Outside the Lines With Rap Genius - Mr. Len Excerpt #1 - Instrumental Hip-Hop lyrics

Mr. Len: Me and El did this record, and it was the first of its kind for that time. And it got mixed reactions. You finish Funcrusher, and people are like, yo, the lyrics on that record are so crazy. And then we said, our next record doesn't have lyrics at all SameOldShawn: I can see how that would catch some people off guard ML: Yeah. Every now and then, I would take over 89.9 back in the day, and there was a caller that would call up, and he'd be like, "Len, you still owe me money back on that record, cause I bought that album and there was no lyrics on it at all." He was like, "I was not pleased." But I'm happy to say, it did start a trend. Producers don't get the same kind of attention that an emcee would. Even if producers have beef, there's no way to really get at another producer in a beat. It's like, "This kick is for you, b**h!" It's just not gonna happen So there's a lot of focus that's taken away from the music because people focus in so much on what's being said. So after us, you had the Spinna album, BBE did PeteStrumentals, then of course the biggest one would be Donuts. And DJ Shadow and all these cats had their joints. I thought it was dope, you know? But it's funny. Working on the EP I just finished, when I told Sussio I'm gonna do an instrumental record, he automatically thought of Donuts. And I was like, "Dude, I started this! Why would you think I'm gonna make a Donuts record?" So it's funny how it's evolved, or how the shift in thinking of what an instrumental record was or is. It went from what we did, from people not being totally happy, to, "Hey man, if your record ain't like Donuts..."