+questions. answers.

van hunt
singer. songwriter

“There is a certain liberating feeling that comes when you realize that whether radio is gonna play you or not, your gonna have to write this song…and that definitely is prevalent on this record. My musician friends who wouldn’t bullshit me at all have told me “it does sound like you decided to be you.”
Van Hunt

Van Hunt dares to be naughty, nice & downright nasty with his latest album Jungle on The Floor, which blazed to #1 on Billboard’s Heatseekers Chart and preserved Hunt’s nonpareil status as the hottest “Pop” star to surface since Jimi Hendrix. Hunt, best describes himself as “A Pop Artist…” who laughs & smiles when often compared to Prince, and refers to himself as “The next Dionne Farris.”

In a recent interview Hunt, took time out from his current tour with Anthony Hamilton to chat with Nat Creole about his latest album and the Van Hunt experience.

When did you first tap into this music you have inside?

It’s always been there. I remember first tapping into when I was about seven. I started taking saxophone lessons, my moms friend started giving me voice lessons, and my cousin taught me how to play the drums.

How many instruments do you play?

Well, I play all of the instruments that people normally play to make their music (guitar, bass, drums, and keys). But I messed around with the saxophone and studied it for about a year but I’ve long since walked away from it. It just doesn’t feel right in your mouth, and all that vibrating in your mouth, (laughs) that’s not cool.

Atlanta was the place in the late eighties-early nineties, where artist from all over the US flocked to. Were you a part of that central “Earthseed” collective of artists and musicians ( India Arie, Donnie, etc…) in Atlanta in the early nineties?

No, I wasn’t, not at all…I wasn’t really a believer in that scene, that’s not the way I came up. In Dayton, you could be a drug dealer, you could rob people, or you could stay in school and get out of there, you could play basketball or you could make music, there were like five choices you had. But getting together with your friends and calling it some type of collective and living in some type of nirvana, I just wasn’t a believer in that. Now I’ve gained respect for something like that, but at the time, when I came to Atlanta I was like nah that some type of bullshit right there. You got to get on this hustle, and do other things. I avoided all of that, and I stayed in my basement just trying to make music.  

What drew you to Morehouse?

Really, I was only there for three months, the rest of the time I was in the piano room…but I tried hard for three months (laughs), then I was like whatever because I really wanted to get into music. And the Hip Hop scene was brewing up all around me, I really felt like I could be successful in it…I just didn’t know where I could fit in though, and I never really did fit in. By the time I found my nitch in the Hip Hop world it switched. It went from the BLACK SHEEP era to like the P-Diddy, Master P era. I couldn’t get into that scene cause it wasn’t about the music anymore. It had kinda flipped the same way that R& B did.

I remember it flipping before P Diddy, like around the time NWA and Luke Skywalker surfaced.  

To me though, Luke Skywalker was always just obviously entertainment. Cause he was even there during the Mobb Deep & Black Moon era when Hip Hop was at its most artistic. It (Hip Hop) just went in another direction and I was like ‘see I was barely hanging on before, now y’all really went somewhere else’…I just said I can’t do it and I went back to my roots, which is just doing music…I said, ‘I’m gonna have to sing’ cause I couldn’t find anyone that could pull off what I heard in my head. I got a job playing on the tour band with Dionne Ferris and from there my musical experience just grew.

You wrote songs for Dionne also?

Well not at the time, when I met her I was just a kid. I had just walked out of Morehouse, and so I needed to do something, she came and saw this band that I was playing in. I was just playing keyboards and singing a little bit…and she said, ‘we really need somebody who plays keyboards and guitar’… I was like “I don’t play guitar”… Well I didn’t tell her that. I went to a friend who played guitar and he taught me the song that they wanted me to audition with. I learned that song, there was just two little riffs…I whipped out the two little riffs and I sang really loud, and she was like, ‘”ok I ‘ll take you out on the road.” And her real guitar player introduced me to the music of Sly, and that just changed everything, it legitamized everything for me… I was like that’s what I’m talking about that’s what I hear in my head.

So you just went from playing piano, to feeling your way around on the guitar, to needing a gig, to actually saying to yourself ‘I gotta learn this music’ and landing the gig. That’s dope, that’s real determination.

Yeah cause the music was always in my head. I always knew that it was gonna be great if I could ever get it out. I was just too lazy. I grew up like most inner city kids who just don’t see music as a legitimate way to get out. It’s either you hit somebody over the head and rob them or you do the school thing and get out.

Which songs did you write for Dionne?

Well I wrote lots of songs for her but the first song they put out was “Hopeless” (featured on the movie soundtrack “Love Jones”). I wrote “Hopeless” when I was living on this dude’s couch and he had a studio in the back… I would just sit there everyday and just play and try to figure out what I was gonna do. One day I was watching this bird and a squirrel and they were out there just chasing each other, and I remember thinking I aint never seen a bird and a squirrel play like that before…and for some reason those chords just popped up that day and I put that song together.

That must be a great feeling as a songwriter to have a great singer adapt your song?

For me its pretty surreal, and so much so where I’m numb to it. I really don’t pay attention to that. I remember when I picked up Rahsaan Patterson from the airport one day and we were supposed to work. I played him a couple things that I had that I’d been working on and he was like yeah I wanna do both of those. And at the time it was kinda shocking, but at the same time I just took it in stride. The process of giving birth to these songs is what’s really wakes me up. That’s what I live for. That’s what I really enjoy doing.

What is your writing process like?

There’s always something going on inside my head, which is why I love silence. I don’t really listen to much music or like to be around a lot of loud noises. Cause there’s just too much going on inside my head to be around that. So I like taking drives, and it usually begins with a long drive. And so, I just jump into my car.

How did your creative process this time around compare to the first album?

I wasn’t really free on this project cause I didn’t sell enough records the first time to like gain freedom, if you will, where I could just go into the studio and not have to worry about someone looking over my shoulder. And at the time when I made this record, I wasn’t strong enough where I could say f*$k anyone who’s trying to look over my shoulder and decide I’m just gonna do this. Fortunately I was in a position where the producer they hooked me up with just pretty much let me do my thing and gave me room to work. And the label respected him so much that they didn’t interfere with it as much. So it was a situation where I could create but I wasn’t really free. I’m still waiting to see what happens when I feel real free.

I hear people compare you to Prince, Smokey Robinson, Curtis Mayfield, Rick James, Sly…What artists influenced your sound?

The only real influences I have are Sly and Prince. The ones that I can tell, they just come through me. Even in terms of the way that I model my career certainly has something to do with Sly and Prince. And that’s just based on business cause I see it took them awhile to nurture a sound. It also took them a while to breakthrough in the market. So I just figure I should follow that model since it’s gonna take me a minute to break into the market too. But sound wise it would have to be Sly Stone and Thelonius Monk. That’s what I hear the most in my music.

I’ve heard people struggle to define Neo-Soul. I’m not really sure what the word is supposed to mean. In your opinion, what is Neo-Soul?

Well, Soul is just something…people do have to come up with a brand that they can sell. So I understand that they want to call any black artist that ain’t rapping Neo Soul and they hesitate to call them a Pop artist.

Well anything other than Rap or Hip Hop is alternative and Neo Soul just means you’re eclectic and really artsy.

Yeah, and I don’t really dig that. You know at heart I’m a Pop artist, there’s no doubt about it. Particuarly, if you listen to the first song off my first record. I don’t think there’s more of a Pop song coming form a black artist since Dionne Ferris that I know of. We’re still friends and I always kid her about that and say ‘if you’d only done two more records I would have no problem and people would understand exactly what I want to do.’

When they call me the new Prince I always laugh cause I’m like I’m really the new Dionne Ferris. Cause that was really the beginning of the modern era of what it really is to be riding the fence of a lot of different genres. The artists that they compare me to in the Neo Soul thing, I just don’t hear it. There are obviously some similarities and D’Angelo would be the forefather of that thing, and to me he’s super talented. I love D’Angelo. He brought Soul music into the modern era and I don’t think that you should call it Neo Soul. That just seems like a light dis.

Where are you headed on your next album?

Where I’m going. I’ve finished about eight songs already. I write all the time. It sounds like Fela Kuti with The Beach Boys. Brian Wilson, if you could imagine putting lyric and melody on top of those rhythms that’s what it sounds like.

The way you describe it, that sounds like it could be good soundtrack music.

Well ultimately, that’s what I am I think. Some guy who writes scores or something, just looking at life and putting chords to it. You know that’s just how I see it.

What song comes to mind if you had to name the soundtrack of your life?

The Beach Boy’s “God Only Knows” and the Carpenters’ “Close To You.” I just wanna bring that kinda music over to funk. I started off this record saying I wanna put the JB’s with Neil Young, or the JB’s with Karen Carpenter.

If you were to put together a jam session with any musicians you wanted, who would you have on bass, guitar, drums and keys?

On bass would be Curtis Whitehead, who happens to be in my band. He helped me write about three or four songs on this record and the first record. He plays like James Jamison from the Motown era and he is the closest to that I’ve heard. I mean it’s just in him. Guitar, I’d have to say I’d need two guitars, Paisley, who’s also in my band Girus and he’s incredible. Drums, shit you got me, Lorenzo Lighthead on drums. Keyboards, would have to be me & D’Angelo… you know D’Angelo can chop it up. Vocalists, I’d go get Bilal & Rahsaan and just let them battle it out and holla. And in between the spaces we’d have Jill Scott just come in and do her thing.

That would be a mean show!

Yeah it would be incredible.