, just because I had been writing a lot and I wanted to speak on some issues that had been floating around in my head for the past year.

Playahata.com: Growing up was there any person, artist or otherwise, in hip-hop that inspired you to want to be an artist? Who were your influences?

Technique: I never wanted to be anybody but me. But I must say that I have been influenced by the people from history that although they cannot help us now they can teach us how to begin to understand the different stages of the struggle that we are involved in. Jose Carlos Mariategui, WEB Dubois, Malcolm X, Che Guevara, Augusto Sandino, Francois Tossaint, Harriet Tubman, Marcus Garvey, Zapata and many others.

Playahata.com: You released two albums pretty much independently, Revolutionary Vol. I and Revolutionary Vol. II. How did you go about getting your music out there and what were the reasons you decided to go the independent route?

Technique: I release Vol.1 in 2001 a few weeks before 9/11 nigga, and Vol.2 was officially release in Nov. 2003. But I had been selling it since August 2003. I moved about 13,000 myself and I gave 10,000 to Caroline which they distributed for me. I would always travel and put my shit out there wherever I went, at first it was me battling and then selling CD’s after the battle. Or doing shows, or going to other peoples shows to hustle my CD’s to the people on-line outside. I got some labels interested now and then but they could never offer me as much money as I started making and I liked being with the people and not acting all high and fuckin’ mighty cuz I had a deal. Being a signed artist has really become a double edged sword I remember when niggaz used to brag about being signed, now I’m laughing cuz where the fuck are they at. They’ve been on the shelf since that day. Maybe if their lucky they get one single on the radio, but unless that sells 6,000,000 it’s a rap.

Playahata.com: On the album you talk a lot about the shadiness of the music industry. I think everybody is beginning to realize how full of snakes and thieves the major labels are but you direct some venom at some of the independents and underground promoters also. What has your experience dealing with the underground been like on the business side and have you found it to be as treacherous as on some of the large labels? And how did you hook up with Viper Records?

Technique: Everybody wants something for free. It doesn’t matter what the fuck you rhyme about, you could rhyme about your jewels, ho’s money, cars, gangsta shit, Revolutionary rhymes, abstract backpack shit, or just rhyme about nothing…The label will still treat you the same way. They are not gonna give you any publishing, and they are not gonna give you control of your masters or any real control of the marketing budget. Independents aren’t quite the same but I can’t take the average independent deal of 50/50 I can’t give anyone 50% of an album that I killed myself to make when I’m doing all the work, pressing it up, I have my own studio and I get my own beats. The fuck did you do? Press it up, get me press? Get me shows, I get all that by myself, I work with people that do things that I can’t do..I don’t pay niggaz to tie my shoes. I hooked up with Viper because they didn’t have a Hip Hop dept. but they had money to match with my own. They believed in me, I met with the president through an old friend of mine and we worked on a deal to make some serious paper and attack the fat formula driven industry with some hardcore Revolutionary street Hip Hop.

Playahata.com: Have you had offers from major labels like say a Universal or Columbia? And could you see yourself signing with one a label like one of those in the future?

Technique: I’ve had several offers from major labels but to be honest as much of an advance as they offer me they never like it when I talk about the details of the term agreements. It’s almost as if they get mad when I speak intelligently about business, they think just cuz I’m from the hood that I don’t know the industry. It’s not that I couldn’t see myself on one of those labels it’s just that I just sold about 23,000 of Vol.2 I have a freedom of doing whatever the fuck in want to, I have no constraints and I make the music I want to, about my people and I live in the hood and get respect for being me, for being real and not tryna say I’m a player or a fuckin’ gambino..Or some nonsense. If I were to ever be on a major it would have to be on my terms, I control me, I’m not someone that you can talk to however…

Playahata.com: The artwork on the album insert for both albums is really provocative, but particularly for Revolutionary Vol.2. You got the whole cabinet and Osama catching hot ones? Are you at all worried about government surveillance or persecution? I hear the State Department paid Eminem a visit over a song he recorded a while back where he said something about Bush, and I wouldn’t really consider Eminem a politically threatening rapper or necessarily an opponent of the current administration.

Technique: I don’t think they take me as seriously as someone with Eminem’s sphere of influence, I only made a few songs and sold a total of about 32,000 records along with Vol.1 so why the fuck would they care about me? Now Em moves 8 million each time he drops an album that’s why they are more concerned with what he says.

Playahata.com: On Revolutionary Vol. 2, you talk about how at one point you were caught up in the church but that seems to be in the past now. What fostered your split, not necessarily with? God?, but with the church?

Technique: I was never “caught up in the church” I wasn’t a fuckin’ alter boy ni&&a. My Mom just made me go to church as a kid until I got to be about 12 and I could just opt to stop going. I started reading and learning about what the history of religion especially Catholicism was, and in particular how it has been used to conquer and destroy my people. Not just on a colonial level of physical rule but also a way of replacing their native culture, (that of Latinos and Blacks) and replacing it with a belief in a white God that deemed all who didn’t agree with rich white people on earth savages. I have a strong believe in God but I have no reason to trust a church that can’t even take a serious stance on the actions of it’s priests. That can’t open up secret record that the pope has about it’s financial investments and it’s history during the holocaust and involvement in sponsoring Latin American dictators via the CIA. That has nothing to do with Jesus or his message, and that has nothing to do with love or God.

Playahata.com: If you listen to rap nowadays, cats talk about jail bragging like it’s someplace people want to be, like it’s the Hamptons. You got some of the most popular rappers in the game, trying to exaggerate how much time they spent behind bars if they spent any time at all. I understand you spent some time in prison, although you definitely don’t seem to be patting yourself on the back about it. What were the circumstances that lead to your incarceration and how much of a life changing experience was it?

Technique: Aight man, I’m gonna be real. I had multiple assault cases pending because I was just immature. I didn’t like to argue, I just felt like if you disrespected me in front of me it was a direct challenge and I had to fuck you up. I took this attitude with me from the streets to college. I was caught up in some shit where I thought a guy made some racial remarks to me and me and my peeps confronted him and the people with him. The situation was out of hand and he ended up getting his jaw broken in a few places, he lost some teeth and was out for the night lying in a crimson puddle. My life changed, I was arrested, I was suspended from school and I had to look at my family through a thick glass window. I saw my mother cry in front of me cuz she couldn’t reach me. I saw people forget about me, and I saw the world change and it seemed their was nothing I could do about it. Being in prison made me feel powerless, like a slave. Especially when they threw me in the hole. I fought a few times, and I read a lot and worked out a lot, but being in prison definitely hurts your pride as a man. Living in a cage and being a slave does that to people whether you know it or not, being aware of that is the first step to overcoming it.

Playahata.com: Tell us how you managed to get the internationally known activist, essayist, and political prisoner, and Death Row inmate, Mumia Abu-Jamal on your album?

Technique: Mumia heard about me through one of my peoples a brother by the name of Mario Africa from MOVE. I had done something for the AWOL magazine compilation and he let Mumia hear it, he said he was impressed. So when I approached him about doing a speech about homeland security he said he was down. I figured since Tom Ridge was the director of homeland security and had signed Mumia’s death warrant twice (even after Arnold Beverly confessed to the murder corroborated the corners report and the ballistics evidence and the witnesses said the police made them lie) he would want to speak on that. It was definitely an honor to work with that man, a person who embodies the spirit of the struggle. Much respect.

Playahata.com: On Revolutionary Vol. 2 you’re really getting at the Military Industrial Complex and Current Administration and their complicity in September 11th. On “The Cause of Death” you break down the whole situation citing specific events and the whole 9-yards but you know people are still going to try and classify you as a “conspiracy theorist”. What do you say to them?

Technique: I think that anyone who calls me a conspiracy theorist just is trying to marginalize the audience that listens to the music I make. The CIA really did give Al-Queda billions of dollars in the late 80’s, and the early 90’s. The Taliban were trained by Israeli agents, Halliburton built a pipeline to get natural gas that it couldn’t have done if the Taliban was in power. The president is really trying to revoke abortion and frees speech. What is so conspiracy theory about that? I invite people to disagree with my views but look up the historical facts for yourself son.

Playahata.com: Do you align yourself with any particular political party?

Technique: For this election I’m going to vote Democrat, but that will only be to make sure that George Bush isn’t elected again. But in general, no.

Playahata.com: What rappers have been very supportive of you and do you have projects to work with musically?

Technique: I’m not gonna sit here and give you a list of every MC that has ever given me props, but I would say a wide variety of people have felt what I talk about. The way that we take what goes on in the hood and relate it to what goes on in the rest of the world. Everyone from Jam Master Jay (RIP) to some of your most notorious record label presidents…Does it really matter? No, because props don’t matter, I’m not hear to lose focus and drown in self glorification, this is bigger than I could ever be.

Playahata.com: What should we expect from you in the future and any closing words for our audience?

Technique: Revolutionary Vol.3 and maybe a project between 2 and 3. But yeah…get ready muthafucka…Harlem !!?!?!