Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Scarface: The Reunion

Transcript

Scarface: The Reunion · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin. I sit alone in my four cornered rooms, damning
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: a candle. What I should let me dropped from shoodlike
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: this field. Scarface is a Houston rapper with a gruff baritone.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: He's one of the most recognizable, respected voices in hip
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: hop for decades now. He straddled the line between commercial
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: and authentic, a dynamic that was once rare in the culture.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Day by day is more impossible the cold. I feel
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: like I'm the one that's doing dope. I'll often drift
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: when I drive, having fatal bolts of suicide. Scarface's appeal
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: was his vulnerability. His graphic depictions of hood life, paired
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: with a psychological toll that environment took on its residence,
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: was groundbreaking. It got the attention of Rap a Lot
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Records CEO James Prince, who recruited Face to join the
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Ghetto Boys when he was only seventeen years old. The group,
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: which also included Willie D and Bushwood Bill, were one
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: of Rick Rubin's earliest rap signings for his post def
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: jam label, Deaf American the main national news in nineteen
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: ninety when Deaf Americans distributor Geffen Records refused to release
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: the Ghetto Boys music because of its violent lyrical content.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: Already square in the middle of the gangster rap era,
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: the group's lyrics pushed the genre even further. They were
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: tagged at the label Horrorcore, the rap version of an
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: eighties slasher film. On today's episode, Scarface and Rick talk
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: about how Face's recent experience with COVID was eerily similar
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: to his classic verse on minds, playing tricks on me,
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: and surprisingly, Scarface also talks about the Miranda Lambert song
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: that makes him yearn for his childhood Texas home. This
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: is broken record liner notes for the did You to Age?
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: I'm justin Richmond. Here's Rick Rubin with Scarface. How are
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: you feeling, man, I'm good man. How you doing good?
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: It's so good Toe. You've been such a long time.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: I know it's been too damn long. Man. Looked like
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: time been kind to you. Man. You're getting nice right either.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you? You You look pretty good to yourself.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: You look healthy. I'm getting there, man. I understand you
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: went through a physical transformation. Tell me a little bit
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: about it. I just decided that I didn't want to
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: be big no more. I just like forty four years old.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: Rick and I decided that I didn't want to. I
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: didn't want to go through those health risks though, mars
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: hart and congestive heart failure and and just being overweight
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: old beasts. Man, it's a lot of things that come
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: with you, you know, not taking care of your body.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: You're eating crazy. Yeah, how heavy did you get up to?
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: I got up to two ninety one. Wow, I'm one
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: hundred and ninety five them. But I also do die.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: I was just four days a week now because the
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: COVID knocked out my kidneys. When did you have COVID?
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: I had COVID February March of twenty And do you
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: know how you got it? I have no clue. Man, Wow,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: did people around you have it as well? Or no?
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: Nobody else had it? They wanted to keep me in
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: the hospital in the small room when no, life's kind
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: of like a solitary confinement. And I ended up, you know,
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: just after down a stand in the hospital. Man. They
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: had to toilet up under the sink and the you know,
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: inside the cabinet. And it's just like I was in
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: depending attention and I like being in jail, So I
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: just scratched it all together. Were you able to go out,
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: like did they let you out? I don't know how
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: any of that stuff works. Okay, so you can leave
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: on your own recognizant, I guess, but you have to
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: sign a letter saying that you left against the doctor's orders.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: And I left and I just said, you know, well,
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: if I'm gonna die, and I'm gonna die at home, man,
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: I definitely don't want to die in this box because
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: that you couldn't even have visitors and not you can't
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: even have this the hospital now. So these people that's dying,
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: they died by theirselves and I don't want to do that.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: Mand So how long we sick for it? I was
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: sick from the beginning of March until about April the seventh.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: I went to the hospital for my kidneys after that,
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: but I ended up fighting the COVID. So when I
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: first caught COVID, I couldn't breathe, and then as time progressed,
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: I couldn't breathe and it felt like I had the flute,
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: and it was like the flute times twenty thousand, and
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: then my lung still up with water. And then they
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: fight you the pneumonia. So that's bilateral pneumoonians, so they
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: fight pneumonia. When they killed the pneumonia, then then the
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: fluid arms around my heart. And then when they you know,
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: fight that off then and then it attacks my kidneys
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: and then it gets it knocks my kidneys. Wow. So
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: how are you feeling in general now since that? If
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: you ask me, how do I feel? You know, just
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: in general, I'm cool. But the last and effects of
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: the covid man, you know, like I hallucinate, Wow, you know, yeah,
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: I see things that aren't there when I was sleeping.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: You know, I could be in a dream, wake up
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: and go get water and come back, go back to sleep,
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: and be back in that same dream, in that same spot. Well,
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: that would segue easily into us talking about a song.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: You always thought I was crazy man, but just a
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: serious man. But seriously, you wrote a song a long
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: time ago that tells the story you just told for real.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: It's unbelievable, Like it's it's it's coming in, it's coming
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: to life. Yeah, tell me the story of mis playing
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: tricks on me. So like my grandmother would always walk
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: around in the house and miss play stuff, and she said,
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: I guess my mom must be playing tricks something, you know.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: That's when a title came from. The song came from.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: You know. I wrote all three verses except for Willie's right,
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: and originally it was the it was my two verses
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: and didn't the one that Bill raps that was the
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: original song that was supposed to go on to mister
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: Scarface's back album, I don't you remember that? Yeah? And
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: I wrote it because, you know, that's what I was feeling.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: That's where my mind state was. I wrote a lot
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: of music about dying back then, Rick, and it was
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: because I guess I was a troubled kid, and I
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: think that I think that writing was the only out
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: that that I had, you know, because I couldn't talk
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: to my mom. She didn't understand that. My dad, he
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: didn't know what I was going through. So I just
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: wrote io songs. It was therapeutic. I don't know how
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: therapeutic it was, but I did write it. And it's
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: interesting to talk about that song and that kind of
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: song because it really was nothing like that before. In
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: the early days of hip hop, the subject matter was different.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: And then when gangster rap came along, that was the
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: next kind of level of hard was gangster rap. But
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: then what you did was different than that and beyond that,
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: and I guess people would refer to it as horror rap,
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: you know, like it's like gangster rap was more real life,
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: street stories was yours were more violent dreams that were
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: you know, more more like like horror movies and just showing,
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: not showing, but just actually putting how you felt, the
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: vulnerability that you felt, put that in the words and
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: recited that and put those feelings you know, behind it.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: When Wow on the mike, you know what I'm saying, Yeah,
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: but I felt about it. I didn't realize I was
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: doing something new, but I really felt like I was
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: just writing my heart Rick, That's about it. Yeah, what's beautiful.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: You also have written emotional lyrics that you know, I
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: listened to the lyrics sometimes that can make me cry
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: because you could feel the emotion in what you're saying.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: And it's different than you know. For for the longest time,
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: rappers were just presenting, you know, a hard face. You know,
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: it was a front basically, and there was great power
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: that you found in being vulnerable. And it was new.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: It is new. It's still new. Am Wow, that's heavy man,
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: And you know, chip to be coming from you know,
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: number the number one producer hip hop producer of all times.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: Do you realize you you rock the bells? Do you
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: realize you run? Do you see this ship? Rick? Like
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: you're a bad dude and you're a beast boy, You're
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: a beastie boy, the game man. Like for a statement
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: like that they be coming from d Ri Rubin. Wow,
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: it's big man. Thank you for the kind words, sir. Well.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: I I love I've always loved music, and I've always
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: loved your music. And I remember when I first heard
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: the first thing I heard was the Ghetto Boys when
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: it was still g h E T t O. Yeah
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: you changed that, yeah, Rick Rubin actually changed our name
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: from g h E t t O t g E
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: t O Boys. Yeah, And I remember hearing it and
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: feeling like this is the next Like this is a progression.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: This music hasn't gone to this place yet, and it
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: felt revolutionary. And that's what always excited me about music.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: You know, I always try to make I always trying
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: to make stuff that was the most interesting thing in
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: that moment, you know, and as a fan and look
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: for the and you know, look for that where's this
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: what's exciting about music? And it's always when someone takes
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: it to the next level. And your writing did that,
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: And tell me if this is great. Always was of
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: the belief that you were. Were you the main writer
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: for the Ghetto Boys? I feel like you wrote a
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: lot of lyrics, not just your verses. I wrote a
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: lot for the bill. Will and I wrote a lot
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: the bill. I see. You know Bill didn't write at all. Rick. Yeah,
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: you know, he may have had a few ideas, but
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: you know, mainly those ideas came from James and ourselves,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: you know, but Willie and I wrote the mass majority
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: of the larrus f Bushwick. How did you meet Willie?
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: By accident? James had heard of record from me caused
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: scar Face, and he wanted me to do a few
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: songs with the group Ghetto Boys. So we all went
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: out to James's ranch. I don't know if you've ever
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: been out there. We went out there and we were
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: locked into the dance with no transportation, no nothing, for
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: like weeks at a time. He would just drop us
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: off out there and leave right and we'd be like, damn,
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: we don't even know what we had, dude, how we
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: want to get back to well, you know where we lived,
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: so we were forced to record together. And when we started,
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: it was Willie Bill billing the rapper. Yet I'm sorry
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: it was Willie. It was myself, and it was a
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: guy named Jukebox because Johnny C had left the group
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: and we just started making music together and all of
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: a sudden it was no more juke Buck, so it
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: was just me and will and then we had to
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: write the bill, so it was us three. Now that's
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: the ghetto boys that you ended up getting into an
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: agreement with and distribution for YEA. And they called you
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: Action then though I remember they always referred to as Action.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: I was a DJ. I'm probably a better DJ producer
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: than I am a rapper. Rick I don't know about that.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know how good you're all the beats, Ricked,
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: I did a lot of those beachs man. A lot
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: of people put their name on my beach, you know
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: with me. But a lot of those beats, I do
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: those beech Man, Yeah, yeah, I did a lot, a
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: lot of those beats. Incredible. Did you know Mike Dean
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: back from those days too. Mike Dean came in on
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: this song that I did call street Life, and if
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: I told you that I think that Mike is the
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: best producer, i'd be lying. But if you ask me,
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: is he the best engineer, mixer musician by far? I
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: don't know old body better than Mike and mixing, engineering
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: and and and master and all that that's seen him. Yeah.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: But as far as like your vibe, like the vibes
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: didn't come from Mike Dean, Like the grooves and and everything,
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: those came from Mike, It O Joe and Beato and
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: Tone Compone and mister Willie a few more people and myself.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: But Mike Dean made it sound great. Yeah, he's and
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: he still does. He still does. I still work with him.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: He's incredible. He is incredible. Noe better. But I met
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: Mike Dean back in nineteen ninety three through Beatop and
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: then from nineties and the ninety four album we worked
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: Throw together with Ino Joe, Mike Dean and I worked
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: with n O Joe on that, on that Diary album
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: and then the Untouchable album and then a couple more
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: albums after that. We'll be right back with more from Scarface.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: After a quick break. We're back with Scarface. You meet
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: DJ Screw, I did meet Dj Screw, but we were
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: more friends than we were music partners, you know what
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: I mean. Like I used to listen to his tapes
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: that he would make, but I never wrapped it in
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: their ciphers, you understand, because it was a totally different
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: cipher from from from when I grew up jumping in. Yeah,
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: you know, this was slowed down top and screwed. And
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: I could say screwed because Crew didn't. Yeah, I put
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: you up on something rig If Screw didn't do it,
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: then it's not screwed because Screw is a human being.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: So if somebody's saying it it's chopped and screwed, it's
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: not chopped and screwed. It may be chopped, but it's
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: not screwed because Screw didn't do it. Yeah, if someone
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: else did, it would be chopped and slowed down, but
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: it's not screwed. Yeah, chopped and whoever his name is,
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: but it's not screwed. Yeah, you know. And we took
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: that real personal when people said, yeah, man, I got
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: sore and so so and so screwed, and I'm like, well,
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: how did you get his screwed and screwed? In here?
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: Like now, we're from the South Side we take screw
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: Real series down here. I loved it. I remember that.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: What was it one am or three am? Three am? Yeah,
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: three am, that's the one. It shout shied to kit
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: Ki and fat Padding, big hawking is she and the
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: whole screwed up click? Yeah that was good music. Yeah.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: For me, it wasn't about the rapping. It was just
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: about the groove. The roof was crazy. Yeah, the gruel
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: is crazy. Tell me about how did you come to
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: write your book? You know what? I would say that
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: the first part of my life was still on my
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: shoulders at the time that my book came out, But
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: once the truth about my life came out, I felt
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: like everything was lifted off my shoulders, if that makes sense, Beautiful.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: It felt like I told you or I told the
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: world everything that needed to be known about me, Like
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: that was the first half of my life, and it
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: weighed heavy on my weigh the heavy burden on my
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: shoulders because it was a lot of stories that needed
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: to be told. That's like the theory of confessional, you know,
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: in church pretty much it was a confessional time, you know. Yeah, Beautiful,
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: do you have any kind of religious or spiritual beliefs
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: or connection. You know, I'll just believe in God now.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: I believe it. You know, you can. You can break
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: it down into a gang if you want to, because
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: it's all religion is to me as a gang, you know,
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: whether you Baptist, a Christian, or Muslim or whatever you
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: as also there's always somebody that's willing to take that
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: to the extreme. But are you willing to take God
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: to the extreme? Like, I just believe it's bigger than me.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: I believe it's God, period, regardless what denomination you want
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: to call yourself belonging to it. I just believe it's God,
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: you know, Like like if you can see suspending in space,
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: spinning on the ball with water stuck to a life
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: growing from it, if you can show me a person
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: that can make this happen, then you'll change the way
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking from right now. I just only believe in God.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: I think more people had that relationship, the world would
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: probably be a better place. Probably so beautiful. Tell me
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: your first memory of hip hop period? Any any memories
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: of hip hop? Originally, my aunt moved to New York
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: in the sixties. She brought a brownstone in Harlem, So
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm a kid getting take from my cousin
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: are going to New York when I'm a little when
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: I'm a youngster and actually being a part of the
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: original hip hop. So I know all about hip hop,
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: you know, from Cool Hurt to Red Alert to all
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: the casts that were DJ and Molly Mall and just
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: all of that. So I think that my earliest visions
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: a hip hop had to be like Curtis Blow Mode
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: and what's the Battle and classic Battle busy Bee busy Bee,
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: that Battle Breaking B Street. I think that when everybody
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: was doing the Sugar Hill Gang, I was on Curtis
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: Blow or something. You know, all kinds of stuff. Man,
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: When did you first start the idea of writing instead
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: of just listening? Had to be in a sixth grade man,
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: you know what really turned me into really wanted to
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: rap When Criminal Mind became out. That's when I knew
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: I wanted to be a rapper. When six in the morning,
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: when I first heard six in the morning by his tea,
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: I knew I wanted to rap. That's amazing, you know,
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: I see, I see inspired a lot of people to rap.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: It really did. Man, and he don't even know it,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: but you know, he to me, Ricky talked it and
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: he spoke about our life. You know, six hit in
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: the morning, police said at my door, fresh should be
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: just across the bathroom floor. But you know what I mean,
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: You're like you saw that. I was like, Oh, take
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: him a lot, let's go. You know we saw that.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: Did you see the movie he made. I think it's
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: called Something from Nothing. I ain't see that highly recommended.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: It really Something from Nothing. I want to check that out. Yeah,
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: it's a story of hip hop. He interviews mcs and
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: everybody raps a cappella and it's magnificent. Everybody. Wow, it
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: will blow your mind. I wanted to take it out.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: Another early rap for me hip hop for me, Oh
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: my mind, big Time was a song that he did
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: called Reckless Incredible. It's different for IC because musically that
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: felt like more of a It felt like more of
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: a New York kind of beat, like New York club
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: beat that eventually would have led to like Miami bass
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: was sort of a derivation of that style. Um, but
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: I don't remember a lot of IC's records having that
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: kind of tempo. Yeah, that's way back early iced Tea.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: That was back when hip hop sounded like that. Wow,
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: you know, and that's early hip hop for me. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: that sounds like when you think of breakdancing music. It's
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: that kind of music that was nice to break dance
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: too cool. Yeah, but I don't anymore. Did Bush with
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: Bill joined the group originally as a dancer? Yes, he did,
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: from what I understand, I wasn't in the group when
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: he was a dancer, I see, no, But you know what,
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: when I came to Houston and you guys performed for
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: me and that we were in this little club and
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: I remember he was dancing. Yeah, he was a dancer, man.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: You know. Back then, we just did what we thought
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: was the best way to do our side of the story.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, let's talk a little bit about that,
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: because coming from New York, it felt like, at least
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: for a period of time, all of hip hop music
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: being made was coming from New York early on, and
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: then the first records I started hearing from outside of
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: New York were coming from the West Coast. But those
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: had a different sound, and we didn't really like him
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: so much in New York, kind of like Egyptian Lover,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: you know, that that kind of stuff, And I feel
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: like ghetto boys might have been the first group I
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: heard from the South might have been. That's possible, not
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: unless you you know, you had the Two Live Crew
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: that makes the surface before the Ghetto Boys did. But
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: for the most part, we were one of the first
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: acts to come out of the sound for sure. Yeah,
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: Like I was aware of the Two Live Crew, but
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: their music felt more like party music than I wouldn't
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: call it rap music, Okay, do you know that? That's
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: how I heard it, Like, I heard it as like
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: more like party music, whereas Ghetto Boys seemed like serious rap. Okay.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: And then I'm in agreement with you one that Rick.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: We wanted to be respected by everybody, you know, New York,
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: especially because we knew how difficult it was to break
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: into that New York market, Like you could never get
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: to record played in New York, you know New York rappers.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: I remember the first time we did the New Music,
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: said Minard, back in the late eighties early nineties. We
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: got booed. And we didn't get booed by the audience.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: We got booed by the other rappers that were in
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: the audience, you know what I mean. Wow, Yeah, it
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: was rappers that were there at the New Music seminar.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: I gonna say no names, but it was rappers that
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: were booing. And then you turn around and those same rappers,
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: you know, a couple of years later, they was talking
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: about getting money too, you know, those very same rappers. Yeah,
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: you know, we talked about our life as ghetto boys.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: You know, we didn't we didn't have the five degrees
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: of knowledge or you know, I didn't want to rap
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: better than nobody else, to show my skills or compare
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: myself to a to an anvil coming down on your
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: head and and and cracking your head with this rap.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: We was talking about robbing your ass, breaking in your
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: house and still in your card or you know what
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, because that was our life in sixteen seventeen
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: years old when you met me. Uh Rick, you know
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: what I'm saying. Yeah, that was my life. We'll be
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: right back with more from Scarface. Here's the rest of
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: Rick Rubin's conversation with Scarface. Was there much other hip
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: hop music going on in the South that you were
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: aware of? Not that I'm aware of, But I will
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: say that I was the biggest Juice Crew fan ever.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: You know, I was the biggest LA fan ever from
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: the biggest ice Cube in wa fan ever, Public Enemy
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: fans ever. And then you take those all of those rappers,
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: all of those influences, and you molded into one character,
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: and that was me because I wanted those skills. I
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: wanted that delivery, but I wanted my street rawness. Ye.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: You know, you take all of those mcas and then
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: put a little bit of yourself in there, and you
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: become one of the greatest mc is known to the
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: hip hop culture. And I'm grateful for that. A lot
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: of people say that about me, and I appreciate it. Yeah. Also,
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: the also the lyricism and the content felt like you
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: were coming from somewhere else, like you could feel it.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: And the fact that you were willing to talk about
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: emotional stuff that other people weren't willing to talk about,
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: and that was interesting. What do you think you found
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: the I'll call it confidence to talk about really personal things.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: I have no clue, but I I you know, when
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: I was in the fourth, third or fourth grade, we
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: used to have I was in a writing class and
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: reading class and the lady was teaching a speech and
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: drama and teaching us how to rate. And she always
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: said that you had to write your heart you know.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: And I add to that that if you write your
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: heart and you're not crying when you're done writing your heart,
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: then you didn't write the right ship. Wow, so you
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: learned that in school. I learned how to write my
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: heart in school. Thank God for school. If that's the case.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: I'm saying, if that's where you got the idea to
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: do that, I appreciate that I got the idea of
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: writing my heart from school. Man. Yeah, it's funny thing.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: I never had a good relationship with school, but there
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: are moments where the right teacher says the right thing
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: at the right time, and it elis. I had a
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: kindergarten teacher by the name of Missus Silva, and I
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: was just talking to my buddy Marcus Reese about her.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: I was in the kindergarten. Man. I'm fifty now, okay,
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: but this maybe had such an impact on my life
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: when I was in the kindergarten until I still think
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: about her from time to time. She used to come
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: to school and she played the guitar for the class, okay,
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: every day, and she would get out in front of
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: those kids, man, and she would sing those songs that
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: I had never heard before. But she would play the guitar,
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: and I just knew that. I just knew I wanted
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: to be a guitarist. I knew I wanted to be
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: a musician. She had our attention for the first fifteen
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: twenty minutes of class fam just by playing and singing
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: to us. Beautiful, Yeah, beautiful. So you started playing guitar
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: when you were young? Very wow? Yeah? My uncles, all
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: my uncles played guitar. You know my cousin Johnny Nash, Yes, yeah,
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: he just passed. I can see clearly now that Johnny Nash,
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: that's my cousin. Wow. So we Channy grew up watching
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: those people do their thing. Wow. And yeah, and all
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: my uncle's a musicians. My mother is a singer. Musician,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: you know, my dad is a DJ, and my grandmother's
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: a singer. So I just come from a whole music family.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: Did they understand when you got into hip hop? Because
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: I know there was always a line where a lot
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: of musicians didn't like hip hop. Yeah, they thought it
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: was a passing phase you would eventually grow out of.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: Let the truth be told is still growing though. Yeah.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: Let me ask you a question, how do you feel
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: about the new I always like I like new. I
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: like new things. I love new. I like new, I
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: like to I like to be surprised. I like to
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: hear something I never heard before. If I want to
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: hear something that I heard before, I listen to my
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: old records. But I don't do a lot. I don't
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: do that often. I'm much more often listen to things
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: I've never heard before, whether they're new or where they're old,
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: things that I never heard before, which which there's an
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: endless you know, you can go back. I go genre
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: by genre and just learned about whether it's classical music
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: or jazz or just different kinds of music that I
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: never listened to when I was a kid. It their
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: whole new world's to enter, you know. I just found
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: a new as not new as extremely old, but but
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: it's it's new to me. I've been listening to a
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: lot of country music lately, great, and I figured, like,
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: if you ever had to listen to something that someone
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: they really wrote their hearts, it would be country music. Yeah,
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: this lady would play his name. Miranda Lambert just got
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: a song rig that's uh, the House that Built Me
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: is the name of that song. That's that song right there,
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: and it hit me so close in here, Yes, like
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: I really understood that. I was like, Oh, I feel
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: like that. I want to go to where I grew up. Oh,
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: listen to what she's saying. That's the power of music.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: That's what it is. Yeah, that's what it is. Like
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: someone who you might feel like you have absolutely nothing
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: in common with is sharing their truth and it could
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: even be a personal story that has nothing to do
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: with you, and you can just hear the humanity in
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: it and resonate with it and feel like this is
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: all of us. Yeah, it's incredible, Rick, and I love
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: music that that pulls that out. Unfortunately, I'm not really
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: hearing any great good and let's understood. I'm hearing good
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: yeah music, hip hop rep. But I'm not hearing great yeah.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: Well I don't. I don't look for it specifically, So
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: the only reason I would hear it is if either
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: someone turns me onto it or just come across it.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: And I would only notice it if if it excited me.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: So other than that, I listened to uh as they said,
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: like trying to learn about other kinds of music I've
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: never heard before, right, the rock the Bells, you know,
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: both versions, the album version in particular, you knew you
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: heard something great when you heard um Run DMC, dumb Girl,
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: or something like you knew you heard something like phenomenal
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: rock box, like oh damn. Like I'm looking for those
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: records that the charist one uh nine millimeter goes bang
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: the public Enemy, I'm looking for that. Yeah, you know
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: what I was thinking Rick since the room and had
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: it that Rick Rubin didn't like Face and the Ghetto Boys.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: I think that we might just need to do a
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: Face Rick Rubin record together. You never know anything's possible. Man.
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: You do the production man, and you're not gonna play
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: all the instruments too right, amazing. I didn't know that. Yeah,
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: I can rock out too amazing. You listen to my
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: rock music, man. I love Megan Devi, I love Metallica,
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: I love UM. I probably know more about rocking music
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: than anybody you ever come in contact with. I go
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: from Judas Priest to Molly Hate Too, Yeah, Boston, I go,
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: you know, yeah, led Zeppelin and all of that. How
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: did you get turned onto it? So my uncle were
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: in the rock and roll. So when I go to
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: my grandmother's house, I hear a lot of rock and roll. Wow,
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: back home to my mind's house. You know they were
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: disco and jazz and stuff, reggae and all of that
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: kind of stuff. My entire family is musicians, all of them.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: So you got it from all sides and from different
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: kinds of taste. It's nothing better than that. Yeah, all
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: kinds of music. Man from Andrea's bolling Wine. Did to
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: you name it? Yes? When do you last? CEO? Willie
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: D I see Willie all the time. Man, great something
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: my love when you speak to them most definitely will
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: feel well. I love seeing you and I look forward
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: to talking to you probably this week then to see
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: your bro. Thanks to Scarface for catching up with Rick.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: You can check out all of our favorite Scarface and
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: get a Boy songs at Broken Record Podcast doc. Be
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: com slash Broken Record Podcast. We can find all of
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: our new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: Broken Records. Broken Records produced with help from Lea Rose,
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: Jason Gambrel, Martin Gonzalez, Eric Sandler, and Jennifer Sanchez, with
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: engineering help from Nick Chafee. Our executive producer is Mia
• 32:19
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• 32:24
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• 32:27
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• 32:31
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• 32:37
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• 32:41
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• 32:47
  Speaker 1: candy Beats, I'm Justin Richard