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I was surprised that I could live in the most densely populated city in the world, and still feel so alone.
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I think most artists are inspired by their surroundings, and I felt pretty lonely and displaced during that initial time living in Tokyo. After I started spending more time in Japan after 2010, my sound was in the “Melancholy Hopeful” (&Prequel) stage, and when I moved to Tokyo to study at Sophia University, I made all of the music for “The Lone Wolf LP” in a tiny dorm room. MD – My sound tends to change and evolve based on what I’m listening to at the time. How did your musical influences and your own production style change during those years? Then, in “Ryujin No Yume”, the sound changed to the so-called Lo-fi Hip Hop of today. MP – I listened to your albums from the earliest work to the latest, I felt that the songs from the first album to “Another Day in the Life Of…” featured rappers, and the tracks were more like Hip Hop, but from “The Lone Wolf to Melancholy Prequel”, the sound became more like the Nujabes and Hydeout tracks that everyone knows. I was in middle school and my friend’s cousin from California would come to Washington for the summers, and he was the one who introduced me to the music. I started listening to Substantial and Nujabes a couple years after that album came out. MD – To This Union is a classic album, thanks for your contribution. Were you listening to Substantial and Nujabes’ works at that time? (By the way, nobody knows this, but I was asked for advice on the song order of Substantial’s first album, and they actually released it in that order. Substantial’s first album was released in 2001, so I guess you were in elementary school student at the time. MP – I also read on another site that you formed Bop Alloy when you were 18. He played me all of the instrumentals of Luv(sic) Part 4,5 & 6 during that session in Seattle and I had to try really hard to keep my cool. Shing02 and I had worked on a track called “Parallel Universe” that summer in Seattle, and he invited me to DJ for him at the tribute. I became connected with a lot of the other Hydeout-related artists one-at-a-time at separate times, but I did meet a lot of them for the first time at the first Eternal Soul Tribute in Tokyo in 2010. He was nice enough to respond, so I sent him some beats and it all went from there.
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I hit him up because I’d been a long-time fan. MP – You’ve already worked with Substantial on Revival of the Fittest, but how did you meet him and how did you get involved with the Hydeout-related artists that you later became so connected with? All of that has had a big influence on my production. Thinking back, I was probably a little too young for all that (laughs)…but maybe it was fate that I got introduced to it early. MD – My brother was making mixtapes for me when I was in elementary school with Royce, Busta Rhymes, Fabolous, DJ Clue?, DMX, Scarface, Jay-Z, Nas, and a lot of obscure underground rappers at the time. Does Hip Hop have a big influence on your music? In addition to Royce Da 5’9″, you have featured other Hip Hop artists such as Torae, Planet Asia, Saigon, Skyzoo, and Del The Funky Homosapian on your subsequent albums. MP – You produced Royce Da 5’9″, who is now a star MC, at a very young age. I played in Jazz bands from middle school to high school and then started making beats when I was 15-16. Marcus D – I started playing piano at an early age, mostly classical and then moved to Jazz in middle school. I read in an article that you have been playing the piano since you were a child. Mental Position – First of all, I’d like to ask you about your musical background. We asked him about his musical evolution and his opinion on the lo-fi scene. He is currently living in Japan, and has contributed greatly to the lo-fi music scene. Marcus D produced Royce Da 5’9″” at a young age, and later went on to produce albums featuring Substantial, Shing02 and many other great MCs.