Influenza with Phingaz of Background Noise Crew
Approach Influenza as a series which serves to help give insight as to where music is born; these are the thoughts, influences and the inspirations directly from the mind of the artists. Here, Phingaz of Minneapolis’ Background Noise Crew dissects the group’s interpretation of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Funky Monks.”
On “Funk Yo Monk (We Red Hot)”:
I had the idea to remake a bunch of Red Hot Chili Pepper songs for a while – “Funky Monks” (off of Blood Sugar Sex Magik) was at the top of my list. The original song has such a hard hitting bass and drum line – [it] just cooks through the whole song. So I decided to replay the guitar and slap in a huge kick drum with hand claps. I’d been listening to Camp Lo a shit-ton around that time and loved “Krystal Karrington.” The beat has this nasty chain-like shaker in it, I wanted a similar sound in the “Funk Yo Monk” song. I grabbed my house keys, a shaker and a tambourine and just went to town.
I sang the first part of the first verse of the original song. It’s perfect and I think it works as a hook by its lonesome. I sent it out to the whole crew and said “You have to spit 16 bars on this – no exceptions.” They all came back with the crazy stew of styles and such. It’s a good thing everybody comes so differently – it clocks in over six minutes but you don’t really notice it cause every ones style is so different.
Status Regin is a perfect starter for a song like this – he always has a crazy amount of energy in his verses, so him up front was the most obvious choice. Everyone had to match up to him. TQD’s verse is a HUGE stand out. If people aren’t familiar with his cataloge – he NEVER sounds like this. It’s nice to hear him switch up his style a bit. Tone always cracks me up with his verses – he had this rhyme pattern that was just jumping out of my ears, so I told him we should really capitalize on that. So Analyrical, TQD and I all yelled along with his pattern to give it that ‘large gang’ effect. We must have done about five tracks of us all yelling. I think Analyrical spits my favorite verse – I really dig it when MC’s play around with letters, patterns and sounds. I’ve never heard so many S’s and P’s in a verse before. Phaust is my homeboy – we’ve been though some shit, put out three Albums with Sinthesis and he is part of the BNC extended family. He always blows me away with his verses. He can be super cryptic and vague [or] he can be direct and literal. I picture him spiting this verse with a stupid grin on his face. Like he just stole two packs of cigs from the corner store and sweet talked his way out of it.
