"I think the most excited I've ever been was when I was about sixteen, and my mum kicked me out so I got a little flat in a horrible high-rise block - but inside the apartment was gorgeous, carpets and big plants and shit everywhere, I did it real nice, splashed white paint through the whole fucking thing, just nice and plain. And I had my studio set up in there with a window view and the view there out of the sixteenth floor was crazy. And it was over the whole... I could see Brixton, Stockwell, Clapham, I could see 'em all - it was a grimy view, and that view went in here [points to eye], out my hands and into the music. Without a doubt, man. I used to just sit there and watch the view, and some of the fucking ideas I came up with were nothing but ghetto beats, man, you could blatantly hear it. Yeah of course it has influence, man!
Even for the listener... Take Dr Dre, and all that, that "bum-ba-bum-bum-bum" [he gets up and goes into a lolloping lean-back walk around the room as he sings and claps out a g-funk beat], that Snoop and Dre laid-back sort of shit - I always hated that kind of hip-hop, but then I went to Los Angeles. Big palm trees, t-shirt sleeves down here and everyone's walking like this [leans back into a cartoonish pimp roll], a little bit slower than on the east coast 'cause it's so goddamned hot, and everyone's just laid back. And it sounds like the way people walk "bom-ba-bom-bom-bom" [pimp rolls, sings and claps some more]. Or you can turn on the radio and it'll be a 24 hour rap station where they play nothing but Miami Bass [beatboxes a booty electro rhythm with "work it work it, hit it hit it" sample] and that stuff I hate even more, but you can understand how the state creates that sound with palm trees and bright sun in your face all the time, it suits it perfect "bum-ba-bum-bum", it's the music of the environment, no doubt. Same with the Salsa, you go down South America and you've got wild dogs and chickens running around and shit, guys with big fucking sharp knives slicing some big fruit on the corner all that [make rhythmic slicing sound] and hairdressers playing music out on the streets and all that shit, cutting hair [mimes haircutting with bandy-legged Salsa hip twitch] and the shoeshine boy [mimes again] - it's just very... very villagey and scruffy, and it suits the music "ga-dang-da-gang-ga-ding-da" it just goes in perfect!"
Interview with EL-B taken from The Wire
