Interview with Eric Axelman of The Funk Underground

There’s a new breed of local music that’s been taking over Providence in 2016. It doesn’t conform to one style, genre or artistic trend. It’s as diverse as the city itself with influences coming from all different directions. One of those bands that made their presence felt this year is The Funk Underground, a hip-hop collaborative that’ll be playing Aurora on December 15. Eric Alexman, who’s a founding member of the band, also made waves this year with his debut solo album Too Much that came out in November.

I recently had a chat with Axelman about The Funk Underground’s beginnings, what it was like making his first solo release, a few music videos that he’s put out in the past few months, starting a non-profit, his thoughts on the Presidential election and what his plans are for next year.

Rob Duguay: The Funk Underground have been part of a new crop of acts that have been gaining a local following throughout Providence. With that being said, how did the band start and what were the initial inspirations behind it?

Eric Axelman: Sydesho, whose real name is Oliver Arias, and I have been working together in a variety of ways for a long time. We started by just doing basement shows on Wickenden Street together, which was almost four years ago at this point. We were both starting out in the hip-hop scene in Providence and we were doing shows together as separate acts because we liked each other’s stuff. Over time we actually lived together and worked together while our sets started to become more and more intertwined. Eventually Sydesho said, “Yo, why don’t we just go make an album?” We started this long process that took about a year for our first mixtape, which was like 16 tracks. It was a pretty long mixtape.

Then we decided to call it The Funk Underground, then we decided to call the whole band The Funk Underground and then we got a band together. From there, it really started taking off and we started making music videos, which is something that I’m really passionate about. About a year ago we decided to go on a three-week, nine-city tour. We started in Providence, then we did Boston, Philly, Ithaca, Rochester, Detroit, Hamilton, Canada and Chicago.

We’re planning another small tour in the summer and I’m planning another solo tour in the spring as well, which will be really fun. Sydesho and I both have very similar styles and very different styles, too.

RD: You also recently released your solo album, Too Much. Where was it made? Was it made in a house or a studio? Did you produce it yourself?

EA: It was made mostly in my friend’s house in Burlington, Vermont. I have this friend who I’ve been working with since my senior year of college. I recorded my first mixtape with him; it was pretty bad. He produced all the beats for that first project, and he produced most of the beats for Too Much as well. He’s been doing a bunch of things ever since we graduated from college and he’s always been a really dope music producer on the low. Also around a year ago I was planning for things after the tour with The Funk Underground and I had all these songs together so he and I started really planning out this album.

I would drive up to Burlington about once a month and we would start doing planning sessions and we’d be working out songs and doing recordings. We did most of the recordings at his house and we did some of them with some Brown University students who have access to the studios there, which was nice. The majority of it we just did in his room just super DIY style. He produced five of the eight beats and then he mixed and mastered seven of them. One other dude made one other beat.

His name is Cognate, his real name is Loren Fulton, but in terms of producers he’s by far my biggest collaborator. He and I work on a bunch of stuff now along with him making music for the documentaries that I make for my non-profit. It was a really, really fun process and I’m really proud of how it came out.

RD: How would you describe the experience of making Too Much? It’s your first solo album so were you delving into territory that challenged you? Did you find that you were pushing yourself a lot more often?

EA: I’m kind of used to more old-school hip-hop stuff, I still like that a lot, but I figured it was time to experiment and try a bunch of new stuff. I think hip-hop is going in a bunch of different directions now, which I think is really interesting, while doing a lot with how beats are organized along with how people are using the human voice. I really, really like how a lot of rappers are using their voice in different ways. What I try to do is try non-traditional flows and also using my voice in ways that I haven’t used it before. We tried to make the production just really varied and have an interesting palette of all the different things that hip-hop has to offer. On Too Much, all the songs are very different from each other, so we tried to make it new and fresh.

RD: Accompanying the album so far are two music videos, one for “Too Much Space” and another for “Talk Too Much.” “Too Much Space” is a bit of a mind warp while “Talk Too Much” has a blissful tone. What were you trying to initially capture with both videos?

EA: I had the idea for the video for “Talk Too Much” as I was writing the song. I really tried to plan out and have each song give off a visual experience, which is what I kind of want to do from now on. I’m trying to have the great majority of my songs to have a music video to go with each one. While I’m writing the songs I’m really trying to think about how I can pair it with a visual. As I was writing “Talk Too Much” I was imagining the scenes as I was writing the song.

The initial idea was this dude who was wounded or got hurt in some kind of way was approaching death, he was totally at peace with it and he was hallucinating in and out of his mind while thinking about life and thinking about the people that he loves. I had the idea of filming it in one location over multiple seasons to show him being detached from time. I had a garden in the back of this house I was living in so we planned it out over the course of four months and we figured out a way to get representations of all four seasons. First, we shot it with a little bit of snow on the ground in the fall and early winter. We didn’t think it was going to snow again but then a blizzard happened and I just called up my videographer and I was like, “Yo, we gotta film this right now.” We filmed during a blizzard, which was very cold but really fun and then we filmed in the spring and we filmed in the summer as well.

I wanted to talk about trying to find peace in dying, which was really fun to make. I directed that one myself and we kind of had a long-term vision for that one. With “Too Much Space” it was very chaotic and I tried to have it be about detachment. I wanted both videos to complement each other with one being very peaceful and vibed out while the other is chaotic and representing a lot of different things visually. Also music wise, one is really mellow and trippy while the other is chaotic and staccato based.

RD: Both videos are really cool to watch, I love the cinematography of both of them. Along with being a musician, you’re also the co-founder and executive director of Pushed Learning and Media. It’s an educational non-profit that you started with Sydesho. For anyone who is not familiar with the organization, what exactly does Pushed do and what made you want to help start the organization?

EA: Pushed is a couple different things. Basically our major goal is to start and maintain conversations with young people and adults about the complexities of identity, privilege and inequality. We try to do that in a variety of ways that are both relevant and accessible to wide varieties of audiences. Part of what we do is arts based performances and talks about racial inequality and global appropriation. Sydesho and I do that, we basically go to schools all over the country and do day long visits at schools that are both public and private.

We start out with hip-hop performances and then we use music and hip-hop as a way to start conversations about race. We do it with schools that are almost entirely white and schools that are almost entirely of people of color. Sydesho and I come from very different backgrounds and we use our backgrounds to talk to different groups of people. We’re not just a hip-hop organization, our main goal is to start and maintain conversations about inequality. We also do documentary film and we just showed the trailer for our first documentary called Settlement: American Jews and 21^st Century Zionism.

It’s basically about how American Jews perceive the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I spent two weeks in Israel in the West Bank this past summer filming that and I was also able to land an interview with Noam Chomsky, which was dope.

RD: That’s pretty cool.

EA: I also talked with a couple of other leaders from all over the political spectrum in relation to Israel-Palestine. That’s our first big documentary that we’re working on and we’re working with this cool videographer named Nik Damants, who has also either co-directed or at least edits most of the music videos as well. We’re working on a couple other documentary projects in the next year, so it’s really fun. It’s just kind of my three things that I love doing. I love performing hip-hop, I love making films and I love talking about civil rights.

I kind of figured out a way where I could make an organization that would keep me interested and keep me intellectually stimulated that would also be sustainable in the long term along with addressing the really messed up parts of our society that we really need to fix. Especially with the election of Donald Trump, starting these conversations as early as possible is really important. The goal is to create both a sustainable livelihood for ourselves and to try to do as much good as we can to help fix the world. I think we have a moral obligation to do as good of a job as we can.

RD: With election of Donald Trump, a lot of artists have been outspoken, especially this year, about many issues mostly having to do with racism and inequality, which you were just talking about. Donald Trump becoming the President-elect has really empowered a lot of racist people in political, social and sometimes even in violent ways. As a person who speaks to all different types of people from all walks of life, what do you think people who are at risk of being victimized by the incoming administration can do to best counter this growing wave of bigotry?

EA: It’s incredibly scary and I’m in a position where because I was randomly born as a white male my chances of being victimized are lower. I’m also Jewish and Jews historically for the past several years have been very privileged in America and have been considered white. For the first time, you have people who are pretty obviously anti-Semitic coming into The White House. I think Jews should be standing up for civil rights no matter if people are anti-Semitic or not. Especially because of our history, we should be standing up for everybody.

It’s more obvious now and I hope the leaders of the American Jewish community know that it’s really important to stand up to what’s happening. Especially because it’s personal now and again I think people should fight against inequality no matter who the target specifically is. I think people have to fight and I think people have to organize. I don’t really know the best way to do that, but people have been fighting for equality and rights for thousands of years since human history started and it’s not going to end. The next four years will be very difficult, I hope that we make it out okay and hopefully it’s only four years, but it’s incredibly scary.

There are a lot of documentaries made now that I’ve watched about Nixon and about Reagan showing the really truly monumental and disturbing changes that they brought to our country. I’m very scared that in 20 years we’ll be seeing documentaries about how monumental a Trump Presidency was. I hope it’s not monumental, I really hope that it doesn’t have a lasting impact, but the Reagan administration did. Only a couple of Presidents sent out policies that imprisoned about 2,000,000 people so a Presidency can do a lot to a lot of people. I think it’s very scary but the only thing to do is to fight.

From my perspective, what I think I’m good at is teaching. I’m not sure it’s the most effective way but I see my role as talking to young people. When I was a young person these conversations were not brought up to me. I hope by starting these conversations with young people at a very early age, the next generation and my generation won’t have to deal with this our whole lives.

RD: Discourse is very important, especially these days where we live in very scary times. For you personally as an artist and as a musician, what do you have planned for the future? I know you’re going to be premiering a new music video the day after the show at Aurora, but what else?

EA: I think the reason why the last album turned out well was that I had a long-term plan and I’m really trying to abide by that by consistently putting out new and interesting content. The plan for right now is to put a music video that is either totally self-directed or co-directed by myself every two months. I have music videos from Too Much coming out until around May and I’m already working on new stuff to come out after that with both solo stuff and stuff with The Funk Underground. Again, what I’m trying to do is find a balance of my solo stuff, The Funk Underground and Sydesho’s material too. Eventually for my live show I’m trying to have music videos behind me the entire time.

RD: That sounds awesome.

EA: I’m already incorporating the ones I’ve done already. It’s easy to add visual stuff to your music these days, and I eventually want to create this entire digital experience when I perform live. I’m trying to get a lot better at promotion and figuring out ways to connect with a large number of fans and stuff like that. The biggest thing is really trying to put out new stuff that feels really good to me. If it doesn’t feel good to me, I don’t want to make it. The reason I write songs is because I have an idea and it’s a fun game to see if I can actually get that idea into something auditory and visually to create what I see in my mind.

Some of it takes a really, really, really long time, but it’s very fun to keep chipping at something and getting closer to the original vision both music wise and video wise. It’s really fun to balance it because I get to work on music and I get to do cool civil rights stuff. I get to do stuff that’s personally satisfying and stuff that I think is hopefully important for the world. That’s kind of how I see my life — half making music and developing my brand and the other half just really working on the non-profit and trying to do stuff that’s both really fun for me and hopefully important.

Check out the music video for “Talk Too Much” here:

Check out the music video for “Too Much Space” here:

Event page for The Funk Underground @ Aurora on December 15: facebook.com/events/1585100281785086; Eric Axelman’s Website: ericaxelman.com; The Funk Underground’s Website: thefunkunderground.com