Words: Miljan Milekić
Codefendants are what happens when punk meets hip hop, chaos meets purpose, and art meets message. Since the very beginning in 2022, Ceschi Ramos and Sam King have been creating something that transcends the confines of a traditional band, blending styles and genres into a constantly evolving art form. They recently played a sold-out show in Saskatoon, the night their brand-new album ‘Lifers’ was unleashed onto the world. I was lucky enough to sit down with them as soon as the final notes from the stage went silent and hear their story. Welcome to the Crime Wave!
I wanted to ask you why you agreed to come to Canada in the middle of winter, and who tricked you into doing it, but then I realized it’s April!
Ceschi: Well, logically, you don’t think it’s winter anymore! But April is still winter in Canada for the record. It’s 20 °F outside – if we’re lucky. What’s that in Celsius? Around zero?
Sam: This conversation has never been had with a Canadian and an American before. (laughs)
So, I need an explanation from you guys. I’ve been listening to Codefendants since the beginning, but I still don’t know what the hell Codefendants is. I guess I could say it’s a band, but I don’t feel like that really explains it. It feels more like a community or a movement?
Sam: It’s a crime wave!
Ceschi: Yeah, that’s actually more accurate – it really is more of a community. Basically, anything that Sam and I do together is Codefendants, but we also have [Fat] Mike for the real albums. He produced it all, and he is very involved. He is officially the third member, but then we have a bunch of…
Sam: Bunch of Codefendants! All of the Zeta members, The D.O.C. is Codefendant. N8NOFACE – Codefendant. Awol One, Gel [Roc]…
Ceschi: Factor Chandelier. We have so many homies in the Codefendants microcosm. So, you’re right, it’s not a traditional band in any way.
Sam: We’re like the Avengers. (laughs)
Ceschi: It can be as small as just me and Sam. And it can be as large as 20 people.
READ MORE: Check our recap from the Codefendants show at Saskatoon’s Black Cat Tavern
And it all helps create this new and unique sound.
Sam: The way I see it, it’s like a horseshoe. You got punk rock coming from one side, hip hop on the other, and they meet in the middle, forming a full circle. Also, it’s been really cool to see the inspiration we’ve given to the people we looked up to, who are getting pulled back into their shit again and making amazing things. It’s humbling, and it’s fucking great.
You got The D.O.C. back into music!
Sam: We got his first verse in years! It was a wild thing. And then, for him to come back and do the second verse for ‘Rivals’ – it’s humbling. It was like (switches to kid voice) – He likes us, he really likes us! (laughs) You know what I mean? He fucks with us for real!
Ceschi: It’s an honor, man. And it’s not even just D.O.C., there are people you don’t even see, like Awol One. He’s one of my underground heroes. He loves Codefendants more than us, almost. He’s been there since day one.
Sam: He always pushed Codefendants. The art that we’ve done – he’s always been a part of it. He and Gel – The Cloaks, they are legends.
There is something I find really interesting about you guys. When I look at the Codefendants as an entity, everything you do seems very deliberate – music, artwork, videos. And then, we see you live, and it’s quite the opposite – it’s unhinged, unpredictable, and it almost feels like you don’t even know what the next thing you’re gonna do on stage is. Where does it come from, and how do you find that balance?
Sam: The way we approach everything, as artists, is very deliberate. Behind the scenes, we are toiling over this shit. We think about it down to every detail. Like, how long am I gonna go on a bender this week to make this art, basically. But the unhinging of it – like how lame is it when you go and see a band, and they give you the same speech they gave you six months prior? It becomes something that they do, like a shtick.
Coming up as a skateboarder and a vandal, a word like “toy” comes to mind immediately when I make anything. And when you’re a skateboarder or a vandal, the lens never closes. An artist – it never closes. We don’t sit there and talk about what we’re gonna do on stage. We have moments, and we’ll yell them out. Like tonight – Turn off all the lights. At that point in time, he [Ceschi] thought the lights should be turned the fuck out.
Ceschi: And we don’t do that every night. We feel what we feel. And tonight was a great one. We love Saskatoon.
Sam: Tonight was amazing! We don’t do Ceschi songs every night, but we did tonight. With this piece of shit! (laughs and points at Factor Chandelier) I did some Get Dead songs, which I normally don’t do.
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Can you explain to me your connection to Saskatoon, while he’s not listening?
Ceschi: My connection with Saskatoon is one man. His name is Factor Chandelier. He is a hip hop producer who started here in the early 2000s, or maybe late ‘90s, actually, but we met in the mid 2000s. The first time I ever came to Saskatoon was in 2008 – I performed here for Factor Chandelier at the ‘Chandelier’ release party. That was 18 years ago, and we’ve been making music ever since. We made some records I’m really proud of together, and aside from a handful of years where I couldn’t travel here ’cause of legal reasons, I was trying to come every year because Saskatoon is this weird hub of underground hip hop.
And it’s because of people like Factor Chandelier, who brought the Living Legends and members of Project Blowed. He made records with Myka 9 from the Freestyle Fellowship, Awol One from The Shape Shifters, and all these people we really looked up to. Even as far back as 2001, he had a record store in town, and he was bringing all these people from mostly the West Coast underground hip hop community here. It became this weird hub where we could go do a weird underground hip hop show, and 200-300 people would show up. There was nothing else like it, probably in Canada. That’s really where I got involved. He discovered my music through, I think, Project Blowed, which is a big hip hop collective based outta South Central Los Angeles. And I guess I would be considered one of the members of the last generation of the collective.
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It seems like that love goes both ways. I’ve seen quite a few shows in this venue, and it’s not always sold out, and it doesn’t always pop off like tonight.
Ceschi: It was great. I had so much fun tonight. Honestly, this is like my home in Canada. Factor made it feel like a home for me. And, a really cool thing that we can, sort of, announce now, is that we did a whole project with him. It’s gonna come out later this year.
I heard some rumors that you actually recorded the video yesterday.
Ceschi: Yes! We made a video yesterday. It’s a pretty cool, underground hip hop-focused project, but it’s also Codefendants. With lots of guests that we admire.
‘Lifers’ is finally out, since about 97 minutes ago. How did it feel to play some of the new songs and get a reaction like this? I know that songs like ‘Lonely Life’ and ‘The Right Wrong Man’ were out for a bit now, but you also played some brand-new songs.
Ceschi: It feels amazing, man. This record started three years ago, in 2023. Fat Mike, Sam, and I were all going through breakups, and we decided to live together in Las Vegas. It was really Fat Mike’s decision, but we started working on this album back then. It was before ‘This Is Crime Wave’ came out. It was done, but it had not come out yet.
Sam: We actually started before that. There are a few songs on ‘Lifers’ that were supposed to be on ‘This Is Crime Wave,’ but they weren’t done. Like ‘Crime Wave’ and ‘Bad Business’ with N8NOFACE.
Wait, ‘Crime Wave’ was supposed to be on ‘This Is Crime Wave?!’
Sam: Shocking, right! (laughs)
Ceschi: It’s also strange, as it was a long time coming, and it really wipes our slate clean as far as what we’ve had in the archives. This is it, and now we have to start again.
I wanted to go back to the conversation about your art being very deliberate. Pretty much every video you released has a storyline, and it’s basically a short film.
Ceschi: I feel like until ‘Lifers,’ we were very focused on narrative, but we were also only making videos with INDECLINE at the time. And it was a film that we wanted to make. The first series of videos is a film. And then, ‘The Right Wrong Man,’ which is also INDECLINE, was the first time we got to do something fun. That didn’t have a real narrative. But I love working with INDECLINE. That’s our family.
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I love them too. I love so much stuff they do, and in a way, I saw Codefendants kinda like a musical parallel to INDECLINE.
Ceschi: I mean, I don’t disagree with that. I don’t wanna speak for them because I don’t think we’re officially members of INDECLINE. We’re not out there doing billboards or writing crazy plays or making movies with them. But I think we’re definitely part of the artistic family, and I think any of them would agree. We’re part of an ideological space that they also inhabit. Some of our really close friends and collaborators are part of INDECLINE. We can’t necessarily say their names, but INDECLINE has been a part of Codefendants since the beginning of the entire project. We’d be proud to be considered the musical side of INDECLINE.
I know we already touched on some of it, but I also know you guys never stop, so do you have anything else lined up?
Sam: I got all kinds of weird ass shit going on! (laughs) I’m doing this thing called Cassette Magazine, and it’s gonna come out periodically. We don’t know if we can do it every month, but it’ll be quarterly at least. In the first issue, we have Factor Chandelier and Thesis Sahib, and it’s a magazine that comes with a 30-minute cassette tape. The next one that we’re doing is Mr. Dibbs, Atmosphere’s DJ. The third one will be DJ Scientific, and then the fourth one I’m gonna do is Ceschi. We’re gonna do a ‘90s mixtape because we both like the ‘90s shit.
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*Interview edited for length and clarity