"I'm not signing or being an MC or anything," the former Blink-182 drummer tells Spinner. "I think over the last five years, when Blink wasn't around, I played a lot by myself or did a whole bunch of stuff with just me -- whether I was playing with T.I. or doing whatever -- it just opened another world for me."
After Blink-182 announced a hiatus in 2004, Barker became a chameleon of sorts. There were a handful of short-lived side-projects: the alt-rock supergroup +44 with Blink bandmate Mark Hoppus, the Transplants guitarist Craig Fairbaugh and the Nervous Return's Shane Gallagher; and the rap-rock trio Expensive Taste that produced a mixtape with southern rapper Paul Wall.
Barker then set out on the road with Adam "DJ AM" Goldstein as the DJ-rock duo TRV$DJAM, which faced eminent doom a year ago when a their private learjet skidded off a runway killing two members of their entourage and injuring both Goldstein and Barker. Eleven months later DJ AM would overdose on a deadly mixture of prescription painkillers and cocaine. Given the tragedies, it's incredible that Barker still trudges on. Since he's hopped around working with everyone from Slash to Mary J. Blige, and appeared more recently at the Grammys drumming during the Eminem, Lil Wayne and Drake hip-hop medley, 'Forever.' As his latest endeavors would suggest, Barker admits there's a lot of hip-hop on the solo effort.
"I'm rounding it out right now," he says of the album's many guests. "I just love music. The more I can be around it the better. So with my album -- it's no one genre. It goes from everything from punk rock to hip-hop to some electro stuff on there to a metal song with Corey Taylor from Slipknot. It's been really fun and interesting up till now."
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