Building Bridges, One Handshake At A Time
Damu the Fudgemunk talks about self-reliance and risk taking, the story of Redefinition Records, and making an album with Archie Shepp
Ocean Bridges—released May 22 on Redefinition Records—is an unlikely collaboration between jazz legend, Archie Shepp, his nephew, the rapper Raw Poetic (Jason Moore), and producer, DJ, and beat maker, Damu the Fudgemunk (Earl Davis). The album sits at the intersection of hip hop and jazz. Its core is an ensemble of live musicians, free-ranging improvisation, and an acoustic vibe, but filtered through a hip hop lens, which includes minimal samples, record scratches, loops, and tasteful overdubs.
Ocean Bridges is the first time Raw Poetic and Damu collaborated with Shepp—and that may be a once-in-a-lifetime event—but as a duo, the two of them have been together for almost two decades, and have partnered on numerous albums and projects.
But for Damu—who I interview here—beat-making and production is just half of what he does. He’s also the co-owner—along with John Notarfrancesco—of Redefinition Records. The label’s output is prolific, and fuses high-end production and well-crafted releases, with glossy artwork and color-coordinated packaging. Their catalog, in addition to vocal-centric rap releases, also includes instrumental cuts, beat tapes, lo-fi tracks, and collections of drum breaks.
But for all its success, Redefinition Records is still an independent label, and they are committed to the ethos of DIY. According to Damu, that commitment means that he and Notarfrancesco have a hand in almost every aspect of their business—and that’s for the best.
“Neither one of us aspired to have a label, it was pretty much born out of necessity, literally being in the fire and being rejected,” Damu says. “But the more self-sufficient you can become—whether you have a day job and you can create some passive income on the side, or you have a side hustle or you own a small business—if you can incubate all your independence within yourself and be more self-reliant, you always end up winning.”
Self-reliance is Damu’s animating spirit, which is obvious in our conversation below. We discussed his background and early releases, the handshake deal that defines how Redefinition Records does business, the label’s embrace of vinyl but openness to newer technologies, and the story behind the recording of Ocean Bridges with Shepp.
Where are you from and what’s your background in music?
I am from Washington D.C., and I still live in the city. Most of my immediate family is from this area. I started getting into hip hop, and trying to rhyme, as a teenager, when I was 13 or 14 years old. At that particular time, producers and DJs were like a package. If you rapped, you had one producer, or one DJ, who was doing your beats, and that’s what made sense to me. Hip hop music production and creation tools were not a consumer product the way they are now, where you can buy a phone or laptop and it comes with built-in video editing, music creation, and recording software. At that time, you really had to want to do music. You had to learn about it in order to get involved. There weren’t a lot of people that were into what I was into, and having a lack of resources and companions with a similar interest led me down the path, where I thought, “I guess I can learn how to DJ, and how to make beats.” I started buying records, doing the research, and eventually realized that it was a lot more fun than rapping. That’s really when I discovered my love for music—between the ages of about 14 and 16—and I got into production at about 17. Around that time, I got an internship at a radio station, XM radio, when they were less than a year old. I was in high school, and I started doing talk radio, although I am not really a talker, I was very shy at that time. I knew they had a hip hop station that played classic hip hop, and I was able to pivot from having this talk radio gig to getting into the production and DJ world. It was through that relationship, actually, which is how I met Jason [Raw Poetics]. We started a long time friendship that’s been going for almost 20 years now. Funny enough, I knew Jason for about a decade before I knew he was Archie Shepp’s nephew [laughs].
Were you and Jason in Panacea together?
Yes. Panacea was the last group signed to Rawkus Records, which was the second run of Rawkus Records. They had a history and reputation with Mos Def, Talib Kweli, and underground rap in the late ‘90s, but they had some questionable business dealings that went public. They folded and came back in the mid-2000s, and had something of a resurgence for a couple of years, and then it pretty much crumbled all over again.
Did your group, Y Society, start around that time as well?
Y Society came out around 2007, and we were on different labels. The thing was, right when Panacea signed to Rawkus—and they got their budget and we were shooting videos—I was still working on my solo career. When we went out to Los Angeles to shoot a video, I was setting up meetings—I was about 20 years old at the time—and I was trying to set up meetings. I would go to record stores and look at the back of 12-inches, and see who put it out, whether it was underground, major label, or major indie. I knew that I needed to find out who these companies were. I wrote down the addresses, and sent demos out.
Did anyone respond?
I was fortunate enough that when we went out to Los Angeles, I set up a meeting with a label called Tres Records, who got their start putting out indie releases. They did have a pretty good buzz at the time, and People Under The Stairs eventually did some work with them. I gave them some instrumental demos. They came to the video shoot to meet with me, and they were also already in conversation with Panacea’s label managers, Glow in the Dark. There was an organic chemistry and synergy. The meeting went well, they had the beats and music, so when I got back to D.C., I thought that they could sign me as an instrumental artist—just making beats. Their response was, “Do you think you can find a rapper? Instrumental records don’t do too well.” It’s funny, because there’s a whole sub-genre—a whole culture of “beats and lo fi”—that happens now. But back then, they were saying, “Nobody wants to hear beat tapes or instrumental records.” Today, that’s the bulk of my catalog. They said, “If you find a rapper, we’ll cut you a deal.” One of my good friends, who is originally from Boston, is Insight [Andre Todman]. He became a mentor of mine around 2004. I called him and said, “I’ve got a deal on the table, and you and I have been talking about working together in some capacity, would you do me the honor of rapping on this album?” He said, “Let me hear the music, and what label is it?” He heard it and said, “These songs have concepts and choruses, and I don’t have to do as much work. You’ve really grown as a producer. I’ll definitely do it.” That co-sign led me to get my first record deal, and that’s how Y Society happened.
When did that album come out?
We did two albums. The first album got shelved, rejected. That’s a whole other story, but the Travel At Your Own Pace album was our second album. We signed the deal at the top of 2006, and we turned the album in around May or June. We had such good chemistry, and were so excited about what we were working on. I was pretty naive, and I was very free with my sampling. The label said, “Can you tone down some of the sampling?” That stifled my creativity throughout the summer. I was creatively depressed, because I was so excited about what I was doing, and to have the label critique that—I had to tone it down, which was a humbling experience. They didn’t do it in a rude way, but I couldn’t understand how that worked.
What was their concern? Was it legal, in that they had to clear the samples?
Yes, it was that, but also in general. They said, “We think you can do better.” A couple of months went by, and in the fall of 2006, we did Travel At Your Own Pace. By the end of 2006, going into 2007, I turned in a mix. They set the release dates for fall, and the rest is history.
Did you start Redefinition Records around that time, too?
I joined Redefinition. My business partner, John Notarfrancesco, started Redefinition Records. He started working with Ski-Beatz and then Camp Lo. Ski-Beats was his original partner, for a couple of months, and the first Redefinition record was actually Camp Lo and Ski Beatz. Around the time that Travel At Your Own Pace came out, that’s when John reached out to me via MySpace at the time. Initially, we were going to see if we could work together. We were taking my ideas, my music, and shopping them around. We said, “Let’s go to Fat Beats. Let’s go to this label. Let’s see if we can get a beat placement somewhere.” And it was rejection after rejection. That didn’t last too long, maybe about a month. After that, we pretty much had a handshake deal, and said that we’re going to go into business together. It’s still that way to this day. We made a handshake deal in Washington Square Park, and the funny thing is, when we talk to artists, when we tell them a little bit about our history, the honor system, and making sure that business is done well—clearly, having contracts and paperwork and that stuff is very important and professional, that goes without saying, especially in this industry—but our company is built around very strong integrity. Being people of our word, doing right by people, doing right by others, doing right by ourselves, and just being very transparent.
We do feel pretty blessed, especially when you think about 2006/2007, the industry, the way we consume, and the acceleration of technology as a whole. The smoke started to clear in the last five or six years, but in 2007, record labels were shutting down—major 40, 50, 60-year institutions were shutting down—and record stores like Tower Records were closing. MP3s were the biggest threat to the CD, and pirating—people didn’t get the concept of iTunes and YouTube. It was definitely an interesting time. Now you have services like Spotify and Apple Music. Those things are common, and an MP3 is worthless. Trying to sell a 99¢ MP3 by today’s standards, that’s pointless.
Did you start selling vinyl from the beginning?
We did.
You preceded the vinyl revival.
For sure, and that’s what I was touching on, that gray area around 2007 and 2008, when record stores were closing, and people were scared to press records. Vinyl was perceived as something that was on its way out. We weathered the storm. Our first record came out 2009, and that sold out immediately. We thought, “This shows there is some kind of demand, let’s do this again. Let’s reinvest the money we made on this record into another record.” That’s how How It Should Sound, our biggest album, and my biggest album to date, came into play. How It Should Sound just turned 10 years old. We put that out in April of 2010. When we were first soliciting the record to the distributor, we couldn’t even get distribution. We got rejected by Fat Beats and a few other places, but somehow, and we really gambled, because we pressed about 500 records—it was two volumes, so we pressed 1,000 records, 500 of each volume—and we announced the record was going to be available. To our surprise, somehow, all of them sold out within about a week.
That’s incredible.
It was no promotion. And then guess who called us? Fat Beats [laughs]. Another distributor from overseas called us, too, and asked, “You got any more?” We said, “We have some leftover copies at the house.” They said, “We need all of them.” At that time, we weren’t doing record covers. We were just putting the records in black sleeves. We were trying to cut corners, because vinyl was—and still is—expensive. The records were selling right and left. Believe it or not, in the last 10 years, with no major promotion, that particular record has sold between 15,000 and 20,000 copies, and that doesn’t include the rest of the franchise. I did another three volumes in 2015, on the fifth anniversary, and that probably sold another 10,000 copies. That was a game changing moment for us, to take ourselves seriously and to boost our moral, and we’re still partners with Fat Beats to this day.
Where are your albums sold? Online or primarily in stores?
At that time it was both, although now, clearly, everyone is impacted by what’s going on. The funny thing was, our business model was almost 80 percent records. We weren’t even focused on the digital realm. When things like Spotify and MP3s were moving, we were so one-dimensional thinking, we thought, “We’re going to sell records and CDs. Who cares about an MP3? Who cares about what goes on online?” But after about two or three years, we realized after the fact, “Whoa, there are checks coming in from iTunes. These digital statements, where is this money coming from?” We couldn’t figure it out, but we definitely weren’t mad. And then, the same focus and emphasis we put into the vinyl model, slowly but surely, we started to be more engaged with the digital world. A thing that’s been a big asset with digital is having access to data. Twenty or 30 years ago, you had specialists and a team of people to do this work for you. Now, these technologies integrate a lot of this stuff right at your fingertips, from search engine optimization, to going on YouTube and looking at your metrics. Bandcamp—the Orchard, which we used for digital distribution at one point—all of this information is available, and we use that to our advantage as much as we can.
You mentioned that your first record was just in a black sleeve, when did you start offering more elaborate packaging?
We adopted a slogan that is very common, which is, “Quality over quantity.” But we really try our best to embody that. We want our fans and customers to feel that when they spend money on our records, that not only is the music quality and special, but feeling it and putting it in yours hands—that also has a certain aesthetic to it and a certain legacy. That’s been the vision since the beginning, although we were less experienced when we first started making records. It was after-the-fact that we realized that we really had an audience that the cover became a very important part of everything we did. We sold out of 1,000 records so fast, and we wanted to sell another 1,000, but this time, if things are evolving and the trajectory is moving up, who knows who’s going to see what we do? Who knows what they’re going to think of our company and expertise? So we need to put our best foot forward, because perception is very important. You never know who will come in contact with your product. It could be a venture capitalist, or your favorite artist can see it, and they can either embrace it—be curious by it—or be dismissive. We knew that having something of quality, something that we felt proud of, was a very important thing. It gave us the confidence to put our products in front of everybody. If you go back and look at our first record, you can see that there’s an evolution of the look and feel. There are even some records, where we went back and redid the album covers. We said, “This was cool in 2011, but we can do this better.” When we did the represses, we gave the albums makeovers.
What is the story behind your collaboration with Archie Shepp?
Jazz is definitely not a foreign language to me. I am not well-versed enough to be a jazz musician, but I have always considered myself a jazz musician who makes hip hop. I don’t have the technical proficiency to communicate my ideas within the jazz idiom, but in hip hop, that’s what I look at as my contribution, and I take the craft very seriously. But even after making music for so long, the challenge of working on my first jazz record with a [bonafide] jazz legend was very intimidating. The story goes, I was out of the country. Jason (Raw Poetic) and I put out an album in 2017 called the Reflecting Sea. On that record, I am playing all the instruments, and then fusing that with sampling. Mr. Shepp came to D.C. and did a performance at the Kennedy Center. Jason had been trying to work with his uncle for quite some time, and Mr. Shepp heard some of the music that we had been working on, and he said, “You guys are ready.” Clearly, it was also some influence from Jason’s mother, who is Archie Shepp’s sister. They had a talk, and somehow he was very compelled to want to do this album. So while I am out of the country, Jason is trying to get ahold of me. He said, “It’s important, answer your phone.” I thought it was something to worry about, but he said, “My uncle wants to do an album.” My brain was spinning all over the place, like, “Wow, is this really going to happen?” Jason said, “Yeah, when you come back we have to set up a date, and get studio time.” But then it hit me, “What am I going to do [laughs]?” This is a certified musician and legend. Was I good enough to take this on? Once we booked the session, Mr. Shepp came down and we literally sat in a room, the tape was rolling, and that’s what we were able to capture. It was a very organic experience. It’s a collective of experiences that created that vibe and atmosphere. Everyone contributed, whether they were captured on tape or just in the studio, it was great experience.
Are you the drummer on the album?
Yes. One or two nights before we had the date, we were walking Mr. Shepp up to his hotel room, and on our way out, he said, “Jason, who’s playing drums on this?” I looked at him, and, shamefully, I said, “Me sir. It’s going to be me.” He said, “Whoa man, you’re great. I can’t wait to play with you.” Just that interaction alone made me say, “Maybe I am supposed to be here? I am not going to try to show off. I am going to try to stay in the pocket—keep this thing grooving and not do anything too extreme [laughs].” I was able to pull it off. It was like being on stage, and making it through the gig. I survived. I make the joke that I am impersonating a jazz drummer on that album. I got in and I got it. There was a guest drummer, too, Bashi Rose. He plays on two songs. The energy was so good in the studio. Bashi Rose was there. He was an invited guest from one of the other musicians, so I said, “This is a once in a lifetime experience. You play something. Of course you should play with Mr. Shepp.” You can hear that there is a distinct difference between the way he perceives rhythm and his clock versus what I do. We were fortunate to get everyone to create this unique experience.
Did you do the production after the sessions as well?
Yes. I did the mixing, the mastering, and the scratching. I play all the vibes. Jason had a role in some of the post production, too, “I want a splice here and there.” I did the interludes, the arrangement, and sequencing. It ties back into being self-contained. Learning to mix and mastering skills and being cost-effective. With day-to-day operations at the label, whether it’s my partner learning how to edit video, or shoot video, and the same with me. I invested in becoming a better mixer, learning how to master my own stuff, and also mastering other artists or other things on our label. Doing that, we don’t have to pay someone else, and we can pay the artist. The money can stay in-house. Developing those skills over the years, helped me knock out this project where we didn’t have those expenses.