Local music spotlight: Paradime (Detroit Free Press)

LOCAL MUSIC SPOTLIGHT
Paradime
July 19, 2007
Read the original article here.
The lowdown: Before he heard the first four bars of an Eminem song, Paradime once thought that he was the dopest white guy in hip-hop. After popping the tape in the deck of his car and experiencing the delivery of Detroit’s most famous rapper, he knew he had some work to do. That was years ago. And now the work is done. Paradime — when he’s not working the mic, he tours as Kid Rock’s DJ — has become one of Detroit hip-hop’s most beloved rappers, and finally he has a new album out, “Spill at Will.” It pushes the boundaries of his signature fun-loving frat-boy style of rap further than anything he’s done.
Who he is: Paradime, real name Freddie Beauregard, is a thirtysomething rapper who has befriended some of the hottest guys in Detroit hip-hop. It’s been three years since his last album, 2004’s “11 Steps Down,” an album that had Paradime rapping about living the rock star life — eating at fancy steakhouses and sipping on the finest liquors — but also being broke as a joke. He made “Spill at Will” mostly in the basement of his Redford home, where he set up a studio in his basement. He teamed up with Detroit rappers including Trick Trick and Marv Won, and worked on one his more introspective songs, “The Water,” with Kenny Tudrick, a former guitar player for Kid Rock.
The new sound: “All my albums reflect exactly where I am at that point in my life. Usually they’ve been funny, tongue-in-cheek or smart-ass. But this album is like a maturation, I guess. This surprised some people, but at the same time, I’m just being honest. I’ve been looking inward more. I burned the candle at both ends. And it made me think differently than I usually do,” says Paradime. “The joke that I’ve made with a couple of my buddies is that I’m like the clown who cries on the inside. I’m always a jokester and the fun person and I don’t let things show a lot. It’s just not in my nature. Whatever. But having the studio here, it brought a lot of that out. I didn’t have to go anywhere to say what I wanted to say.” A lot of the album was written in the middle of the night or early in the morning, he says. “There’s no need to schedule studio time. We finished everything there, but it allowed me to be more honest with my music. There was no one else around to give me input.”
Therapeutic sessions: On several songs, it sounds like Paradime was lying on the couch. “I usually don’t listen to my own stuff after it’s done. Once an album is done, I’m so sick of it, I usually leave it alone. But I’ve been listening to this album a lot and it’s like ‘Oh, God.’ There’s only a couple of songs where it gets that deep. But those couple of songs are really … deep. And people are like ‘Are you OK?’ But if I don’t do that I’m cheating myself and I’m cheating the people that do like my music. We’ll see how people accept it or take it.”
By Kelley L. Carter, Free Press music writer