XLR8R: What inspires you in your day-to-day life?
Madlib: Being alive. Good trees.. family and friends.
Prefuse 73: I say people. Mostly always people.
Madlib: Friends. And enemies.
Prefuse 73: True. Mine goes back to people. Anything I make, I'm always thinking of a person.
Madlib: Yeah, an alien. Other beings.

XLR8R: Otherworldly beings?
Madlib: Yeah, other worlds.

XLR8R: Do you think smoking weed influences your work?
Madlib: Nah, I'd be the same regardless. It's just something I like to do. Wake up, go out, go to sleep-it's just like eating.
Prefuse 73: Yeah, I'm a coffee fiend. I used to smoke weed every day, now it's coffee. It's just as evil. Coffee is like bad, weed is chill.

XLR8R: Does you guys have a muse?
Prefuse 73: A person that inspires, like one person?

XLR8R: Yeah. A girlfriend, or wife or child?
Prefuse 73: I used to, I don't have a girlfriend anymore.

XLR8R: Madlib?
Madlib: My daughter. She's like me, we're like twins. She's trying to do her thing too, make beats and stuff or whatever.

XLR8R: How old is she?
Madlib: Seven. I didn't tell her to, she just did.
Prefuse 73: That's dope.

RJD2: That's hot.
Madlib: I bought her a drum set so she could play the drums. I play my drums, she plays hers. She's got badder rhythms than my homies.

XLR8R: Would you like her to be a musician when she grows up?
Madlib: No. Well, if she wants to.

XLR8R: Why not?
Prefuse 73: You don't wish this hell on anyone?
Madlib: Yeah, exactly, but if she wants to...
Prefuse 73: I think people think you make music and it's just easy and you get paid tons of money.

RJD2: You do get paid tons of money. I saw how much you got paid last night!
Prefuse 73: [laughing] Me? I didn't get paid shit last night! Oh yeah, I had my CDs. I just made some custom-made CDs-had some CDRs, drew on them, made some money.
Madlib: There you go, that's what I'm trying to do.

XLR8R: Do you guys want to speak on biters?
Madlib: No.
Prefuse 73: No.

RJD2: Why, you got a guilty conscience?
Prefuse 73: [laughing] No! Well, I had people say "Sorry I bit you on that track."

RJD2: So, now you're gassed up, think you're hot shit?
Prefuse 73: No, no, no, not like that! Hold on, we have to go outside for one second! No, biters-it's flattering and it's not flattering. I mean, once you hear [someone bite your track], it makes you do something different. Not different-you just want to evolve on what you started to do.

XLR8R: So, in some ways it's a good thing.
Prefuse 73: Yeah, I think it could probably push you if you hear 10,000 records that sound like yours.

XLR8R: Do you want a mainstream hip-hop audience to be listening to your beats, to be buying your records?
Madlib: I want people who love music in general to buy my stuff. That's how I am, I'm not just hip-hop-people that like good music period.
Prefuse 73: Me too. I want the crowd at my show to be across the board. Hip-hop heads, cool, whatever, jazz heads, indie rock heads-just if they're into the music. And the diversity of the crowd, which is what makes a show better anyway. I mean you got all these people in one place, and they're just amped on the music and that's dope.

XLR8R: You both do projects with emcees and vocalists, what's a dream project for you? Or someone you'd really love to work with?
Prefuse 73: (laughing) Just Ice.
Madlib: Herbie Hancock.
Prefuse 73: Oh, not just emcees?
Madlib: Oh, emcees? Whatever.

RJD2: You don't like emcees anymore?
Madlib: Ain't nobody making me go "Ohhh!"

XLR8R: Nobody?
Madlib: Nope.

XLR8R: That's depressing.
Prefuse 73: So, you're not a 50 Cent fan?
Madlib: I wasn't trying to hear it, but I heard it. It's cool if you're partying, but I'd rather listen to some Thelonious Monk, that's what I bump. All day.

XLR8R: You both record under different aliases and release side projects, and I'm wondering how that becomes another outlet for creativity, if it affords more freedom. Like for you, Scott, with Savath and Savalas.
Prefuse 73: I just like to play. I mean I like to make beats and I make them in a certain process, but I like to play music and write in a more traditional form. I mean, the shit I made recently sounds like Spanish folk music. It's not folk music, but it's a different outlet; like you were saying, exploring different music. On an MPC, you work in a certain way. It's just a dif- ferent process. The compositional process is just totally different.

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