The Flatbush Zombies are raking in the dough from their debut album 3001: A Laced Odyssey, released earlier this month. HNHH caught up with the rambunctious trio of Erick the Architect, Meechy Darko, & Zombie Juice down at SXSW to talk about the making of the album as well as their love of Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey", NYC rapper camaraderie ("camaraderie is very important"), and assorted other topics.
Erick the Architect explained how he got in touch with comic book artist David Nakayama, who designed the exceptionally ill cover art for 3001: A Laced Odyssey, and discussed how the Zombies approached their debut album differently than they would have a mixtape. "We approached this with intent to change and basically reestablish that we're psychedelic hip hop artists," he said. "Like we're new to the world, but we been doing this. It's not like that changed much, it's more like, we'll tell you again who we are and why we do this shit."
Erick went on to discuss his beatmaking process and why they kept production in house for the entirety of the album. "It was important for me to do the whole first album just because I've been producing for us this whole time, I didn't see why we had to go get somebody else. This is all me, baby! You don't need nobody else, that's how I feel," he told us."
The Zombies live together in a house on Brooklyn, and Meechy Darko shed some insight into the ways in which Flatbush Zombies work together in that environment. "Sometimes I don't want to see him make the whole beat," Meechy said of Erick. "Sometimes I just want to see the sample that he's cutting and come back five hours later. Depends. Sometimes it's good for a guy to make this shit alone and have no distractions, I'm farting and coughing in the background."
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