— The story of Deltron 3030, a defining underground hip hop record, told by Deltron members Del tha Funky Homosapian, Dan the Automator and Kid Koala.
KID KOALA I remember when it first came out, it wasn’t like people just got it right away or anything.
DAN THE AUTOMATOR That’s just how it is, because you’re giving them something that they’re not used to. You’re in the music world, and you know everything has to be categorized. And once you do something that’s not categorized, it messes people up, it trips them up.
KID KOALA We finished that record, we did a ten city tour, I think, but we were all literally coming off of other tours, so we just stopped it at that. A few months later, Gorillaz came out and just super-nova-ed.
DEL THA FUNKEE HOMOSAPIEN When it first came out, wasn’t nobody tripping like that. Of course, I knew that ahead of time. Nobody’s going know when it first drops. You got to give it time for people to listen to it and figure out what it is. It was some years.
KID KOALA It took three, four years before it found its audience and then that audience just kept multiplying somehow. The record was being passed around to people. I guess it became a little bit of a cult classic in a sense. It was odd how excited people got when I would even mention Deltron, or that we were working on some new material.
The first time I heard about Deltron 3030 was on VIVA2, a more cultured, German-speaking MTV, and it didn’t stick. I rediscovered it years later and realised what I had missed. A truly groundbreaking hip hop record.It became a favourite amongst some of my friends, even those that wouldn’t normally listen to rap music much.