Last November I stumbled upon the tape VAULT CATACOMBS (A.K.A CORTES’ DWELLINGS), instantly drawn to the magnetic black and white Mayan imagery on the cover and the hypnotic, distorted hip-hop beats inside it. The project comes from an Arizona-based producer MILLENIUM, member of the group Absent Call of Response, one of the most exciting voices in the underground right now. I had the pleasure to sit down with MILLENIUM for their first interview ever, just as they are getting ready to release their newest project, the Memphis-inspired collaboration Hounds, Vol. 1 with Amalgama. We talked about Mayan culture, geeked over the new billy woods album and discussed the difference between making beats for yourself and for others.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
SAMUEL: What captured my interest is that your cover art and the song titles are inspired by Central American cultures. Some of your EPs or singles feature Mayan art on them, which I think is super cool. Was that a conscious decision from the beginning when you started making music, or how did you come to this combination of visuals and music?
MILLENIUM: When I started doing music, the first four-ish months, I was just kinda winging it with the artwork, just winging it with the vision. But as I started solidifying myself a little more and finding out what I wanna make I started to figure how to not just set myself apart, but create an identity that’s true to me. I was born near the area where the Mayans were, so I was taking a lot of inspiration from their mythology, their iconography, their beliefs.
I think that to an average listener, or an average hip-hop fan, Mayan culture might not be the thing that screams hip-hop. So how did you figure out how to merge the two? I feel like your music really reflects it and it fascinates me. How did you find that sweet spot of making hip-hop that sounds like Mayan culture?
I was delving a lot into what people might call an ‘esoteric sound’, even if I just consider it as just another branch of experimental hip-hop. I thought it was all giving the vibe of you being in a Mayan temple, you’re in the middle of numerous Mayan traditions. And, you know, being engulfed in so many cool ideas I just thought to synthesise the two, to evoke the feelings I wanted to evoke.
You’re based in Arizona. When it comes to music, is it also about Arizona representation for you? Or, more broadly speaking, do you think you also put some US identity in the music?
My area has a very expansive Hispanic population, so I try to include a lot of elements of that in my music. Not necessarily the music itself, but what I try to evoke through it. At the end of the day, these are my people. I want to honour my traditions and culture as much as possible. I do what I can, you know. Not even just the iconography, but just talking about certain issues, or having projects relate to a lot of issues that affect me and my people. So I try to do a lot of representation towards the Hispanic population.
Your earliest release on Bandcamp is Colonizer’s Tongue. Was that the inception of the whole MILLENIUM identity? Or are there projects and ideas before that that are shelved that already have this identity of yours?
I feel like the commencement of the identity I have now started with a project I have called WIREPULLER. I did that with my good friend UURYDON, a great amazing artist. We put that up on her Bandcamp, I wanna say, July 2023. So that was when I first started delving into the type of production I do today. More so my image, that started with Colonizer’s Tongue, when I decided to include that Mesoamerican heritage and culture and iconography into the music.
I discovered you with VAULT CATACOMBS last year and I just remember listening to it for the first time, it was such a surreal experience because it’s like so clearly in its identity hip-hop, but also very much so pushing the sound. I wanted to ask you, what draws you to go this experimental route? What makes you challenge yourself to see how far you can push hip-hop?
It’s just based on my influences. Probably my biggest producer influences are like August Fanon, Messiah Musik, al.divino. A lot of those super experimental guys who are pushing the envelope. Like you heard the new [billy] woods album, that shit has some of the craziest production.
Yeah! It’s crazy! Insane.
Yeah. That sound made me be like ‘you know what? I want to try this.’ Before
WIREPULLER, I was making more traditional hip-hop beats and I just found out it’s not really my thing. No diss towards that, I fucking love the golden era, the 2000s, the 2010s, I love that shit. But I just found out it wasn’t really my forte and I wanted to delve into something else. That’s when we started making WIREPULLER and when I started pushing myself to see what I can do and just fuck around. As a result, with the success of that album, not just fan-base reception but how I felt about it, it made me realize ‘hey, I can go down this route and do a lot of cool things with it.’
You kind of already mentioned some of your inspirations, Fanon, Messiah Musik, al.divino, which you can definitely hear. Especially some of the al.divino beats have the same grimy quality. Do you also have influence outside of music that you would say shaped you?
Oh man, it’s kind of like a basic answer but it’s a lot of leftist theory. Like I just started to delve into that. Marx has shaped not just how I perceive the world, but how I put that into the music. Just a lot of exploring life, dealing with everything around me, being socialized in this capitalist system, wanting to break out of that mold. That’s what helped me to shape my sound as well.
I think that when you’re a rapper, it is easier to translate your experience into music because the verbal is so direct. But it’s maybe harder to do that with production because you just have sounds speaking for you. How do you navigate letting the beat send a political message?
It’s all mostly around the title, I want it to evoke a message. And if it’s not through that, it’s stuff like taking a vocal clip of Franz Fanon or Huey Newton or other leftists or Marxists. Sometimes it’s just through the sound itself. On a very haunting beat I try to get a rapper to spit a 16 about a revolution and then boom, that’s it. A lot of it is through external means, not just the beat itself, but I also want to beat to speak volumes and build a foundation for what others cover through it.
It’s hard in these past few months to not see what’s been happening in America and globally. How do you make peace with it, both personally and musically? Do you think your music maybe gets more aggressive in response to what happens? Or do you use music as a filter? What’s the approach for you?
I try to avoid using music as an escapist method, because I realize that so much of the sound that I push comes from my emotions. For example, that EP I dropped with ÅGHETTOPHĮLOSØPHER, Red, White, & Blue Has No Symphony, that was an immediate response to the election cycle last year. After the election I hit him up like ‘hey you wanna do a punk rock EP?’ Whenever I make a super dark beat, a lot of it is just an expression and a direct look into how I feel.
Yeah, on that EP it really stands out. It is way more direct compared to some of the other things you do.
Absolutely. I wanted that EP to be incredibly direct. I assume you’ve heard the Pink Siifu album with the jazz and the punk.
The latest one?
No, the one that dropped like 2020 during the BLM protests. [N*GRO]
Oh yeah, I know which one.
That was probably my biggest influence, cause I was listening to it a lot during the election cycle. And I wanted to try something like this. So I think the first beat I made for that was track two [Can’t Take Me Out This Skin] and then I introduced the idea to [ÅGHETTOPHĮLOSØPHER] saying I really wanna do a whole project like this and he said sure. And that was our expression of how we felt about everything going on in the world.
Oh nice! And once again, congratulations on the project.
Thank you.
I’d like to move on to your latest release which was a tribute to Pharaoh Sanders. It’s not your first one, you’ve also released a tribute to Ka earlier last year. Why these two artists in particular? What made you decide to dedicate a whole song to them, what makes the two stand out to you?
Oh man. Ka was… I wanna say I got into him a little too late, like midway through last year.
So just before The Thief Next to Jesus?
About, yeah. I wanna say about a month before. And I was just listening to Descendants of Cain and Honor Killed the Samurai nonstop. And that sound was so captivating to me, because he really just nailed the idea of minimalist sound but speaking so much volume through it. Like I believe he is one of the greatest writers ever, in hip-hop. Not even just in hip-hop. One of the greatest writers ever.
The way he was able to do so much, it was such an incredibly potent experience. And then having The Thief Next to Jesus be his last album was so haunting, especially with that last track. That track is haunting.
It’s almost prophetic, you could say.
Almost prophetic, yeah. Scary. In fact, that last track reminds me of Waterproof Mascara off of the new woods. Just like sample-choice wise.
Yeah, I didn’t make the connection before but I see it.
‘Cause the final track has the sounds of screaming and then Waterproof Mascara is just a loop of a woman crying. Just little details like that are so inspiring to me and it made me realise that I wanna honour the great Ka in whatever way I can. I try my best, you know. It was all made a week or two after his passing. It was made in the span of like two days.
And for Sanders? What was the process like?
Again, it’s just inspiration. A lot of it comes from intake of so much. The genre I listen to most is, you know, experimental hip-hop and I take so much from the messaging, the beats. Like with this new album [GOLLIWOG], woods probably became my favourite rapper of all time.
And you learn so much. I remember reading a review on the new album a couple days ago that referred to his writing as ‘opaque’. But once you get it, you get it. It can be difficult to decipher his writing in points, but sometimes he’s so in your face about it.
That it becomes hard to miss.
Yeah. Same thing with E L U C I D. Same thing with a lot of the Backwoodz people, really. And you intake all of that and shape how you think, how you make music, how you go through life, it’s just an incredibly inspiring thing.
Speaking of inspiration, when preparing for this interview I sent your music to a few of my friends who are in the music scene, I wanted to get their opinions. And one thing that popped out time and again was people speaking of your music as ‘anxiety-inducing’ in a good way.
[laughs]
I sent it to my friend who loves experimental music and she was like ‘it reminds me of being anxious at a show’ but I completely get it. And I wanted to ask, do you get that feeling when you make it? When you hear it back, do you think to yourself that it is anxiety-inducing music?
First, I got that anxiety-but-good comment a lot. [laughs]
I guess it’s a common sentiment. But yeah, sometimes I make a super foreboding sentimental and I think to myself, ‘why the fuck did i make this?’ It could be anxiety-inducing and when I show it to people they’re like ‘dude, what the fuck is this?’ [laughs]
And I took a lot of that anxiety from jazz and experimental jazz, like [Anthony] Braxton and like 60s and 70s Miles Davis, 60s and 70s Coltrane. It’s the way they can put out so much emotion while making you feel anxious as shit. I love that and that’s what I wanted to do as well and I’m very glad people are responding to it.
I’ve been stalking your Twitter and I saw that the producer FORTES follows you. I thought it was very cool because he’s one of my favourites and it led me to my next question. Who would you like to collaborate with, from the producer sphere? Do you have a dream collab?
Oh. I wanna say Fanon, but that’s already happened. That track is out [WHEN U SPEAK IT]. Little side tangent, I did that with my homie kai, who dropped an album last year, mostly self produced but there’s a track produced by him, me and Fanon. That’s still one of the greatest things I’ve ever done.
Oh shit, that’s crazy. How did that come about?
[kai] hit up Fanon, they made a deal, got a beat, and then he hit me up asking if I want to be a part of the song and I agreed.
But if I were to do a collab with a producer, I’m gonna state an obvious one and a not-so-obvious one. My obvious one is probably Messiah Musik. I just think of Church, such a fucking wonderful album. And then the not so obvious one – do you know SURF GANG?
Yeah, of course, love them.
I would love to make a beat with evilgiane, man.
That would be crazy. I can’t even imagine how that would sound.
I’ve been making so much drill music recently and I’ve been listening to so much SURF GANG to draw inspiration and I would love to do a beat with him.
If that happens I’m there Day 1. That sounds so cool.
[laughs] Absolutely yeah.
Speaking of collaborations, you’re part of the group Absent Call of Response.
Yeah.
Just walk me a bit through how that came about, how did you find each other? What’s the dynamic of the group?
So, around January or February last year that’s when I started to really post beats on Twitter and Sunmundi hit me up like ‘yo, you gotta send this shit to Amitai [Sno]’ and I didn’t know who they were at the time. So they put me on to their album RED EARTH, fucking fantastic, and through that I hit up Amitai saying I got a beat for him and now make music together. And through that I met ÅGHETTOPHĮLOSØPHER and Hidden Gem. After me Joey300 and BUDDHA! tagged along.
I haven’t made music with all of them just yet, and we do have plans on doing a couple group projects that are free-er, but for now it’s just trying to build on the foundations I have with a couple of them. I’ve made so much music with Amitai and ÅGHETTOPHĮLOSØPHER already. And I just wanna keep building that foundation with them, as well as with everybody else in Absent Call of Response. Those are my guys, we keep pushing each other sonically. We wanna be part of the new renaissance of experimental hip-hop. Even if it isn’t the most drastic change that we bring, even just a slight contribution is enough for us. We wanna see how far we can push hip-hop.
Definitely. And I think you’re doing a great job at it. Is the process different for you when you’re producing and you know the beats are going to a collaborative project than when you’re making beats for your solo stuff?
Absolutely. When I do collaborative projects we usually have a vision. An exception was the new EP with pty. We started it the night of the 3rd and finished it the night of the 4th. We just kinda winged that shit.
So that was just one session?
Yeah. The first beat on the project, which is mine, started off with just a singular sample. I warped it, got that done super quick and sent that to pty. Then his first beat is taking that beat, warping it, adding shit to it. And my following beat did that on his and so on and so forth.
So it was just you bouncing back and forth between each other?
Exactly. For example, I’m working on numerous projects with ÅGHETTOPHĮLOSØPHER right now and we have evolved ideas and as a result everything I make is centered around those ideas. One project we’re working on is going to be composed entirely of jazz samples. A lot of jazz fusion, a lot of blues, a lot of bop, things like that. And I make those beats jazz centered because I know that’s the idea he wants and that’s the idea I want.
So it sort of depends. When I make solo beats it’s just whatever I’m thinking of at the moment. My next album will hopefully be my solo debut album and for that one I scrapped like seven different ideas I had. It was very profound and very evolved and I wanted to stick to that sound. So it depends if I have a project in mind.
I want to end on asking who you are feeling right now musically. What’s on the MILLENIUM playlist?
Oh man. I was literally just listening to New Blood by Obijuan, like right before we started this. Shoutout to Obijuan. Been listening to RED EARTH and they’re dropping a new project soon, they already have two singles out for it. Been into a lot of ÅGHETTOPHĮLOSØPHER and Hidden Gem as well, cause they’re brothers and they have a duo called New Age Collective. Last year they dropped an album called BTTRSWT, fucking amazing. Of course I’ve been listening to the new woods like non-stop and also Pinball II. Fucking amazing! Yeah, that’s kinda been my rotation recently.
