00:00:00 Speaker 1: Quest Love Show is a production of iHeart Radio. 00:00:17 Speaker 2: Another Quest Love Mini here Me and Opened My Eagle. Okay, so I have a question. Now, I'm very familiar with the sort of reputation or the lure of the Good Life Cafe movement, of which you sort of come into the picture doing the second phase of. 00:00:35 Speaker 1: It after the after life period. 00:00:39 Speaker 2: One, can you explain to me the difference between the two events and just start there? 00:00:47 Speaker 3: Okay, I didn't go to the Good Life, but I know all about it because it was like, you know, it's the Housyon days of the rap family that I belonged to. So the Good Life Cafe was a literal place called the Good Life Cafe on Exposition in Crenshaw that was a health food store and they did an open mic on Thursday nights that all of the rappers all. 00:01:09 Speaker 1: Around the city. 00:01:11 Speaker 3: It's very I'm sure that word was said very many nights, right right many. I'm sure that place smelled like incense. B Hall who ran it, and I forgot the young man's name who ran it with her, and you know, everybody from Freestyle Fellowship sort of started there. The Unity Committee, which ended up becoming Jurassic five volume chilling villain Empire like far Side. I never saw video of Farside on the stage, but I'm sure they were there because some of what was happening at Farside Manor was musicians and rappers who were at the Good Life, So I'm sure they were there and part of that as well. 00:01:50 Speaker 1: Would the alcoholics also be missed. 00:01:52 Speaker 3: I don't know about the alcoholics connection. I think Exhibit was around there. Okay, I'm not sure if the alcoholics were so, but definitely the Living Legends uh so Mers and and uh and Eli and the Grouch and all of them were around there to the l A component, because the other component of the Liver Legends came from the Bay with the Mister Journeyman. 00:02:10 Speaker 1: And this is a gathering every week every week. 00:02:12 Speaker 3: It was where they established the sort of rules of the La open mic, which was please pass the mic. If you weren't rocking it right, the crowd would direct you to get off stage, like the Apollo kind of situation. But yeah, if you didn't come with it, if you didn't come with it, because these were this was high level rapping. This is high level rapping people coming off the head with the craziest styles you could ever imagine my lyrical styles and they and they were establishing like a new sort of technical language of rap. Like one of their rules was like no digities. So you know how dos Effects was doing, they would do you off stage for doing You had to say real words in your in your in your topping of syllables, broth inside of the cheap You couldn't cheat. So you know, famously, other rappers would come from all around the country to stop through because it was the place where rap was happening and a lot of cast was getting signed out of there. Okay, so you know, Fat Joe famously got booed off the. 00:03:12 Speaker 1: Stage of the Good Life he did. 00:03:13 Speaker 3: He did why famously because he wasn't rapping good likes. That's why that would happen. The Grave Diggers were there early on, like there's a there's a great they did great. I mean you can hear it Grim Reaper to poetic rest in Peace, you can hear it in his style. He picked up something there with the way, Yeah, that's a very good lifestyle like that volume ten. The way ice Cube started rapping when he was doing the was it Gorilla's in the Midst or whatever. 00:03:43 Speaker 1: He's doing. 00:03:46 Speaker 3: That's Volume ten style from a Good Life. 00:03:50 Speaker 2: Can you what is the legend of Volume tim My. I'm only familiar with Volume ten because he got the lead review in the Source magazine for his album, and that's how I heard of Allington. I know he's legendary, but he was one of the early guys who got signed out of the Good Life. And he had that song Pistol Grip Pump that was huge. Pistol grip pump on my lap at all times. 00:04:13 Speaker 3: Like it was like outside of Doctor Dre's circle, it. 00:04:17 Speaker 2: Was like the g Funk Joint, see Okay, coming from Philly in New York, they were extremely. 00:04:25 Speaker 1: Like unless it was like Doctor Dre level of g funk like that. 00:04:31 Speaker 2: It's sort of like when the Class Wars were starting with the East Coast and West Coast sound. Yea, So I wish like there's a whole bunch of like I was a major above the Law fan and all that stuff. 00:04:42 Speaker 3: And really didn't get that. I mean, this is a big share of that because there were people getting signed out of the Good Life, but the Good Life really wasn't underground spot like, so a lot of the luminarias that were out of there were more underground heads and hiss that were signed right, and so the way to underground work back then. And this is what I learned after I moved here from Chicago. A lot of that stuff literally because of touring and how hard it is to tour east of Colorado, a lot of that stuff didn't make it to the East coast, you know what I'm saying. So like I had to, I had to sort of get my own education and reframe a lot of men own understanding when I moved out here. 00:05:21 Speaker 2: All right, let me let me car jack a little bit because you said something I always wanted to know about. So for the roots in my mind, the way that the second hand rolls across the United States. 00:05:34 Speaker 1: You know, we have the Northeast. 00:05:37 Speaker 2: On lockdown, yep, from Maine to about DC, Virginia because we were a college. 00:05:44 Speaker 3: Bed, right, But North Carolina too, I would imagine, right. 00:05:46 Speaker 2: Yeah, some parts of Carolina's we would hit like a territory is hitting it three to five times a year. 00:05:55 Speaker 1: And that's a very hard thing to do. 00:05:57 Speaker 2: Like, once you do a show in a city, you're pretty much supposed to be on at least an eight month freeze, like when you come to Chicago and do your show, if you want that same response in that same audience, come back of meat scarcity. 00:06:11 Speaker 1: Marketing, right, because the more you keep doing it. 00:06:14 Speaker 2: So we got lucky because we were able to hide, like the same group of people come to see the roots of the fujis aren't coming to see the roots open up for beck or rage against the machine. So there was always you were able to overlap in the market. Yeah, at least four times with a real hip hop group, a weirdo white act of the beck ilk and then a rage against the machine or system of a down and college gigs don't count because they're in their uncontained world. But my whole point is that we have that on lockdown. 00:06:50 Speaker 1: Some places down south. 00:06:52 Speaker 2: We can go to Atlanta, the Carolinas, maybe an occasional city in Florida once every other year. We could never penetrate the Florida section, some parts of Texas and it. 00:07:06 Speaker 1: Gets a little weird. In the Midwest. Yeah, like we could basically just do Seattle down to California, the west coast, run yep. 00:07:13 Speaker 2: Oregon, maybe a Utah and kind of of a Vegas. But there's a giant gap in the Midwest, huge gap. 00:07:21 Speaker 1: So our routing was more like the Wu Tang W. 00:07:25 Speaker 2: But for someone from California, what are the markets that you know? 00:07:31 Speaker 3: So we received you do La, you do San Diego, you do Phoenix, you do you can do Tucson, you can do Albuquerque, Santa Fe. 00:07:39 Speaker 1: See New Mexico, and Arizona. 00:07:42 Speaker 3: But if you're able to do this loop, you can establish those two or one or the other. You probably can't do both of them every time. But the thing about Albuquerque and Santa Fe, they're on a twenty five north south so you go straight up to Denver from there. 00:07:58 Speaker 1: Yeah, Denver's tricky because it's hard. 00:08:00 Speaker 3: To get in and out. If we go to Chicago the next stop that we can do ism and that's a huge drive, sixteen hours. 00:08:06 Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a huge drive. 00:08:07 Speaker 3: And that's what I'm saying, Like there's this gulf between like the Western region and like the Midwest. If you if you're doing the longitude from like Chicago down, so a lot of music just didn't make it. Could you do Milwaukee? Milwaukee's tough. I mean, if you're big enough, you could do Milwaukee, but it's so close to Chicago. 00:08:27 Speaker 1: It's rough. 00:08:28 Speaker 2: I'm realizing now and I gotta get Caro Lewis on the show. 00:08:32 Speaker 1: Do you know Caro Lewis? 00:08:33 Speaker 2: Is? 00:08:33 Speaker 1: I know that name? So in Payton Full, you know, Norby Walker's our agent. 00:08:37 Speaker 2: Yeah, Caro Lewis is Okay, Yeah, So Carol Lewis was basically, I think in her twenties and she was the youngest at Norby Walker. I believe that agency, and I think one of her first big projects was The Fresh Best. So she's the one that was very instrumental in getting hip hop into stadiums. 00:08:58 Speaker 1: I see, she's basically the gold standard. Now. 00:09:02 Speaker 2: She was so powerful that I know that she bullied promoters into accepting the Roots because again, we had no party jam, we had no She would basically say, I'll give an example whoever her promoters are in New York, so say, I'm gonna give data to jay Z if you don't find me ten roots gigs, ten Roots gigs. 00:09:28 Speaker 1: No, No, I don't want to hear you. 00:09:30 Speaker 2: No. 00:09:30 Speaker 1: No. 00:09:30 Speaker 2: So literally the first two years she just had to play hardball and force us to be there. But because the show was bulletproof, you know, afterwards, it's like, oh my god, you're right, I love those guys. But she only had to do that once. I'll say from ninety three to about after the Fujis Goodie Mob the Score tour. Then suddenly it was like you could take the training wheels off. But yeah, a lot of our beginning was either if and you know I joke about it, it's very true if a member of Wu Tang would more than likely cancel a gig. We were always the second call to take the gig. That was how we got gigs. And then she just played hardball. And you can't even touch her big acts unless you show her some love and the money better be right too. 00:10:24 Speaker 1: I've learned. I've learned the hard way. That's how a lot of this business works. 00:10:28 Speaker 2: Yeah, so she like forced us into wherever big college, any any of those spots are, that's where we would go. So Chicago and Milwaukee almost worn in the. 00:10:42 Speaker 3: Same Yeah, it's like an hour and a half north. It's not far enough to really warrant a huge another show. 00:10:49 Speaker 1: Now, I'm Sam. 00:10:50 Speaker 2: It's from the perspective of I've always been a tour bus, lived in a tour bus. 00:10:55 Speaker 1: But for you, you're driving these damn a minivan. 00:10:59 Speaker 3: Guy, I've been on like four tours and a tour bus where I'm opening for somebody else but my typical headlining show, or like most of my peers went into it. We're in a minivan and you're driving. I drive a lot. I like driving, though. 00:11:10 Speaker 2: I love driving to I don't have the experience of driving from gig to gig, but I can imagine that after rocking one night and settling and packing cleaning, I got that much to pack compared to right, But I mean just and then you're facing a ten hour drive to the next city. 00:11:32 Speaker 1: Is this a thing where you switch off with someone after five hours or you know, occasionally it's like that. 00:11:37 Speaker 3: Sometimes I just do the whole thing. A lot of times I just do it all. But I'm crazy. Have you ever been in an accident. I've not been an accidental I was thinking about that today. As many times as I have driven all around this country, I've never been in an accidental row. 00:11:50 Speaker 1: Wow. 00:11:51 Speaker 2: We've had three major accidents, and believe it or not, they were all based on sober drivers. This is what I learned a lot of those trucks. So be careful when you're like playing uh spy hunter with you. See, I don't do none of that. Like, that's the thing. 00:12:10 Speaker 3: I keep it real easy. Like, you know, I don't do the cruise control. I don't do the cruise control like because you can fall asleep to that. It's not even fall asleep. It's just like being engaged, being constantly engaged. Yeah yeah, But I drive, and and that's when I think of playing Denver. That's why I don't play Denver as much as I want to, because typically I'm driving. And that's the most treacherous drive to me is driving west out of Denver. The scariest driver I ever had in mind. The weather, Yeah yeah, weather, Yeah, it's just bad. It could be really rough. But all of this was me talking about the good life back to the project. 00:12:53 Speaker 1: Were driving back home. 00:12:57 Speaker 3: So the good life had a lot of rules. You couldn't curse. You could not curse because this is the if that's that was too short, wasn't it. 00:13:20 Speaker 1: That's debate. 00:13:21 Speaker 3: But if you rapped whack the rappers and people in the crowd would please, you know, please pass the mic. 00:13:29 Speaker 1: If you cursed, be Hauled would kick you off stage. She was the lady that random play. 00:13:33 Speaker 3: So there was a lot of rules, a lot of structure she had a lot of values that she was instilling in the in the event, and people enforced these things and respect it. Yeah, and they just wrapped. And you know when people freestyled outside and filled up the parking lot and it was ciphers everywhere like it was and out there was like you know, straight street rules or whatever, and. 00:13:52 Speaker 1: Was it Crenshaw? Yeah, Crenshaw. So you know there was ask you was it Crenshaw? It was Crenshaw. It's Crenshaw. 00:13:59 Speaker 3: And now I'll take it in the Project Blow, which started after the Good Life closed. 00:14:03 Speaker 1: So how does that? 00:14:05 Speaker 3: Ac Alone an abstract route. Ac Alone is signed through the Freestyle Fellowship, and I believe he's got his solo deal at that point, and Abstract Rute, I think is signed to Grand Royal at this time as well. When the Good Life closes, it shuts down, they start a new spot with Ben Caldwell who runs this place called the Chaos Network here in Lambert Park, and they start the new outpost there same night, but no rules. So all the styling gets pushed further, the battling gets pushed further. It's more Crenshaw because the street rappers are in there doing eight thing too, because there's no be haul to cut the music if somebody curses. So the Project Blowed is the more rugged, intense version of the good Life, a lot more street infused into. 00:14:52 Speaker 2: The So how enthusiastic are you to go on stage to see what you got? 00:14:59 Speaker 3: I mean, I think if you loved rap, especially if you loved freestyling, you just couldn't wait. Like and my first time I went because the first time I heard the Project Blowed it was mentioned in the Ac Alone album, his album All Balls Don't Bounce. I was in Chicago playing this album and they mentioned the Project Blowed. And there's Mic and nine on this album piece and all of these people, And to me, the Project Blowed is sounding like some idyllic, artistic wonderland of rap music. And I get there and it's like, oh, this is a bunch of angry. Because I saw the video. 00:15:31 Speaker 2: They were like doing count aesthetics and all those things, and I was like, oh, okay, it was happy, go lucky. 00:15:36 Speaker 3: It was not not to It was not happy or lucky all. 00:15:42 Speaker 1: It had a lot of street energy. 00:15:44 Speaker 3: Like the place where the Project Blowed is it's on the boundary between a few different gangs too. So like there was a sort of tension in the air, and it's the nineties, so like that sort of street tension and everybody being hyper vigilant for violence is just everywhere. So when I came, I wasn't received with open arms. I was not I got booed off stage my first time rapping at the Project Blob Damn, even when I established myself, because I mostly established myself on the corner until I sort of figured out the difference between my Chicago rap values and what they were valuing. 00:16:21 Speaker 1: Out here, and what's the difference. 00:16:23 Speaker 3: I came up on the South Side of Chicago in the nineties, where the value was punchlines, and the hip hop in general was different that way because I was a breakdancer too. The value in the breakdancing in Chicago was power moves. Right when you came to La, the value in dancing it was grooving and styling. The value in rap is also styling. It's not about you doing a setup and a punchline. It's about how many ways you can approach cadence m okay. Like if you listen to the freestyle Fellowship and Peace and La Cool and Mike and nine, they are wizards of cadence and freestyling in ways where it's just straight flow state and you're just being musical. I had to learn to appreciate the percussive element of rap music because in Chicago that was strictly a West Side thing that the gangsters did the double time and like Twister and do or Die in Crucial Conflict. Wein't rapped like that. We had this little weird value adjustment about this type of shit. But I came out here It's like, oh so this was like my rap graduate school where I sort of had to learn, Oh no, like this is a whole different way to approach it. So do you go up and sign on Sinalist? They still got they have I think they have scans of lists somewhere. 00:17:42 Speaker 2: I have to all right, I can only imagine was like shook Ones everyone's backdrop or like what would they rhyme over? 00:17:49 Speaker 3: No, not shook Ones. I struggled to remember the beats. I don't feel like there was a predominant beat style. That's part that was part of the problem of the blow though. In the problem in La hip was that it was too MC centric, and if you look at the LA beat scene, part of how that happens is the beat makers got pushed out. They went and started doing their own night call Sketchbook also on Thursdays, because they wasn't getting enough respect at places like the Blow. 00:18:16 Speaker 2: Oh so people weren't bringing their drum machines there to try to. 00:18:19 Speaker 3: A couple like, you know, if you know dB C, Like, so I came up with him and he used to bring his boombox and we'd be outside wrapping to his beats. But like, it just wasn't a place where if you had fire beats, they were making room for you to come be a part of the night really on stage. 00:18:33 Speaker 1: They like, so if you were. 00:18:34 Speaker 3: A rapper, you could come do your song and if you you know, whatever beat was fine. 00:18:38 Speaker 1: It's just that they. 00:18:39 Speaker 3: Didn't respect the producers enough. They didn't like the the the ethos of the place wasn't given the producers the proper amount of reverence. So they would and did their own things, and Sketchbook ultimately became low in theory. 00:18:56 Speaker 2: Oh damn, okay, I mean I've sprung lowering a few times. 00:19:00 Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I saw you there. 00:19:02 Speaker 3: And then if you look at the la rapping around at the same time, all of the battling started being a cappella and that was the great divide. 00:19:10 Speaker 1: What are your thoughts on that? 00:19:12 Speaker 2: Like I'm asking probably in light of j Electronica's actions. 00:19:17 Speaker 1: Of late he loves an a cappella guy Electronic. 00:19:23 Speaker 2: I got so triggered because you know, the last days of so kind of the our version of good life that goes into Project Blode was initially the Roots Jam sessions before things fall apart, and then we had to go on tour and it's like, well what do they do now? And then the women took it over and then it was Black Lily st s m mc and in it. But I remember many a night where like cannabis would come and he was starter. 00:19:52 Speaker 1: Vers cursed and rehearsing the the. 00:20:02 Speaker 2: Phenomena and I'm there like, okay, where's the one? Like and so then I started doing the high half things. It's almost like if you've seen what up with that? 00:20:15 Speaker 1: Like like that like trying to trying to build out, to figure out when to jump back. Yeah, and he would never no no no no no no no, and so acapella free style. 00:20:27 Speaker 3: I mean, I'm you know, I'm a rappers rapper, but I know that some things in rap are just for us, they're not really for people. And that a cappella thing, I've never really got down with that because I mean, that's like one of them kind of wrap self congratulatory things. Yeah, if you're a room full of rappers, cool, do you a cappella? If you're a room full of people who pay for a show, let him he a little bit, give a little beat a little bit. 00:20:51 Speaker 1: Next time we talk, I want to talk about I have ideas for your show. 00:20:57 Speaker 2: What was weird for someone that's not senior show to start giving you unsolicited advice on a show. But I actually feel as though your albums could be like Vignette's or like almost done as a play. 00:21:17 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:21:17 Speaker 3: I did like a little one man thing around my anime Trauma Divorce album, but one performance I did was very much presented in that way, and that is something in my mind. But I don't I don't lean on that enough. I don't think you feel like we still want to be like throw your hands in it. I don't want to be like throw your hands in it. 00:21:34 Speaker 2: Okay, I don't know why, Like I gotta get the eminem eight mile thing out of my head, like, you know, in the place to be like that sort of thing out my head like I don't know what today's version of that is, but anyway, yeah, next time we'll talk about that. 00:21:52 Speaker 1: We sure will, all right. Quest of Shows a production of iHeartRadio