The Hood Internet Interview: SXSW 2010

Chicago DJs The Hood Internet have made a name for themselves with an unusual method of creating music. Taking some of indie music's hottest names and mixing their music with hip hop's elite, Aaron Brink (aka ABX) and Steve Reidell (aka STV SLV) quickly established The Hood Internet as a creative force and innovators in the mash-up genre. It evolved from the duo's time in a Chicago art-pop band, and after spending time creating beats for some of their friends who were rappers, they decided to post music on their blog for themselves and their friends. The rest is music history. Spinner recently spoke with Reidell about the group's origins and its plans for SXSW.

How would you describe your sound in your own words?

I guess in layman's terms, The Hood Internet is a DJ/production duo. We have our blog where we post our mash-ups regularly, where commonly we'll take some Top 40 rap or maybe some underground hip hop and pair it up with beats constructed out of bands that we like or are listening to. People will say that it skews toward indie rock--and that's kind of a giant umbrella...I want to say it's not really the mainstream, although a lot of indie rock is that nowadays.

How do you come up with the idea of what you're going to do with particular songs? Like what you guys did with The Prairie Cartel...

Well, The Prairie Cartel in particular, a couple of years ago we did a whole mixtape of all Chicago artists paired up together. It's sort of home base, there's a lot of people here, a lot of talent. A lot of the people we had on that mixtape were already known, but there were a lot of people coming up--like The Prairie Cartel-- that we wanted to shed some light on. We're fans [of theirs] from being around the same music scene.

How did the idea for The Hood Internet come about? You guys are in another Chicago band together, correct?

Yeah, we played in a band called May or May Not. It was just kind of an arty pop band, six people, lots of layered harmonies and keyboards and stuff. Aaron and I had done some production, just for fun, making beats for friends that rapped. Just sampling...I remember making beats of the band Stars. It was like 2007, and we heard a lot of tracks--obviously, the Girl Talk record was huge at that point, but we had heard more remixey stuff...and thought we could do that.

It was really just intended for us, and for friends to get a kick out of early on. But we passed it around and it got some love from other music blogs, and that's how it kind of took off and became what it is.

Live DJing happened a few months into that, when a friend from Chicago was like, "Hey do you ever DJ this stuff live?" "Well, we could try..."

How did you come up with your band name?

It's actually a line from a movie. Are you familiar with the rapper Cam'ron? Most rappers nowadays will have some sort of companion movie to some album. His movie Killa Season, there's like this opening montage where he's introducing all the characters, and this one guy--and this is funny because all of the other guys you see in the movie except for this one guy--and he's like, "He's like the hood internet. Anything you need to know, he's your dude." We were just blown away by that phrase: "the hood internet."

What's your favorite thing about playing during SXSW?

I'm a big fan of food, and Austin has some great places...but food aside, almost any band you could want to see is playing one or more shows.

Are there any other bands are you are looking forward to seeing during SXSW?

I love it when there's new stuff coming out. We're going to try to catch Broken Bells this year.

What do you consider to be your primary musical influences and how do these play into the music you make?

I think that, in particular, The Hood Internet is influenced by the Dirty South, Memphis, Cash Money Records, Three 6 Mafia...all the major West Coast and East Coast rappers like, of course, Dr.Dre, a lot of classic hip hop, stuff from all over, from the Midwest and Chicago...

And then from the other end of the spectrum, if you want to call it the other end, we love stuff like Broken Bells, Caribou, and a lot of stuff like these modern producers that are sort of embracing a lot of dance music...

What's your musical "guilty pleasure"?

My real feeling is that guilty pleasures are just over, you know?

Beatles or Stones?

Oh jeez. It's funny, I grew up listening to the Beatles because my folks were big Beatles fans, and particularly McCartney and Harrison, we had all those records too. And I love that stuff to death, and I would always say that it was because of the production and the layering was far ore advanced than the Stones. But one night I was real high and watched Gimme Shelter, and I was like, "Maybe I'm going to change my mind on this."

I guess if I had to pick, if I could only do "desert island" albums of one band, I'd probably go with the Beatles. But that doesn't mean I don't got love for the Stones.

Other than SXSW, what do you have planned for 2010?

Right after SXSW, we're doing a little west coast tour with Tobacco...We've been sort of working on a record, and we will be most of this year and maybe into next year of we don't finish it this year. But we're sort of making an original record, no mash-ups involved, probably not even any heavy sampling involved...We're getting sort-of guest musicians, people we've met along the way, to contribute. So that's in the works. We're also doing a 7-inch with a rapper from Chicago called Kid Static...

David A. Cobb is a contributor from Seed.com. Learn how you can contribute here.