“Me? I’m interested in the rebel form of every type of music. And proving that this music cannot only start fires, but end them. I want to prove that chaos can be beautiful.” Since first picking up a pen at the age of five, Chuck Lightning has been starting fires. And when he met up with music producer and vocalist N8 Wonder at Morehouse College, those fires took on a radical new sound. “I’d always been interested in how different societies and different artistic movements approach change. I come from a literary background. My dad was a complete classicist and Anglophile— into Shakespeare, Dickens, Shelley, Wordsworth, all that. Because of that I have to say I discovered books like The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Assata, Seize the Time, Song of Solomon, Things Fall Apart, Black Skin White Masks, The Famished Road, Dhalgren, and Invisible Man because of an Afrocentric awakening that was brought to me first and foremost through the music of Public Enemy.” “But ink—and art—is truly beyond color: I realized early on that my literary heroes were from all over the world: they included Morrison and Marquez, Flannery O’Conner and Ralph Ellison, Faulkner and Hemingway, Langston Hughes and James Joyce, Kafka and Borges, Mishima and Rushdie, as well as all the dope contemporaries: folks like Junot Diaz, Colson Whitehead, Haruki Murakami, Zadie Smith, Michael Chabon, Lorrie Moore, Thom Jones, Tim O’Brien, and Percival Everett. But when I first set out to make music in the 90’s, I took with me only my black musical inspirations: Miles Davis, Prince, P-Funk, Fishbone, Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone, etc. It took two bands dying before I realized that I had to open it up more, approach it like I do my fiction—which is to say—do what the funk you want to do, leave no color untouched, tear the roof off every sucka, rip off some scabs, let it hurt a lil’ bit so that people can smell the funk, feel the power, see the beauty of the entire world…” That being said, Chuck Lightning was slow to delve back into music again, especially with N8 Wonder, who he considered a by-the-book pop and hip hop producer. “I was working on a short story collection and an animated epic film called Adam’s Song. I met N8 when he built a website for an arts group I founded called The Dark Tower Project. At the time, I was still into music, but not into really collaborating with anyone. Most of the stuff N8 was working on was well produced. It sounded like stuff for Lauryn or Missy, both of whom I like immensely. He was also working on some progressive Crunk n’ B stuff. In terms of his listening tastes, he would roll around listening to Bach loud like it was the new shit. Then he would turn on the radio and start bouncing to "Knuck if you Buck." In contrast, I was listening to a lot of dub, indie rock and punk at the time. The Scientist and Lee Scratch Perry. Iggy Pop and the Clash. The Stooges and Gang of Four. And other 70’s stuff like Can and Black Sabbath, as well as Fela and Frank Zappa. I just didn’t know how it would work.” “But slowly I learned that we were alike even in our differences. N8’s into PCs: I’m into Macs. He’s digital; I’m analog. He’s into fast food, songs and pop charts; I’m into tapas, albums and the underground. He gets in my car and turns up the treble because he’s fascinated with strings and melodies. I get in the car and turn up the bass because I like to feel the music. But that being said, we complement each other: he certainly takes the rudiments of my rhythmic and melodic ideas and expands them a thousand fold. And I think he appreciates the tension and dissonance my vocals bring, as well as the far-out places I’m willing to go lyrically, musically and conceptually.”
Credits:
photography by Dave Ellis
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