Pitchfork

Rhymefest is hard at work preparing his previously reported new album, El Che, for a fall release on J Records. And he has big plans for the record: it's going to be adapted into a stage show.

In a recent interview with Pitchfork, the Chicago MC said the Blue Collar follow-up is "70% done" and that "Kanye [West] is playing a bigger role this year than he did last year as far as behind-the-scenes, helping me develop the songs." And though he also hopes to include contributions from DJ Premier, Ghostface Killah, and Kelis, he "doesn't want a lot of rappers featured on this album."

Instead, Rhymefest has focused the album squarely on himself, as reflected by its title (Che is his given name, after Che Guevara) and its concept. "The album tells a story from front to back. And you're gonna have songs you can take from the album and put them on the radio, and you won't even know the difference. Also, I want to have a show competing with Prince and Michael Jackson. I thought, 'How can I do that?' and I said, 'I'm gonna have to do it as a play, a musical of sorts.' Once El Che comes out, the only way you'll see me perform is if you come to this musical. But if you come to this musical, it'll be the best hip hop performance art experience you've ever had."

Rhymefest is working with Anthony Moseley and Chicago theater organization Collaboraction to produce the musical, which will incorporate existing elements of his live show-- like his mid-set freestyles-- into a stage version of El Che. "The album is kind of based on my life as a child, and the play is going to read out that way, based on a true story. There are not going to be a lot of people in the play. It's going to be like, me plus two other people."

Fest plans to launch a tour of the musical to coincide with El Che's release, and he will supplement the album and the touring show with "videos for every song. The videos are going to be like a scavenger hunt. Some of them will be up for download to your phone; some of them will be on other people's CDs or released as a DVD; and some of them will be released for free over iTunes. A lot of time is going to be spent not only on making the music, but gathering the content."

It's a lot of content, but Rhymefest has a lot on his mind. "This thing is going to be hip hop, but it's [also] going to be a revolution. Isn't that what hip hop needs right now? Doesn't it need an infusion of Public Enemy and the Fugees and Bob Marley? What the fuck happened? When everybody started selling death, and I started seeing people who knew better talk about how they'll take their guns and do this, do that with you-- you know, there's a time for everything, but it's like every time is the right time to be in the club and shooting somebody and selling somebody some drugs. When I saw people who I'm like, 'This motherfucker knows better,' start bending that way, I started worrying. I started saying, 'Why is the new style of rapping to rap bad?' If you rap well, they say, 'Oh, that's complicated.' I realized that the only way I could avoid becoming what people would term as a 'hater' was to give more to my art.

"A high-school kid said to me, 'I'm not into hip hop. I like rap.' I said, 'Well, what's rap?' And he said to me, '[Young] Jeezy. Jeezy's just rap. I don't have to think about it. Hip hop is like culture, breakdancing and DJing and all that shit. I ain't into that. I want to hear Jeezy just rap.' That was the first time I experienced the generation gap in rap music, where kids are like, 'I don't care about the culture.' It's really our fault, because we didn't teach the kids about it. Our parents taught us to love Al Green and Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson. We didn't teach our kids to love them; we didn't teach our kids to appreciate KRS-One, Big Daddy Kane, and Rakim. So when they stray from it, we just want to say, 'Shame on you.' My thing is, I want to show the children the beauty of the culture of hip hop, and if one day they can respond to it, we'll be finally starting to do our job.

"This story [El Che] is a guy named Che from the South Side of Chicago, that grew up in the ghetto, that tried to sell dope, that tried to do all that shit, and was like, 'Man, there's got to be another way to change things.' This is their story; this is my story. This story is much greater than the Jeezy story or the 50 Cent story, because this story is real."

Though he has temporarily shelved his Plugg City Tour, where he would stay with fans while on the road and film the tour for a TV special, Rhymefest does have a couple of live dates planned. He will appear at the Rock Steady Crew 29th Anniversary in Newark, New Jersey's Lincoln Park on July 30, and he will perform at Chicago's Rednofive for a Collaboraction event on February 16.

Even sooner, he will perform in Las Vegas at a Playboy "Rock the Rabbit" event on Valentine's Day. Rhymefest was among the recent t-shirt designers for Playboy, but he has yet to visit the company's famous mansion. "I think if I don't muck up this performance, they'll be like, 'Hugh wants to meet with you,' and I'll be like, 'Oh hell yeah.'" Entrance to the Las Vegas show is technically free, but there is a suggested five-dollar donation that will benefit LIFEbeat.

Finally, Rhymefest recently appeared in puppet form on "Crank Yankers", performing the MTV2 show's new theme and outing himself as "the telephone gangsta." Video of the segment is below.