Q&A: Carnage
and Desdamona
Carnage and Desdamona are two of the most hard-working, yet
humble, artists on the hip-hop scene. Known offstage as Terrell Woods and
Heather Ross, respectively, these fellow artists, teachers, and best friends have
been collaborating since 2004, most recently as Ill Chemistry, and have planned
a dual release show dubbed Double Dysfunction to celebrate their new solo
albums.
Desdamona, a fearless wordsmith who has won multiple
Minnesota Music Awards, drops DigiPhenom while Carnage follows up 2012’s
hard-hitting Respect The Name with …Not Just A Name. Free digital
downloads of both albums will be available to all in attendance.
I met up with Carnage and Desdamona at Blue Moon Café to
discuss the state of the Twin Cities music community and the hot topic of relationships—to
each other and their fans.
Q: Who were your mentors and do you feel mentoring is
an essential part of being a musician?
Desdamona: There have been so many. My first mentors
were really my family. When I moved here in 1996, there was a guy named Black
Powae who embraced me. Teresa Sweetland who is the executive director of
Intermedia Arts helped me write the first couple of grants and kind of broke it
down for me. And this guy right here. There’s lots of things that I could say.
[Laughs] We’ve mentored each other in a variety of ways, whether it’s personal
or artistic; I think that our experiences have informed each other on a pretty
deep level.
Carnage: I’ll hit her up on anything from where to
put posters to the name of the songs. There’s really nothing I can’t ask her
about. One time I was like, “How did you know it was time [to be a full-time
artist]? How did you sustain?” and she brought me into a couple of classes.
Then I started getting more attention as a local artist and I got to a point
where I was at work, not working, but doing music stuff, so I was like, “Maybe
it’s that time now.” I hit Des up like, “All right. I’m about to step off the
bridge—”
Desdamona: The cliff.
Carnage: The cliff. And I remember being like, “Oh,
okay, she’s actually going to help me through this.”
Desdamona: I knew that if he got into a couple [of classes],
that it would snowball. Because that is how it happened with me. And I knew he
had such a unique thing. There’s a lot of MCs in town, there’s a few
beat-boxers, but nobody’s teaching it.
Carnage: She was like, “You’re going to teach
beat-boxing classes,” and I was like, “How? Nobody taught me to beat-box.” I
saw the first couple times I did the class, people were being shy. I became
obsessed with how to incorporate the body as an instrument in the teachings.
Desdamona: It teaches listening, it teaches
community, it could teach math, it could teach composition, and also he does a
lot of things that are physical. Even that activity—it may seem minimal, but it
takes a lot of energy to beat-box.
Carnage: The kids love it. And I love the fact that
they love it. That’s a deep thing. That is mentoring to me.
Q: Let’s talk about the local hip-hop scene. Do you feel
like it’s inclusive enough?
Desdamona: When I started, it was not as inclusive.
It has grown to be more inclusive because there has been more access to people.
In some ways, that can be bad, because then it’s easy to get a show.
Carnage: The quality control is really low.
Desdamona: I do think that local radio only picks up
the local successes. I don’t think that’s wrong, but as a local community,
there are many amazingly talented writers, MCs, and musicians in this town, and
they should be heard.
Carnage: The artists who are being supported on these
labels started where the people who are not being represented started. There
are a lot of MCs out there that never get played on the radio, or that don’t
get played that much no matter how much press they get. I got a lot of press in
the last year-and-a-half, and they don’t play me on The Current.
Desdamona: It really starts to feel like a situation
of the privileged and the under-privileged in a lot of ways. Of access and no
access. It’s—
Carnage: Discouraging.
Desdamona: To say the least.
Carnage: But it made me focus on how to write a
catchier single. This time around, I made it easier for them. Nobody has to hit
me up to ask for a radio single. It’s already there. I don’t know that I’ll
necessarily be kissing anybody’s ass…
Desdamona: People know the big players, but they
don’t see that there are other people that have been around just as long. I’ve
experienced people who are like, “Who are you?” and I’m like, “Who are you?!”
Carnage: It just makes me remember why I’m doing this
in the first place. I tell myself, “Terrell, you cannot forget to have
fun.” But I can’t do it for fun if it’s not paying my bills, either. I’m just
blunt now. If you wouldn’t ask Brother Ali to do your show for $100, don’t ask
me. ‘Cause if you called Brother Ali to ask about me, he’d say, “Terrell is
dope. Pay him!”
Q: How do you handle hecklers when you’re onstage or
fans who come onto you after a show?
Carnage: Sometimes they’re
fun to deal with. Sometimes they throw you off. I don’t ever go into a show
expecting or demanding that people like it, but I will be respected.
You’re not going to come up here and tell me that everything I did needs to be
re-worked, ‘cause I don’t come to Wendy’s and tell you how to put the pickles
on the burger. This is what I do. It’s like, “So how long have you been
rapping?”
Desdamona: To answer the second part of your
question, I’ve learned over the years from other people that I’m scary.
[Laughs]
Carnage: No, no. I’m scary. You’re intimidating.
Desdamona: But they’ll come talk to you and not to
me!
Carnage: And they’ll say, “You look like you’d eat my
kids with gravy!”
Desdamona: There’s some kind of fear factor with me.
I’m not a super out-going person, which I’m sure it’s hard for people to
understand as a performer. But I’m pretty introverted. I don’t like small talk,
and I also have a hard time hearing in loud spaces. Those environments are not
really conducive to me having a good conversation with somebody else. The times
I run into issues with being hit on is when people are saying they want to work
with me and they really want something else. It can be really frustrating as a
female artist because you’re like, “Is there anybody who values what I do
creatively? As opposed to how I look or how I’m supposed to look?” As a female,
if you get up onstage with a male, there’s almost an automatic assumption that
you’re in a romantic relationship with him.
Carnage: Oh, God.
Desdamona: It pisses me
off. Why is it that I can’t be up here just because I’m an artist? I got here
because I walked my ass over here and did the work. It’s insane that that’s
still the way that we think.
Carnage: Friends of mine
are like, “Yo, so…did you smash?” And I’m like, “We smashed onstage!”
Desdamona: If the answer is
“no,” then they question his manhood. It’s so fucked up.
Carnage: And then there’s
the girls. There are some girls that come up and are all up in your face. If
you’re dating somebody at the time—
Desdamona: Problems!
Carnage: Then you hear
about it in the car. And I’m just like, “I’m just doing my job! I didn’t bring her
home with us!” Finding a happy medium with how to interact with fans is
something that I’ve learned to do in the past couple of years.
Q: I feel like you’re
both very compassionate people and aware of what kind of social change needs to
happen in the community. If you were going to do a PSA for something, what
would it be?
Carnage: Embrace
everybody for what they can bring to the table. Give someone you don’t know the
same consideration you would give someone you grew up with.
Desdamona: I can’t
think of just one. There are so many. I feel like some of my Facebook posts are
PSAs. I get so many comments on the things I bring up on Facebook. It’s amazing!
I’m a connector. I’ve realized how much power I can wield.
Carnage: Influencing people is part of the fuel that
keeps me going.
Originally published on Vita.mn in July 2013.
Originally published on Vita.mn in July 2013.
