Photo courtesy of Tone Fultz
From Ice-T and Afrika Islam, LL Cool J and the L.A. Posse, Ice Cube and the Bomb Squad, to Nas and Hit-Boy, Hip-Hop has always reached from coast to coast to produce something great, despite what the media may tell you. California emcee Dios Negasi and Pennsylvania producer Tone Fultz linked up to release a super grimy album called “Iron Angeles.”
Iron Angeles is an 11-track release produced entirely by Tone Fultz. The project features appearances by Halo The Lost Angel, Skrillz Dior, and DyVerse.
Dios Negasi and Tone Fultz spoke to The Real Hip-Hop about making music for the backpackers, hipsters that critique Hip-Hop, and their new album, Iron Angeles.
TRHH: How’d you two get together to decide to do Iron Angeles?
Dios Negasi: We got mutual friends, shout out to DigginDaily. We kind of plugged up through them and we kept in contact through social media and all of that. We started talking like damn near every other day. The project just kind of built itself. I was taking a break from production and he just started sending me like crazy joints. I was like, “Shit, let’s get it popping, man.” I ain’t turning down no fades, man. I feel like the Ninja Turtle nigga, you know what I’m saying?
Tone Fultz: Plus, we got a lot in common on the music. We got a lot of the same tastes. We like that hard, rugged shit.
Dios Negasi: Yeah, and if you hear his production it’s slightly similar to mine, or mine is slightly similar to his. It’s not a far stretch. When he was sending it I said, “Damn, this sounds like some shit I would have made.” So, it’s not too far away, it’s not so hard to do because it’s something I’m familiar with.
Tone Fultz: Because my people’s out here was like, “Dios and Reagan Era sound perfect on your beats,” but we do the same shit.
TRHH: How did you come up with the title Iron Angeles?
Tone Fultz: We were just throwing names back and forth and Dios said…
Dios Negasi: Wait though, wait though. This is interesting. Do you remember one of the names that I threw at you?
Tone Fultz: I remember you said “Rotten Angeles.”
Dios Negasi: I was just coming with some wild shit, I said some “something ambush.” I was like, “Yo, bro ambush something!” I just wanted something obscure, which is kind of crazy. I think you should still use that, but he put more reality in it. He was like, “I’m in Pittsburgh; this is the city of steel and iron. You from Los Angeles, nigga, it’s Iron Angeles. I said, “Okay, well I was trying to be creative.” That shit don’t get you very far these days [laughs].
Tone Fultz: Yeah, that’s how it came up. I think it fits though because it represents both of us.
Dios Negasi: Yeah, I agree.
TRHH: What was the process like creating Iron Angeles?
Tone Fultz: It was fast. It was easy. We got all kind of joints that we didn’t even put out. We still got bangers.
Dios Negasi: It was a smooth transition from Reagan shit into this. Again, the production seemed very familiar. We was talking every day anyway. I just remember one of the things was I was just like, “Yo, what kind of style we gonna do?” Remember that? When I hit you I was like, “Yo, are we going to go this way or this way?” and he’s like, “Nah, I prefer it to be on this type of level.” And that was just a conversation, it wasn’t nothing. After that he just let me get busy. He came out to Cali, he was in the lab in The CHAMBERS in here and the homies pulled up.
Tone Fultz: We recorded right there.
Dios Negasi: We just got busy. I think the first night we probably did five or six joints. It was smooth. It was flowing.
TRHH: Tone, without snitching what genre did you get the sample from on Roids?
Tone Fultz: [Laughs] Man that song is probably like some Prog type shit.
TRHH: Okay. There is a line on the song “Exhaust Manifolds” where you say, “Since when did fucking hipsters rewrite our music laws?” How did people who aren’t part of our culture get such a loud voice in our culture?
Dios Negasi: Man, you know what, it’s politics. However, they did it, it had to be some type of political thing that went on from the school systems, to what we see as adults in workplaces, and just in nature, bro. That whole “everybody gets a trophy” or “you’re offensive” attacking comedians and shit. That’s it and a lot of these people are privileged financially and they can have podcasts, and they can have the things that we didn’t. They have a voice on the internet as where they wouldn’t have a voice in the street or standing on a soapbox in a park, wherever niggas was getting their political views off back in the days.
They’re talking from home and it’s like, “Yo, this is how music is supposed to be done,” you don’t know nothing about no goddamn music, nigga! You fucking Clay Aiken bastard, you don’t know shit! I’m tired of that though, these niggas sit in the salon getting their motherfuckin’ hair dyed or whatever bullshit they doing, painting their nails type shit, and they talking about who’s dope. You don’t know nothing about none of that. You was never in that shit. Quiet that shit the fuck down. And I know it’s the younger demographic that be trying to tell you what’s dope and what’s not. Nigga, you don’t know what the fuck is dope.
TRHH: To me they’re the same people that make those lists — 50 greatest whatever.
Dios Negasi: Yeah, come on, that’s crazy. That’s crazy and every time I look at the list it’s like, “This person?” Fuck me. I don’t give a fuck if I’m ever on the list, nigga. Don’t put me on the list. I don’t want to be on Schindler’s List. It’s niggas that’s really ill. I don’t know, man, I feel like Sean P, rest in peace. I don’t fuck with no new rappers. What that nigga say? I don’t do rappers? Who the nigga that was with Rick Ross?
TRHH: Wale.
Dios Negasi: Yeah, he said, “I don’t do Wale, none of that shit, nigga fuck all of that.
TRHH: “I don’t Wale and them new niggas.”
Dios Negasi: There it is, there it is! “Hardcore raps and Mary J Blige records.”
TRHH: Figure 4. Rest in peace, Sean P!
Dios Negasi: Rest in peace. one of the greatest, man.
TRHH: One of the greatest. Dios, on the song “Murder 1” you say, “I do it for the backpack spitters in the 90s.” Why is it important to you to carry on that tradition?
Dios Negasi: Well, just the vibe of this album, it’s different. I put out a few solo joints and I was pacing myself, and in the time that he hit me my aggression level was a little more turned up than it was on the other ones. Me not having to produce took a lot of weight off of my shoulders and it allowed me to just get back into what inspired me to begin with. In the 90s catching the bus to Leimert Park, it was always kind of crazy because we had the backpacks, the fatigues. Niggas was damn near like New York dressed on the West Coast scene. We coming out there and it was all for the love.
Thursday nights was Blowed, shout out to GRIP — Grand Official, they started up the Cypher Nights then we started doing that. It’s the love of it and I feel like the raps that I’m spitttin’ here is more closer to the time I was doing that. I was actually riding the bus, and going to these places, and begging my mom or begging somebody to fuckin’ drop me off because I was 14 or 15. I ain’t have no license and I need to get over here to rap. This project kind of set me back in a battle mode type of thing, versus the regular stuff that I do.
TRHH: What do you hope to achieve with Iron Angeles?
Tone Fultz: Well, what I hope to achieve is to show motherfuckers that Hip-Hop is still pure. That it’s still real, it’s still about beats and lyrics. It ain’t no whatever the fuck they doing now, that ain’t Hip-Hop to me. Just taking it back to the roots.
Dios Negasi: Well, not everything. It’s some dope shit out here. Don’t get me wrong, it’s some dope shit, Tone.
Tone Fultz: I don’t feel like it’s fucking with us though.
Dios Negasi: Word. Hey, I stand behind that. I stand on that too, but the whole drive and motivation behind Iron Angeles is nigga, we the dopest [laughs]. You listen to the bars, you listen when niggas talking, niggas ain’t talking no “let’s plant seeds and grow trees.” Niggas is fuckin’ niggas up. I’m kind of like in one of my most aggressive states. Like I’m saying on the album, I haven’t even really showed all of my abilities. But this is like, yeah, if you piss me off this is something light that you couldn’t expect. We showing that. Nigga, don’t fuck around. You fuck around and get fucked around, if you fuck around [laughs].
Tone Fultz: This shit serious.
Purchase: Dios Negasi & Tone Fultz – Iron Angeles