From a cell phone on his tour van somewhere in Nebraska, a hoarse Ali talked about the many less obvious ways in which he stands apart from most of today’s hip-hop—his reliance on a single producer (Ant of fellow Minneapolis group Atmosphere), his relentless touring schedule, and his admiration of (and resemblance to) actor Forest Whitaker.
How’s the tour going so far?
It’s going really good. I just had the longest break I’ve ever had since I started doing this for a living in 2002, 2001: I had three months off. So I was really excited to get back on the road.
“The Undisputed Truth” has some tough material on it—about the breakup of your marriage, being a single parent, criticizing the war in Iraq. Have you been surprised at how successful it’s been?
I’m not a person that’s really good at gauging what’s gonna be commercially successful. I try not to really base it on that, because I don’t feel like there’s a formula for that—or if there is a formula for it, people like Madonna are able to work that angle. I’m not that guy. I can be myself, and then if somebody likes what I am, they’re gonna love me ‘cause I’m gonna be myself 110 percent. And if somebody doesn’t like what I am, they’re gonna hate my guts.
How much of that being yourself is working with Ant as your only producer? If money was no object, would you ever bring in guest producers—the will.i.ams and Timbalands and Swizz Beatz of the world?
If I did that, it would be for fun, because I think that I would still make my main albums with Ant. I don’t think I would try to mix Ant with other people, because the thing that me and Ant have is a really sacred kind of bond. Even the people that are available to me now—I would love to work with 9th Wonder, I would love to work with Jake One, Vitamin D. Who else? Black Milk, ?uestlove, Premier. You know, if I worked it, there’s people that I could work with now—I think it would be fun. But I think the best thing for me to do is just really be focused on what I’m best at, because of the little amount of time I have to be at home and create. We tour the s--- out of our record[s]—and so when I’m home, I don’t have time to see if I can make my first s--- with 9th Wonder turn into something.
It does seem like you’re unusual among hip-hop artists with how much time you spend on the road—a lot of rappers hardly tour at all.
Well, that’s something that wasn’t taught to us. Hip-hop—musically and business-wise—is really different from every other kind of music in the sense that it was really started in the street. Even the business of it was started in the street. Really, Run-DMC was the first one to come along and say, “OK, we’re a rap group, we’re a hip-hop group, but we’re gonna use rock as our blueprint for how to work this music.” And that’s why they were the most successful [hip-hop act] up to that point. And what we do is something very similar, but we’re independent, so we follow a little closer to a punk rock ethic. We get in the van and we do a show every day.
Does all that time on the road feed you creatively? Do you come back from tours with a lot of fresh ideas?
I would say the number-one thing that it does for me is that it gives me confidence. Earlier on, I didn’t know the way people were gonna respond to the music that we were making. And the song that people responded to the most initially on my first album, “Shadows on the Sun,” was a song called “Forest Whitaker,” [on] which I lay out the details of what it’s like to be me. You know, being a big guy and being an albino and being legally blind. And it was really detailed—it’s not a song that many people can claim, in terms of the specifics, that yeah, that song’s about me. But people respond to it like it’s about them.
Everybody can relate to feeling different—maybe not to being an albino, but feeling different.
Exactly. And so I think that gave me so much confidence, that I could really just talk about my personal s---, and I can do it in a really detailed way, and I don’t have to worry about who the audience is, as long I’ve really put the feeling—what it feels like to go through these things.
Does Forest Whitaker know that you have a song named after him?
I don’t know.
I wonder what his response would be.
He would love it. He would love me—I know he would. Because me and him are the same in a lot of ways.
