Speaker 1: But all right, job.
Speaker 2: All across the USC Compton watch Bay to La, come
Speaker 2: on to California y day from Owy the Valley.
Speaker 1: We represent that Keller County.
Speaker 2: So if you're keeping it real on your side of
Speaker 2: your town, you tune into Gainst the Chronicles Chronic Goals.
Speaker 3: We gonna tell you how are we goals? If I
Speaker 3: lie my nose will girl like Pinocchio. We're gonna tell
Speaker 3: you the truth and nothing but the truth. Gangs the
Speaker 3: Chronic Goals. This is not your average shows.
Speaker 2: You're now tuned into the rail mc ain't, Big Change
Speaker 2: and Big steels the streets.
Speaker 1: Hello, Welcome to the Gainst the Chronicles podcast, the production
Speaker 1: of iHeart Radio and Black Effect podcast Network. Make sure
Speaker 1: you download the iHeart app and subscribe to Against the
Speaker 1: Chronicles For my Apple users, hit the Purple Michael your
Speaker 1: front screen. Subscribed Against the Chronicles, leave a start rating
Speaker 1: the comment like to welcome you to another episode of
Speaker 1: the Gainst the Chronicles podcast. It's your boy, big steeal.
Speaker 1: You know this is where gangster rap lives, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's living. It's living, living froof right next to the wave.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, you know we're gonna do that.
Speaker 3: Over again.
Speaker 1: Thanks all, We like to welcome you to another episode
Speaker 1: the Gainst the Chronicles podcast where Gangster Rap Lives is
Speaker 1: your boy Big Steel along with and today we have
Speaker 1: a man of many traits and he's good at all
Speaker 1: the motherfuckers. You know how your expression skilled that many things,
Speaker 1: but mastering now you actually master of every motherfucking thing
Speaker 1: you do. Accomplished author director, yes, sir, social media mogul
Speaker 1: and just all that good ship man. Yes, and I
Speaker 1: fuck with you because you're from the Midwest. Yes, sir,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. Mister Tarka she what's that
Speaker 1: in the family? Thank y'all for having me here. First
Speaker 1: of all, it's usually man, Usually we don't get people
Speaker 1: of your caliber. No, no offense, none or other guests.
Speaker 1: We don't answer dope people on here. But you have
Speaker 1: done a whole lot of dope shit in your life.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 1: Man, I try, Man, I try. What took you on
Speaker 1: the path that you want? Now? Man? What puts you
Speaker 1: on that path?
Speaker 3: Man?
Speaker 1: Just wanting to bring the truth to things.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 1: I started with relationship books. And the reason why I
Speaker 1: started with relationship books, man, there were a lot of
Speaker 1: books out at the time late nineties that would give
Speaker 1: real janky relationship advice. You had books like Mena from Mars,
Speaker 1: Women Are from Venus and all that stuff, and it
Speaker 1: was a real corny advice that really didn't work. So
Speaker 1: I said, let me do something. Let me put out
Speaker 1: a book with some real game in it, that real
Speaker 1: dude's spit, that real cats can appreciate. And I wrote
Speaker 1: a book called The Art of mackin nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 1: came out in two thousand, became a huge best selling book,
Speaker 1: and that took off my author career right there. And
Speaker 1: then later on I started to morph into documentary films
Speaker 1: because I saw there was a void. There was a
Speaker 1: lot of movies out here that show with us black
Speaker 1: folks in real negative lights. You have movies like The
Speaker 1: Help and Precious and The blind Side, and all of
Speaker 1: these movies showed us in very subservient positions. And I said,
Speaker 1: now we have to have a balance. We have to
Speaker 1: show the constructive side of black society. So I came
Speaker 1: up with the Hidden Color Series as an experiment. I
Speaker 1: didn't know if it was gonna do good or whatever,
Speaker 1: because nothing like that had been done before. We put
Speaker 1: that out, and that took off. So I like to
Speaker 1: try to experiment with different things, man, and kind of
Speaker 1: take risk and just stay true to what I'm putting
Speaker 1: out there, man, And luckily a lot of it has
Speaker 1: been successful. Yeah, you got a lot of different takes
Speaker 1: as far as like on race in America. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: things have gotten better. And me originally being from the Midwest, right,
Speaker 1: one thing I noticed is people tell you how they
Speaker 1: feel out there. Yes. Indeed, you know, you run across
Speaker 1: a white guy out there, he gonna call you a nigger.
Speaker 1: You know, he's gonna say what he gotta say to you.
Speaker 1: You know, in the Midwest, man, that's where most of
Speaker 1: them militia groups are, the white supremacists militia groups, they're
Speaker 1: all in Ohio. They're in Mission again, where I was born.
Speaker 1: A lot of people think that stuff is in the South,
Speaker 1: them militia groups where they're training for race wars and
Speaker 1: all that. That's in the Midwest. In fact, many of
Speaker 1: the race riots that we had were actually in the Midwest.
Speaker 1: When you see footage of doctor King getting hit with
Speaker 1: rocks and stones, that's in Illinois. You know, a lot
Speaker 1: of folks don't know that. When you see folks getting
Speaker 1: whooped on with sticks and people fighting back. That's out here.
Speaker 1: They showed the watch Riot footage and people think that
Speaker 1: it's the stuff going on down south, But that racism
Speaker 1: was all over the country man, so people kind of
Speaker 1: try to regulate it to the south. It was all
Speaker 1: over the place. Oh no, it was all over the places.
Speaker 1: Like I said earlier, they'd tell you how they feel
Speaker 1: out there. They were I fought many a white boy
Speaker 1: and they go squab with you. Yeah, yeah, they go
Speaker 1: squabbing with can't you fade with you know? They go
Speaker 1: running with you? Yeah, they're catching Whereas I know this
Speaker 1: out here, I almost rather would have like a eel
Speaker 1: was back in Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky and all them places
Speaker 1: to where you know, where somebody stands which you are here,
Speaker 1: Hey buddy, how was it going your friend? But I
Speaker 1: remember one time I had an incident to where a
Speaker 1: dude that butted out me by accident. We had just talked.
Speaker 1: And this is when I was working for a publishing
Speaker 1: company actually, and I was talking to a guy that
Speaker 1: worked at Bug Music. He's no longer working there, but
Speaker 1: I was talking to a guy that worked at Bug Music,
Speaker 1: and he had said something like you black shit colored bitch,
Speaker 1: and it was just like, Wow, who was he talking to?
Speaker 1: You know, you hear somebody on the phone and I
Speaker 1: was like this, So I was listening and it kind
Speaker 1: of rolled off for me and then I hung up.
Speaker 1: He called me back, Oh man, that was me and
Speaker 1: my friend. We joked like that, and I was just
Speaker 1: kind of like, whatever, coward, you know, going to say
Speaker 1: what you gotta say. I'm glad I know how you feel.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that liberal racism is real funny style and that's
Speaker 1: the most insidious racism. So like in the Midwest, man
Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier, many of those places are very conservative,
Speaker 1: so they just let you know what it is. They
Speaker 1: ain't gonna really play that game with you. And I
Speaker 1: can almost respect that to a certain degree. Out here.
Speaker 1: They'll sit there and act like your buddy, but they'll
Speaker 1: skin and grin in your face while they're secretly calling
Speaker 1: the cops on you. When we see a lot of
Speaker 1: these caring videos where these white women harassing random black people,
Speaker 1: many of those are in liberal, so called liberal cities,
Speaker 1: where they tell you that the hippie liberal white folks
Speaker 1: are better than the right wing republican white folks. They're
Speaker 1: the same two wings on the same bird. We got
Speaker 1: to understand that. So systematic racism is a very real thing,
Speaker 1: and we got to understand that we as black people,
Speaker 1: we got to be more codified with each other, and
Speaker 1: that's how we protect ourselves from that. Hey, you being
Speaker 1: a comptent, right when you were in comptent, it was
Speaker 1: majority black, right, Yeah, black and Mexican. Black and Mexican,
Speaker 1: so you didn't have too many encounters with racism.
Speaker 4: Niggas no other than police shit, you know, racial pro
Speaker 4: I mean profiling. You know, it was a nigga and
Speaker 4: khakis and a Raiders hat, you know, were automatically symbolized
Speaker 4: as a gang banger. So you know, we got harassed
Speaker 4: a lot by the police. Didn't matter what color they was.
Speaker 4: A lot of them was black sometimes, you know mostly
Speaker 4: you know, you had a few whites and you know,
Speaker 4: Mexican cops patrolling, but it didn't matter what color they was.
Speaker 4: We just got harassed for being young black niggas living
Speaker 4: in the inner city because we were just looked at
Speaker 4: as I mean, you know, it was gangbanging was going around.
Speaker 4: Compton was full of gangs shit. So and then you know,
Speaker 4: I guess for the fact that probably none of those
Speaker 4: police patrolling grew up in Compton, so you know, always
Speaker 4: thought that was I always thought that was important to
Speaker 4: have police who grew up or you know, came from
Speaker 4: those type of areas. Then they would better know how
Speaker 4: to deal with niggas, you know what I'm saying, as
Speaker 4: far as we were concerned. But a lot of them
Speaker 4: motherfuckers didn't come from where we was from, so.
Speaker 3: They looked at they looked at.
Speaker 4: Gang banging and all that was just you know, it
Speaker 4: was just it was just senseless to them, so we
Speaker 4: got harassed for it.
Speaker 1: You know, I was looking at eight shoes. Eight shoes
Speaker 1: reminded me of some of my buddies used to wear
Speaker 1: the Nike Cortest shoes similar to what my boy has on,
Speaker 1: and I would roll with him because I was always neutral.
Speaker 1: But some of my guys they were in part of
Speaker 1: different sets, and when they would wear the Nike Cortest shoes,
Speaker 1: the cops would roll up and say, hey, that's gang paraphernalia,
Speaker 1: and then him all.
Speaker 3: Of us up.
Speaker 1: So they were doing a little shit like that all
Speaker 1: the time.
Speaker 4: I remember when they start trying to ban certain attire
Speaker 4: and schools ye at one point, you know, I could
Speaker 4: wear whatever the fuck I wanted to wear in school,
Speaker 4: but I think by the time I got to junior
Speaker 4: high school they had dress codes in school, and not
Speaker 4: for the fact that if you went to a private
Speaker 4: school and had to wear a uniform, like you couldn't
Speaker 4: wear certain hats because those were you know, symbolized with
Speaker 4: you know, every neighborhood had, you know, a baseball or
Speaker 4: a football cap that represented their neighborhood, so they tried
Speaker 4: to cut that out. They definitely tried to cut out
Speaker 4: the white teas at school. You could not wear all
Speaker 4: white tea the school, and you couldn't wear color shoe strings.
Speaker 4: So yeah, they started trying to break us down as
Speaker 4: far as you know, because they figured, I don't know what.
Speaker 3: They thought, you know, that would stop certain shit.
Speaker 1: This racist is hell though, because when you start talking
Speaker 1: about dickies and a T shirt, that all kind of
Speaker 1: started other people being poor, that's what, you know, people
Speaker 1: being poorant you know, you get your daddy's work pants
Speaker 1: and it was his shirt.
Speaker 4: It was affordable attire. I mean, like we wouldn't going
Speaker 4: to the mall buying at the time. At the time,
Speaker 4: you know, everything was guess you know, guess this, or
Speaker 4: guess that my parents wasn't going to buy no motherfucking
Speaker 4: hundred dollars jeans and an eighty dollars shirt. You get me,
Speaker 4: My parents share when it was time to go school shopping,
Speaker 4: they might hand your ass one hundred and fifty dollars
Speaker 4: and se.
Speaker 3: You got damn right.
Speaker 4: So the first place, you know, once we got to
Speaker 4: school ship, nigga, I'm gonna buy me about two pack
Speaker 4: of all white T shirts. I'm gonna go buy me
Speaker 4: a pair of cor tests, maybe repair khakis, nigga, And
Speaker 4: then motherfucker's finna get reflipped.
Speaker 3: You feel me?
Speaker 1: And you know the fly thing is Man brothers from Compton,
Speaker 1: South Central. They wore those clothes and made it so fly.
Speaker 1: It became nationally recognized and emulated. Then the corporate structure
Speaker 1: got onto it now, so now it's trendy all over
Speaker 1: the world now.
Speaker 4: Because when I when we used to go on tour
Speaker 4: and we used to go back down South or back
Speaker 4: East or Midwest, motherfuckers used to be like, well, I
Speaker 4: got them work uniforms on the ship because you know,
Speaker 4: back where y'all was from, niggas wore them like for work,
Speaker 4: I wear me niggas working in sanitation or at the
Speaker 4: you know, the automotive place or whatever. They wore dickies.
Speaker 4: You get the overalls, the khakis with the shirt. But
Speaker 4: to us, that was that was motherfucking cheap wardrobe for
Speaker 4: a motherfucker coming up and camped in because mostly everybody
Speaker 4: was in poverty. Didn't get me, soa shit everybody. It
Speaker 4: wasn't just you know, a section or or like this.
Speaker 4: Get every gang in Compton, south Central, La, Long Beach.
Speaker 4: I don't even fuck us. The Mexicans wherever you were from. Shit, nigga,
Speaker 4: that was your attire. And you get a pair of
Speaker 4: khakis back then probably football fucking twelve thirteen dollars.
Speaker 3: Shit.
Speaker 1: You know what's interesting, man, DC said when he left Dallas,
Speaker 1: everybody was dressing like Houdini. When he went back to Dallas,
Speaker 1: everybody stressing like easy.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So that showed the influence of it, man, that influence
Speaker 1: of that La culture. They made something so simple, so
Speaker 1: fly that everybody had to emulate it. And it was affordable.
Speaker 1: And you know how, I notice when it became popular
Speaker 1: the price of dickies. Yeah, didn't nobody get no money
Speaker 1: didn't nobody have a sponsorship deal like you were. I
Speaker 1: think that they the confidence most wanted a deal and said, hey,
Speaker 1: you know what, we got a couple hundred bands for y'all,
Speaker 1: for y'all promoting our.
Speaker 3: Product, and did hike the motherfuckers up.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I didn't think about that Dickey's yet. I never
Speaker 1: seen nobody do an endorsement deal with it. They like
Speaker 1: fuck that? Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah, why because look at it? They model was our
Speaker 4: gear is for the hard work in nine to five man,
Speaker 4: you get me? So that they was already they was
Speaker 4: already had sponsorship.
Speaker 3: We don't need no sponsor.
Speaker 4: Every nigga that take his ass to work out a
Speaker 4: factory or construction or whatever they finished, buy one of
Speaker 4: our suits.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, let me ask you something, ad, When did
Speaker 1: you and your guys get your first major record deal?
Speaker 1: Well before y'all had to deal with was it Orpheus
Speaker 1: Records to something?
Speaker 3: That was our first deal?
Speaker 1: Okay? Were you in an independent before then? Did you
Speaker 1: do something with my Cola?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 4: I didn't fuck with my Cola, but the dude that
Speaker 4: we fucked with, they all went through my Cola. I
Speaker 4: fucked with Techno Hop right, Okay, Like I said, I
Speaker 4: met Unknown through Lonzo because shout out to guy exactly Lonzo.
Speaker 4: You know, everybody know Lonzo had a crew cut and
Speaker 4: world class wrecking crew and all of that. So I
Speaker 4: just happened to be fucking with some dudes who was
Speaker 4: trying to get a singing deal with Lonzo, you know,
Speaker 4: because Lonzo was that type and he was pushing that agenda,
Speaker 4: so I tried to get I was me and me
Speaker 4: and the homie Chill shout out my nigga chill. We
Speaker 4: was just like tag alongs because you know, we was
Speaker 4: in the neighborhood banging and ship and the music had
Speaker 4: just started cracking and ship. So I was never good
Speaker 4: at serving, you get me. So when when the rap
Speaker 4: bug caught me, I figured, like, what ship? I can
Speaker 4: write some songs about, you know, being from trag New
Speaker 4: and what goes in Compton and the drive by shootings
Speaker 4: and all of that shit. So we hooked up with lot.
Speaker 4: We we just happened to tag along and Ann was
Speaker 4: there and I had a demo tape that I played,
Speaker 4: and so they liked the ship, and we actually, uh,
Speaker 4: instead of fucking with Lonzo, we went with Unknown. Well,
Speaker 4: no Lonzo basically turned the song Unknown because he couldn't
Speaker 4: do shit with us at the time, Lonzo. You know,
Speaker 4: he had a gang of ship going on and he
Speaker 4: was primarily focused on the R and B stuff at
Speaker 4: the time. Yes, he probably couldn't produce way and you
Speaker 4: know after you know, like I said, my man had,
Speaker 4: he had ship going on and at the time just
Speaker 4: produced it in the Morning An had he had all
Speaker 4: the king Ts singles. Oh yeah, he had the coolest.
Speaker 4: He had motherfucking you better bring a gun pay back
Speaker 4: to Mother.
Speaker 3: All that was. That was that was pool. But they
Speaker 3: came out under.
Speaker 4: Techno who was the producer, and Unknown had the label,
Speaker 4: so that came out, and then Iced Tea. Of course
Speaker 4: Ice Tea had Dog in the Wax over there. He
Speaker 4: had a record call you Don't Quit over there, and
Speaker 4: then after those two they dropped six in the Morning,
Speaker 4: So Unknon had a little more of the street element
Speaker 4: as far as the records were going. He did a
Speaker 4: lot of techno shit, but once easy and then broke
Speaker 4: out in Cube and all of them they like, we
Speaker 4: gotta get in there. So we went through Unknown via
Speaker 4: a DJ Slip. Slip was the producer. He was producing
Speaker 4: all the music that came up out of there.
Speaker 1: So did y'all producer, Did y'all put out a record
Speaker 1: on Techno Hot before y'all got with the major.
Speaker 3: We put out a MAXI single.
Speaker 4: It had three songs on it, Wanted Yes, Yes, we
Speaker 4: were compts most wanted then, and we put out a
Speaker 4: record called this is Compton, Give it Up and I
Speaker 4: give up Nothing that ye oh man, that had to.
Speaker 3: Be like eighty nine.
Speaker 1: I remember that record. The homie had that tape.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because we had a tape too. Now, the plan was.
Speaker 4: They were gonna stop fucking with Macola and they were
Speaker 4: supposed to form West Coast Distributor some lonzown in Egypt
Speaker 4: Lonzo Egypt, Unknown and I think l a dream team
Speaker 4: dude snake. They were going to form their own and
Speaker 4: stopped fucking with Ma Cola and I don't know what happened,
Speaker 4: because we were supposed to be the first project to
Speaker 4: come through there, and uh, we did that single, and
Speaker 4: I think Unknown met this guy named Chuck Fastard and
Speaker 4: Stewart and I forgot the other dude name. He ended
Speaker 4: up working for Morgan Creek. But they heard the motherfucking
Speaker 4: single and so Unknown negotiated because they was fucking with Orpheus,
Speaker 4: this dude that Unknown met. So that's how we ended
Speaker 4: up signing to Orpheus Capital because Unknown met a dude
Speaker 4: who was fucking with Orpheus, who Orpheus had to deal
Speaker 4: with Capital.
Speaker 3: So but at the.
Speaker 4: Time, nothing that they had put out was successful, so Capitol.
Speaker 3: Was on their last like legs with Orpheus.
Speaker 1: So then Orpheus put out Arabian Prince.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they put out a gang of bullshit. No disrespect
Speaker 4: to you know, raybe in prints, but they was putting
Speaker 4: out a gang of bullshit. You just just ship that
Speaker 4: wasn't going. So we ended up coming through. But it's
Speaker 4: like I said, it was at the time where Capitol
Speaker 4: was like, we ain't really fucking with Orpheus no more.
Speaker 4: So what happened was we put out It's a Compton
Speaker 4: thing through Orpheus, the first album, ce Them Dub album,
Speaker 4: and then.
Speaker 1: The whole album.
Speaker 4: Hell No, a lot of it was produced by dj
Speaker 4: A No One produced a little bit. But Unknown was
Speaker 4: really like the executive motherfucker. He you know, he was
Speaker 4: the motherfucker who knew the game. We didn't know shit.
Speaker 4: I didn't know shit. You get me. So that's how
Speaker 4: my publishing got stolen. You know, he stole my publishing
Speaker 4: and all of that. I was just a young nigga
Speaker 4: eager to rap. You get me, I didn't know. I
Speaker 4: was seventeen years old. I didn't know shit about contracts
Speaker 4: and lawyers and.
Speaker 3: All of that.
Speaker 4: Nigga, all I wanted to do was be on the
Speaker 4: cover of Fresh or right on Nigga riding that limo
Speaker 4: with that doukie rope on and you know that made
Speaker 4: me feel like I had accomplished something in music.
Speaker 1: Did you have any dealings with Jerry Heller at the time,
Speaker 1: Hell no, I never went the.
Speaker 4: But see, all the niggas was was And I don't
Speaker 4: want to call him crooked because I tell Steal this
Speaker 4: all the time. If you don't know, you don't know.
Speaker 4: And like my nigga still is probably a rare motherfucker
Speaker 4: because he believe in being fair with niggas. But like
Speaker 4: I tell him all the time, if a nigga gonna
Speaker 4: fuck you, he gonna fuck you. If he can, he's
Speaker 4: gonna fuck you.
Speaker 3: And at that time, all.
Speaker 4: These little independent labels that were running around the city,
Speaker 4: if they got them are artists, they was gonna fuck
Speaker 4: you even at Micola. You know, we've heard rumors about Micola,
Speaker 4: how they would backdoor the records. Of course, you've been
Speaker 4: hearing rumors about that for years, man, man please, So,
Speaker 4: like I said, we signed the Orpheus and then that
Speaker 4: deal fell through, and then the record, I guess it
Speaker 4: sold about two hundred thousand copies. So Orpheus went over
Speaker 4: to Sony and so we ended up getting a deal
Speaker 4: through Orpheus. Through Sony, we moved like two hundred thousand
Speaker 4: units on our very first record, and we had one video.
Speaker 4: We had no radio play, no promotion, no nothing. We
Speaker 4: did about two hundred and some thousand. So Orpheus basically
Speaker 4: they got dropped by Capital and then EA my probably
Speaker 4: wanted to sign us. So we did the New York
Speaker 4: trip and went to go sit down with EMI and
Speaker 4: Chrysalis and all that. But like I said, at the time,
Speaker 4: they had no idea what to do with us, you
Speaker 4: get me, They had no idea. So we came home,
Speaker 4: we didn't have a deal, and then next thing you know,
Speaker 4: we signed to Sony and Epic and I did two
Speaker 4: records over there through Unknown and Orpheus, and then I
Speaker 4: found out a nigga was stealing money.
Speaker 1: And you know, so at that time, this is like
Speaker 1: ninety ninety one, right, this is around yeah, between ninety
Speaker 1: one and ninety three, when Tim dog Get the Fuck
Speaker 1: Compton record, did he put y'all in there? Did he
Speaker 1: mention Okay, he.
Speaker 4: Didn't mention us, But we did a record on Music
Speaker 4: to Drive By called fuck Tim called It was called
Speaker 4: Who's Fucking Who?
Speaker 3: And it was aimed at Tell.
Speaker 4: We just felt we just felt disrespected because of all
Speaker 4: the bad rap we were getting because of our style
Speaker 4: of music.
Speaker 3: You get me and everybody knows, you know, as far
Speaker 3: as the majority of hip hop, you know where it was,
Speaker 3: you know, a high notoriety.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of people felt disrespected because the
Speaker 1: West Coast welcome a lot of hip hop records KD.
Speaker 1: So everybody would come out here. We welcomed them with
Speaker 1: open arms.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: We we've we've put on the shows with the with
Speaker 4: the run DMCs and the Houdini's and the l l
Speaker 4: s and the Eric b and rock Kims, and even
Speaker 4: to this day, outside artists get more love and respect
Speaker 4: than I think hometown artists do.
Speaker 1: Did y'all perform at Skateland World on. Hell No, we couldn't.
Speaker 1: We couldn't do that, not even World on Wills.
Speaker 4: Oh no, No, at that time, we were, at that time,
Speaker 4: we are what what you would call like.
Speaker 3: We were stuck in the hood.
Speaker 4: I didn't venture outside of Conton like half of my
Speaker 4: the beginning of my career rap career, I didn't leave Compton.
Speaker 3: I mean that's all I knew.
Speaker 4: I didn't, you know, as far as the game Banger
Speaker 4: ship is concerned, we didn't travel outside the hood.
Speaker 1: You knew a lot about hip hop dog Oh yeah, man,
Speaker 1: I was around all that stuff. I was with the
Speaker 1: L A Posse and all those guys. Oh yeah, my boy.
Speaker 4: Slip he ran LA Sound Control, so they used to
Speaker 4: provide all the sound systems for all the uh LA
Speaker 4: Convention Center concerts. You know when they would bring run
Speaker 4: DMC out here. My man Slipping them would provide the
Speaker 4: sound systems, tables, all the big Serwin vegas and all
Speaker 4: that shit.
Speaker 1: Did you ever go to the Uncle jm Army?
Speaker 4: I was young, but once I hooked up with Slip,
Speaker 4: Slip was like I said, he ran LA Sound Control,
Speaker 4: O Mob and then he was a local DJ at
Speaker 4: a lot of those clubs back then water to Bush Paradise.
Speaker 3: You know, so are you cool with Unknown? Still? I
Speaker 3: haven't talked to Unknown?
Speaker 1: Word?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: How about how long?
Speaker 4: I haven't talked to Unknown since uh Sony decided to
Speaker 4: kick him out of my deal because I was complaining
Speaker 4: when I found out he stole publishing money.
Speaker 1: So you know, uh, I just saw him on some
Speaker 1: ship he was on. He was on a covered up.
Speaker 3: Yeah him a lonzo school. My problem is this.
Speaker 4: And just like I say, if a nigga, if a
Speaker 4: nigga can fuck you, he gonna fuck you.
Speaker 3: Now, I was a young dude.
Speaker 4: I knew nothing about the music business. I was just
Speaker 4: coming into trying to find my identity.
Speaker 3: As far as.
Speaker 4: I'm gang bang, I'm claiming a neighborhood blob. I knew
Speaker 4: nothing about the music business, but when it started, it
Speaker 4: caught me like, you know, I'm finding myself not going
Speaker 4: to the hood today because I'm sitting at home fucking
Speaker 4: writing raps and shit. And so it caught my interest
Speaker 4: because I looked at it like the fuck am I Finna?
Speaker 4: Do you know you're trying to figure yourself out? Around
Speaker 4: sixteen seventeen eighteen, what I'm Offinna?
Speaker 3: Do you get me.
Speaker 1: Were you guys and basically quick the first cruise to
Speaker 1: claim sets, because I don't remember anybody claiming an actual set.
Speaker 1: I knew people were part of sets. You guys openly
Speaker 1: the set, and that was the first time I've seen that.
Speaker 4: I didn't when I first started rapping, I didn't openly
Speaker 4: say I was from trag New Park because I was
Speaker 4: from trag New before, you know, before I started rapping
Speaker 4: and around Compton that people knew exactly I already knew.
Speaker 4: I didn't feel the need to do that. Now people
Speaker 4: knew we were crips, you know what I'm saying, because
Speaker 4: of the references. But I never openly came out and
Speaker 4: said trag New And probably until my fourth or fifth record,
Speaker 4: we were already gang banging. That was, like I tell people,
Speaker 4: that was before.
Speaker 3: Rap started.
Speaker 4: So partly, you know, the situation with that is, you know,
Speaker 4: I was from trag New, he was from his neighborhood.
Speaker 4: That was openly known before records even you know, it
Speaker 4: started coming out.
Speaker 1: So let me ask you this, your movie that you got,
Speaker 1: is it dropping at the end of this month? It's
Speaker 1: dropping this week. Yeah, That's why I was gonna say
Speaker 1: Microphone chellphone check. Yeah, you talk about the origins of
Speaker 1: hip hop a lot over there. Do you touch on
Speaker 1: the West Coast and no, We're gonna have to do
Speaker 1: another film about the West Coast. That's why I'm tropping up.
Speaker 1: Definitely be evolved. Absolutely, we would like to definitely because
Speaker 1: Bob kat when you mentioned the La Bob Kett is
Speaker 1: my god brother. Oh yeah, Bob is my god brother,
Speaker 1: So I would definitely he definitely want to be a
Speaker 1: part of that. You talk about something, That's what really
Speaker 1: caught me. That's when I really start. I said, this
Speaker 1: brother know what he's talking about. And I think I
Speaker 1: commented on your Twitter page or ex or whatever it's called. Now, right,
Speaker 1: I've been hearing the a lot of brothers, primarily from
Speaker 1: the East Coast. No disrespect, none of them kids, right,
Speaker 1: but they starting to rewrite history a little bit of
Speaker 1: saying like hip hop is from the Caribbean. Now, that
Speaker 1: may have been your inspiration, but that's not where it
Speaker 1: comes from. That when you do a microphone check, did
Speaker 1: you address a lot of that stuff? We dress all
Speaker 1: of it, man, because you know, the fiftieth anniversary of
Speaker 1: hip hop is here, so now that hip hop is
Speaker 1: a positive thing. And it's corporate now, so there's a
Speaker 1: lot of money coming into it. And plus they got
Speaker 1: the b boying and break dancing in the Olympics now,
Speaker 1: so now there's a lot of money in this. So
Speaker 1: whenever something is looked at it's positive that we create,
Speaker 1: we always have to get it taken away from us. Now,
Speaker 1: they got to have a co creation origin. They got
Speaker 1: to say we got it from Latinos and the Caribbeans,
Speaker 1: and no disrespect to them, but hip hop and rap
Speaker 1: none of that came from the Caribbean. There was a
Speaker 1: myth that got started in the eighties that rap came
Speaker 1: from Jamaican toasting. That's not true. And another myth they
Speaker 1: tried to say, well cool hert is the creator hip hop.
Speaker 1: He's not the creator, he's the godfather. Tell you who
Speaker 1: the creator hip hop feels to be technical wition A
Speaker 1: guy from North Carolina, Pig pig me Mark yeah, HIGI yeah.
Speaker 1: That that record. He was actually rapping over a funk
Speaker 1: break and a lot of rappers actually got their cadence
Speaker 1: from that, and you know where from that, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: tell you something. And him being from North Carolina, he
Speaker 1: kind of made his bones in the Chiplan Circle in Harlem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he was at the Apollo all the time. So
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure somebody went to the Apollo because he
Speaker 1: was there like every week and he was winning that
Speaker 1: motherfucker and he I'm pretty sure somebody went to the
Speaker 1: Apollo and said, you know what, that's kind of tight,
Speaker 1: same thing he was doing. If you've never heard from
Speaker 1: the judge, Yeah, yeah, But we've been rapping on records
Speaker 1: since the nineteen twenties. We've always done that, even without
Speaker 1: when we weren't doing records, we would do something called hambone.
Speaker 1: We were pad on our bodies and hambone Hambone. Have
Speaker 1: you heard I'm Gonna Buy your mocking Bird? And know
Speaker 1: mixed Master Spade he would wrap in the hambone cadence.
Speaker 1: That's hamdbone, you know. So that's a part of our culture. Man,
Speaker 1: we've been doing that stuff. Oh yeah, for sure. That's why,
Speaker 1: because you know, shout out to my guy, mister Mix.
Speaker 1: I learned a lot about hip hop being on the
Speaker 1: road with you know, between Bobcat. The foundation of hip
Speaker 1: hop first of all is the DJ DJ slip. You
Speaker 1: feel what I'm saying, DJ Slip? That was his guy, right,
Speaker 1: you know through all the albums, right, so they would
Speaker 1: hit me these records. I remember mister Mix played me
Speaker 1: a record one day and he was like, this is
Speaker 1: the first hip hop record right here, and he had
Speaker 1: to treat that motherfucker like gold had in like this
Speaker 1: little pillowcase and bored it from the top. Bitch. Sheldon
Speaker 1: played it for me, man, and I said, wow, when
Speaker 1: is this when this record come from? And like you said,
Speaker 1: I found out later on that they had been making
Speaker 1: records since like the twenties. And this is the people
Speaker 1: right now. I'm seeing the culture get pill for from us,
Speaker 1: like I've heard then. I don't never dissed nobody on
Speaker 1: this show. We ain't about that. But I'm hearing people
Speaker 1: go out there and say things on major platforms like
Speaker 1: CNN because they just invite people. They go what they
Speaker 1: do with these major publications, these major media houses. They
Speaker 1: go look at whoever got the highest amount of people
Speaker 1: on their Instagram with a YouTube, and they say, oh,
Speaker 1: he must be an authority. So they call them people
Speaker 1: in there, and they're in there acting as representatives for
Speaker 1: a culture that they don't know shit about. So they
Speaker 1: get to telling all these lives and stuff and those
Speaker 1: lives eventually become fact. And that's the problem. Man. We
Speaker 1: got to start gatekeeping the culture because what happens is
Speaker 1: we let people tell these lies. They tell a little
Speaker 1: lie and they get away with that, and the lives
Speaker 1: just get bigger and bigger. So now when we start
Speaker 1: reclaiming our music genres, they treat us like guests in
Speaker 1: the genre, like Beyonce. Beyonce has a country album and
Speaker 1: a lot of the country fans are acting like she's
Speaker 1: a guest in country, like she's disrespecting country by claiming it.
Speaker 1: But we created country music. I was created by foundational
Speaker 1: Black Americans. Thing with rock and roll, they treat us
Speaker 1: like guessing rock and rolls our music. They do the
Speaker 1: same thing with jazz. They try to make us guests
Speaker 1: in jazz. Now that's our creation, and it's happening with
Speaker 1: If we not careful, man, I was telling somebody the
Speaker 1: other day, I said, if we not careful, hip hop
Speaker 1: is go go the way of rock and rolls and
Speaker 1: all those other genres because if you look up thirty
Speaker 1: years from now, because I'm looking at them like white
Speaker 1: kids right now, I'm by no means racist, but I'm
Speaker 1: telling the truth. This is fact right here. I'm not lying.
Speaker 1: If you look at it now, they seem to be
Speaker 1: pushing my booty holeless pink and this and that and
Speaker 1: I sucked dick last night. Yeah you feel what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: It's like they're seeing some wild stuff on these records, man,
Speaker 1: and the other stuff is not really getting no attention, right.
Speaker 1: Ain't no balance now, man, They just have a one
Speaker 1: sided stereotype. They don't have any balance no more. Like
Speaker 1: going back to the eighties, cats rapped about gang banging,
Speaker 1: but they would put a consequence to it. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: guys would have a consequence. Yeah, we're banging, but this
Speaker 1: is gonna happen if you bang.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I told you, you're gonna go to jail, or
Speaker 4: you're gonna get killed, or you're homeie gonna get killed,
Speaker 4: or they're gonna do a drive by on your house,
Speaker 4: or the police is gonna do this or that the other.
Speaker 4: So we always tried to make it, like you said,
Speaker 4: a consequence, right, Like with six.
Speaker 1: In the morning, with ice Teeth, there was a consequence
Speaker 1: all that stuff he was doing, ice Cube gangs, the gangster,
Speaker 1: all that gangs and stuff he was doing. In the
Speaker 1: end of the song Now I'm back in the County Blues,
Speaker 1: you know. So there was always a consequence, so they
Speaker 1: the artists knew to have a balance, like we're not
Speaker 1: trying to tell you to do that. This is what
Speaker 1: we did and this is the consequence of it. So
Speaker 1: y'all don't do that. That's why they had we're all
Speaker 1: in the same gang movement going on. They had self
Speaker 1: destruction text saying, hey, don't rock with crack. Crack ain't cool.
Speaker 1: That's why crack is looked down as negative today because
Speaker 1: the rappers made it now, Oh for sure, even a
Speaker 1: lot of people, especially for Mark generation. Yeah, if it
Speaker 1: wasn't smoking weed or having a little bit hennessy, we
Speaker 1: didn't mess with it because you was looked at as a.
Speaker 3: Fiend ry type of drug.
Speaker 1: Rappers rappers made that made that a negative thing. Even
Speaker 1: the dudes who were serving, like, hey, yeah, I'm doing this,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to get out. Don't you fuck with no
Speaker 1: bullshit like this. This ain't it?
Speaker 3: Yeah for real?
Speaker 1: Now it was glorified and hercosets and ship. That's you know,
Speaker 1: they make that ship sound cool now, Oh, they make
Speaker 1: it sound real.
Speaker 3: Cool because of the generation.
Speaker 1: You know, it's because of the corporate structure. Man, the
Speaker 1: record labels make them do that ship. They incentivized them.
Speaker 1: They give them more money for that type of stuff,
Speaker 1: whereas man back in the day man cats had somewhat
Speaker 1: of a cold. Some people will say, hey, you niggas
Speaker 1: would run up in record labels and smack motherfuckers up
Speaker 1: back the dude. Yeah, they didn't really play like that
Speaker 1: back then with these majors. They would tell them, Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm not doing this bullshit. I ain't putting on no dress,
Speaker 1: I ain't about to do a duet with Kenny g.
Speaker 1: You know, you would tell them what I'm saying. You know,
Speaker 1: we would stand up. Yeah, they would stand up.
Speaker 4: You can come in and kick your motherfucking dough in
Speaker 4: with a couple of baseball bats. Nigga, I'm not playing like, no,
Speaker 4: I'm not doing it. And that's why people asked me
Speaker 4: why you never did this or why you never did
Speaker 4: more movies, because it was like, do you want to
Speaker 4: be Can you put on the nose and paint your
Speaker 4: face and put on the clown wig and can you
Speaker 4: just And I'm like, no, man, how did you get
Speaker 4: the role for.
Speaker 1: A minister society ship?
Speaker 4: The movies were getting popular with us in them, you know,
Speaker 4: as far as rappers, you know, well we had uh well,
Speaker 4: first of all, we had colors, so that kind of
Speaker 4: set the tone a little bit. And then you know,
Speaker 4: we had fucking Juice with Pok. We had Boys in
Speaker 4: the Hood with Cube, we had what Trespassed with Ice
Speaker 4: Tea and Cube. We had South Central with Glenn Plummer
Speaker 4: and shit. So it was the Huge Brothers.
Speaker 1: You get were you and those early reads with Tupac
Speaker 1: when he was there? Yes, okay, how was that and
Speaker 1: what happened? What went left?
Speaker 4: Honestly, honestly, the Huge Brothers, I don't think they really
Speaker 4: they didn't really want him in the movie. Really, the
Speaker 4: Hughes brothers had been fucking with Pac for a while.
Speaker 4: They did like Boutwatch. They probably did about five six
Speaker 4: videos on Tupacs, so they knew him. They worked with him,
Speaker 4: and you know, my mayor, Pac was very strong willed
Speaker 4: and so you as a probably video director or you know,
Speaker 4: your patients probably wore a little thin after working with
Speaker 4: the controversial brother for five or six times. So but
Speaker 4: at the time, and you know, you got this movie,
Speaker 4: you got you know, the hookup with this company and
Speaker 4: Tupac's demand, Yeah, come on records, the controversy. You know,
Speaker 4: fucking my nigga got juice, my nigga got poetic justice.
Speaker 3: Like we we we got fucked with him. So that was.
Speaker 4: Probably one of the you know, we'll give y'all this movie,
Speaker 4: but y'all gotta put my nigga in the movie.
Speaker 3: And so.
Speaker 4: I don't work with you give me. That's probably the
Speaker 4: mind state. But you gotta get in where you fit in, right,
Speaker 4: So they put him in the movie, but the character
Speaker 4: they gave him was not suitable for him, you get me,
Speaker 4: And that was the problem.
Speaker 1: What didn't he like about because he was playing Scharif right, Yes,
Speaker 1: they want to reef the conscious guy, but it's Tupac.
Speaker 4: So you got me and a motherfucking you got me
Speaker 4: in an al Capone ass killer movie and shit, and
Speaker 4: I'm the one standing on the outside going, you know,
Speaker 4: I'm that preacher on the corner where you know, you
Speaker 4: go through those movies and the Preacher is always on
Speaker 4: the corner telling everybody.
Speaker 3: Why am I him? You get me? Why? And so
Speaker 3: you want me to be that? Okay?
Speaker 4: So I need an explanation. So I need y'all to
Speaker 4: show why eight is a killer. Old dog's a killer,
Speaker 4: tyrants turning into killer. Everybody's from the hood hard, But
Speaker 4: I'm over here the conscious one. Now it gotta be
Speaker 4: because you know, to the guy, I need a backstore, right, yeah,
Speaker 4: because in the movie they know there's not a backstory
Speaker 4: to this guy.
Speaker 1: He's just there. Y'all don't need to be doing this.
Speaker 1: And like I said, of course he's he's he's he's
Speaker 1: with us because he's he's allowed, he's everywhere we are.
Speaker 1: Why why is that nigga? Of course he's probably from
Speaker 1: the hood, but they didn't explain it, and it fucked
Speaker 1: with him. Every day we would come to table reads
Speaker 1: and it would get to his time to read his part.
Speaker 4: He would not read because he was not comfortable with
Speaker 4: the character. Like, man, show me killing a nigga, Show
Speaker 4: you know, me going to jail and and then I
Speaker 4: change and come out and whatever. But to just have
Speaker 4: me this conscious nigga a months a room of gangbanging,
Speaker 4: dope dylan killer niggas, like don't make no sense.
Speaker 1: The thing is, you know, as a writer, if he's
Speaker 1: not the protagonist, you can always have somebody in the
Speaker 1: movie where you don't know their best story. That would
Speaker 1: have required them almost going in and rewriting the whole
Speaker 1: damn script, right, And that's.
Speaker 3: What he wanted.
Speaker 4: He wanted a backstory, and they were like, we're not
Speaker 4: doing that.
Speaker 3: So it caused the riff.
Speaker 4: And you know, you can, like you know, you as
Speaker 4: a writer, director or whatever, you can only hold up
Speaker 4: shit for so long, right, nigga, The money is changing
Speaker 4: it right right. The executives is like, hey, what's going on?
Speaker 4: How come we ain't starting to shoot? How come we
Speaker 4: still doing fucking table reads and it's fucking two weeks
Speaker 4: into this shit. We should be out filming. And that's
Speaker 4: because they didn't know how to deal with the interruptions
Speaker 4: every day. So after about a week or two, they
Speaker 4: just decided, you know, and like I said, once the
Speaker 4: bottom line comes and you tell the motherfucker man, we
Speaker 4: losing like ten fifteen thousand a day because.
Speaker 3: We ain't shooting, well, they ain't gonna give a fuck
Speaker 3: who's in it.
Speaker 1: Do you remember a lot of people was getting cast
Speaker 1: in the same movies. I wonder because you know, the
Speaker 1: dude that plays Sharif was a gang bangering boys in
Speaker 1: the hood. He didn't want took the ball to the ball.
Speaker 4: I went to school with Vontae Yes, oh wow, Yeah,
Speaker 4: we went to school together.
Speaker 1: I don't know that.
Speaker 3: I mean, I went to school with Vonte.
Speaker 1: Compton just got a lot of talent. Talent, a lot
Speaker 1: of talented folks out there. You know, like some of
Speaker 1: the best rappers in the world don't came from the
Speaker 1: city of Compton. Compton not if I compared like Brooklyn.
Speaker 1: When I explained the people always tell people like Compton
Speaker 1: is kind of like the I wouldn't say Harlem is
Speaker 1: kind of like the Bronx. Yeah, the West. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can see what I'm saying, the Bronx, you know, And
Speaker 1: well I would say Wat's is the Bronx. Compton might
Speaker 1: be more Brooklyn. Now, yeah, you feel what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of wordsmiths to come out of Compton.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of inspiration in the neighborhood. Well, you
Speaker 1: had to hustle out there in Comptent, man, A lot
Speaker 1: of hustlers out there, cats had to hit the streets.
Speaker 1: So they took that same mentality to the rap game.
Speaker 1: Oh definitely. You know, I want to ask you a question, man,
Speaker 1: and it's really the older. I get this really because
Speaker 1: I see a lot of stuff in the culture, Like
Speaker 1: I said, like from these big, these used platforms, inviting
Speaker 1: the wrong people up to the speak. There are so
Speaker 1: many knowledgeable people of people such as itself, people such
Speaker 1: as this man right here, as me, a lot of
Speaker 1: other brothers out there doing their thing, and it seemed
Speaker 1: like we're last to get called for stuff. Do you
Speaker 1: think that's because we're threatening to a certain degree, because
Speaker 1: a lot of the goofy stuff, man, that's somewhat profitable,
Speaker 1: It was profitable. Now we're flooded with the goofy stuff now,
Speaker 1: so people are kind of getting tired of it. So
Speaker 1: now people want to see conversations like this now because
Speaker 1: it's it's out of the norm. You want to get
Speaker 1: a different take on something. You can only get so
Speaker 1: much heatonism and ratchetness until you say, hey, let me
Speaker 1: try something else. A motherfucker with their clothes on is
Speaker 1: more interested than all of these naked motherfucker's working if
Speaker 1: you see too much of it. So there has to
Speaker 1: be balance to everything, exactly, like you know, Big Ups,
Speaker 1: the sexy red Yeah, her music is entertained. I think
Speaker 1: you know some of us catchy. But like you said,
Speaker 1: there's no longer a balance, right because what's the one
Speaker 1: sister's name she be busting to? What's her name begins
Speaker 1: with R? Yeah? Yeah, I would like to see them
Speaker 1: give rhapsody to kind of the same platform that Sexy
Speaker 1: Red got because both of Mike. I'm not gonna say
Speaker 1: sexy Rid is exactly necessary, but I get it. Well,
Speaker 1: you gotta have a balance. We got a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of sexy reds out of here exactly, Sexy Red, Glrilla,
Speaker 1: Megan City Girls, all of them doing the same thing.
Speaker 1: See back in the nineties, man, we had ratchetness too.
Speaker 1: We had Little Kim Foxy Brown, but we had a balance.
Speaker 1: We had Lauren Hill, we had Queen Latifa, we had
Speaker 1: Yo Yo, we had MC lights. So there was a
Speaker 1: balance to it, so that didn't overtake everything. Back in
Speaker 1: the eighty eight, that was the peak of hip hop.
Speaker 1: That was the golden era of hip hop. Nineteen eighty eight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that year it was so diverse. Many of those
Speaker 1: people can still go on tour now. They were that impactful.
Speaker 1: It was so diverse. In eighty eight, you had Kidn't Play,
Speaker 1: Heavy D, Public Enemy, EPMD, SAWD and Pepper, Rokim. It
Speaker 1: was NWA all of these guys. So it was a
Speaker 1: taste for everybody. Nobody was acting the same. In fact,
Speaker 1: if you emulated another rapper, that would you look down upon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you biting dude, You sound like such and such. Even
Speaker 1: EPMD they were criticized for sounding like rock YIM. They
Speaker 1: were like, hey, y'all better change that style up a
Speaker 1: little bit. So there was a code in hip hop.
Speaker 1: Hip hop was still on this code where you're supposed
Speaker 1: to be innovative and based on the originality Red Ryan,
Speaker 1: you gotta be original. The corporate structure when they got
Speaker 1: a part of it, you know, they want cookie cutter.
Speaker 1: They want everybody sounding the same so they can send
Speaker 1: it to radio. With me working inside the building. I'll
Speaker 1: tell you what happened, man, once everything goes corporate. Instead
Speaker 1: of them hiring people that are actually qualified for the job,
Speaker 1: they're looking for guys that come from where they come from.
Speaker 1: They don't want to sit in there and look at
Speaker 1: one of us every day. They don't relate to us,
Speaker 1: so they want to hire the kids out of which
Speaker 1: I don't have no problem with. But he got to
Speaker 1: be from the culture. They want to hire a kid
Speaker 1: from Cornell All or Brown they make all of these
Speaker 1: You know because I've been in these offices before and
Speaker 1: seen guys responsible for some of the most important hip
Speaker 1: hop artists of this generation. I'm like, this dude, don't
Speaker 1: know what the fuck he doing? How's he A and
Speaker 1: R for? This dude? He don't know, he don't like.
Speaker 1: How am I gonna give him direction when I don't
Speaker 1: know where he come from? It's a difference. If I'm
Speaker 1: talking to eight, it's certain stuff. I know he's not
Speaker 1: going to do off rip, So I'm not gonna present
Speaker 1: him with a bunch of tracks that maybe you know
Speaker 1: for real, got some bangers by the way, but I'm
Speaker 1: not go I'm not gonna bring eight change clothes. You
Speaker 1: see what I'm saying. That's not no, that's not him.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna bring him some right and and Back in
Speaker 1: the eighties, man, when cats made records, I mean you
Speaker 1: had to. If you making a record, man, you're putting
Speaker 1: all your money together. This is your one shot. You
Speaker 1: better come correct with that shit. You better be real creative.
Speaker 1: Cats ain't got money to blow in the studio. You
Speaker 1: better make something that you know, the hood is gonna
Speaker 1: like something that you can take up there to Greg
Speaker 1: Mac and kJ and those guys. So you had to
Speaker 1: be very serious about what you were doing. And a
Speaker 1: lot of those guys knew how to A and R themselves.
Speaker 1: They felt what was what the streets was kind of
Speaker 1: leaning towards and patterned it on that. And back then
Speaker 1: you had the producer. They normally came from a DJ.
Speaker 1: Back around again, the sound man. I'm pretty sure Slip
Speaker 1: probably was an R and y'all earlier records, y'all were
Speaker 1: some young guys, so I'm pretty much I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: he was probably telling you ight say it like this
Speaker 1: or do this this. Am I correct? I kind of.
Speaker 4: I kind of never uh had to go with that,
Speaker 4: uh as far as came to recording, because I took
Speaker 4: pride in writing and saying shit. I was the type
Speaker 4: of motherfucker back then that I wrap some ship and
Speaker 4: get halfway through the verse and say stop it and
Speaker 4: go back.
Speaker 1: Oh, so you was producing your let me do.
Speaker 4: That over, and you know, I do it again, and
Speaker 4: we'll listen to it and I'd be like, oh, I
Speaker 4: fucked up on that part. Let's do that over or
Speaker 4: I'll be like or you listen to me right there,
Speaker 4: or and then you know slip would give me that.
Speaker 4: But I think I just took pride in wanting to
Speaker 4: be a good MC.
Speaker 3: Back then, you know, it was hard.
Speaker 4: To maintain or get any game you get me. It
Speaker 4: wasn't simplified like it is now. Shit, I can sit
Speaker 4: in my you know, my room, turned on my laptop,
Speaker 4: get me a microphone and being now like you said,
Speaker 4: back then, and it was costing two three hundred dollars
Speaker 4: an hour to go up in one of them studios
Speaker 4: within two inch reels, and it's ugly.
Speaker 1: Now with this AI shit is about to get real
Speaker 1: ugly for a lot of people because if you look
Speaker 1: at what they just did to Spotify today, right, they're
Speaker 1: about to open up all this other stuff and they're
Speaker 1: taking more money from the artists now, right with this
Speaker 1: AI stuff is scary, man, because the AI stuff, it's
Speaker 1: a great tool, right, but it's gonna start replacing a
Speaker 1: lot of people, it is. It's gonna start replacing a
Speaker 1: lot of people. Pretty soon. They're going to have an
Speaker 1: AI version of and I'm gonna tell you it's coming.
Speaker 1: They're going to have an AI version of a rapper.
Speaker 1: They already got one. It was a guy. A couple
Speaker 1: of years ago they announced they had an AI rapper,
Speaker 1: some some white dudes. Yeah I remember that. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: people were like, hey, what the hell is that? Then
Speaker 1: they got quiet about it exactly because I'm gonna tell
Speaker 1: you what's about to happen. They're not gonna tell us,
Speaker 1: We not gonna know. It's gonna be a dude that's
Speaker 1: gonna be the perfect the perfect MC almost and he's
Speaker 1: gonna be all AI base watch see what I tell you,
Speaker 1: because because I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you, man, people, it's.
Speaker 4: Just like a motherfucker like they doing with the companies.
Speaker 4: We don't need you to stand here and screw a
Speaker 4: handle on the car no more or whatever you give me.
Speaker 4: We got the motherfucking machines that do all that ship now,
Speaker 4: So why would I want to deal with a motherfucking
Speaker 4: nigga who is a knucklehead and helen from my whatever whatever.
Speaker 3: I can just go create a nigga like that.
Speaker 1: And punching my computer what type of attitude and what
Speaker 1: this and what he won't and then and then take
Speaker 1: it on tour with a hologram exactly and make all
Speaker 1: the money Matt merchandise and everything about and the kids
Speaker 1: go go crazy about it. I'm telling you with scary
Speaker 1: man Now, I forget which rock and roll dude, and
Speaker 1: I fuck with him for saying that man the guy
Speaker 1: from Kiss, Gene Simmons, Gene Simmons. They offered Gene Simmons
Speaker 1: like a ridiculous amount of money for his like virtual rights.
Speaker 1: I think they offered that man something like fifteen to
Speaker 1: twenty million dollars and he said no because I can't
Speaker 1: picture them. They not gonna care about the quality of
Speaker 1: the stuff that I do. They go have just and
Speaker 1: everybody just can't come and write a Kiss record, right,
Speaker 1: So I want all these people to go on our
Speaker 1: farewell tour to remember me from being this. If they
Speaker 1: want to see us, they can go buy the video,
Speaker 1: right right right. I don't want a ghost version of
Speaker 1: me floating around here one hundred years from now. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: When they did something on one of those Grammy shows
Speaker 1: where they had a hologramd Michael Jackson, a lot of
Speaker 1: that turned a lot of people up. I didn't like it,
Speaker 1: you know, because there's only one Michael. It don't that
Speaker 1: thing don't have the spirit of Michael. They need to
Speaker 1: leave that alone. And when Drake did that dis record
Speaker 1: and used Tupac's vocals, a lot of people got turned
Speaker 1: off from that too. Or his family was pissed off
Speaker 1: about that. Yeah, everybody was a lot of folks are
Speaker 1: pissed off on that. And I'm gonna tell you, dog, Tupac,
Speaker 1: I think people aren't even where Tupac got a lot
Speaker 1: of family members to still here because I managed Glass
Speaker 1: to bloge. I remember when he put out South. That's
Speaker 1: when he put out the Tupac Much Die record. Whenever
Speaker 1: Glasses released a record, my lip my dining room is
Speaker 1: like the war table, right. We had come in there
Speaker 1: playing and stuff. Man, I remember the phone calls we
Speaker 1: was getting me and him was driving down the one
Speaker 1: oh five freeway. Dude, and Tupac's cousin called him, was like, man,
Speaker 1: what the fuck? You know what I mean? But he
Speaker 1: hadn't listened to the record. He just saw And that's
Speaker 1: why I told him. I never liked the name of
Speaker 1: that record because to me, it took away from the story.
Speaker 1: But he was trying to be provocative. Yeah, he was
Speaker 1: trying to be provocative, but to the average person, all
Speaker 1: they see is Tupac much that what the fuck is
Speaker 1: he saying? He was talking about, you know, from the
Speaker 1: mind of Orlando Anderson, right, and it just kicked off
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff that I don't even know what's
Speaker 1: worth doing, or kicked off a lot of stuff, man,
Speaker 1: And I think the one thing that they would never
Speaker 1: be able to emulate with these AI whatever you go,
Speaker 1: always have to have somebody writing. Yeah, yeah, you always
Speaker 1: have to have somebody writing, because I don't care what
Speaker 1: you say. Ain't no AI go spit no gangster shit
Speaker 1: better than Scarface or mcas or now or whoever they not.
Speaker 1: It's not gonna be able to do it. But everything
Speaker 1: is turning real vanilla and saccaring right now. I'm really
Speaker 1: worried about the culture right now, even to the point, man,
Speaker 1: where do you think this comes from? To me, I
Speaker 1: call the baby man syndrome to where you got a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of cats now online from their forties to
Speaker 1: their fifties just acting like little kids. Pro And when
Speaker 1: I say acting like little kids, that's almost insulting our
Speaker 1: young generation. The kids are more mature. My kids never
Speaker 1: acted like them these games today, Man, what what can
Speaker 1: you attribute that to?
Speaker 3: That man?
Speaker 1: Look in the system of white supremacy, and doctor Welson
Speaker 1: talked about this, the white male is supposed to be
Speaker 1: on top. And if you don't challenge the white male,
Speaker 1: they put you in either one or two positions. You're
Speaker 1: gonna have to be a grown boy or you're gonna
Speaker 1: have to be a male woman. You understand. So dudes
Speaker 1: either take one or two routes. They're gonna be over
Speaker 1: feminized or they're gonna be ultra babyfied. That's what the
Speaker 1: movie Baby Boy was about. And in the movie Baby Boy,
Speaker 1: they had a doctor Wilson quote at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the movie. The Jody character living with his mama. He's
Speaker 1: a big, overgrown child because of arrested development. And that's
Speaker 1: a problem. That's why we always have to be in
Speaker 1: a position to say, hey, man, we got a problem
Speaker 1: with systematic racism. Let's not be ashamed of it. That's
Speaker 1: an issue. Let's deal with it, and let's acknowledge it exactly.
Speaker 1: And I think right now, if you look at it,
Speaker 1: all that stuff seems to move the needle. Now, yeah,
Speaker 1: anything negative, if you go say something really positive and profound,
Speaker 1: it's gonna get buried. Nobody's gonna nobody wants to hear.
Speaker 1: But if you're seeing something crazy in the landish, oh man,
Speaker 1: it's gonna break all kinds of records. Man. Look, when
Speaker 1: I did my books The Art of Macin, I was
Speaker 1: on MTV VH one. They were trying to give me
Speaker 1: a show on NBC. They were trying to give me
Speaker 1: a late night show. That's why I was on. If
Speaker 1: you go Google, there's images of me. I was on
Speaker 1: Conan O'Brien The Tonight Show. I did all that stuff
Speaker 1: because I was just doing relationship books from a kind
Speaker 1: of satirical standpoint, so that was non threatening. When I
Speaker 1: started doing the Hidden Colors films, that's when I started
Speaker 1: getting negative pressed. When I said, hey, let me teach
Speaker 1: about black history, all of a sudden, I'm a race bata.
Speaker 1: I get all of these negative headlines. I'm getting visited
Speaker 1: by the FBI and all that stuff. Oh many times.
Speaker 1: They I can't even go to England. I'm banned from
Speaker 1: the UK because of my films. Are you serious? I'm bad.
Speaker 1: I cannot go to the UK. I was gonna go
Speaker 1: over there to have a film screening, and the airport
Speaker 1: they had to take me off the whell. They wouldn't
Speaker 1: let me on the plane, and they had phone calls
Speaker 1: going all over the place saying that I'm not allowed
Speaker 1: to go to the UK from not because you've got
Speaker 1: a criminal record, not because of the book that you wrote,
Speaker 1: because of the movies he Tellor's movies, because of those movies.
Speaker 1: They said that my presence is not conducive to the
Speaker 1: good of the society there. Basically, I might wake too
Speaker 1: many black folks up. You start waking up black folks,
Speaker 1: that's a problem. That's why let's go back to the
Speaker 1: rap thing NWA. When they were fucked the police, they
Speaker 1: were getting the FBI letters. I talked to Greg mac
Speaker 1: one time. He told me the FBI was up there
Speaker 1: Kday asking about easy in those guys. When you're talking
Speaker 1: revolutionary and you're independent, that's a threat, you understand. That's
Speaker 1: why the music industry they have to get control of
Speaker 1: independent artists and say, hey, no, no, we can't have
Speaker 1: you out here moving those records saying what you want
Speaker 1: to say. Get us under you. Let us get you
Speaker 1: under our wing so we can control what you say
Speaker 1: and do. Wow, man, it's heavy with all the changes
Speaker 1: that we've had in America, things have gotten a lot better. No,
Speaker 1: we've had some progress in this country. We've had to
Speaker 1: fight for it. We made it happen. Do you ever
Speaker 1: see us getting reparations? Absolutely, because the thing is, man,
Speaker 1: it's they already have to spend the money that's used
Speaker 1: on reparations for defense. Man, when they militarized the police,
Speaker 1: that's the reparation's money right there. All they have to
Speaker 1: do is do the right thing. Look, man, they started
Speaker 1: militarizing the police after the Watch riots. After the Watch riots,
Speaker 1: they saw black folks was actually whooping ass in the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties. That's not talked about black folks. They'll show
Speaker 1: you some black folks getting beat on, but low key
Speaker 1: black people were bringing it to the Cleveland, Cleveland, Cleveland, Detroit, Yeah, Chicago. Man.
Speaker 1: In Illinois, there's a town called Cairo, Illinois. Man, they
Speaker 1: ran all the white people out that town in the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty engineered probably here like what then let me
Speaker 1: look listen, listen, man, I don't know. They probably picked
Speaker 1: the wrong guy. We're talking about Tupaca. Man, listen, listen
Speaker 1: to me. Man. You had groups like the Black Liberation
Speaker 1: Army putting in work that's where Tupac comes from. That's
Speaker 1: his stepdad, Matulush you cor he was from the Black
Speaker 1: Liberation Army. They the one broke aside of Shekur out
Speaker 1: of jail. That was Tupac's god mother. Tupac shot the cops, remember,
Speaker 1: yeah he shot Yeah, definitely. Yeah, that's when that saw
Speaker 1: his election kind of cause I'm gonna tell you interesting story,
Speaker 1: not to cut you off. So Bob Kat was one
Speaker 1: of the first producers in LA that really messed with Park,
Speaker 1: you know, like really you know, he did strictly for
Speaker 1: My Niggas album. That's when Park was kind of going
Speaker 1: on his own, not leaving shots. She was kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, getting his own identity, right.
Speaker 3: Pac.
Speaker 1: That's the Tupac. I loved the revolutionary, the revolutionary that
Speaker 1: told black women how beautiful it was that but she
Speaker 1: had to turn around and shoot a cop. And I
Speaker 1: asked because he thinks he out there fucking with a brother,
Speaker 1: but he was a sponge. Yeah, ultimately, you feel what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. And I just really think, man, we missing
Speaker 1: that in the community right now. Yeah, because our we
Speaker 1: we don't have no leadership no more. Man. I always
Speaker 1: look at myself because if you look at Black America now,
Speaker 1: it's set up to where the young people hate him.
Speaker 1: Oh six year old ass, Now you don't need a
Speaker 1: rap no more. Get out the way. That's the whole
Speaker 1: thing is. So it's this dynamic get out the way
Speaker 1: so I could make my way through instead of them
Speaker 1: coming to sit with this brother and say, hey, I
Speaker 1: wanna be able to sustain a thirty year career like
Speaker 1: you did. Yeah, what can I do? Yeah? You got
Speaker 1: you know, sixty year old dudes trying to get record deals,
Speaker 1: and you got fifty year old women trying to be
Speaker 1: video vixens. Now they're trying to compete with the young girls. Now,
Speaker 1: So right, we don't have that balance of leadership of
Speaker 1: just a adult supervision. Cause it wasn't like that. I
Speaker 1: went to the older dudes. I revered the older dudes
Speaker 1: in my hood that were that may have went on
Speaker 1: before me and played college football. That's how I got
Speaker 1: up out of Cleveland because an older dude that played
Speaker 1: he went to a junior college. I don't know what
Speaker 1: they like. Junior. I thought it was old with for me.
Speaker 1: After my high school career, all them d's I had
Speaker 1: on my report card. Man, I never thought I would
Speaker 1: go to college. But because of him, he made some
Speaker 1: phone calls for me and next thing, you you know,
Speaker 1: send some film off. Back in the day, had to
Speaker 1: put shit in the mail. You see what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: Them bigger ass around tapes. You know, you had to
Speaker 1: put them in the mail. And next thing you know,
Speaker 1: I got a call from five to six junior colleges
Speaker 1: around the country. They were like, hey, we interested in
Speaker 1: bringing you out. But there was a leadership. It was
Speaker 1: like everybody looked out for each other. Now, everybody is
Speaker 1: too busy to be in competition, right Even back in
Speaker 1: the day, man the eighties, even the street cats would
Speaker 1: look out for people who had potential. If you saw
Speaker 1: somebody trying to venture off in some street business, the
Speaker 1: hustlers would take get your ass off this. Well, definitely
Speaker 1: get the fuck out of here. Man, don't come out
Speaker 1: here banging with us.
Speaker 4: We definitely didn't want to deter brothers away who had potential.
Speaker 1: To somebody say more, there was a reason why he
Speaker 1: stopped going to the neighborhood, Ain't that rect I mean,
Speaker 1: sometimes you just get to a point where people see
Speaker 1: that you can do.
Speaker 3: More than what you think. You feel me.
Speaker 4: Uh, And that's just people seeing the potential. Like I said,
Speaker 4: a lot of people look at you and and try
Speaker 4: to determine because where you come from where or your
Speaker 4: situations of where you live. But you know.
Speaker 1: That's that's those old cats, that's the motto that we
Speaker 1: came from, uh, to watch out for our youth and
Speaker 1: are inspiring. Do you think Lonzo kind of did that
Speaker 1: for you guys to a certain degree.
Speaker 4: But Lonzo really didn't where as far as you know,
Speaker 4: as recognizing talent. And yeah, he felt like, I can't
Speaker 4: fuck with y'all, But then here's a dude who could
Speaker 4: fuck with y'all. Because at the time, it was coming
Speaker 4: out of his era of music, you know what they
Speaker 4: were doing.
Speaker 3: At first.
Speaker 4: You know, he probably hated that shit, you know, like
Speaker 4: it portrays not hated it. But we have been successful.
Speaker 4: What's what's right here? And like you know a lot
Speaker 4: of people like to use the term if it ain't broke,
Speaker 4: you know, don't fix it. So that's the way he
Speaker 4: probably was looking at his success in his career. We've
Speaker 4: been we've been quite successful on what we've been doing.
Speaker 4: So but at the time the music was changing, you're
Speaker 4: getting the Brothers from New York was coming out and
Speaker 4: we was hearing that. And then you know, once Once
Speaker 4: Easy came out, and like you said, we had dudes
Speaker 4: like Spade and Toddy t who were already giving us
Speaker 4: tales from the neighborhood. You know, a lot of the
Speaker 4: ship was underground. So that's just how ship was. You
Speaker 4: know what I'm saying. Someone be going back to let's
Speaker 4: say Unknown, What happened with Unknown man? I heard something
Speaker 4: happened with him up a death row. Somebody put hands
Speaker 4: on it, right, what happened? I've heard different versions over
Speaker 4: the years.
Speaker 3: This is the story that I know we were working on.
Speaker 4: We had just came off for a straight checking the
Speaker 4: record and Dre had just left Easy got with sug whatever.
Speaker 3: So we basically sat.
Speaker 4: Down one night, me Unknown, Uh Slip and my nigga
Speaker 4: Chill and the Unknown told us that Dre was Finnah
Speaker 4: start a new label and they were looking for a
Speaker 4: name for the label. Long story short, we came They
Speaker 4: came up with the death Row name. We basically came
Speaker 4: up with the name, me Unknown, Chill and Slip. Yes,
Speaker 4: they called it d E F first and and I
Speaker 4: think if I'm not mistaken. Unknown took it to Sug
Speaker 4: and sold it to Shug the name whatever. But that's
Speaker 4: how he got in with Sug in them because Sug
Speaker 4: knew that he so called was producing our records comptas
Speaker 4: Most Wanted, and I think we were on our third album,
Speaker 4: so they enlisted Unknown to do production work for The Convicts.
Speaker 4: Was supposed to be the first group. They came three.
Speaker 1: That's three two and Big Mike used Texans.
Speaker 4: Group called the Convicts. That's right, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 4: They were supposed to be the first group on death
Speaker 4: Row because I don't even think they had snoop yet.
Speaker 1: Wow, what that record was Big Mike's record, the one
Speaker 1: to break them off? Some break them off, some of
Speaker 1: the deep cover record.
Speaker 4: So because Unknown got in with him, he took some
Speaker 4: money from them to do beats. Sugar was expecting the
Speaker 4: beats Unknown was using. From what I hear, every time
Speaker 4: they asked for the music, he was like, well, I'm
Speaker 4: busy right now working on Compass Most Wanted record.
Speaker 3: That didn't fly too.
Speaker 4: Good with Shuit, especially when I done gave you money
Speaker 4: to turn in beats. So I heard he was up there.
Speaker 4: One day they questioned him about the beats. He didn't
Speaker 4: have them, so they took off on him. Yeah, because
Speaker 4: he came to the studio with us about three days
Speaker 4: later and we couldn't figure out why he had sunglasses
Speaker 4: on in the dark ass studio, like why you got
Speaker 4: sunglasses on? And that's around the time when I stopped
Speaker 4: fucking with him because I had found out that he
Speaker 4: basically stole publishing money. I wrote all my songs. I
Speaker 4: never I never had a ghostwriter. I never had so
Speaker 4: half of that publishing was mine. I wrote every fucking
Speaker 4: CMW you song, every m C eight song, never had
Speaker 4: a ghostwriter, never had any help.
Speaker 1: So you co produced them in the record, say hey
Speaker 1: this sound I started. I started well. I would always
Speaker 1: bring music to him. I would go like, hey, let's
Speaker 1: use this record, Let's use this record, sample this record,
Speaker 1: sample this record. I started doing that around the second
Speaker 1: straight checking them record. I was interested in producing, so
Speaker 1: but yeah, once I found out he.
Speaker 4: Stole publishing money, and that was kind of the end
Speaker 4: of it from there. You know, I'm a young kid
Speaker 4: from content. You know, I ain't know no better. Like
Speaker 4: if you could have asked me back then, I would
Speaker 4: have been like, what the fuck is publishing.
Speaker 1: I want to go back, like, what the fuck is publishing?
Speaker 1: I want to go back to this because we touched
Speaker 1: on it, but we did. I'm going to talk about
Speaker 1: this reparations.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. If you look at the impact that slavery had
Speaker 1: on this as the people, it's still lasting up to
Speaker 1: this day. You know, I was talking to my dad.
Speaker 1: My dad is seventy nine years old. He was just
Speaker 1: out here with me, shout out to Butch. But we
Speaker 1: were talking, and you know, he had a father who
Speaker 1: had a whole nother family in Tennessee. That was just
Speaker 1: the dynamic back then. It was just like he was
Speaker 1: just rolling around the South sowing his seed. And my
Speaker 1: dad was telling me, you know, is this as your
Speaker 1: parents get older, it's important to ask, you know, uncles, aunties, Hey,
Speaker 1: where is it that we from? Yeah, so I got
Speaker 1: a whole. My family is from Memphis, I got a whole.
Speaker 1: My grandmother was from there, and my grandfather was from there.
Speaker 1: But apparently my grandfather had a whole another family down
Speaker 1: there and had another family in Arkansas too, So he
Speaker 1: would disappear sometimes from my grandmother and them, who had
Speaker 1: ten kids with him. He would disappear for sometimes for
Speaker 1: a whole year and go off here, you know, playhouse
Speaker 1: or whatever like that. And I had and all the
Speaker 1: ways we got old ryankle. Disrespecting them is just the.
Speaker 3: Truth, right.
Speaker 1: I think all of that stuff, man, that's like a
Speaker 1: stud almost he gets around there so on to see.
Speaker 1: I think all of that stuff got embedded into our
Speaker 1: DNA somehow.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 1: We suffered a lot because of that shit. Man, We
Speaker 1: suffered a whole lot, man. And I feel like everybody
Speaker 1: else kind of gets taken care of. Like you know,
Speaker 1: if you and I don't want to say that, you
Speaker 1: can't say shit nowadays without getting in trouble. But if
Speaker 1: you come from another country, you can come over here
Speaker 1: and get all kind of helped open up a business
Speaker 1: and all that stuff. But no one is said. And
Speaker 1: the biggest is the thing I hate hearing, Well, that
Speaker 1: was so long ago. Why are you still so worried
Speaker 1: about it? It's like you bullshit. It wasn't your generations,
Speaker 1: Your people wiped out. We don't even know where the
Speaker 1: fuck we come from. What the fuck is black? Yeah,
Speaker 1: but they said they give red natives, they give them reparations,
Speaker 1: they give them big money, casinos, tax free status, and
Speaker 1: that happened long ago. They tried to play the longergo
Speaker 1: game with us. It wasn't that long ago. Man. Grandmother
Speaker 1: was alive when Harriet Tubman was alive, So we had
Speaker 1: people who were former slaves still alive in the nineteen sixties. Man, See,
Speaker 1: you come from the same kind of background I come from,
Speaker 1: because my grandmother had told me that her mom was
Speaker 1: just fresh out of slavery. And then in the Annabelle himself,
Speaker 1: a lot of that shit was still going on up
Speaker 1: intil the motherfucker forties. I mean they still got plantations
Speaker 1: down slaves was still going It was a lot of
Speaker 1: people who just were afraid to leave masters proverbial house
Speaker 1: that were still down there working for free. And then
Speaker 1: after slavery, they had the sharecropping thing, which was another
Speaker 1: former slavery because they were working for peanuts. So that
Speaker 1: legacy is still there. We've never been compensated for that,
Speaker 1: and we got to stand on it and demand the compensation.
Speaker 1: People thought we weren't gonna get out of slavery. When
Speaker 1: we said, hey, we need to get rid of the
Speaker 1: slavery thing, people said that's impossible. We did it. We
Speaker 1: actually fought they got to get out of slavery. That
Speaker 1: was something on aass roots level. Black people were fighting.
Speaker 1: You had maroons living in the swamp that were attacking plantations.
Speaker 1: Before the Civil War, you had the Seminal War, which
Speaker 1: was a black war down in Florida, where they essentially
Speaker 1: wiped out most of the plantations down there. They don't
Speaker 1: tell you about this. The US Army was down there
Speaker 1: trying to suppress the black people. They ended up sending
Speaker 1: a lot of black people to Oklahoma. We were fighting
Speaker 1: our way out of slavery in the nineteen sixties when
Speaker 1: people were saying, y'all ain't gonna get no civil rights,
Speaker 1: we fought and got civil rights. Whatever we focus on
Speaker 1: we can get, so we'll get reparation. We just got
Speaker 1: to stay focused. So just think about the absence of
Speaker 1: a black father and the home. It's almost like we're
Speaker 1: programmed because they come and tell a woman, hey, for
Speaker 1: every child you have, you're gonna get three four hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: So you have women go out and have a church
Speaker 1: full of kids. They're gonna move in the apartment. It's
Speaker 1: really not that bad, right, She's gonna pay fifty dollars
Speaker 1: a month. But guess what one of the main things
Speaker 1: is you can't have a game have a man here
Speaker 1: with you if you get a man and you lose
Speaker 1: all this. So now you got women of the mindset. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't even need a dude because and and the
Speaker 1: media was a big part of that too. In the sixties,
Speaker 1: when they were getting black men out of the house
Speaker 1: with these little Section eight welfare programs, they started putting
Speaker 1: on television shows with single black women, making that seem
Speaker 1: like it was cool. They had Diane Carroll do a
Speaker 1: show called Julia, She's a very beautiful black woman who
Speaker 1: was a single mother. That was new. They had a
Speaker 1: movie called Claudine. Same thing, Early Sex, Good Times, was
Speaker 1: supposed to be Florida Evans being a single mother, right
Speaker 1: she said no, no, no, I don't want to be
Speaker 1: a single mother. She went to the producers and said, no,
Speaker 1: give me a husband and James. They didn't want that
Speaker 1: image that James Evans. That image still resonates with us man.
Speaker 1: That's that was America's black dad. But they had to
Speaker 1: kill that image off and kill him off, and that
Speaker 1: messed with the psyche of a lot of us. Man,
Speaker 1: So that propaganda is real. Before we go, man, I
Speaker 1: just want to say something about being a father, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I loved my biological dad and I loved my dad
Speaker 1: to death, and I was angry at him for a
Speaker 1: long time until I started getting the understanding and talked
Speaker 1: to him about how he came up. Yeah, he had
Speaker 1: no blueprint, right, he had no blueprint.
Speaker 3: He was a dude.
Speaker 1: There was something from his own wounds, you know, his
Speaker 1: brothers and sisters getting separated and shuffled across homes, you know,
Speaker 1: different homes. That's what they would do if you, if
Speaker 1: the mama didn't have enough money to take care of
Speaker 1: the kids, they would just put you on Falster Care.
Speaker 3: Yeah, man, Yeah, they.
Speaker 1: Would just put you on Falster Care. So I had
Speaker 1: to forgive him because we got a lot of healing
Speaker 1: to do as black men in this country. Man. We
Speaker 1: all think we all suffered from some form of PTSD. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and nobody suffered from what we've suffered from, man, and
Speaker 1: we're told to get over it. Other groups, Man, they
Speaker 1: couldn't suffer the half of what we suffered, the stuff
Speaker 1: that we've survived.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 1: Growing up in these neighborhoods, growing up in the Comptons
Speaker 1: and places like that, these were like war zones and
Speaker 1: that was by design, man, And for cats to come
Speaker 1: out of all that slavery, yeah yeah, man, that was
Speaker 1: a societal plantation that they've created. They created those things,
Speaker 1: They created the economic deprivation and then say okay, here
Speaker 1: you go, and by the way, here's some crack, so
Speaker 1: y'all fight over that. And here's a train full of
Speaker 1: guns that we're gonna leave over here mysteriously, which is
Speaker 1: what they used to do all the time. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: these illegal guns would just pop up in these neighborhoods.
Speaker 1: So yeah, a lot of the stuff was orchestrated. And
Speaker 1: for anybody to come out of that with your right mind,
Speaker 1: that's a miracle right there. Well we have to start, man.
Speaker 1: That change starts with us man as directors. And because
Speaker 1: me and eight we working on some stuff right now, man,
Speaker 1: and I fell to him when he said, Man, if
Speaker 1: we go do something, I don't want to play the
Speaker 1: stereotypical dude. You know, I'm a grown man. I don't
Speaker 1: want to run around the pistols. So we could have
Speaker 1: them where he's a football coach. Yeah, yeah, doing good.
Speaker 1: Because they never show those images on TV. The brothers
Speaker 1: that do come out of jail and they because you
Speaker 1: know we both coached you football right and half my
Speaker 1: staff over period mo Man was former feelings, theys out
Speaker 1: there with their kids. Man shout out to what snoop
Speaker 1: to do with this?
Speaker 4: Wif actually change the dynamic of what what was done?
Speaker 4: You know, like you said, with your father, a lot
Speaker 4: of us grew up single moms. You get me, and
Speaker 4: like you said, the dynamic of what the situations was
Speaker 4: we never knew because we don't know the past of
Speaker 4: what our fathers and grandfathers went through. Uh to be
Speaker 4: able to have that direction to be better, but you
Speaker 4: can break that code.
Speaker 3: You get me. Look at your sons, look at my son.
Speaker 3: You get me.
Speaker 4: It probably be looked at as if our kids would
Speaker 4: probably follow with negative footsteps because of what we've done.
Speaker 4: What people look at what I've done. You get me
Speaker 4: where I come from gang banging and selling drugs and
Speaker 4: even with the image of who I.
Speaker 1: Was, and now he got a son that's playing college football.
Speaker 1: How dope is that? Man? So amazing? That's amazing.
Speaker 4: Just like you said, we have to change the dynamic
Speaker 4: and of what they tried to put us through. As
Speaker 4: far as taking taking the dads out of the homes
Speaker 4: and making women feel like, like you said, still, I don't.
Speaker 3: Even need a motherfucker today. You get me.
Speaker 4: It's hard to raise a kid, and especially as a
Speaker 4: young man, as a single mom, when he influences today
Speaker 4: that we have. Man, it's just it's just crazy, you know. So,
Speaker 4: and we got to understand, man, how we got here. Man,
Speaker 4: let's talk about LA in particular.
Speaker 1: Man. Look, in the nineteen sixties Central abaw Man, you
Speaker 1: had the Black Panthers, black men who said, Hey, we're
Speaker 1: gonna feed these children out here. We're gonna have a
Speaker 1: free breakfast program, we're gonna have an education program, We're
Speaker 1: gonna feed these kids. The Panthers with the guns. That
Speaker 1: wasn't the threat because all they did was changed the
Speaker 1: gun laws. They changed the California gun laws because of
Speaker 1: the Panthers. What these gun laws out here? So right
Speaker 1: right when they did it, because of the Panthers, and
Speaker 1: the NRA was in on it too. They were like, hey, listen,
Speaker 1: don't let them niggas have no guns. So that was
Speaker 1: neutralized the problem with the Panthers. When you start feeding people,
Speaker 1: that's nation building. They said, we got to get these
Speaker 1: niggas out of here. They started shooting up the headquarters
Speaker 1: of the Panthers. Right after that. That's when the gang
Speaker 1: started sprouting up. Because the splintered leadership, it was directionless.
Speaker 1: These young kids didn't have the Panther programs to go to,
Speaker 1: so they started to morph into gangs. Let me ask
Speaker 1: you this. It's a reparations march coming up, correct, Yeah,
Speaker 1: June fifteenth in Washington, DC, June fifteenth. Everybody's in support
Speaker 1: of reparations. We need to be out there, absolutely, indeed,
Speaker 1: we need because I really feel like you know, and
Speaker 1: that's why I get pissed off when people say, well,
Speaker 1: why did impact you?
Speaker 3: Man?
Speaker 1: Did you know how hard difficult? I'm not supposed to
Speaker 1: be here. Real talk, real talk. And man, we got
Speaker 1: so many out here in l A. We got so
Speaker 1: many homeless black people out here. Man, it's pathetic. We
Speaker 1: need to be compensated, man, because that stuff has been
Speaker 1: orchestra And who is the people? The people tethers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we call people people who are foreigner as we try
Speaker 1: to undermine our movement, we call them tethers. Just because
Speaker 1: you're a foreigner doesn't make you a tether. But we've
Speaker 1: called the tethers out because We have a lot of
Speaker 1: people who jump up and say, hey, we don't need reparations,
Speaker 1: and then we'll look in the background and this person's
Speaker 1: from the Congo somewhere, like you're not even qualified to
Speaker 1: get it's the deal right now. You know what I noticed?
Speaker 1: I told somebody because somebody I don't like the thing
Speaker 1: African American. A lot of them don't even like it.
Speaker 3: Yo.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we don't like using that term. And there's no disrespect.
Speaker 1: That term was put on us in nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 1: But Jesse Jackson, the Democratics, the Democrats wanted us to
Speaker 1: be comparable to immigrant groups. We just used to go
Speaker 1: buy black or color or whatever. But when they got
Speaker 1: Jesse Jackson to start labeling us African American, that made
Speaker 1: us comparable to Mexican American, Italian American, Asian American. So
Speaker 1: that almost made us like immigrants. So whatever we got,
Speaker 1: all of the other immigrant groups were supposed to get
Speaker 1: a part of the two. But we have a unique
Speaker 1: history here because we as foundational Black Americans, we built
Speaker 1: the country. We're the only non immigrants here. We have
Speaker 1: a very unique relationship to this land and that has
Speaker 1: to be recognized. Because I'm gonna tell you. I know
Speaker 1: I have a lot of family in England. So our
Speaker 1: family reunions were real interest and I got to find out.
Speaker 1: I know, I'm from the Igbo, from the Igbo tribe
Speaker 1: in Nigeria and all. Like I said, I had family
Speaker 1: in England that didn't even go through that pro They
Speaker 1: went straight to England. You feel what I'm saying. So
Speaker 1: it's a lot, man, We pretty much children were no country. No,
Speaker 1: this is no this is our land. We got to
Speaker 1: understand that we're not foreigners here. You know, there were
Speaker 1: black people on this land, thousands of you. But that's
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, and this is our land.
Speaker 1: Let's be very clear. California was named after a black woman,
Speaker 1: Queen Califia, all right. That's a mythological Moorish queen that
Speaker 1: the Spanish used to write books about. There were black
Speaker 1: Aboriginal people in California, the Mahave people, the Alone tribe.
Speaker 1: You look at pictures of them, they look like African tribes.
Speaker 1: That's why you don't see too much archaeological work done
Speaker 1: in North America. I always wondered that, man, because I
Speaker 1: always said, everybody can't be slaves man, right, because you
Speaker 1: know what, everybody didn't come over on slave ship. But
Speaker 1: that's what I think about that. We think about this though, too,
Speaker 1: think about all the slave ships that God took over. Right,
Speaker 1: many of the pirate ships were former slave ships. That's
Speaker 1: where the pirates were still in slave ships. And a
Speaker 1: lot of the pirates were actually black. But the story
Speaker 1: of millions of people being shipped over on ships that
Speaker 1: wouldn't make any sense because it takes about three four
Speaker 1: months for a ship to sail back there. And you
Speaker 1: talk about right now from then them rickety as ships
Speaker 1: the head back right at the numbers don't add Yeah,
Speaker 1: they don't add up. There were people who are black
Speaker 1: already here, they just enslaved them here. We got to
Speaker 1: really look at it from that perspective. There are books
Speaker 1: by people like von woot Now I've in Van Curtima
Speaker 1: who talk about the black people who were here thousands
Speaker 1: of years before Columbus. Again, like I said, they'll do
Speaker 1: archaeological work in Africa, Asia, you don't see too much
Speaker 1: archaeological work here because, as our brother James Small says,
Speaker 1: every time they put a shovel in the ground of
Speaker 1: North America, you're gonna dig up something black. Our DNA
Speaker 1: is real deeply rooted in North America.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 4: All they want to find here is some dinosaurs, right
Speaker 4: they're starting out, because what happens is, man, they start
Speaker 4: doing archaeological work and they start finding these native of
Speaker 4: Americans with all of this African and black DNA.
Speaker 1: Then they get real quiet about it. They act like, oh, ok,
Speaker 1: let's not really talk about that because we've been here
Speaker 1: for a long time. I'll tell you something that really
Speaker 1: had me laughing, man, And then we all had to
Speaker 1: because I know we're going over there. I appreciate you
Speaker 1: being patient. It was funny. I was in the grocery
Speaker 1: store with my wife the other day and I'm looking
Speaker 1: the things where they reconstructed this picture of Jesus and said, oh,
Speaker 1: we know how Jesus looked, and he looked like he
Speaker 1: was from England some damn We're had long blond hair, man,
Speaker 1: and it was just this white dude. Man. So we definitely, man,
Speaker 1: gotta fix a lot of stuff.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 1: I ain't even go get into that whole.
Speaker 3: Thing, you know.
Speaker 1: But because you definitely offend some people, Yeah, you had
Speaker 1: somebody pissed off. We had to tell you that you
Speaker 1: want to lost you all deal. You said, what mother
Speaker 1: like they be all your fault to borrow man. I really, man,
Speaker 1: we really support what you doing, man, and appreciate you
Speaker 1: coming on man, and you dropped a lot of knowledge
Speaker 1: on here. Man. I got some good some game from
Speaker 1: you guys. And eight because I'm a big I'm a
Speaker 1: uc I'm a huge hip hop fan. Oh yeah for sure.
Speaker 1: So all of this stuff, I'm just soaking it in.
Speaker 1: That's why I was just letting you roll when yeah,
Speaker 1: like I said, we got to let people know. You know,
Speaker 1: it's other ship that goes on as far as even
Speaker 1: though we represent the streets and we come from whatever,
Speaker 1: you still got a motherfucking uh. You still got a
Speaker 1: motherfucking give people some some real knowledgeable man. Somebody got
Speaker 1: to be the adults. We can't be on here this
Speaker 1: people are so and this and all the time.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: And in this movie Microphone Check, you know, it's about
Speaker 1: the origin of hip hop, particularly in the East Coast,
Speaker 1: and I want to do I want to do a
Speaker 1: West Coast version of it next because the history of
Speaker 1: West Coast hip hop, man as it ties into the
Speaker 1: gang culture, Uncle Jam's Army, all that, all of that
Speaker 1: stuff that has to be told too, that's never been
Speaker 1: told the way it should be told. I want to
Speaker 1: get aid in that and.
Speaker 4: Do a lot of stories where we start off from
Speaker 4: the Linzo and the Easy and Nwa era. But like
Speaker 4: you said, it was a lot of it was a
Speaker 4: lot of shit going on before then, and like you said,
Speaker 4: that needs that story has to be told about the
Speaker 4: foundation of West Coast hip hop because everybody looks at
Speaker 4: you know, of course we all recognize with what you know,
Speaker 4: New York did for US and East Coast and whatever,
Speaker 4: but we don't go in depth on those stories about
Speaker 4: LA and West Coast hip hop before the Easy Doctor
Speaker 4: Dre era, you get me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like it's almost like cut off, right, And
Speaker 1: many of the dances came from here man, yet they
Speaker 1: still do today. Cass was doing that in the early
Speaker 1: seventies out of here man, So that has to be cold.
Speaker 1: And also the gang influence definitely that you know what, man,
Speaker 1: I used to pop back in the day, believe it
Speaker 1: or not. I used to be a locker and that
Speaker 1: was my biggest thing looking at the dudes on the
Speaker 1: West Coast, seeing those guys. Yeah, and they were so
Speaker 1: fluid with it. Man. It was amazing, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean? It was amazing. Man. How can the people
Speaker 1: get in.
Speaker 3: Touch with you?
Speaker 1: Yo?
Speaker 3: Man?
Speaker 1: Go check out the movie Microphone Check at microphone check
Speaker 1: dot com. Check out the rally for Reparations we got
Speaker 1: coming up in June. That's rally, the number four Reparations
Speaker 1: Rally for Reparations dot com. And just support all this stuff. Man,
Speaker 1: y'all follow me on Twitter at Tarik Nashid. I would
Speaker 1: definitely be at the rally, Yes, sir, where's the Where's
Speaker 1: they gonna be it again? That's gonna be Freedom Plaza, Washington, DC, Saturday,
Speaker 1: June fifteenth, And we got Big Daddy Kane performing out there.
Speaker 1: We should probably organize something out here too. Man. We
Speaker 1: need to, like really man, because I'm gonna tell you,
Speaker 1: if you tell people to show up for some bullshit,
Speaker 1: they go show up for Every black person in this
Speaker 1: country need to be there. They got to jumping cars
Speaker 1: together and carpool up there. Yes, indeed, and get up there.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 1: I'm my shoot. Man. I might organize something myself man
Speaker 1: and get some people out there, man, but leve get
Speaker 1: on the buff. We got homies that got the class licensed. Man,
Speaker 1: let's rent a bus man and six people out there. Man.
Speaker 1: We appreciate you. Man, I appreciate y'all having me on that.
Speaker 1: Oh for sure. Man, y'all make sure man, y'all like subscribe,
Speaker 1: leave for common and all that other good stuff. Man,
Speaker 1: and we out of here. Well, that concludes another episode
Speaker 1: of the gainst the Chronicles podcast. Be sure to download
Speaker 1: the iHeart app and subscribe to The Gangster Chronicles podcast
Speaker 1: For Apple users, find a purple mica on the front
Speaker 1: of your screen, subscribe to the show, leave of comment
Speaker 1: and rating. Executive producers for The Gangster Chronicles podcasts Norman Steelled,
Speaker 1: Aaron m c a Tyler. Our visual media director is
Speaker 1: Brian Whatt, and the audio editors tell It Heyes. The
Speaker 1: Gangster Chronicles is a production of iHeartMedia Network and The
Speaker 1: Black Effect podcast Network. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts wherever you're listening
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