Oksana : You're very experimental with your music. What do you have to say about people who are fusing different types of music together from different cultures. Some say that it's cultural appropriation. Is it "*acceptable"?
Neil Fraser : Well, yes, I mean obviously the melange of cultures could being forward some very interesting things. Yuh got different things coming together, y'nuh. You never know... But then there's those people who are not being given credit to... Well, that of course depends how it's done. If it's done like with illegal rip-off's and things, then yeah. Then that is de downside, y'nuh? 'Cause it's up to every individual to be as fair as possible. And to balance the whole ting. Then there's those major label artists like Puff Daddy who sample foundation tracks and all of the kids end up thinking that the original version of the track he's sampling is produced by Puffy and it's not. But I think you'll find that, despite what the kids think, if they look in the fine print, they'll see he's probably given credit. I think that right now Puff Daddy's too big to attempt to bastardize any record and not give any credit for it and get away with it. He's too big for that, y'nuh? So despite what the kids think, they'll find that it's worked out properly. What probably they have to do is more research on a lotta these tracks and know where he's coming from. I remember some kids hearin' Puff Daddy's "I'm Coming Out." The Diana Ross tune. I played it to some kids and they say "Ahh, dat's the Puff Daddy song." I say, "Nuh, what you guys gonna do? You guys haffi study dis ting." You gotta appreciate things like production houses, like Tamla Motown, and Philadelphia International, Platinum, all the major black production houses from the sixties and the seventies. Once you do that, then you would understand where music is today and why certain songs are being done. About sixty percent of the music done today is being based on something old. It's ripping off something else. It's good, of course, to know the source. It's also a marvelous, marvelous cultural discovery when you haffi go ahn dig up these tracks, and you see like "For the Love of Money." It's like an O'Jays track with (Kenny) Gamble & (Leon) Huff. You could appreciate the whole originality of the track.

Oksana : When you started out, what was your original idea and vision? Were you preaching to the people who were already converted or were you trying to educate everyone?
Neil Fraser : Neither. Neither, neither. I wasn't in no preaching business. When I started out, I was just making my opinion of music. I wasn't trying to dominate or dictate or educate even, y'nuh? I was just going through some experiments that were in my head, really.
Oksana : Self-exploration?
Neil Fraser : Yeah. It's nice that people tune in and people appreciate it, but y'nuh, the day I was making music, I never expected to sell one single copy. I'll be blunt! [laughs]

Oksana : What advice do you have for people becoming involved in music right now?
Neil Fraser : Well, I think that they should kinda go back and research the golden era of the seventies and the sixties because it's from there that the whole thing exploded. And quite honestly, you get a lot of people writing songs who couldn't even care what they sound like because it's quite easy to put two words together and make things rhyme, y'nuh? Writing a song, a real song, is a bit more than that. So I think that really and truly, we need to get back to the standards of the sixties and the seventies, 'cause then you had to be good to be on record. That's why there were hardly any bum tracks from those days. Whether reggae, soul, or even pop... even pop had a high standard of songwriting and production, and I think now because there's so much technology around, it's quite easy for a kid and a computer and a hard disk machine and a sampler to jam out something. Everyone thinks, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm a songwriter." But no, I think in the name of music, you really oughta bring the quality back.