Zora : Do you love French food ?
Green T : oh yeah, I love French food.
Fade : Best food in the world.
Green T : We played in London, Germany and Eastern
Europe. We tried the food there but the catering that you
get in France is always the best. For sure French and
Japanese it’s my two favourite. It’s the most sophisticated
food culture that you have in the world for sure. How about
you guys ? Do you like French food ?
Pupils : yes.
Green T : Do you like other food more ? Chinese or something ?
Arabian ?
All pupils: yeah
Green T : Like what kind of thing ?
Iza : I like couscous.
Other pupils : and Kebabs !
Pupil : Do you write your own lyrics ?
Green T : Of course I think it’s very important if you’re gonna
be a genuine artist. It has to be something that comes from
you genuinely you know.
Racha : Where do you meet to work or rehearse ?
Green T : We have one place in Germany which is like where
we used to hang out when we were kids like your age and
used to collect records and DJay . We still use the same space
and we have a studio in Paris where we record stuff now.
The cool thing nowadays is that because of computer
technology we don’t need a very expensive, sophisticated
studio to be able to work on music you know. You can be like
a mobile unit !
Fade : like a laptop, microphones…
Green T : which is cool for us, because it’s like we have
everything that we need with us and we can be anywhere in
the world and set ourselves up within 10 - 15 minutes and go,
you know.
Nasrine : What bands have influenced you ?
FP : A lot, a lot of them, I mean a very wide range of things
like we normally listen to Hip-Hop obviously, we love funk
and soul and reggae, mostly stuff from the 60’s and 70’s .
Fade : but from Hip-Hop….
FP : it has to be things like A Tribe Called Quest, De La
Soul, Brand Nubians, The Pharcyde and J-Dilla and Madlib
Fade : MF Doom…
FP : most of these groups were probably around when you guys
weren't born. Even at the time they came out, we were only like
5 or 6 so we didn’t listen to them then but a couple of years ago
we really started getting into that because their kind of HipHop was very positive and very… well just influential ! It just
coincided with A State of Mind.
Green T : like what kind of thing is your favourite Hip-Hop ?
Iza : Snoop Dogg
Fade : Snoop Dogg, his first album Doggy style is really good!
Do have his first album ? If you don’t have his first album you
should get it ! It’s his best album I promise you, you won’t be
disappointed !
Green T : 1993, produced by Dr Dre, really good !
Fade : do you guys like a French band called Hocus Pocus ?
Pupils : No.
Fade : No ? You should listen to that if …
Green T : Do you like French Hip-Hop ? IAM and stuff ?
You don’t know IAM ?
Pupils : Not really.
Stany : Since when do you sing or rap ?
FP : I’ve started rapping when I was 12 or 13 and it’s nothing
compared to what it sounds like now . It’s just like trying to do
things to get the rhythm, trying to get the words to all fit inside
bars and it wasn’t that great but it just got better and better the
more I worked the better it got, it’s like everything in life I think,
practice makes perfect, the more you do it, the better you get, the
more confident you get, the more ideas come up and…
Green T: yeah, it’s crazy, sometimes we find like old tapes
because that’s you know when we recorded when we were young
and it’s so bad (laughs), terrible, you know, but there’s a lot of
artists that I respect a lot that I like as well who, when you
really dig deep and find the stuff that they did when they
started, it was terrible !
Green T : well there are exceptions of course but like you have
to start from somewhere so it’s more about the speed at which
you develop and how much you care about it and how much
you stand behind it.
Fade : and not being discouraged if at first it’s not easily done
and just give up you know if you’re passionate about
something, continue to work and eventually everything will
become easier.
Mr Lann (music teacher) : Do you find it difficult to write
lyrics sometimes ? No ? Is it always easy ?
FP : Not really, because we never sit down with the objective
to write lyrics it’s like we hear a beat and I come to write it
right now.
Green T : it’s usually the case that we have more lyrics than we
have recorded material. There’s always so much stuff, then one of
them might get used for something that we do or but most of it
probably won’t you know but you've got to practice, do your own
thing and if it comes then you have to write it and then you don’t
have a choice you know.
Mr Lann : What about music ?
Fade : For music to be honest I do have times when I spend
hours making music and then at the end of it I’ll delete before I
let anyone hear it, you know, humm, and sometimes I do come
about a week period where nothing seems to be coming exactly
how I want it but it’s about just walking away from it at that
point and finding something to inspire you and then coming back
and usually that helps you know
Iza : What does the sign on your tee-shirt represent ?
Fade : It's a good question. “THTC” is the hemp-trading
company. We're sponsored by a company which makes all of their
t-shirt with either organic cotton, hemp or bamboo but
everything is fair trade !
Green T : Carbon neutral
Fade : it's basically everything is good for the environment,
everything's all fair trade which is like the workers who make
them have good working conditions they don't waste a product
like water and for example. the guy was telling me to make a
shirt like this need something like two percent of the amount of
water that you need if you’re making a normal cotton shirt so it
saves water it's really good for the environment.
Fade : It saves energy. They don't use harmful chemicals
which hurt the environment. It's something we really
believe in. I mean, we feel that in the next 20 - 30 years
the water will just continue to go and get worse and
worse in the environment there's so much pollution and
we’re being so wasteful with our resources so every little
helps and I think that if everyone could do one or two
things like recycling like, turning off your lights when you
leave a room, not leaving your TV on, not leaving your
laptop plugged in all day, if everyone just does little
things then we’ll make a big difference and it might not
affect us in our lifetime in a big way but it will affect
your children and your children’s children.
Green T : and no, just being conscious and not believe
everything that you hear from the media and stuff because the
thing is that like big companies have a lot of money to invest
in marketing so, advertisement and publicity so they can tell
you whatever they want because they have the money to
support it. A lot of these big companies do really some bad
things in terms of the way that they treat their workers.
Fade : I mean they’ll have children your age working for no
money, you know and working all day
Green T : so yeah, “THTC “is a company based in England
that makes ethical and carbon neutral and sustainable clothes.
Zora : What languages do you speak between you ?
Green T : English.
Fade : Do you mean how many ? because we speak fluent
German, fluent English, we’re learning French.
FP : Spanish
Fade : we speak a little bit of Spanish, a little bit of Italian.
Zora : Could we take a picture with you please ?
Green T : of course, yeah !
Stany : And would you mind signing us an autograph please?
Green T : of course, I think we’ve got a poster
THE END