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"Phil" by The Milkfat Collective

Why you should know who they are: In what many refer to as a two-crew town when it comes to underground hip-hop, the Milkfat Collective is stating their case to be the third. With a jazzy sound that includes live instruments, Milkfat is looking to carve their own niche in the Buffalo music scene. As a matter of fact, Milkfat just started selling their music three weeks ago, and they’re learning that they have a lot of fans. Go figure. Artvoice sat down and shot the breeze with Milkfat’s five members, Reginoff, Andrew, KG, Joshua and John. Milkfat is performing Thursday, May 11, at Broadway Joe’s as part of Coldcut Thursdaze’s “Hide Your Daughter” special, hosted by A.L.Third. The show starts at 11pm.

Reginoff is from Long Island and the rest of you are from Buffalo. [To Reginoff] You came to school here—what made you decide to stay in the city? I heard about Buffalo from my uncles, and it’s a dope place. I just came up and got sucked in.

How would you describe the Milkfat sound? What would you compare yourselves to? I don’t really think you could compare us to anything else out there. We drop in so many samples and influences, and we don’t sound like anything else in the city. We use a lot of bossa nova and downtempo stuff, rock and reggae records. [Milkfat doesn’t] put up a lot of boundaries; we started spinning drum ’n’ bass, and we branch out from there.

You incorporate jazz, bossa nova, etc. What are some of your other non-hip-hop beats? David Axelrod. We like Astrid Gilberto, old Chemical Brothers…all sorts of shit. The last record I bought was these straight out of Congo from, like, 1965. There’s no instruments—it’s just people and drums. That’s the type of stuff we like to put our fingers into.

With bigger crews like Baby Steps and DeepThinka doing their thing, I can see where you guys may be overlooked. How do you get your stuff out there? Just get in all the areas. We go to as many shows as possible and just rip it. I don’t think we’ve ever turned down a show. We have a couple of avenues that we want to check out to distribute some stuff to the masses in the future.

Is there such a thing as doing too many shows, especially in a place like Buffalo? Around here, yeah. If you do three shows, you wind up playing for the same people at least twice. It’s important for people to see you working on different things.

When you guys tour, what are some good spots outside of the city? We’ve done some stuff downstate at some SUNY schools, the Bowery Poetry Room at SUNY Purchase.

What have you guys been listening to lately? What does it for you? The new Ghostface album, Fishscale, we’ve been listening to. [Reginoff starts rapping from Ghostface’s “Poisonous Darts”: ‘…got jerked at the Source awards/Next year two hundred niggaz comin’ with swords…’] That’s hot. Anything on Ninja Tune, listening to straight-up Ray Barretto, John Russ, some James Brown from back in the day, anything.

Let me talk to you guys [Andrew and KG] for a second. Do you draw your inspiration from the vocals, or vice versa? Is there a give and take with the DJ and emcee? [Andrew]: Usually it can come from anything. It’s whatever springs out at me, but I try to emphasize the overall push with the bass and just be loud. [KG]: We try to lay down a soundscape, and as much as the bass and drums need to be up to par, we gotta lay under the radar…and make sure the emcee and DJ are prominent.

So tell me about some of your current projects. We’ve been getting [KG and Andrew] in the studio to lay out some drum tracks and we’ve incorporated them in our third album.

You have a song called “Spot Cawfee.” Is that a favorite spot for you guys to make songs, where you guys get a lot of your inspiration from? [Laughs] We don’t want to hate on Caffé Aroma too, and all those other cats; we like to support local businesses. Also, all the girls are over at SPoT. Sometimes we like to roll through there and get the triple, quadruple shots of espresso. One time I even started rhyming for the people in there at the counter, and some lady started busting my chops.

So I guess the coffee consumption is pretty important, huh? Yeah, Milkfat is all about the coffee.

Tell our readers one final thing about your music. There might be messages included, but there’s no moral to the story, really. Hide your daughters.