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 dudley perkins interview
 to access audio and video on collective you need real player.Singing from a different hymn sheet. About seven years ago Dudley Perkins had a strange idea: he decided to sing. This was something of a curveball since he was already established as a rapper under the name Declaime and, perhaps more importantly, his natural singing voice sounds like a cross between a rattlesnake and a robot after a particularly large lungful of the sticky green. You don’t have the sweetest voice on earth, do you Dudley? “My girlfriend thinks I do,” he laughs. “I’ve been MC-ing and focussed on that for the best part of my life, but everybody sings, even a baby sings in its head, and I just want to put it out onto some of the coldest tracks god has created. I don’t really consider it singing, it’s just harmonising over fat tracks.” Dudley began his singing/not singing career in 1999 with the release of the seven-inch single, Flowers. When that quickly became a staple with leftfield DJs like Gilles Peterson, an album, A Lil’ Light, was commissioned and released in 2003 to a mixed response from people who couldn’t quite get their heads round its blend of discordant melody and producer Madlib’s blunted aura.  Now his second album, Expressions (2012 a.u.), is with us. Once again Madlib – “he taps into the vibrations of the universe” - is in the director’s chair, and there are discernible signs that Dudley has been buffing up some of his voice’s rougher edges, delivering an LP that’s funkier, less narcoleptic, but still markedly weird. Lyrically it sounds like freestyle mental jotting (almost half the album jams on the theme of god) and Dudley doesn’t take much prodding to drift off into his own metaphysical realm, explaining the track, Last Days, as more than just a spot of Judgement Day scaremongering. “It’s about reality,” he insists. “We’re already in the apocalypse - turn your TV on. Now there’s a major internal war going on within the individual. The questions of why? Who am I? Where am I from? Evolution, growth; we’re spiritual beings whether we like it or not. The air we breathe, the beautiful food we eat, the fruit that grows on the trees, life, death, birth. Pain, compassion, anger - those are all mystical properties. It’s a vessel that you’re in right now, you’re just travelling through time in it.” Just as Doctor Who returns to our screens, the hip-hop timelord is back on our stereos.
Steve Yates
Dudley Perkins - Expressions (2012 a.u.), released 01 May 06 on Stones Throw.
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comment by EF_EWE
Oct 18, 2006
TRUE. Madlib beats are out of this world. The recent gig at musicbox (manchester) was really good. Broke n' English hold tight!!Did anyone else attend?
comment by Misterdrifter
Jun 1, 2006
I've listened to a fair bit of Dudley Perkins and I can safely say withMadlib behind him it doesn't really matter what his voice sounds like as Madlib is quite unorthodox anyway.What interests me about this album is Perkins references to 2012 and the apolcalypse. Perkins believes this is the year thw rold will end. Does anyone else share Perkins view?
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