shit, and I saw this shirt that was army green, with a World War II silkscreen with a side view of a trench, at the bottom in big propaganda letters it said "DUCK", and it had a rubber duckie in the middle of the battlefield.

Even in the very beginning of the movie Waking Life, the dude is talking about the journey thru life and there's a duckie on the dashboard like yakking and shit. It's an imitation of him or a distraction to him.

It's a way for me to express and it's also an attack on how serious motherfuckers take their shit; like my name is "Archangel Abyss Death", you know what I'm saying..man rubber duckie ..shut up!"

I was drawn back at all this man had to say from such a simple question. Everything I once was confused by made perfect sense to me after he spoke. I asked if he thought emcees these days take themselves to serious.

He responded with, "No, mother fuckers don't take it serious enough. You can say what ever you want in the tone you want as long as it's the truth. That's it. I could do a song on how I feel about murder, if I feel like a murderer and I could do it from that perspective. If I feel like the victim I could do it from that perspective. Basically you can say whatever you want, but it's got to be true.

Example would be the piano has a shift in tone, like range, you can go from low C to ending C. (imitates a piano) and lyricism, the tone is painted by the emotion of our words and the truth of your song is the beauty in it. (Imitates a Beethoven piece) It's like encapsulating breathtaking and motherfuckers don't do that no more.

I asked if he had a new album out. He explained Maker, a

producer from Chicago, would be handling all the production. I asked Qwel what to expect from the album.

"Its time to harvest, we came up with the concept on the harvest moon, I've been having fucked up dreams. We're going to harvest, because if you let a grape sit on a vine too long, it will swell with so much juice that it will burst itself and be a useless grape. You have to save it and so we're going to incorporate some of these fat and happy grapes. Also, tell me if I'm wrong, but there are some people here still communicating, but there's a lot of bullshit that has to go," he said.

I definitely agreed with him.

He continued with, "Plus, Maker is the like a fucking Mastodon that plays the harp. He provides the kick in it, just like the song Chicago Barbeque, you know what it feels like, no matter what I'm talking about and all I did was be the muscles to the skeleton of that beat."

Some how, I knew exactly what he was talking about. I asked him to tell me more about the Rubber Duckie. I had to know more. He said, "I could talk about however I want to in the voice I want to, but if my honesty bleeds truth, souls will hear it. I've had so many people come up to me and say "yo I like the Duckie" and I'll be like "yo the Pinocchio Syndrome is about money". You know what I mean, "seven blasphemous heads" and "the gentlemen's drug." But, they still like the shit."

I felt his transformation as an artist really shocked people. He came with raw hip hop on the Typical Cats album and opened his solo career with If it Ain't Been in a Pawnshop then it Can't Play the Blues. He managed to hide a completely different artistic side to his work and catch