URB: I know that there are some artists that say they love life on the road and travelling around, and others say they can’t stand it and just want to be home. Which side do you stand on?
88-KEYS: I’m smack dab in the middle. My whole thing with travelling is I’m not big on sight-seeing and, this is no disrespect to anybody’s city or anybody’s country or hoods or what have you, but to me if a place has McDonald’s and buildings with four walls then I’ve been there already. As far as travelling, I look forward to travelling only so I can go to another Ralph Lauren store or record shopping. Other than that, traveling is just like whatever to me. But I do miss the time being away from my wife and my daughters, that’s the downside. The upside is I’ll be able to go record shopping and get some new Ralph Lauren.
URB: Yeah, you’re known as someone with a huge collection of Ralph Lauren clothing. When you go on the road, how do you decide what comes with you?
88-KEYS: Oh, that’s easy. A lot of people, especially now it’s starting to seem like it’s sprouting up more and more, people are sending me video YouTube clips and photos of their friends wearing Ralph Lauren and stuff like that. The thing is what they’re doing is they’re just buying pieces which they consider hot and they put it all together like that. But me, I buy collections. I don’t mess with random pieces of Polo. I’ll do the research and I’ll know what collection is coming out before it comes out or when a collection comes out I’ll do the research on it, I’ll know the inspiration behind it, I’ll see what the look is, then I’ll decide whether that collection is for me or not. But basically I just go off the seasons. I’ll say, “It’s summer now so, okay, I’ll just pull out one of my summer collections.” And being that I wear my clothes from head to toe in the collection that it came from, it’s nothing for me to pick and choose what to wear, because everything goes within the same collection. Whether the color schemes are the same or not, as long as it’s in the collection, it’s a no-brainer to get dressed and layer it up. So I’ll just be like Okay, the Great Hangover Tour. It’s summer. I’m gonna go to one of my summer collections. Okay, “Blue Lake,” that’s coming with me. I just open up my closet and count the days I’m gonna be on the road, like Okay, I’ll be gone six days, I gotta take, like, eight outfits. And then just throw it in the bag.
URB: Do you have a favorite outfit, or is that impossible to choose?
88-KEYS: Yeah, it’s quite impossible [laughs]. I don’t have a favorite outfit or a favorite piece. I have one piece that I’m most proud of buying–it’s an Indian Point Striped Serrate Poncho. That’s only because it was a hard find, a rare piece that Ralph did a limited edition of, and it was a hard find. And also, the Ralph Lauren sales associates didn’t even know it existed. Yeah, I had to prove them wrong with that one.
URB: So aside from the producing and rapping, you also DJ, right?
88-KEYS: Yeah. Basically my DJ thing is I just play songs that I like to hear when I’m listening to albums at home. I rarely, almost never, play Top-40 stuff unless I truly like the song. So if you come to a party that I’m DJing, don’t run up on my like, You got “A Millie”? Me personally, I never liked that song. No disrespect to Lil Wayne, obviously he’s doing his thing and obviously he can rap, but I just never liked that song back when it came out or to this day. So I won’t play it, but I will play this song by The Game called “The Shit,” which is one of my favorite songs to play, because everyone thinks it’s this brand new song by The Game, when consequently it’s just a song on his album. It’s just that so many people are used to buying or listening to singles and keeping it at that. People rarely listen to albums anymore, so I’ll play album cuts that are so dope that people are like, Oh man, 88-Keys got the exclusive shit! I wonder if he produced this! Nope, I just listen to albums.
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