S. Samuel
[With the long-awaited and highly anticipated new Evolution album finally on store shelves this week, Slum Village founder T3 gives SOHH readers the inside scoop on putting together the crew's latest group effort.]
On this new album, we have a lot of real records on here. You’re going to hear a lot of deep records. We’ve got a record called “Let It Go” which is about letting go of past situations. It has nothing to do with love. It’s talking about friendships and getting over it. It’s about “you” getting over it more so than them. That’s a very real record we have on the album.
Most of the beats on here are from Young RJ and Focus. I did the “Forever” joint but it’s mostly them on the beats.
What happened was we were already doing shows. Myself, Illa, Young RJ, we had been doing stuff as Slum Village and we just naturally started recording records. Then we ended up putting out two mixtapes, this year and last year, and that’s what sparked us doing this album.
And basically what we were doing was going in and spitting on tracks. That’s how we started working this album.
The Evolution concept comes from things like a lot of people not knowing Young J has been producing ever since [2002’s] Trinity and not only that, he’s been in high-demand since he was five. He’s been in his father’s studio. You know Illa J has always been around. He’s been around since the old days when we were in the basement and he was sitting on the steps. It’s all family. So it’s an evolution of old Slum Village to new Slum Village.
Havoc is on the album too. Jazzy Jeff. Rapper Big Pooh. There’s a couple other big cats on there. We’ve got Blu on there too. He’s on the “Let It Go” joint. We’re definitely grinding.
To get your hands on the new album, just click here.
Chances are, if you are anywhere near the Detroit music scene, you have heard of the influential hip hop trio that makes up Slum Village. The group was founded in the early 90?s by 3 childhood friends: Baatin, T3, rapper and producer J Dilla, who all grew up together in the Conant Gardens neighborhood of Detroit, MI. After leaving Pershing High School, the trio began to forge a path into the Detroit underground hip hop scene and quickly found themselves steadily gaining popularity, where they originally went by the name Ssenepod.
