If something about Jack Splash’s music feels jarring yet familiar, it’s because he’s worked hard to make it that way. Between production jobs with artists like Alicia Keys, Missy Elliott, and Jamie Foxx, the Plantlife impresario has forged his own signature sound that attempts to reference classic funk throwbacks while pushing the boundaries of rap and hip-hop into uncomfortable territory. And so, building toward the eventual release of his J Records album, Technology And Love Might Save Us All…, Jack is doing his very best to make sure his audience is in sonic harmony by releasing a series of mix tapes. Buried beneath an avalanche of electro-funk, Jack’s message is simple: music might just be our salvation. George Clinton would be proud.

I’m always fascinated when artists thematically pair love and technology. It’s contradictory stuff; the idea that normally emotionless artificial creatures will bring love to the world. As a musician, why is that theme attractive to you?
I’m really glad you picked up on that! The whole concept behind my upcoming album Technology And Love Might Save Us All… has to do with exactly what you’re talking about. I was reading an article on some of the most progressive innovators of our time and they were talking about how people think that we are in the future with all of this new technology that’s coming out, but that we have no idea how cool things are going to get in the next 10 years. They are developing things that are really advanced. For some reason, that article got my strange little hippie-leaning mind thinking about how many amazing things we could really do with technology if we just applied some true love and compassion to it.

I feel like our next step in human evolution will definitely be technology based and I just think that as this new generation of kids, who grew up multiculturally and with a better understanding of the world, gain more power in their various fields, that we have the potential to do some really amazing things and help solve some of these global problems that we have always been told are insurmountable (stuff like curing diseases, etc.).

Technology on its own doesn’t do anything though. It all depends on the real live beating heart behind it. If we combined that beauty with that brilliance we could change the world again like all of the awesome people (musicians, social activists, etc.) in the 1960s and 1970s did. I know it sounds kinda heavy, but I think that because my music is so wild and uptempo and “out there”, that I was able to pull it off kinda subliminally. People might have no idea what I’m talking about and just dance to the groove, and really that’s totally cool with me also. Maybe their grandchildren will get high to it like I do with Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone and Prince and Bowie and understand what I’m talking about. (laughter)

What’s up with the Jack Splash Technology and Love Might Save Us All… short animation we’ve been hearing about? Who is it produced by? What’s the style of it? When will be start seeing signs of it on the internet?
I’m just putting the finishing touches on it now. It is mini-movie that I made that accompanies this album. I’m really particular about what type of visual art I like, so it took me a while to find someone with the style I really liked. I wanted it to be this weird mixture of  Dr. Seuss meets Salvador Dali with a little knowledge sprinkled in like Basquiat. I finally found these really cool animators who lived in South Africa who have a really cool and psychedelic style, so we met up in New York and set everything into motion. It was an expensive and time-intensive endeavor, but it’s important to me to give people something special with my art. Don’t believe the hype that all these major corporate entities keep trying to force feed us about how “nobody buys music” anymore….that’s bullshit! People still buy art when it’s good. They just don’t buy the bullshit!

The movie stars Cee-Lo as the narrator and is based around this little boy with a million questions about the world and this weird funky robot who comes down in a butterfly spaceship and kind of becomes his interplanetary guru. It was inspired by my friendship with Baatin (from Slum Village), who was an amazing person and had such a bright spirit. Lupe Fiasco plays the voice of the robot and Janelle Monae plays the voice of the child. I’m really excited about it. It should be out very soon!

Heir to the Throne showcased some lyrics that hinted you might be developing a noticeable chip on your shoulder. Like you’re going on the defensive. Are the rigors of the music biz finally getting to the usually upbeat Jack Splash?
That’s really funny that you noticed that! I noticed that also! (laughter) I’m not angry at all though, I’m actually very happy and thankful for the position I’m in and know that I am one of the “lucky” ones who made it. I never really changed my passion or creative process and somehow with hard work I ended up being able to live my dream and make good money doing it. I still have as much fun in the studio every time I step into it though just lie I did when I was dead broke.

The real purpose of Heir To The Throne though was to address the fact that everyone in the industry was trying to put this crown on my head like I was the next king of funk or the next Prince or the next “whatever they wanted to call it.”  If you look at the artwork on that album, what I’m really trying to say is that guys like Little Richard and James Brown and George Clinton and Sly Stone and Prince are the real kings. I’m just a musician from the hip hop generation that’s trying to keep music fun and exciting and keep the energy that these OGs pioneered. That’s why I click so well with people like Cee-Lo or T-Pain, because we all just kind of don’t care about what other people say and just do our own thing and have a lot of fun while we’re doing it.

The angry side you hear on Heir To The Throne is just me addressing some of these fake-ass artists who steal from the funk and fake it and exploit it and sometimes even make a lot of money off of it, but are so wack and phony that they will never get the respect or have the longevity that real artists like Cee-Lo or Dilla have. I had to get that off my chest real quick so I could go back to making my psycho-electro-hippie-funk!

What’s your opinion on the current auto-tune debate? Is it time to move on?
I have a very strong opinion about this and I don’t care that it’s not a popular opinion. I totally understand why people would want to hate on auto-tune, but me personally I love it! I love all forms of music and music making. To me, auto-tune is just another tool to create music with. It’s really funny because people get so angry whenever a new style comes out and they always want to rebel against it and say that it’s going to ruin music, but it never does.

When Stevie Wonder and Herbie Hancock embraced electronic keyboards instead of just using the traditional piano, etc, then that shit was controversial in its time. Same thing with Bob Dylan and the electric guitar. But Stevie Wonder and Herbie Hancock and Bob Dylan weren’t going to let some fans who were haters control their artistic output. Also, people hated synthesizers in the 80s because they thought they would replace guitarists and ruin rock. They didn’t. They just pioneered an entirely new sound and style of music. Same thing with drum machines. But with no drum machines, both Sly Stone and Prince wouldn’t have made some of their most classic material…and there would be no 2 Live Crew!  With no Prince and no 2 Live Crew, what is life good for? (laughter)

They said the same thing about sampling and hip hop and how it wasn’t even real music. Major rock artists would be outspoken about it, about how much they hated rap and hated sampling and how it wasn’t really art. What a joke! Guys like DJ Premier and Pete Rock and Dilla are 50 times the composers that some of these rock jerk-offs who were talking shit. This then brings us to auto-tune. Do I like it when I hear wack people using it? No. Do I love it when I hear someone like T-Pain or Daft Punk or some of the iller electronic dudes using it? Hell yeah.

I’m obviously heavily influenced by the funk and we have always used different techniques to distort our voice in funk. From Roger and Zapp’s talk boxes to Prince speeding up his voice like how Madlib does with Quasimoto to George Clinton and Bootsy’s weird tones that they would sing in…that has always been a part of the funk legacy. I have a little interlude on my next free album called “Future OF The Funk” where I address this. The reality is, you can’t be scared of new technology and new instruments. You gotta embrace it and make it funky. Drum machines and synthesizers and samplers and talk boxes and auto-tune alone are just dead machines, but you put a badass muthafucka behind it and you have the future of music!

You’ve kinda christened PlantLife music as “future music”. But now it’s almost 2010. According to Back to the Future, this is the future. What will be the next evolution of Jack Splash to keep your music firmly planted in the future?
I’ve been holding back a bit over the past year or so because I didn’t want to scare people off with my electro madness! (laughter) I gave them a little taste of it on my first Plantlife album with the song “The Last Song” and “UnderwaterLuvBoogie” and on my second album with “Take It Off” and “LuvBoogie 2”. People have finally come around to where I’m at, though.

With my next free album Future of The Funk, I’m not rapping on it at all and that album should help explain to everyone where I’m really at right now. I mixed everything together. All my live instrumentation. All my digital shit. All my electronic stuff. I’m using vocoders, weird-ass synthesizers, talk boxes, auto-tune….even fucking kazoo’s! (laughter) Honestly, I don’t really care what I use. When it comes to music it’s either dope or it’s not. I’ve been beating these drum machines and keyboards to death though, so I think people are gonna really like this weird mixture. It’s kind of like the prequel to my real album that’s coming out on J Records.

Beyond flooding the market with mix tapes, what’s next for PlantLife?
After these mix tapes (or what I like to call me “free albums”), I’m dropping my first solo Jack Splash album on J Records and hitting the road. I’m getting my live show together right now and for my fans in Europe and Australia that got to see some of the Plantlife shows last time out, I think they are gonna be pleasantly surprised. This new show is gonna be madness. I think they might have to lock me up after this one because I’m pretty sure we will be breaking a lot of international obscenity laws. It’s okay though, as long as I honor all the OG’s like Sly and George Clinton and Prince. Then I’ll feel like I did my job! In the meantime, people can go download my free albums online and spread ’em out to their friends and help me build this movement. Those albums are called Heir To The Throne, King Of The Beats, and Future Of The Funk.

Click here to download King of the Beats by Jack Splash