Patton Oswalt: Damn good man. Thanks for having me back on.

Jesse Thorn: It’s always a pleasure to have you. You’re life has changed pretty dramatically. You’re like a grown up now. You’re an impresario, and you’re married.

Patton Oswalt: Yes, I’m a married impresario. My god.

Jesse Thorn: You’ve really taken the bull by the horns.

Patton Oswalt: I love how you said, “You’re an impresario and you’re married,” like becoming an impresario helped me to get married.

Jesse Thorn: [laughs]

Patton Oswalt: I gathered women. I auditioned them. I rehearsed them, and I chose my bride.

Jesse Thorn: You had the vizier bring a dozen from all over the hinterlands.

Patton Oswalt: [laughs] Have you not seen “The Red Shoes”?

Jesse Thorn: [laughs]

Patton Oswalt: Dance, DANCE!

Jesse Thorn: [laughs] But this is like totally this does seem seem to me like well for someone who has made a reputation for being a having the interests of a perpetual adolescent…

Patton Oswalt: Yeah, that’s true.

Jesse Thorn: And promoting that those interests on television. You know, being a very public comic book nerd, now even comic book author, it’s really something to like get married and be running things in addition to just being in them.

Patton Oswalt: Yeah, it’s kind of like they’re both, both those images I guess, are at odds with one another. But I’ve reconciled them. I think it’s because I was lucky enough to find a woman that is very much into, you know, I need my time by myself, and since you, you know, go off and read your stupid comic books and go off a play D&D that’s fine. Because she, you know, she just, she writes a lot and she’s a, she reads constantly so we’re very much about respecting each other’s space, which is good.

Jesse Thorn: Well that’s, I mean, I ‘m really happy to hear that. The last time you were on this show was like, I don’t know, somewhere between a year, two years ago. The Comedians of Comedy was just starting to get off the ground, and now you’re about to head out on another big tour with a slightly different line-up. It must be exciting to know that you actually can do this thing that you have the idea of doing.

Patton Oswalt: Yeah, I mean, I can start doing this thing and you know not have to depend over and over again on you know a week at a comedy club. And, you know, I can actually just travel and see younger fans. And that does feel really good. That’s definitely a great feeling.

Jesse Thorn: There’s something to be said for booking a comedy act into a rock and roll club. It really does seem draw different people to the show than would ordinarily be at the be at a comedy club.

Patton Oswalt: Oh yeah. I mean, it also just I guess just gives you the you don’t have the comedy club structure of: Here’s the opener; here’s the feature. It’s just much looser. You can be way more aware, you know, onstage doing a show rather than “Well, OK, I’ve got to do my time and get this over with.”

Jesse Thorn: It seems like you’re moving into this impresario mode with great verve too in terms of switching up the line-ups and promoting people on DVDs and all that kind of stuff. It must be nice to be able to make that change as well.

Patton Oswalt: Yeah, I mean, that was one of the things that was so frustrating for me as a being in the scene that I’m in in LA is seeing all these super talented people, then watching what gets selected to famous and popular and the standard for what stand-up is. And it’s so different than what I see every night at places like the UCB and the Largo and places like that. So, you know, if it my dream for the show, if they’d let me have a second season, was to every season fold in new comics, younger comics and showcase them that way, rather than have these comics wait to be on one of those Premium Blend cattle-call things, which I think are such a terrible way to show off a young comedian in a gigantic auditorium and they’re way high up on a stage and there’s no intimacy. You don’t really get to see them as personalities, get to see them working.

Jesse Thorn: It seems like the entertainment industry has really honed in lately on comedy because it can be broken into small pieces which can be put on cellular phones or something like that.

Patton Oswalt: Yeah, boy, that’s really depressing to me. I mean, I’m not anti-technology but I mean that’s reinforcing a lot of really bad stuff of “Yeah it’s just got to be really quick. It’s got to be really…” It’s amplified that whole, that philosophy that was kind of hung over everything in the 80’s of you’ve got to get five clean minutes. You’ve got to go on the Tonight Show. You’ve got to get called over to the couch, and that is the only way to make it. You know, that was that’s a really, really depressing way to have to think about stand-up.

Jesse Thorn: At the same time though, it seems like it does open up some opportunities for bringing people comedy the same way that, you know, for a long time people have brought people, you know, like music acts. You know, in the sense that maybe TV specials tend to be a kind of material write off for comedians in a way that the internet would help them allow to allow them to sort of build relationships and things like that.

Patton Oswalt: Yeah, well the one good thing is that with the internet, and now, you know, little cellular phone stuff, and iPod films is that you know what’s going to happen is that there will always be that 5% of talent out there that will do something really interesting and innovative with it. Same when television came along. People said that was the death of comedy, but then you had innovators that came along like Ernie Kovacs and people like that, that said, “Oh wait a minute there’s actually, I can figure out something really cool to do with this.” So someone out there will figure out a really cool, revolutionary way to do, you know, something on the cell phone or the iPod or whatever.

Jesse Thorn: Do you have any big plans, Patton?

Patton Oswalt: Do I have any big plans? Right now, no. I mean, I have my own specific plans for some TV shows and movies, but I haven’t really thought much about cell phones or iPods. I mean, I there it’s out there. It’s been pitched to me. In fact, I remember about two years ago, right when they were developing the technology, I was walking around. I was in downtown San Francisco and some filmmaker that I worked with years ago like kind of cornered me. He was coming out of like a big exhibition of this stuff at a hotel. They were just pitching the idea of selling short content to cell phones. And he goes, “This is going to fucking, this is going to change everything. It’s going to change everything.” And he flipped open a cell phone and tried to show me films, and they would start. They would play for like three seconds and they would stop and keep kind of loading a cycling and five to three more seconds and stop and load and cycle. I just remember looking at it going, “Well, if they improve the technology.” But it was so bad. It was so unentertaining.

Jesse Thorn: What about the other aspect of your career. I mean, besides being a sort of alternative comedy impresario, you’re best known to the actual world as being a costar on “The King of Queens” which is a sit-come that’s been exceptionally successful.

Patton Oswalt: Yeah.

Jesse Thorn: And is kind of starting to wind down a little bit. What’s it like to realize that that’s getting then instead of being a start-up operation, that’s an operation that’s headed towards it’s end?

Patton Oswalt: Yeah but that, I mean, doing like movies and TV shows for me were never like, “I’m doing stand-up so I can get booked on movies and TV shows.” I did movies and television shows so that I could keep doing stand-up. You know, I’m thinking of it in a much different way.

Jesse Thorn: But at the same time, I mean, it’s an exceptional job to have.

Patton Oswalt: Oh it was a great job. I was lucky to get it.

Jesse Thorn: What about the other aspects of your career. I mean, it’s not just stand-up comedy that you’re passionate about. I mean, I know for example that you’re very passionate about your writing.

Patton Oswalt: Yeah.

Jesse Thorn: And writing screenplays, you know, writing comic books. What about that side of your career?

Patton Oswalt: Well, the stand-up helps it because knowing I can go out and make money as a stand-up you know helps me not have to go to look for screenwriting or TV writing jobs hat in hand. You know, I get to, you know, write pretty much what I want to write which is great. You know, that always feels good. So, you know, those are things that I’ve always been passionate about and I’m going to be passionate about, but stand-up is always the first thing. I think it’s just because of my ego and my kind of Asperger-ey Syndrome way of looking at the world, with stand-up you don’t really need to deal with other people.

Jesse Thorn: But you know, writing you often don’t have to deal with other people.

Patton Oswalt: You would think that, but actually you have to deal with a lot of people. There’s a lot of, you know, cooks in the kitchen when you’re writing something. Especially, when you are in the process of taking it around, pitching it, selling it. I mean, you know, I’ve been through it before. It’s not a nice, it’s not a job of peaceful solitude. There’s a lot of arguing, politics and personal feelings and it’s just pretty crazy.

Jesse Thorn: Are there like topics or themes that you’re passionate about that you have a hard time pitching in the broader entertainment industry?

Patton Oswalt: Yeah. I mean, there’s things, especially the way that I, stuff that I think is funny is very hard to express, especially in a film or in a TV show. I love the whole jump cut aspect to life when there’s like a friend of yours you haven’t seen in two years and you come see them it’s like they’re in a like they’re a completely different character in a completely different movie. But then, so there’s the initial shock of “You’re doing what?” But then if you’re given five minutes to talk about it, the threads do connect. That to me is, you know, I love that. I hate the state of grace. That’s what I don’t like about sit-coms, which is not matter how crazy things are and the same with movies or comic books, no matter how crazy things get, eleven pages in or eleven minutes in, at the thirty minute mark, everything’s got to be back to the way it was at the opening credits. You know, there has to be a state of grace. You know, I would love to do a sit-com where, you know, midway through the season, the characters get divorced and now we’re talking about people going through divorce. You can still do self standing single episodes, but they’re just about a different state of grace all the time.

Jesse Thorn: But I think that to a certain extent that’s changing isn’t it. I mean there are shows on television that there weren’t 10 or 15 years ago. Like say, you know, “The Office” is a show that’s both very much a sit-com and dispenses with that aspect of sit-com structure.

Patton Oswalt: Except that at the end of every episode, and I love the American “Office”, and I see them chaffing at the idea, because the British “Office”, he quite rightfully gets fired, because he’s terrible. And so now the American “Office” is getting to the point, although they did something really great at the end of last season where they had the two characters hook up and kiss and now we’re going to see what happens. And, you know, maybe they’ll have Michael Scott get fired. Like that would be the way to really break things up, to have him get fired for a while, and then see what happens, or just keep the show going that way.

Jesse Thorn: So you’re saying that for most entertainment properties, the best thing to do is just get rid of the lead?

Patton Oswalt: No. They would keep Michael Scott. I’m not saying lose Steve Carrell, but he gets fired and then the documentary crew is like, “Oh we’ve got to follow this guy around too.” So now the show can go in weird directions.

Jesse Thorn: What are the… Are there any projects that you’re working on now that you’re very passionate about?

Patton Oswalt: Yeah, there’s a movie a screenplay that I wrote based on a short story that I optioned that I just did the newest draft of and we’re hopefully going to take that out. That one I’m very very very passionate about. Then there’s a pitch that I’m working on. HBO wants to hear something from me, you know, with me and twenty other people I’m sure, but there’s an idea that I kind of have with this other writer that we really, really like and that we’re really working very hard on, something that I am genuinely interested in and would like to pursue. And it kind goes along the same lines of what I was talking about where can’t the setting and the rules and the status of everyone change every few episodes and still each episode is free standing but if you watch it over all then it’s a whole over all arc?

Jesse Thorn: You’re listening to “The Sound of Young America” from MaximumFun.org. My guest is Patton Oswalt. We’ll be back in just one short minute. Keep it locked.

[music]

Jesse Thorn: Hey, “Sound of Young America” T-shirts are here. Our shipment just came in from Bro Prints in Santa Cruz, California, and these things are nice. They say “The Sound of Young America” on them. They have a record taking off towards Planet Awesome and they were all printed on very nice, high quality American Apparel T-shirts. We’ve got men’s sizes. We’ve got girls’ sizes. We’ve got double extra large for the big ones among us. They’re all only $16 including shipping at MaximumFun.org. So type MaximumFun.org into that browser, click on “Get Yourself a T-shirt”. You’ll have it within the week, possibly.

[music]

Jesse Thorn: You’re listening to “The Sound of Young America”. I’m Jesse Thorn, America’s Radio Sweetheart. My guest, comedian Patton Oswalt, is the creator of the Comedians of Comedy, the costar on TV’s “The King of Queens”, the star of the upcoming Pixar film “Ratatouille” which we’ll talk about in just a moment. He’s also appearing at Cobb’s Comedy Club in San Fransisco August 24-26, and at a show called “A Book-burning Comedy Showcase Presents: Afternoon Tea with Patton Oswalt”. That’s a benefit for AK Press. You can find that show at the AK Press warehouse in Oakland, California. It’s August 27 at 2pm, and it also features “The Sound of Young America” pals Mary Van Note, Jasper Redd, Brent Weinbach, and Rusty Mahekian, a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon in Oakland. Let’s take a listen to the trailer from the new Pixar film “Ratatouille”, which features Patton Oswalt as it’s star.

French Waiter: [French accent] And tonight before the desert course, we present for your pleasure the traditionally cheese trolley. To start, we have an excellent Clochette, very creamy, very nice, very light. Next a Brebi [sp] hearty, with a surprising bite I think you’ll find. And finally the Piece d’resistance a very special, very rare.

Woman: [screaming] RAT!

[screaming, ruckus, pell mell]

Remy [Patton Oswalt]: This is me. I think it’s apparent that I need to rethink my life a little bit. I can’t help myself. I like good food, OK? And good food is hard for a rat to find.

Dad Rat [echoey]: It wouldn’t be so hard to find if you weren’t so picky.

Remy [Patton Oswalt]: I don’t want to eat garbage, Dad! What is that?

[sniffing]

Other Rat [David Schwimmer]: [mouth full] I don’t really know.

Remy [Patton Oswalt]: You don’t know and you’re eating it.

Other Rat [David Schwimmer]: You know, if you can sort of muscle your way past the gag reflex, all kinds of food possibilities open up.

Remy [Patton Oswalt]: This is what I’m talking about.

[music]

Remy [Patton Oswalt]: I don’t think any of this would have come up, but we happen to live in Paris, France, and it’s so easy to find good food in Paris. It’s just dangerous.

[yelling, things being thrown, music]

Other Rat [David Schwimmer]: Gotta rethink your life

Dad Rat: He’s right you know.

Remy [Patton Oswalt]: Let it go, Dad!

[end of trailer]

Jesse Thorn: Now Patton, the most recent change in your career, at least from my perspective, is getting cast as the lead in the upcoming Pixar film”Ratatouille”.

Patton Oswalt: Yeah.

Jesse Thorn: Tell me, how did that happen?

Patton Oswalt: I wish I had a more intriguing story about this, but essentially Brad Bird loved my CD and gave me the role.

Jesse Thorn: I mean, that’s unbelievable.

Patton Oswalt: Yeah, that’s, I say that out loud because that is what happened, but it doesn’t sound in any way accurate or realistic, but that’s what happened.

Jesse Thorn: It’s like, but how do you, I mean it’s unbelievable, that guy gets to make a movie and he would and he gets to pick a guy and he just picks this guy whose CD he likes. That’s crazy.

Patton Oswalt: Well, but keep in mind, they auditioned a lot of people for that role. It wasn’t that he said, “Hey, we’re going to give it to this guy.” They had gone to a lot of people and then they brought me in, and I laid down some tracks as the lead guy and they all liked the voice, which is weird because it’s the one voiceover job I’ve done so far where I’m not doing a voice. I’m doing my own voice. I haven’t, you know, it’s just me talking, which to me, that’s the most bizarre part. Like I thought I would do some kind of cartoony rat voice and Brad was like “No, no, just talk the way you talk.”

Jesse Thorn: I mean, that must have been kind of unbelievable for you, I mean, from the start, I mean, just the idea of being brought in for something like that.

Patton Oswalt: It’s still unbelievable to me. If they had brought me up and they had given me a line, a role as a chef with one line, you know like “Grab the lid.” You know, that would be beyond me. Pixar, to me, is something that, I used to go to those when I would go to animation festivals in the 80s in DC. In the mid-80s and I would watch the first Pixar movies coming out.

Jesse Thorn: I remember that too, like the ones with the lamps jumping around.

Patton Oswalt: The lamps and then the toy, the little drummer.

Jesse Thorn: Yeah.

Patton Oswalt: The baby, all that stuff.

Jesse Thorn: So it must be, it’s kind of an unbelievable opportunity.

Patton Oswalt: Oh it’s, I think the word unbelievable doesn’t do it justice. It’s kind of indescribable and unprecedented. I don’t even; I’m in such totally new territory with this thing. I don’t even know how to react to it. I’m just doing the job and trying to let things happen as they happen because if I think about it too much, it just freaks me out.

Jesse Thorn: So you this is the first time you’ve done voice acting without doing a silly voice.

Patton Oswalt: Yeah. It’s weird.

Jesse Thorn: What is it, what have you learned about acting without people actually being able to see you.

Patton Oswalt: It’s actually, there’s a lot more emotion in it, because you have to do everything that you would do physically just with your voice. And there are times like, there’s a scene where I’m like hugging my dad and you Brad Bird will like run up and give me this big hug because that will change the way you talk. Like when you hug someone, you speak differently even when you’re trying not to. Or when you’re, if you’re crouched down frightened, if you’re standing up straight and proud you see right there your voice changes without you having to think about it, and I think that was a very important thing that I learned.

Jesse Thorn: How do you feel about your acting generally? Is it something that you are more confident in?

Patton Oswalt: I’ve gotten a lot more confident. I used to hate it, and I think it’s the same way with my stand-up. My first five or six years as a stand-up, just super mediocre and nothing to it. Nothing memorable at all. Nothing memorable. But it was just, it was the, I think it was just me doing it over and over and over again every single night that made, you know, me better. And I think it’s the same thing with “King of Queens”. For some reason that I’ll never understand, they didn’t fire me, and I stayed on the show for nine years, and I’ve learned to be better at acting, somewhat better. Although, better than the way I was when I started isn’t saying much, but it is better. It’s noticeably better. And it just comes from doing it all the time.

Jesse Thorn: What’s the process for doing it? Are you acting with other actors? Are you acting by yourself?

Patton Oswalt: All by myself. I haven’t even read the whole script. I just get my pages.

Jesse Thorn: That’s un-, how can you do that?

Patton Oswalt: You look at the specific emotion and the even of the scene. You know, Brad is very much “I trust that the even of the scene itself that we’ve written is going to be interesting and funny, and then you, it’s you’re job to figure out, you know how you want to you know talk about it and stuff like that.”

Jesse Thorn: So when you get pages, how tight is the script when you get it?

Patton Oswalt: It’s pretty tight. It’s pretty tight. I’m mean they’ve worked the pages really hard. That’s the thing about Pixar that I think a lot of other animation companies don’t understand is that you’ve really got to have your script locked and ready. You know, that’s why I do so many, I do so much punch up on these animated movies and they don’t, the script isn’t done. And they’ve rendered these scenes that they now can’t change because they spent twenty million bucks doing these scenes and they just need like people off screen yelling lines or something like that.

Jesse Thorn: What’s it like to go into that situation where, you’ve done, you’ve been a highly paid bring them in punch up type of guy for a number of years now. What’s it like to go into a situation where it’s already written in this character’s voice and it’s your job to act instead of think of the gag.

Patton Oswalt: It feels great, because you I think you feel a lot more confident knowing they’ve done their job and now you are free to put all of your energy into yours.

Jesse Thorn: Is the character’s voice similar to your own? I mean, not the literal physical voice, but the character’s voice more generally?

Patton Oswalt: Yeah, pretty much. I mean they, he kind of has that exasperation that I think I get sometimes. I mean, yeah.

Jesse Thorn: Can you tell us any like inside secrets that people need to know about what it’s like to be in a Pixar movie. I know there’s people out there who like love the Pixar more than anything else in the world. Like a special hat that you wear.

Patton Oswalt: [laughs] No I don’t know anything about that.

Jesse Thorn: Oh, that’s a terrible disappointment, Patton. You’re fired.

Patton Oswalt: Sorry dude.

Jesse Thorn: Patton, it’s always a pleasure to have you here on “The Sound of Young America”. Thank you so much for taking the time.

Patton Oswalt: Thanks for having me on, man.

Jesse Thorn: Patton Oswalt is on the internet at PattonOswalt.com, that’s Oswalt with a “t” and Patton like the great general. He’s appearing at Cobb’s Comedy Club in San Fransisco from the 24-26. For tickets or more information visit Cobbscomedy.com. I understand it’s selling out fast. He’s also doing a benefit show as I mentioned for benefit for AK Press. That’s in Oakland on August 27 at 2pm. He’s appearing alongside Mary Van Note, a graduate of UC Santa Cruz, Jasper Redd, Brent Weinbach, and Rusty Mahekian, all friends of “The Sound of Young America”. A highly recommended show and a benefit for an anarchist bookseller. So I don’t know if you’re an anarchist or a bookseller might appeal to you. That show gets “The Sound of Young America” recommendation. We’ll be back in just a minute with Masta Ace.

[music]

Jesse Thorn: You’re listening to “The Sound of Young America”. I’m Jesse Thorn, America’s Radio Sweetheart. In just a moment, Masta Ace. First, let’s hear the cut that made his name. It’s Marley Marl’s “The Symphony”.

[music: The Symphony by Marley Marl]

Masta Ace: How you doing Jesse? Thanks a lot for having me.

Jesse Thorn: I’m doing OK. Tell me, we just heard “The Symphony”, and I’m sure a lot of interviews you do start with “The Symphony”. How old were you when you recorded that track, and how did you end up making that be your first big record?

Masta Ace: Well, I was about 20 or 21. I had just graduated from college, so I was probably the oldest one on the track, and it was really by a strange circumstance that I wound up being on that song. The song was originally slated for Big Daddy Kane, Kool G Rap, Craig G and MC Shan was supposed to be the fourth rapper on the song.

Jesse Thorn: And at the time, if there’s people out there who don’t know, that was the Juice Crew with Marley Marl, who were probably the most powerful crew in hip-hop at the time.

Masta Ace: Right, and MC Shan was at the top of the game at that time. He was the most well known. He was the, out of all of us he had the biggest name, and he wasn’t interested in being on the song with those guys. He felt like he was on a certain level as an artist, and he didn’t want to. He felt like he was I guess to a certain extent, you know, taking a step down to be on a track with a bunch of unknowns at the time. So he elected not to be on the record. I just really just tagged along to the studio session to see, to watch the recording process. I was really just there to watch Kane and G Rap do their thing in the studio, and when it got time to do the recording of the vocals, there was a big debate about who was going to rhyme first. No one wanted to rap first. And so Marley Marl called on me to kind of just warm up the mike and get those guys loosened up, because everybody was kind of tense. And I went in and spit my verse just really, just to kind of set the tone. And Marley liked the verse enough and wound up keeping it on the song and the rest is history.

Jesse Thorn: One of the interesting things about your story, or especially the story about your recording career, is that there is kind of a gap where you’re doing records with other people and stuff like that but you don’t release anything under your own name in mid-, late-1990s. What was it that precipitated you sort of leaving the game for the most part for a while?

Masta Ace: Well I was at the time I was signed at Delicious Vinyl, and that was for my second and third albums, “SlaughtaHouse” and “Sittin’ on Chrome”. And after “Sittin’ on Chrome” came out, I signed a new deal with Big B Atlantic Records, and that was the label back in New York City. I recorded with that label for about a year and a half, but the album that I was doing never came out. So between probably the whole year of 1996 and part of 97, I recorded that album. At the same time I was also executive producing for an artist of LaShay [sp] and another female artist by the name of Paula Perry, and she was on Mercury and subsequently wound up on Motown. And what happened was during that time between 97 and 99 my album got shelved, the one that was supposed to come out on Big B got shelved, so I had 17, 18 songs done, never came out. And then the two projects, the Paula Parry project that I was working on, that got shelved. And the LaShay project fell on bad fortune being signed to Warner Brothers and that whole major label thing. So there were three projects in a row that just really didn’t work out the way they should have and I was a little disenchanted. I wasn’t really interested in being a part of the music industry. I was a little angry, a little bitter about a lot of things, and so I stepped away from the music for a while.

Jesse Thorn: What were you doing while you were away from music?

Masta Ace: Well, I went into production really heavy. I started kind of running around, shopping beats to artists and managers, trying to get work on the production side. I decided that being behind the scenes was, you know, maybe something I really wanted to focus on more. So I started shopping around tracks and trying to get production work.

Jesse Thorn: What was it that drew you out? You released a record a couple of years ago called “Disposable Arts”.

Masta Ace: Right.

Jesse Thorn: Which is an exceptional record and was exceptionally well reviewed.

Masta Ace: Thank you.

Jesse Thorn: And, you know, independently successful. And I wonder, what was it that drew you out? What drew you into making that record?

Masta Ace: It was two, the main thing that happened was, I did a small tour in 2000 overseas. I did like 15 shows over in England and a couple of spots over in Europe, and I was just amazed at the response I got from people overseas. The turn outs at the shows were incredible, the response, the love that I got being on stage, gave me, when I got back home I had this renewed energy and faith in hip-hop and the fans. And I came to the realization that there were people out there that still wanted to hear me make music. And when I came home from that tour at the end of 2000, I was in the studio at the top of the year 2001 recording “Disposable Arts”.

Jesse Thorn: Both of these records are very high concept sort of story records. And I wonder, how did you end up moving that direction starting with “Disposable Arts” and then with “Long Hot Summer” which follows the same story line but earlier on the timeline?

Masta Ace: Right well, from pretty much from my second album “SlaughtaHouse” through “Sittin’ on Chrome”, there was always sort of a theme to each album that I had done. So this wasn’t really anything very different from what I had done, except that there were, the only difference was that on “Disposable” and “Long Hot Summer” I had kind of main characters with actual lines and that kind of thing. “Sittin’ on Chrome” I had a main character, my cousin Jerome was a character on that album. But It’s was just me kind of feeding my need to be a creative writer. I’ve always been into writing. So it’s a way for me to not just make a record, but kind of to fill that thirst to write. And so I get to write kind of scripts in a way, and I get to write characters and character traits and I put all of that into the records just to kind of make it more of a fun experience for listeners. I try to make a record that I would like to buy and hear and enjoy. So I’m thinking that way when I’m in the studio putting these projects together.

Jesse Thorn: This is a song off “Disposable Arts” called “Dear Diary”. And I want to talk a little bit about what motivated this song and what your perspective in writing this song was. But let’s just let it roll for now. This is a song from Masta Ace’s album “Disposable Arts”. It’s called “Dear Diary”.

[music: Masta Ace’s “Dear Diary”]

Jesse Thorn: That’s Masta Ace with his song “Dear Diary” from his album “Disposable Arts”. I’m your host Jesse Thorn, America’s Radio Sweetheart, and Masta Ace is our guest. Now Ace, I mean I’m sure you know that but that’s a harshly self-critical song for like a grunge rock song, much less a hip-hop track.

Masta Ace: Yeah well it was, that song was recorded. I had a battle, a battle, I had had this battle very like right before that song was recorded and I was real angry with myself because I let myself get even get involved in the battle and then I wasn’t properly prepared and I took a bad loss. I’m my own worst critic, so it was kind of a way for me to kind of exorcise some demons and kind of get at myself, and kind of beat myself up a little bit.

Jesse Thorn: There’s a lot of that on “Disposable Arts”. There’s a lot of darkness on that record, a lot of sort of surprising self-introspection thing like that, that you don’t necessarily hear, you know, at least maybe outside of the context of, you know, violence on a hip-hop record. And that’s something that’s really striking about it.

Masta Ace: Well, it’s to me I think honesty, people respect honesty. I think that the fans want to hear honesty. And the best thing that I ever did was record that song “Dear Diary” because in certain way I was able to say the things that I kind of felt like people were saying. I kind of said it for them, and then in that way I was able to kind of take away some of the power of their words, or their negative words, if I just let it be known “Hey I know what you’re saying. I know what you’re probably thinking.” And then maybe you know I’m thinking the same thing or feeling the same way sometimes, and so that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with feeling that way. I can take it, and I can still be me and still thrive.

Jesse Thorn: So the story line of “Disposable Arts” follows a protagonist who’s just been released from prison and he goes to a school for hip-hop and he’s going through. He’s trying to find a new place in his old life. The story line of the new record moves back before the protagonist has gone to jail, and I wonder what made you want to go back to that perspective?

Masta Ace: “Disposable Arts” when it came out didn’t get the type of exposure it should’ve gotten because the label that it was on, they folded right after it came out. So only a certain amount of albums was ever pressed up. And I was trying to think of a way to make people go back and get that album, because we were planning on re-releasing it on CD. It’s on vinyl but we’re going to re-release it on CD. And I just wanted that album to get its fair shake. So I thought the best way to do that would be to connect the two albums together. So if people heard “A Long Hot Summer” but had never heard “Disposable” they would be tempted to go find out the rest of the story and thus go back and check out that album. Which is, I feel like that album needs to be heard.

Jesse Thorn: You are listening to “The Sound of Young America” on “The Sound of Young America” audio entertainment network my guest is Masta Ace. We’ll be back in just one short minute.

[music]