Mr. Hudson: Straight No Chaser | Hypebeast

A lot of people feel there was a void in Hip-Hop until maybe about a few years ago. When Kanye burst onto the scene, it was a breath of fresh air. People felt “Hip-Hop was dead”, yet I think overall its a really good time for music right now.

Definitely. What Hip-Hop needed to realize was that it was part of the mainstream and that it was actually Pop music. As soon as people stopped denying that, they said “lets have fun, lets start entertaining people and start selling some records and just make sure everyone is having a great time.” Its not just being moody in your bedroom smoking anymore, but just about having some fun. It’s what Hip-Hop was about originally anyways, “let’s get on the corner and entertain each other.”

I completely agreed with you. It’s exciting to see Hip-Hop take on a new stage with musicians like Kid Cudi, who himself, like you, blew up quite rapidly.

Yea, it sort of happened at a similar time. In Hawaii, he (Kanye) was like “this guy is Kid Cudi and this is Mr. Hudson” and within seconds of meeting each other, we were already writing a chorus together.

That’s exciting to hear. It’s the beginning of a new movement.

Definitely, definitely.

Getting back onto Straight No Chaser, will the album incorporate autotune?

I only use it maybe 30-40% of the time. Only when I think it adds value to the track and brings the emotion out. I want to give people value for their money but I’m not going to take it off just cause people feel it should be off, I’m using it as a tool to make things sound cool. If the song doesn’t need it, I wont use it. Like I said before, I think it adds a lot of emotion to the track, so the important thing is to avoid picturing why everyone is putting it on for the sake of it.

That’s the current “hype” at the moment. Everyone using autotune.

Definitely. When you look at Jimi Hendrix, he wasn’t using the wah wah (pedal) on every song. He just liked to bring it in and out to have that effect.

We’ve been talking a lot about music, which of course is your expertise, but how much are you into fashion?

I could never afford to be into fashion because I just didn’t have the budget. It was more like charity shop chic and hand-me-downs from my big brothers. 3 big brothers and my dad, so a lot of hand-me-down stuff. I would kind of just make it work, I’d wait until things came back into fashion. But you know, hanging out with Kanye and the guys, they’re really into their clothes, so I have been learning a lot from them. I just got flown out to Paris for fashion week, so its been amazing. I’m learning fast.

[laughs]