Large Professor, rapper/producer extraordinaire and the man responsible one of the great rap albums, recently took a break from milking your cow and hitting your heifer so he could talk to us about his old crew Main Source and his new solo album Main Source. Hit the jump for the Q&A.

Noz: Did you you get your start as a rapper or a producer?
Extra P: Well really, I was a breakdancer first and coming up I just gravitated towards the music. I had some of the records in my home and started figuring out, ‘yo this is what they doing, they scratching these records up’ and I started getting into the music, starting to rhyme and everything and write on walls. So all of that was just the culture.

When did it seem like something you would try to peruse as a career as opposed to just the hobby?
Around ‘88 I really started taking my own money and going in the studio and trying to make tapes.

How’d you link up with Main Source?
Main Source was basically three dudes in the same high school who had the same hobbies – DJing and scratching records and everything, just really having an after school hobby. Scratching these records and just getting busy. Their mom took an interest in supporting us and started putting us in the studio and the rest is history.

On Breaking Atoms you guys were going a lot deeper than a lot of other acts as far as what you were sampling. How’d you get into that?
I was definitely deep into getting and collecting records. My elder, Sergeant LeFunk used to give me lists. He would put me up on records like “yo – you gotta get this, you gotta get that” so I would go out and find a lot of the records. And some of them were challenges. He’d be like ‘yo you not gonna find a copy of this” and I would find ‘em. So it was like when I couldn’t go outside of the house I would just sit there and study records on my little portable turntable. I kinda had the knack for what to use like “yo put this with that and that with that” and boom it’s good money. It was just having that knack.

How do you feel about the response to that record? Do you think it did what it should’ve in the marketplace?
I mean it’s years later now and a lot of people say “yo [that's a] classic, a legend” and all of that, but in those times it didn’t do what it was supposed to do, it didn’t even go gold. It was cool, we got our point across and it did get out there. But didn’t do the monetary numbers that it should’ve.

So obviously “Live At The Barbecue” is one of the more memorable cuts. When Nas came through for that did you have any idea that he would go on to be what he went on to be.
Definitely. I knew Nas was gonna be crazy. I had all the faith in the world in him. I knew he would do it and that’s why I put him first on “Barbecue”. A lot of dudes at the time had the opportunity to present Nas and they weren’t and I just said “yo I gotta make sure that I put him out there and let people know that this talent exists.”

How’d you first meet him?
Just being in the Queens community, word of of mouth. Dudes saying “yo we got this ill kid on the mic, yo I got this ill dude on the beats, let’s put ‘em together”. Joe Fatal, one day after school he came to my high school and was like “yo we got this dude his name is Nas, he’s ill on the mic and we want you to produce a demo for him.” And you know, we took it from there.

I read an interview with Joe Fatal where he said there’s an entirely different “Live at the Barbecue” with everybody spitting different verses on it.
That I don’t know about. I think there might be a different song, but it’s not the “Live at the Barbecue” beat. We was in there just experimenting and trying different things all the time, but it wasn’t over that “Barbecue” beat.

There’s a lot of speculation as to what, if anything Main Source recorded for the second record before you guys broke up.
Yeah we started working on a second album. What happened basically was, the two DJs mother was our manager, so that started turning into a big conflict of interests because when the money was to be dispersed they got hit first. And sometimes I wouldn’t even get hit at all. So after a while of dealing with that I had to just go ahead and make moves.

What was your next move after the split?
Well I was already heavy into production and I didn’t have any doubt that I could survive on my own. While we were doing the Main Source album, even before we were doing the Main Source album, I was working on Eric B. & Rakim’s album, working on G Rap’s album, so I already had my little knack for production, so I just said I’ll work on my own tapes and continue doing my production.

When did you decide to go forward with the solo career?
Right after, because I had already had rhymes and beats made and done, so I just made that smooth transition.

Did you hear the album Main Source made with Mikey D replacing you? How’d you feel about that?
Of course. I liked it, I liked the beats, I liked what they tried to do, that was nice. It was good that they just kept it moving just like I did.

So you stayed on relatively good terms with those guys.
I’m real cool with K-Kut, that was the original member that I had met.

They must have not taken to kindly to your line on the Tribe joint “fuck them two DJs”.
Yeah well, it is what it is. You take a dudes money, what you expect him to do? It’s good that it was only words. They know what they did. So it wasn’t like I was coming for no reason with that. It’s only words. They had they little things that they was saying on the album too.

Tell me a little about the situation at Geffen.
After Wild Pitch folded, Geffen expressed interest in trying to work with me, so I went to Geffen records and gave it a try over there. I put two singles out, “Mad Scientist” and “Ijustwannachill” and I was working on the album all along. After a while of working on the album, they kinda pulled out of the deal. I guess what I did wrong is that I had the album finished and I was putting the singles out. So they were going off of the buzz of the singles and once the singles wasn’t really buzzing like that they kinda pulled out of the deal, they got cold feet.

And that album remains unreleased, more or less.
Yeah there’s been bootlegs. I think [Geffen] put it out themselves. They tried to make it appear like it was from overseas or something but they put it out. But they paid for that so it’s all good.

So what do you think about the state of New York hip hop right now? It’s seeming a little stagnant.
Yeah New York hip hop is crazy right now. But that’s why I wanted to put this project out there, just to let people know that it still exists and that it’s still strong, regardless of what some of the forefront representers may do. A lot of dudes who represent New York hip hop have been doing a lot of experimenting and doing different types of things instead of doing what they known for and that’s why the world is getting it twisted. But that’s why I wanted to put this project out.

What do you think needs to be done to get New York back to where it was, say, 15 years ago?
I mean New York doesn’t need to get back to where it was. New York needs to do New York just like the south is doing the south. Just do what you do. A lot of people are crossing borders, which is cool, that’s healthy and everything but you kinda got a responsibility after a while to rep where you from. That’s just what hip hop is. You could take any other genre of music and it’s not like that. But hip hop is like that because it comes from the streets, with gangs and all of that. So you got New York dudes they trying to do crunk, they trying to do dirty south, and that’s why shit is all twisted up right now.

Why’d you decide to bring back the name Main Source on the new album?
Just to let people know that I still embrace that. A lot of people when they think of Large Professor they think “Oh Breaking Atoms, Main Source” and I still rock with that, especially after dismissing the DJs, a lot of people think I cut ties with me ever being in Main Source and I just wanted to let them know that I embrace that. Like I said back in the days, Main Source forever.

Main Source is in stores now on Gold Dust Media.

Tags: Large Professor, Main Source, Nas

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 30th, 2008 at 11:45 pm and is filed under Interviews, New York. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.