CunninLynguists’ Deacon The Villain speaks to Groundup about the Kentucky group’s new album Dirty Acres, the eight-year voyage from Will Rap For Food to the present, and those persistent OutKast comparisons.

In addition to CunninLynguists, you’re also half of the production duo A Piece Of Strange with K-No. How’s that moving along?
It’s goin pretty well. We’ve been officially in business for a little over a year now, but we first came up with the idea to join forces as a production team about two years ago, just like, planted the seed. Now we’re like an official Limited Liability company. We’ve sold about 5-10 beats to artists ranging from KRS-One to Lil Scrappy to a Swedish rock band to Bizarre from D12. We’ve just been getting things around. Right now we’re in the running to be a part of something pretty big. I don’t wanna talk too much about it but we’ve got a few things cooking.

That’s a pretty diverse range of artists you’re selling beats to. Is it the same sort of sound you’re selling to each person or have a got a really wide variety of sounds?
I mean I feel like we have a certain sound, but we’re so open minded musically that to others our sound might seem widespread. To us tho, it sounds like a similar sound.

Right, so, I don’t wanna get too sidetracked here but I have to know what sort of CL beat did Lil Scrappy choose?
To me it was a very southern beat, like something that, it could have been on a Cunnin Lynguists album if it were mixed a particular way, but it was definitely a southern beat, but not the kind of beat that he would typically choose. He picked something that was really soulful, something that you’d really have to speak from the heart in order to do the song justice.

Would Kentucky be considered an isolated area as far as hip hop goes?
As far as hip hop goes, it’s isolated. It’s close to Cincinnati, Cincinnati has a few hip hop stars; Hi-Tek, he’s pretty major. Besides that, our next closest city that is an epicenter of hip hop is Atlanta, that’s about five and a half hours away. St Louis, that’s about six hours away. These places aren’t terribly far.

I grew up in Australia obviously, and it was pretty difficult for us to keep up to date with things because we’re so far away. Was it a similar thing in Kentucky?
Yea, it was hard getting it here. We had a few outlets like College radio which always represented, but for the longest we didn’t even have BET here in Kentucky. We didn’t even have MTV, none of these music channels at all, so college radio did it for the longest. Luckily we was blessed with a DJ who really liked everything, was really hip hop to the core; East coast, west coast, down south, Midwest. He’d play Crucial Conflict back to back with Snoop Dogg and follow it up with Nas and Heltah Skeltah, and then play Luke.

So when you started making music, was it difficult to find like-minded people in the area?
Well luckily, where I came from there was a lot of people that really were fine with being themselves, there was really no set leader around, and we didn’t have the video outlets, not much radio so we really didn’t have no-one to follow so to speak, and the musical selection we was hearing was so diverse that we really couldn’t pinpoint one certain trend. So it was like, we really didn’t have no choice but to be ourselves. It’s like we was pulling from ah, this … trail mix of music. So putting it all together, it was gonna be original no matter what cos we wasn’t really getting any sort of complete picture. Everybody around was just being themselves, even when I met K-No, he came from Georgia, and Georgia at the time was really similar to Kentucky as far as it’s influences and, even Atlanta at the time was getting it’s music through college radio, so he was getting a mix of sounds as well. So it was just a blessing that we met, we was on the same wavelength.

When you guys got started … I actually had Will Rap For Food, I remember the first time I heard So Live I thought it was so dope back then in 2000 or 99 or whenever it was
Yea, we hate that song! Hahaha. We’re glad it did what it did for us, but we’re like man that song is so corny!

Haha yea man. When I got Dirty Acres I was like ‘damn, these guys have come a long way from So Live’
Yea, you know back then we was just making rap, just to make rap. He can make beats, I can rap, we hadn’t thought past that point.

When you first started do you think you had pressure on you to make hip hop a certain way, make it sound a certain way?
Nah, not really. We knew that we were coming with a sound that wasn’t typical, we knew that. But we always knew who our audience was. Some artists try to choose their audience, and try to cater their sound to a particular crowd, whereas we just made music. Before we was even a group, we were kinda makin our own music in our own circles and we just kinda happened to see the types of people who were attracted to our sound, and we were comfortable with that. They might not have looked like us, they might not have come from the same background as us, but they had an ear, and they were willing to use that ear on our music you know what I’m sayin? We was just comfortable with whoever came to listen, so we was just that type of artist. We just made music, whoever listened, we’re happy.

The difference, well there’s a million differences between the old and new, but the big difference is the new guy, Natty. He came along in 2004 is that right?
Yea, he came into it right before we dropped A Piece Of Strange.

He adds so much to your sound
Yea, he brings a whole different side, he was the missing link.

Absolutely. His voice is so, well someone used the word gravely is something I read about you guys, and that’s perfect. He’s really street with it I suppose, and he has that dope southern accent to go with it. He seems to compliment you really well.
Yea, I agree. I said to somebody the other day that Natty makes it sound like I’m from the burbs, and I’m not! You know what I’m sayin? Haha I’m from the same place he’s from, and he’s sound so street he makes me sound like I’m not from the streets.

Now, K-No’s a producer, obviously you’re a producer yourself. Did you guys share production on this album or was it all K-No?
It was all K-No, front to back. On some tracks I play keys, but I left it up to him to choose what key parts he took and how he flipped em or filtered em. He did production front to back.

So why is it that he does all the production and you’re just stickin to rapping on CunninLynguists projects?
When it comes to CunninLynguists, that’s his contribution. When the group was started, it was started on his beats and my rhymes and hooks. That’s what determined the sound. That’s the way it’s always been, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. When we do side projects like mixtapes, I’ll have some beats on there. When it comes to beats that we sell, I’ve had a major hand in those, cos that shapes the Piece Of Strange sound. But with CunninLynguists ,that’s just the way it is. Even if I made a beat and we was gonna use it for CunninLynguists, I would give it to K-No and let him vocal scratch with the same pieces and take it where he would take it, just off what I started.

It seems that every single article or review I read about you guys has an OutKast comparison. Would you consider that an accurate comparison?
I only consider it accurate in that OutKast is dope, and I believe we’re dope. I believe that we both make honest music from the soul, and we’re both southern, so there are certain similarities, but I just feel like there’s too few other groups that come from the soul with honest music and have had success, and there’s nobody else to compare us to. We’ve been compared to Tribe, we’ve been compared to The Roots, we’ve been compared to Outkast, and this time around we decided to go more southern and more into our true musical roots than normal, and it just so happens that’s were OutKast came from. They came from the same roots we came from, so if more artists had a chance to shine from the south that made true music, I feel we would be compared to them as well.

With the constant comparisons in mind, did you guys think twice about putting Big Rube on the intro?
Nah, it’s like, he’s part of our influences. It’s just the same as when K-No made the beat for Wonderful, we knew instantly, Devin The Dude gotta be on this, soon as he made the intro, Big Rube gotta be on this, soon as he made Yellow Lines, Phonte gotta be on this. You know those are all southern artists that we respect. If we make a beat, and we feel like it wouldn’t sound complete without a particular person that we respect, we’re not gonna shy away from it just cos some critic says we sound too much like that person, and we might be dickridin. We weren’t afraid to put Cee-Lo, Withdoctor, and if we could afford OutKast, they’d probably be on our album too! But things ain’t made it to that point yet.