FRESH MADNESS

Mantronik: Independent in every sense

"NOT bad for a twenty-one year old from New York", he says and I am inclined to agree with him. It was around this time last year that a new funk/rap duo hit the black music scene like a whirlwind with their first major single release "Needle to the groove". Then they followed it with an album, "The Album" that spawned hits, real hits- and the notion that the music world had discovered for itself a supreme new talented called Mantronix.

Of course, that wasn’t the end of it because the young man who provides the music and production for their innovative sound, Mantronik, went on to lend his talent (and, most importantly his name) to a series of projects that all benefitted considerably from the Midas Touch. Artists like Dhar Braxton, Joyce Sims, T la Rock, Just Ice and Hanson and Davis all released tracks that simply added to the kudos already being Bestowed upon him, and now that esteem has almost reached gratuitous stage with the release of Mantronix’s second and yes, best album, "Music Madness". It’s weird", he also says, and again I’m on his side. When I first spoke to Mantronik. A year back on the phone, the voice at the end was very quiet, perhaps quite a lot nervous and most answers to my questions were littered with stutters and ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’. One relatively quiet debut, "Fresh is the Word" for Sleeping Bag, had obviously not prepared him for the sort of off-pat soul searching required to deal with the glare- or as it was at that time- the glimmer of publicity. But that was a year, that was, and now the guy linking up with me across the Atlantic from his company Sleeping Bag’s uptown New York Office was speeking with the confidence of a man enjoying the knowledge that the rest of the world has now caught up with his talent.

ALTOUGH compulsively the sort of person who doesn’t stop working on ideas and making Mantronik concedes that ’86 his year, was beginning to catch them a reality, up with him. "You see, although I kept going, the problem I’ve run into Sleeping Bag is that anything I worked on would be capitalised on by using my name. So Joyce’s record was big, so was Dhar Braxton’s and my first thoughts on this way was that people would simply yet fed up with my name. "But now I’m really finding that the biggest problem is finding time for my girlfriend and friends and that has really made me sit back and think. "I don’t live and breath the music – I enjoy the company, going out, having a few beers and I’ve made a conscious effort to this more. But even then, if I’m out some place, I get hassled by people who want me to do something for them". Thankfully, though, Mantronik has not come to the begrudging conclusion that the simply can no longer be normal. "I’ve just finished remixing "Who Is It" for a single and I’ve remixed a Just Ice track and I’ve just completed Joyce Sims new single, "Life-Time Love", and my brains are fried. Now Sleeping Bag have said ‘enough – more production….time for a holiday’ and it was a thing I was not about to argue with." Nevertheless, later on in the conversation, he confirmed that on Christmas night he’d be playing a gig so he is certainly some sort of disciple of the work ethic but says "It is only now more work because I have to think harder. Physically, the pressure is no greater now than it has been for a while and I’ve always enjoyed it."

IN CONTROL? I think so because, although he is technically staff at Sleeping Bag, he commands virtual director status and even as we spoke on the phone was constantly throwing directives over his shoulder to a series of callers. Sleeping Bag know what they’ve got here, and he seems to have all the rope he needs. Indeed, so at home does he seem with his highly potent independent label that there wasn’t a hint of reservation in his voice when we discussed and apparently inevitable progression (regression?) into a major label deal. Inevitable, it seems , will never enter into it. "Yeah, I’ve had offers… but look at the Jellybean- "Nail It To The Wall"(Stacy Lattisaw’s recent single) didn’t do shit over here. "And the fact is that I can make more money working for an indie because the major will be taking money that could come to you and doing it on ads and promotion and marketing.

Our marketing is our name. "But the truth is I was never tempted because I don’t want people expecting of me- producing when someone says ‘produce’. No that pressure I couldn’t stand because I know when you get into that system you are in hock to the company. I’m living well- I’m buying a new appartment in Manhattan and in Miami- and it’s my money. I’m not borrowing, I’m not living off some enormous advance that some major waved under my nose then having to pay them back for the rest of my career. What I’ve spent I’ve got, and I’m in control. "He also has a strong argument specifically from the artistic side because one man who did go with a Major – Russell Simmons and his Def Jam label’s liaison with Columbia- has resulted as "Russell now hates it. being a major. He’s coming to Sleeping Bag and asking them to put out stuff the company wouldn’t put out. "In a place that size he is just a smudge whereas before was on top of it all, doing well and controlling his own destiny. Potent advice tempered whimsically with the fact that Mantronik then spoke of "a few deals- no details yet" to be realised in ’87 with the Devil Major. Committed and blessed with integrity he may be but "I don’t work with bullshit people- I think I have now got the right to expect certain things. My name has worked for other people and so it should work for me"- so not ‘too’ much compromise should be expected from this place.

YOU may getting the impression that because, as I say, Mantronik now talks like a man thrust into greatness , he also rather keen to enjoy the limelight that tends to follow it around with a plethora of wattage. But enjoying talking about his vocation should not be mistaken for enjoying his profile because "being on stage is cool but with the whole media thing I’m always in the foreground and I’m trying to get away from that shit" is said with as much, indeed more conviction than any of the other conversation you read here. His rapper McTee, is so good that he’d be a star in his own right if he wasn’t (simply?) the voice on the Mantronix records. However, there is no one more appreciative of T’s ability and stage presence than Mantronik and the way he describes his work on stage is possibly the best insight into his passion for making music and not particularly all the fringe things that accompany it. "You watch me on stage, my eyebrows are knitted together with concentration because, when we’re performing, we go with the flow. "I really don’t have anything to do with being visual because I am up there to do my own thing. I can’t smoke a joint, I can’t take a drink before a show because there is so much I have to worry about and make sure is right. "Up there, the only thing that matters is the music, "he says. And elsewhere, I reckon that is just about the case too.

(MW)

Source: Blues & Soul 1986