Interview: The Internet

Chancing on The Internet’s debut Purple Naked Ladies at the end of last year was like being at a party after the shouty types have ceased to hold dominion, and the company breaks off into various little sub-plots and intrigues. It was the musical equivalent of that fascinating conversation you had with someone on the stairs at 3am; an endearingly low-key R&B set that skewed towards the less picked-up-on, weirder end of the OF musical spectrum.

Moreover, there was a warmth to the record which sprung in part, no doubt, from the fact that Purple Naked Ladiesalso doubles up as a document of the friendship between producer Matt Martians and engineer Syd Tha Kid, whose own profile within the crew was bizarrely boosted when it emerged that she was openly gay (and therefore Tyler couldn’t be homophobic, tra la la). Turns out that Syd — real name Sydney Bennett —forged her connection with the group through Matt, with whom she’d been conversing online for some time (hence the group’s name). Not only that, but Matt encouraged the shy gal of the group to co-produce the tracks that wound up on The Internet’s debut, and even sing over a bunch of ’em as well. The result is a fine, exploratory record that promises still better to come from the pair.

We caught up with Matt to talk about the record’s genesis, his relationship with Syd, and how working for his dad compares to working with Azealia Banks.

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Hi Matt, what’s happening with you at the moment?

I’m about to mix some beats for Azealia Banks, for what I guess is gonna be her new record. I had to really listen to all of her old stuff to gauge what she sounds like, but it’s hard in a way ’cos she’s kind of all over the place.

Exciting times. Was it weird being one of the, er, less blogged-about members of Odd Future when the posse was blowing up?

We’re so self-contained, we’re kind of oblivious to what’s going on, we don’t get to see what’s really going on til we go on tour.

Do you feel like the media focus on all the controversy surrounding the group has overshadowed the music at times?

Definitely… But the media pays attention to controversy before it pays attention to talent.

But at the same time Purple Naked Ladies has received a fair bit of positive attention, which must be nice?

It’s cool, because it shows we’re not just a one-trick pony, even though we know we’re not a one-trick pony. Others think we are. We could have made a record that was a gimmick with these really poppy, kitschy songs, but it really was an album that’s musically deep so you know, that’s why I think it’s so great for Odd Future because it just shows that, even if you wanna think we’re done or wanna count people out, we have so many people in our group that are so tight with each other, that it’s hard to make us go away.

I like that the record embraces the weirder side of the OF ethos…

It’s only weird in that you’re not hearing it on the radio. You go back to the early 2000s and listen to a lot of those R&B records they had a lot of the same synths that me and Syd use. In today’s world with how fast music is distributed, it’s kind of like there’s not enough value in a song anymore. Because people put out so much music. So it’s not really weird, it’s us — and if it sounds weird to everyone else then maybe we are weird. You don’t wanna be the norm, I look on weird as a compliment.

I read someplace that OF’s co-manager, Christian Clancy, who encouraged you two to collaborate in the first place, is that right? Had it never occurred to you to make music together before that?

Well Syd hit me up on Myspace back in ’07, she used to really look up to Odd Future and she used to send me stuff and I would listen to it and well, I don’t wanna say she was good for a girl, but, ahhh, for a little 15-year-old girl she was really dope. So we stayed in contact and over the years me and Tyler were always close so when he and Syd started to get cool that’s when we got tight.

The Internet seems in a lot of ways to be the story of your friendship with Syd, does that sound right?

Yeah, definitely.

Are you very protective of her in general?

Yes, very. That’s family to me. You know like how you’re protective over your sister? That’s how it is.

D’you think doing The Internet has given Syd a lot of confidence on a personal level?

Definitely. It’s definitely boosted her confidence. She knows she can do things by herself, and she doesn’t need other people to make these things happen. She can have an album out, she can have a video… It showed her everything’s possible no matter if you’re gay, lesbian or whatever. It’s showed her she can break down barriers, and that makes her happy even if she doesn’t wanna admit it. She can open doors for females in the industry, you know?

Reading her interviews she seems kind of torn between the role model thing and wanting to keep her privacy?

Yeah, it’s her job, and that’s another thing about Syd, she can’t really know, you know, she can’t help how she is. She’s talented. She has a personality that’s very adventurous, so it’s hard for her not to… She’ll be like, ‘I don’t know if I wanna…’ and I’ll be like, ‘You can’t help it dude, everything you do you’re good at!’ She’s one of those types of person that doesn’t accept mediocrity so you know, she’s a perfectionist and what she makes is always gonna come out really, really good. So while she might not want to be famous she can’t help being cool, and you know people look up to people that knock down doors and they don’t care what people have to say about it.

Do you think she’s growing into the role model thing, though?

Naturally, I think Syd’s a leader. On a personal level she’s a very assured person, she’s very assertive, and that’s one thing about her that a lot of people don’t know, but it’s definitely boosted her confidence in knowing that she can put out records. We’ve actually started on the second album, early stages.

You said it was tricky finding vocals to go with the music you recorded for Purple Naked Ladies, d’you think the next record will feature vocals more prominenetly?

Naww, I think the thing with The Internet is we don’t really plan what we do, we just make what we feel at the time. Those songs are sung in the moment we’re experiencing the emotions that are in the song, so that’s why we didn’t rerecord in a big studio because the emotions wouldn’t have been there and the stories wouldn’t have been fresh. I like that approach to recording, just letting the raw emotion on a track come through — ’cos that’s the thing, I mean Syd’s not the greatest singer but some of the most innovative musicians of our time technically weren’t good singers. People like Andre 3000 and Kelis, it’s about making it work for your sound. We’re so deep in our music we can sing any type of way we want to, we make all the beats ourselves. A lot of people think it’s just me making the beats with The Internet, but me and Syd made the beats together and we wrote the album together, it’s deeply co-produced like that.

Obvously, there’s a lot of interest about Syd and her lyrics on the record, what with her sexuality and all? But what about your own lyrical contributions to the album, are they very personal as well?

My lyrics are definitely personal. Like the song ‘She Knows’, that was about two girls I knew, one was really rich and one wasn’t. And the rich one was like the perfect daughter, she had the big house and everything she ever wanted. And basically she was a slut, she slept around and she had a very bad reputation around time, but she was this really upstanding girl. And the other girl I used to date she was a very poor girl, and she did the same thing, and it’s like, you don’t even have to be this way, you can have respect for yourself and enjoy yourself but you don’t have to give your body up to all these dudes because you’re insecure. But the thing about these two girls is they both knew each other and they used to bag on each other, they’d both be like ‘she’s a ho’, but how you gon’ say you’re different than the other girl if you’re doing that same thing she’s doing. We can’t make up fake stories, like we were writing a song for the Odd Future album Vol 2, and I was trying to make something that would make people dance so I was saying let’s write something about trying to make people dance but Syd was like no, it has to mean something.

You’re from Atlanta, Georgia originally but moved out to California early last year, was that to work more closely with Odd Future?

I’ve always had trouble my whole life working 9 to 5, you know I have extreme ADD, I’ve been diagnosed with it. I feel like I can’t bring myself to do an everyday job, I’m too sporadic. My ideas are too out-there, I need the abstract, I need things to be different. My dad was an entrepreneur [in Atlanta], I would work in his office filing papers just goofing around. I don’t think he got [the music thing] at the time, but now I can show him like magazines and stuff  and really show him I wasn’t lying. ’Cos I mean, as a kid I used to blow so much smoke up my parents’ asses.

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