Photo by Two Vital

It's been a long time since the chart topping days of 'Mr Wendal' and a lot has happened since they last hit our charts, but Arrested Development are back and they mean business. Stranger caught up with Speech to find out more.

Interview by Joe Rorke

Joe Rorke: Speech, it's an honour to be here with you, sitting down with one of my childhood heroes. I have to admit I've been a fan since my sister first gave me a copy of your first album. Speech: Thanks! And tell your sister we said thanks!

JR: I'm very happy to see you back on the scene after what seems like an age, where've you been and what you been doing since the last album? S: It's funny you say that, our new album is called Since The Last Time. Everyone's been asking where we've been and basically we've been living life, y'know, raising our kids, but still doing music - I've been touring as a solo artist mainly in Japan. That's it really...oh no wait, I became an ordained minister about eight months ago and that changed my life because now I lead a ministry of artists and entertainers like myself which is incredible, so there's actually been a lot going on.

JR: How has the hip hop scene changed since you first emerged and where do you see your place within it?
S: Well, when we first came out, hip hop music was more diverse. And by that I mean in the charts, So you had groups like Arrested Development co-existing with groups like MC Hammer, Public Enemy, NWA, 2 Live Crew and everything in between. And everybody was touring, everybody was in the charts, everybody had videos that were being played, so artists in that time period were all fired up about being themselves. People weren't all trying to be the next 50 [Cent] or the next Jay-Z - you could be you. Originality was lifted up and that was what made the music so vibrant. Even to this day in America people call those years 'the golden era' of hip hop 'cause it was so vibrant and everything was accepted.

Photo by Two Vital

JR: Do you think that that era has passed or that there's still new and different things happening today?

S: There is a lot of new hip hop happening and I almost think hip hop is as vibrant as it's ever been, but it's just not exposed. Y'know, you've got a lot of exciting stuff going on around the world but you're not going to hear about it on MTV, you just won't see people like Ty or Strange Fruit on it, you won't see Talib Kweli, or The Roots or any of that stuff but you'll see your Jay-Zs' and your Justin Timberlakes' and so on. I think there is so much good hip hop but a lot of people coming up think that if they're gonna get on they've gotta be like this person or that person, because the door to success is not opening too wide right now, that's the problem with the music industry and that's something we're trying to change with our new album.

JR: How do feel you've evolved or changed as a band to still reach the sort of market you do?

S: Well I think we've evolved in a lot of ways; one is that we've got four new members in the group - JJ Boogie, One Love, Ze, and Nisha.

JR: It's good to see some of the older members still rockin' it.

S: Yes, yes. Baba Oje (75-years-old) is one of the original members of the group, also Ishi, Razedon and myself. So the line up is one of the biggest changes that's happened to us. Other than that, I think our new music is really just a continuation of what we were doing. We could change it up, we love a lot of different styles of music but for what we're calling our official comeback record we didn't want to change it too much because the fans were so clear to us and were saying 'we really need what we heard before, but just new stuff' and so we really didn't re-create ourselves or anything. We just wanted to come out with some stuff that felt right.

Photo by Two Vital

JR: Who's doing it for you at the moment?

S: Lupe Fiasco, I love his new record. I'm really feeling Common. I actually like Kanye West a lot too and I like Outkast. Strange Fruit Project I'm feeling, those guys are really talented. Little Brother. Talib Kweli. We just did a show last night with People Under The Stairs. I gotta give Kanye props for having the vision to put people like Common or Talib Kweli on his record, most people like Jay-Z stick to people in their camp, but I gotta respect Kanye for geting people like that together.

JR: We've heard the tune you've just done with Ty and been digging that.

S: 'This Here Music', that's a gem man! It's been really cool. Now that we're coming back out, I've purposely been doing a lot of guest spots with a lot of people. I did a tune with 1 Giant Leap, one with Gym Class Heroes, me and Zap Mama just made a tune. So I have been doing a lot - on purpose. I just wanted to let people know that Arrested Development is back. I'm loving spreading the vibe.

Arrested Development's homepage is here.