DaVinci

From left to right: Al Jieh, DaVinci, and Ammbush. Photo by Ken Taylor.

In San Francisco’s Fillmore neighborhood, the projects go up and the projects come down, but rapper DaVinci’s family has owned property there since the ’50s, part of a wave of African-Americans that left the South in search of better job opportunities. On DaVinci’s debut, The Day the Turf Stood Still, hard-boiled raps are underscored by soulful, sample-heavy beats, courtesy of his Sweetbreads Creative Collective collaborators Al Jieh and Ammbush.

“What You Finna Do?” deals with the gentrification of the Fillmore neighborhood. What did you see there in the ’90s?

DaVinci: Fillmore started off as a family-oriented community that was thriving with music. One thing I remember when I was growing up in the Fillmore was kids everywhere. I was one of those kids. Of course, crack hit hard. The projects were basically just stranded. Only half of the people from Fillmore were in Fillmore. Everybody else was dead or in jail or just strung out on drugs really bad. So that’s when they tore down the projects. That’s when the people who still did own houses decided to sell.

Your grandma’s been a Fillmore homeowner since the ’50s.

DaVinci: The ’50s, yeah. She passed away in ’96, but she left the house to all seven kids, which is a mess, but my family at least still owns the house. [My mom’s] been here since the ’50s. [She’s] one of the biggest hustlers I’ve ever seen in my life. Still to this day. Now, her hustle is she has clothes, vintage wicker chairs—shit that I call junk—from the ’60s and ’70s, which just fills up the house.

Al Jieh: This guy’s house is a time capsule.

DaVinci: Every Sunday, she push it outside and sell it and be making a killing.

Tell me about the Fillmore legacy, the rap music that came before you.

DaVinci: Man, I could start from the ’60s, but I’ll start where hip-hop started in the Fillmore, which was like Hugh-EMC, KPOO radio station. [Hugh-EMC] kind of inspired the Rappin’ 4-Tays, the San Quinns, all the old posses. [He’s been] helping out the younger talent in the Fillmore since the late ’80s. We all started off making tapes, on eight-tracks, just for fun. It would always be one anthem in the Fillmore like that, that the young cats would ride on all the busses with the radios playing it. It would get so big amongst the youth that the JT the Bigga Figgas or the Quinns would be like, “Yo, I’m gonna put this on my compilation that I’m putting out next summer.” We’d be local celebrities. We’d get to brag about it at school.

Is KPOO still there?

DaVinci: Still there. The first mixtape I ever came out with [Urban Royalty], I went there and they played it—immediately.

Ammbush: They played it all the way through?

DaVinci: The whole thing! If they see a young, up-and-coming talent in the community, then they always willing to help. And they still do it to this day.

Could you tell me about producing the album and where you recorded it?

Al Jieh: We recorded it at [Ammbush’s] studio, the Nest. In terms of production, he comes from that era you were just talking about.

Ammbush: It’s funny, ’cause [DaVinci’s] like, “The Hugh-EMCs.” “The JTs.” That’s really my era. We all had the same distributor: me, JT, RBL Posse. We would all go to the same place so they could disperse [the tapes] amongst the stores. I think it helps being from that old school generation. [Now] we have a new generation, and when we can all listen to each other and respect each other’s opinion, that’s when you’re gonna have the best music.

Al Jieh: A lot of times today, [producers] make a beat, send it off to the rapper. We actually sat in the same room, recording, bouncing ideas off each other, and arguing, like, “Nah it shouldn’t be like this…”

What were some arguments that came up?

Ammbush: I remember one.

Al Jieh: I know the one: on “Ben.”

Ammbush: Oh, that’s not even the one I was talking about.

Al Jieh: “Ben” is our single. [DaVinci] wanted more scratching.

DaVinci: Yea, more scratching in the hook. And there was another one.

Ammbush: “Guys Wanna.”

DaVinci: Yeah, [Al] put a breakdown in it that I didn’t want in there.

Al Jieh: He said that fucks up the groove.

DaVinci: Yeah, I lost that one, too.

Al Jieh: No, you won that one! We took it out.

Ammbush: Not on the album. It’s in there.

DaVinci: You took the one out at the beginning.

Ammbush: We split the difference. We had those moments, but I think that’s what it takes to make something solid.

So what’s this new wave of San Francisco hip-hop? Is hyphy done?

DaVinci: Hyphy is not really a label for the sound of music outta the Bay. That’s what I feel is a misconception. It’s just that the music that was on the radio between ’04 and ’07, they wanted to give it a stamp. But the San Francisco sound represents the feel of San Francisco.

Ammbush: [San Francisco] doesn’t get super-duper hot, and I think our album gives you that vibe.

DaVinci: It’s a little political. It’s street, but it’s conscious. You know, weed is damn near legal here, so you can sit back and smoke a bowl to it. It’s the hippie movement. You got the backspin of the Black Panthers movement, which was right across the bridge. The best way to explain it is if you come here and look at [San Francisco] and listen to the album. Then you’ll get it.

A lot of people have been saying that this record has an East Coast vibe as well. Do you agree with that?

Al Jieh: That one I don’t agree with. ’Cause I think it’s just ’cause we’re using samples [and] because most people equate samples with New York.

Ammbush: If you think about contemporary hip-hop, right now, New York—they’re not sampling no more than anyone. If anything, they fell all the way back.

Does that have something to do with sample clearance issues?

Ammbush: We don’t know nothing about that. It could be.

Al Jieh: We’re not making no money to really give a fuck about that.

DaVinci: We’re giving the album out.

Looking over the track listing, you give individual credits for things like bass and keys. You don’t usually see those credits on hip-hop records.

Al Jieh: That’s a shame that it’s not [more common]. There are so many people involved in the creation of an album. We just thought, “Hey, man, I want a guitar on this.”

Ammbush: I think that comes from when I started to record [Raphael Saadiq’s] Instant Vintage. I sat there for almost the whole album, and I seen how it’s like, “We’re gonna do the beat, and then we’re gonna have somebody come play, and then we’re gonna lace the whole thing up.” So when that project was done, it just stuck with me.

Al Jieh: One of our goals was to put together an album, and not just a collection of songs. Me and Ammbush did the majority of it; Big D did a lot of beats, a couple other guys. But all the songs sound like they could have been from the same producer.

Is that also why you don’t have a San Quinn or JT feature?

DaVinci: Right, just because…everybody expect me to have ’em on everything I do. They willing to work with me, but at some point I have to spread my wings.

The Day the Turf Stood Still is available for free download here.