L.A.'s Self Scientific takes the D.I.Y. route to hip-hop hegemony.

"It just means the study of self." - DJ Khalil

"Self Scientific is exactly that." - Chace Infinite

Okay, the alliteration is catchy, but come on guys, don't play provocative. Everybody knows that high-concept hip-hop handles with cryptic explanations are the quickest way to get you tossed in with all the other obscure, under-the-radar rappers boasting names like Mass Influence and Infinite Loop. But then, of course, Self Scientific is, at the moment, profoundly underground. And they understand that such a designation is a necessary evil.

"I don't give a damn what you're doing," says Chace. "You have to categorize it so it can be marketed, for it to sell - especially now, because hip-hop is so large. Imagine if you work at Tower Records [and you're aren't] a hip-hop fan, but you're a buyer for hip-hop music - it's just your job. And there's like a thousand releases a fucking year, and you're only going to know, like, 20 of them. So, if I don't say, 'Well, Self Scientific, they're sort of like Gang Starr and Brand Nubian, or whatever. Then it's kind of hard to sell. It's sad, but it's fucking true."

But what is Self Scientific, really?

"We talk about negative things and we talk about positive things. In order to relate to your audience, you have to be able to show both sides."

"What is it?" Chace jokes. "It's music. Listen to it. It's dope."

It doesn't take much listening to The Self Science, the group's recently released debut (S.O.L. Musicworks-Landspeed), to understand why Chace's comparison to Gang Starr is more than a passing analogy. DJ Khalil has expanded upon DJ Premier's 10-years-plus jazz salvage mission by employing just as much live instrumentation as sampling on his lush, layered tracks. And Chace, like Guru, is comfortable getting his point across without yelling. Instead, he delivers in a smooth but aggressive manner, appropriate for Khalil's mostly mid-tempo production. More importantly, both Gang Starr and Self Scientific are built on a sense of balance, both between the DJ and the MC and in their representations of real life.

"We talk about negative things and we talk about positive things," says Khalil. "In order to relate to your audience, you have to be able to show both sides." Chace agrees! "The reason I like Jay-Z or the reason I like Mos Def is that there's something in it that appeals to my own personal struggle or triumph."

"With Self Scientific, I want us to represent that duality, that righteousness and that... I don't know," he stops, breaking into laughter again. "What's the other side of righteousness?" Khalil (Abdul-Rahman) and Chace's (Aaron Johnson) mothers lived in the same apartment building in a prominent predominantly black neighborhood of Los Angeles before the boys were even born. Long separated, the families eventually reunited at one of the boys' basketball games. But Chace and Khalil's friendship was hardly the result of some heavenly hip-hop predestination. It wasn't God, but Gang Starr -again - that brought them together.

"We just shared a love of music," recalls Chace. "I remember Khalil was listening to [Gang Starr's debut] No More Mr. Nice Guy when I first met him at basketball practice. We were both trippin' because we knew Premier used to be Lord Finesse's DJ and shit. Just shit like that." The two kept trippin' off of beats, rhymes and life in general, toying with hip-hop the way most young black men did in those days. They remained friends even when they went away to different colleges in Atlanta. Khalil says that it was an important time in the group's musical as well as intellectual growth.

"I guess it was like '93, '94. We were just maturing as people. Once we started learning, our music became a little more serious. There were people from so many different areas. Like you had New York, then you had the South. I think that started [influencing what] we were going to create and what we wanted to talk about."

They formed officially when they came home to L.A., Khalil with a degree, Chace without. Their first name, the Numbskulls, undermined the complex perspective they had already started to develop. (Hey, the Pharcyde was huge then, Khalil and Chace were just victims of the times.) With the help of Chace's cousin, then up-and-coming L.A. promoter William "Bigga B" Operin, the duo signed a development deal with Loud Records under the name Self Scientific in '95. Surprisingly, Chace has distanced himself enough from the episode to laugh off a squandered deal-of-a lifetime.

"The manager that we had at the time, she made bad decisions, we made bad decisions and the shit just really never worked out," he chuckles. "We ended up blowing probably like $18,000 and never came out of it with anything."

Naturally, Loud chose not to renew its contract and Chase and Khalil were left with three little letters: D.I.Y. They began pushing tapes at all of Bigga B's functions - his traveling UNITY show soon became L.A.'s not-to-be-missed hip-hop party, and attracted not just local artists but big national names, as well, from Black Moon to Busta Rhymes. Their connection with UNITY and Bigga B are primarily responsible for their buzz. And his recent death from a heart attack was a defining moment for Self Scientific.

"He represented so much for me, and when that brother passed, man..." Chace says, "that shit really fucked me up. But it kind of gave us the drive to go ahead and finish this shit and pull everything together."

The Self Science is a collection of four year's worth of songs, new to the world but a little dated in the duo's eyes. "This was just something we needed to put out," says Chace. "We've already begun working on the second project." Appropriately, Khalil says the next album will deal with "change." What does Self Scientific mean, really? Who knows? Like the men behind the name, it could be different tomorrow.

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