PAPA ROACH Singer: 'I Just Want To Be A Rocker'

PAPA ROACH singer Jacoby Shaddix (a.k.a. Coby Dick) recently spoke with the Dallas Music Guide about the recording process for the group's new album, "Getting Away With Murder", his personal cleansing which lead to a substantial portion of the album's lyrical content, and why you can't trust the media. Several excerpts from the interview follow:

Dallas Music Guide: "Lovehatetragedy" was the follow-up to "Infest", which had just blown up, but it wasn't able to replicate the response — why do you think that happened?

Jacoby Shaddix: "There was all kinds of shit. We only got one single out of the label. They only worked us one deep. The label wasn’t backing us like they were. Granted, we wrote a record that was different, and not all of our fans understood it, but fuck it, we just go where the music takes us. It was a good experience for us — we went out and toured, we went through Europe twice on that record, went to Japan, went to Australia. Granted, we didn’t sell as many records as we did the first time, but we sold a good amount of records — one and a half, almost two million worldwide — so it wasn't like we fell off the face of the earth, but as far as promo goes, it was kind of…but it's cool, we’re not on Dreamworks anymore. When we were making 'Getting Away With Murder', Dreamworks got bought out, so we didn’t have a label telling us what to do and wasn’t telling us, 'Hurry up, get the record done,' and we didn’t have any rushing, so that was cool. But it was a little nerve-racking, because we didn't know if we had a deal or not when we were making this record. But when Geffen heard it, they were flipping out about it, and that was a really good thing for us, not to have extra hands in the pot while we were cooking the shit."

Dallas Music Guide: Rolling Stone even listed the record as one of the most disappointing — commercially — of the year, while they critically raved about it.

Jacoby Shaddix: "You win some, you lose some. It can be disheartening, you want to be the biggest band in the world, after you've sold so many, but the reality is that we weren't. I think we came through it cool, though. We came through it with a good perspective on where we stood as a band and what the business is about. It's hard business, and we were either going to go and recapture what we had on 'Infest' or push things forward, and the vote was to push things forward. It's another risk that we're taking by not giving them exactly what they bought the first time, but fuck it, it's a risk we're willing to take."

Dallas Music Guide: One thing that’s mentioned a lot is that the rapping is gone.

Jacoby Shaddix: That's right, bitch, the rapping's gone! I don't feel like rapping. I'm just over that shit. It's cool, I dig hip-hop, I just kind of became disenchanted with it. What it is and what it represents in the mainstream…there are some good artists, but just ninety percent of it is shit. There is good, underground hip-hop, but I'm a rocker, man. As far as what we're doing, I just want to be a rocker. It's what I wanted to be when I was a kid."

Read Jacoby Shaddix's entire interview with the Dallas Music Guide at this location.