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Speaker 9: See you there all right, guys, Welcome back ey L.
Speaker 9: We got a special edition Legends only. This is a Legends,
Speaker 9: yes for sure. Whenever we get a chance to talk
Speaker 9: to you know, the hip hop Legends is always fun
Speaker 9: for us because before anything, we was fans of music.
Speaker 6: We still are fans of music and just culture.
Speaker 9: So you know, people that have help shape it, it's
Speaker 9: always great for us to have conversations with them. So
Speaker 9: we have Rashi better known as Common formerly known as Common.
Speaker 5: Also known as It's dope that we grew up in
Speaker 5: the era and we got to watch our artists mature
Speaker 5: and still have relevancy.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So you know, in the early days of hip hop,
Speaker 5: there wasn't an act right like, it felt like this
Speaker 5: couldn't grow. There was a young man's sporty somebody saying
Speaker 5: that the other day's a young man sport. I'm like,
Speaker 5: that's true. But these guys that were young have now
Speaker 5: grown and we've grown with them. So I think this
Speaker 5: is just this is a dope conversation that we're gonna have. Yeah, no,
Speaker 5: for sure, man, thank y'all too for having me up here. Man,
Speaker 5: respect in love with y'all doing. Thank you for sure,
Speaker 5: And I want to say, yeah, I definitely creating. When
Speaker 5: I first started like making music, didn't think I could
Speaker 5: grow into my thirties forties. I'm fifty two now and
Speaker 5: be creating music like where it still feel fresh, where
Speaker 5: I'm still like weird, not being with Pete Rock and
Speaker 5: I on this album, but just gaining new audience. We
Speaker 5: didn't have those examples at the beginning because hip I
Speaker 5: was so young. But when we think about it being
Speaker 5: a it is a young man's sport, young woman's sport,
Speaker 5: but it also is like because it's music. It has
Speaker 5: the time listeners to it.
Speaker 10: Like music doesn't really when you think about music, it
Speaker 10: don't really deno the age or.
Speaker 4: Or even the color.
Speaker 10: Man like cause some of the some of the songs
Speaker 10: I've enjoyed most, man, it's all walks of life, just
Speaker 10: loving it. It could be Michael Jackson's Off the Wall,
Speaker 10: or it could be Kendricks Lamar not like us, you know,
Speaker 10: And I see different like age, different people from different
Speaker 10: age groups still enjoying all that music. So I feel
Speaker 10: like music when it's made in its purest way and
Speaker 10: it really has a soul to it and it's special,
Speaker 10: it doesn't have that limit on it. It can grow
Speaker 10: and be timeless. And for me as an artist, I've
Speaker 10: been just trying to strive and to grow.
Speaker 9: Well, how have you been a So you're one of
Speaker 9: the few artists that have been able to maintain relevancy
Speaker 9: for a long period of time and hip hop right.
Speaker 9: Unfortunately a lot of artists don't have that longevity. And
Speaker 9: you've done it with different verticals, acting and stuff like that.
Speaker 9: So what's your key to be able to maintain relevance
Speaker 9: and to reinvent yourself decade after decade.
Speaker 10: I mean, I would like to think I had a formula,
Speaker 10: but I really didn't have a formula.
Speaker 4: I think it was just a faith.
Speaker 10: It's about the love for the art forms. It was
Speaker 10: about staying humble and being like, man, I can learn,
Speaker 10: I gotta learn.
Speaker 4: I gotta seek to get better.
Speaker 10: So even when I had those victories, like an album
Speaker 10: like B I didn't just sit back and be like, Okay,
Speaker 10: I made it.
Speaker 4: You know, It's like, how can I get better?
Speaker 10: And as you mentioned, like the vertical of acting was
Speaker 10: very important to me, and you know, the relevancy that
Speaker 10: people see some of that is just because of acting
Speaker 10: or because of the activism, because it's not like every
Speaker 10: album I put out since ninety two, when I first
Speaker 10: put out my first album. It's not like everyone is
Speaker 10: connected with people. And I fortunately understand the ups and
Speaker 10: downs of that too and can still stay with my
Speaker 10: eyes on the prize as far as striving to grow
Speaker 10: as an artist, but getting into acting, getting doing different
Speaker 10: things like songs, being in the films, like the song
Speaker 10: with John Legend and now that you know we got
Speaker 10: on an Oscar stage. That is something I was dreamed
Speaker 10: of doing as an actor but didn't know I would
Speaker 10: do it as a musician sea for some of the
Speaker 10: song glory. So that that being said, I think the
Speaker 10: the key that I can say most is just man
Speaker 10: just being in tune with the most high and following
Speaker 10: you know, your consciousness, your gut feeling of who you are.
Speaker 10: Times you move like like musically, at times I do
Speaker 10: different shit, man, Like I'll be like going out there
Speaker 10: venturing off, and I don't be like, Okay, just because
Speaker 10: people want to hear me do this boom back hip hop,
Speaker 10: I'm just gonna do it. No if I'm if I'm
Speaker 10: in this space I wanted to do some eclectic, eccentric stuff,
Speaker 10: I'm gonna do it and it might you know, it
Speaker 10: might not win then, but it could win later. And
Speaker 10: I think that's just about really. I mean, it sounds
Speaker 10: so trite, but staying true to who you are and
Speaker 10: having a face and being humble, it's the only things
Speaker 10: I can look at that has kept me in this
Speaker 10: music business.
Speaker 5: This business you came in in ninety two. I mean,
Speaker 5: this is what do you like to call it? The
Speaker 5: Golden Age, the golden era of hip hop? The breakthrough
Speaker 5: song is I used.
Speaker 4: To love her?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean they made movies around this Mary Brown
Speaker 5: Sugar at the movie it's based off the premise of
Speaker 5: I used to love her.
Speaker 4: Yes, I wonder now as you're creating.
Speaker 5: Because I want to talk about the selection of from
Speaker 5: no Id to Yay, the Pete Rock will get into that.
Speaker 5: What's your thoughts now about him? Like do you still
Speaker 5: love her in the same way that you said in
Speaker 5: ninety two?
Speaker 10: Man, I really like kind of refell in love with
Speaker 10: hip hop within the past like a few years, Like
Speaker 10: I always loved it, but now I feel like it's
Speaker 10: an energy out there in the zeitgeist where man people
Speaker 10: are appreciating and open to and wanting like hip hop
Speaker 10: that has lyrical content like bars, bars, like soulful music
Speaker 10: that could be it could be a young fresh artist
Speaker 10: giving you something soul for with new sounds, but it's
Speaker 10: soulful and authentic, and I just feel like I love
Speaker 10: it because I'm realizing seeing that celebration for the fiftieth
Speaker 10: year did something for me. It made me see how
Speaker 10: much people will always love this music and you think
Speaker 10: that the audience Like for me, I thought that the
Speaker 10: audience was gone for a certain sound of the music,
Speaker 10: but they still there and now we know, like, man,
Speaker 10: you can have music, you can have you know, everybody
Speaker 10: from Future two nots still putting our music and you
Speaker 10: can enjoy it and different.
Speaker 4: Man, I've been we've been touring right now.
Speaker 10: It's sometimes us look in the crowd and it's like
Speaker 10: people twenty three years old.
Speaker 4: I'm like, damn, I'm really their father.
Speaker 10: But they enjoying the music and they like know the
Speaker 10: words to the new album, and I'm like, man, it
Speaker 10: just it just shows me that it can be no
Speaker 10: boundaries when you when you just put out that that umph,
Speaker 10: that stuff that got it too, you know, like man,
Speaker 10: and that don't happen all the time. It's just it's
Speaker 10: just things aligned at the right time, and you you know.
Speaker 10: And I'm saying that to say my passion and love
Speaker 10: for hip hop is strong. And I was able to
Speaker 10: connect with Pete Rock, who is the right person for
Speaker 10: me to create that music with, and it still feel
Speaker 10: fresh and new, but has the spirit of what we
Speaker 10: always loved. But you could have asked me five years ago,
Speaker 10: I might not have been wanting that boom bap sound.
Speaker 4: So I do have that love, and I don't think
Speaker 4: that love.
Speaker 10: Will ever go anywhere, you know, like any relationships, sometimes
Speaker 10: you need something else a little bit. You want to try,
Speaker 10: you know, you know, like you try you know.
Speaker 5: I allegedly allegedly, or you just figure out how to
Speaker 5: work things out, communicate with each other better.
Speaker 10: Let me be clear, you got to you gotta grow
Speaker 10: and expand it like y'all y'all interests, you and your
Speaker 10: partner's interest y'all say, growing and evolving and you know,
Speaker 10: trying new things and remain a line.
Speaker 4: Trying to guy me right, so he still loves it.
Speaker 9: I love it so like talking about Pete Rock right,
Speaker 9: legendary producer that comes out around the same time as
Speaker 9: you come out. And you guys have a unique perspective
Speaker 9: because both of you.
Speaker 6: Have been on major labels. Now you're doing it the
Speaker 6: independent way.
Speaker 9: You've seen it transition from physical CDs to streaming. So
Speaker 9: from a business aspect, how what's it like now in
Speaker 9: twenty twenty four as opposed to nineteen ninety four?
Speaker 6: What have you learned?
Speaker 9: What are some challenges now as far as on the
Speaker 9: independent side as opposed to just major.
Speaker 10: Label Well, business wise, man, I feel like the music
Speaker 10: industry was just making a lot more money when we
Speaker 10: initially were coming out, maybe not right at the beginning
Speaker 10: when Pete Rock Pete Rock came out ninety ninety one,
Speaker 10: I came out ninety two, samey.
Speaker 4: At the same time.
Speaker 10: Around that ninety four ninety five, budgets started going up.
Speaker 10: Like my first videos was like twenty thousand and thirty
Speaker 10: thousand dollars. You know, one of my was only able
Speaker 10: to spend five thousand dollars on the video. But then
Speaker 10: I can remember spending two hundred thousand dollars on the video,
Speaker 10: four hundred thousand. But it was denoting that because the
Speaker 10: record sales were coming in and record labels were just
Speaker 10: making money, and once obviously streaming came and that that
Speaker 10: partnership partnership didn't work out like you know, because obviously
Speaker 10: I heard Apple approached a lot of the labels like
Speaker 10: let's do this together. But the labels were like, nah,
Speaker 10: we're good, this is our thing. And Apple came and
Speaker 10: manifested that business. And then it made the labels have
Speaker 10: to pivot and move and shift and find so I
Speaker 10: find it now we the.
Speaker 4: Pot is not as big.
Speaker 10: That's why you know, you do to me have to
Speaker 10: go out and establish other things revolving around that. I
Speaker 10: look at it like, and I started figuring this out
Speaker 10: early on, was like, Man, I'm investing in my career
Speaker 10: because that's investing in my business, you know. So I
Speaker 10: was I was like, Okay, if I'm I'm gonna spend
Speaker 10: these money on rehearsals because rehearsals actually will get me
Speaker 10: with a great performance, I will be able to perform
Speaker 10: for the rest of my life if I like impact
Speaker 10: with these shows, doing great performances or out investing in
Speaker 10: my own self like this, I'm a higher the chef,
Speaker 10: the chef so that I can take care of myself
Speaker 10: so when I am in an older age, I can
Speaker 10: be doing all the things I need to do, whether
Speaker 10: it's stunt's in a movie or jumping around on stage.
Speaker 10: Those those investments, I think for me the business change
Speaker 10: where we used to depend on the labels to make
Speaker 10: those investments, and now as our own entrepreneurs and visionaries,
Speaker 10: we're like, oh, we gotta But.
Speaker 9: That's interesting because Lebron is notorious that he puts a
Speaker 9: million dollars a year into his body, from his trainer
Speaker 9: to his chef. I saw somebody running back, Yeah, crazy
Speaker 9: vegan alkaline type diet, But I never really looked at
Speaker 9: it from your that perspective as far as like a
Speaker 9: performer artist, but I guess it's the same thing, like
Speaker 9: you gotta.
Speaker 6: Be able to breathe correctly.
Speaker 9: You gotta be able to So that's interesting that you
Speaker 9: that you look because like athletes. I heard it from
Speaker 9: the athletic standpoint, but I never heard about it like
Speaker 9: an artist looking at it like I'm gonna pay for
Speaker 9: a chef, I'm gonna pay for this coach. I'm gonna
Speaker 9: do this so I can have more longevity.
Speaker 10: Oh man, it's like, yo, that like I understand, you know,
Speaker 10: it seemed like it's no brainer for an athlete to
Speaker 10: be like, let me invest in my physical well being
Speaker 10: because they use their bodies all the all the way.
Speaker 10: But so do artists really like And that's the thing
Speaker 10: that we we don't think about sometimes because we came
Speaker 10: up now, I'm gonna drink this up, drinking this and
Speaker 10: kick it. And I still could go on stage and rock.
Speaker 10: But at a certain point it started looking sloppy and
Speaker 10: and you don't have as much like just like focus,
Speaker 10: and you don't have like the energy and and I
Speaker 10: think what I've learned, and I learned it early on.
Speaker 10: It was thank God for some of the eclectic, you know,
Speaker 10: eccentric people or just you know people I met when
Speaker 10: I moved to New York, because I was already on
Speaker 10: my path, but they were showing me like yo, eating
Speaker 10: this stuff, taking some of this alkaline, getting some of
Speaker 10: these green drinks.
Speaker 4: Well that we were just doing it just to be healthier.
Speaker 10: But little did I know it would affect my well
Speaker 10: being in my business too, Meaning like I think clear,
Speaker 10: I got as much energy you could put me up.
Speaker 10: I was just racing against some twenty two years. I
Speaker 10: mean I lost three of them. But I was like,
Speaker 10: you know, like my point is is like to be
Speaker 10: able to do function and move around and do all
Speaker 10: those things at a high level, you got to invest
Speaker 10: in your body, yourself and well being. It also affects
Speaker 10: your emotional well being. So I kind of got that
Speaker 10: through just the process of me picking up information, being
Speaker 10: around people who were in tune with that, and just
Speaker 10: seeing it from myself. And yeah, man, I think it's
Speaker 10: I feel like when I think about the music industry,
Speaker 10: I really wish we would have had more health and
Speaker 10: wellness like attention given because a lot of people have
Speaker 10: went and passed on just because of those things and
Speaker 10: not having helped.
Speaker 6: It's the opposite. It's promoting drugs, alcohol, staying out later.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but you don't even come to that because this
Speaker 5: is an important part of your life. My mom was
Speaker 5: a teacher, yes, right, so the education pieces there. And
Speaker 5: like I said, I read in the book the summer
Speaker 5: vacations that were instrumental and developing. But moving to New
Speaker 5: York the role that that played because at the time,
Speaker 5: and people they kind of can't understand it now because
Speaker 5: they look at Chicago and they think, oh, wait, that's
Speaker 5: where where Little Dirk's from. But that's what Chief Keys
Speaker 5: from and oh you're not. Ya's from there, But like
Speaker 5: when you're coming up, it's really like it's you and
Speaker 5: maybe twist twist, and then crucial conflict is like a
Speaker 5: couple of years after that, but it's not.
Speaker 4: This isn't like a well respected place for hip hop music.
Speaker 5: So coming to New York the role that that had,
Speaker 5: because I remember the line and nobody argues you about it,
Speaker 5: like I'm the shot Town's nas and I'm like, maybe right,
Speaker 5: talking about the role that coming to New York and
Speaker 5: the influence obviously getting around Native tongue a little bit
Speaker 5: with that had on you.
Speaker 10: Yeah, well it was first of all, man, I'm like
Speaker 10: super grateful that I was just born and raised in
Speaker 10: Chicago because it's just it gave me something that I
Speaker 10: carry with me that I think that's the authenticity and
Speaker 10: and a love and just you know, a down to
Speaker 10: earthness that I love. But New York is is a
Speaker 10: mecca for bringing all these different people together, like bringing
Speaker 10: all different cultures. I think when you're from New York,
Speaker 10: you live, you don't even see it from how great
Speaker 10: of a city it is, because it's not many cities
Speaker 10: that can go that you can go to in the
Speaker 10: world and have this mixture of cultures and it really
Speaker 10: blends naturally overall, you know.
Speaker 6: What I'm saying.
Speaker 10: So my foundation, it was hard being in Chicago and
Speaker 10: trying to get even signed or get heard.
Speaker 4: And once that.
Speaker 10: Happened, it was me and Twist and shout out to
Speaker 10: Twist and then, like you said, crucial conflict, those guys
Speaker 10: got out there. But I still wasn't like playing it
Speaker 10: in the industry. I can remember going into my third
Speaker 10: album like, man, how am I going to make a
Speaker 10: career this Because I wasn't making a lot of money.
Speaker 10: I was as Andre's three thousands said live in check
Speaker 10: to check, you know, if you don't move your feet in.
Speaker 4: That.
Speaker 10: So I was in that space and I just people
Speaker 10: that I was like when I would come to New York,
Speaker 10: I was like connecting with people and with certain things
Speaker 10: would happen, Like when Daylight and Daylight reached out to me.
Speaker 10: Dayla Soul reached out to me and said be on
Speaker 10: this album. That was a game changer for me. Be
Speaker 10: on this song that the first time I went to London.
Speaker 10: The business the business on the States is high album
Speaker 10: and funny story, they wanted Bizz on that song, but
Speaker 10: he didn't show up or whatever. So they eventually called
Speaker 10: me and I was super geek and all my friends.
Speaker 10: It just was a big moment for me anyway, like
Speaker 10: being accepted and being out here on the New York scene.
Speaker 10: I started running into different people and I was like,
Speaker 10: it's almost like being in the industry and going to
Speaker 10: the to the center of that industry. I'm in the
Speaker 10: music industry. But me decided to move to New York,
Speaker 10: was like, Okay, now I might run into Premo, so
Speaker 10: that's how I can work with Primo or when somebody
Speaker 10: need me on this track, I'm around like I'm here,
Speaker 10: you know, and you just never know the connections. But
Speaker 10: it's being in that in that hub of where the
Speaker 10: music was coming from most of the music in the
Speaker 10: music industry. So moving to New York gave me that,
Speaker 10: and it also did open me up to different open
Speaker 10: my mind up, two different aspects of life. But I
Speaker 10: was building that in Chicago, and Chicago gave me a
Speaker 10: great foundation.
Speaker 4: I wouldn't change the course of it at all.
Speaker 5: Which is the record that you start to say, all right,
Speaker 5: this has turned around for me.
Speaker 4: Is it the light or is there one before that?
Speaker 5: That's all right, here's a commercial success that everybody in
Speaker 5: the quote unquote industry is looking for me to have.
Speaker 10: Well, okay, the first step I would say was Resurrection album,
Speaker 10: which because had I used to lover on it. And
Speaker 10: the reason why I say that is because when I
Speaker 10: released my first album, it wasn't any response.
Speaker 4: Really, it was like okay, yeah whatever, And then when
Speaker 4: I released I used to lover.
Speaker 10: I remember Biggie doing one of those promos for me,
Speaker 10: being like, yo, this I wash. This kid was from Brooklyn.
Speaker 10: I remember seeing Nas and he was like keep doing
Speaker 10: your thing, and so I started like realizing that some
Speaker 10: of the people who didn't probably pay attention to my
Speaker 10: music before it was starting to and it was those
Speaker 10: greats and I was like, oh, the game change. The
Speaker 10: album was like water for Chocolate because of the song
Speaker 10: The Light and the reason I seen the difference. And
Speaker 10: that was before I was like a well known hip
Speaker 10: hop artist right like on a hip hop scene but
Speaker 10: mostly underground.
Speaker 4: Wasn't like I was getting radio play.
Speaker 10: The Light was the first song I was like starting
Speaker 10: to I got radio play and I was doing the
Speaker 10: summer jams, and it was the first time I saw
Speaker 10: people outside of hip hop culture singing one of my
Speaker 10: songs or like even knowing who I am or caring
Speaker 10: about who I am. Like I remember doing a performance
Speaker 10: in seeing like young black girls singing the Light, and
Speaker 10: I was like, wow, they never was singing any other
Speaker 10: other music. So I saw the difference. I saw like
Speaker 10: me doing top forty shows at that time and like,
Speaker 10: and to this day, that's one of the songs that
Speaker 10: when I performed, people know it the most, you know.
Speaker 10: So that was the game change. And then I think
Speaker 10: b was the one that elevated it even higher.
Speaker 6: Well, b that's when that's when you connect with Yay,
Speaker 6: you on a musical level, right.
Speaker 9: Yeah, when you meet him, you knew him before.
Speaker 10: That, Yeah, I knew Yay and I would say like
Speaker 10: ninety six, ninety five somewhere around now back then, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: He was. He was just out of college. He might
Speaker 4: have been in college.
Speaker 10: But no Id, who's my producer for those first three albums,
Speaker 10: him in Twilight Tone, but no Id was one of
Speaker 10: the main producers and one of my best friends. His mother,
Speaker 10: Kanye's mother, doctor Dondr West God bless Us Soul.
Speaker 4: They were they talked together.
Speaker 10: They were are both educators and and she brought Kanye
Speaker 10: over to meet no Ida and yeah, he was making
Speaker 10: beats and he was always making beats, and his beats
Speaker 10: was dope. But it was like no Idea was a
Speaker 10: master at that point. So I was always like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 10: this is good, but no Idea got this and then
Speaker 10: Yay were like he would he would come to my
Speaker 10: basement sometimes and like battle he wanted, you know, because
Speaker 10: I was one of the Chicago dudes out at that
Speaker 10: sounds like nice and so he like, yo, he was
Speaker 10: battling me and he could rhyme good. So it was
Speaker 10: like it was just that we was cultivating ourselves and
Speaker 10: I never took any I never got any beats from
Speaker 10: him at that time. For me, I was like I
Speaker 10: needed them drums to snap, and he was getting there.
Speaker 10: But then, you know, eventually we reconnected because he had
Speaker 10: moved out to New York and was living out here
Speaker 10: and I started seeing him and he was like, yo,
Speaker 10: let's He's like, I got to get you on my album.
Speaker 10: I got everybody. He was like yeah, I said, of course,
Speaker 10: I'm with it, and we just I got on his
Speaker 10: song get Them High, and we were at the time
Speaker 10: we had already started. We kind of like started connecting
Speaker 10: on beats. Because it's funny, one of the first beats
Speaker 10: I got from ya, he was already excited to make
Speaker 10: some beats for me, but he was in the studio
Speaker 10: session for somebody else making a beat and he told
Speaker 10: me to come by and I came in and I
Speaker 10: was like, what's that? What's that? He was like, oh, man,
Speaker 10: that's this beat I just made. He was like, man,
Speaker 10: take this beat and leave, Like like, basically, what to
Speaker 10: do with this?
Speaker 4: If you wanted take this?
Speaker 10: And then I guess for that artist, he did something
Speaker 10: else for them, but I came in and got that
Speaker 10: beat and that turned out to Beat the Food.
Speaker 6: So you better ask questions.
Speaker 5: I'm just re even the sound of the Food on
Speaker 5: some of my favorite tracks on there, the sound was incredible,
Speaker 5: Like this a double question, right, So at this time
Speaker 5: you're almost your twelve years into the career, but this
Speaker 5: album critically came from you know, all other outlets, but
Speaker 5: it's five mics. It's like at the end of when
Speaker 5: five mikes was meaning something, but you got the five
Speaker 5: mics and I'm sure at that time that that had
Speaker 5: to mean something.
Speaker 4: But I also want to.
Speaker 5: Talk about the visuals for the project too, because not
Speaker 5: only did the sound match it, but like the videos
Speaker 5: that were coming from it were incredible, right, So the
Speaker 5: corner right, you had Taraji stand right like it was
Speaker 5: like everything was coming together at that time. What was
Speaker 5: that moment, Like obviously getting that acclaim for the five mics,
Speaker 5: but then like, yo, we have to match the sound
Speaker 5: with the visual.
Speaker 4: Man, five mike's meant a whole lot.
Speaker 10: Like what I was telling I was telling somebody who
Speaker 10: used to work at the Source, Man, we literally would
Speaker 10: be making our albums like man, I want to get
Speaker 10: five mics. That's something when you like creating an album
Speaker 10: to get a rating. It was nothing else that like
Speaker 10: no other like publications or things where we're thinking like
Speaker 10: I got to get four stars five Stars and Rolling
Speaker 10: Stone or this and that. It was like I want
Speaker 10: five mics and a source or once double excel, I
Speaker 10: want the double. So getting that recognition was like, man,
Speaker 10: it meant a whole lot to me because it's just
Speaker 10: as a coming from the culture of hip hop, that
Speaker 10: was like that was like a gold medal.
Speaker 4: That was like an NBA championship for us. They can't
Speaker 4: all classic the.
Speaker 10: Classic, and your goal is to make a classic man,
Speaker 10: no matter what. Like even for me at that time,
Speaker 10: obviously beyond record sales, I wanted a classic album. So
Speaker 10: getting that recognition and it was something, man, I'll be
Speaker 10: telling the story when I speak at colleges and stuff.
Speaker 10: It was it was something for me growing wise as
Speaker 10: a human being with that album because I was watching
Speaker 10: Ya at that time while we were making b we
Speaker 10: were both creating. You know, he was pretty much done
Speaker 10: with college dropout. But I watched his faith in himself
Speaker 10: and his confidence and was like he would be like yo,
Speaker 10: listen to it was college dropout. We'd be doing listening
Speaker 10: session and he'd be like, listen, this is amazing, this
Speaker 10: is incredible, like presenting his music with confidence and you know.
Speaker 4: Just the way I was raised, I wasn't taught to
Speaker 4: do that.
Speaker 10: And I felt like doing the album B was the
Speaker 10: first time I kind of declared my music to be
Speaker 10: great and classic and really believed it, and it got
Speaker 10: classic ratings. I mean it was the music itself, but
Speaker 10: the fact that I was able to say it and
Speaker 10: believe in it and do it, you know, with like
Speaker 10: the confidence of Muhammad Ali not trying to make some
Speaker 10: arrogant and being like I'm better than you, was just like, Yo,
Speaker 10: check this out. This is dope. This is incredible. So
Speaker 10: that was a stepping stone for me. So that meant
Speaker 10: something five mic and all that just kind of it
Speaker 10: kind of solidified. Yo, man, you gotta believe in yourself.
Speaker 10: You gotta speak And then you know what was the
Speaker 10: second part of the course, because I forget the videos.
Speaker 4: The video the videos was.
Speaker 10: I gotta say I always used to want to be
Speaker 10: dope visually, but wanting to and being able to execute
Speaker 10: his two different things.
Speaker 4: I think having Kanye.
Speaker 10: Really helped from the standpoint of he was gonna make
Speaker 10: sure I had the budget I needed, make sure we
Speaker 10: got to the right director because we was I was
Speaker 10: on good music. It was no like he wasn't accepting
Speaker 10: nothing less than high level visuals and which pushed me.
Speaker 10: And as soon as we made the corner, soon as
Speaker 10: he made that like he heard that rap, he said, Man,
Speaker 10: we gotta do this video on Chicago. Man, it's black
Speaker 10: and white. It's gonna be cold outside when we just
Speaker 10: in Chicago in the hood about and man, he directed
Speaker 10: that video and we was in Chicago was one of
Speaker 10: the coldest days I ever felt in Chicago. Looked like
Speaker 10: I was sick already, but I was so half the
Speaker 10: energy of what we was doing.
Speaker 4: I just was able to get through it.
Speaker 10: But it was those visions that that I got to say,
Speaker 10: yay as a as a and if it wasn't him director,
Speaker 10: he would try to make sure we had the right director.
Speaker 10: And then by the time we got to that video
Speaker 10: testify with Taraji and Wood Harris and Steve Harris, all
Speaker 10: these great actors, it was like I knew that I
Speaker 10: was studying acting, that I could do a story and
Speaker 10: make it a film like we wanted that to be
Speaker 10: a short film and Anthony Manler directed that.
Speaker 9: So how did you actually transition from being a rapper
Speaker 9: into an actor?
Speaker 6: Like who actually gave you a first start? And how
Speaker 6: does that well?
Speaker 1: That?
Speaker 10: I felt that at one point, as we talked about earlier,
Speaker 10: sometimes you know, when you create music, sometimes you got
Speaker 10: that I can't wait to do the next song, and
Speaker 10: then sometimes you're like, Okay, I ain't in the spirit
Speaker 10: to create this music right now. When I found myself
Speaker 10: in those places, I said, it got to be something
Speaker 10: else artistically out there for me, Like I just I
Speaker 10: just knew I had to find another expression. This was
Speaker 10: like late nineties. I was always in the films, going
Speaker 10: to plays. I loved it, but I never knew I
Speaker 10: could do it because when I first did it, when
Speaker 10: I was a kid, my mother saw my play and
Speaker 10: she kept talking how good my homie was.
Speaker 4: You know your mother.
Speaker 10: You think your mother will say good jobs, but she
Speaker 10: was like, yo, Derek was incredible and that I was like, okay, well.
Speaker 4: I said, yea, I saw you up there too. I
Speaker 4: was like, okay, well, So.
Speaker 10: I ended up not even thinking about and plus like
Speaker 10: at the time, it wasn't like I ain't gonna put
Speaker 10: it all on that, but a lot of it was
Speaker 10: like I'm into this hip hop thing, and so I
Speaker 10: wasn't thinking about pursuing it for myself. But somewhere in
Speaker 10: that late nineties period, I was like, man, I want
Speaker 10: to try acting. I really want to because I always
Speaker 10: loved it and love watching movies and love theater. And
Speaker 10: I went to acting class and the first acting class
Speaker 10: I went to, I was like, man, this is incredible,
Speaker 10: Like I feel that.
Speaker 4: Love like that. I felt.
Speaker 10: It's not the same exact as music, but it's got
Speaker 10: just as much love for the art form. And when
Speaker 10: I started it, so I was like, man, I got
Speaker 10: to just keep going to class. So I was going
Speaker 10: to class. I would be on tour every time I
Speaker 10: would come back. I was just going to classes and
Speaker 10: going to classes. Then the classes started going to Okay,
Speaker 10: go do auditions. I was going to auditions getting turned down,
Speaker 10: turned down, and ironically enough, when I was we were
Speaker 10: editing the video for Testify and I had did an
Speaker 10: audition for this movie called Smoking Aces, and that was
Speaker 10: my first movie, and like it was the first time
Speaker 10: I got a call back, and I remember going into
Speaker 10: the editing room.
Speaker 4: I just come from. I just come from, like the audition.
Speaker 10: I still had on my suit because I was playing
Speaker 10: this character that you know, it was like a bodyguard,
Speaker 10: but he was sharp. So I went into that editing
Speaker 10: room still geeked, like yo, and I got a call back,
Speaker 10: and then it happened where I got a second call back,
Speaker 10: and that's when I had to Actually I got the
Speaker 10: second call back which was like, you got the job,
Speaker 10: and I had to literally.
Speaker 4: I was literally I was crying when I got that job.
Speaker 10: I called my mother, like, yo, I got the I
Speaker 10: got a movie, and it was but I had to
Speaker 10: hang up that phone with all that joy and then
Speaker 10: going to the hotel room next door and tell Kanye
Speaker 10: I couldn't go on this tour I booked. I was
Speaker 10: they had, they had promoted me in everything it was
Speaker 10: with him Keisha Cole. It's probably around two thousand and
Speaker 10: five or six. I don't remember the name of it.
Speaker 10: It had to be two thousand and five because that's
Speaker 10: when we started graduations. Maybe it's Glowing the Dark.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it might.
Speaker 10: I think it was before Glowing the Dark, but it
Speaker 10: was anyway, it was. It was a real crazy dynamic
Speaker 10: because Yay definitely was like, man, it's all good, bro.
Speaker 10: Like he kind of was supporting me going into my dream.
Speaker 10: And though it was some business aspects that had to
Speaker 10: be maneuvered that my manager at the time, Derek made happen,
Speaker 10: it was a that was my step into acting, and
Speaker 10: it was good to get that love and support from
Speaker 10: like somebody who I was like, man, we in this
Speaker 10: partnership doing music and things, but he was like, man,
Speaker 10: go pursue that.
Speaker 4: That's your dream, go do it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So that I mean that I remember that with
Speaker 5: the announcement when you got smoking aces, because that leads
Speaker 5: to just right, yeah, which is now you're not just
Speaker 5: like a role, like you're the lead.
Speaker 4: That's the lead.
Speaker 5: You and the queen, right and obviously Cuba had done
Speaker 5: it at the time Will had done it. I was
Speaker 5: to queen Latifa had done it pac obviously and now
Speaker 5: the other guy that is having a lead role in
Speaker 5: a movie you cried the first time. What was that
Speaker 5: reception like when you got the call to say like, nah,
Speaker 5: you're not You're going to be the lead actor in
Speaker 5: this movie now.
Speaker 4: Man, I was.
Speaker 10: That's one of them calls where you as soon as
Speaker 10: you get the call, you start going into like training mode,
Speaker 10: meaning I was.
Speaker 4: I was.
Speaker 10: I was super excited because Queen Latifa is a very
Speaker 10: talented actress and she just people love her and people
Speaker 10: show up for her movies. And for me, it was Wow,
Speaker 10: I'm about to be a leading man in a film,
Speaker 10: and I hadn't had that opportunity. I played all these supports,
Speaker 10: the roles, so I felt the pressure.
Speaker 4: To be honest.
Speaker 10: My first days of filming, I wasn't doing good, and
Speaker 10: they had talks behind the cameras about like, are we
Speaker 10: gonna keep this dude on for this? And I remember
Speaker 10: it was the scene that Queen or Tief and our
Speaker 10: characters had sitting in this jazz club, and it just
Speaker 10: was something about the scene that felt good to me.
Speaker 4: It was natural.
Speaker 10: Ween, you have a lot of dialogue, and from that moment,
Speaker 10: the director was like and the producers like, that's all
Speaker 10: we need, just do that. What I didn't know at
Speaker 10: that time was like in a romantic comedy, people are
Speaker 10: mostly themselves in a romantic comedy, right, like they bringing
Speaker 10: more the essence of just them. It's not like you
Speaker 10: disappear in a character in a romantic comedy.
Speaker 4: Most of the time. Like you know, when you see Heath.
Speaker 10: Legend as the Joker, God bless his soul, he it's
Speaker 10: the Joker. But when you see like Matthew mcconnie in
Speaker 10: in a in a you know, a romantic comedy, or
Speaker 10: you know, even like what Queen Latifa did before, it's
Speaker 10: like it's some of the elements of herself when she's
Speaker 10: doing set it Off. That's a different thing. You understand
Speaker 10: what I'm saying, y'all understand, like it's a it's you
Speaker 10: gotta go deeper in those dramatic roles or those characters
Speaker 10: where you're creating a whole character romantic comedy. They they
Speaker 10: want you to bring more to essen to blight. I
Speaker 10: didn't know that, and I was trying to do something
Speaker 10: else in the first days, and then eventually I just
Speaker 10: had to let go and be like, okay, cool, because
Speaker 10: one of my favorite things about acting is be becoming
Speaker 10: somebody else in different ways, you know, like like and
Speaker 10: I love when I'm watching a movie when somebody's watching
Speaker 10: the movie that I'm in, it knows me and they say, man,
Speaker 10: I ain't even see Rashid in that, I ain't even
Speaker 10: see you in that.
Speaker 4: I saw this I saw the sir.
Speaker 10: Ivy or or Cassie and from you know, from John
Speaker 10: Wick two, I see Robert Simms. That's a compliment, Well
Speaker 10: how do you because from you know, yeah you can
Speaker 10: play yeah who because that's part of the role.
Speaker 4: That was that was part of the role. That was
Speaker 4: part of the role.
Speaker 10: And I made sure that my stunt double didn't getting
Speaker 10: you know, I was like, you know, there was no
Speaker 10: way I was gonna go back home to Chicago and
Speaker 10: they see a stunt double in the movie where I'm
Speaker 10: playing a basketball because it.
Speaker 6: Wasn't double for basketball.
Speaker 9: So but from an actor standpoint, like I've heard actors
Speaker 9: say they struggled with getting out of character, like when
Speaker 9: you go that far into character, have you ever been
Speaker 9: in that vibe with I thought, who was it?
Speaker 6: Somebody said it took like.
Speaker 9: Six months for them to actually get out of the
Speaker 9: character and it actually caused a lot of problems in
Speaker 9: their life.
Speaker 6: Might have yeah, I think said that.
Speaker 10: I definitely have had times where you know, it took
Speaker 10: me time to get out of the character, mostly while
Speaker 10: I'm filming, meaning like I come home with some of
Speaker 10: that energy and I've time. It's times where I've been
Speaker 10: like I've had heavy days of filming where like the
Speaker 10: scenes is heavy, and on the ride home, I just
Speaker 10: broke down because like I've had a I played on
Speaker 10: a show called Helen Wheels where my character was getting hung.
Speaker 10: It was like taking place in the reconstruction era where
Speaker 10: it's like the building of the Continental Railroad and man,
Speaker 10: my character was getting hung and man, I couldnot like
Speaker 10: man that feeling and just thinking about all of our
Speaker 10: ancestors that it went through that And when I got
Speaker 10: in that van on the way home, I was just like,
Speaker 10: couldn't hold it, man. And you know it comes out
Speaker 10: in different ways too, like where you like you and
Speaker 10: you playing that killer and you shooting somebody all day.
Speaker 10: Like I remember just coming home one day of being
Speaker 10: like I gotta go watch a dumb movie, just a
Speaker 10: movie that don't got no Well, I ain't got to
Speaker 10: think about nothing because I just was feeling heavy, you
Speaker 10: holding that gun, shooting somebody. Them guns is real powerful,
Speaker 10: like they it's just they just don't have gunpowder in
Speaker 10: the bullet, but you still getting the same charge.
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Speaker 1: An illegal alien from Guatemala charged with raping a child
Speaker 1: in Massachusetts. An MS thirteen gang member from El Salvador
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Speaker 1: illegal border crossings are at the lowest levels ever recorded,
Speaker 1: and over one hundred thousand illegal aliens have been arrested.
Speaker 1: If you were here illegally, your next you will be
Speaker 1: fine nearly one thousand dollars a day.
Speaker 2: Imprisoned and deported, you will never return.
Speaker 1: But if you register using our CBP home app and
Speaker 1: leave now, you could be allowed to return legally.
Speaker 2: Do what's right. Leave now.
Speaker 1: Under President Trump America's laws, border and families will.
Speaker 3: Be protected sponsored by the United States Department at Homeland Security.
Speaker 10: You know, it makes you have compassion towards people who
Speaker 10: dealing with that type of stuff all the time.
Speaker 4: Who like this is because it speaks to a couple
Speaker 4: of pieces.
Speaker 5: Obviously the mental health side of it, right, because yeah,
Speaker 5: you're crying and that's just you.
Speaker 4: But number one, who do you call? Who did you
Speaker 4: call it during those times?
Speaker 5: And was there somebody in the dustry that was a confidant?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 5: Like like I said, those the cubes of the world
Speaker 5: that they're from hip hop, but they're in the in Hollywood. Like,
Speaker 5: are those people that you were able to call and
Speaker 5: reach out to during these times for advice?
Speaker 6: Well, I mean I still had an issue with you the.
Speaker 4: Specifically were gonna get to that. We're gonna get to that.
Speaker 10: By then we have resulted. By the time I was acting,
Speaker 10: we had resolved that. But a lot of times it
Speaker 10: would be cast members. Like even on the film American
Speaker 10: gangst I didn't have no real like like I wasn't
Speaker 10: like going through it or whatever. But jen Zel was
Speaker 10: like guiding and helping and giving me gems, like and
Speaker 10: giving us gems.
Speaker 4: And I really respected that.
Speaker 10: The fact you know, this is Denzels is crazy. It's
Speaker 10: like I worked so hard to get that role because
Speaker 10: I tried out for the role that Isses had and
Speaker 10: they liked me, but they was like no.
Speaker 4: Then I tried out for another role and they like,
Speaker 4: you're too young.
Speaker 10: And I went and made another just tape, another audition tape,
Speaker 10: and in the casting director was like, man, you dope
Speaker 10: and and you passionate, We're just gonna cast you as
Speaker 10: this to y'all's father. And I was like, okay, I'll
Speaker 10: take it. I'm eight years older than them, but I
Speaker 10: could do it as an actor. It's funny because you know,
Speaker 10: for a long time, see I would see me and
Speaker 10: be like Pops, like, oh man, this is gone too far.
Speaker 10: But you know, I was grateful that Denzel was sharing
Speaker 10: information with us. That's what you want, like from somebody
Speaker 10: who's that gifted and you know, just a legend a
Speaker 10: guru in it to give you you know, that wisdom.
Speaker 10: And Ruby D was on that set too. I was
Speaker 10: just watching her and just being like, God bless us.
Speaker 10: So she was a master. I was like, I'm this
Speaker 10: is you know. I took that bro I got that role,
Speaker 10: and I literally only had about four lines in the movie.
Speaker 10: But I knew I would be throughout the movie like
Speaker 10: learning and I was gonna be on set with Denzel
Speaker 10: Washington and Ruby D. And it was like some of
Speaker 10: the great lessons I have as far as those times
Speaker 10: when I was going through stuff, only mostly the actors
Speaker 10: around me that I would you know, talk through with
Speaker 10: stuff or therapist, you know. But ultimately acting was great
Speaker 10: for therapy, you know, like it's a therapy in itself
Speaker 10: because you you are releasing some of that energy if
Speaker 10: you're going through those scenes, whether you're crying at home
Speaker 10: or crying on the set, you're getting it out or
Speaker 10: that anger you getting it out. That was one of
Speaker 10: the things that I always would tell people, like, man,
Speaker 10: this has been a good thing for me because when
Speaker 10: I'm dealing with all this stress, I get to release
Speaker 10: it through these characters through this artistic expression. So yeah,
Speaker 10: and most death I'll say most Death is somebody who
Speaker 10: acting wise that I was able to talk to a
Speaker 10: little bit about acting because he's a he a brilliant actor.
Speaker 4: He is like he is super dope.
Speaker 6: Well speak speaking of most Death from the music side.
Speaker 9: You know, you guys, most people will look at as
Speaker 9: conscious rap, right il quality most of yourself? How has
Speaker 9: that been? Because sometimes people don't want labels or titles
Speaker 9: because they feel like it boxes them in and it's
Speaker 9: limits them from doing like just being a person, like
Speaker 9: they might want to do something that's not necessarily conscious. Right, So,
Speaker 9: how has that title as far as being a conscious
Speaker 9: rap or how have How has that blended with you?
Speaker 4: Well, it's been.
Speaker 10: You know, I went through a journey with being called
Speaker 10: a conscious artist because at first, when they first said it,
Speaker 10: I was like, man, why they calling me that life?
Speaker 10: You know, like, you know, like because it did put
Speaker 10: me in a box. And I'm like, man, I like women,
Speaker 10: and I like drinking and automatically if you you know,
Speaker 10: if you put in a conscious box, they expect you
Speaker 10: to just be like only talking about a side of
Speaker 10: the court or you know, or the Panthers and and
Speaker 10: Malcolm Xell, You're always gonna be serious. In fact, like
Speaker 10: being on tour, I would meet girls and that's all
Speaker 10: they wanted to be.
Speaker 4: Like, look, I like having fun. Man, let's kick it.
Speaker 4: Let's st.
Speaker 10: Ain't gotta stay heavy though, so I and and I
Speaker 10: think too, to our own fault, we fell into that
Speaker 10: box and it and it separated us from other artists
Speaker 10: like the jay Z's or the dmxes, and you know,
Speaker 10: we weren't like working with those artists. And I felt
Speaker 10: like at a certain point, Yay Kanye was one of
Speaker 10: the bridges for that because he did put freeway in
Speaker 10: most step on the song, you know, or he was
Speaker 10: like rapping some things that was like artistic and his
Speaker 10: music is very artill. And he was throwing up the
Speaker 10: rock sign, throwing up the you know and having this
Speaker 10: rock and Feller chain.
Speaker 6: You know, he blended those two.
Speaker 10: Blended those two worlds, and it was like a reminder
Speaker 10: that man were not separate.
Speaker 4: It's still all our culture. It's all us.
Speaker 10: And like I have been around jay Z and kicked
Speaker 10: it with him and blah blah blah.
Speaker 4: So why just because they lave me as conscious do
Speaker 4: I need to.
Speaker 5: Feel like when he said I was gonna how validating
Speaker 5: or is it a gifting the person He says.
Speaker 6: I want to rap like common said, are you are.
Speaker 5: You saying to yourself? Damn, this dude just said he
Speaker 5: wants to rap like me. Or you're like, he's still
Speaker 5: putting me in the box a little bit like, how
Speaker 5: did you.
Speaker 4: Respond to that? That's thinking the same thing.
Speaker 10: I love that he said that because I mean at
Speaker 10: that point for me to even be in his thoughts
Speaker 10: of while he's writing a song, I mean that he
Speaker 10: recognizes me as an artist, that is valuable. And for
Speaker 10: him to say Jay is brilliant as Jay Z is
Speaker 10: as a business man, he's also an artist. So for
Speaker 10: him to say, man, truthfully, I want to rhyme like
Speaker 10: common sense, he expressing one thing about him and dope
Speaker 10: enough He's like, he expressed what I be the feeling like, man,
Speaker 10: why don't we do it more of this? Like we
Speaker 10: could feel more than one thing about certain situations. He saying, Look,
Speaker 10: I want to rhyme like this dude and have some conscience,
Speaker 10: but I want to get paid to money.
Speaker 4: I'm doing fire I did fire man, I'm selling records.
Speaker 4: I'm not listen.
Speaker 10: That's cool, But these dudes and the truth is we
Speaker 10: weren't selling like that, so that was you know, his
Speaker 10: path and his choice. I felt good that he that
Speaker 10: he mentioned me because like at that time, I remember
Speaker 10: my cousin calling me like, damn, Jay Hope mentioned you, bro,
Speaker 10: you made it?
Speaker 6: You Did you get that from people like that?
Speaker 9: You might not, like you said, like when you saw big, Like,
Speaker 9: did you get that from people that you?
Speaker 6: Was like, yo, I really appreciate it.
Speaker 9: They might not have things publicly, but it's like they
Speaker 9: talk to you and they like you kind of know
Speaker 9: like that they do want to tap into that, but
Speaker 9: for whatever reason they're not.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I mean yeah, I mean when you get that
Speaker 10: from from the artists that you really appreciate, even something
Speaker 10: that you like, Damn, you appreciate my music?
Speaker 4: You like my music?
Speaker 10: Damn, that's crazy, Like you you know, you feel good
Speaker 10: about it because man, like you want to be respected
Speaker 10: by people you love and your peers and people you
Speaker 10: fans of so and and you also understand like, man,
Speaker 10: they have this other path and desire and vision and
Speaker 10: qualities that may get them to a higher level commercial wise.
Speaker 10: But you know, once you for me, once you start
Speaker 10: embracing like this is who I am that's when things
Speaker 10: started to thrive for me.
Speaker 4: Was like I wasn't trying to.
Speaker 10: Be like Biggie or Nahs or Daylight even you know,
Speaker 10: all them inspired me like Daylight Tribe Day, but I
Speaker 10: once I found my voice. At first it was like like, Okay,
Speaker 10: I got all pieces of these, but then I started
Speaker 10: to be like, Okay, I got influences by these inspiration,
Speaker 10: but I got my voice now. So yeah, these artists
Speaker 10: are these artists that can make dope hip hop but
Speaker 10: still reach high levels of radio play, and I just
Speaker 10: accepted that for that and being like, Yo, I'm an
Speaker 10: artist that's gonna do these creative things. I'm gonna go
Speaker 10: out there and do live performances and rock. The people
Speaker 10: may have a song that get on the radio, may not,
Speaker 10: but I guarantee you that I'm gonna make some music
Speaker 10: that you're gonna listen to twenty thirty years and now
Speaker 10: and hopefully hundreds of years now.
Speaker 5: That's the fact I think the transparency, even when he
Speaker 5: says it, it's like I dubbed down my audience a double.
Speaker 5: My daughter'll all criticized for it, but y'all, y'all holla.
Speaker 5: So it's like, what do I do the fact that
Speaker 5: you're making music that it's sending in a test of time.
Speaker 5: Like I said, B is incredible. That was five mics.
Speaker 5: Love is my favorite track sometimes I just put that
Speaker 5: on just because the way you're talking about love and
Speaker 5: how it manifests in different ways. But fine forever, I
Speaker 5: think it is equally almost it's right there. It's on
Speaker 5: the Cuss south Side on there, the people's on there.
Speaker 5: Yay's is the producer for pretty much the most both albums, right,
Speaker 5: And so that's like the traditional model of hip hop
Speaker 5: where you have one producer produced the whole project. And
Speaker 5: obviously throughout your career you've changed that. You no I
Speaker 5: d started at first, then you had Ya, and now
Speaker 5: you're back to Pete Rock doing predominantly the entire album.
Speaker 5: Talk about that process of going back to the traditional
Speaker 5: ways where you had your one producer and we're going
Speaker 5: to make the click this together as opposed to the
Speaker 5: allmatic way, which is a classic classic. But I'm getting
Speaker 5: the best five producers that I can find to make
Speaker 5: this manifesto.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 10: I'm one of the first to acknowledge that Jay Diller
Speaker 10: on be and Finding fact did like he did that
Speaker 10: love his song and he's one of the greatest producers
Speaker 10: and ever live and also inspired Yay and many others
Speaker 10: like Pete Roy. Making an album with one producer or
Speaker 10: two at the most, for me has been my my
Speaker 10: way of operating because like, I like creating sounds with
Speaker 10: the album, the albums that I've loved throughout my years.
Speaker 10: When I you know, when they say what album would
Speaker 10: you take on an island? Like Off the Wall by
Speaker 10: Michael Jackson is one of my favorite albums, you know,
Speaker 10: Lawrence Hill's mis Education, myb Deep, the Infamous, you know,
Speaker 10: like these are some albums that will be with me forever.
Speaker 10: That being said to try Midnight Marauders, like these albums,
Speaker 10: like were they created a sound like Purple Tape?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, Purple That's something that's definitely five mics.
Speaker 5: Yes, Tribe is the first group to have three five
Speaker 5: mic albums and like Marida's low End Theory in their
Speaker 5: first time yep, wow, yeah, I never knew that they
Speaker 5: got three.
Speaker 10: They well they for me, they well deserved. It's like
Speaker 10: earth Winding Fire is one of my favorite groups. E
Speaker 10: and Tribe is the earth winning fire hip hop to me.
Speaker 10: Fact Yes, Sir Resting Piece to Fight and Maurice's wife
Speaker 10: for Earth Winning Fire. So I'll say, man like I
Speaker 10: like locking in with a producer because it gives me that.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 10: We start bonding and creating and talking and going through stuff,
Speaker 10: and we started developing a rapport, a collaboration, a sound communication.
Speaker 10: Like it's just like me, ain't got it, ain't gonna
Speaker 10: always be perfect, but it's about getting Like real creativity
Speaker 10: is about getting to know each other and then getting
Speaker 10: into a certain vision and being able to create that
Speaker 10: vision and like iron sharpens iron, y'all get better. And
Speaker 10: that's what Yay did. That's no idea did it from
Speaker 10: the beginning. That's what Questlove as an executive producer, and
Speaker 10: Jay Dillar did for my arm like water for chocolate.
Speaker 10: And that's what Pete Brocket's done where we just get it.
Speaker 10: With this new album, Auditory in Value one, we wouldn't
Speaker 10: we wouldn't have created something to me with the level
Speaker 10: of quality if I wasn't going out to his crib
Speaker 10: and like him playing records and being, oh, you like that,
Speaker 10: and then along with that just watching his dog and
Speaker 10: go around the house. And then we're talking about life
Speaker 10: and talking about therapy and talking about like man when
Speaker 10: he first started doing this stuff and like took me
Speaker 10: all that shape up into creating the best work. You know,
Speaker 10: and you ain't doing it for that. You ain't You
Speaker 10: ain't like faking the conversations. But I'm just saying that
Speaker 10: type of bond. It's like any teams when we watched sports,
Speaker 10: some of them teams were just able to reach that
Speaker 10: level because they was able to connect to as people.
Speaker 10: That's why Phil Jackson had them handing out books to
Speaker 10: them and doing like having them sit down and put
Speaker 10: the thing in the fire and all like those are
Speaker 10: the things that you can't let Those are priceless things
Speaker 10: about connection that come out in any project that you
Speaker 10: were doing together.
Speaker 9: So, like, let's talk about Chicago because music, I think
Speaker 9: music hip hop has served as like a tour guide
Speaker 9: of a city when you like, before I got to LA,
Speaker 9: I had an idea of what LA was like from
Speaker 9: listening to Snooping Dog Found, and then when I got there,
Speaker 9: a lot of the stuff that I thought was going
Speaker 9: to be La wasn't La, and it was kind of
Speaker 9: a different perspective. But it's the same thing with Louisiana.
Speaker 9: Cash money, like you saw. I saw the visuals of
Speaker 9: New Orleans and the hot video, and that's what I
Speaker 9: thought New Orleans was, right, So it's like Chicago. I
Speaker 9: always loved going to Chicago because I feel like that
Speaker 9: downtown is like one of the most beautiful downtowns, right
Speaker 9: on the water. It's the vibe, the food, everybody's like,
Speaker 9: it's just good energy. But of course there's issues, but
Speaker 9: I feel like a lot of it. When once drill
Speaker 9: became very popular, the image of Chicago changed, right, And
Speaker 9: so what's your thought process as far as how Chicago's viewed,
Speaker 9: Because most of the time when you say Chicago, people
Speaker 9: were like, it's dangerous, stay away while you going there.
Speaker 9: It's just a very negative connotation from at least black
Speaker 9: people when they think about Chicago. And then drill music
Speaker 9: has definitely played a part in that for sure, and
Speaker 9: so like and drill has went over the world, London,
Speaker 9: New York, everybody's doing drill now. So what's your thoughts
Speaker 9: on Chicago's reputation as far as violence linked with drill music.
Speaker 10: Well, I think drill music wouldn't have been able to
Speaker 10: come about if Chicago didn't have that type of angst
Speaker 10: and type of like if parts of Chicago didn't have
Speaker 10: the violence that we have. That was the expression of
Speaker 10: with Dirk with Reese or Chief keef Man. They was
Speaker 10: them dudes is from a really tough neighborhood in one
Speaker 10: of the toughest neighborhoods in the world, and they were
Speaker 10: talking what they've been exposed to and what they know.
Speaker 4: And it's really powerful.
Speaker 10: How like we as black people, and I say black
Speaker 10: and brown people really, but how we all right take
Speaker 10: some of the heaviest things, the most difficult situations and
Speaker 10: make something golden out of it. Because Drill is a
Speaker 10: they created a sound and it's like influenced the world
Speaker 10: and it's dope. But as you said that, it's other
Speaker 10: sides to Chicago that I feel like.
Speaker 4: People don't know.
Speaker 10: And I mean, if you think about it, sometimes people
Speaker 10: got a tendency to come from the glass half empty
Speaker 10: mentality anyway, like, oh you hear that story. So it's
Speaker 10: just like you generalize that's what it is, that's all
Speaker 10: it is. And I can understand why you would think, like, man,
Speaker 10: if that's what it is, I ain't going to visit
Speaker 10: that place. But once you touch down or just even
Speaker 10: open your mind.
Speaker 4: Because there's other artists that expressed what Chicago.
Speaker 10: Is too from early on Loop Chance Chance No Name,
Speaker 10: like they talk about it, but like just did different
Speaker 10: artists they talk about a chance to show the whole
Speaker 10: nother side of Chicago.
Speaker 4: That what you say, yeah, yeah, but why do you why.
Speaker 9: Is Chicago Because there's a lot of cities that poverty
Speaker 9: is is pretty much in every city unfortunately, Right, what
Speaker 9: makes Chicago so different as far as the the violence,
Speaker 9: Like why is the violence so heavy in Chicago as
Speaker 9: opposed to New York or like you know what I mean,
Speaker 9: Like it just seems like Chicago is just really intense
Speaker 9: in that in that violent aspect.
Speaker 4: Well, I think.
Speaker 10: Like gang culture and I know gangs is just everywhere,
Speaker 10: but for us, like gang culture was part of our
Speaker 10: parents growing up, Like the gangs was existing in the
Speaker 10: in the sixties, right, so that warrior spirit has been
Speaker 10: like in our DNA. And I'm not saying that it's
Speaker 10: gangsters everywhere, but that being said, it was organized for
Speaker 10: a while and then it's you know, certain people got
Speaker 10: incarcerated and and and it was not a lot of
Speaker 10: leaders there to like guide those who were dealing with
Speaker 10: the gang.
Speaker 6: Culture, and they displaced people when they.
Speaker 10: To throw the buildings down, displaced people. But it essentially
Speaker 10: you know that warrior gang thing is is ingrained in us,
Speaker 10: and that's part of like one of the elements that
Speaker 10: I would say it's different from most because where you
Speaker 10: got where it's poverty, where it's lack of jobs, where's
Speaker 10: lack of like education and kind of overall lack of hope,
Speaker 10: you gonna get that. Like you can go to Brooklyn,
Speaker 10: you can go in certain places in Harlem or Atlanta
Speaker 10: or like where you can go to these neighborhoods in Oakland.
Speaker 4: And you feel that what you feel in Chicago.
Speaker 10: But I think it's intensified just by the gang culture
Speaker 10: that's been there for a long time. And man, I
Speaker 10: always be thinking, like one of my whole life missions
Speaker 10: has been to be a part of the peace in Chicago,
Speaker 10: like to really figure out, like man, because I don't
Speaker 10: have all the answers, but I do know creating jobs, education,
Speaker 10: like education from a level not just only in school,
Speaker 10: but providing people with ways to get to their dreams
Speaker 10: and stuff is important. And just like hope, man, Like
Speaker 10: hope is a broad thing. But it's like I grew
Speaker 10: up like my neighborhood. Ain't ain't far from where dirkdam
Speaker 10: grew up my neighborhood, or where ge Herbo and Bibbie
Speaker 10: grew up. I grew up around some of the same stuff.
Speaker 10: But it was the hope that my mother instilled that
Speaker 10: I saw for myself that made me say, Okay, I
Speaker 10: don't want to go too.
Speaker 4: Far over there.
Speaker 10: I might be around this, I might be, you know,
Speaker 10: banging with these guys over here for a second, but man,
Speaker 10: I ain't really trying to shoot nobody. That ain't that's
Speaker 10: too much for me, like, and that ain't what I'm on.
Speaker 10: So my point is, and that was because I felt
Speaker 10: like I was I had some value and I think,
Speaker 10: you know, I like to think about the solutions to
Speaker 10: help our city and in cities across the country.
Speaker 4: To be honest, that's crazy.
Speaker 5: As you're saying that, I'm listening to the line that
Speaker 5: you said used the game right in the shop.
Speaker 4: We're even rooting for a garbage tine.
Speaker 5: But so like the picture that you've painted, I mean,
Speaker 5: it's been pretty consistent, Like you've you've painted a narrative
Speaker 5: that's different from the one that's being portrayed. Whether it
Speaker 5: was on your world or whether it was on the.
Speaker 4: South side of the Shah.
Speaker 5: It's a different perspective, but it's a mature perspective as
Speaker 5: you're growing. You talked about the music, we talked about
Speaker 5: the acting. Obviously you're an author as well. Who starts
Speaker 5: or are you doing this on your own to say
Speaker 5: I need to diversify artistically through music and through the acting,
Speaker 5: But now the author is something different. Are the other
Speaker 5: things that you're getting more adept to or being made
Speaker 5: aware of inside of the world As you're your finances
Speaker 5: are starting to increase, you're making more money, Like is
Speaker 5: there somebody gotten you through this or are you just
Speaker 5: walking in the rooms and you seeing new opportunities.
Speaker 10: Now it's like one thing I learned if I was
Speaker 10: gonna make it in this business and and and pardon me,
Speaker 10: I should have said this earlier. Another thing that definitely
Speaker 10: helped me to continue in this business is constructing a
Speaker 10: great team.
Speaker 4: And that for me, I was like, oh man, okay.
Speaker 10: My manager at the time was one of my best friends,
Speaker 10: still great, Like Derek Dudley, he was He's a smart
Speaker 10: dude and he just knows business and knows how to
Speaker 10: handle cares about this, But when it came for us
Speaker 10: to really get into the acting world, I had to
Speaker 10: get an agent that is in that world, living in
Speaker 10: that world.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 10: So then when it came to doing voiceovers, I had
Speaker 10: to get a voiceover agent who was in that world.
Speaker 10: When it came to doing investments, you got to go
Speaker 10: get the person that is going to do that. Oh
Speaker 10: when it comes to marketing and development, well, if you
Speaker 10: don't go hire a firm, do you have somebody that
Speaker 10: will focused on those things, even if it's from a
Speaker 10: consulting perspective. And it was me understanding that first of all,
Speaker 10: I don't know everything. I might have some ideas, but
Speaker 10: it's other people with great ideas around me, and along
Speaker 10: with ideas, who are the people that can execut those ideas?
Speaker 10: And it was about building that team structure. And it
Speaker 10: continues to grow too, like because new things come up,
Speaker 10: Like I got into producing films and producing plays, and
Speaker 10: I had to get a structure for that because if
Speaker 10: you don't have somebody working over there, and that branch
Speaker 10: of work is not going to get maximized.
Speaker 4: You know, it's not going to reach the levels that
Speaker 4: you want.
Speaker 10: Even from philanthropic like my social activist. I have a
Speaker 10: team that works like so it's not just like Okay,
Speaker 10: I'm just gonna do everything that comes through or Okay,
Speaker 10: we got these things going and that's it. That focus
Speaker 10: has to be there every day like any other business.
Speaker 10: But this is a business is not for monetaries, for
Speaker 10: the people, so it got to be there and that
Speaker 10: got to be somebody heading that. So that is what
Speaker 10: to me has allowed me to continue in the business
Speaker 10: too and figure other ways. But also it's not coming
Speaker 10: off from me, you know.
Speaker 9: From a hip hop hip hop question, we talked about
Speaker 9: like you being categorized as a conscious rapper, but you
Speaker 9: also obviously have Looking at your battle with Ice you,
Speaker 9: I'm wondering what's your perspective on seeing what now would
Speaker 9: be considered a conscious rapper and Kendrick Lamar have a
Speaker 9: battle with the most popular rapper and win and now
Speaker 9: he's actually ascended to like the number one position. It's
Speaker 9: an interesting dynamic right where his music is in the
Speaker 9: vein of positivity, revolutionary, but he's still dangerous, dangerous, right,
Speaker 9: So like do you got do you have like some
Speaker 9: like pride in seeing.
Speaker 6: That put the flag down? Shout out to Drake No
Speaker 6: disrespect to Drake, but I'm just saying.
Speaker 10: Yeah, well listen, let me okay, let me answer those things. So,
Speaker 10: first of all, Kendrick is a masterful artist, like one
Speaker 10: of the greats. Before the Battle, he like he won
Speaker 10: a polar surprise for raps. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 10: That's how great of a writer he is. And each
Speaker 10: one of his albums have been different, unique, dope like
Speaker 10: you know, and that's what it is to do. One
Speaker 10: of the greatest in any generation. Drake is one of
Speaker 10: the most talented songwriter artists to do them to do music,
Speaker 10: man like, one of the most successful to be able
Speaker 10: to make songs like at that level and be making
Speaker 10: hits over and over. That says something because even pop
Speaker 10: artists that they had some big hits, they don't last decades.
Speaker 10: So Drake is a super talented dude. The Battle, I
Speaker 10: gotta say, I was like, man, Initially, I was like, Wow,
Speaker 10: this is real. These dudes was going at it because
Speaker 10: Drake was delivering. And then Kendrick came and then Kendrick
Speaker 10: kept giving them flows and he just like did what
Speaker 10: he had to do, and just man, he came out
Speaker 10: the victor. He was a victor, like this point blame
Speaker 10: he won and it's is it like if you're asking
Speaker 10: it's a victory for me, I think it's just a
Speaker 10: victory for hip hop that that battle went down the
Speaker 10: way it did and had people paying attention to lyrics
Speaker 10: and hip hop, like different generations was paying attention to that.
Speaker 10: Like I had some of my youngins hitting me up like, yo,
Speaker 10: you hit a new one. And then people my age
Speaker 10: hit me up like, yo, you hit what you know?
Speaker 10: You hear what Drake just dropped? You know what Kendrick said.
Speaker 10: I think it does. I love that Kendrick is within
Speaker 10: a battle, is able to give you like lessons and spiritual.
Speaker 4: Damn, not just but the truth. That truth is.
Speaker 10: It's like this dude dropping like knowledge and still battling.
Speaker 10: It's like ridiculous. But that being said, it's funny you said,
Speaker 10: like some he's a revolutionary and still dangerous, because when
Speaker 10: we think about it, our revolutionaries were dangerous, like like
Speaker 10: Fred Hampton Chicago, he was dangerous, like but dangerous for
Speaker 10: the right thing. Shoot, Malcolm Max dangerous aside, I should
Speaker 10: call dangerous in a wait that they are dangerous for
Speaker 10: their people. And at the end of the day. Kendrick
Speaker 10: is dangerous for his people, so I got nothing, but you.
Speaker 4: Gotta protect them. Love for protect our people.
Speaker 5: How much did it make people go back and revisit
Speaker 5: old battles, because right once they say that battle, it's like, oh,
Speaker 5: that's the greatest battle of all time, and we're living
Speaker 5: in that moment and people are like, well, nah, there
Speaker 5: was this either thing that happened. It was like, nah,
Speaker 5: there was like I see the bitch of you. So
Speaker 5: now it goes back, people get to revisit it. How
Speaker 5: much of it was brought back like a little bit
Speaker 5: of nostalgia for you. Yeah, we were in that moment.
Speaker 5: We've grown past it, but like I remember that fire
Speaker 5: that I.
Speaker 10: I mean, it was more like people was bringing up
Speaker 10: the battle I have with Cube and the battle I
Speaker 10: had with Drake.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's the fact they brought that up. They would
Speaker 4: bring that up.
Speaker 10: But I was like, listen, first of all, we both
Speaker 10: those battles got squashed this now, so I appreciate that
Speaker 10: y'all loved it. We had the battle. I was worn
Speaker 10: at that time, but you know, I'm just watching the
Speaker 10: battle now, so don't drag me in. And somebody was like, yo,
Speaker 10: I was like, no, don't drag me in. I'm good man,
Speaker 10: let me let me watch this and just enjoy because
Speaker 10: they both going in and I think it was I
Speaker 10: would have to say, man, it probably was the greatest
Speaker 10: battle we've seen. But and even if you feel something
Speaker 10: else was back in the time, it's still one of
Speaker 10: the greatest, Like you know, it's it's like it because
Speaker 10: that back and forth we you didn't have that much
Speaker 10: back and fourth flight right direct and have all the
Speaker 10: artwork to go with it, and it was levels today
Speaker 10: back we thought out.
Speaker 9: Videos shots they were doing ten minutes later he dropped.
Speaker 4: The joints stepping on each other's tracks.
Speaker 6: That was definitely crazy.
Speaker 4: And now we got the Super Bowl.
Speaker 9: I mean, will anticipate on some hip hop like not
Speaker 9: who's the best artist, but like who do you think
Speaker 9: of the most Like who's some of the most dangerous rappers?
Speaker 9: That because I heard Nas when he was saying like
Speaker 9: he used to fear Big L, so like Big L
Speaker 9: never really reached the level of success that people. You know,
Speaker 9: he's not on nobody's like top five, but like as
Speaker 9: far as the rappers, rapper.
Speaker 6: He's highly respected.
Speaker 9: So like, who's some of the people on your list
Speaker 9: that like you just like you know that these dudes
Speaker 9: is just different with the.
Speaker 10: Pin Andre three thousand, Nas Kendrick of my old the
Speaker 10: older guys I grew up with, like Big Daddy Cane
Speaker 10: and carrous One rock him. Let me see who else
Speaker 10: those I mean, those are some of the ones. Sahai,
Speaker 10: the Prince, the Press, he he gets he one of
Speaker 10: them guys. When you hear him dropping bars, You're like, Wow,
Speaker 10: this dude can say some stuff. But as far as
Speaker 10: the ones I just said, Kendrick and Andre three thousand
Speaker 10: and two are like ones. When I hear I'll be like,
Speaker 10: oh nas Nas for me is like that shot.
Speaker 5: Who's we always do a Mount Rushmore of a city
Speaker 5: shot towns Mount Rushmore.
Speaker 10: Okay, if I'm gonna take myself now, you gotta be myself.
Speaker 10: I'm putting you on it now. This is the other
Speaker 10: slock put it in. Okay, so it's four people, it's
Speaker 10: me Kanye. I'm gonna put Twister and probably Dirt Dirt.
Speaker 9: I was gonna say, Dirk, Damn, they're gonna be like
Speaker 9: what Sosa shout out.
Speaker 6: To Sosa, Dirk's I think it has been more consistent,
Speaker 6: has been.
Speaker 5: Like revolutionized that at sixteen, like Sosa that sound comes
Speaker 5: in after him.
Speaker 6: He did, but then Dirk took that. He ran it.
Speaker 6: He ran it. Yeah, he's carried it for almost ten
Speaker 6: years now.
Speaker 4: He been consistently. Now he's the guy we're not going to.
Speaker 4: We're not going to. That's good, that's a good yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean I know chances like we're about we about
Speaker 4: to get a text message after this too.
Speaker 5: But anyway, I gave my food and Liquor is another classic.
Speaker 6: So what can people expect from this project with you
Speaker 6: and Pete Rock? Is it? Is it nostalgic to the nineties?
Speaker 6: Is it new?
Speaker 9: Like what's the what can they expect to hear when
Speaker 9: they when they when.
Speaker 4: They get this.
Speaker 10: I think I think it has both those things you
Speaker 10: just mentioned, because it has the spirit of what we
Speaker 10: love in the nineties, like just the spirit of the music.
Speaker 10: But the sound is new, Like don't sound like okay,
Speaker 10: all these drums is oh, like Pete could have made
Speaker 10: the beats back in ninety In the nineties, it's got
Speaker 10: the textures in the in the sound and equality and
Speaker 10: approach that is present day. It don't sound like something
Speaker 10: he's done or anything like I've done, and I'm rapping
Speaker 10: about what a grown man would rap about right.
Speaker 6: Now, Well that's thank you to thank you.
Speaker 9: That's a good thing because that's one thing I liked
Speaker 9: about NAS's journey is that he's like, life is Good
Speaker 9: is one of my favorite albums. Like he's talking about
Speaker 9: his divorce. It's things that you It's like saying jay
Speaker 9: Z for for four. What I don't like is when
Speaker 9: some of our hip hop artists they're still rapping about you.
Speaker 6: Know what I'm saying.
Speaker 9: It's like it's like it's like, yo, your grandfather's being
Speaker 9: wealthy and longer than you've been. Just like that's what
Speaker 9: I don't That's what I don't like to see is
Speaker 9: like age appropriate rap.
Speaker 5: I think is man, if we listen to you when
Speaker 5: we were teenagers and now we're grown, you're grown too.
Speaker 9: Because you got to you gotta you're grown too because
Speaker 9: you have an audience that is listening for that reason.
Speaker 9: Like if you forty or you fifty, you don't want
Speaker 9: to listen to what a twenty year old is.
Speaker 6: Like there's the twenty year olds make me for twenty.
Speaker 10: Year old exactly exactly, and if some of those songs
Speaker 10: end up like hitting it for twenty year old's song
Speaker 10: end up hitting other age groups. That's great or you know,
Speaker 10: but I don't. I don't believe. I don't believe. And
Speaker 10: even when I made I used to love her. I
Speaker 10: was talking about like just man, being authentic to who
Speaker 10: you are and where you are, not chasing what everybody
Speaker 10: else is doing. I think when you see older artists
Speaker 10: trying to sound young or just getting all the young
Speaker 10: artists so they could be cool, it just don't feel
Speaker 10: it's good. You feel out so and I love that
Speaker 10: it that man, we can't talk about like you said
Speaker 10: nas on life is good, we talk about divorce or
Speaker 10: you know, shoot, I mean you've heard artists talk about
Speaker 10: therapy or like these are things that man, as we grow,
Speaker 10: we talk about these things, and I think one thing
Speaker 10: we forget.
Speaker 4: You said it a little bit Jo.
Speaker 10: It's like, man, we growing up, like the audience growing up,
Speaker 10: so we don't want to hear you talk about something
Speaker 10: we used to do when we was twenty year years old.
Speaker 4: Either. We rather hear you talk about something grown and
Speaker 4: just say it in the fresh way.
Speaker 5: My kids are graduating from high school, like, y know,
Speaker 5: these things are happening Bro, he's happening.
Speaker 4: Bro, I'm buying a house right now. Man.
Speaker 10: Man and people that's dope, Like Andre three thousand, like
Speaker 10: he be making stuff sound good.
Speaker 4: It could be. I remember he did a rap about
Speaker 4: being in the line and whole Food that was fire am.
Speaker 4: It's like brunch on Sundays.
Speaker 5: We actually go to brunch on Sundays, Thanks NASA exactly.
Speaker 4: That's it.
Speaker 10: So I love that approach and that's what this album.
Speaker 10: This album is. When I when I I had quest
Speaker 10: love from the from the Root sequence, the album the
Speaker 10: Pete Rock and Our album, and when he heard it,
Speaker 10: he was like At first, he was like, man, it's
Speaker 10: one of your best albums.
Speaker 4: Man, it's in your time.
Speaker 10: I was like really, and he's like yeah, and he said,
Speaker 10: this is what the album should be from somebody that's
Speaker 10: adult in hip hop.
Speaker 4: This is what it's just say, adult contemporary.
Speaker 10: Yeah, yeah, tradition. Somebody's asking me how I should it be?
Speaker 10: Category rise, Like, what do you think is a good category?
Speaker 10: I'm like, hip hop? This adult contemporary hip hop, traditional
Speaker 10: hip hop.
Speaker 5: But yeah, when you was twenty, you rapped like you
Speaker 5: was twenty.
Speaker 4: Yeah your fifth rap like that? Bro? Yeah, shout out
Speaker 4: to you. Thank you.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well I appreciate it.
Speaker 4: I appreciate you, my guy, thank you.
Speaker 5: I'm glad I got to tell you in person how
Speaker 5: much I love being That meant a lot.
Speaker 4: Twenty years next year, Yeah, can we get one show
Speaker 4: just the album?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I was going to ask you are you going?
Speaker 6: Are you going on tour?
Speaker 4: Yeah, definitely, gonna have to do a be like twenty year.
Speaker 5: I'm just telling you that I might be at multiple
Speaker 5: shows and if you need me to do a few verses,
Speaker 5: you ready, you know, like verbatim?
Speaker 4: You ready? Okay straight?
Speaker 6: Are you gonna hit the road for the new album?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 10: Yeah, We we're on tour right now. Actually be the
Speaker 10: auditory in Volume one tour we're doing we now we
Speaker 10: ending it off in New York. Got some shows at
Speaker 10: the Blue Note that sold out, but now we're doing
Speaker 10: Webster Hall. It's just dope. So man, I'm excited that
Speaker 10: the tour has been amazing. I can't wait. I can't wait.
Speaker 6: Thank you.
Speaker 9: Like Troy said, man, somebody that we listened to for
Speaker 9: a long time and never compromised the art.
Speaker 6: That's that's important.
Speaker 9: So I think that that's that's something that you know
Speaker 9: the legacy is gonna live forever and definitely classic timeless music.
Speaker 9: So thanks for all of the inspiration.
Speaker 4: Thanks y'all. Thanks, it's been great to be here. It's
Speaker 4: beautiful man.
Speaker 9: Thank you all right, guys, thank you for Rocke next week,
Speaker 9: who is an.
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