UDC: Who you are. Background Information?

HK: My name is Head Krack, originally from Bronx, NY. I am currently residing in Dallas, TX. Been in the game since the early 90’s. I started off as a beat box for my crew at an elementary school. We use to go by Juvenile Dope PS95. Actually PS95 and Christ Keota Catholic School. Yeah, so I use to do the beat box and then I got into rhyming. I remember being in school and waiting all year for the talent show. One year I was suppose to beat box for my crew at the talent show and my homeboy that was suppose to spit got sick, so I had to rhyme acapella. So I just kind of freestyled the whole entire thing. We didn’t win the talent show, but it was still fun.

UDC: In about five to ten sentences explain what your artist name means to you?

HK: Head Krack is a bunch of different things. A lot of times people hear the name and are like Crack Head. No, I never did drugs, but I have seen the effects of drugs on other people. The name basically came from a dice game called C-Low. Whenever you roll a four, five and six they call that a Head Krack. Which means you automatically win. So no matter what it is acting, rhyming, writing, education, radio or whatever it is. I am automatically trying to win off top without any real struggle behind it. I’m coming through for the win.

UDC: What point did you feel like music and radio is what you want to pursue as a career?

HK: I always wanted to do music. I remember back in the day when I use to watch Michael Jackson’s Thriller video. It just seems like your music was the move, because music is the only thing that’s really out there that can bring people together of mad nationalities. Everybody understands the language of music. Something that can bring people together like that is a beautiful thing and I want to be a part of it. Now the radio thing it just kind of came from me hanging out with other people in radio and seeing how they lived. Seeing some dudes work four or five hours a day and making mad money made me want to get down with it. So I just kind of fell into it. It originally started when 100.3 JAMZ was in town. They use to do this thing called the roll call where MC’s would call in and battle. I use to do that all the time and I won way to many battles. They told me I couldn’t do anymore but could come on their show and I was like word. So I went on their show. It was Lisa Lisa and Spud and they showed me a lot of love. They let me come on the show every Friday, kick it with them and rhyme on the air . Just by meeting them and hanging out with them I got to see how the whole thing really worked. Even before that Easy Street use to let me come to his show and give me alot of love. They had this contest back in the day called the “Know Ya History Rap Contest”, and it was like me, my partner Vinny at the time and my man Oasis. We all went to the studio, actually we didn’t go to the studio we went to the garage. We made a song off a paused beat tape with this Kid Capri song. ” We rhymed over it. It was called “"If you Know what’s good Bring Knowledge to the Hood"”. It sounds mad corny now, but back in the early 90’s positivity rained. We went to the talent show and won a whole bunch of studio time. When 97.9 The Beat came into town I sent in the air check somehow the contact information got separated from the CDs’. The lady that was doing the hiring, Marie Kelly recognized my voice and knew how to get a hold of me. That’s how we kind of got the gig at the radio station were at now.

UDC: Is there a message or a theme in your music if so what is it?

HK: If there is anything in it, its individuality. You have to be individual. There are so many trends that are being followed in hip hop right now, like you know everybody’s ballin and everybody’s flossin. Who’s hungry? Who can’t find work? You know I’m trying to tell the other side of the story because it’s so redundant, it so mundane right now and there’s so many other things out there. I can’t really say that my music is all positive, but it’s definitely not all negative. There’s a lot of things that happen out there that are not all bright, but I’m going to tell you a story from a different angle. It’s kind of like a Quinton Terantino movie. Like a lot of times he will do a movie and you will see the same movie from a whole bunch of different perspectives. That’s what my album is. Just a different take on the world. I’m not going to talk the streets; you already know how the streets are. No one ever hears the victims’ side of the story but I’m hitting from all angles.

UDC: Give us a little insight on your next project?

HK: The album right now is currently untitled. If you ask me today I'll tell you the name of the album is “Guilty by Design”, if you ask me in about an hour I will tell you something different. The overall concept of the album is just really bringing it back to the fundamentals of hip hop as far as excellent stories, lyricism and a couple joints for the ladies to get into. You know your not going to see me in a crushed red velvet suit or

nothing like that, but you I definitely want to get at the ladies. If I could sum up in my opinion the perfect album it would be LL Cool J “sWalking with a Panther” or “Big daddy's Thing”. Those two albums were like the perfect balance of keeping it street, but at the same time people could relate to it. Women could relate to it and at the same time it was mad lyrical so the hard rocks could do there work to it.

UDC: What are the three most essential items that you need when at the studio?

HK: When I’m in the studio I need red bull, note book and a picture of anything. I usually record at night and by the time I get home I am burnt out through dealing with radio, my son, my son's mom and my girlfriend. It’s just real hectic so I kind of need that pick me up and the note book obviously to write the rhymes down. Sometimes when I do particular joints I like to take an image or a snapshot and just place it wherever it is I’m writing and just stare at it to help my mind create that picture. It’s just one of the different writing methods that I use. I use a lot of methods but that’s the one I been using a lot lately. Just a picture of anything. If I’m writing a song about a girl, I’ll find a picture of the most beautiful girl post it up and just start writing. If I’m writing a rhyme about my city I’ll use a picture of that city. It’s amazing what you can do with a picture. You can look at that picture and I swear I can stare at the building and I can tell you a story about a person that’s on a particular floor in that building. What they're doing. What they're going through. I'm real imaginative when it comes to my work and my rhymes. One thing that I hate the most is that a lot of times people will try to review or critique me as an artist. They don’t know anything about me. There was this one message board I was reading the other day and somebody was critiquing me as an artist and it’s like you don’t even really know me. You have not heard a complete body of my work. How can you define me from a thirty minute sampler or a battle you saw me do in the streets? I can’t wait until this album drops so that I can shut up anybody that has anything to say. He is all about battling, I tell really insane stories and I got radio joints. I got lyrics.

UDC: Tell me what priority number one is for Head Krack right now, as far as music and the radio?

HK: I got to finish this album. It’s real tough when you’re in the recording process and your trying to figure out what to put out there. Hip Hop is fickle, it’s mad fickle. Like at the end of the day, you want to sell records. So if you come with your commercial radio joint your underground hip hop fans are going to turn on you. So basically I’m just really trying to find like the best seventeen or eighteen joints and put it out there. It’s crazy because ten years ago people would say I don’t like MC such and such because his rhymes are to simple. Now it’s I don’t like such and such because I don’t understand what he is talking about. So I’m trying to find a happy median between both avenues and get it popping.

UDC: How do you feel the internet has affected your genre of music and the music industry as a whole?

HK: A lot of people are going to hate it but I think it has actually hurt music in a certain aspect. The fact that you can use it to promote yourself as an artist is fantastic and on that aspect it is the greatest thing to ever happen to music. On-line and satellite radio is fantastic, wish it was bigger. The bootlegging and the pirating, you got so many people out there that will not buy an album, they will download it. Some people’s argument is if people start making better albums maybe we would buy them, but I know people who just download music and that’s what they do. It really sucks because it really hurts the underground genre more than anything else. Other stuff is promoted better even though it gets downloaded, it will be eventually bought. If the right person goes into a particular message board or chat room with the right album and five hundred people download that underground artists album, they don't see those sales. They will have to keep working their day job to support their art.

UDC: Do you think that penalizing sites for downloading music is fair?

HK: It is a double edge sword because as much I condemned downloading in that last question, I download but I download stuff I have already bought. If I bought Chill Rob G's Ride the rhythm, I bought it on cassette and if I see it on the internet I will download it. I think if it was somehow monitored in a way maybe if it cost 99 cents per download, it would be more fair to the artist and customer won’t be saying 99 cents, you’re killing me. Something needs to be instated to police the whole thing.

UDC: Describe Headkrack five years from now?

HK: Hopefully I would have branched out from radio. Radio is cool but there are so many politics involved and when you are as passionate about the music as I am. I listen to those records with a gun in my mouth sometimes like, I don’t believe this. It amazes me what is allowed to get out there on the radio not even from a quality standpoint but from quality of message standpoint, I think it really screwing the kids up. Hopefully in five years, if I’m still doing radio, hopefully I’m doing mornings and branching out to the satellite thing, I could do both, mornings and satellite. Outside of radio, I really want to do TV. Super K, Keynote, and I, the three that do the show, we got some crazy ideas. We are putting some stuff together that we are about to pitch to some networks. I got some big records out there with some muscle that are doing some stuff for me. Hopefully, hip-hop will be in a better state than it is now. I have been holding my album waiting for “dope” to come back in style.

UDC: Why do you think the mix tape circuit has grown over the last five years?

HK: It is not the radio. The radio is policed; you can only put certain things on the radio. Mix tapes you can do what you want and they are also a great promotional tool. I wish mix tapes were big in Dallas as they are in every other city. There are so many things you can do on a mix tape. It gives the artist an outlet to really promote himself without paying that ten thousand that it would cost to get a commercial on BET or magazine exposure. There are a lot of dope artist that have broken on the mix tape circuit across the country: the Game came up on the mix tape, Slim Thug, Lil’ Flip, and Mike Watts’ Swishahouse. Those dudes in Houston created a new industry out there with the whole chopped and screwed scenario. I think its dope because it is an extension of hip-hop but a lot of times people are really quick to say what's that screwed s*#t and they don’t like it. Obviously there are a lot of people who like it and it is creating money for more people that are part of the hip-hop culture. So I think mix tapes are incredible.

UDC: Why do you think the Dallas hip-hop scene is the way it is and do you think the radio plays a part in this?

HK: I think radio plays big part on it because it is a really competitive market. You have so many stations playing the exact same record so it's tough to take a chance on an unproven artist. That is the industry radio answer, but I think at the same time a lot of these stations should dedicate couple of hours even if it is two o’clock in the morning to new music and artists from the city. I get tapes and cds sent to me all the time and it is mind blowing how a lot of these dudes are not signed. We do this thing on our show, freestyle battle which is the least we can do. I’m hoping that these artists use this as a stepping stone to take themselves as artist to the next level. Radio really needs to step up more, especially in a major market like this, and really support their independent artists a little bit better. Better represent the city as a whole because everybody's not about spinning rims and rocking a piece and chain. There are a lot of underground cats and it has got to the point now where if you rhyme intelligently or speak in complete sentence, you are quote unquote not south. Scarface doesn't sound like a moron when he speaks neither does Willie D; I was just with him the other day. As far as underground hip-hop, there were a lot of prominent promoters that were really thriving in the early 90's. It really hit its peak in mid 90's, there was one guy that was bringing a lot of those shows to town, his name was K-son, and he used to be in a group called Mad Flava. Once he stopped promoting that single-handedly changed the scene. He was responsible for bringing Mad Flava, the Youngsters, Masta Ace, Black Moon, Mobb Deep, Notorious BIG, and once he got out of the promoting game that is when all the really good shows stopped coming. 100.3 Jamz was embracing underground hip-hop so it would not be uncommon to see 100.3 Jamz do a live broadcast from the Bomb Factory for all the old school Dallas heads. I remember they broadcasted a Common and De La Soul concert. For a commercial radio station to support that, it was a beautiful thing, and now the climate has changed. Everybody thinks that people just want these southern artists but people are not as narrow-minded as you would like to think they are. It is setting up a scenario to where the future generation is only going to really be into what they are programmed to listen to and they are getting farther away from the nucleus.

www.headkrack.com
headkrack@hotmail.com
(214)886-0555
(972)934-8733

Interviewed By Lejend@undevco.com
Photography By Ean Pegram