Courtesy of allhiphop.com

In the beginning was the Groove. Flowing from the hard, metal-edged punch of Parliament and Funkadelic to the satin-n-lace, bedroom eyed silky smoove ballads of Marvin Gaye, Barry White, and Millie Jackson to the booty-boomin’ dance floor anthems of The Jacksons and Prince, the Groove came in many shapes, sizes, sounds, and colors throughout the decades.

But in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s, the Groove landed in the gang-torn hamlet of Compton, California and assumed a form that came to be known as G-Funk. And the Groove was good. And oh, how the people rejoiced and danced. And then they danced some more. And the man behind the Groove’s latest form was Big Hutch from the old school hip-hop outfit Above the Law, but you can now call him Cold187um.

Two decades later, Cold187um is largely acknowledged by the hip-hop history books as the main architect behind the G-Funk sound, which basically defined the sound of West Coast rap in the early ‘90s, even if Dr. Dre’s The Chronic popularized the style. But chicken-or-the-egg quibbling aside, it’s 2012 and while the Artist Formerly Known as Big Hutch remains proud of his legacy, he’s not resting on his past glories.

Now signed to Detroit’s legendary Psychopathic Records, the kingdom of horrorcore icons Insane Clown Posse, Cold187um has just released a concept album called The Only Solution, a hip hop tale about the merry adventures of The Psychopathic Assassin and his bloody trade. Imagine “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadassssss Song” directed by George Romero (director of “Night of the Living Dead”) and you might have an idea of what to expect with this flat-out fun record that will wag yo’ ass and give you nightmares.

We caught up with Cold187um over the phone to discuss his new home at Psychopathic Records, the muddled history of G-Funk, and the mysterious character on The Only Solution known as the Black Swan.

AllHipHop.com: There hasn’t been a really good hip-hop concept album in a long time. Where did the story for “The Only Solution” come from?

Cold 187um: Me and Violent J (of Insane Clown Posse) conceived the whole idea. He said he wanted to do a project with me and I knew that Psychopathic Records did a lot of albums that were pretty artsy and so I was a bit unsure as to where I’d fit in at first. Then I was on the tour bus on the “American Psycho” tour and we were talking and I said “What if I did a storytelling album?” That’s one of my great assets as an MC—I’ve always been able to tell a lot of dope stories. So I thought “What if I could do a whole record like that?” But the hook would be that I would be my own self in it, as a killer or an assassin, so I came up with the concept of the Psychopathic Assassin. It would be stories through the eyes of a killer. When we got off the tour, (Violent J) and I went back and forth over the idea and came up with this notion that we would capture the whole temperament of an assassin—how he became one, how he grew up, that whole mental scope of how he turned into an assassin. When we started shaping the actual project, we said we wanted him to do 12 different hits for whatever reason. Y’know, like, he’d go kill this person for this price. We put the vigilante twist on it because we wanted to make it a more personal quest he had, so that even though he was getting paid, he had this vendetta on every mission he went on. So I said to Violent J, “You go write-up the whole synopsis or scene that you want set up in each song or episode.” And then I was basically like a screenwriter, I’d script the whole episode. So if you look at “Born to Kill,” it was written like the intro of the movie, where it sets up everything that you’re about to hear. People will say “This kid (in the song) is crazy” but the last verse explains to you why he went crazy—he watched his father get killed right in front of him. So now you’re in his head. It’s funny because we recorded the whole album chronologically from his birth right on up to him getting called up by the agents in “Alive & Free”

AllHipHop.com: Let’s talk about that setup about when you hear Black Swan killing the Assassin’s dad. Where did you get the name Black Swan? Did you take it from that Natalie Portman ballet movie?

Cold 187um: (Laughs) No, see, when I was creating all the characters, I was trying to create kind of a ‘70s blaxploitation film, so I was trying to pick a name that would be kind of pimp-type character, so that’s how we picked the name Black Swan. We wanted a futuristic name. So that’s how we picked the characters names. I wanted them to be really cinematic but I wanted them to be surreal too.

AllHipHop.com: Were you worried that some of your old school fans would bristle at the notion of you working with Insane Clown Posse?

Cold 187um: Well, I wasn’t worried about the fan base part. I think I was more worried about how I wanted to stay me. I didn’t want to go so far left that I was no longer politically correct with my own fans. But Violent J was a big follower of Above the Law and he knew he wanted to protect the integrity of the audience that I had built with Above the Law. But I wasn’t really worried because I’m a musician first and I really respect what ICP has done in the industry. They’ve covered our records before so I really wasn’t worried about doing a disservice to my fans

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• Interview with Cold 187