Public Enemy

2020 | Hip-Hop

— track 11: “Make It Home”

David Michael Clifford: Music, I’m very passionate about it but it did start as something that was kind of a hobby. People kind of just drew it out of me. Everyone would come up to me that would see me, “You look cool.” I had tattoos since I was 14 years old, so, “Your tattoos look cool.” It just worked. I grew up in Pine Ridge, born and raised in Pine Ridge, but my father’s actually non-native. He’s from out of state, originally from the West Coast and moved to South Dakota when I was young. I lived with him in Sioux Falls when I was about 12 or 13 or so. That had an influence on me, seeing the city scene in South Dakota. There was always a rap influence in South Dakota, and I feel like that was just always something that I wanted to be a part of. But I did grow up around a lot of cool artists like Scotti Clifford, Catlin Clifford, Gunner [Jules], shoutout Nightshield, just knowing a lot of cool artists when I was coming up. Rage Rocc, I didn’t even know who they were, but I’m pretty sure I might be related. I always remember hearing his mixtapes when I was in school. Man, just Indigenous street. I remember when I first was learning how to roll and smoke weed, I’d always hear Rage Rocc. That was back when CDs was a thing, it was physical, so if you sold enough CDs in your area, somebody was about to be hearing you in your area. It was like that with Rage Rocc and his camp. He was always playing in all the stereos when all the wild parts of my life was happening. I remember the scent of the car freshener with the blunt we was smoking, first time driving to the city, going to bigger shows, you roll the windows down, we was listening to Rage Rocc because that was somebody from where you’re from. I’m a have to check out his interview. That’s dope he mentioned me, honestly an honor.

I went to the Institute of American Indian Arts, that’s in Santa Fe, New Mexico. New media and graphic design was my major. I got accepted late because I was going wild until I was about 20, and that was kind of my getaway, that was my ticket, where I really had to do something different, something positive. I’m an artist so I paint, I spray paint, I draw, I’m into animation and stuff like that. I got into making music myself a little later than a lot of people. With everything in my life that happened, it’s like therapy for me, and people happened to like it. When I ended up in New Mexico a lot more people from South Dakota paid attention to me just because, who knows? But they thought it was cool that I was out of state. So I made music and I would put it on SoundCloud. Really, I was just trying to get off, it felt good to rap and rhyme on the beat. Don’t get me wrong, I rapped when I was 15, we recorded a lot of fun stuff, a lot of funny stuff. You know 15, 16, we actually had a stolen microphone and a stolen laptop. I don’t even know who stole it, it wasn’t me, I’ll say that. But we got ahold of a MacBook and a Snowball microphone, and we took beats off YouTube and recorded a song on GarageBand in the car. So I attempted, but I didn’t really take it serious until I was a little older where I was actually putting albums together, actually trying to get royalties, or look at the deeper details of what I’m doing.

Looking back on stuff from 2013, I was on the West Coast for pretty much my whole 20s, a lot of people know me on the West Coast from here. The music I was making in 2013 you could put out right now and it still sounds relevant. It’s these late 80s and early 90s — like, hip-hop really was electronic funk influenced, on the West Coast anyway. There just wasn’t a lot of Native representation. It’s influenced by Short Dawg mainly, the hyphy movement that Mac Dre brought, Mistah F.A.B., there’s just so many cool people from the West Coast. It’s a genre that’s still kind of bubbling right now, and it’s been bubbling for almost 15 years. So every time I make music, even now, it’s just those beats. I could always do some boom-bap or ultra East Coast style, I could do anything, but I’m really passionate about this certain sound. A lot of people in my family are influenced by the Bay Area, I just got a love for the Bay Area, a lot of my friends are from there, over the last ten years.

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A lot of times I want to be positive and inspirational, that’s why I put songs like that together, like two ends of the spectrum. “My Day” is definitely like, the sky is the limit, and we’re going there. “Make It Home” is definitely open to interpretation, it’s almost talking in code about the trauma. Like, just letting you know, everything’s going great, but I might not make it home. That’s just a reality. Don’t be shocked, don’t be scared, don’t take it too hard, but I might not make it home. It could be some random tragedy, car wreck, you know? But deeper, I think I said, “Hater, banger, perfect, pretty, with the aim on it.” Like, the truth is, they got those cool guns with the laser and it shoots a lot of bullets at once, that’s what I meant. My haters got very perfect artillery, and I might not make it home. Which is serious, it’s just real. Especially coming out of — you know when I was 14, 15, 16, I definitely didn’t expect to go to places I’ve been. The accolades, I did not perceive any of it. And the people now, like, my childhood friends are career criminals. Very good people, but career criminals. Not to say that it’s them, it could be the situations they were put in, but that’s the truth. You’ll hear even in my past mixtapes, a lot of it is just venting in a cool way. “Make It Home” specifically is letting you know I don’t have control.

And that could also mean about the police. I’m pretty sure I said on the song too, “Police at the station got a paper with my name on it and I might not make it home.” I might go to jail. And that’s a reality, especially in Rapid City. Tattoos on the head, neck. Just the lifestyle where I come from, who I am, people I grew up with. At the end of the day, I have an image though. People are going to perceive me how they’re going to perceive me. No matter how I feel, whether I try to explain myself or not. No matter what, I come from where I come from, and I might not make it home, but I’m still here, I’m not ever gonna leave, I got family here, I got things to do, I got youngers to influence. Because if I were to run away — I did, I was gone for a long time, that’s probably how I stayed alive. I was gone for ten years. I didn’t start staying around until I was older. But that’s the truth, it’s possible I won’t make it home. I’m not one to post it on social media, but there’s been several instances throughout my life, or just on the day to day, there’s funk that I might get in. You know, when I get pulled over it’s not a warning, and a pat on the back, and a “hahaha, have a good night.” The last time I got pulled over I forgot to turn my lights on, and I was like, “Ah dang it, here you go, here’s my information.” “It smells like alcohol.” And it’s funny because I have a new car, I don’t even drink, not because I’m dry, I just happen not to drink. So he pushed it on me, pushed it on me. Ends up getting me to get out. I do all the tests, count the ABCs backwards, walk the line, just to blow a PBT and it says zero. And he’s just shocked that I’m sober. Yeah, I just forgot to turn my lights on. It’s always something like that though. And I can only imagine for my brothers and sisters who are darker complected, more of a target. But that’s the truth behind it. So “Make It Home” is real pretty, but I sugar-coated something kind of wicked.

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[Public Enemy] was basically a collection of sounds, we didn’t all sit in the studio, that would be really cool though. There’s a few producers that I know personally, some that I only know through advertising, and business, and email. It’s super awkward to talk about the genre, you just kind of either feel it or you don’t, you link or you don’t with people. Because it is dangerous times. I won’t blame it all on drugs, but you never know, people aren’t very trustworthy in these times. So it’s not how you would think, like you just kind of link up and everybody’s happy and cool. You’ll hear of each other, probably, and you’ll admire one’s music. You’ll feel something though. You feel something in your chest. That’s the only reason why I want to put something out, it’s because if somebody made something that I feel lines up with my vibration, or the vibration that I want to put out, that’s how it ends up on my album. I definitely don’t worry too much about selecting beats and selecting producers to work with. It’s all just kind of a vibe. Everyone just kind of vibrating, and then if someone likes something we just kind of migrate together, or don’t and there’s no problem between each other.

So Gunner [Jules], I actually heard a song from him when I was 15, 16. He was making music back then, and he was big on the rez. He made this song for his homeboy, I think he just called it, “I Miss You Stone.” I heard his song once, twice, three times a day throughout high school. He just had a big song. I knew who he was, we played basketball against him. Cool story about what we recorded for [Public Enemy], I got asked to go to Europe, and I was pushing for him to go, because I knew they were looking for somebody else. And so I was like, “Take Gunner, take Gunner.” So that’s when I really got to kick it with him. Went to Europe and just experienced it. We took his laptop, and we just recorded. We made “Want From Me” and “What’s Up” in the same day, about a five hour session. We didn’t put in a lot of work on them. It was just quick, it was a vibe, it’s something I tap into here and there. He definitely was quick with the editing and recording, and we had those done and were listening to them that night. We went to Paris, hung out in Paris for the first day. Then we had a workshop and a performance in Germany, so we flew from Paris to Berlin, and then we drove from Berlin to a place called Chemnitz, they have this huge music festival every year called Fuego A La Isla. They have all these cool, different genres that come together and we were the rap portion. So we talked to some kids and did a four day workshop on recording, so they all recorded their own music. We went back to Paris and then we did another show and record there. I’ve known Hassan [Ying] since 2016, he’s actually from Africa but he moved to France. He speaks, like, five languages, like most people abroad. He had a verse in English and a verse in French, and I was like, “Do the one in French!” “My Day,” was such a good vibe, it had to go out. [The other collaborators on Public Enemy are] Big Chief Rocka, he’s Pomo from Sacramento, man that’s my dog. IDKro is an artist from Las Vegas, on a personal level, that’s my homey. When I met him he had this crazy comic book “Kapow! Boom!” suit on, a real nice suit, and some shades on, and he was just drunk as hell, and he freestyled four songs in a row. Dom Dean is another one from his crew, just a cool dude, been my good friend since 2014. They’ll rent out a studio and make a mixtape that night, just freestyling everything. Baby Shel is one of the dopest Native rappers, definitely one of the most influential Native rappers in my time. I’m definitely not on the same level as him, because he’s very versatile. Tris, another cool cat, they’re both from Minneapolis. He wants to work on a whole bunch of new stuff. And that’s just how some of these guys are, just a catalogue of music waiting to put an album together based on what they have. I’m the type of cat, real sentimental with it, I don’t have a hundred songs locked and loaded.

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I’ve been for the last year structuring a business [Trap Tipi] that I don’t mix with my brand, Witko4Ever. But I do at the same time. You know, Trap Tipi will maybe do a collaboration with Witko4Ever [laughs]. So I’m real MF Doom with it. I’m doing it at the mall, which people would probably say I shouldn’t. It’s real conservative here, and people be coming by cringing, “Trap Tipi? That’s never going to last.” It’s like, man, people have no clue what I’m about to do. I’m about to really influence the shit out of their kids, in a good way. Yesterday, November 1st, actually marks it’s been a year now, and I’m about to do a grand opening on a street style design agency, so we do branding services, logos, websites. That’s been my hustle for ten plus years. I do the street art, a lot of vector stuff. I funneled a lot of my freelance design and web development customers into a print shop, so I’m doing actual custom garments. The police were definitely tripping on me when I moved back to South Dakota and put up this shit, they probably thought I was laundering money. They stayed outside of my backdoor for fucking seven months or something. At this point it’s just funny. They were cool, they waved at me, they didn’t have a problem with me, they never harassed me. But I thought it was odd. Who knows, it was suspicious, we just kind of set it up. I had been working my ass off to do it just over the years. Honestly, this has been the plan since I worked at a t-shirt shop when I was 23, 24 in Phoenix, Arizona and a guy fired me for being culturally unfit. So I turned around with the cash that he gave me for the week and a half that I worked, like two hundred bucks or something, and I turned around and I bought a t-shirt that said “culturally unfit.”

I did actually build the office into a personal studio that’s not open for business, and that’s kind of where I’m making this new album at for now. I’m quiet, this is the first time that I’m actually saying anything about it. I got a new album 2022. And I’ll drop a bomb here, I’m actually planning to do a puppet show. I want to do something that’s creative, fun, different, also involves audio engineering, involves our studio. I do have a house full of kids, I’m influenced by all my little kid nieces and nephews now, they’re pushing me to do something creative and funny and different.

It’s hard to be a Native and live in contemporary culture, because everybody wants you to do something they seen in a Western. It’s hard to do something contemporary. Shoutout to everybody who involves themselves in contemporary culture in a good way, or whatever people perceive as a bad way, shoutout to them. From comic books, to books, so many people doing the language programs, starting non-profits, doing art. I mean we’re in every genre. I seen Mato Wayuhi is in a whole different genre. It’s a good day. When I was 20, we definitely weren’t this relevant, especially from South Dakota, but it’s bubbling. I hope in ten years from now it’s just “of course,” it’s not a shock. You know? I’m pretty sure Mato is going to take it for people like CONQUEST, Nevad Brave, Stacks Thunderhawk, Pauli, Griffin White, man there’s so many young artists that are coming up that are already better than I was their age. There’s a big scene coming. It’s a new day for music in South Dakota for sure. Becoming more diverse in Rapid City. This town, we’re not always going to be known for the racial divides. I want to see more Native art, I want to see more Native music, and people from different states coming here for Native artists and Native shows. If I forget to mention so many people, shoutout to everybody. There’s a whole lot of kids coming up, they’re always doing shows in Rapid City and I look and they’re packed crowds. I remember it was always so hard just because music is such a vibration thing. It’s happening more and more in South Dakota.