Featured Artist of the Month: MORRI$ of Team Bear Club [Jan/Feb 2012]

By Chris Mills | January 17, 2012 at 9:33 pm | One comment | Downloads, Featured, Interviews, Videos

Having lived all over the country in places like Philadelphia, Texas and Chicago among others, Lawrence, Kansas seems like an odd place for MORRI$’ patented style of dreamy trap beats and DJ mixes to come out of. Soon to enroll back in school at KU as a film major, the blog buzz over MORRI$ and his Team Bear Club crew has been raging at the speed of a snare roll over the past couple of years. Collaborations with the likes of Sinjin Hawke, pub on sites such as XLR8R, Mad Decent, Earmilk and others have garnered him a lot of international exposure. His Goomahrave parties, and other DJ events out in Lawrence put on by Team Bear Club have built a reputation as being some of the coolest events to hit Mass Street since DJ Konsept left for Chicago a few years ago.

As a freshman at Topeka High, he was introduced to the “realness” of the pool of potential sitting in the state’s capitol while current area hip hop movers and shakers like Stik Figa were rapping outside the school on Fridays. At about this time, MORRI$ was playing in punk and screamo bands and even participated in one group that served as a precursor to our indie rock icons, Cowboy Indian Bear. 2005 is when he moved to LK, received a Serato box from his dad (who’s also a DJ), and got his hands on Ableton the following year, essentially ditching live instruments for the computer.

At 24, the future looks very bright for MORRI$. And in typical Featured Artist of the Month fashion here on Demencha, he’s involved in quite a few big collaborations that he insisted were to be left off the record. But considering his effervescent knack for building bridges via the internet, MORRI$’ rise throughout blogland is nothing to scoff at when youtube views and soundcloud plays have transformed an artist’s attractiveness meter. In this interview, MORRI$ tells how the Team Bear Club machine operates, speaks upon his future plans and clears the air to let us know that being an underground-chained artist is not a rut that he’s trying to sink into.

MORRI$ SOUNDCLOUD
MORRI$ TUMBLR
MORRI$ TWITTER
TEAM BEAR CLUB YOUTUBE

Chris Mills: What’s the scoop on Team Bear Club, and what does each member bring to the table individually?

MORRI$: As time has gone on, those divisions have made themselves a little bit more clear. I started Bear Club by myself in maybe, 2008. And it was just an idea. I wanted to be able to move and operate in whatever directions I wanted. It wasn’t a team by any means, it wasn’t shit. But it wasn’t until I met (Tom Richman), he was the first person who I was musically clicking with and understood the vision too.

Meanwhile, I had a pretty good relationship with this kid named Jamaal. I recorded his first mixtape which was called “Womyn”, and it was really good. It was definitely just some joke rap and it was definitely some shit we just did amongst ourselves. But from that project sprang every recording project that we’ve done since then, every MORRI$ song. A lot of those MORRI$ songs that would’ve got released six months ago instead came out on Jamaal’s tape which ended up being really fucking good. Jamaal went on to become our art director. He designed our shirt, he did the video for “Affairs”…



…He’s just really good at that kind of shit. So he’s pretty much our art director. We’ve worked very heavily as far as our lingo and our branding in general just came from what he was trying to do. But the music side of it came from what Tom and I were doing. That springs from us. The music springs from a lot of the influence from Tom.

Also, on the video and design end, our buddy Reggie Scott Smith, he DJs at Goombahrave and he’s a really competent graphic designer and he does a lot of our designs and shit. When I’m feeling lazy and I don’t want to do a design, he’ll definitely do some or he’ll just come up with an idea. He does all the Blasian flyers. Tomo is his sidekick, and he pretty much just DJs.

But Tomo is crazy. He’s from Japan and he DJs under the name Mitmo. He has two twitters, one for us and one that he tweets in complete Japanese and he’s got hella followers. People are fucking with him real heavy over there. That’s Reggie’s better half, they DJ together.

Who else? Tyler Waugh. Tyler’s our photographer. He’s pretty much our in-house dude, like all of my press shots. He’s also a recording artist. And we’ve done a series of viral videos and shit that are on our youtube channel. I directed those with him and those are pretty good. But his music is a trip. It’s like, nerd-core, but like on some other shit entirely (Tyler’s upcoming project will be titled “New Suede”). He’s a very unique individual. He’s got a couple different jobs in Bear Club. He operates in that capacity a lot of the time, just taking pictures. Greg Enemy, Marty Hillard. Pretty much any beat that comes out of Bear Club is probably gonna be us (Morri$ and Tom Richman).

Rashida Jones by M?RRI$

Chris Mills: What’s the difference between the music you play at the Team Bear Club parties and the music you make and put on your soundcloud?

MORRI$: I think that there’s a pretty big difference honestly, between what I personally make and the music we play out. They’re definitely cousins. Like Mingle, for instance, is a trap party. We play pretty much trap music 100%. Sometimes we’ll get into some Jay-Z from the mid 2000s. We definitely play a lot of Three 6 Mafia, a lot of Wacka Flocka, Gucci, shit like that. That’s what we’re trying to play.

We have a lot of room to breathe when people are vibing. Tom’s beats are a lot more like a punch in the face. They land with you a lot more directly. So we play a lot more of his music in the club. I don’t think I make music for the club particularly.

Morri$ beats are definitely more for what we’re doing right here, kind of relaxing, just vibing out, you know what I mean? I don’t really aim to make dance music I don’t think. But do I make music to have sex to? I think. Sometimes I make music to smoke weed to, a lot of the time. It’s heady. It’s heady music.

Inside Yr Head Riddim ft Gucci Mane by M?RRI$

Chris Mills: Are most of the tunes you make geared towards having vocalists on them, or no?

MORRI$: That’s a good question. It depends because I don’t feel like every song that I make lends itself to a real live vocalist. I don’t think every beat I make could have a rapper going on top of it. But I do think that a lot of the beats that I make…if I sample a vocal or some shit like that, I could probably weave it into it pretty well. I’ve been doing that more and more recently just because not only does it make it sound fuller or whatever, but it just gives people this dimension that they can suddenly connect to, this human element or whatever. I don’t think that every beat I make is ready for Whitney Houston or Gucci Mane or somebody to just like, walk in and record over top of it. But I think if I was able to sample an Aaliyah vocal or something, I could definitely work it into the songs that I do. And I’m doing it more and more.

Chris Mills: What can you divulge about your buzz right now?

MORRI$: I don’t know what there is to say about it except that it’s all thanks to the internet. 100% of what I’m doing right now is with the internet. I spend a lot of time on it, just as somebody that participates in the internet. So I guess I have some awareness about what it takes to interact with people on that level. It’s just led me into a lot of different things. It just so happens that the music is what the people interact with the most. It just so happens that people interact with my videos and interact with my website.

It just so happened that that combination of things is what sort of makes you attractive as an artist. And that’s great. If I look at a collective, I expect them to have a sweet website, I expect them to have cool videos, an art direction, I expect them to be cohesive. That’s definitely the pressure that I put on myself maybe to the nth degree. The more and more that things have developed, I’ve definitely met more and more people who are willing to help me sort of forge in that direction towards accomplishing that vision. The machine even happens without me. When we made that video for Blasian (a now defunct series of parties through Team Bear Club), I wasn’t even integral to the creation of that thing and the script was written, the idea was there and I just helped them execute it. It was great. It was an idea that I wished had crawled out of my head. It just happened to crawl out of this other person’s.

Chris Mills: In a previous interview conducted with you and RawJuice, you said, “It’s never really been my goal to be an underground artist.” Could you go into more detail about that?

MORRI$: I just don’t want to be pegged as an indie dude. I’m just not trying to be on the underground. I’m definitely not trying to get stuck in this rock and roll dream of being in some band, traveling around going place to place, selling your merch and shit. Nope. That is not part of my vision. I might as well just sit here and sell beats to rappers. I’m avoiding both of those paths.

Chris Mills: What’s on the horizon for you, looking into 2012?

MORRI$: I know I’m going to SXSW. I put an official bid in to be in one of those special showcases. So I hope it works out. But I’ve already got a bunch of shows lined up. Who knows what will happen after that? People go out to that kind of shit and they blow up off some SXSW type exposure. I haven’t put out very much music. It’s a very slow trickle.

I’ve definitely achieved some hype and shit, but if I had dumped out a lot of the shit that I have been working on like a little while ago (a release), I probably would’ve had a lot more write ups. But I’m definitely still on the underground just because it’s got to bubble under there for at least a little while. But it’s definitely floating out there to some very interesting people. Everyday, I get an e-mail from this person or that person and it’s getting more and more interesting everyday. In 2012, we’ll definitely see what the fuck’s going on. I can’t put my finger on it yet, especially as I get closer to putting out a release, but inevitably I think some very interesting things are sure to develop.