Interview #665: Cyrus Malachi

Having fallen in love with hip hop thanks to the Wu-Tang Clan, UK emcee Cyrus Malachi first made a real impact of his own in 2008 alongside Melanin 9 and Nasheron in the cult hip hop collective Triple Darkness. He and M9 then went on to form the equally revered Orphans Of Cush with Masikah and Terra Firma founder Kyza Smirnoff. Having firmly established himself as one of the most talented, erudite and uncompromising emcees around, all that was left was for him to strike it out alone. He finally did so earlier this year with the release of his incredible debut solo album Ancient Future.

I Like Music caught up with Cyrus to chat about Triple Darkness expanding, defying perceptions, reaching people across the world and the disparity between mainstream and underground hip hop.

"I Like Music because… you can touch a fellow human being in a way that nothing else on this planet can.” Cyrus Malachi

ILM: We’d like to start from the beginning, how did your relationship with music, with hip hop begin?

Cyrus: The first hip hop album I heard was Wu-Tang Clan - Enter The 36 Chambers back in 1993. That was the first hip hop I ever heard. I think I was only eight years old but that touched me man, that left a mark on me. I heard it and I was just like this music is powerful man, it’s really resonating with me. It was love at first sight really, musically.

ILM: How long did it take for you to put pen to paper, to realise it was something you could do yourself?

Cyrus: It was a few years later. I wrote my first lyrics when I was about sixteen, then when I was seventeen I was writing a little bit more. Then that obviously got interrupted because I went to jail for a few years. When I came out in 2005 I was basically hell-bent on doing music.

ILM: Your first feature was with M9, how did that hook-up come to be?

Cyrus: I met M9 in late 2005, I think I met him via Scribblah... So I knew Scribblah and I went to go see him one day, socially, just to chill and M9 was there just chillin’ too. Obviously we got onto the subject of hip hop and then I heard him for the first time, so…that happened.

ILM: How about Triple Darkness – how did that come together? When did you decide that working as a three piece was the next step?

Cyrus: Triple Darkness started with the Phalanx Heresy, which was a two-man group; me and a guy called Nasheron. We’d been rapping together since we were like sixteen. Throughout my time in jail we corresponded via letters; he would send a lot of rhymes, I would send a lot of rhymes. When I got out in ’05, we were like we’re gonna do this, so we started making the album Anathema. About halfway through making that we met M9, so we just featured him quite heavily.

ILM: And so Triple Darkness was born...

Cyrus: Well, when the album was done in 2006 we talked more with M9, we were really feeling his style and he really liked ours, so we consolidated everything. We changed the name from Phalanx Heresy to Triple Darkness. Triple Darkness doesn’t have anything to do with three people being in it, Triple Darkness is a metaphysical term which deals with the building blocks of creation and subatomic particles... It’s a very complex thing.

ILM: You worked with another group in Orphans of Cush, at what point did you decide to pursue a solo career, had that always been in the back of your mind?

Cyrus: I always had my sights set firmly on an eventual solo career. I thought it would be best for me to introduce myself via crews – I’m a team player anyway, I like being part of a group; I am very group minded, but I always knew my time would come. I stayed doing loads of cameos with M9, cause it was his time. You know, he became a solo artist long before me. Doing cameos with him and all the group stuff and Orphans of Cush – that happened in 2009.

ILM: Now you’ve established your solo career, do you think you’ll return to Triple Darkness or Orphans of Cush, or is that the end for them?

Cyrus: Oh, not at all, no. Triple Darkness is still there as the twelve man crew. We added like another eight members. I was in the studio last night with one of the new members and we were working on a solo project of his. That’s going to come out under the Triple Darkness brand. So, it’s still very, very alive.

ILM: Excellent. That’s exciting stuff man, I look forward to hearing a bit more of that in the future...

Cyrus: Well, I’ve got a mix tape I just dropped about a month ago.

ILM: The Isis Papers 2 right?

Cyrus: Right, the Isis Papers Volume 2. That’s guest starring Triple Darkness and that’s basically a showcase of the new members.

ILM: Moving on to Ancient Future, one of the first things that struck me about it was the number of producers listed. How did you go about choosing who to work with?

Cyrus: I had a few producers that I was really affiliated with, you know, Beat Butcha and Chemo. They were natural selections. For the others, I just sort of approached them and it just kind of happened. It was very, very bizarre, in a good way. I would be a couple of tracks deep and someone would just pop out of the woodwork.

ILM: Producers that you were aware of, or unknowns?

Cyrus: Most of the people on my album, besides Beat Butcha, Endemic and Chemo – I didn’t know them from Adam. They were quite local. That doesn’t bother me, I’m just all about the art man. The beats they were sending me, these unknown people – I was just like wow, this is really, really dope, so I’m gonna use it. It happened in a very bizarre way, but when I say bizarre I mean things just fell into place seamlessly. I’m always getting certain beats, hundreds of beats, but I’m very picky, I don’t like them. I’m getting you know 40 beats and then two in one week came from someone like Noize Thievery. That’s a guy on there that was fairly unknown, but I just liked the beats, so I got back to him and we just went from there man.

ILM: How does the writing process work for you?

Cyrus: It’s kind of a myriad of different ways man. I mean there’s a track on Ancient Future called Elemental and I did that all in my head. I do physically write as well. In terms of how I go about it – I think with Ancient Future, my main aim was to try and step out of a certain pigeon hole I’d been placed in.

ILM: In what way?

Cyrus: How do I put it...? I felt like I’d been pigeon-holed in a certain way because I’d covered certain subjects, because I refered to knowledge and ancient wisdom and historical reference in my music. I thought I was getting very pigeon-holed. To someone that didn’t hear me but heard what a critic was saying, they might not even judge me on my lyrical ability, they’d maybe just think I was going to preach them to sleep! And that’s not my music. With the album, I wanted to show people the 720 of what I do…like T.D. has a certain style. I wanted to expand on that and bring in the personal sides of my life, concepts that I’ve always wanted to deal with, but I couldn’t deal with until it was my solo time.

ILM: Were you consciously avoiding covering those familiar themes?

Cyrus: Not really. I mean ancient Egypt, those elements of knowledge and historical reference in my rhymes; I’ll never get rid of that. I just wanted to give people a different perspective, so they could stand back and say you know what? This guy’s a fucking good lyricist. Straight up, this guy is a fucking bad lyricist and whether or not I agree with his sociological world view, I can’t deny this shit. I know that hip hop can touch people on many, many different levels and I wanted to touch people spiritually and personally, do you know what I mean? I didn’t feel I could do that until I was solo. I wanted to expand on things.

ILM: On the album you talk a lot about parts of London you’ve lived in and the social evils one can come across. Do you think music is capable of changing not only an individual’s perspective on their own society, but a community as a whole? Do you think music has that power to change society?

Cyrus: I think it does. I mean it sounds corny, but I think music is an extremely powerful artistic tool. I mean I get people...even today, one guy got at me from Chile and he was like listen man, I reckon your album is like album of the year! I’m playing this 24/7. I just can’t get over it, it’s affecting me very heavily. And he’s in Chile! I mean, I’m in Hackney!

ILM: A long way away!

Cyrus: Right! I am in that guy’s mind even though we are universes apart. I think it’s because that music has penetrated his soul. And music can still do that even though there’s many parameters and shackles and blockades put on it by the whole mainstream and that whole thing. Music is still music. When I was making Ancient Future I felt personally that there were tracks on it so powerful, that whatever the person’s social standing or their stereotypes, or their occupations, I believe those songs could pierce right into their soul, make their hair stand on their neck. That’s what music is, that’s what it should be.

ILM: A really positive thing...

Cyrus: That was the idea. Even in my early life I veered away from a lot of bad fucked up shit that I used to be involved in because of music. It was music that got me thinking about history, got me thinking about society, got me thinking about me wanting to read certain books, gaining certain aspects of knowledge and wisdom that lead me away from certain, you know, beastly behaviour that I was engaged in when I was younger. So yeah, I do believe it definitely can change society; it did it for me.

ILM: Hip Hop has changed a lot recently, there’s a huge void between underground and mainstream sounds and themes. How do you feel about that?

Cyrus: I’d say towards the end of the '90s it all started to go wrong. Listen to my track Animal Circus; that track outlines as far back as N.W.A. You know, I think N.W.A. were an important group. They were historical figures within hip hop, but what they were spitting was not helping the black community in America at all at that time. So it goes back as far as N.W.A. The whole mainstream thing…I could talk about that for days...

ILM: Go on...

Cyrus: There’s so many aspects, so many hidden agendas. It’s crazy. I know someone who had a long relationship with a girl who is in a group right now in England that are very, very prominent. I don’t want to say names, but some of the shit that’s happened to her, stuff she saw happen... it takes the whole conspiracy agenda to reality. It’s deep. Artists are exploited. It’s a fucked up world, you know what I mean? The whole music industry is very fucked up. This person collaborated with some very high profile artists and some of the stuff they seemed to be into.... It’s just very far from anything you would imagine would ever be intertwined with easy-listening pop music. There are a lot deeper issues to why real powerful music made solely from the heart and soul is completely kind of blocked and not given that mainstream push – there’s many reasons for it man.

ILM: Could you ever see yourself on a mainstream platform?

Cyrus: I try to never limit myself. I know the universe has infinite possibilities. So I can’t say that it could never be done. But it’s unlikely that a big label would ever pick an artist like me up.

ILM: Right. Why do you think that?

Cyrus: I think the only time a major label would pick someone like me up was if I was selling literally thousands and thousands of units across the whole world. If it got to that point, major labels would probably look, because major labels are solely driven by money. If they saw that they could make money off you, they don’t give a fuck what you’re saying in your music. They’ll fucking sign you if they can make money off of you, you know what I mean?

ILM: Can you see it getting to that point?

Cyrus: To make those hundreds of thousands of sales, you need that promo that major artists get. So you need to be driving down, you know, Camden High Street and see the big billboards: Cyrus Malachi – Ancient Future. You need to be in the Underground station, going to where you’re going, seeing a big poster in the Underground: Cyrus Malachi – Ancient Future. And these are the things that artists need that we don’t get. That stuff is mainstream. To get your face on a billboard in London, that costs hundreds and thousands of pounds man.

ILM: It all comes down to money...

Cyrus: Yeah, and it’s the majors that fuel all that, you know. But in terms of can I touch people across the world? Hell yeah, hell yeah! The hip hop community across the world is huge, it’s huge. The underground – when I say hip hop, I mean hip hop.

ILM:Right.

Cyrus: I’m not talking about Lil Wayne or Young Jeezy. That’s not hip hop. That’s what I call a proxy. Something standing in the place of hip hop, but it’s not hip hop. But if you go to the underground worldwide scene, it’s flourishing man. You know, all I’m trying to do right now is really work myself to America and Europe. Lovers of the kind of music I make, that’s where they happen to be, in considerable amounts. France, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway. I get people – all these countries, they hit me up. Austria too – I’m doing a show next month in Hungary.

ILM: Cool.

Cyrus: Germany too. In Europe they just go crazy for authentic hip hop. So, to say that there’s no way of making a career out of the kind of music that I make – you can do it, but it’s a very, very tough, hard task. But it is possible.

ILM: Aside from the Triple Darkness guys and the producers you hooked up with on Ancient Future, is there anyone else on the UK underground that you admire?

Cyrus: I’ve worked with basically everyone I’ve really wanted to work with, you know what I mean? Bar Klashnekoff and Chester P, who I haven’t worked with yet. But I’ve worked with most of the people I wanted to work with growing up. I’ve achieved that. To be honest with you, I think the kind of hip hop I do is worlds away from what is being pushed right now in the UK, it’s worlds away. I’ve had people get at me, you know. I did a phone interview the other day with Mista Montana, he owns a radio show called Conspiracy Worldwide which is massive. Probably got to be the second biggest hip hop radio show in the world man. That guy interviews everyone. He got at me – you know I don’t understand how people like Syntax and Westwood aren’t playing your shit? Because this is an amazing album, this is what he was telling me.

ILM: Why do you think that is?

Cyrus: Well, I was like yeah man, I hear what you’re saying man, but it’s like – it don’t matter what I do, they won’t play it, because what I stand for is the complete antithesis of the music that they’re pushing. They’re pushing very dumbed-down, ignorant, basic, poor, degenerative, derivative rap. You know, what I do is very pure hip hop. So they’re not trying to push it, but it doesn’t bother me. And at the same time, I’m now in over seventy high street record stores across America!

ILM: Impressive.

Cyrus: Right, from what I know, no one who I would consider a rapper has ever achieved that from Britain, you know what I mean? People that have achieved that are like Estelle and Dizzee Rascal. Estelle is a singer and Dizzy Rascal is a pop star. They’re majors. But in terms of an artist who’s not on a major, who’s made all the music on his own, you know, for it to be in over seventy stores in America – on the streets, the high street – that’s very difficult

ILM: It’s an amazing achievement...

Cyrus: Yeah. So all I can say is those kind of things keep my spirit high. When major DJs completely ignore that, it does hurt you slightly as a person. I’m sure if another artist achieved that, you’d be shouting it from the rooftops. But at the same time, the fact that I have achieved it solidified in my heart that I could take it somewhere man. So I’m not bothered. America is the hardest place to crack and in terms of hip hop, you know, it’s the motherland.

ILM: What have you got coming up? What are your future plans?

Cyrus: Like I said, I’ve got a show next month in Hungary, which I’m very happy about, that’s the first show I’ve ever headlined in my life! I’m headlining that with M9. In terms of the rest of the year, I know Endemic wants me to come out, as the head of my label, he wants me to come out to New York and network with him in June, so hopefully I’ll be doing that.

ILM: Cool.

Cyrus: There’s other things too, but you hear many things and you never know if they’re going to come into effect. I’ve heard about shows in America, I’m definitely going to get out there this year, network with Endemic out there and try and make some other things happen man. It’s all about the album. Like I’ve said, I’m getting some serious feedback which makes me think something can happen!

ILM: So you’ll keep on keeping on, working hard...!

Cyrus: Yeah man. I have to work very, very hard, you know. At the end of the day, I love doing what I’m doing. I’ve taken a risk trying to make a career of it, so I’ll have to see man. I’m just going to concentrate on my art man, that’s all I’ve ever done. I just do my music and I’m lucky I’ve got a label who are making really, really powerful music and getting me to the right places. I feel very humbled. I feel like I’m definitely happy with myself. Musically I am very happy, I’m not angry at all. A few years ago I was angry, but I understand the way the scene works, you know what I mean. I know where my market is man, I’m just happy that I’ve got someone trying to help me towards that market.

Guest Edit #37: Cyrus Malachi Take a look here