Rapper Cage Breaks Loose

Though Cage isn’t set to take the stage for another two hours, the Middle East is already pulsing, not with anticipation, but with straight rocking-out.

Awkward Landing, a local hip-hop trio that includes Harvard student DJ Shiftee (Sam M. Zornow ’08), brought out a surprisingly large conti ngent to the show, and their loyal fans and pumping their fists and singing along in the middle of the floor. The group took to the stage explosively, playing amped-up versions of songs off of their debut album “What’s Eating Awkward Landing?”

Shiftee wowed the crowd with turntable acrobatics while MCs J-Ring and Normal stomp-hopped across the stage, shout-rapping over the bouncing heads of their buzzed fans. Nothing’s fair though, and Landing only got a change to play a few songs before the bill moved on.

Cage is pacing back and forth in the dressing room when I find him, looking up every now and then to say few words to Camu Tao, his long-time collaborator. It’s half-an-hour before he’s scheduled to go on stage and his palms are sweaty when I shake his hand. Though Boston is the last stop on the twenty-city “Hell’s Winter” tour, opening up to packed club on Saturday night is a still a relatively new phenomenon for Cage.

“Hell’s Winter” was released this fall on underground arbiter Definitive Jux Records (home to indie heavyweights Aesop Rock and RJD2), and with a new glossy video on MTV, Cage is riding the underground hip-hop wave like few others.

The Harvard Crimson: Do you think that hip-hop is healthy right now?

Cage: I don’t know, I don’t really care. I’m healthy, that’s all I care about…I think Aesop Rock is really important to indie rap. El-P, I just happen to be friends with all the guys that I listen too. I think Atmosphere is really important to hip-hop right now…I wanted to get real musicians on my record, not just other dudes that just spit on my record because they are more famous than me. I don’t give a fuck about that.

DJ Shadow, Camu Tao, El-P, RJD2, Blockhead. These are producers that I really respect and I wanted to do the opposite of what I was doing. We were gonna go a lot further with the music, but we decided to more with the story of the record and save the musical super-change for the next record.

THC: How has the underground scene changed since you started rapping?

C: I think the underground is really stagnant right now, it seems like no one knows what to do. You got a group of people that are stuck in the ’90s, trying to remake all that ’90s stuff, beats sounding like old [DJ] Premier.

Than you have the whole battle scene, of just battle rappers. To me that’s old, that’s tired. That’s like in Rock n’ Roll making music like Chuck Barry now; it’s been done. Progress, move on.

In a song called “Daze,” I said, “When your words are empty/and your subject matter’s elementary/then the kids are too advanced to pay for your fantasies.” People are tired of it, people are done with that shit. People want real, people want truth. When I made this record the truth bit me like a snake-bit, and I won’t do anything but this.

THC: Tell me about the Cage before [the release of Hell’s Winter] and the Cage after. What changed?

C: Everything changed…[his official debut] “Movies for the Blind” was basically the story of who I was and “Hell’s Winter” is the story about why I was the way that I was…a dusthead, fat as hell, fucking out of my mind, gluttonous greedy seething depressed selfloathing asshole womanizing piece of shit.

Hallucinogenics, PCP, sheets of acid. I woke up one day and shook the drugs off…I smoke pot as a mood stabilizer because I don’t want anti-depressants. I don’t drink alcohol, I don’t do any hard drugs…I woke up in a different skin; I no longer wanted to repesent any of that shit anymore…In changing my life, the record changed at the same time.

THC: What kind of racial issues are you confronting? Are you part of the continuum of hip-hop, what are you doing?

C: For myself, I wanted to step out of the box. I don’t want to represent black stereotypes. I think it’s disgusting that white people that listen to rap music have to kind of play that role. I don’t get edge-ups anymore…

I don’t look like a rapper, I don’t move like a rapper on stage. It’s corny and you don’t get any respect for doing it. Be yourself.

I’m just not trying to do what everyone else is doing. Everyone else can do what the fuck they do. I’d rather people sit back and say “Cage is a fag, Cage is emo.” I don’t give a fuck, I’m selling more records now. I feel that my music is better now. I make reality music. People say all kinds of stuff in their music, people represent things that don’t make any sense.