The minds behind the Foreign Exchange, Phonte Coleman and Nicolay Rook, have a three-way chat with PHIONA OKUMU about their second, critically-acclaimed project ‘Leave It All Behind’.

I grew suspicious when Percy Miracles – Little Brother rapper Phonte’s alter-ego – got a main part in their sophomore album ‘The Minstrel Show’. Percy, the greasy-haired caricature of all that’s wrong in R&B, sang sleazily and off-key. Coleman insisted it was all just a big joke and even officially pronounced his death. He wasn’t here to sing, he said. But I just had a feeling…

Everyone knows the way the Little Brother dynamic works: rapper Big Pooh is all street and Phontigallo’s always been the lyricist with a soft spot for melody, the one who knows his Brenda Russell from his Angela Winbush. He even doubled up with producer Zo to release an EP of covers of their favourite 80s songs last summer.

Phonte singing in all seriousness and a hell of a lot on Foreign Exchange’s ‘Leave it All Behind’ shouldn’t be all that shocking. Its 2004 predecessor ‘Connected’ showcased MCs like Ken Starr, Odissee, Sean Boog, Pooh and Phonte of course. Their rhymes over Dutch producer Nicolay’s Jay Dilla-meets-Spinna-esque thump on tracks like ‘Raw Life’ and ‘The Answer’ kept the heads happy. But that album’s true focus were singing talents Darien Brockington and Yahzarah, both now independent solo recording artists who attended the same business class as Phonte back in uni in North Carolina. Theirs with snatches of Phonte’s occasional backing vocals defined the easy, breezy, dream-like spirit of ‘Connected’. So it was really just a matter of time.

Progressive even in its premise, much was made of the cyber meeting between Rook from Utrecht in the Netherlands and Coleman from Durham, North Carolina. Both were Okayplayer members who chanced upon each other via the website’s forums, and bounced sound files between themselves until they’d created a full-length album. A perfectly organic mesh of musical ideas which transcended mere distance, ‘Connected’ did as it said on the tin beautifully. On a personal level, it spurred an exchange of emails and phone calls and meetings between Nicolay and the woman who become his wife in May 08.

The two now live in her native town of Wilmington, North Carolina where ‘Leave It All Behind’, Foreign Exchange’s second outing, was created. With the same dreamy, expansive feel, even more cascading harmonies, drastically fewer rap verses, it’s the more mature record – this time surpassing its previous definitions of R&B and hiphop, free forming its way through elegant electronica, and capturing the heart of your imagination.

SHOOK: What’s up guys, how’s it all going?
Nicolay: How you doing, good? I’m excited about this album!
Phonte: Yeah I ‘m in LA right now. We are doing the Hiphop live tour with Little Brother, David Banner and Talib Kweli. It’s going real good.

SHOOK: So Nic, you once said you’d never live in the States but you’ve moved there now. Explain yourself.
Nicolay: (Laughs) I moved a couple years ago. I just wanted to see …I guess a lot of European musicians do have the desire to “make it” in the states and I guess I just wanted to see if I had what it takes to do my thing over here an build up a little bit of a career. For me it made sense cos the stuff I did started doing better here than anywhere else. It was a matter of going to where most of my work was really.

SHOOK: Well it seems to be a good time. Europe is big commercially, no?
Nicolay: It goes in phases. There are phases where the greatest stuff comes from America and it’s always been like that in a way. There’s great stuff from both sides it’s just so different. I guess I can see how the two relate and or are different from each other.
SHOOK: Well you sound settled, your accent even sounds kind of yankish!
Nicolay: (Laughs) my accent kinda wears off a little bit. I am really in a small town now; I am in a smaller town than where I used to live in Holland. I wanted to be in a not too big environment. I wanted to be where I could grow and it made sense.

SHOOK: Was ‘Leave It All Behind’ always in the works?
Phonte: Nah, at the end of ‘Connected’ we just let it do what it did. We didn’t really do a lot of work together or any real talking at all. I was steady doing my Little Brother stuff and Nic was getting involved in all kinds of production (‘Nicolay and Kay’, ‘Here’, ‘City Lights Volume1.5’, ‘Here’, ‘Dutch Masters Volume 1’ etc). Pretty much we didn’t start talking again on that level until about 06. And then initially it wasn’t about what we wanted to do it was about what we didn’t wanna do.

SHOOK: What kind of things didn’t you want to do?
Phonte: We didn’t wanna make the same kind of record twice. It was like, we done did ‘Connected’ already. Ain’t no need for us to do ‘Still Connected’. Just reheating some old shit would have been very boring for us so once we kinda got that out the way that’s when Nic threw in his first few musical ideas. That’s was when the songwriting and recording process really started.

SHOOK: Everyone was really impressed at how ‘Connected’ turned out, being that you two did not know each other at all. How different was is it the second time around now that you do?
Nicolay: We do the same thing to this day. It works for us that we grew so comfortable with it and we were used to getting the results that we were getting. In terms of filling the shoes for the first record, I am very aware that there are some big shoes to fill but I think we came out of this one even stronger. And I wouldn’t say it’s a better record just because it’s the new one
Phonte: Hell, I’ll say it’s a better record!
Nicolay: OK, it is a better record, I’ll cosign.

SHOOK: Nic, how does it work when you make records? Do you make the beats with what you would like the words to be in mind?
Nicolay: The lyrical content is for Tay’s discretion. He is obviously going to do certain things over certain tracks. There’s tracks that I do that he would not necessarily feed in and there are some that he does. I don’t force myself at all in the lyrical content just because we have that distinction that I am the music guy and he is the vocal guy. But somehow it works every time in that he will always come back with something and I’ll go “yeah that’s it” so I don’t even have to tell him what to say.

SHOOK: Tay, you’re singing with Muhsinah on the first single ‘Daykeeper’ right?
Phonte: Yeah, that’s me.
SHOOK: In fact you’re singing a lot more lately. What was your reaction when you heard Kanye West singing ‘Love Lockdown’?
Phonte: I really do think it’s a good song but he is not the one to sing it. I think melodically and lyrically and the production is very good. And I don’t think he can sing. Singing with auto tune was funny when like T-pain came out. And by the way I do think T-pain is in fact a good songwriter. But now with a lot of records coming out using it as a crutch, it’s like come on dude. If Phil Collins was singing that shit then, yeah. You can put clothes on a dog but at the end of the day it’s a dog.
Nicolay: ‘Love Lockdown’ is tight. I agree I do think it has a very Genesis feel to it and if a real singer would take that on it would be a real kick-ass record. I at first was like “we should allow people to step out boxes” but I think not so much in this case.

SHOOK: Tell us about the casting for ‘LIAB’.
Phonte: Darien and Yahzarah are involved. But also Muhsinah who you mentioned. She put out a project called ‘Daybreak’ and she is always putting out music. She records at a really quick pace. She is just an incredible talent. She was definitely one of my muses, the way Yahzarah was for ‘Connected’. Even though Yahzarah is also on this record and she did a phenomenal job on both of them. But Muhsinah was like… when I was first introduced to her music I was “like this is amazing.”
Nicolay: The thing about her is you hear singing and you’ll be like “man this is a kick-ass singer” but she makes beats too and her beats are so good. She really makes excellent track. She’s amazing.

SHOOK: Will you do a tour for this record?
Phonte: We working on it. This record is just a much more musical record and there is much more depth in it from an arrangement point of view. We just trying to find out the logistics of making it work economically. If I had deep pockets I’d bring out the 12-piece orchestra, pyrotechnics and all kinds of shit. It’s a little different when you into working with that kind of money. We just figuring out a way to make it work financially and such that the vision of the record comes across on stage.

Leave It All Behind is out now. Get it here.
www.theforeignexchangemusic.com