Throughout 2011 and 2012, I was working on a concept album. I had long been obsessed with listening to live tapes of the earliest hip-hop shows… Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five at T-Connection ’79, Cold Crush Brothers vs Fantastic Five at Harlem World, etc. I got the idea to do a whole album that recreates one of these tapes with the original breaks, rhyme styles, and low-fi sound. I started working on this project with Dave Barresi, aka Secret Weapon Dave.
With a tour coming up, I decided to wipe the slate clean, and perform nothing but songs from this forthcoming project. I brought Jones with me, and we did an entire set as if we were an MC and a DJ rocking a Zulu Nation park jam in 1978. Performing live like this felt absolutely freeing. I recast myself as a character telling you to rock the spot, instead of telling you about my life and my angst. The dusty, dead parts of my onstage identity just blew away, and I could be whatever I wanted to be… It was more about fantasy and imagination than it was about a portrait of my own reality.
Pretty much every Height supporter stuck with me through this change. It made me feel like I could wipe the slate clean anytime, and that people would stick with it, instead of just wanting to hear certain songs or a certain sound.