Latest / The Breakfast Club / LL COOL J & The Roots Discuss The Art Of Hip-Hop, Ownership, Lyrical Rivalries + More
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Owning everybody.
- 0:00Speaker 2: It's stee J M V Charlamagne to God. We are
- 0:03Speaker 2: the Breakfast Club.
- 0:04Speaker 3: Now.
- 0:04Speaker 1: We got some special guests in the buildings, some legends,
- 0:07Speaker 1: some icons.
- 0:08Speaker 4: Of course, we got the Roots Black Thought and Quest
- 0:10Speaker 4: Love Welcome.
- 0:11Speaker 3: Everybody is black from the roots.
- 0:15Speaker 1: They've been up here before.
- 0:16Speaker 2: And we got another icon that's never been up here before,
- 0:19Speaker 2: the legendary icon L L cool J Welcome Queen Tim
- 0:25Speaker 2: his first time.
- 0:26Speaker 1: First time LL stand for a living legend at this point,
- 0:30Speaker 1: I appreciate that absolutely, absolutely. So let's first start with
- 0:33Speaker 1: you know, why you guys are here together, because people
- 0:35Speaker 1: are like, well, why is LL and the Roots together?
- 0:37Speaker 1: So you guys are going on the road on the tour. Yeah,
- 0:40Speaker 1: so how did this all come about?
- 0:43Speaker 3: Wow?
- 0:44Speaker 5: Who's whose version?
- 0:46Speaker 3: Really? Who ensure?
- 0:49Speaker 6: You know, the planet Center stars sort of aligned themselves
- 0:52Speaker 6: and and you made it possible for us to work
- 0:55Speaker 6: together on this huge segment that we did for the
- 0:58Speaker 6: Grammys this year. And I think you know, from that
- 1:01Speaker 6: the idea of us always having wanted to, you know,
- 1:04Speaker 6: work together in some way, just you know, it opened
- 1:08Speaker 6: the collaborative path and it was like, Yo, why don't
- 1:10Speaker 6: we try to.
- 1:11Speaker 3: Take this show on the road.
- 1:12Speaker 5: It was huge.
- 1:12Speaker 6: What we did just in that one fifteen minute segment
- 1:15Speaker 6: was so huge for the culture. And you know, this
- 1:18Speaker 6: being hip hop's fiftieth anniversary, and you know that that
- 1:22Speaker 6: whole deal, it made sense to try and you know,
- 1:24Speaker 6: do something celebratory in that way.
- 1:26Speaker 3: You know, from region to region. You know.
- 1:29Speaker 2: The great thing about hip hop fifty is a lot
- 1:31Speaker 2: of these stories that we haven't heard or that we've
- 1:35Speaker 2: heard whispers are coming to light like and you're starting
- 1:38Speaker 2: to see more and more and more and more videos.
- 1:40Speaker 2: I was online yesterday and it was just random because
- 1:44Speaker 2: I DJ for Havoc the other night in Queen's Bridge,
- 1:46Speaker 2: and it was one of the most amazing things for
- 1:48Speaker 2: me because it's Queen's Bridge and it's Havoc right when
- 1:51Speaker 2: he did shook Ones. I just seen the original and
- 1:52Speaker 2: I'm just googling, and then I see a video of
- 1:54Speaker 2: quest Love looking at Jazzy Jeff play the original right
- 1:58Speaker 2: and go through the samples. And then I was looking
- 2:00Speaker 2: at another video the other day and it was talking
- 2:02Speaker 2: about LL talking about Biggie and he was in the
- 2:05Speaker 2: studio when he wrote.
- 2:07Speaker 3: Who shot you?
- 2:08Speaker 7: I shot you?
- 2:08Speaker 3: I shot shot you? Who shot you?
- 2:10Speaker 2: And then I was talking about another another video I seen,
- 2:12Speaker 2: and somebody was saying.
- 2:13Speaker 1: That Biggie had beef with the Roots back then. So
- 2:16Speaker 1: because people can't hear, these stories are amazing, can we
- 2:20Speaker 1: put that one to rescue ones in ball the Biggie beef?
- 2:24Speaker 1: People don't know, like the the Goots from different strip right,
- 2:27Speaker 1: It's just you know, you could tell it was like
- 2:29Speaker 1: born before seventy eight and after seventy eight, like it's
- 2:34Speaker 1: that generation thing. Anyone after seventy eight is like, oh
- 2:36Speaker 1: the Roots.
- 2:37Speaker 5: No, it was never And even when.
- 2:38Speaker 8: Y'all did the video for what they do, I think
- 2:41Speaker 8: people don't realize all of hip hop, well not all
- 2:43Speaker 8: of hip hop, but a large portion of hip hop
- 2:45Speaker 8: was that player lifestyles.
- 2:47Speaker 7: Oh yeah, And folks didn't like that at the time.
- 2:49Speaker 3: Oh yeah. I mean you know it was a choice.
- 2:51Speaker 3: You know some people did, did y'all?
- 2:57Speaker 5: That's not good, y'all, y'all are to.
- 3:01Speaker 6: Did we catch any flax from there? I mean, you know,
- 3:04Speaker 6: Big was so chill man.
- 3:05Speaker 3: Here's the thing. Big was a huge Roots fan and
- 3:08Speaker 3: he always made that known.
- 3:09Speaker 6: Anybody that I ever met from Junior Mafia, Little SE's,
- 3:12Speaker 6: Little Kim anybody remotely related to Big, they would always
- 3:16Speaker 6: lead with Big as a huge roots fan. When I
- 3:18Speaker 6: met Big, uh, he came out and sank silent treatment
- 3:21Speaker 6: to us, like that was his intro to the roots.
- 3:24Speaker 6: So he definitely he did feel a way. But I mean,
- 3:26Speaker 6: he wasn't gonna be like, yo, like why'd you play me?
- 3:29Speaker 6: Because he didn't feel enough of a way to feel played.
- 3:32Speaker 6: But what he did was he did an interview. I
- 3:35Speaker 6: can't remember what publication it was, but he did. He
- 3:37Speaker 6: did an interview one interview where he may mention of it,
- 3:39Speaker 6: and what he said was he said, look, it's not
- 3:41Speaker 6: like I'm going to, you know, go after the roots
- 3:44Speaker 6: like the roots.
- 3:44Speaker 3: He like, I'm a huge roots fan. I'm not going
- 3:46Speaker 3: to you know, do x Y and Z.
- 3:48Speaker 6: But then he said that, but I can't speak for Brooklyn,
- 3:57Speaker 6: you know, but yeah, you know, you know, definitely Big
- 4:01Speaker 6: Rest and power Man and uh that that was definitely resolved.
- 4:04Speaker 3: We had a chance might have a different opinion, right, right, We.
- 4:07Speaker 6: Had a chance to you know, to resolve it, you know,
- 4:09Speaker 6: because it was it was stupid, you.
- 4:10Speaker 7: Know what I mean, you never regret doing that video.
- 4:13Speaker 3: I didn't regret doing a video I just you know,
- 4:16Speaker 3: I just wish I had been more informed, you know,
- 4:19Speaker 3: and forward. It was. It was definitely a teachable moment,
- 4:22Speaker 3: you know what I'm saying.
- 4:24Speaker 1: At the time, like I will say, like I was
- 4:26Speaker 1: really neglectful about like our martwork or videos of those things.
- 4:30Speaker 1: It was more like, all right, where do we stand?
- 4:32Speaker 1: Or this is what we do? And it didn't even
- 4:35Speaker 1: really occur to us like we might be ruffling feathers
- 4:38Speaker 1: or you know, of that level.
- 4:40Speaker 5: No.
- 4:40Speaker 3: I mean, you see the look at the video, and
- 4:43Speaker 3: I understand why they would.
- 4:46Speaker 6: It looks that way you could say you had to know,
- 4:48Speaker 6: but not like we. We didn't we literally, you know
- 4:50Speaker 6: what I'm saying. I was, I'll be focused on my
- 4:52Speaker 6: own ship. So I'm not I'm not about I'm not
- 4:54Speaker 6: the I'm not always abreast with you know what I mean,
- 4:57Speaker 6: Like the I mean for for you know, just kind
- 4:59Speaker 6: of petition's sake, and you know, just to stay up
- 5:02Speaker 6: on what's going on with you. I don't be I
- 5:03Speaker 6: don't know your video set being you know what I'm saying, respectfully,
- 5:07Speaker 6: you know what I'm saying, I don't you know, I'm
- 5:08Speaker 6: I was on my own ship. So it was very much.
- 5:10Speaker 6: Where do I stand? And you know what I mean,
- 5:12Speaker 6: we were it was it was business and it was
- 5:14Speaker 6: just transaction on that way. And then and then in
- 5:16Speaker 6: that in that video, everything was nonspecific except.
- 5:20Speaker 3: For just this one scene. And you know, I had
- 5:23Speaker 3: no idea.
- 5:23Speaker 6: I was like, why would I try to single out
- 5:25Speaker 6: you know what I'm saying like one of my peers
- 5:26Speaker 6: to to you know, I mean no knowing me over
- 5:30Speaker 6: the past thirty forty years that we've been doing what
- 5:32Speaker 6: we do.
- 5:33Speaker 3: That that that just doesn't speak to my character.
- 5:35Speaker 4: Now, lady ladies, love cool James.
- 5:38Speaker 2: Now, what what got you into We're gonna start you
- 5:40Speaker 2: from the beginning because it's your first time here. What
- 5:43Speaker 2: got you into hip hop? And said you know what
- 5:45Speaker 2: I want to be MC? Where where did the love
- 5:46Speaker 2: come from? As a kid from Queens and say this
- 5:49Speaker 2: is what I want to do?
- 5:51Speaker 3: You know into the mic? Can you can you hear me?
- 5:54Speaker 5: Yep? So you know when those first wave of tapes
- 5:57Speaker 5: came around, like you know, Cold Crush Brother and Fantastic
- 6:01Speaker 5: Romantic five and Foursome Seas and then you know Treacherous Three,
- 6:06Speaker 5: you know, Grand Master, Furious five and all of those
- 6:09Speaker 5: groups when they were just tapes run around, you know,
- 6:12Speaker 5: Harlem World tapes, and then the songs came later. That
- 6:16Speaker 5: was the first time that I heard, you know, young
- 6:19Speaker 5: black kids sounding powered. It was the first time that
- 6:22Speaker 5: I heard, you know, or could envision us doing something great,
- 6:26Speaker 5: because before that, all the images I had seen were
- 6:29Speaker 5: us like handcuffed, being put in a police car or
- 6:32Speaker 5: some sort of charge or you know. So that empowering feeling,
- 6:37Speaker 5: you know, the braggadocio thing that you know that we
- 6:40Speaker 5: really focused on came not from a place of looking
- 6:44Speaker 5: down on high on people, but more about I could
- 6:47Speaker 5: be somebody, you know what I'm saying. The world looks
- 6:49Speaker 5: at me and like I'm invisible. My friends up the
- 6:51Speaker 5: block get killed, and nobody says anything. So when I'm
- 6:54Speaker 5: bragging and I'm boasting, what I'm really doing is saying, hey,
- 6:57Speaker 5: look at me, I exist, you know what I'm saying.
- 6:59Speaker 5: So for me, that was, you know, a real special
- 7:04Speaker 5: thing and a spectacular thing. I mean, I'm eight, I'm
- 7:06Speaker 5: nine years old. I'm ten years old, and I'm being
- 7:08Speaker 5: introduced to this thing and I just completely fell in
- 7:10Speaker 5: love with it. And then you know, you know, eight nine,
- 7:13Speaker 5: I'm a fan of the wrap. My grandfather broughts me
- 7:16Speaker 5: some equipment at eleven. I'm DJing, I'm messing around with that,
- 7:19Speaker 5: but I'm still rhyming, and I'm going back and forth,
- 7:21Speaker 5: and then you know, eventually one thing led to another
- 7:24Speaker 5: and you know, here we are, def jam and the
- 7:28Speaker 5: whole whole nine.
- 7:28Speaker 8: Do you consider yourself a founding father of hip hop?
- 7:31Speaker 8: Because you know, people always gonna say, you know, cool her,
- 7:34Speaker 8: you know, Grandma's to Flash, people like that, But as
- 7:36Speaker 8: far as hip hop as we know now, I would say,
- 7:38Speaker 8: you and run DMC.
- 7:39Speaker 5: Yeah, So so I'm you know, I'm definitely generation one
- 7:42Speaker 5: point five. You know what I'm saying. You got to
- 7:44Speaker 5: give Flash and HERK and Force and all. The grant
- 7:48Speaker 5: was the Theodore They're due. The thing that myself from
- 7:51Speaker 5: run DMC did, what we did is we took it
- 7:54Speaker 5: to the world. We took it global, you know what
- 7:56Speaker 5: I'm saying. We took it from the city and took
- 7:58Speaker 5: it around the world, you know what I'm say saying.
- 8:00Speaker 5: And that was the difference. So they they brought it.
- 8:03Speaker 5: They took it from from the Bronx and Harlem, you know,
- 8:06Speaker 5: out to the Five Boroughs and you know, around the
- 8:09Speaker 5: world somewhat on a slow on a on a you know,
- 8:13Speaker 5: not quite as they didn't penetrate the market quite as deeply.
- 8:16Speaker 5: Then we took it and made it global.
- 8:18Speaker 6: And I think I think from from a Philadelphia standpoint too,
- 8:23Speaker 6: you know, just from the outside looking then with that
- 8:26Speaker 6: that one point five generation with with you and and
- 8:29Speaker 6: alltist like running du that was our first time sort of.
- 8:32Speaker 3: Seeing our own reflection exact stage.
- 8:35Speaker 6: It was like, you know, like again, I was a
- 8:37Speaker 6: huge fan of all the other founding fathers, but they
- 8:39Speaker 6: didn't look like people from around my way, you know
- 8:41Speaker 6: what I'm saying. And when I saw a run jam
- 8:43Speaker 6: Master j L, they looked like the corner boys. Like
- 8:46Speaker 6: that was outside and I saw myself in that. So
- 8:49Speaker 6: you know that that's where a lot of the inspiration
- 8:50Speaker 6: for me to do what I what I do came from.
- 8:52Speaker 3: Not to mention you know, ella.
- 8:55Speaker 1: You know, L is very modest, but L literally invented
- 9:00Speaker 1: what I call postmodern hip hop, like the three minute
- 9:04Speaker 1: rap song sixteen bar like before LL even Run DMC's
- 9:11Speaker 1: first album, Like it's like that's like eight minutes, like
- 9:13Speaker 1: seven verses, you know what I mean. Like LL literally
- 9:16Speaker 1: invented the sixteen you know, maybe the twenty fourth the course,
- 9:21Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like, oh, the song has
- 9:23Speaker 1: courses on it.
- 9:24Speaker 3: So I love rap.
- 9:26Speaker 1: Yeah, like literally emotions on rep Like he's he's pioneered
- 9:32Speaker 1: for like so so many things that he never gets
- 9:34Speaker 1: credit for, and I think, like he's so good at it,
- 9:38Speaker 1: you know, like you roll your eyes when like Steph
- 9:40Speaker 1: Curry just like any shot goes in with Steph Curry
- 9:43Speaker 1: and it's sort of like you're like, Okay, yeah, yeah,
- 9:45Speaker 1: you're good.
- 9:46Speaker 3: It's like it well black thought, killsh it again on
- 9:48Speaker 3: another joint.
- 9:53Speaker 5: No, but it's lots of given.
- 9:55Speaker 1: But what you're saying, it's like that, and oftentimes think
- 9:59Speaker 1: amazing shit, look at listen, right, And oftentimes the thing,
- 10:03Speaker 1: especially now that I'm in more of the business of
- 10:08Speaker 1: rear view mirrors, like looking at his history and like
- 10:13Speaker 1: I'm also on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame committee,
- 10:16Speaker 1: like the people that nominate the people that get in,
- 10:18Speaker 1: and you know, even in trying to get him nominated,
- 10:22Speaker 1: I was like, yo, like we're really like penalizing people
- 10:26Speaker 1: for being too good, like too effortless, Like he's he
- 10:29Speaker 1: was like the first teen idol, the first, Like there's
- 10:32Speaker 1: so many first with him that you just you take
- 10:34Speaker 1: it for granted.
- 10:34Speaker 8: So you think because people are prison of the moment,
- 10:37Speaker 8: like you know, it seems like that whole era, especially
- 10:40Speaker 8: that started in the eighties, don't necessarily get the credit issue.
- 10:43Speaker 1: It's not and people just don't look at it as art.
- 10:47Speaker 5: And that's the thing, like we have to.
- 10:48Speaker 1: Now, that's the one lesson I learned, especially like in
- 10:51Speaker 1: when we were organizing the Grammy thing. You know, you're
- 10:55Speaker 1: using words like your legacy, your history or whatever. And
- 10:57Speaker 1: you know, I understand sometimes with artists, like there's a
- 11:00Speaker 1: bunch of eye rolling and I don't care about this
- 11:03Speaker 1: like that sort of thing because for a lot of
- 11:05Speaker 1: us like this just this is survival and you know,
- 11:09Speaker 1: but what it really is is it's art and it's
- 11:11Speaker 1: our lives.
- 11:12Speaker 3: And so.
- 11:14Speaker 1: I think what we need to do, especially as whatever stages.
- 11:18Speaker 1: I don't want to say elder statesman because hip hop
- 11:20Speaker 1: soil ages, but.
- 11:21Speaker 7: Oh geez, yeah, I take it off.
- 11:26Speaker 3: I take other statesmen.
- 11:29Speaker 1: So that said, it's like we need to collectively like
- 11:34Speaker 1: really start looking at this like art high art, you
- 11:38Speaker 1: know what I mean, And especially now where we're all
- 11:41Speaker 1: just dying by the thousands, you know, like we can't
- 11:44Speaker 1: take it for granted. So like he's in fine form,
- 11:48Speaker 1: like in fighting shape.
- 11:49Speaker 5: And you know, I.
- 11:51Speaker 4: Was gonna ask when when you you talked about deaf Jam.
- 11:53Speaker 4: So let's talk about that.
- 11:55Speaker 2: When they when they came to you with a contract
- 11:57Speaker 2: to sign, do you remember what's your first contract like
- 12:00Speaker 2: and how much they gave you?
- 12:01Speaker 5: Yeah, well, I mean talk about that for you know,
- 12:04Speaker 5: you know, you got to remember that. So, so deaf
- 12:08Speaker 5: Cham was a production company. There was no label. Okay,
- 12:11Speaker 5: It's Yours by Tila Rock was on Party Times street
- 12:14Speaker 5: Wise label. It was deaf Cham Productions, which was Rick
- 12:17Speaker 5: was the producer along with Jazzy J. And it was
- 12:21Speaker 5: so it was it was more than a contract. They
- 12:23Speaker 5: were actually forming a label. Rick was having a problem,
- 12:26Speaker 5: you know him, and he was having problems getting his
- 12:29Speaker 5: money from the other label he was dealing with.
- 12:31Speaker 7: So they wanted to start this new thing.
- 12:33Speaker 5: So you know that first contract, you know, at the time,
- 12:37Speaker 5: you know, I had we split the publishing.
- 12:41Speaker 7: They gave me like fifty thousand.
- 12:44Speaker 5: But but before that, actually, my first single I ever made,
- 12:47Speaker 5: I didn't have a contract when I made I Need
- 12:49Speaker 5: a Beat, which was the very first song I ever made.
- 12:51Speaker 5: I had no contract. It was just like, yo, let's
- 12:53Speaker 5: just get it and we'll figure it out.
- 12:55Speaker 7: You know what I'm saying.
- 12:56Speaker 5: Sometimes you gotta be willing to crawl over the barb
- 12:58Speaker 5: wire fence with no shirt on, you know what I'm saying,
- 13:00Speaker 5: to get what you want.
- 13:01Speaker 7: So I did that and then, you know, with no
- 13:11Speaker 7: shirt on.
- 13:12Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying. By the end of the story,
- 13:14Speaker 3: I have one hundred lls. I'm number six already.
- 13:19Speaker 7: That was what it was. And you know it wasn't Listen, man.
- 13:23Speaker 3: How old were you at this point?
- 13:25Speaker 5: Sixteen? I was sixteen when I mean yeah, when we
- 13:28Speaker 5: started death Jairing, I was sixteen. So my first song,
- 13:30Speaker 5: you know, when I may rock the bells or sixteen seventeen.
- 13:33Speaker 5: You know, why do people see so much about why
- 13:36Speaker 5: people seem way more mature back because I was like
- 13:38Speaker 5: kind of like in that that Kobe kind of you know,
- 13:41Speaker 5: straight out of pros, trade out of high school into
- 13:43Speaker 5: the pros as opposed to like kid rappers, like you
- 13:46Speaker 5: do have kid rappers who are fifteen sixteen and their
- 13:48Speaker 5: kid rappers.
- 13:49Speaker 7: I wasn't that I was ready for the big leagues.
- 13:51Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying, Because you were out in
- 13:53Speaker 1: the streets, you were out around the local drug dealers.
- 13:55Speaker 4: You've seen what was going on.
- 13:57Speaker 3: Well, that's queen was ed.
- 14:03Speaker 5: Was a bunch of hosts and put that out.
- 14:05Speaker 3: Yo.
- 14:06Speaker 7: Now you know what it was is that all of
- 14:10Speaker 7: my I was listening to my heroes.
- 14:11Speaker 5: I was listening to the dudes that was really spitting
- 14:14Speaker 5: and it was going hard and there was no holding back.
- 14:18Speaker 5: And you don't get that. You don't get the right.
- 14:21Speaker 3: You know.
- 14:21Speaker 5: One thing about the inner city that's funny is like
- 14:23Speaker 5: once you walk out on the block, you really don't
- 14:25Speaker 5: get an opportunity to be a little kid.
- 14:27Speaker 4: Correct.
- 14:28Speaker 5: You know what I'm saying, Like, you know, we're gonna
- 14:30Speaker 5: treat you, sir where you get. You got. You had
- 14:32Speaker 5: that one dude to treat you like a little kid.
- 14:34Speaker 5: Everybody else is like and what So when I stepped
- 14:37Speaker 5: on the court, you know what I'm saying, When I
- 14:39Speaker 5: stepped in the ring of hip hop, it was just yo,
- 14:42Speaker 5: this is what it is, you know. So I just
- 14:44Speaker 5: went for it, man, and I love it so much.
- 14:47Speaker 5: I signed a ten album deal. What yeah, and it
- 14:50Speaker 5: was it was I remember going home saying to my mother, MA,
- 14:53Speaker 5: guess what, and they're gonna make let me make ten hours.
- 14:56Speaker 5: And I blew through them ten albums like nothing. And see,
- 14:59Speaker 5: see the thing when you do it for love, the
- 15:01Speaker 5: rest of everything else happens. Remember when you see people
- 15:04Speaker 5: in the in the in the locker room after the
- 15:06Speaker 5: NBA Championship and they got the cigars in the champagne,
- 15:09Speaker 5: that's because they loved the game all day life and
- 15:11Speaker 5: they really worked hard and they really had fun. The
- 15:13Speaker 5: contracts in the champagne and the cigars come later. So
- 15:15Speaker 5: all of the things that all of the accolades that
- 15:17Speaker 5: people see me with, that's because I love it so much.
- 15:20Speaker 5: I didn't get into this to get paid, even and
- 15:23Speaker 5: I did get paid. Did you ever feel like you
- 15:25Speaker 5: should have had like equity and depth Jam? I did
- 15:28Speaker 5: have equity in Death Jam. I did have equity and
- 15:30Speaker 5: Death Jam. I just sold it a little early. But
- 15:32Speaker 5: I definitely had ownership in Death Jam, ownership in Foobu.
- 15:37Speaker 5: You know, I have ownership in NCIS Los Angeles, ownership
- 15:41Speaker 5: and lip Sync.
- 15:42Speaker 7: Battle I have.
- 15:43Speaker 5: You know, I own my catalog, you know, like so
- 15:48Speaker 5: the things that I do, you know, I did well,
- 15:51Speaker 5: but I didn't do it for the money.
- 15:54Speaker 2: And where did you get the business mind from? Was
- 15:55Speaker 2: it was it your mom's? Was it you know, an uncle?
- 15:58Speaker 5: Like?
- 15:58Speaker 4: Where did you get that? Because I don't think a
- 15:59Speaker 4: lot of people were thinking ownership back then. They were
- 16:01Speaker 4: just thinking I need to blow.
- 16:02Speaker 5: Up, you know what? You know what I've learned man?
- 16:04Speaker 5: You know, like, and people may have heard me say
- 16:06Speaker 5: this before. You know, if a homeless man tell you
- 16:08Speaker 5: not to do push ups in traffic, you should listen
- 16:10Speaker 5: because you might get ran over. A lot of times
- 16:12Speaker 5: people are like, yo, yo. A lot of people are like, yo,
- 16:15Speaker 5: you homeless?
- 16:16Speaker 3: What do you know? All right?
- 16:17Speaker 5: Brown today in the news. So it's like, so so
- 16:25Speaker 5: the business thing I learned from people before me and
- 16:27Speaker 5: after me, I hear, oh oh, you know you just
- 16:32Speaker 5: stay cheerious and then you ask questions and then being
- 16:35Speaker 5: blessed by the grace of God to be so successful
- 16:38Speaker 5: for so long that I got a lot of bites
- 16:40Speaker 5: at the apples, so at the apples, So any mistakes
- 16:43Speaker 5: that I may have made got a chance to be
- 16:45Speaker 5: corrected because I just, you know, because of the amount
- 16:48Speaker 5: of time that I'm able to be successful.
- 16:50Speaker 7: You know what I'm saying, because you got to remember,
- 16:52Speaker 7: you know.
- 16:54Speaker 5: I've been professional since eighty four, professional now in terms
- 16:58Speaker 5: of as in pop. It was, you know, way back
- 17:03Speaker 5: before that, and I was already ready. See think about it,
- 17:06Speaker 5: you know, because you gotta get ready. So it's just
- 17:08Speaker 5: a matter of just being curious. You know, reading is
- 17:12Speaker 5: my hobby, you know what I'm saying. That's always been
- 17:14Speaker 5: my favorite thing to do.
- 17:15Speaker 1: That was the Monica Ladies Love cool j Right. Did
- 17:19Speaker 1: you always feel like these dudes gonna think I'm sweet?
- 17:21Speaker 1: So I'm gonna I have to have these these rhyms
- 17:24Speaker 1: in the corner just in case.
- 17:25Speaker 5: The Ladies Love cool Ja thing was just wish for thinking.
- 17:29Speaker 5: You know, I'm fifteen on one girls, I'm Ladies love
- 17:31Speaker 5: cool Jack. It was. It wasn't really that ended up
- 17:36Speaker 5: not being true. It didn't have to be that like
- 17:40Speaker 5: people took that a little. It just kind of worked out.
- 17:42Speaker 5: Let ill cool Jack. I hope lady, you know what
- 17:49Speaker 5: I mean.
- 17:49Speaker 7: But you never rebelled against the sex symbol image. I
- 17:52Speaker 7: saw no like.
- 17:54Speaker 5: I mean, look, I made I need love because I
- 17:56Speaker 5: like girls. I made like rock the bells because I
- 17:58Speaker 5: like to do the hard ship. You know, I don't
- 18:01Speaker 5: I don't have I don't understand really, you know, like
- 18:06Speaker 5: for like me growing up, I like girls, right, so
- 18:09Speaker 5: I don't understand like what we're really talking about when
- 18:12Speaker 5: you think about it, like what are we talking about?
- 18:14Speaker 5: Like if we're in the car, Like we're not going
- 18:15Speaker 5: to talk about no girls, we're not doing that. You're
- 18:18Speaker 5: not with that, y'all don't want to go to that state?
- 18:22Speaker 3: What should we do?
- 18:23Speaker 5: Should we play corners in the car like the whole time,
- 18:27Speaker 5: whole ride, like how you know, how we move? So
- 18:30Speaker 5: that's why I never had a problem with that, and I,
- 18:33Speaker 5: you know, and then leading that.
- 18:36Speaker 7: It's all love, you know, I don't have no.
- 18:39Speaker 1: I think it's important though, because it's like what what
- 18:44Speaker 1: that what those songs really represent is like vulnerability, which
- 18:50Speaker 1: you aren't allowed to do that in the hood because
- 18:53Speaker 1: you'll be seen as weak or an easy target. But
- 18:57Speaker 1: I guarantee you anyone.
- 19:00Speaker 5: You know, you know what question honestly, let me tell
- 19:03Speaker 5: you something. What the you know the dudes that that
- 19:07Speaker 5: feel like they'll be perceived as weak or target with
- 19:11Speaker 5: that kind of when they're dealing in that area, they
- 19:14Speaker 5: all weak, like they are weak, bro, Like, Like, let
- 19:18Speaker 5: me tell you something that like that shit, you know,
- 19:21Speaker 5: doing putting I.
- 19:22Speaker 3: Need love out of me.
- 19:23Speaker 5: Doing love songs is the equivalent of me walking into
- 19:26Speaker 5: projects with a neck full of jury. Yeah, it's the
- 19:30Speaker 5: same thing, because you know, you open and you know
- 19:34Speaker 5: it's what it is. You know what I'm saying. So
- 19:36Speaker 5: there is no nervous noodle like with that. Like it
- 19:39Speaker 5: ain't even about that. Like I don't even think that way,
- 19:42Speaker 5: because my thing is, here's here's the strength isn't doing
- 19:45Speaker 5: what you want to do artistically.
- 19:47Speaker 1: That's where the strength is. I do what I want
- 19:50Speaker 1: to do artistically.
- 19:51Speaker 5: I don't do what they say I should do because
- 19:54Speaker 5: then I'm not being me.
- 19:55Speaker 1: I'm fronting. I'm being somebody else. Right, So I don't
- 19:58Speaker 1: even think like that. That's why I.
- 20:00Speaker 5: Could be in a picture smiling. Don't make me feel weak,
- 20:03Speaker 5: you know, go do a TV.
- 20:04Speaker 3: Show, cessiment street. I've done it too right.
- 20:07Speaker 5: We can do all that right.
- 20:09Speaker 7: We could do these things right because you don't limit yourself.
- 20:12Speaker 5: See I think that you know, and I just say,
- 20:15Speaker 5: just a lot of young men in general, never limit.
- 20:18Speaker 7: Yourself to to to the to.
- 20:21Speaker 5: The what others, the perception of what other people think
- 20:26Speaker 5: you should be, right, don't limit yourself to that be yourself, right?
- 20:30Speaker 2: Does that have a body with both of y'all that
- 20:33Speaker 2: you know, yell are so legendary and hip hop, but
- 20:35Speaker 2: people might not look at you as a rapper. They
- 20:37Speaker 2: might just look at you as an actor, or people
- 20:38Speaker 2: might not look at y'all as the roots as in
- 20:41Speaker 2: a group, but just the guys we're banned for to
- 20:43Speaker 2: night with people the younger generation especially, No, I.
- 20:47Speaker 6: Think I think there's value in that we've been able
- 20:50Speaker 6: to reinvent ourselves in a way that you know, like
- 20:56Speaker 6: our brand has had, you know, different iterations, different complete
- 20:59Speaker 6: just lie. So the fact that yeah, we've been on
- 21:02Speaker 6: you know TV every day for the past fifteen years,
- 21:04Speaker 6: it's a whole demo. They only know us from that,
- 21:07Speaker 6: so that leaves a whole new space for them to
- 21:09Speaker 6: explore when they discover our body of work.
- 21:11Speaker 3: And then there's people who've been die hard fans.
- 21:13Speaker 6: Of you know, l L and the Roots forever, who
- 21:16Speaker 6: you know, may have lost track of our musical contributions
- 21:20Speaker 6: along the way. So I just appreciate the chance to
- 21:23Speaker 6: sort of keep reintroducing myself. Me and Elle was just
- 21:26Speaker 6: talking about how you know, you just pop out every
- 21:28Speaker 6: now and then as an artist to shut shit down
- 21:30Speaker 6: with those little, you know, not not so general reminders.
- 21:33Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying. And you're good, and that's
- 21:36Speaker 3: sort of how we navigate the space.
- 21:38Speaker 5: And you know, the way I look at it is
- 21:40Speaker 5: it's just an opportunity, you know what I'm saying. It's
- 21:42Speaker 5: a beautiful opportunity to put you up on something new.
- 21:45Speaker 5: And if you don't know, to come find out, come
- 21:47Speaker 5: to the show. You know what I'm saying. That's why
- 21:48Speaker 5: we're on tour. You can come see some music. It's
- 21:50Speaker 5: multi generational, you know, just like the festival, multi generational.
- 21:54Speaker 5: So come out to the tour, come to the Force tour,
- 21:56Speaker 5: see what we're doing. You know what I'm saying, Get
- 21:58Speaker 5: put onto something new.
- 21:59Speaker 7: That simple. You know what I'm saying. If you don't know,
- 22:01Speaker 7: come find out.
- 22:02Speaker 8: And I think, you know, as media personalities, I feel
- 22:04Speaker 8: like we got to do a better job of preserving
- 22:07Speaker 8: those legacies. Yeah, you know, because there's been times I've
- 22:10Speaker 8: I've critiqued LL's like a freestyle.
- 22:13Speaker 4: You might have did he want to box out of you?
- 22:15Speaker 4: He did?
- 22:16Speaker 8: But you know what I'm saying, But what I realized
- 22:18Speaker 8: in that is, people would hear that and not realize
- 22:21Speaker 8: that LLLL got a whole catalog, Like there's no way
- 22:24Speaker 8: you can ever say ll cool J is whack. He's
- 22:26Speaker 8: one of the coin the term goat. Of course he's
- 22:30Speaker 8: an icon, he's one of the greatest of all time.
- 22:31Speaker 8: But sometimes the younger generation don't know that. If they
- 22:34Speaker 8: hear us critiquing something.
- 22:36Speaker 5: Well, you know what, shaw I put it to you
- 22:37Speaker 5: like this, And I will say, I'm not even tripping
- 22:40Speaker 5: off of that, because the reality is, you know, every
- 22:42Speaker 5: now and then, you're gonna miss a dunk, you know
- 22:44Speaker 5: what I'm saying.
- 22:45Speaker 7: So you know, if I miss a dunk, it'll be
- 22:47Speaker 7: a highlight. But I got some good.
- 22:48Speaker 5: Ones, you know, so so maybe I'm and if you
- 22:53Speaker 5: step into the ring right, and I'm talking about like
- 22:55Speaker 5: in music or art or anything, right, like if you're
- 22:58Speaker 5: gonna win championships, you know, great box, you're gonna get
- 23:00Speaker 5: punched in the face. So you're gonna miss some it
- 23:03Speaker 5: is what I'm saying. So you know, the critique ain't
- 23:05Speaker 5: necessarily wrong. It's all right for you to you know,
- 23:08Speaker 5: say what you feel. You know what I'm saying. It's
- 23:11Speaker 5: a matter of you know, my job is just to
- 23:14Speaker 5: give people consistent Like this new album I did that
- 23:17Speaker 5: that that Q Tip executive produced. I look forward to
- 23:21Speaker 5: introducing that to the world and looking at that hearing
- 23:24Speaker 5: your you know, your critique and your your you know,
- 23:26Speaker 5: your opinions of.
- 23:28Speaker 7: It, like this is the thing we got to do. Like,
- 23:30Speaker 7: my my goal is this.
- 23:32Speaker 5: I just want to show people that you can have
- 23:35Speaker 5: a career that last decades and decades and decades at
- 23:38Speaker 5: the highest level.
- 23:39Speaker 7: I want to show people what's possible.
- 23:41Speaker 5: You know, in hip hop, we haven't had somebody who
- 23:44Speaker 5: started from the beginning and went to another level you
- 23:48Speaker 5: know this many years later. So this is a very
- 23:51Speaker 5: unique thing that we're dealing with. So it's new to
- 23:53Speaker 5: all of us. You never dealt We never dealt with
- 23:56Speaker 5: a LLL cool JA. You have the roots band and
- 23:58Speaker 5: like these like this is a whole num the level.
- 24:00Speaker 8: Now, that's why I think you, I actually think you're
- 24:03Speaker 8: above critique. I'm not even I think we're one of
- 24:05Speaker 8: those people that you can't critique.
- 24:07Speaker 7: J has done it, He's home already.
- 24:09Speaker 5: I think I think everybody can be critique. You know
- 24:11Speaker 5: what I'm saying. I think that I'm not immune to critique.
- 24:15Speaker 5: I will say this though, you know, I put a
- 24:17Speaker 5: lot of work in and I got a lot of
- 24:20Speaker 5: I got you know, a lot of hardware, and you know,
- 24:24Speaker 5: you know, but Wikipedia is pretty long, you know what
- 24:26Speaker 5: I'm saying.
- 24:27Speaker 3: So it's like you got rhymes at the hood that beautiful,
- 24:34Speaker 3: which this told.
- 24:34Speaker 7: Me happening without the writer strike in Hollywood.
- 24:38Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, definitely it was.
- 24:39Speaker 1: I mean we planned it sort of around like our
- 24:42Speaker 1: breaks that would have happened during the Foulon period, but have.
- 24:48Speaker 5: One week okay, ok, yeah, because we both was working
- 24:51Speaker 5: and and that was why it really made so much sense.
- 24:53Speaker 7: You know, is it true that Jimmy Fallon is paying
- 24:56Speaker 7: the staff out of pocket? Why, y'all stripe?
- 24:59Speaker 3: Uh, that's a question.
- 25:02Speaker 4: Let me check my check, Let me check my bank
- 25:03Speaker 4: account right now.
- 25:05Speaker 3: Now, I got like nineteen other jobs. It's not like money,
- 25:08Speaker 3: you know, No, no one, no one.
- 25:11Speaker 5: Is getting paid. Uh. After that, that's kind of a myth.
- 25:15Speaker 8: And this may be a stupid question, But what changed
- 25:17Speaker 8: your life more Hollywood or hip hop? We know hip
- 25:21Speaker 8: hop changed your life and it probably would be no
- 25:22Speaker 8: Hollywood without it, But what has elevated your lives more?
- 25:25Speaker 1: I will say For me personally, hip hop has definitely
- 25:29Speaker 1: changed my life. Like I grew up in the house
- 25:31Speaker 1: with three thousand records that I didn't like in the beginning,
- 25:35Speaker 1: and then suddenly I'm starting to listen to hip hop, like, wait,
- 25:37Speaker 1: this is what dad listens to, Like, let me see
- 25:39Speaker 1: when my dad got over here and so, and that's
- 25:43Speaker 1: what enabled me to sit here today. So it starts
- 25:48Speaker 1: with really hip hop and our our shared love of it.
- 25:53Speaker 1: You know, to me, that's hip hip hop is the answer.
- 25:56Speaker 6: I don't know, yeah, yeah, for me, it's definitely a
- 26:00Speaker 6: you know, the same I would say, I would say
- 26:02Speaker 6: hip hop. I mean not only hip hop, but just
- 26:04Speaker 6: the arts right has been my my my saving grace.
- 26:08Speaker 3: You know.
- 26:09Speaker 6: I come from, you know, just a place and time
- 26:13Speaker 6: where you know so much and so many were lost.
- 26:18Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying. Both my parents have murdered victims.
- 26:20Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying.
- 26:20Speaker 6: My brother institutionalized, spent over thirty years in prison. So
- 26:25Speaker 6: that that's that's where I come from. And that's not
- 26:26Speaker 6: I'm not a you know that that I'm not unique
- 26:30Speaker 6: in that. That's that's everybody on my block, you know. So,
- 26:33Speaker 6: But I also come from a place where it's something
- 26:35Speaker 6: in the water. And you know people who I've seen
- 26:37Speaker 6: invest all their you know, effort and time and energy,
- 26:41Speaker 6: you know to making it.
- 26:42Speaker 3: You know, Beyond the Block has has done extremely well.
- 26:45Speaker 6: I've seen you know, I've known Wallow you know what
- 26:48Speaker 6: I'm saying in the Meeks and Kevin Harts and you know,
- 26:51Speaker 6: and you know people who have gone on to Philadelphia greatness,
- 26:55Speaker 6: you know Eve and Jill Scott, you know, like people
- 26:57Speaker 6: when when they were still Olympic hopefuls.
- 27:00Speaker 3: You know. So it's just dope. I mean, that's I
- 27:02Speaker 3: get a different kind of.
- 27:05Speaker 6: Reassurance and inspiration just coming from where I come from,
- 27:08Speaker 6: you know what I mean.
- 27:09Speaker 3: And yeah, that really just you know, just lets me
- 27:13Speaker 3: know that the sky is the limit.
- 27:15Speaker 4: Did y'all ever get it to it?
- 27:17Speaker 7: What about you? Hollywood?
- 27:18Speaker 3: Hip hop?
- 27:18Speaker 5: Oh man, hip hop? I mean hip hop changed my
- 27:20Speaker 5: life and made it amazing. Way before I went to Hollywood,
- 27:23Speaker 5: I was many albums and I was, you know what I.
- 27:26Speaker 3: Mean, like him.
- 27:27Speaker 6: Hip hop is something that has been this important to
- 27:30Speaker 6: us since before it reached since before there was a
- 27:35Speaker 6: you know, an intersection of hip hop in Hollywood. You know,
- 27:39Speaker 6: hip hop. Hip hop is fifty this year. I'm fifty.
- 27:42Speaker 6: You know what I'm saying. These brothers are my elders
- 27:44Speaker 6: there little but you know, like me and hip hop
- 27:49Speaker 6: were born.
- 27:49Speaker 3: Right at the same time, you know what I'm saying.
- 27:51Speaker 6: So I definitely have always felt like, you know, the
- 27:54Speaker 6: culture is my contemporary.
- 27:56Speaker 8: You know what I mean, you're founding father in that
- 27:58Speaker 8: to hell, like as far as like hip hop artists
- 28:00Speaker 8: who moved here, Yeah.
- 28:03Speaker 5: Because you know, like even you know, like we did
- 28:06Speaker 5: Crush Group in eighty five, you know what I'm saying, Like,
- 28:08Speaker 5: you know, my first appearance you know, to the world,
- 28:13Speaker 5: you know, was on a movie screen through hip hop.
- 28:15Speaker 7: So I guess Hollywood has been there all along for me.
- 28:18Speaker 5: Did Wildcatching eighty I've been like thirty forty movies, you
- 28:20Speaker 5: know what I'm saying.
- 28:21Speaker 1: But it's you know, listen, man, I love the culture,
- 28:25Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. And I do this because
- 28:26Speaker 1: I love it. I could have took my ball and
- 28:28Speaker 1: went home along time ago.
- 28:30Speaker 4: I was gonna ask, was there any at any point
- 28:32Speaker 4: of any of your lives did y'all lose love for
- 28:34Speaker 4: hip hop?
- 28:35Speaker 2: Maybe it was the sound change, maybe it was it
- 28:37Speaker 2: wasn't received the right way, or maybe it was I'm
- 28:39Speaker 2: getting money over here.
- 28:40Speaker 4: Was there any time at that at all for me?
- 28:44Speaker 5: No, because I'm getting money over here has nothing to
- 28:47Speaker 5: do with loving hip hop.
- 28:49Speaker 7: You know that it has nothing to do with that.
- 28:51Speaker 7: You know, I don't.
- 28:52Speaker 3: I don't.
- 28:52Speaker 5: I don't do I don't make rap music and do
- 28:55Speaker 5: hip hop culture and rock the bells and all this
- 28:57Speaker 5: to make money to survive.
- 28:59Speaker 7: Rather, you know, I do it because I love it
- 29:01Speaker 7: and I get.
- 29:01Speaker 3: Paid doing it.
- 29:02Speaker 1: But I would say, well, I will say that, you know,
- 29:07Speaker 1: there's times if you're creative and your passion turns into
- 29:10Speaker 1: your livelihood, that sometimes you might have to leave it
- 29:16Speaker 1: for a second. I mean, there definitely been moments where,
- 29:18Speaker 1: like you know, like he and I have put since
- 29:21Speaker 1: ninety three, probably somewhere between one hundred and fifty to
- 29:25Speaker 1: two hundred shows a year, you know what I mean,
- 29:28Speaker 1: from ninety three up until like when we start fouing
- 29:31Speaker 1: two thousand and nine, like our lives was on a
- 29:33Speaker 1: tour bus, and you know, the grass is always green
- 29:36Speaker 1: on the other side, and so during the tonight show
- 29:39Speaker 1: allowed us especially to see what other magical powers we had,
- 29:44Speaker 1: like I didn't know, like, oh, I could write books,
- 29:46Speaker 1: and both of us are professors at NYU. You know,
- 29:51Speaker 1: he wrote a play, I did a movie and all
- 29:53Speaker 1: those other things. So a small team man, not more
- 29:58Speaker 1: than spart just curious, like we're I think all of
- 30:01Speaker 1: us are creatives. And that's that's the thing, Like we're
- 30:04Speaker 1: creatives that are discovering that sometimes our talent is transferable
- 30:09Speaker 1: to other mediums. In avenue like Tarik, you think of
- 30:13Speaker 1: that hot ninety seven freestyle, he is a better chef.
- 30:17Speaker 1: He's a better cook than that freestyle. That's how I'll
- 30:22Speaker 1: put him against any three micheline star chef or black
- 30:27Speaker 1: grandmother or whatever.
- 30:28Speaker 3: About to have my now for real, Like he's the king?
- 30:33Speaker 3: Is Gordon Ramsey? You wanted to smoke? Now?
- 30:37Speaker 1: He is getting up before m Yes, you know I.
- 30:41Speaker 6: Think I cad. I catered for the roost other night. Yeah,
- 30:44Speaker 6: I brought a bunch of grubs to the up to
- 30:47Speaker 6: rock the bell. So you I mean you're go ahingad
- 30:48Speaker 6: and tell him what I brought?
- 30:49Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying.
- 30:50Speaker 1: Yes, everything from crab legs to lobster to Colin Greens
- 30:55Speaker 1: to like his cookie.
- 30:57Speaker 5: But that's what I'm saying, Like his check all the
- 30:59Speaker 5: box you left the Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love the
- 31:04Speaker 5: Chillings on the grid.
- 31:07Speaker 7: A moment in your careers where y'all questioning things though.
- 31:10Speaker 6: Well, you know, yeah, definitely there have been many moments, uh,
- 31:14Speaker 6: you know where I've questioned you know, myself and where
- 31:18Speaker 6: we've questioned ourselves, you know, I mean as a collective,
- 31:20Speaker 6: and you know, in those moments of pause, that's when
- 31:23Speaker 6: you're able to answer the call and I think, you know,
- 31:25Speaker 6: you just get those bursts of of clarity. And it's
- 31:28Speaker 6: been a blessing that we've been able to reinvent ourselves,
- 31:31Speaker 6: you know, because yeah, you know, I just like I
- 31:32Speaker 6: was saying, I would be making music. I would be
- 31:35Speaker 6: writing songs and you know, creating art, whether I was
- 31:39Speaker 6: able to you know, support myself and my family off
- 31:41Speaker 6: it or not. So it's it's a blessing, like you know,
- 31:44Speaker 6: I mean, the plus is that I'm also able to
- 31:47Speaker 6: make a career out of it, you know what I'm saying.
- 31:50Speaker 6: But yeah, there's been times that I've questioned, you know,
- 31:52Speaker 6: like what the next chapter would look like, or what
- 31:54Speaker 6: the next you know, sort of act like act three
- 31:57Speaker 6: of my career, you know, am I gonna be able
- 31:59Speaker 6: to swing another you know, reinvention and yeah, you know
- 32:03Speaker 6: it's you.
- 32:04Speaker 1: You.
- 32:04Speaker 6: It is those moments when you sort of listen to
- 32:06Speaker 6: the universe and you go with your heart and and
- 32:09Speaker 6: things become more clear.
- 32:11Speaker 4: You know, I was gonna ask you what hip hip hop?
- 32:13Speaker 7: Do you have a question? Things?
- 32:14Speaker 5: I mean, yeah, listen, man, There's always gonna be a
- 32:17Speaker 5: time in life where you have doubts and you have concerns,
- 32:19Speaker 5: and you have insecurities, and you feel like uncomfortable or
- 32:23Speaker 5: discomfort about certain things. But like like Tarik said, you know,
- 32:27Speaker 5: answering that call and following your intuition, following that that
- 32:30Speaker 5: small voice inside of you and go for it. You know,
- 32:33Speaker 5: you can't be fearful in life. You can't be scary
- 32:37Speaker 5: and you the person that has to be able to
- 32:38Speaker 5: you have to be able to trust the most is yourself.
- 32:41Speaker 5: And you have to be able to trust yourself in
- 32:43Speaker 5: moments when you are susceptible to fear and weakness, and
- 32:48Speaker 5: you just have to find that strength and keep moving through.
- 32:51Speaker 3: Like you got.
- 32:53Speaker 7: What is the ll cool JA in security?
- 32:55Speaker 5: Well, it would be like maybe, Okay, it's been a
- 32:58Speaker 5: thousand years, should I make another album?
- 33:00Speaker 4: Them?
- 33:00Speaker 7: Do I make another album, should.
- 33:02Speaker 3: I go on the road. You haven't done this, you
- 33:03Speaker 3: haven't done that. You know.
- 33:05Speaker 5: The other day, you know, Sway asked me to rhyme,
- 33:08Speaker 5: like do you do you say the rhyme like their
- 33:11Speaker 5: little things that you know what I'm saying, You know
- 33:15Speaker 5: what I mean? You know, you know, you know what
- 33:18Speaker 5: I mean.
- 33:19Speaker 7: Is it a dolphin?
- 33:22Speaker 5: So so you know that's that's But you know, like
- 33:25Speaker 5: I said, man like, when you want to do something,
- 33:28Speaker 5: when you want to build something, you're gonna deal with
- 33:30Speaker 5: that kind of stuff.
- 33:31Speaker 7: You're gonna deal with them feelings.
- 33:32Speaker 5: Like there's people listening to us right now who you know,
- 33:35Speaker 5: are going through things and they're scared, they're on the edge.
- 33:38Speaker 5: You gotta be able to push through that fear. You
- 33:39Speaker 5: dig like, that's what it is, and that's a part
- 33:42Speaker 5: of being great. You know, Greatness is not about comparing
- 33:45Speaker 5: yourself to others greatness, other people's greatness. Greatness is about
- 33:49Speaker 5: maximizing your personal potential. That's what makes you great. When
- 33:52Speaker 5: you maximize your potential, you're great, you know what I mean.
- 33:56Speaker 1: And as he said earlier, like you gotta stop like
- 33:59Speaker 1: I just started, like the practice of not people pleasing
- 34:09Speaker 1: and oftentimes we do things in the eyes of like man,
- 34:13Speaker 1: what's that? And I going to say or I don't know,
- 34:15Speaker 1: and the second that maybe it comes with being fifty,
- 34:18Speaker 1: like start your I don't give a fuck face around
- 34:22Speaker 1: that time we.
- 34:24Speaker 5: Question so so you know, always people always ask me
- 34:26Speaker 5: about that look. Always tell people I'm not a nice guy,
- 34:29Speaker 5: I'm a good guy. It's a difference, you know what
- 34:32Speaker 5: I'm saying. Like like if if a little old lady
- 34:34Speaker 5: is walking down the street and some god grabs a
- 34:37Speaker 5: pocketbook and you grab the guy and break his nose
- 34:39Speaker 5: and break his arm, you're not a nice guy, but
- 34:41Speaker 5: you're a good guy, you.
- 34:42Speaker 3: Know what I mean.
- 34:43Speaker 5: So there's a difference. So in life it's all right
- 34:46Speaker 5: to say no, you know what I'm saying, I'm not
- 34:48Speaker 5: in this to be nice. I mean it to be good,
- 34:51Speaker 5: you know what I mean. And when you so that
- 34:53Speaker 5: goes back to your people please that I'm agreeing with you,
- 34:55Speaker 5: that people please, like you don't have to please people.
- 34:57Speaker 5: What it is is you put your oxygen mask on first,
- 35:00Speaker 5: then you helped the person next to you, right, So
- 35:02Speaker 5: it's the appropriate selfishness, you know what I'm saying. When
- 35:05Speaker 5: you've beaten people up you felt bad about it depends
- 35:08Speaker 5: on who would be got you?
- 35:09Speaker 3: You know what I mean?
- 35:10Speaker 5: Like, you know what I mean, beautiful, I'm saying you
- 35:20Speaker 5: don't feel bad at all.
- 35:21Speaker 1: You feel phenomenal because because you saved the old lady, right, you.
- 35:27Speaker 5: Feel great like you But but that's not nice if.
- 35:30Speaker 1: You beat Arlamagne, but you have felt good at that
- 35:34Speaker 1: time time, Yeah, I'm sure I would have felt.
- 35:37Speaker 3: Terrible, terrible.
- 35:43Speaker 4: I gotta ask you.
- 35:44Speaker 2: We got to discuss the lyrical sparring, right, so you
- 35:46Speaker 2: have times had been challenged and you threw shots, whether
- 35:50Speaker 2: it was more d back and day canna bus or
- 35:52Speaker 2: people even say, oh, have you ever ran into the
- 35:54Speaker 2: people that you've ever had into a lyrical sparring? And
- 35:57Speaker 2: is it all jokes and fun now or is it
- 35:59Speaker 2: still like standolphish?
- 36:01Speaker 7: No, I ain't no standolfish man.
- 36:03Speaker 3: That's a sport. I don't.
- 36:04Speaker 7: I don't have no beef with none of the guys.
- 36:06Speaker 1: Of course, not beef.
- 36:06Speaker 3: But is it No? No, I don't.
- 36:07Speaker 5: When I say beef, I'm not talking about like real
- 36:09Speaker 5: street be problem. Like I'm just saying, like I don't
- 36:13Speaker 5: you know, No, I don't have any tension, Okay, there's
- 36:15Speaker 5: there's no I mean some dudes. Look, everybody is different, man,
- 36:19Speaker 5: some people, you know, it really bothers.
- 36:21Speaker 3: Them, like you know something.
- 36:26Speaker 1: Like post Jack the Ripper, right or post how you
- 36:30Speaker 1: like Me?
- 36:30Speaker 3: Now?
- 36:30Speaker 1: Like were you and mod ever in the room together
- 36:34Speaker 1: at any of that those periods like I walked out
- 36:36Speaker 1: on stage of this concert before like I'm crazy, Wait
- 36:39Speaker 1: what there was.
- 36:40Speaker 3: No there was no social media. Man, we see each other.
- 36:45Speaker 3: We laugh.
- 36:47Speaker 7: When you walked nothing.
- 36:50Speaker 6: That's ridiculous kind of l kind of pioneered the move.
- 36:58Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, but.
- 36:58Speaker 4: Then with cannabis, you know what I mean, have y'all left,
- 37:01Speaker 4: y'all spoken.
- 37:02Speaker 3: Brought them out of Barclays when I perform, Remember that's right.
- 37:05Speaker 7: You know what I'm saying.
- 37:06Speaker 4: You know, I see you and I see see pictures.
- 37:07Speaker 5: I mean, yeah, we got the you know we're doing
- 37:09Speaker 5: we got things we're doing now together.
- 37:11Speaker 7: You know what about you and what was what was
- 37:13Speaker 7: you in Hohode? I never understood that one either. That
- 37:15Speaker 7: felt like just ego.
- 37:16Speaker 5: I really, I honestly couldn't tell you, bro, I have
- 37:18Speaker 5: no idea. All I know is it's all love. You
- 37:21Speaker 5: know what I'm saying, Like you know, it's we Gucci,
- 37:23Speaker 5: like for real, like you know, you know, listen, man.
- 37:26Speaker 8: Does a conversation make things straight or just over time
- 37:29Speaker 8: and just you realize it wasn't really about nothing.
- 37:30Speaker 1: They said you at the time that you didn't like
- 37:32Speaker 1: him as president or death ya, and that's where they
- 37:34Speaker 1: say it came from.
- 37:38Speaker 7: Dude.
- 37:40Speaker 5: Next question.
- 37:43Speaker 7: Is a question y, y'all in the old street stuff
- 37:47Speaker 7: and the stuff.
- 37:47Speaker 5: Like yeah, next question, I tell you like this. I
- 37:55Speaker 5: tell you like this man, Listen, listen. You know, at
- 37:59Speaker 5: the end of the day, you know, I got love
- 38:01Speaker 5: for everybody. You know what I'm saying. I just want
- 38:03Speaker 5: to do great things.
- 38:05Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying.
- 38:06Speaker 1: And you know, you know, as a matter of fact,
- 38:09Speaker 1: I think there's a part in the show where I
- 38:11Speaker 1: actually get into this stuff a little bit with a freestyle.
- 38:15Speaker 1: So you know, people should just come to the show
- 38:17Speaker 1: and check it out. And he how I address it?
- 38:20Speaker 8: What did oil up your ankles, make your TEMs tap?
- 38:22Speaker 8: Mean oil up your ankles, make your TEMs tap?
- 38:25Speaker 7: What did that mean?
- 38:26Speaker 9: Put a legs in there? Got you?
- 38:38Speaker 5: He didn't understand.
- 38:38Speaker 3: He didn't understand that.
- 38:39Speaker 5: On Skeevy he was like, He's like, we've never heard
- 38:41Speaker 5: Skeve before.
- 38:42Speaker 3: I'm like me, that's me and top Fight running round
- 38:44Speaker 3: like ship me and Top Fight. You know what I mean.
- 38:47Speaker 3: It's all good.
- 38:49Speaker 8: Okay, are you done with movies? Because it's been like
- 38:53Speaker 8: and I just this just came to my my radar.
- 38:54Speaker 8: It's been ten years.
- 38:55Speaker 3: It's been a long time.
- 38:57Speaker 5: I'm actually I'm actually thinking about I'm looking some scripts
- 39:00Speaker 5: now and I got some things that I'm working on,
- 39:04Speaker 5: you know. I also, you know, I'm gonna be doing
- 39:07Speaker 5: uh you know at the time, you know, but right now,
- 39:10Speaker 5: I can't really talk about that because there's a strike
- 39:12Speaker 5: going on, so I can't really get into you know
- 39:14Speaker 5: what I'm saying that I want to be supportive of
- 39:16Speaker 5: all my fellow actors and writers out there, so I
- 39:19Speaker 5: can't really get into it, you know what I'm saying.
- 39:21Speaker 7: Let's talk about music.
- 39:21Speaker 8: Then, how do y'all feel about we all celebrating fifty
- 39:24Speaker 8: years of hip hop icons that haven't gotten paid, like
- 39:28Speaker 8: icons that really paved the way, laid this foundation, but
- 39:31Speaker 8: they haven't gotten paid the way they feel like they should.
- 39:35Speaker 5: You know.
- 39:36Speaker 1: That's the that's the million dollar question in music isustory
- 39:39Speaker 1: because it happens with blues Artists's happened with my dad's
- 39:42Speaker 1: O generation and.
- 39:45Speaker 3: I'm sorry, good, no good.
- 39:49Speaker 5: You know, look, I started Rock the Bells as a company, right,
- 39:53Speaker 5: So I gave DJ cooherk equity run DMC has equity,
- 39:59Speaker 5: and Rock the Bell's ownership. Roxanne Chante has ownership, Big
- 40:03Speaker 5: Daddy Kane has ownership, Salt and Pepa has ownership. Yeah.
- 40:08Speaker 5: I gave Eminem actually invested, he wrote a check. He
- 40:12Speaker 5: has some you know, Ernie panacolea the photographer hip hop photographer,
- 40:18Speaker 5: has ownership. I gave you know, quite a few different people,
- 40:21Speaker 5: Fab five Freddy as ownership. And because we've created such
- 40:26Speaker 5: a high evaluation with Rock the Bells and what that's become,
- 40:29Speaker 5: that equity is going to mean something for them in
- 40:31Speaker 5: their states. So my why did I answer like that?
- 40:34Speaker 5: Because my thing is this, you don't get better, you
- 40:37Speaker 5: get better. And instead of like when I felt like,
- 40:40Speaker 5: oh I don't feel like they play my music enough,
- 40:42Speaker 5: I got my own channel, right. But then I decided,
- 40:45Speaker 5: you know what, it's not about me though, It's about
- 40:48Speaker 5: the culture. So I'm gonna play. I'm not gonna be
- 40:49Speaker 5: a pig, I'm a flip it. I'm gonna make sure
- 40:51Speaker 5: that I take care of everybody. So with Rock the Bells,
- 40:54Speaker 5: that question is being answered through action. You feel you
- 40:58Speaker 5: feel what I'm saying, and that that's the really the
- 41:01Speaker 5: what it's about, you know what I'm saying.
- 41:02Speaker 3: So like, but I'll tell you this.
- 41:05Speaker 5: You know, for every sob story that we hear about,
- 41:08Speaker 5: there are a lot of great stories too. Run DMC
- 41:11Speaker 5: are doing phenomenal really well financially, Like there are a
- 41:14Speaker 5: lot of artists that.
- 41:16Speaker 3: You know, have come from that era that really did well.
- 41:20Speaker 3: You know what I mean.
- 41:21Speaker 7: I see running the grocery store with the fur on
- 41:23Speaker 7: and it's the summer.
- 41:28Speaker 5: Ghost.
- 41:29Speaker 3: I don't know.
- 41:33Speaker 7: So so look where there's some people out there.
- 41:36Speaker 5: Look what I can say about one thing I can
- 41:37Speaker 5: say about Russell and you know, uh, you know even
- 41:42Speaker 5: le or later is that well Russell and Rick, especially
- 41:46Speaker 5: with that first deal, they didn't bang me out, they
- 41:48Speaker 5: didn't screw me over, they didn't you know, you know,
- 41:51Speaker 5: like they started it with a fifty fifty published and
- 41:54Speaker 5: obviously I got it all back now, but even that
- 41:56Speaker 5: start at fifty to fifty could have been zero.
- 41:58Speaker 7: I would assigned for zero, right, So like I think.
- 42:03Speaker 1: We just got to take graam Mastic cast has equity
- 42:05Speaker 1: and rock the bells like real ownership, so that that
- 42:08Speaker 1: kind of a thing. So when you see the festival
- 42:10Speaker 1: and when you see all the things we're doing, and
- 42:11Speaker 1: when you see all the stuff in the stores and
- 42:13Speaker 1: all the stuff.
- 42:14Speaker 5: They're gonna they're getting paid. They're gonna get paid from now.
- 42:17Speaker 5: So that's how you deal with that, you know what
- 42:19Speaker 5: I mean, Charlam, That's how you deal with it. You
- 42:21Speaker 5: don't deal with it by complaining and pulling out the
- 42:23Speaker 5: world's smallest violin and just talking about how sad it
- 42:26Speaker 5: is that it happened again. You do something about.
- 42:29Speaker 3: It, you know, I mean.
- 42:29Speaker 1: Not only there are things that are happening as well
- 42:32Speaker 1: that well you'll know about later, like a union or
- 42:36Speaker 1: something you'll hear about it later.
- 42:38Speaker 2: But you're also hiring DJs too, like in hiring people
- 42:41Speaker 2: and hiring personalities and hiring people on your show and
- 42:44Speaker 2: concerts and festivals. Like I speak to a lot of
- 42:46Speaker 2: DJs that are an older statesman, and they say that,
- 42:49Speaker 2: you know, Ella is keeping them alive with the mixes
- 42:52Speaker 2: and the programming and the shows and the tours. And
- 42:54Speaker 2: that's very important because you know, people have kids, they
- 42:56Speaker 2: have families, they have.
- 42:58Speaker 5: We got to take care of each other, you know
- 43:00Speaker 5: what I'm saying, Like, Yo, let's take care of each other.
- 43:03Speaker 5: That's all Yo. Listen, it's kindergarten. It's really just kindergarten stuff.
- 43:07Speaker 3: You know.
- 43:08Speaker 4: Share That's right, you'll be that's another one a little bit.
- 43:12Speaker 5: Here's that one.
- 43:12Speaker 1: It's real kindergarten. He's my granddad, like that's he's the
- 43:17Speaker 1: king of every idiom. I wish older man that told.
- 43:21Speaker 5: Me in my life what that said?
- 43:23Speaker 8: Is there anybody that hasn't gotten credit or light shined
- 43:25Speaker 8: on them that should for what they contributed hip?
- 43:28Speaker 3: I feel like it's a lot of artists.
- 43:30Speaker 1: There's a lot, you know, so many, but you know,
- 43:33Speaker 1: hopefully uh fantastic romantic with what we're doing. Yeah, well
- 43:38Speaker 1: hopefully what we're doing it'll sort of elevate their their situations.
- 43:43Speaker 8: And I keep seeing Philis four brand Wizard Theodore. You know,
- 43:47Speaker 8: you keep talking about somebody named Hollywood.
- 43:49Speaker 5: DJ Hollywood was on the festival. Yeah, DJ Hollywood. You
- 43:52Speaker 5: know he got a show coming to rock the bells.
- 43:55Speaker 5: I mean, so many artists, you know what I'm saying, Listen, man,
- 43:59Speaker 5: all of the cold crush, you know, or you know,
- 44:01Speaker 5: so many of them.
- 44:02Speaker 3: You know, you think.
- 44:03Speaker 5: About these different guys and people that rock, you know,
- 44:06Speaker 5: Disco Dave, you know Easy Mike, you know, different artists,
- 44:10Speaker 5: different people. Man, this culture is very rich, you know
- 44:15Speaker 5: globe how these these.
- 44:17Speaker 6: Are mister Big who you know largely made their contribution
- 44:22Speaker 6: before there was any you know anything right set up anything, Yeah,
- 44:26Speaker 6: a model set up for you to you know, even
- 44:28Speaker 6: be compensated for your art in that way. So you know,
- 44:30Speaker 6: folks who I mean, they did it from the muscle
- 44:32Speaker 6: for the love, you know what I mean, for the
- 44:34Speaker 6: the art, you know what I'm saying. And you know,
- 44:37Speaker 6: had it not been for the courage of to feel
- 44:39Speaker 6: his crew to Meno would be lost.
- 44:40Speaker 1: As they say, you know, you know when you look
- 44:43Speaker 1: when you look at when you look at those when
- 44:45Speaker 1: you look at you know, space X going up in
- 44:47Speaker 1: the air, just you know, you know, Sender send a
- 44:51Speaker 1: little kiss up in the air for the right brothers.
- 44:53Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying.
- 44:54Speaker 5: It's like, you know, you just gotta remember, like you
- 44:57Speaker 5: know what I'm saying, Like they harnessed you know, the
- 44:59Speaker 5: physics if physics exists existed, you know what I'm saying.
- 45:03Speaker 5: They figured out how to harness the laws of physics
- 45:05Speaker 5: that already existed. Once they harnessed it, then people were
- 45:08Speaker 5: able to take that and elevate it, take it to
- 45:10Speaker 5: another level. So that's why, that's why the credit for me,
- 45:17Speaker 5: Like I look at a roots band, and I look
- 45:18Speaker 5: at how exceptionally talent they are thought as a as
- 45:22Speaker 5: an mc quest, as a as a drummer and producer,
- 45:26Speaker 5: and both of them as artists in general, right, like
- 45:29Speaker 5: the credibility in art and music, you have to look
- 45:33Speaker 5: at that.
- 45:35Speaker 7: The one thing that I would say is what we
- 45:36Speaker 7: have to be very very careful of.
- 45:39Speaker 5: Is measuring artistic greatness by the number of commons in
- 45:43Speaker 5: your bank account. They are not the same thing, and
- 45:47Speaker 5: that is that we have to be very careful of that.
- 45:50Speaker 5: The Wright brothers did not have what you know Boeing
- 45:54Speaker 5: has financially even if you pro rade it go back
- 45:57Speaker 5: then they don't have that.
- 45:59Speaker 7: So we have to be more mindful of that.
- 46:01Speaker 1: Artists art, and I want hip hop, Like Quest said,
- 46:04Speaker 1: hip hop needs to be judged artistically, you know, it's
- 46:07Speaker 1: not about like, look, the ability and I've been saying
- 46:10Speaker 1: is the ability to be a businessman and an entrepreneur.
- 46:12Speaker 5: Capture value is very important in society. It's very important
- 46:15Speaker 5: for what we do. You know what I'm saying, you
- 46:17Speaker 5: gotta get to the back. That being said, that's not
- 46:20Speaker 5: the only measurement for art, you know what I'm saying.
- 46:23Speaker 5: Nobody cares about how much Leonardo da Vinci made off
- 46:25Speaker 5: the Mona Lisa.
- 46:26Speaker 3: We don't even know.
- 46:27Speaker 7: We don't know. Yeah, we don't have no idea.
- 46:31Speaker 3: We just like the painting. So you know what I mean.
- 46:34Speaker 1: Do you feel like hip hop has gone there in
- 46:36Speaker 1: a nasty place where people are more concerned with the
- 46:39Speaker 1: finances and less concern with the actual art.
- 46:43Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 46:44Speaker 5: I think with any.
- 46:47Speaker 1: Anything that was once in underground or you know, sort
- 46:50Speaker 1: of below radar that becomes the mainstream suddenly turns into
- 46:54Speaker 1: the thing that it was once against, you know.
- 46:57Speaker 5: For hip hop.
- 46:59Speaker 1: You know, jazz at one point was like an outlawed music.
- 47:03Speaker 1: You know, the FBI is shutting everybody down, like jazz
- 47:06Speaker 1: was the gangster rap of his day back in the forties.
- 47:09Speaker 1: And you know, hip hop was definitely outlaw music in
- 47:11Speaker 1: the eighties and nineties, and now like suddenly it's like
- 47:14Speaker 1: your grandparents' music. I mean, it's just the evolution of
- 47:17Speaker 1: it all. But you know, I was just thinking as
- 47:20Speaker 1: a people because we were you know, you're pressed to
- 47:24Speaker 1: find any black person that doesn't live in fight or flight,
- 47:29Speaker 1: you know, in sort of a panic, and hip hop
- 47:32Speaker 1: Woord's like Hustle survived that sort of thing. Like we
- 47:35Speaker 1: really weren't ever given a space to be creative or
- 47:38Speaker 1: dream or all those things, which you know, these brothers
- 47:42Speaker 1: over here like made exceptions to that because they definitely
- 47:45Speaker 1: came from environments in which they could have been statistics,
- 47:50Speaker 1: you know, but because we allowed ourselves the space to
- 47:54Speaker 1: dream in that. So I think at the end of
- 47:56Speaker 1: the day, hopefully, especially as a people thing after the pandemic,
- 48:02Speaker 1: more and more Black people are getting into like mental
- 48:04Speaker 1: health space and that sort of thing.
- 48:08Speaker 3: Hopefully the art will change.
- 48:09Speaker 1: But you know, hip hop is what it is because
- 48:12Speaker 1: you know where we are as a people politically, financially, monetarily,
- 48:17Speaker 1: artistically in twenty twenty three, and you see what's happening
- 48:20Speaker 1: in the news right now, like it's it's every man for.
- 48:22Speaker 3: Itself and that's why we're doing it.
- 48:24Speaker 5: Like that's why the tour is all about, like just
- 48:26Speaker 5: doing it official and doing it, just doing cool shit
- 48:29Speaker 5: and doing stuff that's like really you know official, you
- 48:32Speaker 5: know what I'm saying, Like like we're not playing Like
- 48:35Speaker 5: that's why when you come to when you come to
- 48:36Speaker 5: see us on the road, it's crazy, you know, it's
- 48:38Speaker 5: really like we're not we're not doing the commercial thing.
- 48:41Speaker 3: Yes, we have commercial aspects to the to the show.
- 48:44Speaker 5: I have commercial some commercial songs in it, but are
- 48:47Speaker 5: also digging into crates and doing some things that people
- 48:50Speaker 5: aren't even familiar with and doing things that people haven't
- 48:53Speaker 5: seen before seen live. So this is an opportunity really
- 48:56Speaker 5: to get reintroduced to, in my opinion, how hip hop
- 49:00Speaker 5: originally was supposed to be presented to the world.
- 49:03Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying, Like, I'm really presenting it
- 49:05Speaker 3: that way.
- 49:05Speaker 8: It's a balance, though, right, because you're not LL cool
- 49:08Speaker 8: J without those big commercial smashes, right, Like you still.
- 49:12Speaker 7: Might be an LL cool J, but like you might
- 49:14Speaker 7: not be the guy we.
- 49:15Speaker 8: Know in black thought you one of the nicest people
- 49:17Speaker 8: to ever pick up a microphone, but you necessarily don't
- 49:20Speaker 8: have the mainstream hit, so people may not recognize that aspect.
- 49:24Speaker 3: So it's a balance, right, It is definitely a balance.
- 49:27Speaker 3: It is if you know.
- 49:28Speaker 5: But the thing about what I would add to that
- 49:30Speaker 5: is that you know, for me, you know, I couldn't
- 49:33Speaker 5: have made the songs that you're the songs that you're
- 49:35Speaker 5: referring to, if I didn't have the fundamentals as an MC. See,
- 49:39Speaker 5: people don't realize the degree of difficulty of creating those
- 49:42Speaker 5: kinds of songs. They think the freestyle is harder, but
- 49:46Speaker 5: it's not. You know what I'm saying. The difficulty associated
- 49:50Speaker 5: with creating the level of songs that I created, that's
- 49:54Speaker 5: you know, if it was that easy, then everybody would
- 49:56Speaker 5: do it right. So but the difference is because that's
- 50:00Speaker 5: not all I did because I was really I'm really
- 50:03Speaker 5: a m C from the ground all the way up,
- 50:06Speaker 5: all the way up from the beginning. I'm able to
- 50:09Speaker 5: do those things and still do the other thing. So
- 50:13Speaker 5: that you know, because if you think about the different
- 50:17Speaker 5: styles of songs that I made, like you know, you
- 50:20Speaker 5: have a lot of people who, like you're talking about,
- 50:22Speaker 5: only familiar with those kinds of records. They don't even
- 50:24Speaker 5: think about ill Bomb, they don't think about Nitro, they
- 50:27Speaker 5: don't think about it gets No, they don't think about
- 50:29Speaker 5: all these other songs. They know a Roundaway Girl and
- 50:31Speaker 5: I Need Love and Mama said knock you out, which
- 50:33Speaker 5: is hard of you know doing it. They know those
- 50:35Speaker 5: songs head Sprung, you know which. By the way, it's
- 50:39Speaker 5: big Ellie, a big silly, big money big. Really, I
- 50:44Speaker 5: just want to be They called me big, you know,
- 50:49Speaker 5: you know.
- 50:52Speaker 3: They probably.
- 50:56Speaker 5: You know for that matter. I mean, when was the
- 51:00Speaker 5: cool j era?
- 51:02Speaker 3: Okay?
- 51:02Speaker 5: I mean you know you caught yourself what you want
- 51:04Speaker 5: to call yourself?
- 51:05Speaker 1: Right?
- 51:06Speaker 2: So now what was your what was your most favorite
- 51:09Speaker 2: hip hop moment? All of Yeah, was the most memorable
- 51:12Speaker 2: memorable favorite moment?
- 51:14Speaker 3: Hmm for me?
- 51:16Speaker 6: You know, I mean, there's been very many of them.
- 51:18Speaker 6: I mean, you know, I can't take anything away from
- 51:21Speaker 6: again the Grammys earlier this year.
- 51:23Speaker 3: It was phenomenal for me, and not as much.
- 51:26Speaker 6: I mean, I feel like the rehearsals, you know, maybe
- 51:29Speaker 6: more so than the production, you know what I mean,
- 51:32Speaker 6: in that it was just such.
- 51:33Speaker 3: It was it was you.
- 51:35Speaker 6: Know, it felt like, you know, I was part of
- 51:37Speaker 6: a thing that there were generations of. It was multiple
- 51:40Speaker 6: generations up in the room, you know what I'm saying.
- 51:42Speaker 6: Me being in a room with DMC and DMC standing
- 51:45Speaker 6: in next to the rapper that made him want to
- 51:47Speaker 6: do it, and you know, just so on and so forth,
- 51:50Speaker 6: grand Master Flash, Jazzy Jeff, you know what I mean,
- 51:52Speaker 6: going all the way down the line.
- 51:53Speaker 3: That was huge for me.
- 51:56Speaker 6: But you know one, you know, a standout moment for me,
- 51:59Speaker 6: like when I felt like I had a ribbed as
- 52:00Speaker 6: an MC was many years ago.
- 52:03Speaker 3: Was it ninety six a Great day of Hip Hop?
- 52:05Speaker 3: Ninety eight?
- 52:05Speaker 1: What was that ninety Soalst Magazine show Double Excelo.
- 52:10Speaker 3: It was the day we mastered things for all apart.
- 52:12Speaker 1: It's like September twenty eighth, nineteen ninety eight, were yeah.
- 52:16Speaker 3: So yeah, Like in ninety eight when you know.
- 52:19Speaker 6: Everybody, they got all of hip hop essentially together or
- 52:22Speaker 6: at least, you know, people who represented every genre, you know,
- 52:26Speaker 6: every region.
- 52:27Speaker 3: We all got together in Harlem and took a photo.
- 52:29Speaker 6: Oh yeah, I remember that was based on the image
- 52:33Speaker 6: that Gordon Parks took, uh, you know years ago. That
- 52:36Speaker 6: was a great day in jazz where you know, all
- 52:38Speaker 6: the jazz musicians took the same photo on these in
- 52:41Speaker 6: front of these brownstones in Harlem, and I had to
- 52:44Speaker 6: step out right before this photo was taken. I had
- 52:47Speaker 6: to step out to like one like use a bathroom
- 52:50Speaker 6: and some stupid shit. And I left and when I
- 52:52Speaker 6: came back there was ready to take the picture. So
- 52:54Speaker 6: I'm like, you know, excuse me, like ushering my way
- 52:56Speaker 6: back through the crowd because I think what they had
- 52:58Speaker 6: the roots was way in the nosebleed of this of
- 53:01Speaker 6: this image and that you know, making my way back
- 53:03Speaker 6: up to the top, I bumped into rock Camp, you know,
- 53:06Speaker 6: when it was my first time meeting him in person.
- 53:08Speaker 6: And when he looked at he had like a hoodie on.
- 53:10Speaker 6: You know, I ain't know who I bumped into. When
- 53:12Speaker 6: I looked at dude, it was like a druid or somebody.
- 53:14Speaker 3: He lift his head up, pull the hoodie back. He
- 53:16Speaker 3: was like, oh ship thought and he was he was
- 53:19Speaker 3: like more excited to meet me.
- 53:20Speaker 6: And I was like, yo, like I must be that
- 53:22Speaker 6: dude like I'm fucking here, like you know what I'm saying,
- 53:26Speaker 6: and uh yeah, that was that was a huge moment
- 53:27Speaker 6: for me.
- 53:28Speaker 3: Man.
- 53:28Speaker 6: I went back up there and you know, I took
- 53:29Speaker 6: I took the pic and uh that think things have
- 53:31Speaker 6: never been the same for me.
- 53:34Speaker 5: I think the biggest moment in hip hop for me
- 53:37Speaker 5: in my entire career the moment that like really it
- 53:41Speaker 5: was they called me big.
- 53:50Speaker 1: Yo.
- 53:54Speaker 5: I want I want to I want to speak there
- 53:56Speaker 5: and that was a moment, I mean, that big elle moment.
- 53:59Speaker 3: Listen, I want to talk.
- 54:00Speaker 6: I want to talk about just how fun it is,
- 54:03Speaker 6: you know for me as an artist, as someone you
- 54:05Speaker 6: know who came up just quoting all these lyrics to
- 54:08Speaker 6: what you know, to have a chance to support my heroes,
- 54:11Speaker 6: you know what I mean. It's always a full circle
- 54:13Speaker 6: moment for me when I get up there and I
- 54:15Speaker 6: get to sort of play the support and roll to
- 54:17Speaker 6: an l L or a cane or rock camel, you
- 54:20Speaker 6: know what I'm saying.
- 54:21Speaker 5: Heroes, man, Yeah, it is huge for me. It's not
- 54:24Speaker 5: you know what's impressive though. What's suppressive is you know
- 54:26Speaker 5: everybody's catalog have you have? You have a photographic memory,
- 54:30Speaker 5: and you sound great and you know it's like it
- 54:33Speaker 5: comes natural.
- 54:34Speaker 7: So it's like you're a pro, you know what I mean.
- 54:36Speaker 3: So you know, and you got a why Mike is
- 54:39Speaker 3: still can stay out the way, So that's some.
- 54:41Speaker 5: Real like you know, you know, everybody don't know how
- 54:44Speaker 5: to do that, like I'm used to that, you know
- 54:45Speaker 5: what i mean. So it's like those kinds of things like,
- 54:48Speaker 5: I mean, look, I love working with them, I love
- 54:52Speaker 5: the you know what we're doing. You know, I think
- 54:57Speaker 5: that when people come and see this tour and see
- 55:00Speaker 5: how we're doing it, the guests we bring in and out,
- 55:03Speaker 5: you know, from from the Rick Rosses to the whether
- 55:06Speaker 5: depending on what city where, Queen Latif or a method
- 55:09Speaker 5: man of red Man or Juvenile or even Iced Tea.
- 55:12Speaker 7: He got some dates on the toy.
- 55:14Speaker 5: He's gonna be out there with me on stage to
- 55:17Speaker 5: I mean, so many different acts that will be on
- 55:18Speaker 5: the stage.
- 55:19Speaker 7: I think people are gonna be blown away.
- 55:21Speaker 5: So you just this is one of those times when
- 55:25Speaker 5: I would just suggest that people come in witness history.
- 55:28Speaker 7: You know, you you ask questions about hip hop.
- 55:30Speaker 5: You have questions about fiftieth anniversary of hip hop, you
- 55:33Speaker 5: have questions about Okay, l you were there since the beginning,
- 55:36Speaker 5: You've seen it, You've done a lot of things. This
- 55:39Speaker 5: is a chance for you to come and witness how
- 55:42Speaker 5: it's done, you know, for real, at a high level.
- 55:45Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying, on a plus stage high level.
- 55:48Speaker 1: So Scoot how Scretchful.
- 55:50Speaker 8: Was putting together the fiftieth anniversary tribute for the Grammy, because.
- 55:55Speaker 5: I know you.
- 56:00Speaker 3: Make money to.
- 56:04Speaker 5: QUESSI.
- 56:05Speaker 3: I'll put it this way.
- 56:08Speaker 1: Two of the artists dropped out an hour before taping.
- 56:14Speaker 1: And the thing is is that it's so tightly choreographed
- 56:17Speaker 1: that you're not just dealing with like we make it
- 56:20Speaker 1: look easy, like okay, that is not here right now,
- 56:23Speaker 1: so let's just skip his part.
- 56:24Speaker 5: No, because the show is live.
- 56:26Speaker 1: So this means that now I personally have to run
- 56:30Speaker 1: to the light people to tell them, yo, the seven
- 56:33Speaker 1: minute and thirteen second portion till eight twenty three is out,
- 56:38Speaker 1: and they while they're doing the show live doing commercial breaks,
- 56:41Speaker 1: they have to now edit. Then you have to run
- 56:43Speaker 1: to the dancers and tell them, hey, guys, bad news.
- 56:45Speaker 1: Blah blah blah blah blah's not here anymore. So and
- 56:48Speaker 1: they're all like dejected. But then you got also you
- 56:51Speaker 1: literally have to like I had an it was the
- 56:54Speaker 1: most magiver thing I ever did in my life, where
- 56:57Speaker 1: and it still came off like I wasn't even and
- 57:00Speaker 1: aware that lou uzi Vert had got my text for
- 57:06Speaker 1: him to come on stage to do that. So I'm thinking,
- 57:10Speaker 1: I don't know if you remember Purple Range when like
- 57:11Speaker 1: Prince stormed off stage after Prople Raine because he thought
- 57:14Speaker 1: like he fucked up, Like I was about to have
- 57:16Speaker 1: a panic attack.
- 57:17Speaker 3: Like it's over, it's over, and all the routes are celebrating.
- 57:19Speaker 3: I'm like, wait, what do you celebrate war?
- 57:21Speaker 6: And they're looking on Twitter like you see this, and
- 57:23Speaker 6: I was like, wait, Uzzi was on stage only because
- 57:26Speaker 6: only because where I was positioned, I couldn't see my
- 57:30Speaker 6: like couldn't see if he actually like literally I will say, yeah,
- 57:34Speaker 6: the way the stage of the Grammy's Ship was set up,
- 57:36Speaker 6: it was two complete different stages. Yeah, you know, so
- 57:39Speaker 6: like half the band was, you know, essentially in a
- 57:42Speaker 6: different room.
- 57:43Speaker 1: So it came off. But just as the person who
- 57:46Speaker 1: was the traffic cop making up for you know, okay,
- 57:49Speaker 1: we gotta skip this song that or whatever, Like it
- 57:51Speaker 1: was a difficult one. It was a hell Mary throw
- 57:53Speaker 1: and then you know you can caught it. You gotta
- 57:55Speaker 1: talk to people, you know what I'm saying.
- 57:56Speaker 5: You gotta you know, everybody has to be you know,
- 57:58Speaker 5: you have to you know, some people you have to
- 58:00Speaker 5: like you know, Lavender synth Under then No was another
- 58:03Speaker 5: dude needs a goddamn he needs a black cup of
- 58:06Speaker 5: black coffee. This one over here. You gotta put your
- 58:09Speaker 5: thumb right on his trap, right to him. This one
- 58:12Speaker 5: you gotta pay. You gotta snap your fingers. Okay, okay,
- 58:15Speaker 5: you know what I mean. So it's like, you know,
- 58:17Speaker 5: somebody is distracted, you know what I mean.
- 58:19Speaker 8: I feel like that's an impossible show to do, though,
- 58:21Speaker 8: because you're going to miss people.
- 58:23Speaker 4: And people are gonna get me.
- 58:24Speaker 1: I don't recommend it. Well now, I don't recommend it.
- 58:27Speaker 1: I just recommend that you you make sure that you
- 58:29Speaker 1: know what you're getting into. Back in November, I was like, oh, yeah,
- 58:32Speaker 1: I want to do this, and then by January I
- 58:34Speaker 1: was like, I see what y'all did.
- 58:38Speaker 7: No good guy, not nice guy?
- 58:40Speaker 3: Right.
- 58:40Speaker 5: We knew in advance we couldn't have everybody. It'd be
- 58:43Speaker 5: ten thousand people. We can't do ten thousand songs in
- 58:46Speaker 5: a row.
- 58:46Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 58:46Speaker 1: My first draft was like twenty eight minutes because I
- 58:49Speaker 1: included everybody, you know.
- 58:50Speaker 5: What I mean.
- 58:50Speaker 3: So we had to whittle it down.
- 58:52Speaker 7: To hip hop deserves that though, right, I think so
- 58:55Speaker 7: pop deserves it. Twenty eight minutes on.
- 58:58Speaker 3: It would have.
- 58:58Speaker 1: We weren't made it live, but it know, Grammys a
- 59:01Speaker 1: three hour fair and there's other categories and.
- 59:03Speaker 3: All that stuff. So again, something's going to happen.
- 59:08Speaker 7: That's what I heard. I heard L was doing. I'm
- 59:10Speaker 7: hearing that that you're doing one.
- 59:12Speaker 5: Well, we're talking about all of us, you know, we're
- 59:14Speaker 5: talking about some things, and yeah, you know, we got
- 59:16Speaker 5: some cool stuff.
- 59:17Speaker 1: And when the L is involved, like it's extra special.
- 59:21Speaker 1: So it's not just like something's gonna like something monumental
- 59:25Speaker 1: is really going to happen.
- 59:25Speaker 8: I feel like you gotta be regional ones, like it
- 59:28Speaker 8: gotta be somebody curating Philly, somebody curating New York, somebody
- 59:32Speaker 8: curating l A, somebody.
- 59:35Speaker 5: They all need to be represented like me, like you know,
- 59:38Speaker 5: like I love like look, Philly was like come on man,
- 59:41Speaker 5: between Philly and Baltimore, I mean Philly going to Lady
- 59:43Speaker 5: B after midnight you know, doing all that you know
- 59:46Speaker 5: for me was unbelievable. I love Philly.
- 59:48Speaker 7: I used to do Philly shows like two three times
- 59:51Speaker 7: a month.
- 59:54Speaker 5: But you better believe it. You better believe it.
- 1:00:00Speaker 3: We literally fought, we literally all the way live.
- 1:00:06Speaker 5: Now.
- 1:00:06Speaker 3: We we literally.
- 1:00:07Speaker 1: Thought to tooth and now to make sure that everybody
- 1:00:09Speaker 1: was included, like because I know everyone had their criticisms,
- 1:00:12Speaker 1: like where is that as it was just like we
- 1:00:17Speaker 1: were what we were working with was really you know,
- 1:00:20Speaker 1: it was supposed to be eleven minutes, and we fought
- 1:00:22Speaker 1: hard for those thirteen minutes, like we just and.
- 1:00:24Speaker 5: You got to remember how many millions of dollars those
- 1:00:26Speaker 5: minutes costs, right, you know what I'm saying, question Like
- 1:00:29Speaker 5: it's not you know, we were doing right by our culture.
- 1:00:32Speaker 7: And that's the thing.
- 1:00:33Speaker 5: Quest Look did a massive job curating it, you know,
- 1:00:38Speaker 5: orchestrating it, kind of moving these pieces around, you know
- 1:00:41Speaker 5: what I'm saying, Like, you gotta have.
- 1:00:44Speaker 7: You know, you do the best you can, right.
- 1:00:47Speaker 5: We knew we couldn't please everybody, you know, he did,
- 1:00:50Speaker 5: he did, He went, He did everything within his power
- 1:00:51Speaker 5: to make sure that everybody was represented on some level,
- 1:00:54Speaker 5: everybody from Chuck D to glow Rialer and little Baby
- 1:00:59Speaker 5: right like.
- 1:01:00Speaker 7: You know we you know, and that's it. So now
- 1:01:03Speaker 7: here we are.
- 1:01:04Speaker 5: I know y'all got to go.
- 1:01:05Speaker 7: But I got a couple more questions. How do y'all
- 1:01:06Speaker 7: feel about lists?
- 1:01:07Speaker 8: Because Billboard had y'all ranked number ten group of all time?
- 1:01:10Speaker 8: Really yeah, ll they had you ranked number fourteen of
- 1:01:15Speaker 8: the top rappers ever and you coined the term goat,
- 1:01:19Speaker 8: but for some reason, your name doesn't always get put
- 1:01:22Speaker 8: in those goat conversations?
- 1:01:24Speaker 5: How did that?
- 1:01:24Speaker 3: Because he's too good? People can never look at it?
- 1:01:26Speaker 5: Well, you know, you know, I guess I just got
- 1:01:28Speaker 5: to do something about it. You know, I guess that's uh.
- 1:01:31Speaker 5: You know, that just means I got some work to do,
- 1:01:34Speaker 5: you know what I mean. I guess that's what it means.
- 1:01:36Speaker 5: I mean I could sit here and come up with
- 1:01:37Speaker 5: a thousand different excuses, but at the end of the day,
- 1:01:40Speaker 5: I guess my job is to change that narrative.
- 1:01:42Speaker 3: So, yeah, to be continued.
- 1:01:45Speaker 7: What about y'all.
- 1:01:45Speaker 3: Thought for me? Man? Like, I'm not you know, I'm fine.
- 1:01:49Speaker 6: Like whoever, when I do fall like on those lists,
- 1:01:52Speaker 6: it's always, you know, just an honor to be held
- 1:01:56Speaker 6: in the company that I'm held in. You know what
- 1:01:57Speaker 6: I'm saying. It's never any other artists on those that
- 1:02:00Speaker 6: I don't feel, you know, deserve it.
- 1:02:02Speaker 3: But you know where you rank.
- 1:02:04Speaker 6: I think that you know, it's relative, and I think
- 1:02:06Speaker 6: that you know, it varies from person to person, different
- 1:02:09Speaker 6: folks opinions. Yeah, I know, I'm I'm a force to
- 1:02:13Speaker 6: be reckoning with. I know, everybody know that, so I'm
- 1:02:16Speaker 6: fine with it.
- 1:02:16Speaker 3: You know.
- 1:02:17Speaker 5: Yeah, And you know, the other thing I would add
- 1:02:19Speaker 5: is that, you know, I think this is an overused term,
- 1:02:22Speaker 5: but in my cases, I'm different.
- 1:02:24Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you know what I'm saying, fact, I really am.
- 1:02:28Speaker 5: So it's like, you know, you know a lot of
- 1:02:31Speaker 5: times those lists are based on what have you done
- 1:02:33Speaker 5: for me lately? And there's a lot of recency bias
- 1:02:36Speaker 5: kind of sprinkled in those lists recent. You know what
- 1:02:41Speaker 5: I'm saying, Yeah, you know, you know, so I understand that,
- 1:02:46Speaker 5: and I get it. It's the it's the equivalent of
- 1:02:49Speaker 5: asking somebody who's a better basketball player? Like, yeah, I
- 1:02:52Speaker 5: don't like the sports analogies because artists in the sport
- 1:02:55Speaker 5: I can be seventy and do this. But I would
- 1:02:58Speaker 5: say that, like, you know, you have people who have
- 1:03:01Speaker 5: seen you know, different ball players play in the post
- 1:03:04Speaker 5: in the post Internet era, and then you've had people
- 1:03:07Speaker 5: who didn't play in the Internet era, and then you're
- 1:03:10Speaker 5: trying to compare them, so you can't you compare Jordan
- 1:03:13Speaker 5: to whoever you want to pick in the new era,
- 1:03:15Speaker 5: and people don't get those comparisons. So if they don't understand,
- 1:03:22Speaker 5: like how much the world changed how much I changed
- 1:03:25Speaker 5: the world. If you wasn't dead, you just don't understand that,
- 1:03:28Speaker 5: you know what I mean? You don't like you have
- 1:03:30Speaker 5: to remember that. Okay, just just just with deaf Jam alone,
- 1:03:34Speaker 5: name the artists that will signed to death Jam. Just
- 1:03:36Speaker 5: name no, just over time, name five. So let's stop
- 1:03:52Speaker 5: right there, right. So, I'm the first artist on death Jam.
- 1:03:55Speaker 5: It was a production company, Tela Rock. I'm the first artist.
- 1:03:58Speaker 1: I put the label on my back and I got
- 1:03:59Speaker 1: us distribution deal with my album.
- 1:04:03Speaker 5: Wow, what are we talking about? What are we really
- 1:04:09Speaker 5: talking about it?
- 1:04:10Speaker 3: Like, so.
- 1:04:12Speaker 5: I'm just saying that, like that's putting the work into
- 1:04:16Speaker 5: really be a pillar. So now creatively with this new album,
- 1:04:19Speaker 5: what I look to do with the Force, because the
- 1:04:21Speaker 5: album is called The Force.
- 1:04:23Speaker 7: Frequency is a real creative energy.
- 1:04:25Speaker 5: And what I'm looking to do with this is to
- 1:04:27Speaker 5: give people, you know, you know, a body of work
- 1:04:31Speaker 5: that really gives them an opportunity to go a little
- 1:04:33Speaker 5: deep into what I do, you know what I'm saying,
- 1:04:35Speaker 5: and really get into it so that we can have
- 1:04:37Speaker 5: these maybe those listeners.
- 1:04:38Speaker 7: I think the list will change.
- 1:04:39Speaker 8: So you know, I think I think certain people can't
- 1:04:43Speaker 8: be ranked. I think you're one of those people who
- 1:04:45Speaker 8: can't be ranked.
- 1:04:46Speaker 3: You know what I really think.
- 1:04:47Speaker 5: You know what my honest opinion is, Charlamagne, I think
- 1:04:50Speaker 5: that every I think art is about.
- 1:04:53Speaker 7: The observer or and music is about the listener.
- 1:04:56Speaker 5: And it is how that art affects the observer or
- 1:04:59Speaker 5: how that music it affects the listener. That that's so
- 1:05:03Speaker 5: the fans. Let the fans judge it. Like people always
- 1:05:05Speaker 5: ask me, what do you want your legacy to be?
- 1:05:07Speaker 5: It's like that's you're never going to be able to
- 1:05:10Speaker 5: decide that. You put all your work in in the
- 1:05:12Speaker 5: moment and then you let the fans decide that. You
- 1:05:14Speaker 5: know what I'm saying. So when it comes to those lists,
- 1:05:16Speaker 5: let the writers decide that if that's what the people
- 1:05:18Speaker 5: in that room felt.
- 1:05:19Speaker 4: Cool.
- 1:05:20Speaker 5: We also know that there's some people running around right now.
- 1:05:22Speaker 5: There's a guy in the barbershop who said he's been
- 1:05:25Speaker 5: loving me and I saved his life for years and
- 1:05:27Speaker 5: he loves everything I do, and there's a girl that
- 1:05:29Speaker 5: feels the same way. So it's not really those judgments
- 1:05:33Speaker 5: are not really what it's about for me totally.
- 1:05:36Speaker 7: You know what I'm saying, I just want my fans.
- 1:05:39Speaker 5: The ones that love Llo COOLJ, whether the day Ones
- 1:05:41Speaker 5: or the new fans, to hear my music, to come
- 1:05:44Speaker 5: on the road, to enjoy what I do, to love
- 1:05:46Speaker 5: what we're doing together.
- 1:05:47Speaker 3: And that's it, you know what I'm saying.
- 1:05:48Speaker 7: How do we create those conversations though?
- 1:05:50Speaker 8: Because you did when you said you're the goat, right, Yeah,
- 1:05:52Speaker 8: started a whole new conversation. How do you start those
- 1:05:55Speaker 8: conversations to let people know like, nah, this is a
- 1:05:58Speaker 8: revered icon.
- 1:05:59Speaker 1: I mean, you're Reac and I are in the production
- 1:06:03Speaker 1: business now, So it's.
- 1:06:06Speaker 6: It boils down to telling those stories, you know what
- 1:06:08Speaker 6: I'm saying, and in us being able to tell our
- 1:06:11Speaker 6: own stories, you know what I mean.
- 1:06:13Speaker 5: I might have to do a documentary.
- 1:06:15Speaker 1: I might, I would hope, So yeah, I might have
- 1:06:18Speaker 1: to do a document absolutely. I just never wanted to
- 1:06:20Speaker 1: do a movie or documentary because I just didn't feel
- 1:06:23Speaker 1: like looking at myself for hours.
- 1:06:24Speaker 3: And hours dealing with that bullshit boring camera.
- 1:06:34Speaker 1: You're in tire, Like do you have a collection of
- 1:06:36Speaker 1: like you know, I'm coming.
- 1:06:39Speaker 5: Here the perfect person to do that and help me
- 1:06:43Speaker 5: with that.
- 1:06:43Speaker 4: I mean, tell you the story.
- 1:06:45Speaker 2: Absolutely, I gotta ask who I know, you gotta go
- 1:06:47Speaker 2: but the mount Rushmore of hip hop to y'all, who
- 1:06:50Speaker 2: would be the four faces on it?
- 1:06:53Speaker 7: Not even personally. You can't do personal as.
- 1:06:57Speaker 1: People put hisself on.
- 1:06:59Speaker 8: I mean to say, like your personal favorites, like in
- 1:07:01Speaker 8: the future when we're not here and somebody's looking like,
- 1:07:03Speaker 8: who are those people?
- 1:07:04Speaker 3: The big I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I have to do it.
- 1:07:10Speaker 3: I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. All right.
- 1:07:16Speaker 1: So, my as as as a music lover, DJ and
- 1:07:20Speaker 1: a producer, and you know, I'm representing my my era.
- 1:07:27Speaker 1: You know, I was seventeen, eighteen and eighty eight. So
- 1:07:31Speaker 1: for me to hear my record parents, to hear my record,
- 1:07:34Speaker 1: my parents' record collection come alive in these records was everything.
- 1:07:39Speaker 1: So I would say that probably my mount Rushmore of
- 1:07:45Speaker 1: albums would probably be.
- 1:07:48Speaker 7: Uh, you're doing albums not artists.
- 1:07:50Speaker 3: Well, yeah, it's cheating. No, it's too monolithic.
- 1:07:54Speaker 1: Like everyone answer.
- 1:07:57Speaker 3: For me.
- 1:07:58Speaker 1: Albums wise, I would say A Nation of Millions, three
- 1:08:04Speaker 1: ft I and Rising, and then the thirty six, and
- 1:08:11Speaker 1: probably lastly I might say Midnight Marauders, Like those four
- 1:08:17Speaker 1: records sort of informed me to go deep into the
- 1:08:21Speaker 1: culture and actually to get my own career. So I
- 1:08:24Speaker 1: wouldn't have face. I mean they'll have MC's or whatever.
- 1:08:27Speaker 1: I don't know, but I mean those are what's the
- 1:08:30Speaker 1: criteria for the mount rushmore? What is the criteria I.
- 1:08:33Speaker 8: Think people I would I would look at people that
- 1:08:35Speaker 8: are founding fathers but also shaped hip hop as we
- 1:08:38Speaker 8: know now in its whole totality, from the music to
- 1:08:42Speaker 8: commerce everything.
- 1:08:44Speaker 3: See that, I think, get in the commerce.
- 1:08:47Speaker 7: When you start talking commerce.
- 1:08:49Speaker 1: No commerce, no commerce, But I mean the commerce like
- 1:08:52Speaker 1: are because we're talking about but there are people.
- 1:08:53Speaker 8: Who transformed the game with their art, like like Doctor
- 1:08:57Speaker 8: D transformed the game.
- 1:08:58Speaker 7: They just happened to sell millions of records doing it.
- 1:09:01Speaker 3: Well.
- 1:09:01Speaker 5: The commerce on that, But I would say the beats
- 1:09:03Speaker 5: would be the commerce. Correct, now put those records right
- 1:09:06Speaker 5: if you're entire I mean the selling of records is commerce.
- 1:09:09Speaker 5: But you know what I mean, Like when when you
- 1:09:11Speaker 5: say commerce to me, I'm thinking about like business outside
- 1:09:13Speaker 5: of music. Yeah, that's how I took it.
- 1:09:17Speaker 1: Your entire hip hop record collection and tape collection, we're
- 1:09:22Speaker 1: taking away from you. Which four would you want to
- 1:09:26Speaker 1: save just.
- 1:09:27Speaker 3: For your own listening pleasure?
- 1:09:29Speaker 5: I mean that you know for me, it's it's on
- 1:09:32Speaker 5: the album side. Yeah, you mean, just like house is
- 1:09:37Speaker 5: burning down, you get I need you know, look, man,
- 1:09:42Speaker 5: I just keep it. Keep it simple to me. When
- 1:09:44Speaker 5: you talk about like a real rush More and you
- 1:09:46Speaker 5: talk about the shaping of the culture, you have to
- 1:09:48Speaker 5: look at it's first principles. You know, it's like anything else,
- 1:09:52Speaker 5: you break it down the first principles, right, and you
- 1:09:56Speaker 5: know you got to put DJ cool Hirk he started
- 1:09:59Speaker 5: the ship. He ain't on Rushmore. I just he just
- 1:10:02Speaker 5: started it. No big deal, no big deal, this something
- 1:10:05Speaker 5: I did, Okay. And then you have to put run
- 1:10:09Speaker 5: DMC up up there because they kicked down the doors
- 1:10:12Speaker 5: in the walls and you know, put me on their
- 1:10:14Speaker 5: back to a certain stand as well. And I was
- 1:10:16Speaker 5: the solo guy who went out there got shot out
- 1:10:18Speaker 5: of that you know cannon, right. And then you have
- 1:10:22Speaker 5: to put you know, Flash and Mail because Flash, because
- 1:10:28Speaker 5: you know, he made he made us dream of the culture,
- 1:10:34Speaker 5: the DJ, the art of the DJ, the idea that
- 1:10:38Speaker 5: a DJ could affect culture.
- 1:10:39Speaker 7: And move culture. Flash made us do that.
- 1:10:41Speaker 5: And then you gotta say Mal because he was the
- 1:10:44Speaker 5: first original prolific writer that wrote songs that were beyond
- 1:10:49Speaker 5: just the brag, not just the bragging, because the bragging
- 1:10:51Speaker 5: was very important. See now you know we got all
- 1:10:54Speaker 5: sophisticated and we looked down on the bragging. But like
- 1:10:56Speaker 5: I said earlier, the bragging was our way to get
- 1:10:59Speaker 5: out of our turmoil and out of that that drama
- 1:11:03Speaker 5: that we were in in that inner city.
- 1:11:05Speaker 7: That's the that's the core what we do. Like those
- 1:11:07Speaker 7: are the core. You know what I'm saying.
- 1:11:09Speaker 5: You have a couple of others, but like that core,
- 1:11:11Speaker 5: right there is the real core. Now we could get
- 1:11:13Speaker 5: in anything after that. Fan based this you know, it's
- 1:11:17Speaker 5: based on oh he made money or oh he had
- 1:11:19Speaker 5: a lot of platinum albums. Oh he got people to
- 1:11:22Speaker 5: change their shirts. Oh yo that he got you know,
- 1:11:25Speaker 5: all of that is cool. But DJ Cool, Hirk Run, DMC,
- 1:11:30Speaker 5: Grandmaster Flash and Mail like bro like you removed that
- 1:11:35Speaker 5: in like.
- 1:11:37Speaker 3: What you got?
- 1:11:38Speaker 5: Yeah.
- 1:11:39Speaker 6: For me, I think it boils down to, uh, just
- 1:11:42Speaker 6: who had the most impact, you know upon my craft
- 1:11:46Speaker 6: and right, I think it's always been just like a
- 1:11:49Speaker 6: balance between you know, uh uh a certain cadence and
- 1:11:54Speaker 6: you know, something more stylistic.
- 1:11:57Speaker 3: So I'll give props to.
- 1:11:58Speaker 6: You know, the the ls and you know the BC
- 1:12:01Speaker 6: Boys and the Chuck D's and even running them even
- 1:12:03Speaker 6: though they weren't depth jam artists. But that whole first
- 1:12:06Speaker 6: wave of depth jam artists were the first people that
- 1:12:09Speaker 6: I heard had you know that yeah, that that that
- 1:12:12Speaker 6: that that rush roster. They had that powerful cadence that
- 1:12:15Speaker 6: was just different from with Mel and Curtis Blow and
- 1:12:18Speaker 6: everybody was doing.
- 1:12:19Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying, run DMC, you know what
- 1:12:20Speaker 3: I'm saying.
- 1:12:21Speaker 6: They came out like balls going on el el cool
- 1:12:24Speaker 6: than Chuck d you know what I mean. Yelling There
- 1:12:27Speaker 6: was the yelling, so it was you know, that was
- 1:12:29Speaker 6: like wow, like they had arrived.
- 1:12:30Speaker 3: They you know, changed the way I wrote, you know
- 1:12:33Speaker 3: what I'm saying.
- 1:12:33Speaker 6: After I was exposed to that, So that whole wave
- 1:12:36Speaker 6: would be you know, half of my Mount rushmore and
- 1:12:38Speaker 6: then the other half would be once artists you know,
- 1:12:41Speaker 6: started doing something stylistic that you know, made the voice
- 1:12:45Speaker 6: more comparable to an instrument.
- 1:12:47Speaker 3: Right, so you know the rock km's and knes and
- 1:12:49Speaker 3: g raps.
- 1:12:50Speaker 6: You know people who you know that next graduating class,
- 1:12:53Speaker 6: so you know, the you know, one point five version
- 1:12:56Speaker 6: of what Ellen was doing, who came out and said,
- 1:12:58Speaker 6: you know, I'm gonna challenge myself to do this and
- 1:13:00Speaker 6: not have to yell you know what I mean, I
- 1:13:02Speaker 6: want to draw you in in a different way. So
- 1:13:04Speaker 6: I think what I've done is always been a balance
- 1:13:06Speaker 6: between the two. So that's sort of my mount Rushmore.
- 1:13:09Speaker 6: I think, you know, one one artist that I think
- 1:13:12Speaker 6: has definitely navigated that well. I mean definitely earlier on
- 1:13:15Speaker 6: in his career was Cute, you know what I'm saying.
- 1:13:17Speaker 6: I think, you know, when when Q came out, you know,
- 1:13:20Speaker 6: when he broke off from n w A and started
- 1:13:22Speaker 6: doing his solo ship, it was like that was the
- 1:13:25Speaker 6: space that I.
- 1:13:25Speaker 3: Wanted to occupy.
- 1:13:26Speaker 6: I felt like that was, you know, reflective of sort
- 1:13:29Speaker 6: of where I was, you know, in between a chuck
- 1:13:32Speaker 6: and you know, like the narrative storytelling of a g
- 1:13:35Speaker 6: rap You know, So did you write for.
- 1:13:39Speaker 1: You collaborate on on that?
- 1:13:43Speaker 3: You can still tap? You can still cob.
- 1:13:50Speaker 5: Now, we never did any music together, no, no, yeah, yeah,
- 1:13:54Speaker 5: people people have a fantasy d on your old absolutely
- 1:14:00Speaker 5: asolutely DJ Pool Bob Cat because remember my second album
- 1:14:03Speaker 5: was part of that crew. Yeah yeah he was. He
- 1:14:06Speaker 5: wasn't in the l A possible, but he was. But
- 1:14:08Speaker 5: he was definitely part of our crew when we produced
- 1:14:10Speaker 5: Big and Deptha and yeah, yeah, DJ Pool, Bobcat, you
- 1:14:14Speaker 5: know what I'm saying, La, Dwayne Simon, Daryl Pierce, they
- 1:14:18Speaker 5: all were you know, part of that.
- 1:14:19Speaker 7: Yeah, no question, Yes, somebody I saw this on the internet.
- 1:14:22Speaker 8: Somebody said around that time, Cube was helping you. You
- 1:14:26Speaker 8: know what, people have this, you know, you know people,
- 1:14:28Speaker 8: they got a lot of stories, bro, They come up
- 1:14:30Speaker 8: with a lot of stories, you know what I mean.
- 1:14:31Speaker 7: Hey, Hey, Michael Jordan, did.
- 1:14:34Speaker 1: Uh somebody ever bounced the ball for you and shoot
- 1:14:38Speaker 1: your jump.
- 1:14:39Speaker 5: Shot for you? Like?
- 1:14:39Speaker 3: No, I shot the jump shot.
- 1:14:42Speaker 1: I just always find answer who did you write? Like,
- 1:14:45Speaker 1: because I just heard the story of you writing for
- 1:14:48Speaker 1: lights Verse on self Destruction?
- 1:14:51Speaker 7: Who else have you written.
- 1:14:55Speaker 3: For different people? I don't you know, you know I have.
- 1:14:57Speaker 1: There been some legendary rhymes from classic stuff that you wrote.
- 1:15:01Speaker 1: We will never know about that you'll take to your
- 1:15:03Speaker 1: grave like yeah.
- 1:15:07Speaker 5: Why because it's just it was a different time and
- 1:15:11Speaker 5: people just don't talk about it. And I just but
- 1:15:14Speaker 5: I you know, I wrote for people. But at the
- 1:15:16Speaker 5: same time, like listen, I'm not above collaborating on a
- 1:15:19Speaker 5: chorus or working on something like I'm not picky like that.
- 1:15:22Speaker 5: If I was writing a rhyme and somebody said, YO
- 1:15:24Speaker 5: said a word up, be like, all right, I like
- 1:15:25Speaker 5: that word.
- 1:15:26Speaker 3: I'm cool with that.
- 1:15:27Speaker 5: But you know, I write my songs, you know what
- 1:15:29Speaker 5: I'm saying. I have to because it has to come
- 1:15:31Speaker 5: from me. And if you collaborate too much on the
- 1:15:34Speaker 5: at least from ll COOLJ fans, If I collaborated too
- 1:15:37Speaker 5: much with somebody on writing, it would affect what they're
- 1:15:41Speaker 5: listening to.
- 1:15:41Speaker 7: It wouldn't sound like me, you know what I mean?
- 1:15:44Speaker 7: Because they are.
- 1:15:45Speaker 5: Very unique things to ll COOLJ, to black Thought, to
- 1:15:48Speaker 5: quest love, so you have to be you know, very specific.
- 1:15:51Speaker 5: Specificity is universal.
- 1:15:53Speaker 6: One of my I one of the things that I've encountered,
- 1:15:55Speaker 6: you know, as a writer in my career is I'm
- 1:15:58Speaker 6: a little bet at it now since I worked on
- 1:16:00Speaker 6: musical theater. But you know, people would hire me to
- 1:16:05Speaker 6: write for them, and it would be hard for me
- 1:16:06Speaker 6: to write in their voice or to write in a
- 1:16:09Speaker 6: way that's gonna make them sound together than you know,
- 1:16:12Speaker 6: like someone.
- 1:16:12Speaker 3: Who's doing the Black Store. It's hard to impressure, right,
- 1:16:15Speaker 3: you know, it's hard to dump down.
- 1:16:17Speaker 6: Not even I wouldn't say it's a dumbing down, it's
- 1:16:19Speaker 6: just you know, composing and the ranging in a different
- 1:16:22Speaker 6: voice other than your own. It's it's not as easy
- 1:16:25Speaker 6: as one would think it is, you know. So yeah,
- 1:16:28Speaker 6: you know, it's definitely like people who are like ghost writers,
- 1:16:30Speaker 6: who are able to you know, be like water in
- 1:16:32Speaker 6: that way. And if I'm writing for you, like it
- 1:16:34Speaker 6: feels like you, that's a that's that's that's that's not
- 1:16:37Speaker 6: a quiet gift that people people sort of learn over time.
- 1:16:41Speaker 5: Yeah, so I'll give you I'll give you an example.
- 1:16:42Speaker 5: So I tried to do a more collaborative writing album.
- 1:16:47Speaker 5: I did a whole album with fifty cents. Yeah, and
- 1:16:50Speaker 5: we were writing together on this album. And when it
- 1:16:53Speaker 5: was done, I listened to it. I'm like, it sounds good.
- 1:16:56Speaker 5: I like the music, the rhymes, it sounds cool, but
- 1:16:59Speaker 5: it ain't me. So I didn't put it out. It
- 1:17:02Speaker 5: wasn't nothing against fifty. I love fifty. I just wanted
- 1:17:05Speaker 5: to try something different. Maybe we collaborate right together. It
- 1:17:07Speaker 5: didn't work. I think Paradise was.
- 1:17:09Speaker 7: No, no, no, no. Paradise is totally different.
- 1:17:11Speaker 5: Fifty wrote the chorus on Paradise for a Marie what
- 1:17:16Speaker 5: she sung. He didn't write my rhymes. You know what,
- 1:17:18Speaker 5: I mean, like people get that a little, you know
- 1:17:20Speaker 5: what I'm saying.
- 1:17:21Speaker 1: That being said, when that happened, I didn't even know
- 1:17:23Speaker 1: fifty was involved.
- 1:17:24Speaker 5: That was the track masters. They got that done right,
- 1:17:28Speaker 5: so and they played with the chorus. I liked it,
- 1:17:29Speaker 5: et cetera. But you know, we tried to work together,
- 1:17:34Speaker 5: and that's my man, you know what I'm saying. We
- 1:17:35Speaker 5: real cool, But the collaborative thing when it comes to
- 1:17:40Speaker 5: my verses, that doesn't work for me. And you know,
- 1:17:43Speaker 5: I'm kind of like, it's funny when you do this
- 1:17:45Speaker 5: a long time. The longer you do this, the more
- 1:17:48Speaker 5: people does he still got it? Can he still do it?
- 1:17:52Speaker 5: Is he gonna be able to do it? It kind
- 1:17:53Speaker 5: of reminds me of the Crawfit fight the other night.
- 1:17:56Speaker 5: There were a lot of people who like were really
- 1:17:58Speaker 5: like nervous for off it. Yeah, it was a lot
- 1:18:03Speaker 5: of people that were nervous for Crawfit when he was
- 1:18:05Speaker 5: walking in the ring and he showed what it is.
- 1:18:09Speaker 5: And I think with me it for whatever reason, people
- 1:18:13Speaker 5: are never quite sure if how it's gonna be.
- 1:18:16Speaker 3: But do you like being underestimated?
- 1:18:19Speaker 1: I love it. I actually love it. I'm good with that.
- 1:18:23Speaker 1: I'm good with that because that, you know, that only
- 1:18:25Speaker 1: makes the jab that much.
- 1:18:26Speaker 8: Stiffer underestimated as the fact you've been winning for so long.
- 1:18:29Speaker 8: It just comes to a point where people just like, god, damn,
- 1:18:31Speaker 8: can he lose at something?
- 1:18:32Speaker 7: Or they may be bad at something? Can you know
- 1:18:33Speaker 7: what I mean?
- 1:18:34Speaker 1: It's just or they forget what happens to every dynasty.
- 1:18:37Speaker 5: Well, you know, you know it all comes with the territory,
- 1:18:39Speaker 5: right Like, I'm a big Denzel Washington fan of love Denzel.
- 1:18:42Speaker 7: There's great movies.
- 1:18:43Speaker 5: You could take him for granted because he's so nice
- 1:18:45Speaker 5: with his thing, Like I don't I don't you know,
- 1:18:47Speaker 5: I'm gonna be real with you, man. I feel very loved.
- 1:18:50Speaker 5: I feel very respected. I feel you know, like number one,
- 1:18:54Speaker 5: I feel like the goat. I feel good, I feel recognized,
- 1:18:57Speaker 5: I feel appreciated. I don't have I don't have have
- 1:19:00Speaker 5: hang ups about like how people perceive me. I'm not like,
- 1:19:04Speaker 5: I'm not pretending to be fourteen and I ain't gonna
- 1:19:06Speaker 5: pretend to be sixty.
- 1:19:07Speaker 3: I'm just who I am. You know what I'm saying.
- 1:19:10Speaker 4: You know, I know you guys gotta go.
- 1:19:11Speaker 5: I got well you know you say that like once
- 1:19:17Speaker 5: every half an hour.
- 1:19:20Speaker 3: Once once every hapf I gotta.
- 1:19:21Speaker 1: Ask, right, So we all go out to dinner, right,
- 1:19:24Speaker 1: LL is paying for dinner because we usually the person
- 1:19:26Speaker 1: the richest money.
- 1:19:27Speaker 5: The richest person pays right to la.
- 1:19:29Speaker 1: Now when you go when y'all in Magic go out
- 1:19:31Speaker 1: to y'all uh big billion dollar boats and y'all traveling,
- 1:19:35Speaker 1: y'all go to SpaceX and all that.
- 1:19:37Speaker 3: Who pays for that? Most of the time Magic?
- 1:19:40Speaker 5: Most of the time Magic pays every now and then
- 1:19:42Speaker 5: I pay, I do pay, I do pay.
- 1:19:45Speaker 3: But you know, I got much be nice, Like.
- 1:19:51Speaker 4: How many do your own l like you have a
- 1:19:54Speaker 4: halt closet?
- 1:19:55Speaker 3: I probably is probably as many as you got sneakers,
- 1:19:57Speaker 3: you know what I mean? You have already do.
- 1:19:59Speaker 7: What time you was insecure to take the head? Of course?
- 1:20:02Speaker 5: Absolutely, But then you know we get over that too,
- 1:20:06Speaker 5: don't we. Like it's pretty obvious. I mean, see, I
- 1:20:08Speaker 5: mean it's pretty obvious. I did fourteen seasons and TV,
- 1:20:11Speaker 5: you know what I mean, with a ball head so
- 1:20:13Speaker 5: into deep ball Head.
- 1:20:14Speaker 7: I just didn't like that. I just always felt.
- 1:20:16Speaker 8: Comfortable classic role, very underrated role when you played God.
- 1:20:20Speaker 3: Yeah too deep?
- 1:20:21Speaker 5: You know, actually, Omar, we've been you know, I talked
- 1:20:25Speaker 5: to Omar every now and then. You know what I'm saying,
- 1:20:27Speaker 5: that's my man. Into Deep was definitely a fun movie.
- 1:20:29Speaker 5: People should see it if they haven't seen it, it
- 1:20:31Speaker 5: was fun than we appreciate.
- 1:20:34Speaker 4: Make sure the tour. How can they get tickets if
- 1:20:36Speaker 4: they need to.
- 1:20:37Speaker 5: Go to I mean, just go to ticketmaster dot com
- 1:20:39Speaker 5: and check it out. The fourth tour. I love Cool
- 1:20:42Speaker 5: Jay and the Roots and oh one other thing. I
- 1:20:43Speaker 5: want to tell you. This show is not like the
- 1:20:46Speaker 5: music stops, then another artist comes on and the music
- 1:20:49Speaker 5: starts in another.
- 1:20:50Speaker 3: Out of.
- 1:20:52Speaker 1: Yeah, don't show up. This is one long what is
- 1:20:55Speaker 1: it two three hours? Yes, it's a one long mixtape.
- 1:20:58Speaker 1: It's a mixtape, I mean, And that's how we're fortunes
- 1:21:02Speaker 1: another day.
- 1:21:03Speaker 5: Okay, right, so get there, you know, get there on time.
- 1:21:06Speaker 5: You know what I'm saying. We'll be trying to make
- 1:21:08Speaker 5: a grand entrance to ship, seet hurting and all that.
- 1:21:11Speaker 5: Just get in on time. Let's have some fun.
- 1:21:13Speaker 7: Hed sprung. The first song that comes, they called me.
- 1:21:16Speaker 5: Big hell, oh cool, glazy gentlemen, it's the Breakfast Club.
- 1:21:21Speaker 4: Good morning,