track premiere + interview: download the new single “mr. president” from royal, devon lee & dead prez’s mikeflo’s new project #soundcheck

Royal, the collaboration between songwriter and producer Devon Lee and Dead Prez’s mikeflo has been blowing up with the release of their Royal Remixes mixtape. The free full length features covers of songs ranging from Pink Floyd’s “Have a Cigar” to Bobby Womack’s “Across 110th Street.” As the duo gets ready to release their self-titled debut EP, AFROPUNK is honored to present an exclusive free download of the track “Mr. President.” We got a chance to talk with the band about the song and about the politics of every day life.

By Nathan Leigh, AFROPUNK Contributor

Can you guys give me a little background on the band? How did you guys get together?

MIKEFLO

Devon and I have been musicians in our own right. He’s been leading different bands, I’ve been doing my solo stuff, and stuff with Dead Prez for years now. We got together because we’d been admiring each others stuff. So once we did some originals, and we were like “we’re sitting on this heat right now, and it’d be real good if we still had some content in the meantime,” cause we felt like shit was too dope—the originals—to put out and undershoot it. So we were like “let’s take a rap approach. Let’s do a mixtape full of joints where it shows the musicianship, the craftsmanship, and kind of off-the-radar and let’s give some of these songs new life; rework, strip down, funk up.” And that’s kind of how it came. One song turned into three, and three turned into ten, just like that.

Mike, your work is known for having a very strong socio-political bent, was it a conscious choice to take Royal in a more personal direction?

MIKEFLO

I think the conscious choice for me was to be more transparent in my music. The soldiers that are on the battlefield all over the world for all sorts of things, although they put their lives on the line, they may have some whiskey in the canteen. Or they may smoke a joint while drinking a beer. So I thought it was important for me. And you know, the music creates the landscape and gives me the freedom as a writer to go different places. Because I feel like we’re all more alike than different anyway. And my dues are paid man, I don’t have to explain my politics to nobody. I don’t want to do anything that’s counterproductive, but I don’t have to preach to the choir. I want to meet people where they are and take them where they want to be, even if they don’t know they want to be there. As a writer I can paint whatever. I can make that canvas as vivid or as monochromatic as I want to make it. The choice was to make music that’s more transparent. Because everything’s political. So when you look at it like that, everything that we’re doing has significance. I don’t want people to have to feel like they need to read Chancellor Williams Destruction of a Black Civilization just to understand what I’m saying. You know what I mean?

Right right. Cause on the flipside, there’s the track you just sent me, “Mr. President.”

MIKEFLO

It’s hard body.

Exactly. Can you talk a little about the ideas in that song, and where it can from?

DEVON LEE

I’ve had the song for a minute. I worked on the song a little while ago. And Flo brought it up and said “this would be a great addition to the project; that ‘Mr. President’ song.” Really, the vibe of “Mr. President”—everything is so political and things are so heavy right now, and things have been so heavy for a minute—that we thought that it would be the right type of song to release right now. It’s political, but it’s still got a rock and roll thing, which I’m totally partial to. The rock and roll foundation is really what I’m about in my production, even though I go other places in the music. That’s why we did things like Pink Floyd; that’s the kind of music I grew up with. I think “Mr. President” should speak to everyone in terms of what’s going on right now; the power structure, the political structure, the choices we have in life, the choices we have in our leaders, the choices we can make as people working together. So I think that “Mr. President” has that force to be political, but then it’s also got that gangsta force of like “you gottta do what you want in life, be your own president, be your own liberty, create your own life, create your own nation, create your own people.”

I want to talk about that sample at the end for a second. The voice sounded like Martin, but what he’s saying sounds like Malcolm. What was that from? What’s the idea behind including that?

DEVON LEE

Exactly. So at the end, we began touching on this idea with the Royal Remixes album, where we have a bunch of excerpts from different people speaking, but in this particular case although we’re talking about Mr. President with this political narrative, the end is a mixture of different people. It’s Martin Luther King where he talks about economic liberation, the campaign he was working on before he died, you have Malcolm X talking about the psyche of white America, you have Angela Davis discussing the concept of revolution, whether it’s violent or nonviolent, and how it relates to the human experience. You have a tidbit about police brutality up in there. It was important to bring all these concepts together to where you don’t just listen to one thing, but maybe you can catch them all. And maybe you can catch different pieces and focus on different concepts. Each time you listen to it, if you focus on Martin Luther King’s voice, you can focus on that and listen to that. But once you start hearing the other voices, you can focus on that. It’s not just one message, it’s many messages. It’s many people. It’s the same concepts, that same human experience. These are all the people we venerate. People who are leaders. It’s just drawing on the canvas of what’s real to us.

But then in the song, you talk about how leaders matter less than ideas.

MIKEFLO

That’s why I say “it’s more than the man it’s the platform and jurisdiction, Pinocchio moved by Gepetto talking heads telling lies to your vision.” At the end of the day, to take the human element out of that position, it helps to bring it around less cloudy. So for instance, I’m a retired school teacher, but I had a principle who had a job to do. Come April, that principal is doing teacher contracts for the next year, they’re working on a school improvement plan, they’re looking at community partnerships and so on and so forth, and I have my job. So I can be mad all I want to about how I have to turn my lessons plans in, how I’m being micromanaged, but at the end of the day I’m turning them into the principle because it’s the principle’s job to collect my lesson plans whether I’m the teacher or not. And there’s a position number. So we’ve got these Social Security numbers, and we’ve got ID cards and all that, but the laws and the Constitution and all this verbage or whatever can be interpreted however you want to interpret it. But at the end of the day, the President is a job, and it doesn’t really matter who’s in the job. If your manager at Walmart is a bitch, well that’s your manager. At the end of the day though, it’s Walmart’s rules that your manager is conveying. Now she may have a funky ass attitude or he may be acting like some kind of fucking Gestapo, but at the end of the day, it’s the structure. It’s the balance of power. And once you understand that, you can take the personal feelings out of it. And once you take that out of it, you can take the expectations out of it. And the expectations then remove the heartache, and we can look at America for who she was and who she currently is. And then we can move forward and do the things that we need to do to improve ourselves and our prosperity, instead of blaming that on Obama, or blaming that on Nixon, or blaming it on Jeb Bush if he becomes President or whatever. You know what I mean?

Yeah. And you look at a Obama—and I do believe he has a conscience, and he knows what’s fucked up—but he’s not empowered to change some of the things that need to change.

DEVON LEE

I mean the song itself is less of an attack, and more of an inspiration. Because, I mean me personally, as far as the president goes, I wish Obama could be the president for my entire life! [Mike laughs] I mean, I don’t want see any of these last people I’ve been seeing before him. Straight up. But at the same time at the same time, just like Flo was saying, it’s not about him also. The things we’re talking about were put in place long before that. So “Mr. President” is a song about liberation; be your own president. Live by your own hope, take control of your own destiny. Which is kind of why we turn to leaders and words of wisdom at the end. Because it’s not all bad. So just like Flo was saying, look at it for what is, and treat it for what it is, like it’s gonna be that.

MIKEFLO

But our literary license says that if we want to make an antagonist and a protagonist for this song’s sake to drive points home, if the president has to be this proverbial gunslinging badass, he’s saying like “I got the power, so what you gonna do?”

DEVON LEE

Wild west style.

MIKEFLO

Exactly. I have two children. I deal with the basics, with the structures. All the things in between, they change, they become wordy and tricky, and young people don’t always follow that shit. Hell, adults don’t even follow that shit! My brothers don’t know the politics of the electoral college and shit. Most people don’t know that shit. You know what I mean? But they know “shit I am under insured, I’m two paychecks away from being on someone’s doorstep asking can I seep on their couch.” So they understand and they unite with some of the basics. So we try to speak to the basics so that there’s no confusion as to where we are with our political analysis. But we have fun with it! There’s some rock and roll badass black man shit, and we embrace that. And we thought this song would be perfect for Afropunk. Sonically, politically, it couldn’t come out a better time with the political climate. So we want to help channel that, and add to that vibe.

Hell yeah. Did you see the Time cover this morning saying “Black Lives Matter?”

MIKEFLO

Yeah!

It’s an interesting time right now. It feels like people’s eyes are opening to some of the larger systemic problems.

DEVON LEE

It’s a good time for change. It’s a good time for new ideas. At the same time that we have the Time Magazine saying “Black Lives Matter,” it’s important for Royals to come out and represent black intellectuals and black revolutionary strength. It’s important that we promote a vibe that we consider the future and the present of the community. So we live our lives around that. Because “Black Lives Matter” is a magazine slogan, but it’s not a lived experience. So with our art, with our lives, with our music, we discuss the lived experience.

MIKEFLO

Yeah!

I like that. That’s a good way of putting it. So what happens next? There’s a national conversation and people’s ears are open, so what happens next?

MIKE FLO

I think what’s next is to not romanticize it. To not make it more than it is. There’s a saying that it begins and ends with you. We’re in different spaces. Now, there was a time that I was 19 years old in college and I had tickets signed and I could afford to go to jail, and all of that. But now I have kids. I’m in a different place. So I activate them. I can still get down. I can still get out in those same streets, but my eye, my scope is different. Knowledge is power and requires constantly moving on that. To know you have a responsibility to yourself, and you have to act like you know. So I don’t want to romanticize what’s next. What’s next is treat your body better. Drink more water. Exercise. Rid acidic people from your day to day existence. You know? Meditate. Become active in your community. Learn how to defend yourself. That’s what’s next. But that’s not popular. Because they want to point fingers. They want to put something in the microwave and pull out Thanksgiving dinner. And the reality is that it doesn’t work that way. So we take our lives seriously. They matter 100% of the time, every second every minute. Human lives matter. We consider ourselves global citizens. But it’s the same fight. It’s the same oppressor, whether it be Haiti or the south side of Chicago. So we arm ourselves with the feeling. Because to know is to know and that’s that, but the feeling is where you can communicate your views and activate, and be the catalyst for action. So my 15 year old son, or my 13 year old daughter and their buddies can hear Royal or hear Kendrick Lamar, and they can make better informed choices about how they want to go about their lives. What’s next is moving on that fear and meeting that fear head on and arming yourself with the knowledge of your situation. And just being better today than you were yesterday. It’s a journey. It’s life. And it’s nothing to be romanticized.

Right. It’s like you mention being in a different space. As you get older, you realize that shit is more nuanced and complicated.

I’ve privileged to be with the legendary Dead Prez for going on 10 years, and Dead Prez is celebrating 15 years of Let’s Get Free.

Oh my god, you’re right.

MIKEFLO

Yeah we’re getting old now, right? So I want to 100% shout my comrades for giving me the opportunity to do more than just ride along, to create, have input and run a masterful show, and I’m just happy that the group has maintained its legendary status and its cult following. Even today, if Dead Prez doesn’t have a number one hit on Clear Channel Radio, the group is still relevant and there’s new music also. But the group is relevant as long as there are working class people on this globe. And the have nots overpower the haves by many in this capitalistic society. There’s always gonna be a place for Dead Prez. So when Dead Prez says “revolutionary but gangsta,” that may sound today to some people as catchphrasey or whatever, it may even sound colloquial, but what it means is: don’t get it fucked up. Just because I may have read some Kwame Nkrumah does not mean that I don’t know how to communicate Kwame Nkrumah to Darius that lives down the block. You feel me? And that’s what it means. It means each one teach one. It means humility. It means meeting people where they are and taking them where they want to be even if they don’t know they want to be there. And I’m so happy that there’s so much different stuff in this gumbo right now and the food is tasting good. And I tell young people all the time that there’s a lot of bullshit out here, but some of it is dope shit out here. I was just listening to a song from Lupe Fiasco on his new album. I was listening to the song “Mural.” Me and my son were listening to that shit like “this is a fucking encyclopedia.” You know what I mean? But then I still resonate with Soulja Slim. It is that mesh of all these different colors, and paint brushes, and canvases that we are skilled and talented to paint that makes it all beautiful. And I’m just happy to be alive and viable right now. Dead Prez helped to active a whole lot of people. We travel the globe. You know how many people come up and say “yo when I heard such and such a song, I was activated.” And Royal is gonna be brand new. And once you guys let go of “Mr President,” it’s gonna activate somebody. I accept that responsibility. Royal embraces the journey and the path. We’re striving to raise the vibration and heighten the vibe.

For more info on Royal, and to download the Royal Remix album, visit http://allthewayroyal.com/

Pinocchio moved by Gepetto talking heads telling lies to your vision.