Will: Most rappers who begin their careers battling in cyphers haven’t been able to make the transition to recording artist. How have you been able to manage? Iron Solomon: I’ve been in the studio from a young age. There are a lot of musicians in my family and there were always instruments and music equipment in the house. I’ve always been around music. Even when I was dedicating a lot of energy to be in battles, I would always still be in the studio working and trying to refine my craft. I surround myself with musicians and artists that are not just into hip hop. I made a decision to really focus on it and be patient. I wasn’t thinking that I was already good at it. Once you step in the studio feeling like you’re already a good song writer because you won a battle then you’re never gonna become a good song writer. I approach things like I never won a battle. I’m like a rookie every time and I learn from my mistakes. I’m not afraid to access something I may have done as being wack. I just figure out why it wasn’t good and try and do a better job next time. You play any musical instruments? Yeah, I play the guitar a little bit. I play the piano and some percussion. I’ve played a few instruments on the Monster album. How did the concept for this album come about? The idea for Monster came from Frankenstein. The thing I love most about Hip hop is that it’s a collage culture. Whenever we get dressed we pull clothing from different styles and different walks of life. We put it all together and
make it make sense. When we make music we might sample a break beat from a record from a certain era. A string section might come from another genre. You mix it and make something new and sometimes more powerful than the original. Frankenstein the monster is a collage human being. He was put together from a bunch of different pieces of people that were dead and he becomes more powerful. Hip hop has taken things that were thrown away by some and remixed them. Frankenstein was also misunderstood. People thought that he was a criminal when he was actually just trying to find a girl. Hip hop and its young generation have always been very misunderstood. We take all the violence and anything we see happening in the world and regurgitate it. You can’t blame us for being the way that we are. We’re dealing with what’s been given to us. Chuck D said that Hip hop is our “CNN” and that still holds true. Just because we talk about what’s going on doesn’t make us vulgar. The stories on the news are vulgar. One of the songs on the album that caught my attention was “15 Minutes”. On the hook you show tribute to Slick Rick and Doug E. Fresh. Who else did you enjoy listening to on this journey? I was a big NWA fan. The earliest hip hop I was exposed to was kinda all over the place. Digital Underground, Eric B. & Rakim, Nice & Smooth, The stuff that really reached me was Biggie, Wu-Tang Clan, Jay-Z, Nas. From a production standpoint The Fugees were huge.