BOOTS
Interview By Black Dog Bone
Continued from Murder Dog Vol 13 #1
I was doing an interview with a person who was saying that Black people should invest in Wall Street because all the rappers’ money is not going to the rappers. He was saying we should be like White people, wear suits and be respectable.
If somebody is really about Black folks coming together, think about what’s coming out of the Bay right now, the Hyphy movement, that’s really about Black folks being together. It’s about affirming our identity. It’s about, fuck the police. It’s about community
The Hyphy movement is real positive. It’s more positive than what most of the political so-called conscious rappers are talking about. The Hyphy movement is bring Black people together
That’s what the Hyphy movement is about. As it goes on, people will talk more about what’s going on. Right here in the Bay Area, we got a lot of struggles around class. We need jobs. We need money. There’s racism that’s going on all the time. We talk about it when we’re standing around the corner. The music needs to talk about it. That’s the only approach I take for my music. My music is never saying, "I know this and you need to know it." My music is saying, "You already know this!" I’m just talking the regular type of shit that everybody talks about. If you listen to my song "We Are The Ones," it’s talking about a dope dealer trying to come up. If you listen on the new album to my song "I Just Want To Lay Around In Bed All Day With You." It’s a song about fuckin but the boss keeps you away from being able to live your life the way you want to live it. It’s talking about everyday regular shit. The hyphy movement is talking about people coming together and it’s part of that ritual which is part of the Bay Area. I’ve always lived in Oakland. People in Oakland know me. Not from rapping. They know Boots from before there was The Coup. They know me from all around. People see me on a daily basis. I’m not out in the suburbs somewhere. I’m right here. I’ve been here. People that live in Oakland that hear this album know me from when I was acting stupid at a party one time or they know me from when I helped their brother out in a fight. They know me from being involved helping people win back their job or something like that. There is a false line the media is drawing between stuff that’s political and not. I don’t think that my music is any more political than anybody else. You are part of the media and you draw that line. They might call Talib Kweli political but Juvenile is not political, and he got hella songs on his album that’s political. You’re the person putting the labels on it.
This is the problem I have too, not necessarily with you but with the press. The press puts this stuff about the hyphy movement or they look up to Talib Kweli or they would say Chuck D is great and look down on someone like Juvenile. The press does. That’s the problem I have and you probably have the same problem.
I definitely do. If you look at the interviews I do, I always say that Trick Daddy have way more political things to say than Talib Kweli. This is not insulting Talib. He’d probably say the same thing. Sometimes it’s not only the press. The whole attitude in New York. For example Talib Kweli, he looks down on so much shit that we do out here. Or Chuck D or Wu Tang Clan. These are the people I love and listen to.
A lot of East Coast artists say that what we are doing is garbage.
Corporations want to classify the music into different categories for marketing purposes. This is all about money. If they could call all of this one kind of music and not political, it helps them sell their image. And it helps them figure out who to market it to. All of this music, whether it’s mine, Trick Daddy, E-40, Keak The Sneak, it’s being bought by who? White kids.
Not all, there’s a lot of Black people buying it.
Not all music, but even the Gangsta music wherever it’s at. We live in the United States and most of it is being bought by White kids. Even at Dogday. Remember Dogday was doing it before the internet and they were getting mail orders. All of those kids that were buying the gangster shit off of Dogday was White kids. And Joe and Chris would tell you that. There’s an image. It’s kind of like in the 60’s that Stacks records was bought by Black people and Motown was bought by White people. Somebody put out a book exposing all of that. It’s all White kids. Black folks buy stuff but we don’t got enough money. We’re hustling so it would take a whole lot for us to spend ten dollars.
Black people buy a lot of music but Black people in America are a minority so it doesn’t add up.
That’s what I’m saying. If you look at a Jay Z concert on TV, it’s White kids. Were talking right now about the United States. If you want to talk about what’s popular in Africa, because I’ve done a tour in Africa. My point is we can’t get into a contest of which music is more Black or less Black because it’s hypocritical. They are all competing for White kids’ dollars. You got some White kids that buy the music that they think is more artistic. Then you got other White kids this and that. Like Murder Dog, you know, you can’t lie, that most of the kids that buy it are White kids.
The reason is because there is more White people here. What we know is Murder Dog is really popular in the hoods also in the prisons.
The market effects what kind of music people make. For instance, if the most popular rapper whose quote was "Fuck all White kids that like Black music." You would not put that on the cover because they wouldn’t buy the record or the magazine. My politics are that I deal with the Black community and I believe in tearing down capitalism. I think it’s going to take the White and the Black working class to do that. All of this music is Black music. If we want to get into a contest of what’s more Black or not. It’s self-defeating.
I wasn’t. We don’t care who buys the magazine. It doesn’t matter if it’s White people or Black people because we do something that we care about. I don’t know how the rappers do it. Maybe the rappers make music to cater to White people because they know there’s a big market but we don’t really care. We are not writing. We just do interview. If you say "fuck White people," I don’t really care. You’re saying it and Murder Dog is going to print your interview. It’s nothing to do with us in that way. Our writers are not saying fuck White people or fuck Black people or whatever. You say and we print it. It’s nothing to do with us. We have that freedom and that’s why Murder Dog is an interview magazine. Murder Dog has always been your voice. If you say "Fuck all the White people," We don’t care. We will print it because it’s not our voice. It’s the voice of the artist.
Let me clarify, that’s not my political stand at all.
I’m not saying that this is the right Black music or the wrong Black music either. We live in America and we’re are living with a corporate structure and we have to sell music. I’m not talking about magazines, but music. We have to say that this is more political rap or not, because it’s a business.
Exactly. That’s how it does. I have a problem with certain rappers calling themselves conscious when they really make the same stuff. Back in the day, in the early nineties when Ice Cube was on top, he had one of the most revolutionary albums ever, Death Certificate. At the same time you had people like Black Sheep out of New York. Ice Cube was called Gangsta and Black Sheep was called conscious. Black Sheep’s music was talking about picking women and yet it was conscious. That was because they used jazz samples and they had a certain style. Everything from New York was supposed to be conscious back then. It’s not the same anymore because you got people that don’t call themselves conscious out of New York. But Ice Cube was called Gangsta because his music was more funky and talked about the streets. It was all a marketing thing.
The problem I have with these so-called rappers is that if the newspapers and record labels want to label you, they can, but it’s within the rappers. If I listen to a rapper that political or conscious, or any rapper from New York, they say "Laffy Taffy" is garbage or Crunk is not even music.
I wouldn’t say that. I don’t know who would. If you want to be on a pure Hip Hop music level, the Crunk stuff out of the South is like Afrika Bambaata. It’s the natural progression of Hip Hop. It’s more Hip Hop then a lot of stuff that’s coming that’s suppose to be taking it back to ’88. It gives you that feeling that you could get back in the day. I don’t know how anyone could say that’s garbage.
When rap was at it’s beginning stages it was more African—drum and vocals, more of a chanting style. It was conscious music but more like "let’s have a good time, let’s celebrate, let’s dance".
I don’t think it was more party, have-a-good-time. I think that’s something the media has been rewriting history about it.
Let me explain it. You take Run D MC’s music and then you take someone like Rakim—they’re two worlds apart. The original New York Rap had a more tribal sense, drums, chanting, celebration, dancing, more party. Even if they put conscious stuff in there, it was not intellectual like certain intellectual music that we have right now. It was still street, still gutter. When I say intellectual music it’s like knowledge from the books. Like you read a book and write a song about it. It’s really not your experience or understanding so it doesn’t sound authentic.
I think you are being a little simplistic. I think that the music that got promoted first by the record labels in the 80’s was the party stuff, but there was a lot of stuff by Run D MC that was very political. A lot of stuff by Grand Master Flash was very political. It’s kind of like how Trick Daddy will have his record that is for the club and for the radio, but a lot of songs on there are talking about struggling and striving. When Rakim came out, the reason we liked him was not because we read his lyrics somewhere. It was because when you played "Check Out My Melody" at the party you could dance and freak on a girl. That’s why he got popular because you could play him at the party.
You can’t deny that Run DMC was a different type of music from Rakim.
It was definitely a different kind of music. But I think KRS One was that simple. KRS One was Gangsta. You know that me and Spice 1 started working at UPS together. He came out on Too Short’s thing first. But after that we was on a compilation A Pound or a Ki. A big part of Spice’s sound when he first came out was KRS One. KRS One had a big influence on Gangsta because Spice 1 had a big influence on what was Gangsta. And he didn’t only affect Spice 1 he affected a lot of other people. KRS One affected some of Ice Cube’s sound early. That’s why they sampled him in a couple songs. It’s not that simple. Schooly D was straight up Gangsta shit.
There was a time when Rap was dominated by the New York style that was lead by people like Rakim and Wu Tang Clan, that type of wordy intellectual rap.
That was a stage that people were looking in thesauruses and things like that.
And they were more lyrical.
There’s a certain lyrical style but I wouldn’t say it was more lyrical. I would say that Young Jeezy has way more tight lyrics than the Wu Tang Clan.
The press wouldn’t agree with you…
Some would. The press loves Young Jeezy.
Because he’s on Def Jam because there’s so many Young Jeezy’s. Young Jeezy just happens to be on Def Jam but there are so many Young Jeezy’s that we never hear about because they’re not signed to a major label.
Exactly. And so many of us don’t get to be out there. We were lucky because we came out at a time when every record label had to have somebody from the Bay Area. We could have easily came out there and have to get a job and not be able to put anything else out. That happened to a lot of people. Luckily I was in the right place at the right time. I’ve been able to develop my craft and my flow. I think everybody ought to take pride in their lyrics. Young Jeezy takes pride in his lyrics. David Banner takes pride in his lyrics. Keak and E-40 take pride in their lyrics. But I understand what you are talking about. At that time there was a style and you should see the interviews that I did where I said that that style was bullshit. If you got to look in the thesaurus and use a word that people don’t use then you ran out of creativity.
Whatever people want to do with their music is fine, but don’t turn around and look at the other music that you don’t understand and say it’s garbage. It’s like you may not like Bay Area Rap because it’s not your---??
There were people in the Bay Area that didn’t like E-40 when he first came out. There were people up until recently that didn’t like the way Keak rapped even in the Bay Area. There are people in LA that don’t like the Bay shit. There are people in the Bay that don’t like the South shit. There’s always going to be that. When Hip Hop, Rakim, Run DMC and KRS One came out, the writers were saying that is wasn’t music, that it was garbage. When Wu Tang came out writers said it wasn’t music, that it was garbage. Black music is always ahead of the curve and that’s how it’s always gonna be because we have a system to sell music to people. What they got to sell is what’s on the radio right now. What’s on the radio right now is old and there is some new shit bubbling up. It’s always some new shit bubbling up. When they got on hyphy, we’ll have moved onto something else and they won’t understand it. That’s how it’s been. When White kids got on to the Blues, Black kids had already moved on. So you had the Rolling Stones doing it. Somewhere down the line in fifteen years some Justin Timberlake type of dude is going to do a song called "Hyphy." That’s going to be the new thing.
Right now, if you talk to the president of the United States he’ll say he likes Jazz. Thirty years from now the president of the United States will say he likes hyphy.
I used to really get mad about stuff like that, but I realize that as long there is oppression and we’re getting stepped on, the music is going to follow that suit. As soon as we are able to say "fuck that! You ain’t just paying me six dollars an hour right here. We shutting this spot down!" As soon as that happens, the music will be taken as serious. It works this way: White kids start liking Black music but on the news and everywhere, Black folks are criminalized and demonized. Whatever music we are listening to they call ignorant. Whatever music from ten years before is the music from when Black folks are supposedly peaceful. That’s always the story.
It’s coming from the Black writers too. I talked to a writer yesterday who said he didn’t like E-40 when he first came out. Now 12 years later his favorite rapper is E-40. Now when I ask him about Hyphy he says it’s garbage. 10 years from now he will probably say he likes Hyphy.
That has to do with the same thing. There was recently an article in the Village Voice saying that Black folks don’t like music that’s political. They only define music as political in a few groups. But Black folks like it when Juvenile talks about this and David Banner talks about this and when Trick Daddy talks about this. So they like political music. Some Black writers are frustrated because they are not part of a movement and they’re bought into the idea that we’re in the predicament we’re in – that we’re oppressed and exploited – because of ourselves. We’re busy trying to blame Black folks for being stepped on. We’re blaming ourselves. And one way to blame ourselves is to look down on our own culture and say that our culture is doing this to us. That argument has been around forever. It’s been before Hip Hop or the Blues was around. You always have Black people blaming themselves because it’s a way not to fight back. It’s a way not to organize.
Would you say your music has changed over the years?
I’m still talking about the same thing. I put pride in writing my lyrics so that when people hear it they hear different things. I can do a lot of different flows. Since I produce it, the music is still that same funk. We’ve reached out to a few people on this album. Keak was supposed to the chorus to "Get That Monkey Off Your Back." But it wasn’t able to happen in time so we’re going to do that for the remix of it. I think we just got better. I refined it. I come with lyrics that people can’t deny no matter what kind of music they listen to. I talks real about what’s going on. I think early back in the day, my music might have come off as being preachy. But my music now, I just talk about my own experiences. Back then I had an afro. One song on the album was called "Fuck A Perm" because people were always coming up to me and telling me that I needed to get a perm. People might have thought that I was trying to get preachy and saying don’t get a perm, but I wasn’t. I was just saying I ain’t getting no perm. I like my hair the way it is. It might’ve come off like that because there was a lot of other music that was like that. But this one, I just talk about the hustle and how it relates to the bigger system. How George Bush is killing people in Iraq has to do with the same reason we don’t got no money and we got to hustle and sell dope. I draw those connections. My whole point is that it ain’t only the war in Iraq but it’s the war on Black folks and people of color.
Political Rap like you or Chuck D are doing is needed, but sometimes I feel like political rappers are talking without real understanding. Their understanding is not that deep. When you listen to "Laffy Taffy" from D4L or Run DMC, you know I’m going to listen to good time music. But when I listen to Paris or you or Chuck D, I’m looking for a different type of entertainment.
I would say, don’t listen to me for answers. I can’t speak for anybody else, but none of my music has ever said I have the answers.
We Black folks are still broke. My music represents that. I’m just part of that tradition that’s talking about the real thing. But I put a little bit more insight into it. The only answer I tell people is not to sit back and keep getting slapped. We need to slap back. My music doesn’t say "so and so did this on this and that date." That would be boring. I have books that I could recommend if people want hear some of that.
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Scarface
Interview By Black Dog Bone
Continued from Murder Dog Vol 13 #1
I was doing an interview with a person who was saying that Black people should invest in Wall Street because all the rappers’ money is not going to the rappers. He was saying we should be like White people, wear suits and be respectable.
If somebody is really about Black folks coming together, think about what’s coming out of the Bay right now, the Hyphy movement, that’s really about Black folks being together. It’s about affirming our identity. It’s about, fuck the police. It’s about community
The Hyphy movement is real positive. It’s more positive than what most of the political so-called conscious rappers are talking about. The Hyphy movement is bring Black people together
That’s what the Hyphy movement is about. As it goes on, people will talk more about what’s going on. Right here in the Bay Area, we got a lot of struggles around class. We need jobs. We need money. There’s racism that’s going on all the time. We talk about it when we’re standing around the corner. The music needs to talk about it. That’s the only approach I take for my music. My music is never saying, "I know this and you need to know it." My music is saying, "You already know this!" I’m just talking the regular type of shit that everybody talks about. If you listen to my song "We Are The Ones," it’s talking about a dope dealer trying to come up. If you listen on the new album to my song "I Just Want To Lay Around In Bed All Day With You." It’s a song about fuckin but the boss keeps you away from being able to live your life the way you want to live it. It’s talking about everyday regular shit. The hyphy movement is talking about people coming together and it’s part of that ritual which is part of the Bay Area. I’ve always lived in Oakland. People in Oakland know me. Not from rapping. They know Boots from before there was The Coup. They know me from all around. People see me on a daily basis. I’m not out in the suburbs somewhere. I’m right here. I’ve been here. People that live in Oakland that hear this album know me from when I was acting stupid at a party one time or they know me from when I helped their brother out in a fight. They know me from being involved helping people win back their job or something like that. There is a false line the media is drawing between stuff that’s political and not. I don’t think that my music is any more political than anybody else. You are part of the media and you draw that line. They might call Talib Kweli political but Juvenile is not political, and he got hella songs on his album that’s political. You’re the person putting the labels on it.
This is the problem I have too, not necessarily with you but with the press. The press puts this stuff about the hyphy movement or they look up to Talib Kweli or they would say Chuck D is great and look down on someone like Juvenile. The press does. That’s the problem I have and you probably have the same problem.
I definitely do. If you look at the interviews I do, I always say that Trick Daddy have way more political things to say than Talib Kweli. This is not insulting Talib. He’d probably say the same thing. Sometimes it’s not only the press. The whole attitude in New York. For example Talib Kweli, he looks down on so much shit that we do out here. Or Chuck D or Wu Tang Clan. These are the people I love and listen to.
A lot of East Coast artists say that what we are doing is garbage.
Corporations want to classify the music into different categories for marketing purposes. This is all about money. If they could call all of this one kind of music and not political, it helps them sell their image. And it helps them figure out who to market it to. All of this music, whether it’s mine, Trick Daddy, E-40, Keak The Sneak, it’s being bought by who? White kids.
Not all, there’s a lot of Black people buying it.
Not all music, but even the Gangsta music wherever it’s at. We live in the United States and most of it is being bought by White kids. Even at Dogday. Remember Dogday was doing it before the internet and they were getting mail orders. All of those kids that were buying the gangster shit off of Dogday was White kids. And Joe and Chris would tell you that. There’s an image. It’s kind of like in the 60’s that Stacks records was bought by Black people and Motown was bought by White people. Somebody put out a book exposing all of that. It’s all White kids. Black folks buy stuff but we don’t got enough money. We’re hustling so it would take a whole lot for us to spend ten dollars.
Black people buy a lot of music but Black people in America are a minority so it doesn’t add up.
That’s what I’m saying. If you look at a Jay Z concert on TV, it’s White kids. Were talking right now about the United States. If you want to talk about what’s popular in Africa, because I’ve done a tour in Africa. My point is we can’t get into a contest of which music is more Black or less Black because it’s hypocritical. They are all competing for White kids’ dollars. You got some White kids that buy the music that they think is more artistic. Then you got other White kids this and that. Like Murder Dog, you know, you can’t lie, that most of the kids that buy it are White kids.
The reason is because there is more White people here. What we know is Murder Dog is really popular in the hoods also in the prisons.
The market effects what kind of music people make. For instance, if the most popular rapper whose quote was "Fuck all White kids that like Black music." You would not put that on the cover because they wouldn’t buy the record or the magazine. My politics are that I deal with the Black community and I believe in tearing down capitalism. I think it’s going to take the White and the Black working class to do that. All of this music is Black music. If we want to get into a contest of what’s more Black or not. It’s self-defeating.
I wasn’t. We don’t care who buys the magazine. It doesn’t matter if it’s White people or Black people because we do something that we care about. I don’t know how the rappers do it. Maybe the rappers make music to cater to White people because they know there’s a big market but we don’t really care. We are not writing. We just do interview. If you say "fuck White people," I don’t really care. You’re saying it and Murder Dog is going to print your interview. It’s nothing to do with us in that way. Our writers are not saying fuck White people or fuck Black people or whatever. You say and we print it. It’s nothing to do with us. We have that freedom and that’s why Murder Dog is an interview magazine. Murder Dog has always been your voice. If you say "Fuck all the White people," We don’t care. We will print it because it’s not our voice. It’s the voice of the artist.
Let me clarify, that’s not my political stand at all.
I’m not saying that this is the right Black music or the wrong Black music either. We live in America and we’re are living with a corporate structure and we have to sell music. I’m not talking about magazines, but music. We have to say that this is more political rap or not, because it’s a business.
Exactly. That’s how it does. I have a problem with certain rappers calling themselves conscious when they really make the same stuff. Back in the day, in the early nineties when Ice Cube was on top, he had one of the most revolutionary albums ever, Death Certificate. At the same time you had people like Black Sheep out of New York. Ice Cube was called Gangsta and Black Sheep was called conscious. Black Sheep’s music was talking about picking women and yet it was conscious. That was because they used jazz samples and they had a certain style. Everything from New York was supposed to be conscious back then. It’s not the same anymore because you got people that don’t call themselves conscious out of New York. But Ice Cube was called Gangsta because his music was more funky and talked about the streets. It was all a marketing thing.
The problem I have with these so-called rappers is that if the newspapers and record labels want to label you, they can, but it’s within the rappers. If I listen to a rapper that political or conscious, or any rapper from New York, they say "Laffy Taffy" is garbage or Crunk is not even music.
I wouldn’t say that. I don’t know who would. If you want to be on a pure Hip Hop music level, the Crunk stuff out of the South is like Afrika Bambaata. It’s the natural progression of Hip Hop. It’s more Hip Hop then a lot of stuff that’s coming that’s suppose to be taking it back to ’88. It gives you that feeling that you could get back in the day. I don’t know how anyone could say that’s garbage.
When rap was at it’s beginning stages it was more African—drum and vocals, more of a chanting style. It was conscious music but more like "let’s have a good time, let’s celebrate, let’s dance".
I don’t think it was more party, have-a-good-time. I think that’s something the media has been rewriting history about it.
Let me explain it. You take Run D MC’s music and then you take someone like Rakim—they’re two worlds apart. The original New York Rap had a more tribal sense, drums, chanting, celebration, dancing, more party. Even if they put conscious stuff in there, it was not intellectual like certain intellectual music that we have right now. It was still street, still gutter. When I say intellectual music it’s like knowledge from the books. Like you read a book and write a song about it. It’s really not your experience or understanding so it doesn’t sound authentic.
I think you are being a little simplistic. I think that the music that got promoted first by the record labels in the 80’s was the party stuff, but there was a lot of stuff by Run D MC that was very political. A lot of stuff by Grand Master Flash was very political. It’s kind of like how Trick Daddy will have his record that is for the club and for the radio, but a lot of songs on there are talking about struggling and striving. When Rakim came out, the reason we liked him was not because we read his lyrics somewhere. It was because when you played "Check Out My Melody" at the party you could dance and freak on a girl. That’s why he got popular because you could play him at the party.
You can’t deny that Run DMC was a different type of music from Rakim.
It was definitely a different kind of music. But I think KRS One was that simple. KRS One was Gangsta. You know that me and Spice 1 started working at UPS together. He came out on Too Short’s thing first. But after that we was on a compilation A Pound or a Ki. A big part of Spice’s sound when he first came out was KRS One. KRS One had a big influence on Gangsta because Spice 1 had a big influence on what was Gangsta. And he didn’t only affect Spice 1 he affected a lot of other people. KRS One affected some of Ice Cube’s sound early. That’s why they sampled him in a couple songs. It’s not that simple. Schooly D was straight up Gangsta shit.
There was a time when Rap was dominated by the New York style that was lead by people like Rakim and Wu Tang Clan, that type of wordy intellectual rap.
That was a stage that people were looking in thesauruses and things like that.
And they were more lyrical.
There’s a certain lyrical style but I wouldn’t say it was more lyrical. I would say that Young Jeezy has way more tight lyrics than the Wu Tang Clan.
The press wouldn’t agree with you…
Some would. The press loves Young Jeezy.
Because he’s on Def Jam because there’s so many Young Jeezy’s. Young Jeezy just happens to be on Def Jam but there are so many Young Jeezy’s that we never hear about because they’re not signed to a major label.
Exactly. And so many of us don’t get to be out there. We were lucky because we came out at a time when every record label had to have somebody from the Bay Area. We could have easily came out there and have to get a job and not be able to put anything else out. That happened to a lot of people. Luckily I was in the right place at the right time. I’ve been able to develop my craft and my flow. I think everybody ought to take pride in their lyrics. Young Jeezy takes pride in his lyrics. David Banner takes pride in his lyrics. Keak and E-40 take pride in their lyrics. But I understand what you are talking about. At that time there was a style and you should see the interviews that I did where I said that that style was bullshit. If you got to look in the thesaurus and use a word that people don’t use then you ran out of creativity.
Whatever people want to do with their music is fine, but don’t turn around and look at the other music that you don’t understand and say it’s garbage. It’s like you may not like Bay Area Rap because it’s not your---??
There were people in the Bay Area that didn’t like E-40 when he first came out. There were people up until recently that didn’t like the way Keak rapped even in the Bay Area. There are people in LA that don’t like the Bay shit. There are people in the Bay that don’t like the South shit. There’s always going to be that. When Hip Hop, Rakim, Run DMC and KRS One came out, the writers were saying that is wasn’t music, that it was garbage. When Wu Tang came out writers said it wasn’t music, that it was garbage. Black music is always ahead of the curve and that’s how it’s always gonna be because we have a system to sell music to people. What they got to sell is what’s on the radio right now. What’s on the radio right now is old and there is some new shit bubbling up. It’s always some new shit bubbling up. When they got on hyphy, we’ll have moved onto something else and they won’t understand it. That’s how it’s been. When White kids got on to the Blues, Black kids had already moved on. So you had the Rolling Stones doing it. Somewhere down the line in fifteen years some Justin Timberlake type of dude is going to do a song called "Hyphy." That’s going to be the new thing.
Right now, if you talk to the president of the United States he’ll say he likes Jazz. Thirty years from now the president of the United States will say he likes hyphy.
I used to really get mad about stuff like that, but I realize that as long there is oppression and we’re getting stepped on, the music is going to follow that suit. As soon as we are able to say "fuck that! You ain’t just paying me six dollars an hour right here. We shutting this spot down!" As soon as that happens, the music will be taken as serious. It works this way: White kids start liking Black music but on the news and everywhere, Black folks are criminalized and demonized. Whatever music we are listening to they call ignorant. Whatever music from ten years before is the music from when Black folks are supposedly peaceful. That’s always the story.
It’s coming from the Black writers too. I talked to a writer yesterday who said he didn’t like E-40 when he first came out. Now 12 years later his favorite rapper is E-40. Now when I ask him about Hyphy he says it’s garbage. 10 years from now he will probably say he likes Hyphy.
That has to do with the same thing. There was recently an article in the Village Voice saying that Black folks don’t like music that’s political. They only define music as political in a few groups. But Black folks like it when Juvenile talks about this and David Banner talks about this and when Trick Daddy talks about this. So they like political music. Some Black writers are frustrated because they are not part of a movement and they’re bought into the idea that we’re in the predicament we’re in – that we’re oppressed and exploited – because of ourselves. We’re busy trying to blame Black folks for being stepped on. We’re blaming ourselves. And one way to blame ourselves is to look down on our own culture and say that our culture is doing this to us. That argument has been around forever. It’s been before Hip Hop or the Blues was around. You always have Black people blaming themselves because it’s a way not to fight back. It’s a way not to organize.
Would you say your music has changed over the years?
I’m still talking about the same thing. I put pride in writing my lyrics so that when people hear it they hear different things. I can do a lot of different flows. Since I produce it, the music is still that same funk. We’ve reached out to a few people on this album. Keak was supposed to the chorus to "Get That Monkey Off Your Back." But it wasn’t able to happen in time so we’re going to do that for the remix of it. I think we just got better. I refined it. I come with lyrics that people can’t deny no matter what kind of music they listen to. I talks real about what’s going on. I think early back in the day, my music might have come off as being preachy. But my music now, I just talk about my own experiences. Back then I had an afro. One song on the album was called "Fuck A Perm" because people were always coming up to me and telling me that I needed to get a perm. People might have thought that I was trying to get preachy and saying don’t get a perm, but I wasn’t. I was just saying I ain’t getting no perm. I like my hair the way it is. It might’ve come off like that because there was a lot of other music that was like that. But this one, I just talk about the hustle and how it relates to the bigger system. How George Bush is killing people in Iraq has to do with the same reason we don’t got no money and we got to hustle and sell dope. I draw those connections. My whole point is that it ain’t only the war in Iraq but it’s the war on Black folks and people of color.
Political Rap like you or Chuck D are doing is needed, but sometimes I feel like political rappers are talking without real understanding. Their understanding is not that deep. When you listen to "Laffy Taffy" from D4L or Run DMC, you know I’m going to listen to good time music. But when I listen to Paris or you or Chuck D, I’m looking for a different type of entertainment.
I would say, don’t listen to me for answers. I can’t speak for anybody else, but none of my music has ever said I have the answers.
We Black folks are still broke. My music represents that. I’m just part of that tradition that’s talking about the real thing. But I put a little bit more insight into it. The only answer I tell people is not to sit back and keep getting slapped. We need to slap back. My music doesn’t say "so and so did this on this and that date." That would be boring. I have books that I could recommend if people want hear some of that.
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