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Rapper Luke Sick and producer Vrse Murphy are real hip-heads, the type to make music together just for the love of expressing themselves. Sure, what they want to express – sex, drugs, alcohol and hip-hop – may be a little controversial, but they express it with an undeniable talent and sense of humour despite the subject matter. With the right tools behind them, Luke and Vrse, collectively known as Sacred Hoop, deliver their best album to date with Go Hogwild. Here, the duo eschew the lo-fi format of earlier recordings and come with a professional sound and enough catchy hooks that Sacred Hoop are unlikely to be ignored for much longer. And it's about time for these two, with a huge discography both as Sacred Hoop and as part of various collaborative projects spanning their more than ten years of making music. From Vrse-atile Authority to The Confirmed Bachelors, The Disturbers to Brougham, Miasmatice to The Hoop, LLC, it's time to delve into the myth that is the Hoop.


URBNET How did Sacred Hoop come together?
LUKE SICK I dropped out of college to go to Tucson, AZ to be a dishwasher and DJ for a rap group called Vrse-atile Authority. I'm sure you can guess who the front man was. We did some shows where Vrse would dress up as Colonel Sanders and rap to freaks about how he was gonna turn 'em out. Oak D the barber used to cut hair live on stage; we got footage of all this. Vrse WAS versatile; his talents had no limits. He rapped, played the trumpet, the drums, the harmonica, the piano and many other instruments, but his sampling was something else – it was amazing! Fon-douglas, original Hoop DJ, was in the crew as a rapper named Stax back then, and he introduced me to Vrse, who I thought was a arrogant drunk from the jump.

VRSE MURPHY And Luke's a fuckin' gutter-snob. So, it made it easy to get along and fuck shit up a lot. You heard of good-cop/bad-cop? It was like bad-drunk/worse-drunk.

LUKE Then I made a song with the then-bassist of Third Eye Blind, Jason Slater, who ended up being the producer of Brougham. It was called "Going Ape Shit," and it sounded a hella lot like a shitty version of "Mass Appeal" by Gangstarr. Then Vrse just said, "Fuck it, why don't you just be the rapper, I'll make the beats and we'll change the name to Sacred Hoop," which was already the name of me and Oak D's road-trippin' crew from back then. So I said, "Fuck it, I'm down," and that's kinda the attitude the crew's always had. We asked Fon not to rap anymore and made him the DJ, and he was like, "Fuck it, I'm down."



URBNET What is the meaning behind the name Sacred Hoop? Is it a good representation of the group?
LUKE My homeboy Ruddie Rudd, owner/operator of the Hump Hut in Palo Alto, CA, once used it as peer-pressure to get me to go on a senseless road trip to Tucson, AZ and back in 48 hours. He'd been watching Young Guns and Smokey and the Bandit back-to-back, and busts that speech that Emilio busts on Chavez when Chavez wants to do what his vision told him: to go west. But Billy wants [Chavez] to ride with him down the trail to old Mexico. He says, "If you leave now, you break our sacred hoop, 'cause we're pals," or something like that. It's all about fuck your responsibilities; let's get blurry and cause a ruck. As far as the native wisdom the name withholds, I like to refer to these two quotes from the Sioux priest Black Elk, and they hold significance for us because we view this shit as a way of life that deserves a spiritual equivalent:

"With this pipe," the Grandfather said, "you shall walk upon the earth, and whatever sickens there you shall make well."

Then a Voice said: "Behold this day, for it is yours to make. Now you shall stand upon the center of the earth to see, for there they are taking you." I was still on my bay horse, and once more I felt the riders of the west, the north, the east, the south, behind me in formation, as before, and we were going east. I looked ahead and saw the mountains there with rocks and forests on them, and from the mountains flashed all colors upward to the heavens. Then I was standing on the highest mountain of them all, and round about beneath me was the whole hoop of the world. And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being. And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy.



URBNET Why is so much of the Sacred Hoop background shrouded in fiction and exaggeration?
VRSE Facts? About Sacred Hoop? Aha! I love when the real heads say there are no facts about Sacred Hoop. It sounds so poetic and spooky, but they're absolutely right, of course, because there really aren't any, when you think of it. Not a one.

LUKE A very wise man, I don't know who but I'm pretty fuckin' sure he was Jamaican, once said, "Some mon just deal wit' information. An' some mon, him deal wit' the concept of truth. An' den some mon deal wit' magic. Information flow aroun' ya, an' truth flow right at ya. But magic, it flow t'rough ya."

VRSE That man was named Nernelly. He was a bush doctor in Jamaica back in '82.

LUKE Right, of course. This shit is as serious as having a baby born with a terminal disease. It takes a man with a severe constitution and a twisted sense of discipline. We are writing a particularly fucked up story here.



URBNET Why did you start Miasmatic Records?
VRSE We didn't think anybody else would put it out. We were on acid.

LUKE Oak D got tired of being the barber, and he used to roll with us everywhere anyway. So he said, "Fuck it, I'ma start a label, and fuck it, it's going to have a really impossible to pronounce name." So he did, and we put out a handful of releases under that heading. Those were good times, but then Oak D said, "Fuck it, I'ma have some kids." Sacred Hoop salaries are not enough to support drinking habits, lavish travel and child care as well. You kind of have to choose one or the other. And Oak D is one of the most successful men I know with the choices he decided to make and the steps he decided to take. His kids are a blessing.



URBNET Are you content releasing your own music or would you like to sign a deal with a large indie or a major label? VRSE We started The Hoop, LLC with our renegade financier, Dusty Melons. But, we need to get signed. Indie, major, whatever, let's just do it! Like they say in Half-baked: "No window love, go, go, go, b, sell weed…"

LUKE This new trend of self-promotion never really caught on with us. We were much more interested in being notorious rather than famous. It's always been the character of the group and our sound and what I brag about in the lyrics. And our whole lifestyle is incognito: bank robbers got aliases and hideouts, and so do we.

VRSE We're from the Ras Kass "Remain Anonymous" school of thought. We were Northern California indie12"-vinyl music renegades. We took that shit to heart. 'Cause when you press vinyl with samples on it, it's all for the heart. Shit, these days there aren't even enough people who own record players for a piece of vinyl to go platinum. It's like we're headquarters coding messages for only a select few thousand of secret agents in the know to receive. And don't get me started on the sampling laws that basically outlawed the art that we make.

LUKE Yeah, it's like we know our music is good enough and accessible enough to garner widespread appeal, but at the same time it's hard for two guys who came up in this shit the way we did, at the time we did, when there was an unspoken underground honor code to follow… it's hard for two old samurai like that not to commit seppuku, you know what I mean?

VRSE But we still really want a deal… fuck it, any deal.

LUKE I'm willing to settle for a large pizza and a reach around at this point.

VRSE Depends on the toppings.

LUKE If you view the whole thing like a cheesy '80s movie, and trust me we most definitely do, take the movie Roadhouse for example. We don't want to be like Patrick Swayze's character: mullet, philosophy graduate, coffee drinker, Tai Chi, refuses a local shot trying to impress the nurse who's stapling his knife wound. We want to be more like the character Sam Elliot portrayed in that movie: bonafide long-hair, wise old drunk that stays up all night trying to woo your lady and sounds cool when he's calling somebody a douche.

VRSE So we want any deal we can get, but we don't want to be Patrick Swayze.

LUKE Right.



URBNET Sacred Hoop continually work with the same artists. Do you prefer to work with familiar collaborators over new people?
LUKE Fuck a collabo. It's a bad vice and I have to work on it, but I'm greedy with verses. I got too many to squeeze other fools in. I'd rather do the whole album alone like Chill Rob G or Guru on Step in the Arena, but my friends are better than me at rapping, so I have to give 'em shine or the art would work against me. I'd work with somebody new if I was genuinely impressed with the way they ripped it, and it was convenient, and they were mellow to drink and smoke burner with. But I don't send shit through the Internet to people I don't know unless the beat makes me feel like the first time I heard "Rock the Bells" by Cool J, and that hasn't happened yet. Wait, what am I saying? We just said "Fuck it" and did two songs with this dude named Wax Factor from England on the beats - Vrse even raps a little bit. They are called "Ten Gallon Hat" and "Float Your Kegs." He's lagged on getting them out because he's had some health issues in his family, but they're coming so check for them. But I mostly keep my shit in the Gurp City set. Be on the lookout for the Hogs of Rap 12". Only 500 made, hand-screen-printed by Gurp City.

VRSE I'm doing a new project with Neila, but she's been a friend for longer than I can remember.



URBNET How did Z-Man get down with your crew?
VRSE He brought wine.

LUKE Him and Eddie K baptized us with Carlo Rossi, burgundy, and lead us to Gurp City.



URBNETVrse, what led to forming The Bachelors with Z-Man?
VRSE It's The Confirmed Bachelors now. Legally we can't be The Bachelors – already got one of those. After we did "N.O.H." for Cue's Hip Hop Shop Compilation and "Cremona" for Sleepover, both featuring Z-Man rapping alongside Luke, me and Z said, "Fuck it, let's record a whole album of shit." It's been recorded for awhile, but we've never officially released it. We recorded a few new tracks that will be added to the original ones and it'll officially be released in October.



URBNET Do you approach beat making for The Confirmed Bachelors differently from producing for Sacred Hoop? Or, do you just make the beats and decide where they'll go later?
VRSE Back in high school I used to get really hot chicks. My standards were high as hell. I used to hold open the door of the 7-Eleven and say, "Welcome to the home of the slurps!" I love observing Scottsdale apartment complex pool areas with binoculars from a high perch now; it soothes my Chi and pumps my 'nads. Yet lately, in the evening, you'll find me in the back bar with fatties on the prowl. I know a guy named Parrot who used to push his way to the front of a crowded bar, get a tall Jack and Coke and holler out, "Let the rapings begin!" He never got none, except for girls with so much acne-scarring that they looked like burn victims. I've had my share of burnies as well. Put it this way, metaphorically speaking: When I make a beat I try not to say, "Let the rapings begin" and scare off all the potential talent, but by the time I'm done with it, it's basically last call and I'm standing next to Parrot trying to see who can say "I can fuck yer muff" the loudest. Things just get crazy – beat, life, everything. It's not me, I swear.

LUKE Remember when Parrot used to say rape's a myth? He'd compare it to Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. That shit was so fucked up.

VRSE And about as funny as a t-shirt that says: Cancer Kills Grandmas Dead.

LUKE Serious.



URBNET Is it different making instrumental music for skate and snowboard videos compared to making beats for rappers?
VRSE That's kinda like asking do I sweat differently when jogging and lifting weights as opposed to playing a match of tennis. The only variable that ever has or ever will change the way a beat is made by me is the ebb and flow of my record collection, the stew pot I fill each particular bowl with. When I make snowboard music for my cousin "Double-Barrel" Darrell Mathes, who rides for VansSnow, I think of all the hot chicks who were ever impressed when I did a keg-stand because I know those are the types that Darrell likes to keep around his teepee.



URBNET Were the beats for the Sacred Hoop albums really recorded in exotic locals like the Bahamas, Mexico and Italy? Is travel an important part of your sound?
VRSE I've been and made beats in all those places you mentioned and other exotic locales and more than once in most places, [although] I'm sticking to the current history already recorded surrounding those albums. It is not my place to change prophecy; I'll leave that job to forces I know nothing about and have absolutely no control over. I will tell you that the beats for Hogwild were made in a beach-side condo in Hermosa Beach, CA called the Pink Taco. Luke came to Scottsdale and we wrote songs during nine months of Rap Camp, then we went back to Palo Alto to refine it and record it for real in a shithole where Luke was hiding out with the Disturbers. I guess travel is important when you keep getting kicked out of every place you choose to hang your hat. Like Fletch says: "I'm a man without a country, Frank."

LUKE My case is still pending, Vrse got off with a slap on the wrist.



URBNET You mentioned Rap Camp. You have a promotional video on your MySpace page for that. What is it?
LUKE It's a camp that Vrse runs every summer out in Scottsdale. It is invitation-only and the enrollment is a very low number. The video on MySpace was shot during a particular summer when Z, Ed, DJ Quest and I were all invited to this prestigious club to wreck shop. The song "Guerrilla Style Splash" came from that Rap Camp summer and a lot of drinking merit badges were earned. This year, I think only Neila has been accepted to flex skills – let's just say there's a rigorous application process that includes the hopeful applicant sending some less then flattering photos – but I'm sure greatness will ensue. I might have to make an appearance as a guest motivational speaker and veteran camper to encourage Neila to see it through to the end of camp because the session is one of toil and hardship. Vrse cracks a whiskey-soaked whip atop a desert boulder of rose quartz and it's on!



URBNET Who are the Disturbers, and what are they all about?
LUKE When I was doing the major label shit with Brougham, I wanted to do some grimy shit, too. So I'd go over to [the house of] my boy who made the beats, Nate Nitty, [who] is also called the Curator and is now employed as Vrse's freelance record finder across the nation, and wait for his mom to go to work and his brothers to go to school and then we recorded all those projects on a shitty digital eight-track. They are, officially: Moe's Strange Hobby, Anansi Spider (Nate got his body invaded by spirits when I was recording the lyrics for the track "Sadness," which became "D.S.L." on Sleepover), Kefu Qan and Negusa Negast. Nate is very spiritual on some fuck up your life with voodoo type shit. Kefu Qan, [which] means evil days – named after the worst famine in Ethiopian history – will give you bad luck if you listen to it. Straight up, I do not jest. I think it is out of stock right now. It's a hard thing to get your hands on and for good measure; no telling what would happen if that album fell into the wrong hands. The track "Cramp in Ya Action" from Hogwild first appeared in a different form on Anansi Spider. Disturbers is a gang, and they also help me with my practice tapes.



URBNET And how about Brougham?
LUKE Brougham got signed to Warner Bros. amidst the dotcom boom of the late-nineties/early-2000s when everybody and their grandma was getting a deal. We did the demos in two weeks – some of the songs were really great – and then the manager of Third Eye Blind got a hold of it and scored us a deal without ever playing a show. I wanted a DJ, but the label wanted me to have a band like Fred Durst – Kid Rock was in Top Dog limbo and Eminem hadn't come out yet; I didn't have Dr. Dre in my corner to convince the white people that a down-ass white boy could be a bonafide emcee, so I said fuck it and toured with the band and sabotaged the thing every chance I got. Made some good scratch though, and I still got mad love for the Brougham producer and my friend since seventh grade, Jason Slater. We did some new tracks recently: "New Robotic Dick," "Dancefloorgasm," "The Game Remains the Same," shit like that.



URBNET And finally, who is Eons One? And Luke, how did you hook up with him for Underbucket?
LUKE DJ Eons One's other name is Karate Dan. He was the guitarist in a hardcore thrash band called Spazz – Kool Keith mentioned them on Dr. Octagon. But, he's always wrote graffiti and been a beat-digger, a DJ and made beats on an MPC from way back. He's got that old traditional aesthetic. He's the type of guy who buys you a hoodie and Tim boots for your birthday with a card attached that says, "Time to put the armour back on!" Real grimy. He's from Redwood City and I'm from Palo Alto, so heads naturally know each other. He used to go to Cue's Hip Hop Shop all the time when the Bulletproof Scratch Hamsters reigned supreme. We also met at KZSU, the Stanford University radio station, back when that scene was poppin'.



URBNET Was it a one-off project or are there plans to work together again?
LUKE Yes, we are back in the lab with a project called Grand Invincible. We've already recorded an album's worth of songs. We just need someone to mix it. That shit is raw and dope. Think early-90s rap – our style is bonkers – Group Home Living Proof-type shit. It doesn't sound modern; it sounds like rap.



URBNET Is there any difference to writing and recording a Sacred Hoop album compared to these other projects?
LUKE Sacred Hoop is difficult 'cause you have to insist what you are doing is meaningful when everything around you says this is all for shits and giggles. The most impressive way to get your point across is to make no point at all and still effect change in the people who hear it. But that's all bullshit. I'm still just trying to sound like Guru, in the same way that Eric Clapton is trying to be Robert Johnson. Maybe that's how everybody's gonna see it in the long run, so why am I even bothering discussing it? I write like I puff herb: all the time, and it all just ends up blowing in the wind, dude.

VRSE Everybody's gonna say you just called yourself the Eric Clapton of rap. That probably wasn't too smart

LUKE Fuck it.



URBNET Why is Hump-Legg no longer available?
LUKE It's called Hoop-legg, but I like the way you're thinking. That CD was put out by the artist AyeJay, of Gangsta Rap Coloring Book fame. Hit him up at www.ayejay.com and demand a copy. That was a leak that only leaked a little while.



URBNET Why did you decide to re-release Bring Me the Head of Sexy Henrietta?
VRSE For the sake of maintaining an accurate and unabridged history on iTunes.

LUKE Fuck it, that song "Pregnant Toad" will probably end up saving our country from tyranny.



URBNET Go Hogwild sounds more professional with catchy production and hooks. What prompted this direction? Was it intentional?
LUKE When Vrse was scoring the hottest chicks he's ever scored, he was listening to albums by Tribe, the first Organized Konfusion, 360 by Grand Puba, Maxwell, Black Sheep, 3rd Base, Beastie Boys, Diamond D, Stunts, Blunts, and Hip Hop, all De La, first and second Brand Nubian, KMD, Mr. Hood etc. Shit like that. And a Sacred Hoop record takes a long time to make. So, if he was going to put that much time and effort into the thing, he wanted to just say fuck it and make an album that reminded him of a time when he was getting the good ones to keep his hopes up, so we aimed for an album with that kind of density and entertainment. So, yes, that was intentional. And the hooks? Well, I've been doing catchy hooks forever – go listen to "Bathtub Gin" off Retired. And the more professional sound comes straight from Dave Cooley, who mixes shit for the likes of Good Charlotte, but gave us the bro-deal 'cause he knows us from back in the Retired days. He's one of the most sought-after in his field right now, so you know he wasn't gonna serve us any bullshit. He mixed our shit so it could be played against shit like Gwen Stefani and Andy Gibb. Sacred Hoop has never been about not sounding good. Sacred Hoop has always been about shocking motherfuckers by doing things they wouldn't, couldn't, or think they shouldn't.



URBNET What's more important to Sacred Hoop: the comedy or the debauchery?
LUKE The weed.

VRSE And some decent chicks for once.



URBNET You write a lot about sex, drugs and alcohol but you don't use many dirty words that will keep you from getting radio play. Is this intentional? Is it hard to do with that subject matter?
LUKE Sometimes just the topics of sex, drugs and alcohol will get you banned from radio play and MTV shit. Our song "Jenna" off Hogwild where I date the first daughter and murk the President surely isn't gonna score us any points with Clear Channel.

VRSE Sacred Hoop is straight up seditious, and I think sedition is more terrifying to the status quo if you display it too them in a pretty package. It's like, "Wow, that sounds beautiful," but oh my god, it's so threatening. Like in that song "Lie, Cheat, Steal" off Hogwild, we match the beauty of a Rachmaninov concerto with a totally immoral sentiment, just to give those heartless fuckers back what they're trying to shove down our throats.

LUKE You can't pour fear-syrup on constitutionally abhorred prior restraint and call it airport safety pancakes without somebody noticing that you are totally full of shit. We noticed, and we're gonna show you what it feels like to be smiled at and fucked over at the same time with the only tools we thought it necessary to master: records and mics. Shit, look at the Alkaholiks' whole career. Their music was well-deserving of mainstream hype, but they stayed underground to the bitter end, mostly just because their name suggests recklessness. I heard recently J-Ro moved to Sweden.

VRSE Nice move; tits galore.

LUKE The Beatnuts were an original sound whose mainstream potential was sadly proven by J-Lo's theft of their "Off The Books" beat, but it's hard to earn that triumph when one of your most recognizable lyrics is, "A crazy rapist smellin' like much vagina." But as an underground head, that's what makes Beatnuts the fuckin' greatest, and same with the Wu-Tang Clan. And those are three groups that we were greatly inspired by, especially for the writing and recording of Go Hogwild. I guess Amy Winehouse is making it a little easier on all the drunks like us now, but I dunno. I don't really care if they play it on the radio or not. The rap I like wasn't not played on the radio because it was dirty, it wasn't played because the whole culture was not accepted by the mainstream at that time (can y'all put down your iPods long enough to remember the term "subculture"), so growing up I always thought it would be that way for our group, too. And I guess it has. Me and Vrse got our hands full just loading bowls and mixing enough drinks to keep these tunes churning out and that's what we're gonna keep focusing on. Someone else is gonna have to figure all that other shit out 'cause as far as Sacred Hoop is concerned: Fuck it man, it's not our bag.