March 20, 2013

I Am Many

IAMMANY1

I Am Many. Many Styles. Many many styles. Strength in numbers. He walks with a million clones. I Am Many first emerged as Many Styles in the early 2000s establishing himself in the underground battle & cypher scene, since then he has re-emerged as the recording artist I Am Many. Affiliated with the Creative Juices crew, 2 Hungry Brothers (Deep and Ben Boogz), and Homeboy Sandman, this New York native is essential to the current NY come-up. Google the track “The Okey Doke.” I met Many in 2009 at his record release show for The Human Experience, which I found out about on MySpace then, yea.

You’ve got Disobey coming out, please expand.

Let me start off by saying I believe in the goodness of people. I believe there is a natural goodness in all of us but we’ve been led off course. The idea of disobeying comes as a threat when assuming the people giving the order have your best interest in mind. However, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to Disobey someone telling you to make a fool out of yourself or to be cruel to others. Our so called leaders, teachers, law enforcers, authoritative figures don’t always have our best interest in mind, though it may appear so.

“There’s a curtain behind a curtain behind a curtain behind a curtain behind a curtain” -We Are Here (off the Disobey album)

We have to constantly be on our toes as our minds are under attack at all times. Remember who these people are, they are the controllers, the slave owners, the sickened minds who wish to keep the populous in a zombie like state of unawareness. Their weapons are radio, tv, churches, schools, music, advertisement, food, sex, entertainment, culture, clothes, colors, etc.. all of these things can be used against you to prevent you from being your greater self.

They used to use white people to betray black people as fools in plays, they no longer have to as the black entertainers in hip hop do a great job of it themselves. When an artist projects a msg of self worth based on an object, it is a direct statement of how he or she is of little worth without it. “I’m special because of my car”, “I’m special because of my chain”. Look at all of the THINGS I have, they make me important. “You’re beneath me because your objects aren’t as expensive as mine”.

Now let us look behind the curtain.. Who’s to benefit from this MSG? Who owns mainstream radio? Who sells you the things you buy to fill this void of worthlessness? And most important of all, why do they want to keep you down!? If people knew what they were being robbed of, if people really knew who they really were, how valuable, limitless and full of potential they are, they would cease living a life that is beneath them and this system that enforces this false way of living would collapse. We humans have become hamsters in a wheel, running in place to see that it keeps turning but getting nowhere all the same.

So yeah, Disobey coming this May, touches upon all these things I just mentioned in a hard hitting unorthodox way. Its my attempt to awaken the sleeper, to free the enslaved mind. So it’s important that it’s readily available and something like money doesn’t get in the way of people having it.

IAMMANY2

Tell people why they should save their money. It doesn’t have to rhyme.

Because the people you’re giving it to don’t care about you. So you have to take care of yourself. Wanna impress a girl, take her to your apartment. Not your room in your moms house where you keep your sneakers and hats that help you look like every one else caught up in the same nonsense as yourself and that’s not to say there’s anything wrong with fashion, but ask yourself this… Would the people you’re giving your money to give their money to you? In fact, I challenge you to go into a jewelry store with something you made yourself and see if the merchant would give you 10 dollars for it, let alone the thousands one would spend on his gordy products.

You dropped S.I.N. (Strength In Numbers) right around this time last year, looking back…

The S.I.N. album is dope. There’s a good deal of originality on there. My fav joints on that are “Posers”, “Swine Flew”, “Universal Love”, “Victorious”, “Stardust”, “Look Mom No Pen” (which was pretty much a freestyle) but there all dope for different reasons.

Can you maybe list some posers you left out of the song?

Gladly. People who like and support parody rap. There’s this idea that its cool to be intelligent but like stupid rap. I think I know why.. I believe the psychology of it is this.. 1, it enables them to be the wannabes they always were. 2, majority of them being hipsters are parodies of artists themselves so they can relate to the joke of it all because their existences and life as they know it has always been a joke. Also, part of this is due to the idea that good music is a matter of opinion. Bullshit.

There is such a thing as better music being a matter of fact! No one is going to argue that Led Zeppelin is better than New Kids On The Block but you might get a kid who takes a run of the mill unskilled rapper and says he’s better than a more seasoned MC because they like his beats. Talent, skill and ability isn’t a matter of opinion. You’re either an amazing guitar player, a good guitar player, an ok guitar player, or someone who cant play the fucking guitar.

Either way, it’s not something that needs debating for 3 hours.. and if you take your sorry guitar playing ass to a blues club and get on stage like “Haha I don’t know what I’m doing, isn’t this great!?” you’re gonna get booed off stage and possibly have shit thrown at you.

So it makes my blood boil when outsiders think its funny and cool to cheer on the imbecile who makes a mockery out of himself and more importantly a culture that represents me.

How do you feel about the New School format for battle raps?

I love it. I think battling is being brought to the highest of levels these days cause of that very format.

Talk about your shirts.

I currently have 2 shirts I sell, the first is the Born Again Sinner tee. The second is Disobey. The born again sinner is a shirt that reps S.I.N. Strength In Numbers and pokes fun at the un Christ like “Christian” the Disobey tee represents thinking for yourself, marching to the beat of your drum, not falling for the okey doke

You have an EP coming out with Homeboy Sandman, that’s gonna be some shit right?

Indeed it is. Sand is a one of a kind artist as am I, we see eye to eye on a lot of things. So it wasn’t hard to formulate the concepts or topics for the joints. Its produced entirely by Vex Ruffin and is titled Get Big as we created it while training in the park. Sand is a great friend and the dopest MC in NY right now. So it’s an honor and a privilege to collab with him on a project.

I hear you offer personal training?

Yes, I’m very much into the unorthodox style of fitness. Much like hip hop it came from the streets of New York and has now become a world wide phenom. People seek advancement, they wanna achieve, grow, learn, evolve and that’s how it should be. We weren’t meant to stay the same. Nothing about us does, but it’s a common belief that life ends when you’re 30, that it’s no longer about you, that it’s too late to aspire to be something more cause if you were supposed to be it you would’ve already been it by now. That very thought along with other self-defeating notions drives the unhappy commuter to continue his or her on-going life of dormancy.

Now, one thing I appreciate about training is the fact that it’s not like rap. There’s no denying the obvious, you’re either in great shape or you’re not. You can’t hire a publicist or rely on a co-sign to assist you, it can not be bought and once you have it it’s yours in a way that few things are and it can not be taken from you. It brings us to experience who and what we are in a physical way.

Be on the look out for iammany.net where I will have a section of videos devoted mainly to training.

Tell us about your project with 2 Hungry Bros tho.

The album with 2 Hungry Bros is called Obese and is also very fresh. A good mix of uppity joints with some heavy thoughts and flows over charismatic beats. I knew Deep from when I went under the name ‘Many Styles’ this was back before Ben was producing.. We would head to TME studios in the Bronx and I would lay down the same verse 80 times for like 3 days.. Fred Ones called me ‘Many Files’ Those were the beginning days.. We recently shot a video for a song called “Cheeseburger” feat. Sand, that’s being edited and should be out soon. But yeah the album is really dope man.

Is there gonna be a follow-up to The Human Experience?

Very possible. That first release was the result of an incomplete project.. There were more songs written for it that never got recorded so I’m looking forward to revisiting that material and imagine I’ll be inspired to lay it down.

A dozen a capella videos, what’s that about?

I figure its a good way to stay active. It also it gives people a preview of what’s to come.

iammany.net
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@TheRealIAmMany

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