Here And Now

The Pharcyde burst onto the scene in the early ‘90s with a demo record featuring a track that became a hit in Passin’ Me By, before adding four full-lengths to their discography. As individuals, several members of The Pharcyde clan have made strong careers for themselves, including Wilcox, as well as former members Fatlip and Slimkid3. Now a duo, Wilcox and fellow member Bootie Brown (Romye Robinson) continue play shows around the States, and were down in Australia celebrating 20 years together in 2012. It’s easy to recognise where Wilcox has come from by the way he talks down the line of the phone; he’s definitely got that slang that many of the LA rappers of the ‘90s possessed, and his seven-minute monologue to one standard question was a treat to listen to. “People don’t even realise how much the game has changed if they’re standing on the outside looking in, but man, it’s changed so much. People talk about releasing records and it sounds so ancient to me. People are talking about releasing flashdrives of records for free – it’s like, man, an album, an actual album? Are you kidding me? People don’t do that no more! I’ve been trying to calibrate myself for the 21st century because it’s something that’s very difficult to break loose from. It’s like, I don’t know if you’re familiar with American football, but they change the rules so much that if you took a player from the 1950s and brought him into now, he wouldn’t even be able to play because it’s not the same game. Everyone always wants ‘What’s next? What’s new?’, and you don’t get the full fulfilment of anything anymore because everyone’s always after what’s next. You don’t get to digest music fully. When we released CDs, you’d open the package and read the back and there’d be all the thankyous and the shout-outs and all the producers, and you’d listen to the whole thing. Now it’s like, people listen to one song and it’s like, ‘Okay, who’s next? What’s next?’

“I’m 44, and I’m proud to say I’m 44 because people always equate being old to not being able to rap, and I don’t believe that. If you can rap, you can rap. You can be a 19-year-old rap-ass motherfucker, you can be a 55-year-old rap fucker. How I see it is, there’s always new cars that are fresh, but when you see that dope-ass Mustang role up, it looks better than anything else. So that’s what I’m trying to do. I’m calibrating myself for the 21st century, and I’m making sure that when I role up in my ’55 Mustang, I look like a brand new car.”

As for their legacy? “[More people] know our music now than when we started, but you can’t be talking about your legacy if you haven’t even made the playoffs yet. A legacy? No way, man! I’ve got all my music out on Bandcamp right now, there’s three albums on there, you can go to YouTube and watch the performances. We’ve got an app, we’ve got everything going on. We’re just thinking about the now. The now is important.”