FListed Exclusive: Interview With Hip-Hop Fusion Duo Christian Rich Of “Famous Girl” Fame, “The Future of Music”

Christian Rich are a group that need some introduction, but probably not for long.  Right now, the genre-bridging duo are in the blissfully unencumbered phase of their career at which they are known mostly to other artists and aficionados.

But the heat coming off their new single “Famous Girl” and its strange and shocking video has caught the attention of MTV, VH1, and HBO, and their work with Lil Kim, The Clipse, and Diddy has won them fans in the box seats of the industry.  Ali Shaeed Mohammed of A Tribe Called Quest has called their sound, which is an encyclopedia of pop, hip-hop, electronica, and just about every other genre, “the future of music.”

Kehinde “Rich” Hassan and Taiwo “Christian” Hassan hail from Chicago, but I caught up with them in New York’s Union Square, near where they work (Vimby was there also, filming them for the day).  We talked about their musical influences – from Young Jeezy to Brazilian jazz to the movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s – as well as their thoughts on Auto-Tune, the inspiration behind their unsettling new video, their parties, and how to meet your next child’s mother.  Click through for the interview, video clips, and a lot of great free music.  

FListed: Let’s just start with a little introduction here first.

Christian: Christian, Rich, Christian Rich together, hailing from Chicago, Illinois, via New York City.  Chilling in Union Square right now with FListed.

FL: So these last few weeks you guys have mostly been promoting your new album?

Christian: Our new single, ["Famous Girl"], off the EP The Decadence.

FL: And that EP comes out in September?

Christian: It’s been pushed back.  Because we want to make it right for the audience.  We don’t want to mess around and make random stuff.

FL: Let’s talk about “Famous Girl” for a little bit.  A lot of celebrities and even musicians seem to be really interested in this idea of “fame for the sake of fame,” or at least fame as an important component of the music, so I’m wondering what made you guys interested in examining the idea of fame?

Christian: Originally this record was just written on the surface level, this is a song about a famous girl that I saw who I was just infatuated with, just a fun song.

FL: Can I ask who it is?

Christian: Ehh, no one I want to mention.  I don’t want to give her any more fame that she doesn’t have now…

But when it came time to make the video, we really just wanted to contrast what you heard in the music.  The music is really just a fun song and very melodic, and the video, the undertone is just so different from that.  It’s like the ying and the yang, the good is the music and then the bad is the video, as far as what can happen with the downfalls of fame, if you know how to read into the video.  We took it there because we have friends who succumbed to that, you see people on television every day who succumbed to that.  And some come back like Britney, and some just keep going down and down.

I think it’s something that needs to be seen, that people are afraid to talk about directly.  They’ll make fun of them, they’ll poke at them, but not in an artistic way that says, this is what could happen – this is what is happening – and we’ve got to address it in the proper way.

Rich: The symbolism in the video really centers on the masks worn by the men.  Each mask symbolizes a different emotion – greed, gluttony, lust.

Christian: There’s no one interpretation of it.  You can look at it as just a cannibalistic thing, you can look at it as men vs. women, you can look at it as society vs. women, you can look at it in whatever way you want.  That’s what an intriguing video should do.  Any art form I believe should do that, even if it’s just a nice club song.  It should make you wonder, well what did he mean by this line and that image?

FL: How did you guys get the idea for the video?

Christian: Well, it’s a 50-50 thing between us and the directors, BB Gun.  I saw a video from this guy Peter Fox out in Germany with him in a suit and a bunch of people in monkey masks, and I was like, I want a video with masks.  And so the directors said, well let’s do some Eyes Wide Shut type of stuff.  That was the basis.

FL: You guys, I know, have worked on a number projects with a few different fashion labels.  How did your interest in fashion come about?

Christian: It’s funny because as kids, you know, we weren’t the kids that got all the girls and stuff, so we literally said if we could dress better, if we could be more stylish, we’d get all the girls, so we just kind of took more interest in fashion.

As we got older, we were just kind of like, well you’re not trying to dress nice for the girls any more.  You like this clothing and you want to find out why this outfit looks better on him than him, and what type of cut that is, and things like that, and that is why we’re still interested in fashion.

FL: Did it work, for the girls?

Christian: Yes!

Rich: Oh yeah.

Christian: It worked very much so.

Rich: Almost had a couple babies.

Christian: College was a great time because of that.  Thank you to Ralph Lauren Polo.

FL: Going back earlier in your musical careers, how did you guys first get involved in hip-hop and electronica?

Rich: It’s funny, we were introduced to hip-hop – well we used to live in Nigeria, but we moved back here in like 1990.  We got introduced to hip-hop and electronica at the same time.  Our sister introduced us to hip-hop, was telling us about A Tribe Called Quest, The Pharcyde, Big Daddy Kane, we were like, this is great, we like the beats.

On the electronica side, our sister was like, yo, there’s this group called Daft Punk, they have this song called “Around the World,” you’ll probably like it.  And from there I was sold, I was like, I like this.  We always told ourselves as producers, when we become artists on our own, we’re going to make that fusion, we’re going to show people that hip-hop side, that electronica side, that symphony side, all the genres we like.  So we’re doing that and that’s how we came about, just from our sister showing us the music.

Christian Rich talk musical influences, favorite artists, and favorite movie soundtracks/scores.

Listen to The Bird and the Bee’s “Diamond Dave.”

FL: I noticed on “Famous Girl,” and I was listening to The Decay Mixtape, you do have all these gothic strings interludes.  So what are some of the more unusual genres and sounds you guys like to work with?

Christian: I wouldn’t say that we listen to anything unusual, I think to things that are unpredictable for the type of people we are.  We listen to a lot of bossa nova music, Brazilian jazz.  We listen to a lot of Indian music.

Rich: Indian music!  That’s something a lot of people don’t know we listen to, especially me, he’ll tell you.  When we first got our placement with Lil Kim, I got infatuated with Indian music and made all these Indian beats, and of course Lil Kim picked one of them for her platinum album.

We watch Indian movies and American movies for the score.  We’re laughing at the movie, but at the same time we’re listening to the composition and judging it: ok, this is what I would have done here.  When he was sad, I would have dropped the strings there.  That’s where we take our musical inspiration from.

Christian: As cliché as it may sound, try to make it as cinematic as you can, because it’s an experience.

Rich: It’s a three-minute movie.  Every song is a three-minute movie.  That’s how you have to envision it.

FL: You did a mixtape of all Young Jeezy songs [Jeezy Eats at Lola's] not too long ago.  I’m just curious why you chose Jeezy?

Rich: Young Jeezy is actually one of our favorite rappers, and we used to live in Atlanta and we got inspired by a lot of artists down there, from Polo to Keri Hilson to Jeezy, even Gucci Mane, whatever.  The reason we took Jeezy is because we tried to find the most controversial artist who was still clean, who was still proper at what he did in hip-hop and take this love for electronic downtown sway club music.  We said, what if we take Jeezy vocals and just put MGMT, some MIA and mixed it, some Hot Chip.  We really just wanted to do something fun.

Christian Rich discuss how they came up with the mixtape and EP titles Jeezy Eats at Lola’s and The Decadence.

FL: So where do you guys fall on the Auto-Tune debate?

Christian: Love it.

Rich: Love Auto-Tune.

Christian: I mean, it’s like using reverb.

Rich: It’s just an effect.

Christian: I mean, country artists would never stop using Auto-Tune, they love it.  Indian artists love it.

Rich: If you go to Auto-Tune, they actually have a setting for Arabic music.

Christian: It’s funny because hip-hop tries to say, well, you can’t use it because I don’t know how to use it.

Rich: I just think it’s silly that from a money, hustling, revenue standpoint, you’re stopping someone’s capital from growing because you want to go out of your way to say, “What you’re doing is stupid.”  It’s childish.  It’s like when that kid says, “You got cooties,” because you trying to holler at that girl because he doesn’t have the confidence to go speak to her himself.  That’s how I view it.

Christian: If you don’t like it, just change the station.  For some records it works, for some it doesn’t.

Rich: Who cares how the song was made?  I don’t care if you made it in your bathroom – is it hot?  I like it.  Auto-Tune is just an effect.  No one is saying “The Death of Reverb,” “The Death of the Delay.”

Christian Rich lay out what happens when you party with them.

FL: You must be looking forward to your upcoming college tour?

Rich: You know, we perform with a live band.  And sometimes we add a string quartet to it, so you’re talking like, 9 or 10 players onstage.  If you look at all the new pop artists who are out right now, none of them are really doing shows like this.  What I look forward to the most is the reaction to what our shows are like.