Our Interview with Rheteric Ramirez aka Neitzsche Cortez

Interviews are one of my favorite parts of being a SYFFALeer. The reason: intimacy. Album reviews, video postings, column additions? None come close to the interview on the scale o'sensh. So you know that if we've interviewed a band it's because we've usually reached out and begged and stalked and pestered them until they acquiesce. It parallels our love lives.

I had a chance to chop it up with Rheteric Ramirez aka Neitzsche Cortez, maybe the most honest man in all of hip hop and esteemed member of Hellfyre Club. What I love about Rheteric, in rhyme and real life, is that he pulls no punches. If he thinks something isn't up to par, he isn't the type to wring hands, himming and hawing potential outcomes. Dude is point blank in his aim. And it is mother fucking refreshing.

I came to be a fan of Sir Ramirez by simply being around LA hip hop in the last decade-and-a-half. Ramirez/Cortez and I move in similar circles. That we'd eventually meet, and he'd keep mistaking me time and again for other bearded and chubby white dudes, was inevitable. I kid, but also hope that, after this, he'll remember me next time I come say what up.

Hellfyre Club has become appropriately associated of late with the nerdy and wordy off-kilter offerings of Busdriver and Milo, and the comedic ruminations of the soft-spoken Open Mike Eagle. But if push came to shove, as it often does, the heart of Hellfyre Club might lie within the rawness that Kail aka William Thedford and Rheteric Ramirez aka Neitzsche Cortez serve up sans lubrication. Even label-head Nocando seems to be more thuggy than huggy on many occasions ("All Over a Bitch,"Third World Hustle"). While Busdriver is Hellfyre's Frank Zappa, Rheteric might be its Captain Beefheart.

SYFFAL is populated by a mostly bearded, mostly man-tittied, mostly married, mostly boring social retards. Rheteric Ramirez aka Neitzsche Cortez tells us all who he has become and how he manages to be so much better than the rest of us.

OUR INTERVIEW WITH Rheteric Ramirez AKA Neitzsche Cortez STARTS NOW!

SYFFAL: Rheteric, I ran into you wearing a cardigan sweater and nerd glasses, hair all side-parted, and then I ran into you again in a some kind of a matching dollar bill print linen outfit. Who is the "Real Ramirez"?

RHETERIC RAMIREZ: I am no longer Rheteric Ramirez and I categorically deny EVER wearing a cardigan. I am now going by Neitzsche Cortez. I still wear the same shit though and that's important.

I just pretend I'm Emilio Estevez in Repo Man when I'm getting dressed in the morning, idk.

You might just end up in a place where you're asking yourself, "How did I get here?" and somehow I'll be there too, wearing the same shit. Maybe it's the glasses. Maybe it's an illuminati survival jumpsuit, but when you see me, you'll know why you're there and you won't feel so lost anymore.

Could save your life.

SYFFAL: First, if it wasn't a cardingan, it was a certifiable grandpa sweater (which I respect and admire). Second, why Neitzsche Cortez?

Neitzsche Cortez: I changed it to Neitzsche like Friedrich Nietzsche, the German Philospher. Nietzsche is a nihilist. I am not, but Nietzsche and I are alike in thought so much to the degree that I have said the same things before I was ever aware of him. It's funny because before I ever heard about Nietzsche I wrote in a song called "Hard Feelings," "I close my eyes look into darkness and feel something looking back" (Link to lyrics for Hard Feelings). It was only later I found out that Nietzsche wrote "And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you".

Rheteric Ramirez is dead and so is Nietzsche, the philosopher.

I chose Neitzsche because Nietzschian thought has become the narrative to my life as a man who is getting closer to his greater self, while honoring the people that are meaningful in my life. And Cortez because of a heritage that is inextricably part of my pre-English understanding of this American World I was born into.

Thus, Neitzsche Cortez.

SYFFAL: OK. That was maybe the most straight-up anyone has ever answered anything for a SYFFAL interview. I was half expecting you to make a joke about not caring about the difference between rojo or verde when it comes to your salsa selection.

So, Neitzsche, what is your favorite flavor of agua fresca? It says a lot about a man.

Neitzsche Cortez: Tamarindo.

SYFFAL: Nothing says thirst quenching like boiled legumes. What is the weirdest place you've ever played a gig?

Neitzsche Cortez: If "weird places for gigs" had a tab and then, when you click the tab, it's a scroll down menu showing: "creepy," "pitiful," and "just leave," then I would say - I played at a horse stable in the Palm Desert in '07.

SYFFAL: Speaking of the desert: If your friends got high and forgot you in the Mojave desert with just a handful of peyote, what spirit animal would lead you back home? Notice, I never questioned whether you'd eat the handful of peyote.

Neitzsche Cortez: I can't picture a spirit animal. All I can think of is those sand worms from Tremors. I don't know. A picture of a really sarcastic penguin keeps flashing in my mind.

SYFFAL: Dude, I will never picture you as anything but a really sarcastic penguin for the rest of our days.

How did you become involved with Hellfyre Club.

Neitzsche Cortez: I am what you call Hellfyre Club pre Veneris Nigrum (the compilation released in 2011).
Nocan came to me in 2010 and said that he wanted me on a record and I've been involved ever since.

SYFFAL: Word. So you are what we could call a founding member.

Yo, riddle me this, why in the fuck do we fucking park on the fucking driveway and fucking drive on the fucking parkway? What the fuck has become of the American Dream?

Neitzsche Cortez: The same reason we spit out the window and have the wind blow it back in our face.

SYFFAL: Or all over the back window. Where is the first place you ever rapped in public?

Neitzsche Cortez: The first time I ever rap was at Poisonous Records when it was on Hollywood Blvd. in 1994. The last place I imagine myself rapping is at Elysium.

SYFFAL: The last place? Oh, I see you feel like you can just add onto the questions now!? I am glad you're getting comfortable. Take off your Cortez and stay awhile, bro. (See what I did there?)

Let's pretend I'm a mother fucking genie. You get one wish. What the fuck do you waste it on?

Neitzsche Cortez: For you to not call me "bro"! Instead I like "brother". It shows commitment because we are all brothers, but we are not all bros.

SYFFAL: No BRO-MO, brobro!? On SYFFAL - the birthplace of brobro, bruhbruh!? Brah, we might not EVER get to be bros, bro! You didn't know that we can get kind of brobsessed with the brolloquials around this SYFFAL metrobropolis, brother?

Tell the people not familiar with the Los Angeles not covered in reality television about the real Rodeo (pronounce Roh-DeeOh… and never Roh-DAYoh) drive.

Neitzsche Cortez: If you study the Egyptians and the Coptic Christian teachings from the Abyssinian testament, Rodeo was actually a street in Bethlehem. The next time you're at McDonald's and you buy your kid a happy meal, look where the toy is made.

SYFFAL: I somehow love the idea of Chinese rodeos.

Someone just put me on to that New Orleans snowball stand off Slauson and Overhill. I'm from New Orleans originally so I had been fiending for that shit for years and now I got it. What's the one LA-based thing you miss most when traveling?

Neitzsche Cortez: I would miss the Iranian food. I love me some Iranian food.

SYFFAL: You're Armenian, right!? No? Sure? Oh…hmmm...well, you want to go take a yoga class with me? I've never ever been to a yoga class and also because I want to prove that rappers are people too.

Neitzsche Cortez: Yes (I hate you).

SYFFAL: YES! (I hate myself too.) New projects?

Neitzsche Cortez: I still hate you.

I'm writing for my first full length album self titled, Neitzsche Cortez, the next Hellfyre Club project and some other guest spots in hell. There are talks about doing things that sound important but I can't over-promise and under-deliver to my beloved.

SYFFAL: Brother, I love you! I really am a fan and can't wait to hear your new stuff. Thank you for taking the time to go back and forth with me. We still need to come up with a code word or some secret hand sign so when we meet next, you won't mistake me for Barry or Brent or whoever.