Lord 360 Interview in the Chicago Suntimes

360 comes full circle with CD release
October 6, 2006
BY DAVID JAKUBIAK (Hip-Hop)

When Lord 360 takes the stage at Morseland tonight for his record-release party, it would be fair to say that while most folks there will be celebrating the record, the artist will be feeling a release.

Bursting onto the scene as part of the Internet-fueled, Evanston-based collective Slaughterhouse V in 1999, 360's aggressive, high-energy, stream-of-conscious raps left fans wondering when a solo CD would emerge.

Then, in 2001, with the founding of his label, Cypher Infinitum, and a solo single, "Hail 2 the Profit," such a CD was imminent.

But, he explains, "shortly after that I met up with Overflo and Pugslee Atomz and we formed Birthwrite," the label that would serve as the launching pad for artists like Psalm One and Thaione Davis. But while he was steadily working on his own album, it never say the light of day.

"We were busy with other people's stuff," he explains the now 25-year-old Rogers Park resident. "I was working on my own stuff, but I also had label stuff to do. And then, after a few years, I decided to start focusing on Cypher Infinitum again."
That, in an abridged sense, is how the release date for "The Anomaly LP" went from 2001 to 2003 to this past Tuesday, when it came out on Cypher Infinitum.

The CD captures much of the promise initially offered by 360. On songs like "Playful Jab" and "Gasping Gattling," he plays the role of microphone predator, rattling off rhymes of a complexity that necessitates multiple listens. Yet on other songs like "Death to Ingsoc" (shouldn't we have expected a literary reference from George Orwell's 1984 from the former Slaughterhouse V-er?), he unveils a deep political consciousness over a self-produced track that offers a bass drop similar to the British grime sound.

"I've always listened to a lot of different kinds of music, but when I do my solo stuff, I definitely want to keep the intensity but do a range of things," he explains. "I pull from everywhere -- punk, grime, funk and jazz. I'm always all over the place. That's why I'm Lord 360 -- I'm all over the place, trying to experience everything I can."

His desire to do everything goes beyond the fact that he only features other rappers on two of 13 tracks (Psalm One and 360's brother Touch appear on "Ego Tripping" and Blueprint adds his flavor to "Previously Pillaged"), or that while boasting production of artists like The Opus, Maker and Overflo, 360 also produced three of his own beats. He also was responsible for the CD's cover art and the design of the liner notes.

Launching into different artistic outlets, whether making dance music or painting a canvas, fuels his rapping.

"When I take detours down those other paths, it may delay something else I'm trying to do but I pick up so much that when I come back to doing hip-hop I have all of those new tool sets," 360 says. "My energy is always going toward something."

Offering an example of the synergy between his creations, he says he views the flow of his debut in terms of colors.

"If this makes any sense, I see the album going from oranges into kind of reds into blues," 360 says. "And from the feedback I've gotten so far, I think it comes across because most people say they like the flow of the album."

This constant creativity also forces 360 to focus on several projects simultaneously, and he's already about half done with his next project, a CD that combines elements of house, drum and bass, and grime with traditional hip-hop, called "Dub Zoot Sig."

As for the debut, "It's been a long time in coming," he declares.

Tonight, he'll party, at the release.

David Jakubiak is a local free-lance writer.