by Hazard (courtesy Planet Urban, www.planeturban.com.au)

Holding court both on the mainstream charts and the independent scene, Auckland native P-Money has become one of the most sought after beatsmiths in the music game, since his sudden ascension to stardom in 2003, alongside Scribe.

Not one to stick to the same tired formula until it well and truly wears out it’s welcome, New Zealand’s finest producer has thrown listeners yet another musical curveball with his new single Angels, exploring an unchartered terrirtory with his fresh gospel-meets-dance, by way of psychedelia, musical style.

With new projects in the works with longtime collaborators PNC and David Dallas, in addition to newcomer Vince Harder, and an unexpected feature film debut on the way, P-Money had plenty to catch his fans up on when he recently spoke with Planet Urban.

Sounds like you’ve been real busy as of late, so let’s get into it. First of all, what projects have you been working on recently?

Currently man, I’ve got a few different songs in the works. My approach is pretty much, just knocking out several tracks at the moment. I’m not so much worried about doing an entire album at once, I’m kinda doing it one step at a time. I’ve got songs in the pipeline with local artist PNC, more stuff from Vince Harder, and another guy, David Dallas [Ed. Note: formerly Con-Psy of Frontline], that I’ve worked with a fair bit. That’s what’s happening.

How is Dirty Records going, what releases do you guys have coming up?

Yeah, there’s a fair bit on there as well. PNC as I mentioned, he’s mixing down his album at the moment, it’ll be his second album. And that’s actually going to get an Australian release, because the first one [Rookie Card] got released in Australia but didn’t really get any promo or marketing behind it. This one should be a little more of a push for him, so that’ll be nice. There’s Dave’s (Dallas’) one that I mentioned before. Vince (Harder) has some singles coming out. We’re also working with Tiki (Taane) on his release for Australia also.

Sounds good. I actually really enjoyed the PNC album and I noticed there wasn’t a whole lot of press for it.

Yeah, unfortunately it didn’t get the support from our partners over there [in Australia] that we were anticipating or expecting. So we created a new situation for him now, for his future releases. So it should be a lot better, so hopefully the public and a lot more of you will get to hear more of him, so he gets the promo he deserves.

For sure. Last time we talked to you, one of our interviewers asked you how your life had changed and he said you must be living like Dr. Dre. How has life changed for you?

I wasn’t living like Dre back then and I doubt that I am now (laughs). I am extremely happy with where I’m at career-wise and just my lifestyle and everything. I’m enjoying making music at the moment, really digging everything I’m making, and having fun playing a lot of shows. It’s always good for me, the busier I am live the more excited I am to get back in the studio, because I feel as though I’m on the road too much and I want to go back to the studio. It kind of just creates that feeling of being excited when I finally get to work on beats. I’m excited, rather than sitting at home getting bored kinda not wanting to do it so much.

You first gained your name as a DJ, being very succesful at DJ comps and battles, what is the transition like going from being a DJ to being a producer?

I think I did it quite abruptly. Around 2001, I was probably in my fourth year of battling seriously, like every year I put so much time into my routine and I won the New Zealand champs three years in a row. In 2001 I went into the DMCs, but my heart was actually still here at home, I wanted to be in the studio working on my first album, which I had just started. So I was kinda torn, like trying to achieve stuff on the world stage but I want to do this music thing. So I when I came home, I kind of put the practice and battling preparation to the side and just got stuck into making my first album, which was Big Things. And it became quite a success for me here in New Zealand and got the ball rolling. The next thing I did was Scribe’s album [The Crusader], and from there I guess it’s kind of history at this stage. I focused on production more so than competitive DJing. Not to say that I don’t DJ, I still DJ frequently, pretty much every weekend, but not so much in the competitions.

Angels is considerably different from your previous work, what inspired it and what sort of sound were you going for?

Yeah man, I was just having some fun, I was even using the same process I always use as far as making beats, but the end result was quite different. I was digging through some records and found a couple of different pieces that I like the sound of and that was the basis for the track. Then I put some drums on there and then I was like “you know what I want to make this sound like?” I was really inspired by the group J.U.S.T.I.C.E. and I really like what they were doing.

They were making kind of hardcore dance music, it’s almost like too hardcore to even dance to (laughs). But I liked it, it was aggressive and I thought “why not?! Lets see if I can do something in a similar vein but flipping it a little differently.” And the track just evolved from that really. I was just having some fun and trying my hand at something different, which has really been my philosophy for the last 12 to 18 months. To shed any kind of… you know sometimes you might feel obligated to stick to something, because people only know you for one thing. Sometimes you might experiment and you’ll be scared, like people won’t like it if I do something different, because you get comfortable doing the same thing. But I felt that I needed that challenge and I wanted to surprise people, and see what they think. So far people like it, so I’m doing alright.

It’s funny because Hip Hop really seems to be embracing electronic music at the moment, to varying degrees of success, but a lot of people seem to be embracing it at the moment and marrying them together.

I agree with that totally, and I see a lot and some examples are better than others. I think sometimes it’s funny when you hear people trying to do something that’s kind of dance influenced and kind of missing the mark, like majorly. I’m quite a fan of late 90s house music, so I think I reference that a lot more and it suits my style I guess. It’s not that big of a stretch for me really.

Yeah, it’s kind of like when Hip Hop was embracing rock. Some of it worked, like Run-DMC and Aerosmith, but then again some of them didn’t work. Then you had the whole ‘nu-metal’ movement, so I guess it’s kind of a mixed bag.

Yeah, it’s always fun. Its part of the nature of Hip Hop as well, it feeds off other genres of music by the nature of it, with sampling and everything. So you can take influences from everywhere and put it out in a Hip Hop context. I think with what I’m doing, it’s almost like going to the other level where you start off sampling something or taking inspiration from something to create Hip Hop, and then I’ve kind of gotten to the point of actually making that music. Like going back to the source material and actually making a dance tune, rather than making a rap song that samples a dance tune. I’ve gone the other way.

Speaking of Angels, you will be starring in the film of the same name, how did that come about and what can people expect from it?

Well actually, that’s pretty funny. What we’ve got is a movie trailer for a film that hasn’t been completed yet (laughs). I had this idea where I wanted visuals to accompany the song and I wanted them to be kind of scary and I spoke to a director friend of mine (Greg Paige). And I told him my ideas, and he turned it into this concept of doing a movie trailer and we’re going to expand it into a film, he’s writing a script at the moment. That’s what it is.

With a lot of films these days the trailer ends up being stronger than the film, so it’s funny that a film is born out of trailer.

Yeah, so we’ll see man. It’s just an idea that’s evolved and hopefully when people see the trailer they will accept it and appreciate it as something novel and different in the forum of music videos. Is it a music video, or is it a trailer or is it a film? Hopefully we’ll achieve our goal.

What was the period of time like for you when you had songs in the charts that were getting international attention?

that was really fun man. It all happened so fast, me and Scribe had been working together for two to three years prior to all that success. We knew we were making good music and we were excited about it, and once we put it out then the whole country here in New Zealand go excited about our music. And it just propelled him [Scribe] to this superstar status almost overnight. It was quite bizarre and I think it was a lot to bear to be honest, from being an anonymous guy in Christchurch to one of the most recognisable faces in the country.

For me, I got about 60 to 70% of that fame side of it, so I didn’t have to deal with all of it, but it still changed my life in a lot of ways. Some for the better and some were lessons and challenges I had to learn. It could have gone to the worst, but I think I went through it well enough. It basically established me and him as top musicians in the country, internationally recognised by people from different parts of the world. It opened a few doors, and energised us to want to continue and live up to the reputation, I guess. It’s something we both learned fairly well.

As you said, you became so big overnight. But all of you guys just seem like regular guys really, you’re not like a media creation, you were doing your thing for a long time.

Thanks man. That’s exactly what it is and I’m glad that comes across. Because we never really wanted to be anything other than that and never pretended to be either. We just present ourselves the way we are and do the music. we’re just having so much fun with it and are enjoying the fact that so many other people are enjoying it and come to the shows. It something that you could never really fathom, crazy!

I was doing a bit of research on New Zealand Hip Hop the other day. Do you remember a track called Hip Hop Holiday, by a group called 3 The Hard Way?

Oh yeah, I know it very well. That was like the first… well I don’t know if it was the first, but it was one of the first New Zealand rap number ones. It may not have been the first but it definitely had a lot of impact. It seemed like they were cooler at the time, they had the style down with what else was happening. Growing up, we looked up to those guys.

Last year there was a bit of a controversy when a local group, the Killer Beez, launched a record label, called Colourway Records, and they dissed some of the Dawn Raid artists. What exactly happened with that situation and have you seen the gang element come into play at all in the local scene or is it business as usual?

Business is continuing as normal, that’s definitely for sure. That’s a particularly tricky situation for me to comment on, because I don’t know what actually transpired between both those camps, as far as Dawn Raid and the Colourway guys. All I do know is that Killer Beez is a street gang and they did start a record label, and they got a lot of publicity in a short space of time, for making moves into music or whatever. And then the next thing I heard was that a lot of those key guys got arrested, and that was also on the TV news over here. It was front page news, that the main dudes from the gang got arrested for illegal stuff or whatever they were doing. And things have gone a little quiet from that camp, presumably as a result of most of them being locked up.

Do you keep in contact with Savage, how’s he going in the U.S.?

Yeah I saw him probably just before Christmas, and I speak with Andy from Dawn Raid quite a bit, he’s like one of the co-founders, he manages Savage. Things seem to be going really really well for them. Like 1.5 million copies of the Swing single have been sold, like digital downloads in the U.S. Which is just phenomenal, the highest-selling New Zealand single, outside of New Zealand ever! They’ve got tons of opportunities to travel, do shows and try to establish it as something even bigger for Savage, and establish a career for him in the U.S., and I wish him all the best. He seemed to be very happy with all the things he’s experiencing, but still missing home a lot.

It sounds like such an amazing opportunity.

Yeah, it’s amazing man. It blew me away to be honest, like I never would have guessed in a million years that it would have happened. But it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy, he’s genuinely one of the nicest people that I’ve ever met period.

As we said before, you started as a DJ. What tracks are the definite musts when you are doing a set, what songs always get the crowd moving?

Oh man, the thing is it depends what style you’re playing. Hip Hop-wise I would keep a little playlist of the mid 90s classic Hip Hop joints. You can’t really go past Shook Ones by Mobb Deep. Ante Up by M.O.P. You know, Simon Says by Pharoahe Monch, those kind of tracks. It’s very rare that I don’t pull those out, because they still seem to work, even though some of them are coming up on 12 years old now, or maybe older. But yeah, it depends on your style, if you’re a DJ it’s on you to know as much about music as you can and play all the cool records man.

Finally, what advice do you have for the up and coming artists out there, especially those that have been inspired by you and your success?

Be true to yourself and do your best to not sound like whoever else it out there. That’s one of the hardest things to do, especially when you’re young and starting out, because the immediate first thing you might do is imitate your favourite artist or producer. You aspire to be like them so you start to copy what they do. And that’s okay, that’s part of learning to make music.

But when it comes round the time you want to release your own stuff just make sure that it represents you and is original, and doesn’t sound like a copy of someone else. Because by doing that you’re helping yourself, because there’s already a Timbaland and a Pharrell and there’s already a Kanye West, so you need to sound like you. No one else is you, you’re the only person that can make that original sound for yourself. That’s really the best advice I can give. For artists to find their own voice and use their own sound.

The new single Angels is out now through Dirty Records. Looks for the Angels feature film to drop soon.