What is Industry Rule #4080?
I’ll answer that for you.
Record companies are shady, or at least that’s what A Tribe Called Quest tried to warn us about on “Check the Rhime” way back in 1991 off their classic album The Low End Theory.
That’s the concept of Brooklyn rapper Rome Streetz and Kansas City producer Conductor Williams‘ lead single from their collab album they dropped today. I visited the set during the second shoot day on crisp spring afternoon in Brooklyn, where Rome and Conductor were shooting a scene in which they stood in front of a white cyc background and had images depicting slavery projected on to them. The video for “Rule #4080” shows them dealing with shady record execs and visiting a plantation. One scene that sticks out, however, was when they were both in the middle of a green field which harkens back to the album’s title.
In Danny Boyle’s 1996 film Trainspotting, starring a young Ewan McGregor, the four friends take a train to the middle of nowhere in Scotland to try to enjoy the great outdoors as they try to wane themselves off heroin. “I relate to that movie, because they’re just trying to come up, it’s just a bunch of friends,” Rome told me between takes as he sat on a couch in a backroom of the creative venue House of Brooklyn. “They doing some wild s–t, but ultimately they trying to elevate all of their situations.”
And for the most part, Rome and Conductor have become close friends on and off the court, branching off on their own from under the Griselda umbrella to put this album out on their own. “This is the spin-off. It’s like if Tommy and Cole had their own show,” Rome joked as he references the ’90s sitcom Martin, after I brought Westside Gunn and Griselda up.
Trainspotting features 14 tracks of pure, unadulterated rap music with West Coast mainstay Jay Worthy and the Wu-Tang‘s very own Method Man serving as the only two guest appearances.
Check out our conversation below.
When did you guys first start talking about doing a full length together?
Rome Streetz: After the first couple sessions when we were in Arizona, honestly. Once I did Kiss the Ring, I just realized that I had so many records from Conductor. I just kept listening and wanted to see how I can make them doper. The first time I linked with Conductor and heard the beats that he was making, I’m like, ‘Yo, these sh—s are insane.” I was like, ‘Yo, I’ll do a whole album with Conductor,’ and when we talked about it we said, ‘Let’s do it.’
When it comes to working with Conductor, it’s a certain zone that I stay in. I can’t even describe it. I think it’s because people love what we do. That’s probably some of my best work, the fans hold it in such a high regard. I know what I gotta do. I gotta jump out the gym on this s–t. The chemistry was there the first time we linked.
What is it about Rome that you f—k with?
Conductor Williams: Rome on the rap side is just elite. He never surprises me in the fact that he’s elite, like that’s always going to be — but it’s an attention to detail. It’s like listening thoroughly to the sample, understanding where the pockets are that he can navigate. And then sometimes he chooses other pockets that he could do his thing, but he chooses the other ones. So it’s almost like Sudoku, as at a certain stage with Rome. I send a beat with intentions, and then it’s like, “Yo, which way is he gonna play this thing?” And that’s the joy that I get out of working with him. It’s a master class of street rap, but also just like pen to paper, if you just read the lyrics, it’s just as impressive. I’m just a fan of high level art, and that’s what he is with the rap s–t.
And even as a person, as we continue to like build and be in situations, in the same studios for weekends at a time, it’s just like high level detail to everything. It’s clothes, food, flavors, colors, you know, all the things. And that’s the type of stuff that I that I feel, you know? So, finally I felt like, “Man, he’s like me.” I found my group. This is like a musical cousin. I found him. Out of all the people in the world, I found a guy that understands what I’m doing. We don’t even got talk. It’s not like a chatty catty poker night, strip club relationship. It’s just like one that God set up, man. I can’t explain it.
So, when y’all first linked it, did you let him listen to a pack or did you construct stuff around him?
C.W.: I was playing beats out of a pack I had made when we were all in Arizona and we went through them, and he selected the ones he wanted. We exchanged numbers, and I was texting him beat after beat that he hadn’t heard while we were in the same room. Even when I got back home to Kansas City, I kept sending him beats.
R.S.: I probably sent some songs right back. [Laughs.]
C.W.: It was pretty organic in like, finding somebody that not only matched my output, but could match it creatively. He was just out of that mastery level where he said, “Yo, the faster you can make them, the faster I can connect.”
R.S.: He sent me a pack, I’d listen and be like, “Oh s–t, let me hop on this right now.”
Are these songs old or new?
R.S.: It’s a mix. Honestly, we have a whole batch of songs. Some new, some old.
C.W.: Some are really old. There’s songs on here that we made in Arizona that didn’t make Kiss the Ring. Just extra songs.
Why is the album called Trainspotting?
R.S.: That’s just a crazy movie… Sometimes the crazy sh— can just inspire a lot of things. Trainspotting is one of my favorite movies. It’s really left-field and weird. It’s visually striking movie, and this is a sonically striking album. Also keeping the train theme going, with Conductor.
C.W.: After the fact, they put me on. They had me watching that s–t. I was like, “What?” N—as told me to watch it. I was at the crib and I had dropped the boys off to school, and I cooked up. So, it’s like 10:30-11 and I had leftover Bar-B-Q from Gates thinking I’m gonna sit down and watch me a little show. [Laughs.]
That’s a crazy flick to watch first thing in the morning. Gotta watch that late night when you’re zooted.
C.W.: Man, he was in the toilet. There was s–t everywhere.
R.S.: That’s when I seen it the first time. Mad late, I think it was on Cinemax or something. It was a long time ago. I remember thinking, “What the f—k is this? This movie is f—king crazy.”
C.W.: Yeah, n—as f—ked my lunch up. I think I got in the groupchat that day too and was like, “What y’all got me watching?” The most cringeful part is after he smashed shorty and found out that she was getting ready for school the next day. They were just in the club, how the f—k she get in here? You smash and then the next morning, you wake up and she’s got her school clothes on. I remember just like freaking out for him. It made my stomach hurt.
The album is like the movie: It’s exciting, it’s rapid. It’s rap record after rap record after rap record after rap record and then it’s done.
Conductor Williams Photo RobDid you guys talk about concepts for some of the songs? You have a song about the record industry. Then you have a couple songs about shorties on there too.
R.S.: It was more like how the beat spoke to me. I heard the beat. I’m like, what else am I gonna rap about? “Before I be a slave, I’ll be buried in my grave.” How can I relate that to my life? And it’s like, you know what? That’s the record industry, right there. You could be trying to live out your dream, but you so hasty, you might sign a f—ked up deal. You might get a f—king 20-page contract, motherf—kers will just be like, “Where’s the money? How much I’ma get? It’s a lot of clauses to how much you might get. You might get a free week of UberEats and a Supreme jacket. Sometimes what glitters ain’t always gold.
It felt like you were showing off your versatility a little bit with the subject matter.
R.S.: Even that song “Heartbreak.” It’s a conceptual joint, but it’s more so just like the beat speaks to me. Sometimes the beat will just take you in a direction, and I went with it instead of going the opposite way. Sometimes you need those joints especially if you’re making a complete album. I gotta give you that type of s–t. Everybody loves Kiss the Ring, and I feel like I went and I gave you a little bit of everything on there. I went to a lot of different places with that. I see the formula that I gotta follow when it comes to me making my own records to get the type of response from the fans that make them go, “This is insane.”
You mentioned in a previous interview that we did with you and Daringer that you prefer pulling up to a studio to work with a producer. How collaborative is the process when you guys are together?
R.S.: It’s literally 1-2-3. We play a beat, I just go in If I don’t have something already, I’ma figure it out. Also it’s like, who knows? We might do something tonight from the ground up.
That’s what I’m saying — so you’ll build a beat during a session?
C.W.: Yeah, I’ll come prepared with some ideas and stuff like that. But it really is like the most honest, rawest form of collaboration. This is the beat I made out of it, then he hears it and responds, then we link together to see what happens, and after that, it’s a game of what if? What if we add this, what if we put this hook on it? What if we that? That’s the most fun part — and we talked about a little bit earlier — that collaborative thing. I felt this, and I put the gospel sample on there. He heard the gospel sample and was inspired to make a record about the record industry.
Even if you were going in with a different idea, he hears it, it sparks something, and it’s like, “Let’s go in this direction.”
C.W.: Yeah, I can’t tell him how to feel. My entire ethos, in that way, is just like, kill the ego. I can’t tell him that he didn’t feel the record industry off of that. I can only tell him if something is mathematically bad, too many words in a bar that’s f—king the groove up. Stuff like that.
R.S.: Even with that song, I did have that beat for a while before I actually wrote to it because it was just one of those things where I felt like I had to say something. I couldn’t just rap. I wanted to make something conceptual like let me use the sample and bring out a message. Sometimes music is just to entertain, sometimes music is informative, sometimes music is emotional.
So, at that particular time, I wanted to make sure I said something that would stick. A lot of people that are in the music industry, and they don’t even know how the s–t works, they just want to be a pure artist, and sometimes labels take advantage of that s–t. Or, you know, sometimes people just want the money. Sometimes people are happy with living out their dream that they just want to get to it. Being in the music industry is a constant learning experience.
And you guys are with a label in Griselda that essentially figured out the indie game in the Internet era.How has that been, working with Gunn?
R.S.: It’s literally, you eat what you kill. If you ain’t out there killing s–t, you ain’t gonna eat s–t. You can’t wait for West to sit you down and be like, “This is what we gonna do?” And I feel like he don’t really f—k with people that’s waiting for him. He gonna f—k with you if you a killer on your own. He does so much, it’s like, “Listen, bro, I’m gonna throw the ball up and just dunk that s–t. And after that, keep scoring. That’s all it is. This was some s–t that we just did. We met through West, but we just spun off.
Let’s talk about the concept of the video a little bit.
R.S.: It’s basically just playing off of what I said in the song. Relating ancient slaves to modern-day slaves, because you could really just be a slave in the music industry if you sign a f—ked up deal.
And you guys shot some of it at an old plantation upstate.
C.W.: I wanted to be involved for this particular video. My folks are from the Blue Hills of Missouri. My grandfather was a sharecropper. So, some of the things in this video touched my heart so much so to where I was stuck, and Coach understood that, and kind of moved me around some scenes and made me feel comfortable. But I’m very much a part of the video.
Did you make these beasts in the crib? Do you have a studio now?
C.W.: I had a studio in Kansas City that I was renting a room out of but they sold the building, so I didn’t move everything into my basement. So, wifey and I are building a crib and we’re going to put a studio in there.
Yeah, you coming up — because you watch your old vlogs, you’re like in a basemen or an attic with a makeshift one.
C.W.: That’s the grass roots of it. I’m just making beats, and I’ve worked very hard to get very good and that shit don’t mean a studio. It means you sitting with the machine. I just need time alone to build.
R.S.: I record a lot of s–t myself in the crib, and then send it to Conductor. Because I could go off in the studio, but once I started recording at home, it’s a different level of comfortability with your creativity. If I write it right then and there, I can record it right then and there. Sometimes I’ll go to sleep and I’ll dream of rhymes. I wake up and write it, or I’ll wake up in the morning and have so much creative energy that I have to write or record right away. Sometimes I might write a rhyme, leave it for days, and be like, “Damn, I forgot how I even said this.” I like being able to knock out right then and there.
C.W.: I don’t think everybody can do that. You got to be at such a level where emotionally you can connect to what you’re thinking and you can rap anywhere, in any condition. You got to be really good to be able to one-take these records.
R.S.: It’s literally like training because I used to give myself challenges even before I had any type of notoriety. I felt like I had to be able to cook up rhymes at any given moment because when I do get to where I want to go with my career, there might be situations where I’m in the studio and it’s like, “Yeah, let’s work now. It’s not like I’ll write this when I get the idea, when I get the feeling. It’s like, nah, bro, how dope are you?”
That’s what Kiss the Ring was. All those days I was preparing to be able to go to the studio and lay something down on the spot. The beat is on right now. We’re trying to see if you really are what you sound like. Like, can you do this in front of my face? Can you hibachi this s–t? I train myself for that. You don’t just get this good overnight.
Do you mix and master your beasts yourself?
C.W.: Good side note, and I’m glad you asked that. So, the mastering tech that we used is Dave Cooley — and Dave Cooley mastered Madvillainy, Donuts, a bunch of indie rock stuff.
So you sought him out.
C.W.: I’ve been wanted to work with Dave, but unfortunately, my status wasn’t at that level yet. But when I reached out to him when I was working with Rome, I got to thinking about some of the records that to me sonically never die like Madvillainy and Donuts, I thought of Dave. And he was just ecstatic, and told me that he heard Rome on a DJ Premier track he did with West. Then he listened to what I went him, he listened to Kiss the Ring, and he listened to Noise Kandy 5. So, it was like a discovery moment for him, which gassed me more to make this record.
Do you guys have a favorite record on the album?
R.S.: It varies for me the more I listen to it.
C.W.: My favorite is “Lightworks.” And it’s my favorite because I love Dilla so much, and so I had to try to figure out how he cut the original sample of “Lightworks” to make it say what it sounds like it’s saying. I found a lot of joy in trying to be like, “Yo, how did he make it say light up the spliff?” And it’s not “light up the spliff,” it’s “light up the sky,” but you got to cut it a certain way. Dilla chopped the vowels out to make it say, “Is death real?” on “Stop.” It’s just like science and technical stuff.
My favorite track from you guys is “Chrome Magnum.”
C.W.: I think “Chrome Magnum” represents the type of music we love to make together. It don’t sound super boom-bap-ish — it’s just like industrial, ugly.
R.S.: I just like the unorthodox way that Conductor’s beats sound.
I mean, your flow is kind of like that, too, so it makes sense now that you say that.
C.W.: Another one that’s really dope that came from a fun moment. is “Ugly Balenciaga’s.” I sent it to him to try to make him laugh. I didn’t even want you to rap over it. I sent it because I just thought it was funny, and he didn’t say nothing back until he sent a song back.
R.S.: That’s one of my favorites that I’ve made.
C.W.: I was like, “N—a, you rapped on this?”
R.S.: Hell yeah.
C.W.: And he went crazy. [Laughs.]
R.S.: That’s the thing. Some s–t like that is a challenge to me. A beat like that will make me go, “Okay, how am I gonna approach this s–t? How am I even gonna attack it?” Because you gotta attack it in a certain type of way to make it entertaining. I like to have no floor and somehow figure out how I’m gonna make it across the s–t.
C.W.: That’s wild.
It’s like a balance act. Are you guys planning on doing another tape together?
C.W.: I don’t know, man. My schedule is crazy, his schedule crazy. But ultimately, this is my brother, so yeah. I just don’t know when. I think the fans kind of know that too.
People been asking for a collab tape from you guys for a while.
R.S.: We’ve been making music for so long together, we have more songs than what we gave y’all.
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