Toronto Urban Music Festival 2009

Slum Village seems to have an uncanny ability to thrive amidst the chaos. These mysterious music men from Detroit have overcome various delays and industry restructuring, bootlegging and the loss of beatmaster, Jay Dee from the group, to produce a fine follow up to their 1999 debut album Fantastic Volume 2.

Their latest album, Trinity: Past, Present And Future has already spawned one of the summer's anthems, "Tainted!" which features hot new neo-soulman, Dwele. The album itself, seeks to establish linkages with all the sides of the Slum Village sound including contributions from behind the boards from Jay Dee while pushing forward with a variety of new producers and more importantly their newest member, Detroit rapper, Elzhi.

Slum Village is back. But then again, they never really left. They've just continued to stay grounded, kept touring and making their own post-modern brand of hip hop music.

Slum Village will headline the sixth annual Toronto Urban Music Festival on Sunday, August 25th at the CNE Bandshell with special guest Dwele at the all-day music celebration. WORD Magazine caught up with Slum Village's T3 to get the low down on the group's return to the spotlight.

WORD How would you describe the difference between Trinity and Fantastic Vol. 2?

Slum Village They are in totally different classes. On Volume 2, the concept for that album was, musically female friendly hard core. That was the concept of that album. This Trinity album is a lot different. What we did was we broke it up in three sections: Past, Present and Future. And that has a lot of significance because that's how we labeled the songs on our album.

What we did with the past sound of Slum, that's from, basically what we did was the Vol. 2 type of songs. The songs that remind you of Vol. 2 like "Tainted." And then you had the Present with was a lot different joints like "Get Live" and "Slumber" and a couple of other joints...those joints represented more like the present vibe...and then the future vibe — it's more like a retro funk, soul, mix it all together. We're kinda alternative too and that's why the future sounds like that. I mean, just that alone, was different from the Vol. 2. Also, you got the new addition, Elzhi. He brings a lot to the table you know, he comes from a freestyle battle type back-ground. He kinda brings that element to Slum Village, which we really didn't have. We were freestylin' emcees but not really freestyle battle and he kinda brings that element to the table, which just refreshes what we already had. Which (serves to) bring new listeners to the table.

WORD You guys have always had very loyal fans. So loyal, I hear that you were probably one of the most bootlegged artists out there. How has that affected Slum Village?

Slum Village Yeah. Well...right now we're getting a lot of love man. Fans, we couldn't have had a lot more fans — more in the industry I would say. Like, AJ on BET's106 & Park, he just labeled us as one of his favorite groups of all time. You know what I'm saying...that's just like, you can't even expect someone on live TV to say that without you talking to him or knowing this guy, you know what I'm saying? But we get a lot of love from people in the industry. All this love is kinda different, either you love us or you just hate us. You either got to be with it or you just don't get it. (laughs)

WORD But, has the bootlegging situation slowed you down, do you think?

Slum Village No, no. We didn't go through this with the Trinity album. We didn't go through it that much, it was good. You know, the bootlegging situation helped us out. When Vol.2 got bootlegged, it helped us out. Because then we had fans, we were able to do shows. So when we performed, they knew the songs, before we came out. So, we may have lost a little money, but we got a lot of loyal people.

WORD Tainted right now is resonating with a lot of people. And I'm just wondering if that track surprised you in the way people kinda embraced it and had it become this cross-over hit. We're now hearing it on many different radio formats.

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