Cartel Madras are performing during Sled Island on Saturday, 8:30pm at Palace Theatre.

Interview Audio:

Interview Transcript:

Kaamil (CJSW)
Going to hit the record button here, and we’re going to jump straight into it. And the topic on
everyone’s mind, maybe the elephant in the room, is the new project. So I’m curious, how long
have you been cooking up this project for? Because it’s been about five years since your last
release.

Contra
Yeah, so The Serpant & The Tiger, which was our last album, it came out in 21 with Sub Pop
and Royal Mountain, and then we disappeared. Well, we were playing live, and we were doing
like a bunch of shows, but it was a little bit more, it wasn’t like a focused, okay, like we were
promoting something new. I think we really needed time to go away and investigate and think and find new sounds and new things to say and become new people, essentially shed old skin, turn into a new person. And now it’s about three years, I’d say. This new project, the name of which we can’t reveal the
date that it comes out, we can’t reveal…

Eboshi
But what we can reveal is that EVIDENT 2 ME our first single comes out June 18th via Sub Pop
and Royal Mountain, and it comes with a very exciting music video and signals Chapter One,
the entry point into our new period as Carta Madras, which is very fun for us. It really is a good
indication of where we’re taking things sonically, philosophically, vibes, and the visuals are also
a really good reflection of that. I’d say, so we’re just really stoked about this new song.

Kaamil (CJSW)
Yeah, and I think a lot of Calgary hip hop fans, Canadian hip hop fans, are very excited for this
new release as well. The new single coming out. You both have very methodical, kind of
calculated approaches for the kind of release, and the visual side is something that’s super
striking with this new release especially. How have your experiences over the last few years
since the release of The Serpent & The Tiger, and kind of working on solo projects on your own,
and doing your own things with FOREIGNERZ, how has that influenced the approach to the new
project?

Eboshi
It’s been very interesting for us to take this step back and take it slow. In many ways the music
industry parallels what’s happening in fashion; fast fashion, sweatshops, people pushing things
out that nobody wants, but people are participating with and consuming anyways, because
they feel they have to, and our philosophy behind art has always been to take our time and say
something that we really mean and feel, and with this upcoming project, with this new single,
the story remains the same. We do have a very slow, methodical approach, because that’s how
we also engage with art and culture. The books we read, the films we watch, the music we
listen to, the things we look at, and the things we taste, come from a place of intention and
motivation and true commitment to what the person, the creator, is doing and what they’re
trying to tell us, and for us as artists, but also as thinkers, as filmmakers, as writers, as people
that work in the creative industry, we do want to channel that philosophy across all platforms
across everything.

Kaamil (CJSW)
Yeah, anything you want to add on to that Contra? I know you’ve been doing a lot of visual stuff
lately.

Contra
I think our work with FOREIGNERZ has made us really strong visual narrators, which always was
something we were doing with Cartel, like even with The Serpent & The Tiger, and even like
early, you know, like Trapistan, Age of the Goonda, it always was meant to feel like you’re watching a movie with these larger than life characters and watching larger than life narratives come out at you, and that’s always been an interest, and I think we’ve actually only gotten better at doing that because now you know, like, professionally we have a creative studio, we have a production house, so we’re working with some of the best of the best filmmakers and editors and visual creatives in Alberta, and I think it creates a different sort of sensibility and energy to our visual language.

Kaamil (CJSW)
Nice, nice, and the visual side, we’re talking a lot about that, but the music side is something
that a lot of people are excited for, for that new music coming out.

Contra
Yeah.

Kaamil (CJSW)
How would- and you’ve defined the style as Goonda Rap before, so would you still define this
new album as Goonda Rap, or would you say it’s evolved or changed in any ways?

Eboshi
I love that question, because something that we always set out to do by self-labeling as Goonda
Rap was give ourselves the flexibility to play with genre and to experiment, which is a huge
part of the Cartel Madras ethos since day one, and previously that leaned into a lot more of a
dark-trap-house sensibility, and now we have evolved, so Goonda Rap includes basically
anything we want it to, because while the term Goonda has always existed, Goonda Rap is
something that we kind of put that hat on and wore it, marched into the distance with it, and
we continue to do it, and something that our listeners will find when exploring this upcoming
single, and following the journey into the upcoming album, is that we have expanded a lot of
our sonic palette. We’re pulling from a lot of different spaces, a lot of different worlds. We’ve
traveled a lot, we’ve consumed a lot of different music, gone to a lot of shows, done a lot of
drugs, and our producer, the director of production for this album has done the same and taken
in a lot of the same information and stimuli that we have, so there’s a really good reflection of
where we’re at, both as writers, as musicians, as thinkers, as like people in this album, and
you’ll really hear it. There’s with this upcoming single a huge jungle palette, DNB, it has that
vibe, and then there’s definitely a lot of house electronic vibes in the album overall, and there
is a lot of classic Cartel dark hip hop in there too. So it does remain Goonda Rap. Yeah, it’s just
like the colors that we paint with have shifted a little.

Kaamil (CJSW)
Nice, that’s awesome. And the collaborative side, you work together pretty closely on this stuff.
You’ve been working kind of separately on some stuff as well. So, what’s the process like for
working collaboratively on these kinds of project where there’s so much visual? Is it sitting in a
room with the director and all three of you coming together, is it bringing ideas to the table and
seeing what sticks?

Contra
Yeah, you know, like she said, we’ve been traveling a lot and moving a lot and flexing a
different creative muscle for the past three years in, you know, various things we’re doing, but
we’re always informing each other of what’s going on, and there’s this kind of stream of
consciousness way that us and our producer and our manager, we’re all kind of, you know,
shooting things off to each other, and sometimes that might be a song, sometimes that might
be a film that we’re like ‘you have to watch this right now’, ‘you have to watch this show right
now’, because I think for us we’re pulling references from everything and ideas from
everything, and a feeling from so much different types of content, so we’re in constant
conversation writing in different places. It creates for a really interesting energy when, say,
you’re in Germany writing the lyrics of a song, and I’m in Mexico City writing the hook, and we
both come back to the table in Winnipeg to write the demo and record it, and then go to
Toronto, re-record the demo, come back to Winnipeg, and then a year later record the proper,
so these songs have been circulating within ourselves and our team for a while. So now when
we’re standing behind it, it’s like, right, like this is perfect, this is the message, this is exactly
what we want to say, and this is exactly how we want it to sound.

Kaamil (CJSW)
Nice. That’s so cool, and I wouldn’t be a good journalist, if I didn’t try to pry into this new project
a little bit more, any kind of content that you mentioned there within the travels or even just TV
and film that you would point towards as like a big piece of inspiration for this new project.

Eboshi
Absolutely, I would say for us a lot of motivation behind this upcoming album is very much like
we had mentioned, we’ve traveled a lot and it’s informed a lot of what we say and how we say
it, but beyond that, it’s like we use a lot of the shorthand from the political thriller, from
espionage, neo-noir tropes and sensibilities, and pulling from a lot of narrative threads that
we’ve had distilled into our minds from John le Carré, Raymond Chandler, Wong Kar-wai. These
artists inform how we see our characters in their world, and in many ways our characters are
interacting with the questions they’re grappling with in their lives, which are told through song,
and all of those songs are part of a larger infinite puzzle, which is like the biggest question of
all, which is what our album is grappling with, and ultimately the biggest question has
everything to do with existence and survival.

Contra
I’d add that, we’re in an interesting time to be an artist and a person, right? There’s a lot of
forces at play. I think people are trying to resist, and obviously those questions and ideas come
into our work. We meditate on them. A lot of what we’re exploring is this larger idea on, like,
what – what is actually happening right now in the world we live in? What is the truth? Is there
one? You know? So it can be a quite a, like, existentially open-minded record that we’ve been
working on, but I’d also say it’s a little bit more fantastical. I think we lean a little bit more into
the esoteric with this one. I think there’s larger ideas on how humans live that we’re talking
about and asking, and alongside that, we still want you to party, and we still want you to rage.
Yeah, so there’s bangers too.

Kaamil (CJSW)
Yeah, I love that, both sides of the coin. Yeah, that’s awesome. And it’s something that I love
about your guys’ music is that replayability aspect. It feels like you hear something new or
different every time, see something different anytime you watch one of your projects and stuff.
We’re not gonna keep this interview going too much longer. I know you guys got other stuff and
chats to do so. Last question, and last kind of prying question, are there any collaborations or
features that you can bring up and mention and kind of sneak preview for us? If you can’t,
that’s okay.

Contra
We can’t say anything yet anything yet. Yeah.

Kaamil (CJSW)
That’s fair.

Eboshi
I mean, with this upcoming single, and a lot of the upcoming project, like, we can definitely
shout out our producer Jide, who is Toronto-based, but also was a Calgary artist for a really long
time. That’s where he cut his teeth and is a huge part of the sonic architecture of the upcoming
era.

Kaamil (CJSW)
Amazing. Anything else you guys want to add before we close this interview out?

Eboshi
Well, EVIDENT 2 ME comes out. We want you to listen to it. We want you to engage with it. Tell
us your thoughts. Tell us your feelings, but also receive it as something of a manual. These are
instructions for how to participate in our upcoming world and what we want to see from people
that are our compatriots in this world that we live in.

Kaamil (CJSW)
I’ll try my best to follow. Thank you, guys, so much for chatting with you.

Cartel Madras
Thank you so much for having us.