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Nate "Dust" Corrona (left) and Greg "Manchild" Owens still hope to release their much delayed Pro*Pain in 2006

From the Sugarhill Gang in the '70s and Run-D.M.C. in the '80s to heavyweights like Beyoncé and Kanye West today, sampling is widely used in popular music. It basically means taking a portion of someone else's recording and using it in a creative new way in another. Sampling is extremely common in hip-hop, but it came back to haunt rap duo MarsILL, whose much-maligned second album, PRO*PAIN (Gotee), has been delayed numerous times because of legalities involving somebody else's material. In this conversation, the tandem of Greg "Manchild" Owens and Nate "Dust" Corrona explains the technicalities of this hip-hop element, how the oversight has affected the release of their second album, and in what ways their very livelihoods have suffered because of it.

So what exactly happened to your second album with Gotee Records?

Dust: We turned the record in. Gotee asked if there were any samples on it. We said, "Yes, but they're chopped up so don't worry about it."

What do you mean, chopped up?

Dust: From a production standpoint, the art form of hip-hop is based around sampling. "Chopping up" is basically, according to lawyers, "interpolation"—pieces of music that have been re-sequenced to make something new. Sometimes you can get around the sampling issue by chopping things up, sometimes you can't. It's the law nowadays that whenever you use someone else's piece, even if it's half a millisecond, it still needs to be cleared. EMI [Gotee's parent company] wasn't comfortable releasing the album without it being cleared.

You're not new to the hip-hop game, yet you did something you knew would get you in trouble. Why?

Manchild: Dust? (Laughs)

Dust: (Laughs) Speaking as the producer and the person mostly responsible for the samples that caused the problem, [this situation] is a lot different that any other record we've put out. EMI really took notice of this record, and really got behind it. But their lawyers who work with licensing put it under a magnifying glass. It's not so much that PRO*PAIN is any more sample-based than any other project. We were just a little laid back in how we approached it initially. But EMI wasn't laid back about it.

We come from a very independent place, musically, and with our situation we just had a much different attitude. Obviously, our attitude is changing because of what happened. We're figuring out how MarsILL can exist under the sample law breeching. We'll work on it.

Manchild: Dust hit the nail on the head. It's not that we were making a dangerous record; it wasn't like Dust was sampling Phil Collins or a really big artist. Our label got real excited. They thought, "This is the record that's going to do it! This is the one that's going to blow up!" So when they started looking at it, they were really scrutinizing every detail. They were very worried. [But] even now, the stuff that's holding it up is not a very big deal. But the lawyers have their jobs to do; they were really worried about liability.

Meanwhile, you already had 10,000 copies ready to go.

Dust: Yes, and that was the main problem. We had a whole bunch of units pressed up, and we couldn't really go back and fix the sample glitches. So we had to actually clear the samples before releasing it. It was really hard for the lawyers [at our label]. They had never really had to deal with this before.

Are people at the label upset?

Manchild: Gotee has been very supportive; they're sticking with it. Another label would've said, "Let's just shelve this and move on." But they really believe in the record, and that's why they're taking a chance on it. The frustration they feel is the same one that we feel. It's not a case of this big corporate giant trying to hold the little guy down. They're really trying to protect us.

Your music depends on heavy sampling. How will things change moving forward? Will your sound change completely?

Dust: It definitely changes the way I think about music. It's going to be a combination of planning ahead: "Can we clear this?" And the other half will be, "I'm not going to sample that. I'm not going to do it like that." We're going to work differently. [We're] going to have to work around it. That's what I'm learning how to do as a producer. It's a bit confining.

All the legal wrangling has held up your album, but selling it is what actually provides for you and your families. How do you manage?

Dust: We've been very blessed. From the beginning, we've been blessed by a team of people that help us. We consider ourselves missionaries in a lot of regards. We're out there doing shows for college kids, and the brand of hip-hop we do, within the Christian realm, has a more "offending" sound. There's a lot of people who really believe in what we do, and we have a team of supporters that help us survive. Had we not had that in place during this whole PRO*PAIN fiasco, it would've been a very hard year.

What do you mean by "supporters"?

Manchild: Dust and I do this separately. Like workers in the mission field, we try to look for people who get on board with what we're doing. There are people on my team and people on Dust's team. MarsILL operates in that way. It's a supplement between contributions, doing shows, and record sales. All that said, it's been a tough time. Had it not been for those people, it would've been impossible to make rent and pay for groceries.

Beyond the financial aspect, we have that base of people also for prayer and accountability. We're in a lot of places where there's a lot of temptations. We spend a lot of time in bars. We need accountability and prayer, and it's been a blessing to have all these people on our team—150 to 200 people who pray consistently for us. To have this kind of backbone to your ministry is a pretty amazing thing.

How did you get all these people on board to help you?

Dust: I came into it via Campus Crusade for Christ. I was in one of their campus-based ministries, and in a different hip-hop group. By the time I met Manchild and things kinda grew into MarsILL in 1998, I had already three years of being full-time support-based. Manchild asked, "How do you do this?" I told him, and that's how MarsILL kinda jumped off and we were able to get on the road without having to worry too much about financial needs at home.

Does this make MarsILL a ministry more so than a music group?

Manchild: The people that support us understand that my ministry is really my life within the music industry and my relationship with the guys that we get to battle-rap with downtown, the artists that we do shows with, and the people that come to see us. It's really our lives and how we show Christ to people. We've always shied away from being called "holy hip-hop" or "Christian rap" or whatever because we don't want people to pigeonhole our music. We feel like our music is people music. Anyone with a heartbeat who wants to sit down and listen, we have something to say to them. Our lives are our ministry, and that bleeds through into what I write.

At the same time, Mars ILL is a hip-hop group. When we're doing shows at the bars, we're not doing altar calls or "bar calls." That's not what we're called to do. Now, if we're praying with the soundman in the back at the end of a show, wonderful. But sometimes, we need to understand that the seeds are sown whether we see the fruits of it or not.

You're both married and have kids. What do your families think of your jobs?

Dust: My wife is very supportive of what I do. There are certainly aspects of it that are not great for a family man and raising kids, like being away from home for extended periods of time.

Manchild: Our wives understand, but the funniest part about what we do is when we're you're trying to explain what we do to other people. Take my mom and my dad, for instance. They give me blank stares. It's a very weird thing to tell somebody you're in a rap group. "You've got your fourth kid on the way and you're in a rap group?" And I'm like, "Yep." If I meet somebody in my kids' school, they're like, "You do what? You rap? That's crazy!" And I'm like, "Word up!" So our worlds collide sometimes.

Dust: If I say, "I'm a musician," inevitably that leads to, "What kind of music?" And then I say, "Hip-hop," to which they reply, "What instrument do you play?" To which I go, "I don't play anything; I'm a DJ and a producer." So it never ends and you just have to say you're in a rap group.

Ever thought about getting a regular nine-to-five job?

Manchild: Yes, I have (laughs). I have always loved creating music. But I'd be lying if there wasn't something very attractive about coming home at a certain time every day, having a schedule, and living a more traditional life. It's something that I haven't done in a long time, but've thought about it.

Dust: It's been a very hard road being just "mildly" successful in music, but I feel a little different than Manchild in the fact that I probably would do this for the bulk of my remaining years. Whether it's in a group, in production, or in another creative aspect, I feel like God's called me here. I can't see myself doing the nine-to-five. I'd always feel like, "What about that other thing I did for ten years?" Committing to this, at this point, is how I feel. We've always had a simple life calling.

Keep your fingers crossed for the release of PRO*PAIN in 2006. In the meantime, you can learn more about Mars ILL by visiting our site's artist page for them and reading our review of 2003's Backbreakanomics. Please visit Christianbook.com to listen to sound clips and buy their music.

© Andree Farias, subject to licensing agreement with Christianity Today International. All rights reserved. Click for reprint information.

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