For someone with a flair for drama, RJ Krohn — aka RJD2 — is just a regular guy, one who brings you figs from the tree in his yard and knows where to take you for the perfect sandwich. That would be, according to Krohn, Tommy Dinic's in Philadelphia's Reading Terminal Market, where we went for a bite before we talked about his new record recently. At the counter, he goes for the pulled pork with provolone, broccoli rabe, and spicy peppers. Before we walk off with our beastly sandwiches, Krohn takes a carefully wrapped package of perfectly ripe figs out of a box he's been carrying and hands one to the guy behind the counter, telling him they're from his own tree. (Before we say goodbye, he gives one to me, too.) He's the best kind of regular, the kind who knows what he likes and brings new friends to the establishment because he can't get enough of it, and we take the time to properly demolish the smoldering pile of melted cheese and meat before getting into how one of his tracks wound up as the Mad Men theme song and why he hasn't made a record in three years.

RJ Krohn may be a regular guy, albeit one who approaches his music like a slightly less unhinged mad scientist, but More Is Than Isn't, with its superlative lineup of collaborators (Phonte Coleman, P. Blackk, Aaron Livingston, Blueprint) and spectacular, cinematic orchestrations is a record that's anything but. Below listen to "Temperamental" from the album exclusively here, and read our interview with Krohn about the album and not taking yourself too seriously.

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ESQUIRE.COM: Three years have passed between The Colossus and More Is Than Isn't. What've you been up to?

RJ KROHN: There was a follow-up to The Colossus called Inversions of the Colossus, which was an instrumental version of that record with a couple of new songs on it, and then I did a new side project record under the moniker The Insane Warrior. I kind of follow my whims, musically, so I'll often record something and then figure out what to do with it, as opposed to trying to figure out what I should be doing and make a recording fit the paradigm of a new release. Does that make any sense?

ESQ: Sure — you write something, and then you figure out if it's appropriate for RJD2 or one of the other projects you're working on.

RJ: Exactly. I try to find a home for something and keep the process of writing and recording music as pristine as possible, untainted by the forces of marketing and branding. At the time, I had been listening to a lot of soundtracks from horror and sci-fi movies from a particular period — a lot of John Carpenter, other film scores from the '70s and '80s — and it sort of manifested itself in some recordings that were loosely inspired by that train of thought, basically. That became that Insane Warrior record in 2011, and then later in that year, I was also recording this project with Aaron Livingston, who sang one of the songs on The Colossus. He sang a couple tunes on a couple Roots records over the years. After we did the song for my album, we just keep recording. That was another thing that happened during that period. We did another record and started a group, in essence, called Icebird, and that came out in October of 2011. A month after the Icebird record came out, I had a kid, so basically from then until now, I was working on this record.

ESQ: I'm interested in this movie-score-as-influence thing going on here. Since "A Beautiful Mine" was licensed for the Mad Men opening sequence, it's become one of the most recognizable themes in television. Is that weird for you now, to be a contributor to that canon?

RJ: I didn't make that connection until you said it. It's hard for me to come to grips with the idea of playing any role in the landscape of music, really. It's still sort of foreign to me. In so many ways, my default state of mind is one of a fan and the guy who still has a lot of aspirations as to what I want to accomplish with music, one of "I need to get this music thing off the ground." Part of the reason behind that is because I feel like there's a lot of risk and danger in taking yourself too seriously in terms of what role one may or may not play in the field or history of their own musical genre. I've seen people take themselves too seriously, and I've seen what happens when they have the rude awakening that inevitably comes. It's an ugly thing, and I don't want that to happen, so I'm constantly on guard.

ESQ: What was More Is Than Isn't's biggest hurdle?

RJ: Finding an effective use of time for me is the number-one challenge. I've hit a point in my life where there isn't enough time in the day to do everything that I want to do. I have to be selective as to what I choose to spend my time on, and I think that's true for everybody. I don't think you're quite as cognizant of it. Or at least I wasn't.

ESQ: Hey, there's always tomorrow.

RJ: And then you start realizing those start flying by. There's a lot of things that I enjoy doing that end up by the wayside, and there are things that I do that maybe aren't practical or prudent. I still build and am fairly into DIY synth building and audio restoration. It's something I'm gravitating away from because of this time issue, but that's an example of something I get a lot of joy out of that isn't the most practical use of my time.

ESQ: You're doing the ultimate DIY thing — you've got your own label now, RJ's Electrical Connections. How has that been, balancing the label and the music? Do you view your creative process differently as a result?

RJ: I do, in the sense that I know I can put out a record within six months. That is a thing that cannot be understated. The magnitude of that is so incredibly important. I've seen the negotiation of a release date issue between an artist and a label singlehandedly kill careers, and at the very least, it can be a major headache and a huge stressor. The stress of recording a record, and then submitting it to the label, and having that label pick it apart and analyze it, and having them change it after multiple revisions, and dealing with the artwork... I don't miss that by any stretch of the imagination. I have lower expectations for the scope of a record reaching as many people as I'd like and much higher expectations for the longevity that running a label imparts on my career.

ESQ: Does that play into the aspirations you talked about earlier?

RJ: The short answer is yes. The aspirations that I have are not for being famous, or culturally revered, or having any sort of place in history. I have aspirations to function at the level of my idols. That's what it comes down to. I have aspirations to make records as impacting as my favorite records. Someone might think these goals are sort of modest. If they do, they don't really understand the scope of what it took to make Songs in the Key of Life, or Heavy Weather, or A Love Supreme, or De La Soul is Dead. I have a lot of work to do. I'll never play keys like Chick Corea, and I can sit here and say with all honesty that I can't. It's an aspiration and a thing that'll never happen, but it's a bar to set. So I'm constantly going to be behind those aspirations, and that's fine. For me, it's about getting a little bit better every day with something to shoot for.

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