dead prez Discuss Green Lantern Mixtape, Upcoming Album

Gearing up for the summer release of the third volume of their independent mixtape series, Turn Off The Radio, dead prez spoke to XXLMag.com about linking up with DJ Green Lantern and his Invasion Music Group, as well as the direction of their next official album, Information Age, last night (April 28) at a New York listening session.

“[Green Lantern’s] developing a label and he’s got a new artist, Johnny Polygon, so he got a lot of big things poppin’ and we got our own independence. We don’t gotta ask nobody if we can do something so it was good opportunity, man,” said Stic.man of the partnership. “It definitely ain’t no pimpin’, so it’s all good.”

After several one-off collaborations and touring together on last year’s Rock The Bells festival, the duo also entrusted The Evil Genius with production reigns for the entirety of the mixtape. “That relationship with Green has been culminating for a minute and we pick carefully who to work with in order to touch down in the street,” said M1.

After wrapping the tape in February, the duo have been working on their next full-length album. “Information Age is a totally, totally different sound than we ever worked with,” said Stic.man. “It’s up-tempo, it’s new-age, it’s hard, it’s soulful, it’s experimental, and i1t’s about learning.The theme of the whole album is dealing with the age where you come into a knowledge of yourself which is a human thing — the point where you begin to challenge certain traditions. Certain shit don’t add up or make sense and you just start to question the answers a little more."

“We got a song got called ‘Soakin’ Up Game’ which Common is actually working on right now,” he continued. “We literally wanna be able to attack things from where Let’s Get Free was at, but from a 2010 point of view.”

The duo looks to release the album by the end of the year, working currently to lock in distribution. However, a failure to do so would not deter M1, saying, “We’re gonna put it out regardless.”

Turn Off The Radio, Volume 3: Pulse of The People hits stores on June 23rd.- Devin Chanda