(*interview taken prior to using Affion Crockett and appearing on Wild N Out)

One Cypher had the opportunity to sit down with “the jack of all trades” Oskamill. Oskamill was born and raised in North Carolina, and moved to Los Angeles to pursue his many talents. Oskamill is an emcee, well respected comedian, producer, actor and dancer extraordinaire. His success in comedy has earned him a place on The Best of Def Jam Volume Five. As an emcee he’s currently working with producer/emcees Kid Official and Onassis. He’s a very well respected dancer in the Hip Hop community and can be seen on various commercials/shows; as well as on television. One Cypher is honored to interview such an incredible contributor to the Hip Hop community.

“There is a huge lack of responsibility in the music. I’m not saying that they should be parents, but they should stop selling out to the record labels who want them to perpetuate this image. They are getting paid $1 million off their debt, but contributing to some young person’s death. Kids want to be what these emcees are rapping about. ”

OC: What’s up everyone, I’m here with emcee Oskamill. Thanks so much for being with us today.
Oskamill: No problem.

OC: So, what is your musical background?
Oskamill: I listened to a lot of music growing up. I used to play the keyboard and guitar. My father is actually a bass and keyboard player. I used to play music by ear on my keyboard. My mother put me in piano lessons when I was seven, but I became bored because my teacher had me start from scratch. I had to play boring songs like Three Blind Mice. It wasn’t the same cool hip-hop songs I was used to playing. I became tired of the lessons and eventually stopped taking them. I kind of regret it. I picked up the guitar in the eighth grade, but the government began to take money out of the art programs in schools, which they are still doing today. They took the arts out of our curriculum, and I stopped playing guitar. I wanted to keep playing but it wasn’t offered the next year.

“I started in late ‘94 and I booked Def Jam in ‘95. I am in the Best of Def Jam Volume Five. I’m on the show with Jaime Fox.”

OC: How did you get involved with hip-hop?
Oskamill: My older brother and his friends were the first to influence me in the art of Hip hop. They introduced me to songs like “Rappers Delight” and “Planet Rock.” These are my first memories of hip-hop. At the time, I was living in Germany and we used to get music late, but it was straight out of New York, straight off of mix tapes. Back then a mix tape was not a DJ in his living room mixing the records together, taping, and selling them on the streets. To us, a mix tape was using one boom box, pressing play, and putting it up to someone else’s boom box. We would tape from box to box. Those were the kind of recordings we would get. That’s when I first heard songs like “Rappers Delight” and “Sucka Emcee.” Those are the first hip-hop songs that I heard that were funky. Run DMC set it off for me.

OC: Who has been your largest influence in music and dance?
Oskamill: I first began dancing at the age of 10. It was me, my brother, and uncle. We were all in a dance group together. My brother was actually the nastiest cat in the neighborhood. He was always the best dancer. Our influences came from whoever was on the television or the radio—Breakin’, Beat Street, those types of shows.

“…when I moved to LA in ’98 I started meeting people such as Poppin’ Pete and Skeeter Rabbit, Don Campbell, Greg Cambellock Jr., who originated specific dance styles. After meeting these , I people started doing the dances I had done as a kid, but I started learning how to do them the right way.”

As I got older, I stopped b-boyin’ for a while because it was out of style. I started getting into more freestyle. When Hammer came out I was really feeling him. Hammer and Kid N’ Play were really doing something at the time. Hammer is actually responsible for me dancing the way that I do today. I’m not afraid to give him credit, he really put it down.

This brought me up to the days of EPMD. They had a dancer named Fendi . He was nasty as a dancer and probably had the biggest influence on my dancing career. That was in the early nineties when I first really got back into dancing.

After that, I got interested in a comedy career. At the place I lived in North Carolina there were not a lot of people still dancing, so I really didn’t rediscover dancing until I moved LA. When I moved to Los Angeles, I met people like Flo Master and Aristan and Crumbs from Style Elements. I really rediscovered hip-hop. As far as I had known, hip-hop was dying, but when I moved to LA in ’98 I started meeting people such as Poppin’ Pete and Skeeter Rabbit, Don Campbell, Greg Cambpellock Jr., who originated specific dance styles. After meeting these people I started doing the dances I had done as a kid, but I started learning how to do them the right way. I learned Boogaloo style, Greg Campbellock Jr. taught me Locking, and I learned B-boyin’ from Flo Master and Steelo. On top of all of that, I was doing comedy and acting.

“To me, a “gangsta’s mentality” means to handle my business when I need to. I can throw down when I need to and I can spit lyrics when I need to. ”

OC: How did you get into comedy?
Oskamill: Well here’s a funny story. I used to imitate teachers in class. I would do a lot of different voices and I could imitate my mom, who’s from Trinidad. I used to watch Def Comedy Jam back in the nineties and I saw this one dude, Cool Bubba Ice, who did a lot of impressions. Because of dance, I was always performing. I knew a stage, I knew how to be on it, and how to work it. That’s how I got into stand up comedy. I started in late ‘94 and I booked Def Jam in ‘95. I am in the Best of Def Jam Volume Five. I’m on the show with Jaime Fox.

OC: How would you categorize your music?
Oskamill: I would have to say straight hip-hop. A lot of people don’t believe in labels, and they try to have a Zen attitude by saying that music is universal. Don’t get me wrong, music is universal, but there is a certain sound for certain types of music. For instance, you know Country and Western when you hear it. You know Classical when you hear it. My music is straight Hip-Hop. I come from the lineage of Rakim, Big Daddy Kane, EPMD, Redman, Slick Rick, Nas, Boot Camp Click. When I say lineage, I mean you are what you eat. Because they were fed into my system for so many years, that’s the type of flow that have. It’s very East Coast. My influences have always come from East Coast/New York. I would classify my music as hip-hop, lyrical, and relevant. I love telling stories. I don’t talk about gangsta stuff, I say that word loosely because the word “gangsta” has been limited to guns and drugs, how hard you can look, and how much money you’ve got. In my own way, I do spit gangsta flows, but it ain’t in the gangsta that most of the artists on Rap City are doing right now. To me, a “gangsta’s mentality” means to handle my business when I need to. I can throw down when I need to and I can spit lyrics when I need to. Gangsta, to me, is the mentality that you can hold it down when you need to.

“There are not a lot of rappers talking about anything important nowadays. Long gone are the days of Slick Rick, Doug E. Fresh, where you could listen and follow the story and get mental picture of what was going on. It’s not like that anymore.”

OC: What makes your music different from anyone else’s?
Oskamill: What’s out there right now is bullshit. I’m not afraid to say it, we all know it. I can’t even watch Rap City anymore, because 90% of the videos that are on right now, I’m thinking, “what are they talking about?” There are not a lot of rappers talking about anything important nowadays. Long gone are the days of Slick Rick, Doug E. Fresh, where you could listen and follow the story and get mental picture of what was going on. It’s not like that anymore. There is no substance, but I’ve got to give it up to Nas, Eminem, Common, and even Kanye, he’s spittin’ some good lyrics right now.

OC: How do you feel hip-hop affects the youth. Do you feel that it’s positive or has the potential to be positive?
Oskamill: How much time do you got? Ha ha. Hip-hop already has affected the youth. If these entertainers don’t start assuming some responsibility, and take it seriously, it will be a very bad thing. For example, when I was young and Run DMC and Beastie Boys were rockin’ Adidas and Lee jeans, when I saw a Beat Street and they were rockin’ Lee jeans and Bomber jackets, and when Rock Steady Crew had on bubble vests and hoodies, we all started rockin’ Lee jeans, hoodies, and Bomber jackets because we saw them on the screen and heard emcees rapping about them. So what the hell do these rappers think? If they’re rapping about guns, killing, crack, heroine, what makes them think that these kids aren’t going to do it? That’s why our hip-hop society is really fucked up. There is a huge lack of responsibility in the music. I’m not saying that they should be parents, but they should stop selling out to the record labels who want them to perpetuate this image. They are getting paid $1 million off their debt, but contributing to some young person’s death. Kids want to be what these emcees are rapping about.

OC: Where do you see hip-hop in the next five to ten years?
Oskamill: Where I’d like to see it go and where I see it going are two different things. I’d like to see it go back to the days of having fun and uplifting each other, which sounds like a pipe dream, but it’s been done before. Nowadays, the most dancing you will see is a girl shaking her ass. Although I don’t mind seeing a girl shake her ass, there is a time and place for everything. In hip-hop videos I want to see real hip-hop dancing. I want to see some b-boying and freestyling. I want it to go back to the days where hip-hop was about having fun, uniting, and being one.

OC: What do you feel has been your largest obstacle?
Oskamill: I don’t have any obstacles, only laziness. Nothing can stop me, I can do anything that I put my mind to. I can do all things through Christ Jesus.

OC: What have you been doing with your time lately?
Oskamill: I’ve been producing my records, going in the booth, and spittin’ them. I have a lot of songs built up, about two albums worth. I’ve also been working a lot with A.R.E. (All Real Emcees). The first mix tape we did is called A.R.E., the Steve Stanton tribute. Steve Stanton is a friend of mine who is in the Groovaloos. Steve is a dancer, an incredible cat, locker, freestyler, popper, he does it all. He went to Canada last year and he got caught in the crossfire. There were gunshots and he got shot in the back. Kid Official called me and said that he wanted to a collaboration CD and have the proceeds go to Steve. So we got together and that’s the main thing that we have going on right now. We are still selling them. We are also going to produce some more and keep selling them until we can’t anymore. I like building the empire from the ground up. My partners are Kid Official and Onassis, I don’t really need to work with anyone else. My production partner is Scott Bowler. I also do my own production. Just the four of us are killin’ it already.

“…what ever it is that you want to do in life, find that one thing in life that you love to do, what ever that thing is, and there may be more than one thing, something that you could lose sleep over, something that you could lose a meal over, and you don’t even sweat it one bit, it’s the one thing that you daydream about every day, that’s what you’re supposed to be doing. Pursue it.”

OC: Breakdown Oskamill for me?
Oskamill: Let me breakdown Oskamill for you. Oscar-Award-Winning-Millionaire. Oskamill. I was taught that you should speak over yourself what you want to happen. The power of the tongue is really serious. You basically have what you’ve been saying your entire life. If you backtrack and examine your life, you basically have what you said. So if you walk around saying your sick and tired all the time, you’re going to be sick and tired all time. If you walk around saying that you’re broke, you’re going to be broke. So, Oscar Award Winning Millionaire is me succeeding in acting, believing that I’m going to win an Oscar, or that I am winning an Oscar, and eventually I will be a millionaire.

OC: What do feel is your largest accomplishment?
Oskamill: That’s a hard one. You know, I was the first person to go to college in my family. I graduated with honors and a full academic scholarship. After that, I did Def Jam and became a successful comedian. Then I moved to Los Angeles. Moving to L.A., I must say, encompasses everything. I would have to say moving to L.A. was my largest accomplishment. I moved from North Carolina just by packing my car and driving across the country.

OC: Do you have any words of wisdom for aspiring emcees, dancers, artists, or anyone trying to pursue a career in entertainment?
Oskamill: Let’s narrow it down, I do everything. I rap, produce music, dance, do comedy, and act. I do it all. I don’t say that to brag, but doing all of that can get really overwhelming. Whatever it is you want to do, I don’t care if it’s managing at a grocery store, bottom-line–you have to believe in yourself. Believing in yourself requires not listening to negative feedback. You have to listen to criticism or constructive criticism, but don’t listen to people who don’t know what they’re talking about. You have to listen to people who are trying to teach you the right way to do it. Do your research. So, it starts with not listening to negative feedback. Sometimes even your parents can be a roadblock. If you believe it’s in your heart, do it. You know what? I am going to sum it up, what ever it is that you want to do in life, find that one thing in life that you love to do, what ever that thing is, and there may be more than one thing, something that you could lose sleep over, something that you could lose a meal over, and you don’t even sweat it one bit, it’s the one thing that you daydream about every day, that’s what you’re supposed to be doing. Pursue it. Go on the Internet and research, that’s a big start. Don’t settle for less. Don’t get a hobby. There is no such thing as a hobby. If you’re working a job that you hate and you have a hobby that you go home to, you’re working in the wrong field. Your hobby is supposed to be your moneymaker, your hobby is supposed to bring you into your wealth. That’s real. Find what’s in your heart and what you love to do and do it.

OC: How should people go about getting a hold of you for booking purposes?
Oskamill: I have a web site that will be launching soon, www.affioncrockett.com. Look out for future shows from A.R.E. Also, I’m producing my own film projects, sketch comedy stuff. Onnasis and I are working together and we’re called the Uncomfortables. So, wherever you see the Uncomfortables, know that you will see our music. We are everywhere. Just remember the names, Affion Crockett/Oskamill/All Real Emcees (A.R.E.) and the Uncomfortables. That’s how you’ll be able to find me.

Interview by Shelley Oto
*Photo Credit:Photographer Mike Quain www.quainphoto.com