In April, Pac Div made its triumphant return with1st Baptist. The album was the trio’s first project in six years and officially ended the group’s hiatus.
Following the release of the new LP, HipHopDX Editor-In-Chief Trent Clark had the opportunity to catch up with BeYoung, Like and Mibbs to learn about the comeback and what’s been going on in the years since 2012’s GMB.
Here’s what Pac Div had to say.
On Their Creative Process
“The process is always fun,” Mibbs said. “It’s a puzzle. You just put it together. Like, he’s always in the lab making beats. He be sending me stuff over the phone now that I’ll be like, ‘Oh my God, I was just writing to the last one! I gotta start writing to this new one too!’ But it’s tight. But when we get in the studio, we just try to relax a little bit and then just let it come out.”
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On Why 1st Baptist Features No Guests
“We wanted to come back and it wasn’t, ‘Oh that’s hot ’cause y’all got features. Y’all got so-and-so on the song,'” BeYoung said. “All that, outside of the producers — shout out to the team — is us singing, it’s us rapping. We wanted to give ’em all Pac Div, like unapologetically.”
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On Their Hiatus
“It allows you time to evolve,” Like noted. “It allows you time to soak in the culture and just kinda see where it’s guiding. It’s also like a refresh. Sometimes, you gotta step back and appreciate your art. Appreciate other art around it and not be so competitive, but contribute. How can I contribute to this? ‘Cause no idea is really wrong, so we always have that mindset of hearing new ideas from other people and hearing new sounds and colors. We can add to that, we can contribute to that.”
On The Importance Of Taking Their Time
“We never thought about it like a time thing,” Like explained. “You know, [people would say] six years have passed. Y’all still got it? Of course we still got it! Like, what do you mean? It’s music. It’s like riding a bike. It’s not anything you lose sight of or lose the spirit of unless you decide to lose that spirit. And that’s what a lot of people don’t understand. Some people do lose that spirit, but the spirit lives in us. We are that essence of it!
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He continued, “When we took that hiatus, it really hasn’t a hiatus. [Mibbs and BeYoung] dropped a couple projects. I was producing for mad cats, dropped a project as well. Got three Grammy nominations in that process. So, it was definitely some work being done. But it just wasn’t what people were–consumers are used to like, ‘Here’s this. Here’s this. Here’s this.’ Like, ‘Yo, chill a little bit and restructure.’ Because there’s some artists you wish would go away. And there’s some artists that just evolve, and it just kinda stays stagnant. And consumers are lying to themselves like, ‘Oh, this is the greatest thing!’ But it’s really not. It just kinda stays at the ceiling. We’ve evolved numerous times.”
On What’s Next
“The goal now is just to keep the foot on the gas,” Like said. “All gas, no breaks. We ’bout seven, eight songs into the next joint. ‘Gon let 1st Baptist breathe for a little bit over the summer. Of course the fall, we ready to drop again. Just keep it going while we still have it.
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