Photo courtesy of Thanos Alatsidis
Emcee Abitight (Appetite) and producer RP are two members of Chicago’s Greenlights Music collective. The duo ventured off to release an album titled “Sample from the Menu.” The release is like a sonic smorgasbord feeding you everything from the sad, to the silly, and the sublime.
Sample From the Menu is a 17-track album produced entirely by RP. The project features appearances by Kastaway, Joe Goodkin, Holly Prindle, Hobbyist, Lilly Choi, Spiderface, Bob Rok, Casagrown, and Doc Wattson.
The Real Hip-Hop talked to Abitight about what he brings to Chicago Hip-Hop, run ins with police, working with RP, and their new album, Sample From The Menu.
TRHH: Why’d you call the new album Sample From The Menu?
Abitight: I call it that because I wanted to do a couple of different things. This was my breakout solo venture and through all the albums that I’ve listened to growing up, I just wanted to have different sounds, and styles, and pretty much have like a culmination of what I do. I do some singing, I do some rapping. The old-school Hip-Hop albums, they were always using regular samples, samples from like movies, TV shows. Everyone has said the same thing, “Where’s the good Hip-Hop these days? Where is that 90s boom bap?” I wanted to pay homage to that. I miss those days of getting an album, hearing an album from front to back.
I didn’t want to just do songs and then have people just kind of skip along. I wanted to have a cohesive project where when you put it on, you can listen to it front to back. And Sample From The Menu, people know my stage name being Abitight, my friends know me, I like eating a lot, cooking. I call myself that because, starving artists, I kinda do like a play on words. So, I figured, this is my breakout album to the masses, ‘cause I’ve been on band stuff and features, but, this is me. I just wanted to give that to the people, Sample From The Menu [laughs].
TRHH: How different was it doing Sample From The Menu versus doing a Greenlights album?
Abitight: Well, doing all the heavy lifting [laughs]. Well, not all the heavy lifting, but a Greenlights album since there’s six or seven guys some songs I’m just doing like a chorus, some songs I am doing my own verses and then adding choruses as well. What’s funny, going into this project, I thought that I was gonna do something small — maybe like ten tracks or so, but throughout the process it just got away from me. I figured, let’s just go in. Let me put in all this work and that’s what I did. It was a great pairing ’cause me and RP we’ve been working together for almost thirty plus years. I’ve known the cat for a very long time. We have deep, deep roots. He is truly a brother from another mother.
So, doing this project was daunting at first. ‘Cause I’ve never done like a solo joint. I’ve done solo joints with a different genre like back in 2008. I did like this rock-pop group. It was a three piece, but I was like the front man and the group was called Shapes and Sounds. For that we only did like about five songs and I was the lead vocalist. So, for that I just knew that I always wanted to do the solo project, but I was just putting stuff off for like years and years and years. And during the Greenlights stuff, like Bob put out a couple of solo joints and, Doc had did a solo joint, and Amanu did his solo joint, and they’re all looking at me like, “Cam, you’re next.” I was ready to do it, but at the same time Bob gave me some great advice, all he said was, “one track at a time” and that’s the approach that I took — one track at a time.
RP is always sending us beats and it was about three years ago he had sent the whole crew like three or four beats. And there was this one beat, that I just wrote to. I think I finished the song either that day or within like two days, but I had maybe two or three verses and the chorus for the intro song. We were gonna send this off to Oh, Are They? and they were gonna do a feature, but they were busy and that never happened. But when I originally did that song I felt this ownership to it. I was talking to RP saying let’s take that track and put it off to the side, not thinking that that was going to be the jump off for this project, and it just so happened to work out that way.
So, things just kinda fell in my lap that way. Same thing with Whirlpool and Carry On. Those tracks kinda manifested themselves. Whirlpool was one of those songs where he sent the beat out and I just connected to it right away. ‘Cause like the choruses were already there, and I just wrote these two these two 16s and it just worked. And then with Carry On, Bob Rok was doing I think Thoughts Becoming Music and he had this song about buildings. I was in Switzerland at the time and I was in the back of my girlfriend’s mother’s car and Andres (RP) was sending out beats and I’m in the back of the car riding to that beat. But then when I came back in town, when I went to record for that track, RP was like, “That track is already done.” And then I’m like, “Oh, okay.”
So, then he was like, “All right, check this beat out.” And the beat that that verse is on, that was the beat and it just worked out perfectly. And the night before, I had come up with that chorus just randomly ’cause there is this movie I think on Netflix called a Carry-On with Egerton. I like to play on words for like a carry-on and then the verse that I had that’s starting off that track, at first it was about buildings, but then I started to talk about my own experience being an artist within the city, and then the different trials and tribulations and rites of passage that you go through. Everything just kinda meshed together.
TRHH: What makes RP great as a producer?
Abitight: Man, there’s so much. It’s just his choice of beats. Since we have a lot of history, he is a great listener. This may sound grandiose, but I would put him as like a Dr. Dre or a Q-Tip or an Alchemist. He knows how to work with an artist to hear that artists style, if he knows that artist that he is working with. And, with his background, he just knows how to just find those perfect beats, like those perfect samples [laughs]. He also works with some of the band members within Greenlights, because Tim Deuchler, who’s our bass player, he actually kind of came up with the stem for Carry On. He would send Andres some of these like stripped down basslines and beats, and then they would kind of build tracks that way as well.
But I don’t know, I just trust his choices. His production has gone up throughout the years. When he first started making beats, it was probably like around maybe 2007-2008, this is back when we were in Abstract Giants and right when the band thing kinda started to tear away. He took it upon himself to learn how to produce beats and he was working with Rollin Weary, who’s an engineer/musician and he just taught him all of his tricks. Andres has always had like a pretty good ear. He used to play the drums, I played bongos, so, it was innate.
TRHH: One thing about Sample From The Menu that stood out to me was the sampled stuff from movies and TV. Why’d you decide to put funny interludes throughout the album?
Abitight: That’s just something that I felt, I wouldn’t say was missing, but that’s what I was saying before, that’s what I would miss growing up listening to these classic Hip-Hop albums — those funny little skits. Even with my core group of friends one of the samples that we had used was from Fear of a Black Hat. We used to watch this movie like almost every day back in the college days when you’re sitting around, and you’re drinking, or smoking. Or like late night, just hanging out, you wanna put on a funny movie and certain movies you would quote those lines and Fear of a Black Hat, there was just so many quotable funny lines I just wanted to add that and share that to the world. So, with this album being a piece of me, I wanted to kind of showcase my sense of humor side, like the things that we find funny.
There are some pretty recognizable movie quotes from there, like House Party. But then there’s some stuff in there that, I mean I could reveal but, if people know ‘em, they know ‘em. If they don’t know ‘em, they could talk to me personally [laughs]. Or talk to RP, ’cause he’s a funny dude [laughs]. All these guys are funny. The whole Greenlights crew, it’s like a bunch of comedians who know how to rhyme. We just kinda have to be on our toes and we wanna share that humor. Cause, Nick — Bob Rock is a funny dude. He has his Jerry Blowkiss character and I didn’t wanna copy but, just kind of show my brand of humor. Going back to that old school way of how artists used to do records.
TRHH: The song “For the Win” speaks on our city. The line “Sweet home Chicago, home of the pot holes” made me laugh. The beat just sounds like Chicago. Was the track the inspiration for you to write about the city?
Abitight: That’s a good question. Once again, that was one of those songs where RP had that beat and certain songs, certain choruses, just kinda spill out of me. I knew that I wanted to do a song to honor Chicago, but when he presented me with that beat, I thought that I was just going to do the chorus for that song. I think originally that song was going to be for a Greenlights project, but around that time, Doc was around and I did the course first. I think maybe like the following day Doc had a session and he just put a verse on there. I came back a few days later and RP was like, “Yo, check this out.”
It was a blessing in disguise [laughs]. Even though a lot of the songs were intentional, but that was just a happy mistake. We put that together and things just happened organically. I think that song we did like two and a half years ago. Just kinda going back to that moment, I remember writing the chorus in his studio and then he sent me the track later and then I was writing my verse to it. When I was writing my verse that’s when he had re-sent the track a few days later with Doc’s verse on there and I was just like, “Oh, okay.” [Laughs] So yeah, it was an interesting process.
TRHH: “Finding Jubilee” gets real interesting in the second verse. Is that based on a true story?
Abitight: Yes, that whole song is based on a true story. And a funny thing about that track is that track was originally like four or five verses. The song was so long because I told about what happened that whole day and, later when we were building this album and after we had about 10 or 11 songs, and when we were getting close to finishing the album, RP was like, “Due to the runtime we should cut the song down.” Cause Missing Link is like six minutes, that song was originally almost eight minutes long. I cut out maybe three or four verses and then there was originally a resolve after that second verse on the original track. But yes, that’s definitely based on a true story.
When I was about about fifteen or sixteen my friend Jorge got a call from this girl Liz and she lived down in Peoria and this was either during like spring break or it was summertime. All I know is that my mom was a dean at my high school and she was out of town on a California conference. Me and my older brother had the car, we had the freedom, so we took this trip down to Peoria to visit this girl. That night it was really hot. So much stuff had happened — when we first arrived we were supposed to stay at this girl’s house, but she told her mom that we were just there to visit. In reality we were supposed to stay there for a week, so when we showed up to this girl’s house the mom was there and then her mother’s boyfriend was there.
We showed up with bags, were there to hang out, and the boyfriend wasn’t having it. He was like, “You guys gotta kick rocks. You guys could get a hotel.” We’re in high school. I had a job, but, we didn’t have money like that. So, long story short, they made some phone calls and we were going to stay with this girl’s friend, and as we were sitting in this person’s house, I mean they had no AC, it was like ninety degrees, it was really, really hot. My brother was gonna drop us off and drive back to Chicago. So, he was like, “Im’ma take a nap. You guys figure out what you guys wanna do.” During that time, we were undecided on if we wanted to stay or not. We were leaning towards staying and at that very moment we were like, well if we stay we need to grab this fan. I am not staying in some stranger’s crib with nothing.
So, we went to go grab this fan and, just like in the song itself, we picked the fan up, these girls are talking in the backseat and one of the girls just starts laughing and then she’s talking about, “The other night there was this KKK rally.” Me and my boy George just kind of like looked at each other and then we were like, “What?” And then like right after they had said that, I’m sitting there driving and I see in my rear view, there’s like a cop car right behind me. And then my boy was like, “Do you have your license?” I was like, “Yes, I have my license.” And as soon as I said that, lights went on. I was just like, “Wait, what?” So, there was this intersection where there were four stop signs and a light suspended in the middle of the intersection.
So, I stopped at the stop sign and then I like slowly crept through the intersection and then two seconds later lights come on. First there was one cop car, and then there was another cop car, and then another cop car came. At the very end I think there was like seven patrol cars. This cop is giving me a hard time. I was sixteen at the time and in Illinois I think there was like a state curfew if you were either under like 17 or 18, you couldn’t be outside after midnight. This must have been maybe like 1:30 in the morning. This cop, he saw my ID and he knew that I was coming from Oak Park. He was just trying to scare me, but he was really trying to scare me ’cause, he was like, “Hey, I have to impound this car. You can’t drive it.” I’m like, “What do you mean? I have my license, I have insurance, I have registration.” And they’re like, “No, you’re underage.” And if my brother wasn’t there, this would have been a different story.
Happy ending where I had just remembered that my brother was staying right down the street. “Please go grab him!” I’m sure his perspective from the story is quite funny because he is already sleeping. To be taking a nap in a stranger’s home and then to be woken up by cops knocking on the door saying, “Hey, can you pick up your brother?” And then he’s probably thinking, “What did my brother do now?” I’m sitting there like, “I didn’t do anything, man! This cop was just trying to give me a hard time!” Thank God, after that incident, we actually just drove back to Chicago that night. I was too shook. That whole day was just one big ordeal that I just wanted to forget. And the messed-up thing is that cop actually gave me like three citations. One was like for $180, one was like for $150, another one was for like $55. It was a ridiculous amount and they took my license. And, thank God my mother is who she is, ’cause, like back in the day, she used to date a cop. I don’t know exactly what happened; I was on probation for like six months but they had reduced the citations.
It was just a really weird messed up ordeal. I have dealt with racial stuff, throughout my childhood, but being in Peoria, dealing with that particular incident was just very unnerving. I’ve been in a lot of other crazy situations, especially being in Oak Park, but that’s a whole other situation. Which was kinda funny, because I was actually going to talk about that situation in high school a few years earlier, but I just wanted to focus on this one particular story, because it kinda it stuck with me since I was a teenager, amongst other run ins that I had with cops. Same with my brother. I’m just happy that none of those situations went left and that I’m still here. If that happened, a few years ago, I could have been like one of these kids. I could have been a Trayvon Martin, I could have been a Mike Brown. But, this happened in like 96 or like 95. Yeah, cops are wild, but, they weren’t that wild.
TRHH: You have a lyric on the song “Star Gazing” where you say, “Stepping in this world is grimer than the reaper.” Explain that line.
Abitight: It’s the black experience. Every day we walk outside, we deal with society. A lot of people don’t have these certain thoughts. Some people could just go about their day, and they could wear whatever they want, and they can look however they want. But, I am very aware of myself. I’ve been in situations where I’m looking down like, “Yeah, I don’t fit in.” Or I don’t blend in. Just walking down the street sometimes I would think to myself, “Is this just a projection? Are these things that I’m just thinking? But certain people cross the street for certain reasons. I’ve had plenty of situations where I walk down street and people are locking their doors.
Someone is twenty feet in front of me, they cross the street and then I turn around, they cross back over to the other side and I’m just like, “Was that just a coincidence?” But stuff like that happens all the time and going to the whole thing of people who have had bad encounters, like Trayvon Martin’s and Mike Brown’s and people who have been killed just for being at the wrong place at the wrong time, that lyric was kind of touching up on that, plus it was like the play on words where I am using references from KRS-One, Rakim, and Nas. So, it’s a bit of a double entendre, but at the same time there’s more to it as well.
TRHH: What do you hope to achieve with Sample From The Menu?
Abitight: I just want people to see me and my talent and see what I bring to Greenlights, what I bring to Chicago Hip-Hop, and to the Hip-Hop world. This is something that I wanted to share and let it be funny songs, serious songs, songs about food [laughs]. This is just hopefully the first of many, and that’s what I wanted to accomplish. I just wanted to give people a taste of what I’m capable of.
Purchase: Abitight & RP – Sample From The Menu