Challenge Accepted: Michael Christmas, Chris Crack & Girl Talk

Michael Christmas knows how to make an entrance, even on a damn Zoom.

"This n**** lying," he says in cartoonishly hasty response to Chris Crack, who was commenting favorably on his late-arriving rap cohort, before quickly adding, "what was the question?"

That perfect comedic timing, executed in a matter of mere seconds, elucidates just how well these Boston and Chicago natives, respectively, vibe with one another. The smile on Crack's face is instantaneous and genuine, very much in line with his own complimentary thoughts on Christmas just prior to his arrival in the virtual room.

"Me and him had been working before, but we had never met–not officially," Crack says. "Our chemistry worked really well, I think, in person and not in person."

Before the release of Don't Come To My House Sharing Your Location, a collaborative project produced by plunderphonic veteran Girl Talk, the two jocular yet consummate emcees worked together, albeit remotely. Some of those collaborations ended up as features on their respective solo efforts, yet this six-track outing from the bespoke trio found them in the same room together for the first time, in Pittsburgh of all places.

"I actually saw them interacting online, and the idea kind of hit me," Girl Talk says of the record's origins. "I thought they had such unique distinct voices, but there's some crossover in the overall vibe or tone of their work."

("I don't think anybody's ever watching what I'm doing," Christmas says. "I assume everybody is eyes shut on what I have going on.")

Though the Steel City denizen, who made a name for himself as a mashup maestro some two decades ago, previously considered doing something with each of them individually, he has a knack for this sort of thing. In recent years, he's become known for bringing rappers together in inventive new configurations, as on 2022's ten song mini-album Full Court Press with Wiz Khalifa, Smoke DZA, and Big K.R.I.T.

"I like that format of mixing up different artists together and seeing what happens," Girl Talk says." And with credits for the likes of G Perico, Sauce Walka and Young Nudy, to name a few, his stature as a hip-hop producer at-large only continues to grow.

The following Q&A is comprised of edited excerpts from this conversation.

What was the thinking in terms of beat selection, the types of sounds you felt would work with their respective but cohesive styles? 

Girl Talk: Any session I do, I'll have so much material ready. A lot of times you go in and someone's not feeling something. Sometimes I have an idea of what it will be, and then we will steer somewhere else. I had a range of stuff ready and I wanted something where each song can be very distinct and unique, but they all are complementary and work off of each other. This was unconventional for me in that, at the beginning, I told them to just record. We recorded multiple parts for different things. On many songs we had multiple hooks or little breakdowns. I could pick and choose and figure out what to use.

I always find that I have the best sessions and best projects when the artists roll with whatever I play and give it a shot. There was a few times where we would go through a few beats and they would pick out the ones they liked. But for the most part, the stuff I was playing was the stuff we were recording on.

Michael Christmas: I feel like the project's six songs and we legit listened to 10 beats. Also, to piggyback off what you said about recording a lot of parts, that's something that I don't typically do. So it challenged the way I make music completely, to not just be done when I'm done. I write dumb ass fast, just verse done, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, whatever. It made me come home and start thinking more about the music, for real. 

Chris Crack: It was spontaneous. It was out of my comfort zone, which actually puts you in a good place when you're doing music, most of the time. It was just something different than I'm used to. So I fuck with it. I love a challenge. 

Michael Christmas: I think it would've been different if we weren't all kind of comfortable with each other. That shit was fun before it started. We got to the airport and I was having fun immediately.

Given your history rapping together on tracks like "Shake Some 4 DOOM" and "Sorry I'm Building My Brand," what was the dynamic between the two of you once you were in the studio?

Michael Christmas: I'm a big child, so it felt like Goku meeting Vegeta when we got together in real life. Like I say all the time, there's not a lot of rappers who I give the credit for being as good as me at rapping. That's not to say I'm the best rapper alive, but I'm fucking super good at it. And I always say Chris is better. He's just colder, more calculated with how he actually is rapping. He's the only rapper in history to ever tell me that I had a filler bar on a song, when we were doing them sessions. And I'm like, he's 100% right.

So having recording multiple takes and these different hooks, how do you then, after the fact, figure out what's gold? What is that process like?

Girl Talk: The verses were all set, for the most part. I don't usually pick and choose on that as much as structure and some of the hooks. It's really similar to what I used to do with my mashup albums back in the day, where I would have hundreds of samples and then come up with these different arrangements. I'm into just trimming it down as much as possible: nothing unnecessary.

I think with certain artists, with Michael and Chris, there's a lot of energy that's just off-the-cuff. You don't want them to labor over it too much, because it might start sounding not as good. You want things that are spontaneous and on-the-fly. Then I go and take all that material and then I labor over it for months.

With my older music, people would think it's very quick moving. This stuff now is a bit more nuanced. I'm not changing the beat every second, but there are a lot of little changes and I don't want to repeat anything. I just want to get the most exciting version of what this could be. I've listened to this stuff hundreds of times, even just the ad libs.

The Kingdom Come ad lib on "Vending Machine Charcuterie Board" was definitely the right one.