Interview: Mazbou Q

In February 2020, Hugh Ozumba and I were surrounded by the purple walls of the Radio BurgerFuel studio in that twilight zone of covid denial - several weeks before it hit the shores of Aotearoa. He introduced us to Mazbou Q, the next iteration of his journey as a musician. The following four years have been “incredible” (his words), and while Mazbou Q is going nowhere, he has risen again, Phoenix like, but without the ashes.

“I never set out to be The Rap Scientist. It just fell into my lap and I was actually in two minds about how far I should take it,” says Mazbou Q while explaining how his alter-ego emerged as a way to market his music. Ironically, four years later, that’s exactly what is happening. 

"My thinking was, let me talk about the way I approach flow in this song of mine, so that people can listen to the song, right? But it turns out people just love the way I communicated ideas around rap flow, so I kept making videos about that and all of a sudden people would call me the Rap Professor, or the Rap Scientist, and my social media started to really blow up."

This unexpected turn of events led to some soul-searching. Mazbou Q says he was thinking, “This is cool, but I kind of want people to listen to my music.” And at this stage, the attention on social media wasn’t translating to streams on Spotify.

“So, I was wrestling with how much I should lean into this Rap Scientist thing. Eventually I was like, ‘you know what, any publicity is good publicity.’ It can't hurt to be known as a rap scientist. It's still very much within the realm of music and I'm still getting to demonstrate my skills as a musician.”

As he leaned into it, Mazbou explains that it was just an online thing with people saying, “Hey, he's that TikTok or Instagram guy.” It took a couple of years before the real potential behind this idea started to appear.

“It did seep into real life when a viral music theory page on Twitter called Threatening Music Notation found one of my one of my posts on TikTok and posted it onto Twitter. This is something that you wouldn't think existed, but it does. And a lot of professors, music scholars, and students follow that page.”

“All of a sudden I had a bunch of music professionals starting to follow me. That's when I realised, OK, this is more than just being a TikTok guy because I'm starting to be connected to universities.”

“I had the idea, what if I just asked some of those professors in America who contacted me on Twitter if I could come to your uni and speak? Turns out a few of them were actually quite keen. So, that's what happened towards the end of last year. I ended up going to Louisiana State University, Southern University, Harvard and Berkeley and I did these lectures.

“It meant I had to create an hour-long presentation from the material that I had been putting out on social media. They were so happy to have me talking to them about my ideas around music theory and rap flow. And I was able to use some of my music as a vehicle for that.”

I was finally able to do that whole rap science thing, but also to be like hey ‘I'm a practitioner of this, check out what I'm doing.’ Since then it's just been incredible. Social media has continued to blow up and I've had some really notable followers on Instagram that have lifted my profile quite a lot. I'm just riding the wave.”

After returning to the US a few months ago - he was invited back to Berkeley College of Music to run workshops at a summer camp, and also at the Hip Hop Congress annual conference. “They're a group of educators who found me on Instagram and thought that I’d fit right in!”

It was here that Mazbou Q noticed some real differences between NZ and the scenes in the US, saying, “the main thing that struck me is the age of people immersed in hip hop culture over there. I’m 35 and I was one of the youngest people at the Congress. But it makes a lot of sense that people would be 40 plus, because hip hop is around 50 years old. So a lot of these people grew up with this. It was their pop culture.”

“A lot of these older people were wearing these 90s and early 2000s streetwear. Over here, if you saw that, you'd be like, ‘this old dude’s trying to be young’. But, for them, this is just what they wear.”

“I actually felt a lot more comfortable there. Doing music here in New Zealand, I'm starting to feel like I'm an uncle, you know? Me still pushing this music thing feels like I'm that old generation. But when I go to America, I'm still very much a part of what's going on. Like, when I went to a club night in Boston. I was shocked to see 40-50 year olds getting down to Not Like Us by Kendrick - like the whole club was old. I was like, yo, this is weird, but it’s actually kind of cool.”

I asked Mazbou if any of this education and teaching crossed his mind when he made his first videos? “None,” comes his response. “Literally, it was me trying TikTok because I didn't know what to do on it. It was definitely not that deep and it's kind of shown me that I shouldn't hold too tightly on to my vision.”

“This rap science thing. It opened up because I'm someone who I've always been, someone who loves communicating knowledge. You know what I'm saying? If you go back to my old Unchained XL discography, you'll see songs like Pass It On, which is literally me talking about passing knowledge on. So this has always been a part of who I am.” 

“This rap science thing might finish tomorrow, but as long as it speaks to the core of who I am, I'm probably gonna go there. I don't know where I'm gonna end up though you know.”

This is where the next evolution of Mazbou Q came from. The wondering and desire to find out how he could turn half a million followers online into something more that he could benefit from. He has recently launched his Intro To Rap Flow online course, bringing together everything he has taught and learnt.

“I gotta be honest with you. It's not a huge passion of mine to make these digital products and sell them. It's probably why it took me so long to make the course and why it's not every post on my feed.”

“I realise it needs to be done, but it's not the core of who I am. I do get a few sales a day and I'm open to working with sales people who might want to take charge of that and really push it. But I'm cool if that manages to give me money so that I can continue doing what I love to do, you know?”

He’s philosophical about the sacrifices he made to get this course done. “Everyone has seasons anyway, as a musician, you're not always in writing or touring mode. Sometimes when you've been doing lots of writing and recording, then lots of shows, I just chill.”

My chill is like, I've released this music, now I'm gonna do something else. Some of it is out of necessity, but I've got ADHD. So I literally just want to do things.”

The latest Mazbou Q release is called Cryptography, it’s part of a set of music that ties into The Rap Scientist project, which brings it full circle to where it started - wanting to promote his music.

“At the start of this year I thought, Why don't I just make music for the purposes of demonstrating the kind of stuff that I'm teaching? Because that was already really freaking popular. I can drop a video about polyrhythms and it can get a million views. So why don't I just put that on my music?”

“Cryptography is part of this series of songs that have these scientific titles. So that's me being The Rap Scientist and I'm teaching you stuff about rhythm. Here's the example. You see all that displacement, you see all that syncopation, all that swing, all that polymeter stuff that I'm talking about? It's in here. This is it right here.”

“Then when I go and make those videos, I can actually use my music and don't have to fish through to find where those examples are. I'm writing the music for that purpose. It's still a genuine expression of who I am, it’s still the same kind of things I talk about. But now I'm just being more intentional about the flows and what I'm doing in terms of the beat and the instrumentals.”

“I've got another one coming out in October and I'm getting to the point now where I think that album is probably finished. At which point I am interested in doing a hybrid kind of interactive style performance setup where it's more than just playing.”

I wanted to know if all this teaching and creating has taught Mazbou Q anything about his own music?

“Yeah, it has. Ironically, it kind of showed me that my music is probably over-engineered. Not in terms of being overproduced. I mean like how I think, OK, these bars need to be symmetrical here. This needs to line up with this. This rhythmically needs to do this.”

“And it's made me realise, I actually need to be intentional about striking that balance between being technical and just letting things be a bit messy and letting things be a bit vulnerable and letting things be not perfect, right? It’s a challenge for me. I studied computer engineering at university, so I really have that kind of thinking ingrained in me.”

“People are free flowing and going with the flow of vibes, which is great. But, I'm challenging people to be more intentional about their technicality, right? Here I am saying, why don't you just pay attention to some technical stuff and you might elevate your craft.”

“This whole process has shown me the other way, like, maybe you should just relax sometimes. Step away from the technical stuff and then just be free.”

As well as a new single due in October, Mazbou Q is also going international again. Firstly to perform at the African Music & Cultural Festival in Melbourne, and possibly testing the Rap Scientist live concept with some local artists.

He’ll finish the year going back to some universities in the US to do some teaching in December. “I've also linked up with a professor from Borough of Manhattan Community College, who received a grant so we can do some music together and explore a collaboration between rap and jazz,” he says. A US gig is also in the offering, as well as some summer shows in NZ.

And then? The plan seems to involve, “Pushing the connections a bit further, getting some more high profile collaborations and co-signs. And being able to do this stuff at different universities.”

“Really just taking what I'm doing now higher. That's what I'm thinking. But as I said, who knows what happens next week, you know?!”