Q&A: Brother Ali on Rock the Bells and The Importance of Getting Touched By Ghostface

Cover of Ali's The Truth is Here EP

Of the many details that differentiate Brother Ali from your average rapper, it is important to note that after delving deep into the painful dissolution of his emotionally abusive marriage on his 2007 album The Undisputed Truth, Ali wraps things up by telling his ex that he hopes she has a better life without him. Braggadocio concerning one's ability to love and forgive is a particularly Ali characteristic, but the man has never lacked for unique insights. Over the course of his decade-long career the Madison-born, Minneapolis-based Ali (who convertered to Islam several years ago) has tackled subjects ranging from depression, racial identity, America's war addiction, the aftermath of sexual abuse, life as a single father, and the need to stay strong through life's hardships. His flow is direct, but crafty, his tone veers from spleen-bursting to achingly empathetic. He's also capable of a sweetness that can turn unapologetically gooey. (When discussing life with his new wife and children, he claims they now have a house "like the Berenstain Bears.")

Ali, born Jason Newman, found a patron in indie-rap kingpins Atmosphere last decade, gaining an early fanbase on tours with them and releasing albums via their label Rhymesayers. And though the albums are strong, it's his stand-up-and-testify live shows that have proved him a force to be reckoned with, which should make him a welcome relief for anyone who begins to suffer a nostalgia overload at the admittedly awesome/absurd Rock The Bells festival this weekend. The festival will feature a variety of hip-hop legends performing classic albums in full, such as A Tribe Called Quest's Midnight Marauders, Wu-Tang Clan's Enter The 36 Chambers, Rakim' Paid In Full and Snoop Dogg's Doggystyle, as well as appearances from Clipse, Yelawolf, Murs and Wiz Khalifa. (According to reviews of previous performances, "special guest" Lauryn Hill has actually shown up to the first two dates on the tour as well, but it might be unwise to get one's hopes too high in this regard.) Sound Of The City caught up with Ali to discuss the art of the hip-hop show, stealing from KRS-One and teaching one's fans proper methods of interaction.

How's your summer been?

Uhm, interesting. Busy. Good. Rough. Everything. I've spent the whole first part of the summer doing festivals in Europe. This run of Rock The Bells shows and U.S. festivals will end my year of touring for my last album Us, I'm kind of at the last month of it now. Man, I did ten months on the road supporting this album.

Tthis is your last month before you take a break?

I'm not taking a break, I'm starting my next album, but touring will slow down a little bit. But actually...no, really not even. This band called Pepper called me and asked me to open for them. I wasn't that familiar with their music but they seem like really great dudes, so I'm going to be on their tour. I'm going to do my pilgrimage to Mecca later this fall. So I'm not really slowing down, but in my mind it's the end of the cycle for that album.

When you do things like this Rock The Bells festivals or those European shows, do you get a sense of how many people are there to see you, and how many people are just killing time until the headliners are on?

That and a mixture of being outside are always kind of the unknown factors of being at a festival. Whereas a club show--they're pretty much going to be what they're going to be. But festivals, it's really hard to know how many of the people are going to be actually watching and in to you, and what the actual weather is going to be like and the set-up of everything. Those are the two biggest unknowns of going into a festival.

You're already known for an intense love show. When you're playing for a crowd that might not know who you are, does that spur you to try harder to win people over? Or at least make an impression?

No, I take the approach that it's really important to me to just do what I do. Because as an underground, independent artist, without having the major-media machine behind me, I've always said that my goal has always been for just people to just have a chance to see what we're doing here. And if that speaks to them, then they can become a part of it. So that's the way I approach festivals too.

But we do usually pick up new people at festivals. You used to be able to track record sales and say, "Okay, you go play a big festival in London and then in the next two weeks your record sales in London might go up." You can't track it like that anymore because people don't buy music like that anymore. But I'll notice that where normally I would get a 1,000 new people or 2,000 new people every week on Facebook or Twitter, well Facebook in particular, when I'm out there doing festivals it'll be 5,000 new people or 4,000 people instead of two. So it does seem like we're picking up new people from performing festivals.

These Rock The Bells festivals you're doing look like a lot of fun. But the headliners are all these veteran acts doing classic albums in full. As an old-school fan who has an investment in the future of hip-hop, how do you feel about it?

I'm really excited to see people doing these classic albums. What I've always said is that I think it's really important for the genre, for us to not separate the current from the old or the underground from the mainstream. If we're going to have these primarily hip-hop spaces where we're all going to come together, I would like to see us more integrated, and less of a distinction made between "This is the main stage and these are the..." and I'm not saying that because I'm on the second stage [laughs]. I've always felt like it's really important to keep all of these things together. Businesswise, but then also in the minds of supporters, listeners and fans, that we don't allow this separation to continue.

Because there's a huge separation that's hurting all of us, and there was a time when it really hurt as underground artists, because of the fact that we had less exposure and the mainstream was doing so well and we were fighting to get any kind of attention at all. But now, the climate in the music industry has changed so much, these mainstream artists could have been learning a lot from us over the last ten years about how to sustain a career independently. And you see some of them that are able to make that switch, but now they're all kind of scrambling to want to throw a tour together. And now because nobody is getting those advances that they used to get, now everybody wants to go on tour. But nobody really knows how to tour, so we just have a flooded mess now on the touring circuit. And had we been connected this whole time, we could have all really had a much better groundwork laid for the touring sector.

Also, you get a lot of artists that used to be on major labels--Freeway is a great example, his first album was with Roc-A-Fella, his second was with G-Unit and his third album is with Rhymesayers--he's somebody that has adapted really well to the underground, independent business model. Because that's kind of always been where his head and heart have been. But not everybody is able to make that transition as smoothly. I think businesswise, but then also for the sake of the genre. We have so many listeners who are open to a sliver of what hip-hop has to offer. They have one particular niche that they like, and they never really found an awareness of the rest of it. I have people who listen to me that don't know, man, Immortal Technique. You know what I mean? Not to mention that they don't listen to Rick Ross and Lil' Wayne like I do, but I mean they don't listen to Dead Prez.