by Alex Shtaerman
For more than a decade Tha Alkaholiks have been buying out the bar and tearing up shows from coast to coast. Building a cult like following through the ‘90’s, E-Swift, J-Ro & Tash earned critical acclaim infusing their trademark off the wall humor into an extensive catalog of upbeat party cuts. Indoctrinated into Hip-Hop by West Coast rap legend King Tee, Tha Liks burst onto the scene in 1993 with their classic Loud Records debut album 21 & Over. Twelve years and four albums later Tha Alkaholiks still stand as one of the most distinct and arguably most underrated groups to ever come out of Los Angeles. With their fifth LP Firewater on the way, Tha Liks took many fans by surprise as they announced they would be parting ways following the completion of a farewell tour. While all three members intend to focus on solo careers, many wonder if Firewater truly spells likwidation for Hip-Hop’s favorite party animals. As Tash explains it, it’s up to the fans to determine whether or not we will see Tha Alkaholiks reuniting again in the future. “If the fans want us, we can’t turn our back on the fans, that’s one thing that we’re not going to do. So we see how this album does and then we’ll put out our solo albums and then maybe in the future you might get another Alkaholiks record”.
RIOTSOUND.COM: You got your final group album Firewater dropping in early 2006; knowing this was going to be your last project together, what type of message were you looking to deliver to the fans?
J-RO: We wasn’t really trying to deliver a different message just because it’s the last album. We’re just really trying to make a good album and that all happened in the process of making the record, as far as us deciding this would be our last album. We didn’t really go into it with that thought process in mind [of this being our last record together]. But I think it’s a good album to go out on. It’s just us on the album basically, it’s a lot of hard beats and rhymes. There’s also a lot of riddles on there that you gotta figure out.
RIOTSOUND.COM: Listening to some the tracks off Firewater it sounds like you stuck to your trademark formula; would you say that’s the case?
E-SWIFT: Yea, that’s the whole album. We went back to the original formula. When we did our first album it was pretty much just us in the studio doing what we do best – and that’s being spontaneous and just sticking to the basic rules of Hip-Hop where you gotta have tight lyrics and bangin’ beats. Over the last decade we’ve been all over the world and we’ve met a lot of people and we get a lot of input from the fans; so we took all that input that we gathered from everybody and went back in the lab and gave them what they wanted. And what they wanted was that original 21 & Over sound, just straight raw Hip-Hop without even thinking about anything outside of the box. So that’s what it is man, its Alkaholiks at they best, the sound that put us on the map, we going out with that same sound.
RIOTSOUND.COM: You’re in the midst of a farewell world tour, what’s that been like?
J-RO: We started it and we’ve been on the road, we did the West Coast all the way over to Denver and we actually on tour now in Europe.
TASH: It’s been crazy; one thing that we pride ourselves on is giving the fans a good show. A lot of artists from the West Coast are not really known for stage performances. With a lot of the West Coast vibe it’s real laid back, but we get on the stage and tear it down every single night so the fans love that shit, they go crazy. They start throwing shit and slam dancing and stage diving and acting a fool so we definitely take pride in kicking ass on the stage.
RIOTSOUND.COM: When Hip-Hop journalists talk about West Coast Hip-Hop it seems to always either be N.W.A, Death Row or Aftermath. I think that gives people a very one-sided impression and does not reflect the true talent and diversity we got out on the West Coast, how do you see that whole situation?
TASH: One thing about it is that America itself is intrigued with guns and murdering and all that type of shit. I think when N.W.A came out with saying Fuck Tha Police and a lot of the West Coast artists were talking about gangbangin’ and stuff like that, it basically sparked a lot of conversation and that led to record sales. To put it bluntly, that all put a stamp on what West Coast music was. But then there was artists like us and a bunch of other cats that was making a different type of music that never really got as much shine.
If you go anywhere they know about the Alkaholiks and they know about this and that, it’s just their preference in music. If they like the underground Hip-Hop then there’s a lot of groups out there like that, if they like the funky shit then get with the Alkaholiks, if they like the gansta shit then get with Snoop and them. It’s just that the West Coast G-Funk sound took over rap music all together at one point, so it just got talked about a lot more than us. But, you know, there’s a lot of variety out there.
RIOTSOUND.COM: Going back fifteen years or so, how did Tha Alkaholiks originally come together; for fans who don’t known can you talk about how it all started?
E-SWIFT: To make a long story short, me and Tash, we’re from Ohio. When I moved to L.A. I was introduced to J-Ro through a mutual friend of ours. I was DJing and making beats and stuff and I was looking for MCs to work with. J-Ro, from the first time he came over my house and I heard his demo he did, ‘cause he was [already] in a group with King Tee, from the first song he ever played for me, I was like – yea, this is what I’m talking about right here. Because, like you were saying before, I had a certain image of what the West Coast sound was and how the rappers were out here. J-Ro was really like the first rapper I met that kind of stepped outside of the stereotype West Coast MC.
So me and J-Ro just started hanging out as buddies and then I met Tash the same way, through a friend of ours. What I noticed that we had in common was that we was all into the real real Hip-Hop, we weren’t into the negative stereotypes how you might define like a West Coast group or whatever. So we was just hanging out and doing stuff separately and then it got to the point where we was like – yo, we just need to get together and start making music. When we actually did our first song we was in the studio and J-Ro was doing a solo song and Tash was doing a solo song and I was producing for them. So we just got together and did one joint and from then on we really became a group.
J-RO was running around with King Tee doing his thing, they had a group called Total Control back in the day. I was also DJing for King Tee before we were Tha Alkaholiks. And to make a long story short, King Tee is the one who gave us the name Tha Alkaholiks. We introduced [our] sound to the world on King Tee’s Tha Triflin’ Album. Got It Bad Ya’ll was our first single. After that we just caught a buzz and got signed to Loud Records and the rest is history.
RIOTSOUND.COM: Over the years Tha Alkaholiks have earned a lot of critical acclaim and developed a cult like following. Looking back on everything that’s transpired, if there was anything you could change, what would it be?
E-SWIFT: I would say the only thing I would have done [different] is put out more albums. I would have put out an album every year. But we toured so much and we did so much stuff in between our albums that it was kinda hard to do that with our schedules. That might be the only thing though, we woulda had out like eleven albums by now, but it ain’t over.
J-RO: I wouldn’t change a thing myself, nope. Nothing.
TASH: I wouldn’t change nothing either. I just wish that we had more opportunity as far as record sales, I wish we would have went platinum a couple of times, you know. But we make our paper so I wouldn’t change too much man.
RIOTSOUND.COM: How permanent do you see this breakup as being, is it possible that five years from now we’ll see Tha Alkaholiks reuniting? It seems Hip-Hop has been proving a lot of people wrong lately with many older artists enjoying longevity and continued fan support.
TASH: We ain’t got to that point yet. I know one thing, I’m a hustler man, so its supply and demand. If the fans want us, we can’t turn our back on the fans, that’s one thing that we’re not going to do. So we see how this album does and then we’ll put out our solo albums and then maybe in the future you might get another [Alkaholiks record].
RIOTSOUND.COM: It’s been just over a year since Ol’ Dirty Bastard tragically passed on. Tha Alkaholiks recorded a track with Dirty called Hip-Hop Drunkies, which is one of the great callabos of the 90’s; can you talk about recording that record and how that song came together?
J-RO: It was cool, that was one of the most memorable recording sessions we had in our career because we kinda was brothers with Wu-Tang. When we first went out they was right there with us and ODB was always a cool cat with us and hung out with us all the time; of course he gonna come kick it with Tha Liks, you know. And when we did the song – I mean, my most memorable thing was the last verse, we was all three of us in the mic booth, just pretty much pushing each other out the way going back and forth. I had never seen that before in a recording session so that was fun man, that’s a good memory that’s going to last forever. Rest in peace to ODB and thanks for helping us make a Hip-Hop classic. We do that song at shows all over the world and we tell everyone to get with us for ODB man and it’s the loudest roar from a crowd that we hear from any part of our show, so it’s definitely a good experience to this day.
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