T.I.: You recently released your first album, Lexicographic Lint, about two months ago. Tell me a little about your musical background leading up to the album.
K.R.: I remember listening to Pink Floyd's "On the Run" when I was a kid and thinking that helicopters were really cool. Then I started banging on my grandma's piano. My brother and me formed a group in the 1980's called The Idiots and we did a lot of banging on sheets of aluminum and boxes and things. We recorded like six or seven albums worth of stuff. Then I ate a lot of macaroni and cheese and did a lot of whooshing. I did some solo stuff and then I went to college and forgot about a lot of things. I remember collecting thumbtacks for some reason and there was all this stuff about Fortran and crap. Then I made Lexicographic Lint.
T.I.: When you were with The Idiots, did any of it get released? I've never heard of them.
K.R.: I don't think so. They're on K-Mart tapes.
T.I.: What did The Idiots sound like? What were their influences?
K.R.: The Idiots sounded like a rumbling of crumpled aluminum and when we added boxes, it sounded like a rumbling of crumpled aluminum with somebody banging on boxes with a ruler. We had a rubber band guitar but you couldn't hear it with all the noise, so I think I recorded it by itself and then played it over the stereo with enough volume to even it out. I'm not certain as to what we were influenced by. My guess would be a combination of Sesame Street, toilets, and spending too many hours watching the trash trucks pick up trash.
T.I.: Where did you come up with the name "Superluminal Pachyderm?"
K.R.: I thought of it when I was doing a poop. I was reading an article about superluminal motion in the universe and I thought that "superluminal" sounded like a cool word. Then I thought about a noun to attach to it and for some reason "pachyderm" kept coming to the front of my brain.
T.I.: While you were doing a poop?
K.R.: Yeah. I don't remember anything else.
T.I.: How did you come up with the title for your first album?
K.R.: It was the name of the first solo work I did after The Idiots.
T.I.: Were you doing a poop when that idea happened?
K.R.: I don't think so. It could've been a diarrhea or one of those times you think you have to poop but all you do is fart. Really, I can't remember.
T.I.: Hmmmmm... Well, what is "Lexicographic Lint" about?
K.R.: It's about finding words and how the act of finding them provides a causal relationship with the quantum underdepths of everything we attach to the environment surrounding us and what we are here for.
T.I.: Is there an overall concept to the album?
K.R.: Not anymore than a telephone book has. I guess when I think about it, it has a lot to do with the labeling and dating of paper towel tubes. But you have to remember that we can find coal veins and samples of things coming out of the bag of diacritics. I've wondered often about buses.
T.I.: I see... How has the press reacted to your debut album?
K.R.: I don't know. Like a bunch of bananas and stuff. Somebody told me they listened to "Can't Get Nothing" and they were not sure where I was going with this stuff. I would have to agree.
T.I.: Do you plan on doing a tour?
K.R.: No, I don't do that. Sometimes you end up sitting next to somebody that stinks. I would much rather drive myself and see things and look for stuff. When you're on a bus, you never know where you'll end up.
T.I.: What do you think of music today?
K.R.: Well, it usually sounds just like it did yesterday, but sometimes I'll notice something that I forgot to notice the day before. So I guess sometimes you never know.
T.I.: No, I mean what is played on the radio these days. Or what is being played on MTV.
K.R.: I don't listen to the radio. I haven't listened to it since like 1989 or something. It stunk back then. I don't know if it still stinks. If it's anything like what I saw on MTV, then I'd have to say it stinks. It seems like when you take the video away, there isn't anything left. It's like the video is central and the music takes a background role. I think I'd have more fun looking for tennis balls I rolled down the sewer. All I ever watched on MTV was Beavis and Butthead.
T.I.: Where do the ideas for your music come from?
K.R.: Pretty much the air and my brain I think. Some of these ideas have been recycled by my earlier stuff, but back then I think it was more air than brain. I noodle around on the computer for awhile and sometimes something happens, but then sometimes nothing happens. Sometimes I clock around a lot.
T.I.: Clock around?
K.R.: You know. You look at the clock and when the number changes you blink real hard and an idea happens and if you remember it you act on it or forget about it. But if you forget about it before it happens you have to wait for the numbers to change again. Then you blink real hard and try again. I do a lot of forgetting on weekends. Still, I did do the whole thing in about five months. So there were blinks that held real well. You never know what might happen in a brain. I remember having sore eyelids a lot.
T.I.: You mentioned before that today's music videos are the focus instead of the music. Do you have any plans to make music videos and how would you do it differently?
K.R.: I have no plans to make music videos. If I did, my guess is it would be full of rugs singing and lots of scenes of people doing what would seem to be simple things in a very complicated manner. I thought it would be interesting to drive a car two feet ahead and then back it up one foot out of a parking lot. If I could make it take 18 minutes to get out of the parking lot I would have a video for "Trail to Grytvikken."
T.I.: Why did you make "Trail to Grytvikken" so long?
K.R.: When I first made "Trail to Grytvikken" it timed in at over 32 minutes long. I just kept adding more and more to it. But unfortunately it wouldn't fit on the CD and I had to cut it down to 18 minutes.
T.I.: What's it about?
K.R.: It's about the wasteland of politics and all the crap that is fed to us to the point that we have no idea what anybody has done or what they will do. It's also about bookcases and public bathrooms and stinky socks.
T.I.: What is the significance of the sphere that is represented on the album's artwork.
K.R.: It's the digested remains of a salad. It cements our connection with the outer areas where there is an Oort Cloud and our inner areas where gas is constantly bubbling up or down, whichever the case may be. It's also symbolic of our future need to have more letters added to the alphabet and a gentle nudge to a base 17 system and having clothes hampers in our living rooms.
T.I.: Is it common for you to answer many of the media's questions with cryptic or goofy answers?
K.R.: Commonalities can be divisible to the point of being like a hand-operated can opener.
T.I.: Thanks for your time and best of luck for your Superluminal Pachyderm project.
K.R.: Thanks for the peanut butter.