Flipsyde [Q&A + Oakland Show] on Metrojolt

Flipsyde [Q&A + Oakland Show]

// by DJ / May 06, 2011 / Posted in: All Music, Bay Area, Hip Hop/Rap, Interviews, Shows

Nota Bene, show this Saturday (Ticket Giveaway):

Flipsyde is performing their first show in over two years at Oakland’s Soundwave Studios THIS SATURDAY at 8pm with special guests Shotgun Wedding Quintet and Raw Deluxe! We have a pair of tickets to give away. To qualify, please comment on this post with your full name/e-mail address and add us on Facebook. We will be announcing the winner on our Facebook group tomorrow morning. You can buy your tickets here as well!

Flipsyde, an introduction:

Combining rock, hip hop, and R&B, Flipsyde roots itself in both classic and avant garde sounds. It’s been more than a quick second since Flipsyde was on the top of everyone’s mind with their first album “We The People,” released in 2005, which was lauded as the “best hip hop album of the year” by the Washington Post in 2006. In 2009, Flipsyde released a second album “State of Survival,” but this album wasn’t circulated in the U.S. Today, Flipsyde, which now consists of three members, is back en force with a politically charged single “Act Like A Cop Did It.” It’s a prelude/teaser to their next album.

Interview with Jinho “Piper” Ferreira, an MC, playwright, and police officer:

I had the pleasure of sending a few questions over to the dynamic MC Piper, who raps on Flipsyde’s tracks. His lyrics– which touch on issues like poverty, violence, and the emotional pain after aborting a child– are clearly socially conscious. He is a prize winning screenwriter and a police officer in addition to his musical pursuits, which makes for a unique combination and set of life experiences. Here’s what Piper has to said:

Where did you begin writing the lyrics to Someday?

Steve and I wrote the lyrics to Someday at his old spot in Berkeley, on his birthday, at 3 in the morning, eating old chinese food. I was a student at SFSU and a counselor at Juvenile Hall. Steve was leaving the Coast Guard and trying to get his life together. We were both solo artists but always wrote better material together.

In the beginning of your new song Act Like A Cop Did It, you reference infamous cases of violence in the East Bay: the Oscar Grant shooting, the Piedmont Ave gun down which inadvertently paralyzed a boy in a piano lesson, and everyday occurrences of prostitution and rape. How has violence affected you? Did these incidents push you to become a police officer?

The reasons why I became a cop are too many to write down. People dealt with the Oscar Grant situation in different ways. I remember being at the Fruitvale BART station rally. I remember talking to several members of the community that I respect tremendously. The theme of the day seemed to be, “We should be the ones serving, protecting, and patrolling our own community”. So far as I know, I’m the only one that went through the process of doing that. I paid my way through the academy, graduated at the top, and earned the opportunity to do exactly what we were discussing at the rally. I don’t believe any entity outside of our community is going to make things better in our community. We can sit back and complain about how someone else is protecting our mothers, wives and children, or we can do it ourselves.

A little known fact about you is that you’ve written several screenplays, one of which was selected at Tribeca Film Festival for best screenplay. How does your process for developing a screenplay mirror or differ from writing music lyrics. What new projects are you working on in this realm of screenplays?

Writing a screenplay has a more logical process than writing a song. However, there are sections of a screenplay that I freestyle. It has to be alive, if you remove the spontaneity, it won’t work. I recently signed a deal for my action/thriller WALTER’S BOYS, and we’re in the process of selecting the right director to bring it to life. I’ve also written a Mixed Martial Arts film that I’m determined to keep in the Bay Area, and I’ve just been contracted to write another action screenplay that will be filmed this summer.

You’ve released a string of singles and a second, less circulated album since your big release in 2005, and now you’re working on a new album. Is there a theme or concept driving the production of this upcoming album?