Attention J-Dilla Heads: Slum Village's T3 on Finally Releasing the Album, Dilla's pre-Tribe Beginnings and that Whole "New Native Tongues" Reputation

E1 Music

Slum Village's T3: No fear of a black hat

​"The idea for a Slum Village reunion album came from a conversation I had with J Dilla before he passed away," says T3, the last living member of the beloved Detroit rap group. Released this week, Villa Manifesto is a fitting end to the Slum Village story. The project reunites the original line-up, with fresh production and raps from Dilla assisted by vocal contributions from Baatin (who passed away last year), also fulfilling the group's oft-quoted tag as the 'new Native Tongues' by adding De La Soul's Posdnuos and A Tribe Called Quest's Phife to the song "Scheming."

With the album confirmed as the last official Slum Village release, T3 looks back on their relationship with the Native Tongues crew, reveals the Slum songs that ended up on Tribe and Common albums, and explains how Dilla's beats on their four-track demo tape first caught Tip's attention.

On the Slum Village song "Hold Tight," Q-Tip rapped, "I'm a leave it in the hands of the Slum now." How did that make you feel?
We were all honored that Tip was showing us all the love he showed us. Q-Tip is basically the guy who started the Slum Village career and the guy who started J Dilla's career as a producer. He gave us that first opportunity.

How did you come to meet him?
We met him through a guy named Amp Fiddler, who was on tour with Parliament/Funkadelic and A Tribe Called Quest. Amp told Tip about us, invited us to the tour, and we gave our demo tape to Tip.

Can you remember what was on the demo tape?
Ha ha, it was four songs, that's about all I can remember. Actually, Tip didn't like the songs on the demo - he just liked Dilla's beats. That's how Dilla started producing for him, on the strength of the beats on that demo. Then once we did Fantastic: Volume One it was a smash. We gave that to Tip and he loved that and started playing it to all his dudes in the industry.

​Did you receive much interest from major labels in those days?
Yeah, we had five major deals on the table the first time we shopped our album: Universal, Interscope, Def Jam, A&M and somebody else. If I think about it, we really probably should have went with Def Jam! But you can't go back in time. Slum Village on Def Jam would have worked.

After Q-Tip rapped about passing the baton on to Slum Village, people started tagging you as the 'new Native Tongues'. Do you think that was justified?
Not really. We were so different in a sense not of the music, but what we were talking about. When Slum first came out, people tried to put us in this category of 'conscious rappers,' but we were never conscious rappers, we were street. Our concepts have never been conscious, they've got a street edge, we talk about women a lot, and do a lot of different things those cats aren't doing. I remember Mase from De La Soul was excited that we paved the way for that style. He told us he always wanted to rap in De La, but he couldn't because De La had to stay in a certain language. When they first came out they were about love, peace, some hippie stuff. He couldn't go where he wanted to go. He told us he was so happy we paved the way to try to do soulful music but not have to be like a conscious rapper. The Native Tongues had certain things they'd talk about, but we paved the way for something different.

Was Slum Village's sound influenced by Tribe, De La and the Jungle Brothers?