OK, let’s play a little game of ‘guess who’. He’s from the States. He started Jurassic Five along with Ozomatli. He’s worked with everyone from DJ Shadow to Blackalicious, as well as releasing his own solo material, and he’s about to head back to our shores one more time. Give up? It’s Cut Chemist of course, and with his upcoming Australian tour in support of De La Soul just around the corner, ITM got on the phone to have a chat with the famous beatmaker to sift through his thoughts.

From the first few minutes of talking to Lucas MacFadden AKA Cut Chemist, it’s instantly obvious this man has a passion for music, a passion he’s not entirely in control of. We start discussing the topic of his apparent workaholism, but he’s quick to dismiss this assumption. “If only you could be a bug on the wall you wouldn’t say that. I’d say I’m more schizophrenic than anything. I get bored real easy so when I work on something for a while, I have to do something else. It keeps me interested in music cause it can get boring very fast for me.”

It’s unsurprising then that when you look at what he was going in his early 20s, he was playing in multiple bands as well as DJing and studying. “At that time I was in Ozomatli, Jurassic 5 and doing Cut Chemist stuff, and I was used to that. Now that I’ve left Ozomatli and I’ve left J5 and it’s just kind of me floating around in space all by myself, it’s kind of tough to keep motivated and interested because I don’t have those other groups to keep things fresh,” he confides.

“I think that what was so special about it was that I never even thought these groups would go on to be as successful as they were. They were certainly a lot of fun to play in though and that’s why I did it. They were pretty much started at the same time, J5 formed in ‘94 and Ozomatli in ‘95. One weekend I’d be doing shows with Ozomatli, driving up and down California and the next week I’d be with J5 at a talent show or something. It was all very crazy, I mean I also had a residency DJing at some club and I was going to school, I look back at it and I’m like, how did I do all that stuff.”

While he was undoubtedly busy juggling all these projects it turns out that leaving them proved harder than expected for MacFadden. “I went through a whole bunch of strange mental breakdowns because I never had to work by myself before, I’d always had all these different people to bounce off. It was nice to have a break, but I definitely prefer working with other people.”

When it comes to working with other people MacFadden is sort of spoilt for choice having worked regularly with both DJ Nu Mark and DJ Shadow. “Nu Mark and Shadow are really good people to partner up with,” he exclaims. “They’re really good at what they do and it forces me to be better. With both of those teams we build off each other and kind of out do each other, you know friendly competition. Like, I’ll drop something and Shadow’ll be like ‘oh man that scratch solo was dope let me see if I can out do that’ and then he does so I have to top that and then before you know it we’re on the top of this mountain just looking down.”

With a career that spans over 14 years, MacFadden has not only worked with some of the most popular and influential artists in hip hop, but he has also seen the genre change and evolve from it’s underground beginnings to it’s mainstream status today. “I think the underground versus mainstream thing is sort of dissipating, the lines are kind of being blurred with the internet and downloading. I see hip hop kind of blending itself with all the other genres at the moment, it’s just kind of becoming a texture for all these other genres. I mean it will always be its own genre, but I just think it’s permeating into all music, and I think that’s good because it will be harder to kill that way, it’s like a chameleon, it’ll adapt itself to whatever environment it finds itself in.”

“You can really see that in the indie rock movement, there’s more hip hop appeal in it. Besides when you’re in the clubs you see the rock kids are dancing to hip hop records and hip hop kids are getting down to rock records. It’s all just sort of blending into one.”

Cut Chemist tours with De La Soul:

Sun April 26 – Metro City, Perth
Thu Apr 30 – Esplanade Hotel, Melbourne
Fri May 1 – Esplanade Hotel, Melbourne
Sun May 3 – Big Top, Brisbane
Tue May 5 – Metro Theatre, Sydney