Steele (Smif N Wessun) Interview

written by Angus Crawford

MVRemix: When is the album coming out?

Steele: The Bootcamp album, Casaulties of War, comes out August 14th.

MVRemix: Nice. So when all of you get back into the studio together, how do you decide who raps on what tracks?

Steele: How do we decide?

MVRemix: Yeah are you like this sounds like a Smif N’ Wessun beat, let’s do this….

Steele: Well, some of them are ideas that Buck might have come to the table with, some of them were ideas that Dru man come to the table with, some beats we had gotten from random producers in the studio, and we just sifted through a lot of beats. Some beats cats liked.

MVRemix: So how do you decide who is going to be one each song, instead of having eight guys rapping, how does that work out?

Steele: It’s kind of like Chemistry man. Sometimes you just hear beat and you be like “Damn I can hear Louivelle on that, I can hear Top Dog on that, you know what I mean, I can hear Smif N’ Wessun” or sometimes a cat might just get on it and give you a vision or something different. Like with “B.K. All Day” we tried to get as many people as possible on that, like everybody was supposed to be on that and that was a vision that Dan The Man had, saying “We got to start with Rusty” which is the new young gunna we got coming out on Duck Down in ‘08, and it was perfect that 5 [5 Ft. Excelerator] was here, out of prison, and was able to bless that track. Some things just work out good. You got to try shit sometimes and you can’t be afraid to make some wack shit.

MVRemix: [laughs] Smif N’ Wessun has album coming out right?

Steele: Smif N’ Wessun comes out late fall.

MVRemix: Do you guys work on the albums simultaneously?

Steele: Actually we are at the mixing stage right now. We went overseas and worked on some shit with a couple of producers over in Scandinavia, produced by my man Ken Ring who did “My Timbs Do Work” and “Trading Places” on Last Stand. We just stayed with him for a couple of weeks and just traveled around and fucked with him Tommy Chee, two other producers Collen and Web and we recorded 35 tracks and just sifted through which ones we’d think would work and we still in the ending stage. Like we in the 4th quarter of work, we got photo shoots that we trying to finish.

MVRemix: I got to ask you, did you go to Amsterdam?

Steele: Yeah, actually before we went and started working on the album, we were in Amsterdam because we were on the Bootcamp tour, so directly after we left the Bootcamp tour we spent some extra time like four days before we went to work on the album.

MVRemix: How does it compare to the U.S.?

Steele: Amsterdam is dope for me man. Anywhere I can go inside a shop and buy weed without having to worry about police is a beautiful thing.

Original Article [extended]