During Bubble Geese’s set at Doin’ Alright 17 at the Bowery Poetry Club in NYC one of their mothers was called mid-performance, a shoe was thrown into the crowd, and an ode to “Fat Chicks” was rapped. To call it a raucous good time would be an understatement. The duo of Jacky Nice and Craig K (pictured L to R) had heads nodding and smiles on everyone’s faces, which is a rare feat in hip-hop. A prevailing sentiment was felt by the crowd – Bubble Geese reminded people, at least a little bit, of the Beastie Boys circa the mid to late 80s.

RapReviews caught up with both Jacky Nice and Craig K on the night of Doin’ Alright 17 to find out more about the duo, including how they met, why they’re offering their album, #foamparty, on cassette tape, and their deepest thoughts on JNCO jeans. Jacky Nice and Craig K also revealed how a fetish porn has impacted their careers.

Adam Bernard: Your music is high energy and very fun. Did the idea to create Bubble Geese have its origin at a party?

Jacky Nice: No, we were nude and doing Adderall in college, and we were in video chat, when it was really grainy, and we were wondering what the appropriate plural of bubble goose would be, whether it would be bubble gooses or bubble geese, and in our drug induced state we decided on bubble geese.

Craig K: “That’s a great idea, Bubble Geese as a band name.”

J: There were like 70 other ideas we had that night.

C: We were definitive in our answer on that one.

AB: Before you were naked and on Adderall how did you two meet, or was that actually how you met?

J: I think we met at a friend’s house.

C: We actually didn’t get along the first time we met.

J: No, that’s not true. We got along fine, I just didn’t really care for you. Craig was fresh out of Syracuse, and it was through our boy who also went to Syracuse. There was a party with those Syracuse dudes, so obviously everyone was having a terrible time, and Craig was part of that time. Over time I realized that he’s a good guy. The band breaks up once a month or so and we get back together.

C: That’s how it works.

J: It’s usually on weekends when Craig stops returning my calls and then by Tuesday he’s hitting me up with some random crazy shit and then we get back together again. It’s all good. We’re like one of those boyfriend/girlfriend couples that breaks up every time they go out. They start drinking and they fight like animals and then they get back together in the morning when they’re mad depressed and hungover.

C: We realize we want to do something that actually means something creatively and sparks some interest.

J: We put the energy towards the creative product in the end. We uphold the integrity of the creative product as the most important thing.

AB: Speaking of the creative product, #foamparty (http://bubblegeese.bandcamp.com/album/foamparty-2) is the album, and you released it in a variety of formats. Why the cassette tape? I have to assume that was for more than just me.

J: I don’t even fuckin remember.

C: Jacky hit me up one time and said “we gotta step it up, we gotta do something a little bit different.” He actually brought up the idea of cassette tapes. Just being in New York, living here and not having a car, sometimes we don’t understand that there’s millions of people out there in the country that have cars and still have tape decks in their cars, but they don’t have tapes to be played, so whenever we hand out a tape it’s actually kind of funny…

J: Lemme disagree with you there. Now I remember. You jogged my memory.

C: Hold on, the point I was getting at, the truth of it is we end up being the only tape in everybody’s deck, and it’s a nice thing to have that tape be able to fit in your pocket.

J: There ya go. You’re getting warmer.

C: So basically we were like let’s put out an album that you can fit in your pocket. Well, what about thumb drives? Everybody’s getting viruses and shit on thumb drives.

J: Are people getting viruses off thumb drives? Is that a thing?

C: Yeah, it’s like a huge corporate scandal.

J: We figure people give you CDs at concerts and unless you have a purse, or like JNCOs, you’re not going to be able to put them in your pocket, so we figured it would be easier for promotional purposes, it would probably be more salient for promotional purposes, it stands out more, and we like the vintage thing. When I make beats I don’t sample anything that was released after 1979. I’m very anal about that shit.

AB: So next time maybe you’ll release the album with JNCOs? You could also then bring JNCOs back, which would be cool.

J: It would be cool, and I’ve considered it, but, first of all, it was the shittiest look. It was one of the shittiest part of the 90s. You have The Shawshank Redemption, you have Kurt Cobain, you have Ready to Die, and aaalllllll the way down the list you’ve got JNCOs, and then you have second generation JNCOs and third and then bankruptcy. I hope they went bankrupt.

C: I had 44 inch JNCO bottoms. I don’t think I’m ever gonna have a 44 inch WAIST.

J: I took the biggest spill on Chambers Street. I was wearing these crazy skater boots, when I was like a weirdo, and I stepped on my pants and I literally tumbled all the way from West Broadway to Church Street.

AB: Jeans aside, has the album been received the way you hoped it would?

J: Yeah. We get a lot of weird, rogue, love. From the general hip-hop population, which I don’t even really know what that is, it sort of gets overlooked like “yeah, cool, I like comedy rap,” and this and that, but people come up to me at shows and they’re like “yo, Bubble Geese!” and I’ll have no clue who they are. Accidentally, on our website we put free shipping internationally, cuz we have it through Bandcamp. We got an order from Finland a couple weeks ago and the guy actually emailed us and he was like “I know it said it was free shipping, was that like an error?” It was an error, but if you’re ordering our tape from Finland we’ll take a loss. Fuck it.

AB: How much is the loss?

J: According to Ice Rocks, the producer of DXA, it’s gonna be a $2 loss. It’s gonna be about $7 to ship and we charge $5 for the tape.

AB: When Zerox One of Chronikill heard I’d be interviewing you he had two things he wanted me to bring up. First, he suggested I ask Craig about his “humble beginnings singing gospel in small town Alabama.” So, Craig, what’s that all about?

C: Yeah, during high school I actually went back. It was nice.

J: He did one of those gay conversion things.

C: I was trying to become gay and it just wouldn’t take.

J: He was trying to pray the gay to stay, but Craig wouldn’t have been a successful gay because he’s not circumcised.

AB: And you know this because you were naked together on Adderall.

J: That’s when I FIRST found out, but there have been other instances.

C: On YouTube…

J: “Secret Dreams?” That’s ME naked playing MPC. That’s one of our secret tracks we release under Bubble Geeze, which are weird, we know people would start hating us tracks if they knew it was us, songs. That’s why we release it under a different name. It’s like a hip-hop song about having dreams about having sex with your mom.

C: It’s on some deep shit.

J: You can’t say that’s NOT next level.

C: We got a lot of views. That’s the funny thing.

J: I sampled this really obscure soundtrack from this late 70s/early 80s porn called Taboo, or American Taboo. It’s all about moms and sons, and daughters and dads, and it’s crazy, but it has the most amazing jazzy soundtrack. You can’t find the actual shit so I had to record it into the computer from the porn, so there are these moans and people being like “mom keep touching my penis” on it we incorporated.

C: They kicked us off YouTube the first time.

J: After we got like 5,000 views.

C: There wasn’t any nudity, but when I edited the video I left in a lot of the movie and there’s some dirty shit.

J: We have like 40,000 views on that now which is the most of any video we’ve ever dropped, but it’s because underage people that can’t get into real porn sites because their parents block them go on YouTube and search for this weird shit.

C: People are weirdos, man.

AB: So you have a hardcore audience of tweens looking to get into porn who don’t have Cinemax.

J: Looking to get into incest porn.

AB: While we’re on the subject of family, my final question, also inspired by Zerox One, is for Jacky. What’s this I hear about your twin daughters?

J: They were triplets, but one of them died when she was in childbirth. The other two are named Kristen and Katherine. I had them with a Catholic girl from Jesus land, and they live with her now.

AB: Jesus land? That sounds like a theme park.

J: That’s what I call Mississippi. They live with their mom and I’m extraordinarily delinquent on child support to a degree where if anybody found out I would probably get a lot more press than I do just by being a regular jerk.

C: You put the dead in deadbeat.

J: I put the B in deadbeat.