Interview: Boogie B (Speech Defect)
Words by Simon Tagestam
Listen: Holla at your favorite color!
First of all, for people who don't know who Speech Defect are - please let enlighten us.
We're four guys, five if you count the Swedish gangster. The Gangster looks kind of mean, but is the nicest guy you'll ever meet, really. He eats a lot too. The rest of Speech Defect is Boogie B, Mr Linus, DJ Prao-D and Thage. Three MC's and one DJ doin' damage.
And what's your music like?
Old school hiphop, raw deluxe. We've done two LP's and a gang of 12"s. Our latest LP, "Come for da funeral, stay for da food", is just out in Japan and will be out in Australia and New Zealand in a minute.
Did you guys meet through making music?
We were all friends long before we started doing beats and rhyming. We basically grew up on the same street. Linus lived a bit away, all of us could probably bicycle those roads from his house to our street blindfolded any day. We hung out like toes in a sandal. Then Mr Linus got a mixtape with Rakim, Masta Ace and Slick Rick, that kind of stuff, from his cousin. We we're like "Fuck!". From that it was on.
And when was this?
We've been around for more than ten years.
What things inspire you?
Sunshine, mummies, snooze buttons, chocolate donuts, Biz Markie singles, computer games, girls, girls, girls, mixtapes and riding on a bicycle really fast.
I assume you're not doing music all the time, what do you guys work with to make a living?
Working, working, not working and a Ph.D. in Economic History. Not sure about The Gangster.
What are your current plans for Speech Defect?
We're supporting our new album "Come for da funeral, stay for da food". We just did a video for a song from the LP, it's called "Blast off for kicksville" which turned out cool. We might do another video this spring and then start work on our new album. We got some mad ideas.
With Thage living in South of Sweden and the rest of the band in Stockholm, how do you go about making the songs?
Prao-d and Mr Linus make a beat either on their own or together. Then they call up Thage and Boogie B, talking about nothing in particular but with some weird underlying enthusiasm. Then just before they hang up they are all like "hey, um, I made a beat". Then they play it over the phone really loud so the drums comes out real good and distorted. Beats sound so good over the phone! Then we just write to it, we usually have ideas already that we wanna flip. We ALWAYS quarrel to the point somebody leaves for, like, an hour somewhere halfway through a song before you can tell where the song is going. When the song is finished we listen to it loud as fuck, dance and have a coffee and a muffin. That's tradition.
Any cool album / film / book you'd like to recommend to It's A Trap's readers?
Good rap LP's don't come around that often these days, but Roc C's "All questions answered" is a cool record. "The last king of Scotland" and "Hollywoodland" were dope films. Didn't really read any new novels this year, but everyone should read John Fante. And Jonas Hassen Khemiris's novel "Montecore" is really inspiring if you like writing.
Any last words?
We're the old to the new, the new to the old - and got lots of soul! Once Boogie got a Hai-ku poem from a hyped fan in Manchester. The poem said that Speech Defect was protected by a great big black bear. The whole incident was actually creepy as fuck but, hey, protected by a bear? That gotta mean we're worth something, right?