The President is charming, even from a distance. He approaches our little press junket striding as easily and confidently across the parking lot of Randy’s Donuts as if it’s the South Lawn’s grassy expanse and he’s just stepped off the Marine One helicopter.  Suddenly, it seems plausible that he made the last-minute change from our original destination, In-N-Out, to Randy’s in an effort to duck a gaggle of groupies. 

After all, it made sense that he’d suggested In-N-Out, despite the fact that he’s newly stopped eating beef (“It was makin’ me feel slow”). His next, and last free, project is entitled “Animal Style,” a slight nod to In-N-Out’s secret dish of fries swimming in Thousand Island dressing, cheese, and grilled onions. Though El Prez has been around earning his name since the early 2000s, he’s still not listed on the main menu.  You gotta be in the know to ask for the good stuff. 

That’s all about to change, however.  “My main focus with “Animal Style” was to make sure it beat in the truck, and I could perform every song.  I’ve never had that…everything was dark or slow; I wanted some shit you ‘throw ya hands up!’ to. I felt like people weren’t respecting my live show.”

De Andre Harvey, better known to his constituents as “El Prez,” will get a chance to test out his new tactic soon:  He’s the first act listed on one of the first highly-anticipated concerts of the new year, “Leaders of the New Cool.”  Diplomatically, El Prez doesn’t just robotically recite, but details the other acts in depth. 

No surprise, really, when he elaborates on his peace policy. “Most of us get along. We have our scene, but we got Glasses Malone, Bishop Lamont, Jay Rock, Nipsey Hussle, the more mainstream; they fuck with everybody.  I know all of them, real good dudes, helped me out a bunch of times.  My homegirl is one of The Bangs; couple of them jerk cats fuck with couple people I know.  All of our scenes are together. Our little rivalries are off record, cause I don’t want people thinking we not united on this. The more everybody sticks together, the more everybody comes up.  A lot of these fans like ALL the artists, so why you trying to make them pick a side?”

He can’t confirm Curren$y, the Big Easy-gone-Big Apple rapper, on the “New Cool” bill.  But “be real, probably the one artist I look forward to hearing right now is Curren$y.  I’m a weed-smokin’ rapper; I like clothes….my regular background is a retail stylist and merchandiser.”  “I saw you modeled,” I interject. “Where’d you see me model?” El Prez asks, and his tone is such that I expect those groupies to materialize out of thin air. 

It’s in these moments that El Prez radiates Southern charm on par with another president, Bill Clinton, but he was born and bred in Inglewood, CA.  Being a mixed family (his mother is white; father, black) living in the ‘hood was heightened reality enough, but they were living off Florence and Normandie during the riots of ’92.  “I remember when what you see in the movies was real life…I think all that helps me be the person I am because I never wanted to be that. I always strived to be different, do better…but you can’t forget, you can’t think of yourself better than your people and where you come from.”

While that humility seems innate, it’s also been hard earned.  I ask about his business savvy. “Shit, I done did everything wrong. For example, putting a record out.  We was straight from the Pro Tools, got an external cd player, burn it on the cd, write [on it] with a Sharpie, stand in front of 7-11 across from our college [Cal State Northridge], slangin’ cds, five dollars.  I ain’t even have no case half the time! I’m not checking the cds so people was gettin’ blank cds; track listing would be wrong. Be prepared, ‘cause this is your first impression.  Some people may get that [first] cd from you, and they run into you again, and I might have a whole package now- shrink wrapped cd case, [I’m] comin’ at you the right way, dope music- and you ain’t gon’ give it the time of day, cause you remember, ‘I got this cd from this dude named El Prez, and it ain’t even have the music on the cd!’ That shit goes a looooong way.” 

Although his dad worked in multimedia at EMI Capital and presciently warned him of the disappearance of the golden-ticket label deal, he “never had the connections of an older person schoolin’” him.  Prez was out on his own, using the fact that he “used to be a little nerd and shit” to study others’ game.  “I used to run with a couple of cutthroat homies from Project Blowed, and they would just crash your stage.  These motherfuckers would take a cordless mic with transmitter, and just be buggin’ the promoter, and whether he say yeah or no, it’s a little break in that show? Oh, they on there, and they rock it so hard, you can’t stop it!

We used to play games like Lyrical Knockout. You could direct a verse at anybody, and if that person doesn’t, in enough time, direct somethin’ right back at you, he out. It causes you to think on your toes, [instead of] ‘I got these four lines Ima say when it come back around.’ I consider myself an MC, and [that means] ‘move the crowd,’ ‘master of ceremonies’…a lot of people these days don’t do that, and that’s kinda [why] the culture suffers as a whole, cause you not takin’ it back to where it started.” 

In 2005-06, El Prez was in a group called The Empire, and after pressing up cds, his partner dropped out.  By himself, Prez got the record on the shelves at many major outlets- Tower, Best Buy, Amoeba.  As excited as he was to see his record in the same bin as Eric B & Rakim, many copies went unsold.  “I wasted all that money, and just at this time the Internet started to pop. I just hopped on the train at the right stop.  I have that street mentality of pushin’ a record, but I also have this sensibility on how to take as much advantage of the Internet as I can.  Can’t nobody name [The Empire] album, but everybody can name that “Prezanomics,” or [the video for] ‘Uaintuponthis!’”

As any PR-polished representative of a new school of thought, El Prez is optimistic about the future for not just him, but the whole city.  “This new scene is totally different from what you expect L.A. to be.  And that’s what I love about it the most, it’s changing the perception [that] all of us out here gangbang and wear khakis and Chucks. We do intelligent, different music. Not the West Coast g-funk music you used to.”

As for the state of hip-hip on a national level, Prez is actually happy the game has entered a recession. By the late 90s, hip hop, led by Pied Piper Diddy, was parading gold-dripping wrists and a glittering smile, attracting everybody on the block who ever accidentally created a couplet. But “now you can’t make no fucking money.  A lot of the drug dealers, a lot of the n*ggas who didn’t want to get no 9-to-5, who just wanted to be famous, they getting out of the game. The people who are still bein’ creative and resilient are still gon’ be here, and they gonna end up shinin’. You getting all the people half-assin’ shit out.”

It’s rare, and refreshing, for such a public figure to speak so candidly.  Then again, I suspect this is why El Prez has gained the reputation he has; people always know where they stand with him. That, and there’s no red tape, no hoops to jump through, when it comes to reaching him.

“I’m always politicking…in a good way.  If I got a connect, you got a connect.  Now if you do me dirty, or if I need something and you ain’t trying to fuck with me, that’s a lesson learned. But I’m not gonna act like you. They can call Prez if they need some help; they know that, from the young to the old.”

Spoken like a man who’s on his way to making the history books. 

El Prez drops “Animal Style” President’s Day, Febuary 15.  Catch him live next Tuesday at the “Leaders of the New Cool” concert at Echoplex, or hit him up online on MySpace and Twitter.