[photos and interview by karol o.]

When you say “live rap” you might think of bands like The Roots, multi-piece funk / soul bands with emcees that play smooth and ride easy flows. But Themselves (Adam “Doseone” Drucker and Jeffrey “Jel” Logan) are perhaps one of the only live rap bands around these days. They use the original building blocks of rap – samplers and drum machines – but turn them into live instruments that they twist and turn into an unequivocal racket of groove, all right before your eyes and ears. They (ha) are currently on tour in support of their dizzying new album CrownsDown.

EID: What is “CrownsDown”? What does the title of the album mean?

Doseone: Crownsdown is our truism, a term to our language of rap, that encapsulates the arrow and edge of us at this point in time, like “Ready to Die.” Jeff and I gently set our worth down on the table of days before us. Not out of confidence but reverence and earnest.

EID: On the second track on the album, you give people your home address and tell to come and “get their careers over with already.” Has anyone yet come to either of your houses looking for a battle?

Doseone: Not yet, but I can’t wait. I hope I am in underwear with my toothbrush in one hand and a bill in the other while I kill a kid on my stoop.

EID: Why are there no lyrics included in the album?

Doseone: We put them in the digital booklet. It was a tough call, but the ten photos in the book are specifically set and shot to be theoretical 12″covers. So each song gets its own diorama of sorts. I enjoy the maturity and room for interperetation it leaves to the listening person.

EID: How were these new songs written? Did beats come first? Did words come first?

Doseone: A bit of both. Overall, Jeff and I sat with our concept of classic rap albums, and fostered our own astranged version of such a criteria. We then tried to discern what “type” of rap song motiffs still could hold true and reign potent in the 2000s. So we had a bootlegging song, a don’t-mess-with-the-dj song, a defend-rap-from-nogooders song and so on. And for some of these we had a very clear idea of what the production should be. For “Oversleeping,” we made that beat together, and I was like, oh this is the clean-out-the-closet skeleton crush jam, and I wrote the song in a single eve. “Back II Burn” was written as a long poem by Pedestrian and I, and Jeff and I then made a triumphant album begining beat to match and modify the mood of the poem.

EID: What is touring like for you guys? What is the weirdest thing you’ve seen on this tour?

Doseone: It’s pretty great for us right now. We are the fastest of friends, and really just beginning to open up as a two-man rap band. So it’s somehow, all new again a decade later and our people are very happy to have us right now. Things feel flush: we are giving our appreciators a meal that is shaped just like their hunger.

You know, we were in Denny’s, and they were selling a shirt that says “get your grave on.” I shit my pants! It’s like a dose shirt. It may not be the weirdest tale, but when corporations make something adorable and advertised in the language of death, one must shake their head, take note, and see things as new and oddly futuristic.

EID: How is playing support different from headlining?

Doseone: We are co headlining, which I like. Sometimes opening is great, cause crowds can get drunk and long day drowsy on you. And opening tends to be the sweet spot. Truthfully I live for my hour on stage, and will take it anyway I can. Jeff and I don’t need cake and pointy hats, to bring it birthday to the ageing.

EID: What’s the plan when the tour is over?

Doseone: We are finishing a remix record for CrownsDown, and Jeff will be sealing shut his new solo record. I am going to be finishing “unearthing” with Alan Moore and Andy Broder, and then its onto Nevermen with [TV On The Radio's] Tunde [Adebimpe] and mighty Mike Patton. The rest is blood, sweat, bills, and B-movie dreams.

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[for more photos from the Toronto show, check out the decipher photo gallery.]