Twiztid Topics: Multiple Man Jamie Madrox drops by 1428 Elm

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— Courtesy of Majik Ninja Entertainment

1428: When signing new talent to Majik Ninja Entertainment, as seasoned veterans who helped set the standards in the underground scene, what are some of the things you look for or what catches your attention in a new artist?

JM: My brother Paul deals with a lot of the talent scouting portion of stuff. He has a certain eye for things that he looks for. He explained to me a few times, he likes stuff that doesn’t necessarily run with what everybody’s going for. He likes stuff that runs away from the pack. He likes the stuff that stands out. That’s what he gravitates toward.

I’m more of a person that I have this weird ability of being able to read certain people. It’s like if I can feel that you have a real passion in what you do, and I can feel that you feel what you say, then I will gravitate more toward that person be it male, female, group, band, rock, reggae whatever genre of music I would be like, I feel that shit. They feel that shit so much that I feel it. I would sign that. We have our particular tastes when you know we look for stuff. A couple of them were no brainers, you know it was family and friends and people that were like we have opportunities and stuff like that.

And then like recently, with L.A.R.S, which is Bizarre of D12 and King Gordy. They came together to do this project called L.A.R.S, Last American Rock Stars and I mean it’s amazing. It has a very contemporary hip hop feel to it and it’s really cool. And it’s really dare I say, it’s outside of the wheel house of all of the Juggalo aspect kind of things that we typically cater to. It’ll be interesting, it’s very raw and that’s also what we are trying to do is be wise as a company. We want to expand our horizons at the same time and don’t want to just be dominated by the main demographic. We want to also say “hey we do realize there’s other people outside this wall that are listening that do like the same thing as this here, but maybe certain things are a turn off.

So we’re living and learning and that’s part of the business where we talked about the big boy pants. Back in the day that wouldn’t have been a thought, I wouldn’t have given a fuck about that, but now 2017 Jamie Madrox is like “Wait let me put the business hat on, now wait a second, now if these guys don’t like this shit what if…” you know it’s part of the record company business.

1428: It is obvious to those of us who have followed you guys for years and listened to the albums and have watched your videos, that you guys are huge horror fans. But tell me, the one horror movie that has scared the hell out of Twiztid?

JM: I always have a problem with the words “the one” because I can never pick the one. There’s different things in different parts of my life that shared different things so it’s hard to say the one. First one that comes to my mind was A Nightmare on Elm Street. I remember a very young R.O.C. coming into the arcade and telling a very young Monoxide and Jamie Madrox that his mother had gotten this movie called A Nightmare on Elm Street. There’s this guy Fred Krueger that comes and kills you in your nightmares and he’s gonna take it from his mom’s house and bring it to my house tonight if my mom lets us stay the night.

So he brings this movie to my house, we watch it and I don’t sleep for like three days. I’m completely fucked up over this shit. It legit fucked with me and it was like that kind of engagement with something was like a lock for me. It was like, “Wow man this is deep,” and it started going deeper than that. We would watch other movies and then got into like The Evil Dead, that was where all the learning of the dialogue began, where it would come into play and where it would be very repetitive with us where we would watch that and it was like our comfort food.

We would watch that every night and then we would venture into something different for variety like another one that scared me, literally scared me was Demons. That movie, when the iron mask would cut and it cut the one hooker and she started bubbling, and I think it was the transformation and turning into something, that fucked with me. And we used to do this where we would scare the shit out of each other and we’d do our seances and all kinds of shit. So that made it cool for us and that was how like I said before about how that was like our release to things.

Where how we tell people with our music, that’s like one of our main things a lot of people always say “Well you saved my life” and we try to tell a lot of people like instead of, you know we get shit a lot because of the violence and the content of when you guys talk about murdering people and killing people, and we tell people we’re like an audio medicine. You hate your fucking boss, you wanna kill somebody let us do it. Go out to your car, roll up the window, fucking put on the music, turn up the volume to 10 beat the fucking steering wheel out let us kill them on wax. Turn it up, and then turn it down, go back in and live your day. Let us do it.

It’s like the horror movie, that’s what we used to do, we used to sit there and watch you know people getting cut up with lawnmowers and stabbed and the deer’s laughing “hahahaha” you know and we’re just like “Yes!” It was a release and we got it, and it was psychological. So in essence it’s like our music is our version of that for other people. It’s our therapy that became therapeutic in some ways to us and somehow we made that for people. And it works. It works down the pipeline in a pay it forward kind of way, which is cool. I’m happy to say that. I guess everything happens for a reason you know.

1428: As far as the horror genre goes, is there any particular period or genre that inspires you guys most like the classic monsters, ’80s slashers, psychological? Anything that you draw inspiration from?

JM: I’m gonna say two because again I can’t pick one. The 80’s slashers for sure and psychological. Because with Twiztid you have to mix them. And there was movies like Maniac that did a very good job of that, and so well might I add that it scrambled my brain for a while. Watching that dude cry and rock, I didn’t know what that was. It’s like little things you see at an early age in childhood on VHS, some parents don’t keep a good lock on the VCR cabinet. And the psychological part because a lot of that part was influential to me because you know a lot of those good stories, even like The Changeling where there wasn’t any horror but just the idea of that great ghost story, or Amityville (Horror).

That’s one that’s near and dear to our heart. It breaks my heart because I am fucking fascinated, I am beyond the moon fascinated with that whole thing. I love Ed and Lorraine Warren, but the more that I do research, the more that I watch, the more that I look, the more that I get into it, the more that I’m starting to find out, and find out that it’s not really real and it really fucking bothers me and it’s like I want it to be real. I want it to be what I want it to be. And I’m like oh man. There’s a couple of new documentaries that have come out and it’s like oh goddamn. I’m so into it, it’s one of my favorite shits. I love the movies they’ll always be great because they’re scary as fuck but I mean I’ve actually watched the real documentaries. We did a couple of cool songs. We did a song about Ronnie DeFeo, that was pretty crazy.