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The sun may set in the West, but when it comes to L.A. hip-hop, the light is shining brighter than it has in years. In October, Compton’s Kendrick Lamar dropped his major-label debut, good kid, m.A.A.d city, an album-of-the-year candidate that sold a surprising 241,000 its first week. Earlier this year, fellow Black Hippy members SchoolBoy Q and Ab-Soul released their own stellar albums. Odd Future dropped its debut LP, The OF Tape Vol. 2, and headlined major festivals filled with rabid fans. Right over the L.A. county line, San Bernandino’s Hit-Boy made a compelling case that he’s following in Kanye’s footsteps with his inaugural mixtape, Hitstory. And now, veteran trio Pac DIV is putting a solid exclamation point on a banner year for L.A. hip-hop’s new generation with GMB, the group’s power-packed second album.  It’s the latest triumph for the blue-collar, hard-touring trio, who along with Blu (who was signed to Warner till last year), was the first of L.A.’s emerging vanguard to ink with a major label, Universal Motown, in 2009. In all-too-common story, the deal wasn’t a good fit, and Pac Div didn’t manage to release a proper album, 2011’s The Div, until last year, when they left Motown. This year, after an uncharacteristically long 12 months without releasing any music, Pac Div is back to doing what they do best. Their new album, GMB—released Tuesday via their own label, The Div, and RBC Record— features clever mic interplay, bold-face names (Mac Miller, Kendrick Lamar, Kurupt, Scoop, Chuck Inglish, Deville) and lots and lots of bass. They’re about to embark on a heavy December tour that will see them criss-cross the West Coast and Rocky Mountatin region, including three shows opening for Snoop Dogg. Here, in between packing their suitcases, Pac Div’s Mibbs and Like (the third member, Be Young, was unavailable) sat down with XXL to talk flipping samples for Kendrick, their grandmother’s swag, and why the West is best. —Alex Gale (@apexdujeous)


So what does GMB stand for?

Like: It’s an acronym for Gabe, Mike and Brian.

Mibbs: Our government names. This album kind of takes that spin. We felt like it was just us and our essence—something that we would be proud of, with our names behind it instead of just our aliases. We wanted to let the world know where we was at. We also felt like the title Gabe, Mike and Brian just set it off because we’re all going into it doing a bunch of different things in the future too—we’re still Pac Div, but we’re all going to be working on our own projects as well. I have a project with Scoop Deville coming out in January. It’s like a nine-song EP, just something to slap ‘em with.

Like: And I’ve just really been on the beats heavy; I might put out some instrumental albums. I did Kendrick Lamar’s “Sing About Me/I’m Dying of Thirst”—I produced that the first half of that record, so I’ve been trying to get more placements with more artists. So I’m gonna be in the studio with different people. Pete Rock hit me up and was like,”‘Yo, man—dope-ass joint.” I was like, “Man.” It kind of had a Pete Rock feel when I made it.

I love the drum/rimshot sample from Bill Withers’ “Use Me” you flipped on that song—it’s a slept-on break.

You can’t deny that break! The thing is, it’s not so much how used the break is, it’s what you do with it—what you’re going to do with the sample, how you’re gonna chop the sample up, if you’re gonna play some keys over it. It’s just a marriage. You can’t deny it. Every time I hear those open drums on the Bill Withers song I’m like, “Oh my God.”

How did you end up landing that beat on Kendrick’s album?

Like: Kendrick is a good friend of ours, and we were on tour with Mac Miller last Thanksgiving, and I made that beat on Thanksgiving night. And I sent it to him, just because I send him beats normally, and he hit me up that same night like, “You don’t understand, man. I got the room with the lights down and the candles goin’ and I’m creatin’ right now.” Then he called me again, like, “Dude—give me the stems for that and like three other joints.” So I sent him a batch of records and he recorded like four or five of them and that one ended up making the album. I didn’t know the album was going to be as big as it is—you know? It outsold Ross the first week. I’m glad to be a part of it.

So he was returning the favor by spitting a verse on “Crosstrainers” with Blu from your new album?

Like: He’s been working with us, we’ve been doing shows together, for years now, before any of the buzz. He was actually opening for us; him, Ab-Soul, Schoolboy [Q]—all those dudes. We’ve done many shows with those guys, so when we see them its all love. Originally, we wanted to have Blu, Kendrick, and Dom on the song. We didn’t get to Dom in time, so we ended up just having Blu and Kendrick on it. We kind of just figured it would be the crème de la crème of this rap shit on the West for this generation. You know, Kendrick, Dom, ourselves, Blu—in my opinion, those are some of the premier spitters.

NEXT UP: PAC DIV TALKS COLLABOS WITH MAC MILLER AND KURUPT

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Indeed. Over the past few years, L.A.’s scene has produced some amazing underground talent, and you guys have been at the forefront of that. With Kendrick’s album reaching such big success, it’s really coming to fruition now.

Mibbs: We really do feel like there’s a sort of renaissance happening. It’s still the beginning of it, because there are a lot of other rappers that are going to get that shine in a little bit. As the course of history goes on in hip-hop, certain regions get a certain amount of attention, and I feel like the West Coast is getting it back to where it used to be, because the sound is just a lot more refined. No diss to any other coast or anything, it just seems like it’s a lot more progressive and innovative [here], you know? We’re hitting ’em from all angles: the beats are dope, the lyrics are dope, and everybody has their own style. It’s fun, man—it’s a really good sign to walk down the street and see rappers that are your homeboys and they’re making it and see them driving Audis and Beamers. It’s pretty cool.

One thing that’s interesting about the new West it is that it sounds pretty different from what people think of as traditional L.A. hip-hop, which has always been so rooted in the gangsta-rap and G-funk foundations N.W.A, Dre and Snoop built.

Mibbs: Right. I just think that guys we mentioned—the Kendricks, the Blus, the Pac Divs, the Doms—we didn’t really have that kind of upbringing. Of course we were raised around the gangbanging stuff, but we were fans of music, we were fans of MCing and just watching rappers do their thing.

Speaking of L.A.’s rap history, how’d you guys end up linking up with Kurupt?

Like: Back in the day, back in 2003 when was like 19, not even old enough to buy liquor, we used to be in the lab with him. He taught us a lot about the game, the industry—that was during a time when he wasn’t really on terms with Daz, so he was doing a lot of his Death Row thing. It was just a good experience, man—to hear his wisdom on just life. He’s like a Jedi. He’s an enlightened dude. He knows his history, he knows his hip-hop history. He’ll tell you about shit in Egypt and Africa and then he’ll just drop 100 bars of freestyle on you, all in five minutes of conversation. [Laughs]

On the other side of the spectrum. you also recorded with Mac Miller, for “Black Acura.” How did that come about?

Like: He’s a fan who respected our music and our grind for years and he wanted to collaborate, and the timing was right. We toured with him last year. We hit him up with a record, and he came back with the stems and that was that.

What’s your favorite song on the album?

Mibbs: Oh man. It’s hard to pinpoint one song, but I would have to say “The Return,” I love that song. It’s just got that feeling like we brought back ’94. It has such a bright feel and it just reminds me of California. You wake up in the morning and you hit the streets and you see the hills and you see the blue sky, and it’s just pretty outside. It just embodies what I think California is.

NEXT UP: PAC DIV TALKS DUMPING MOTOWN AND GOING FOR SELF

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Tell us about the hilarious cover art. Who’s the gangsta older woman on the cover?

Mibbs: That’s me and Like’s grandmother. [Laughs] We just went over to her house—she’s been living at the same apartment since we’ve been alive—so we just felt like, ‘Man—this album feel like we takin’ people home, so we might as well just go home for this one.’ So we went to our grandmother’s house and set up everything and took the pictures. It was easy—she’s got so much swagger herself that she killed that in a couple of shots. The other day on Twitter, somebody said, “Pac Div’s grandma look like Jay-Z.” I was dying. [Laughs]

It’s been a year since you guys dropped an album or mixtape—a lifetime in rap these days. What was behind that?

Like: Life be happening, man. Speaking for myself, it just kind of discourages me really to go out there and, I don’t want to say “whore” myself, but I’m just not an attention-feeder like that. When the music speaks to me, then I create. But I do realize that this game requires a bit of consistency, a bit of staying on people’s radar. But I’ve always been a loyal fan to artists that I really love: No matter how big of a hiatus they take, if the music was that good, you’ll come back to it. Kind of like how some alternative bands work, they’ll not put out an album for a year. Beastie Boys even—they’ll put out an album and then you won’t hear from them for a while, they’ll spend a lot of time touring and stuff. In our case, we’re not the Beastie Boys, but it’s the same process when we’re going to create. Music takes a while—we’re not just popcorn artists that go in and just scramble anything together. We like to put a little bit of thought and time into it, and sometimes it takes a while to get to that point. I didn’t really think too much about it, but I think a lot of people be getting discouraged like, “Aw, man—we want to ride for Pac Div but they just don’t put out that much,” and it’s like, “Dude—we’ve already put out like six albums pretty much, and a lot of them were free.” We’re giving people a lot, and even still, that isn’t enough. So now we realize we’ve just got to keep out foot on the gas.

Mibbs: He’s right. We’re young dudes, but we’re old school in the sense that like [when] we grew up, our favorite artists only put out one album a year. Now you’ve got a bunch of artists—too many artists, actually. There’s too many people to pay attention to, so everybody’s attention span is kind of messed up, so we just don’t want to be in that flock of people that are putting out a mixtape every two weeks. We just want to be like, “Let’s concentrate all of our energy on this one project.” But like he said, after GMB we’re going to keep our foot on the gas a lot further so that we can capitalize.

You guys were signed to Motown till summer of 2011, but you released this album, as well as last year’s The Div, independently. How come?

Mibbs: The break-up with us and Universal was cool anyways because we were sitting here wondering, “C’mon, man—we’ve been on this label for three years, we dropped two mixtapes—ya’ll still ain’t put an album out for us yet?” So, it was a perfect time because they got outta dodge [Motown left Universal and relaunched under Island Def Jam last year] and then we got outta dodge right after that. They just let us go like, “Hey, man—sorry it didn’t work out.”

Like: We were just thinking it would be more lucrative if we just controlled more of what we wanted to do. So it’s an experiment. We have more leverage to go in and do more things as opposed to being at the mercy of someone else’s call to release music. That’s kind of our thing, man—we don’t really like that pressure. We don’t like people to dictate our decisions. I feel like labels just do a lot less these days and want a lot more, because they’re struggling. They expect the artist to become a single-driven artists, which forces the artist to compromise because now you’re changing the formula to achieve record sales. Or a company is gonna get their money first before you see a cent, and then after the recoupment, if the single is big enough, you get paid. Not knocking anyone else, but we’re just not that type of band. Art takes cultivating and time, that’s why labels don’t even understand creative people like Hov—their music is a lot more than just chasing a trend, following a specific radio format. They never really understood that. An artist like that takes time to cultivate. Let it be as organic as possible. That’s what being independent gave us the freedom to do.

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