Scion AV Presents "Cashe Rules," a 5-Track EP With Chase N. Cashe

Chase N. Cashe has a lot he wants to share. For reference, check out his excellent Twitter, which is updated almost constantly with all kinds of knowledge darts and truth bombs and wisdom gems. Or take a look at his discography, which, despite his relatively short career, is wildly varied and prolific, including production credits for everyone from Drake, Lil Wayne and Eminem to Flo Rida and the Pussycat Dolls, as well as several solo rap projects. Or talk to him and try to get a word in as he offers up thoughtful, wide-ranging critiques of the music industry and creative processes in general.

A New Orleans native, Chase moved to Los Angeles following Hurricane Katrina, and his career experienced a steady upward climb, taking him to New York and Atlanta, and landing him a production deal with Polow da Don's Zone 4 label alongside friend and creative partner Hit-Boy. In the years since they first began that in-house production gig, Chase and Hit-Boy's artistic collective Surf Club saw some modest success and, as things started to stagnate with the deal, each headed his own way to try out new things.

Chase has spent much of the last two years rapping, putting out projects such as Gumbeaux, The Heir Up There, Crown and the instrumental tape Verde. His production style is cinematic, often bringing together carefully composed piano lines with massive swells of Southern bass drums. His lyrics reflect his relentless desire to share, offering some of the same wisdom of his tweets while also finding time to brag about things like the thread count on his sheets. He turns up, but thoughtfully.

Today, Scion AV presents Cashe Rules, a collaborative project with Chase N. Cashe that finds his sound becoming even more refined. The 5-track EP features appearances from Casey Veggies and Smoke DZA. They're gearing up to release the video for "Me and Mine" later this month but for now, we've got the premiere of the full project streaming below.

In the past, Scion AV Presents series has released Harry Fraud's High Tide, ILL Clinton's The ILL Experiment, and Danny Brown & Co.'s Bruiser Brigade. You can check out all of this at the Rap Archives on Scion AV's site right now.

We caught up with Chase on the phone as he was headed home from Art Basel in Miami to talk about why his Twitter and his music are equally important, how artists can carve out an independent career path and why rappers should be very afraid of the next “Gangnam Style.”

You're generally better known as a producer. What prompted you to branch out into rapping?
I was always rapping. I wasn't the nicest rapper ever at the time, but I had been rapping since I was 13 years old. I wanted to rap as a kid. It was something inside of me that said I want to pursue rap right now because I had hit a stagnant point as a producer, and I had hit a stagnant point being signed to Zone 4 when Polow's career just started taking a change. Not for the better or the worse, but he just started gaining success, which meant me and Hit-Boy's role as producers over there started changing. We knew what we wanted to do. We just didn't tell everyone what we wanted to do. How can you tell people you want to rap if they want you to produce hits for them?

It was all timing. It wasn't like 'I'm seeing everyone else do this so I want to do it.' My main inspiration is Pharrell Williams, I wanted to rap as soon as I seen the “Lapdance” video. And even Mannie Fresh. I knew Mannie Fresh for rapping and making beats. And Pimp C for rapping and making beats. And DJ Quik for rapping and making beats. And Dr. Dre. So I didn't really know what it was to be a producer-rapper. That didn't make sense to me. It was just an artist or a person who made music.

Do you feel like you've been pigeonholed as an artist at all then?
Yeah, completely. I don't think it's on my behalf. I think it's on peoples' musical tastes. I can't think of anyone from the South that had an easy road to success. We all choose a different path. It was evidence in my life to see Cash Money and No Limit do what they did, and other Southern rap labels—Rap-A-Lot, Suave House, Swishahouse… even LaFace to a degree was a complete Southern record label. I had all these things in front of me that gave me the confidence to do what I'm doing right now. I see how everyone likes Max B and Pimp C and Lil Boosie more than ever. These are people I grew up on, and I used to get made fun of listening to. I remember my cousin putting me onto Lil Boosie and telling me Lil Boosie was better than Lil Wayne back in the day. All this shit on the Internet don't move me. I'm only moved by what I witness in real life.

I don't ever feel pigeonholed because everywhere I move in real life people take to me and people fuck with me. When I moved to Los Angeles, I didn't have people telling me I was wack. I didn't have people telling me I couldn't rap. People were just waiting on me to do what I wanted to do. Everyone knew I was independent. Everyone knew I wasn't going around searching for a deal. Ever since I left Zone 4 it's either been Surf Club or Chase N Cashe. It's only certain people I'm going to pin myself with, whether it be Hit-Boy or Drake, even the Troy Ave shit—people think our bond is new, but I've been knowing this guy since the first South by Southwest when we performed on the same bill and no one was fucking with us except each other. Pigeonholed don't exist to me, haters don't exist to me, being slept on don't exist to me because I've been blessed to do shows. I've been blessed to tour with Drake and Kendrick Lamar and A$AP Rocky and perform in front of tens. Kendrick Lamar just brought me out in my home town to perform in front of 7,000 people at the Yeezus tour is. So I don't know what pigeonholed is.

One thing you touched on and that seems to be an overarching point of yours is that there are lots of independent routes for artists now. How do you see some of the new opportunities for artists working?
The transparency that is available now for an average fan to wake up in the morning and for their favorite artist or their second favorite artist look up their history, that wasn't around before. You can be in tune with Rick Ross's album rollout and his history at the same time, if you're willing to do it. The internet doesn't provide a connection. It just provides a source. And us as artists have to understand we're the connection. I understand I'm the connection, and I understand this because I have more of a Twitter following than I have a following for my music. And the weirdest thing is: Everything I speak on on Twitter, I speak on in my music. But it's easier for [people] to get to my Twitter account than it is for them to get to my music. Maybe because I'm charging them? Because I'm going through iTunes? I've really been knowing that Twitter is going to connect the dots to my music.

I just want to be the source of what I'm saying. I don't want people to take what I'm saying and go look on TV for it because you're really going to be confused. [Or] instead of me being on RapRadar where it's just a bunch of posts being accumulated with no segue, with no source, with no median telling you where it's coming from. I mention all the time who my inspiration is. It's Pharrell! And I think once I start saying that more in interviews, they're going to press it up and let it be known: Everything this man has been doing has been motivating me since I was 15 years old, and he's continuing to push the bar. It has opened lanes for me. I don't think people understand that because I'm not attached to anything. If you look at Pharrell, he's not attached to anything. He continues to do artistic things, to do creative things and be attached to the KAWS and the Jeff Koons and the Nicos and the Takashi Murakamis of the world.

I call myself the Wave God, not trying to be like Max B but because I'm the source of many different waves and many different energies. I'm into art just as much as I'm into music, and I'm into jazz music just as much as I'm into hip-hop. Rap and hip-hop has had an isolation process go down where we're not using the tools and the instruments that made the music and involving everyone. It's like rappers and fucking DJs and bloggers now. It ain't rappers and drummers and keyboardists and horn players. Without the information to connect the dots, it's really going to be like a competition for no reason. I think that's what happens when Kendrick drops a “Control” verse and people try to get competitive instead of raising the bar on their creativity. And I blame the middlemen for that. I don't blame us for that. And I'm here to be bold enough to speak about all these blogs, to speak about all these artists, to speak about even myself.

You're saying hip-hop needs to be more open-minded?
That's my exact message. I think a lot of these rappers choose to be naïve because they're scared they'll lose their power. They're scared to speak up on something. Once you speak up on something, you've kind of got to keep doing it. What I'm going for is not a fear tactic. I continue to see Jay Z learn about himself and do new things. I listened to the Magna Carta album, and he's talking about smoking hookah with his fellowship in Morocco. I'm Moroccan, bro! I can relate to that. I'm not scared to wear Air Force 1s and at the same time tell people to raise their mentality. I think we're taking lightly the effect of when we see these videos of “Gangnam Style” or these artists from South Africa, not taking shit seriously when we know that these people are really taking this music seriously. And one day they're gonna have a Jay Z. One day they're gonna pop out a Drake. One day they're gonna pop out a Kanye West because guess what they're doing that we're not doing? Taking this shit seriously and pushing the envelope and putting a unique twist to it. People look to us as the leaders of this shit. I've been out of the country and seen how people look at us as rappers. We can sit here and think we're going to wear all these chains and this and that? Nah, man.

When Kendrick Lamar goes outside this country, you see what happens with his shows. Bitches is packed out, people throwing their arms in the air. Same thing with Odd Future. 80,000 in Monaco, 80,000 over here at an Earl and Tyler show. Because the message is different. People look at Odd Future like them kids weird, and they don't sell no records in America. They don't have to. Because Americans all think the same way. Americans ain't trying to rebel, ain't trying to open up their brains. The exact thing that Tyler's talking about and Earl is talking about and Kendrick is talking about. I get it because I've traveled and I've worked with all of these kids. I remember Tyler skating down Fairfax way before, when niggas was in 4chan chats…

The imbalance right now in hip-hop is why we have these things where you go online and they're battling between French Montana being a rookie, Troy Ave being a rookie or Chance the Rapper being a rookie. Let rap be rap. It's too broad to be confined. That's what the blogs are doing because they're putting Macklemore, Chance the Rapper and Troy Ave on the same page knowing damn well they don't make the same music but, since they need something to talk about, they're throwing all this confusion in the air. It should just be a platform for dope music. If the music ain't dope, don't post it.

What makes my music different? What makes my music mine? What makes my music unique, if it's just posted on a website? Or just posted here like that? There's nothing unique about that. So that's where the independent grind I have, and me doing these shows, and me feeling the way I feel about, that's what moves me. What moves me is having a natural, avant-garde, organic following.

What's the relationship between you and Hit-Boy these days? What's the situation with Surf Club?
I just think we're at the point where we're all individually doing our own shit. The wild thing about Surf Club [is] a lot of people I think might have thought we were older than we were, might have thought we were into more than we were. It was really me and Hit-Boy manning a lot of stuff. The only thing we could do to get a name for ourselves was to venture out on our own because everyone thought we were signed to Polow and Polow just got a bad stigma, people didn't want to fuck with him or anything that was Zone 4. It wasn't like there was any clarity on the relationship in Surf Club and Zone 4, so I chose to rap. And as I chose to rap, Hit-Boy chose to respect it. He decided to go work with G.O.O.D. Music and work on the album. It's just a genuine respect. I mean, we did some shit. We got an Oscar nomination in the process, for this Disney movie we did with Beyonce called Epic.

We ran into a point where me and him started looking at each other for change and growth as men, and we wasn't men. We couldn't help each other grow. We were around each other every day. Even being signed to Zone 4, me and Hit-Boy were our own support system because we were always on some different shit and always pushing the bar. And we didn't know what it was to be corporate. All we had in our hearts was making the dopest music. And it stuck with me to this day, so that was the coolest thing about it.

Is there anything you want people to know about this project?
I would just like everyone who wants to hear more, who's in search of a message, to know that I've got it for you. Go pick up all of my projects: Gumbeaux, The Heir Up There, Charm, Verde, Ca$he Rules. Just listen. I'm an acquired taste, so if you're looking for something good, something forward-thinking, I got it.

Kyle Kramer is on Twitter. Follow him - @kylekramer