Hip Hop Wired Exclusive
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Source: Photo by Paras Griffin/Getty Images for BET / Photo by Paras Griffin/Getty Images for BET
All eyes are on Fat Joe and for all the right reasons. The veteran MC is closing out the year with a return to the BET Hip Hop Awards, a new album and more.
While the 2020 pandemic negatively impacted millions it surprisingly brought the Hip-Hop community together via virtual engagement on social media; here Fat Joe was reborn. The “Lean Back” rapper hosted a captivating Instagram Live series that featured some of the highest profile talents in music, film, sports and more. Fast forward a couple of years and the Bronx, NY native is Rap’s unofficial Master of Ceremonies that we never knew we needed.
This week he completed a rare three-peat and returned as host for the 2024 BET Hip Hop Awards for the third time. Taped in Las Vegas on Tuesday, Oct. 8, the ceremony was attended by countless celebrities and power players. The event not only celebrated some of the most impactful releases from the last year but also honored Travis Scott with “I AM HIP HOP Award.”
In an exclusive interview with HipHopWired.com Fat Joe made it clear the honor was all his. “Three-peat baby! Night night! [There’s] nothing like it. You know coming from The Bronx there is no better vibe than representing the culture and seeing all the other artists. You know the only time we get to see the other artists” he said with excitement.
Since his last stint at the BET Hip Hop Awards Fat Joe has kept busy with co-hosting talk shows, multiple promotional appearances for his autobiography and more. He went on to admit that the additional experience of being on set served him well. “To be honest with you I did it and before you knew it, it was the last act. It just flew by so smoothly; I don’t know how to explain it” he added. “This year was way easier than the first two. I knew everything that was going on. The timing was perfect, everything was perfect about it. I guess practice makes perfect.”
While he didn’t give us any spoilers about the event, he made it clear his favorite moment of the night was when Cactus Jack was honored. “The biggest moment of the night was when Travis Scott received the ‘I AM HIP HOP Award’. This man created his own style. His music is so incredible, he’s one of the few artists that I can listen to 20-30 songs in a row” Joe explained. “It was a happy moment to see him received his flowers.”
Back in 2022, Fat Joe broke necks when he hosted the BET Hip Hop Awards wearing the very limited Eminem Jordan 3 sneakers. When asked what fans can expect this year he remained tightlipped but revealed that he was thinking pink. “I got an outfit called Pinky and the Brain, that’s how I start the show. Super Bottega [Veneta] flow. A lot of name brands that a lot of people don’t know” he said cryptically. “It was real clean, it wasn’t big logos it was more just straight clean. More subtle but [the pieces] are real!” he said jokingly.
To round out the year Fat Joe looks to release a new album. “The World Changed On Me will be out later this month, no later than the beginning of next month. I feel like I am the last un-gentrified MC. [It’s like] I got the bodega and they trying to change the neighborhood with the Jamba Juice and all that,” he said.
The 2024 BET Hip Hop Awards will air Tuesday, October 15 at 8PM EST and will be simulcasted across BET HER, VH1, AND MTV2.
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Source: Alex Mayo / iOne
The iOne Digital team was on site at this year’s CultureCon, where they took center stage to discuss a topic sparking widespread conversation—AI (artificial intelligence). As part of the largest Black-owned media company in the United States, it was an opportunity to address this powerful new technology through the lens of diverse creatives.
The panel discussion, Unlocking Creative Storytelling with AI, spoke to a standing-room-only audience at the annual CultureCon creative homecoming in Brooklyn, New York. Panelists Markus Robinson, Victoria Fleary and Cliché Wynter-Mayo lent their perspectives on the pros and cons of AI while Allison McGevna, iOne Digital’s Senior Vice President of Content moderated the conversation.
Protecting authenticity in the age of AI
Source: Alex Mayo / iOne
The panelists agreed that, as creatives, the key is to view AI as a supportive tool that enhances the creative process, rather than relying on it to produce a final product. “The use of the tool, the knowledge behind actually knowing how to generate the right prompt, is going to weed out the people who are just there for fast output, versus actual creatives and actual artists,” said Vice President of Social, Victoria Fleary.
While AI tools offer an unprecedented range of capabilities, Fleary noted the importance of remaining authentic as creatives. “We’re not putting in these prompts in order for it to generate what we’ll then say, ‘I did this.’ It is a wonderful breeding ground for the germination of ideas,” said Fleary. “Get that direction, and then you walk down that path. Don’t let AI do it for you.”
‘We need to figure out how to safeguard ourselves as creatives.’
Source: Alex Mayo / iOne
In regards to the risks of leaning too heavily into AI, Cliché Wynter-Mayo, Director of Sponsor & Affiliate Content, shared concerns around critical thinking being diminished if “we’re running to a machine for all the answers.” She also expressed some worries around data privacy, security, and misinformation that occurs with manipulated images and video. To mitigate some of these potential harms, she proposed promoting digital literacy that better equips people to discern credible information. Additionally, she wants to see more governance policies and regular data audits to ensure compliance.
“What’s next for us? How do we protect our creative minds? For me that’s where most of my hesitation comes in,” said Wynter-Mayo. “I think we’re just moving so fast. We need to give ourselves a beat to figure things out and to safeguard ourselves as creatives.”
SVP of Product and Technology Markus Robinson is pro-AI and eager to explore opportunities to leverage its uses. However, he emphasized the importance of setting boundaries to protect intellectual property. Robinson noted that iOne Digital opts out of allowing AI language models like ChatGPT and Google Gemini to “crawl” or use content published across the iOne Digital ecosystem including publications like MadameNoire, NewsOne and HipHopWired.
“We believe our voice is unique and something that a lot of folks can’t replicate, so we’ve asked the large language models (LLMs) not to crawl our stuff,” said Robinson. “At the same time, we’re actively having conversations about licensing our content, and that’s the way it should be.”
Using AI tools to streamline work and everyday life
Source: Alex Mayo / iOne
While there’s a conversation happening around protecting creatives in the new age of AI, there are also plenty of areas in which AI has become a useful tool. From transcribing audio and video to text and facilitating note-taking, this technology has proven to be a huge timesaver in the workplace, the panelists agreed. It even has a place at home, where Wynter-Mayo uses ChatGPT to inspire dinner recipes for her family by typing prompts listing the ingredients in her fridge.
It’s clear that AI is here to stay, which is why this conversation is critically important for Black and diverse creatives, the panel emphasized. Like it or not, the iOne Digital team agreed that this emergent technology is something we all need to learn and understand, at the very least. By leveraging these tools, iOne Digital is ensuring that Black and diverse creatives are being included in the AI conversation and do not get left behind as this technology continues to evolve.
Source: Alex Mayo / iOne
Source: @conradclifton / Hip-Hop Wired
Legendary Hip-Hop icons Common and Pete Rock sat down for the latest edition of I Got Questions.
For Common and Pete Rock, their collaborations in the past have been a blessing for Hip-Hop culture. And the public got to see one of their dreams realized as the duo released The Auditorium, Vol. 1 as the summer began. Now, as the two are finishing off their tour in support of the album in New York City this week, HipHopWired got them both to sit down and discuss their careers and partnership in the latest edition of the digital series I Got Questions.
Source: @conradclifton / Hip-Hop Wired
The conversation starts with a bang as Common discusses their first collaboration, the scathing 1996 diss track “The B*tch In You,” which was part of the feud the Chicago rapper had with Ice Cube.
“That was a tough time, but what made you decide to do that beat?” Common asked. “Just being in your house at that time, meeting your moms, and being concerned. Like, calm down,” Pete Rock said with a laugh. At that point, Common revealed that a lot of producers had initially turned him down for that track, surprising Pete. “I know what it’s like to want to get something off your chest,” he replied, as Common agreed and said he’s glad the team up happened and that it’s now a part of Hip-Hop.
Both discussed their first steps into rap, with Common sharing how he started rhyming through his late cousin’s crew in Cincinnati, Ohio, as well as being part of a group with veteran producer No I.D. and opening for Big Daddy Kane and N.W.A. Pete Rock reminisced on when he first met C.L. Smooth in high school and getting signed off the strength of their demo tapes. “That bugs me out to this day,” he said, “because I was just learning how to formulate music, and to get signed off of that by a major label…it was cooking.”
Source: @conradclifton / Hip-Hop Wired
Other gems from the conversation include Common revealing that The Source had planned to do an album full of Unsigned Hype artists like himself including The Notorious B.I.G., Mobb Deep, and Eminem, as well as Pete Rock detailing how he and Nas got together with the help of Large Professor to make the classic “The World Is Yours” track from the Queensbridge MC’s Illmatic.
Check out the entire I Got Questions episode featuring Common and Pete Rock above.
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Source: Redsummer TV / Tale of the Tape
HipHopWired got to exclusively chat with the director and producer of Tale Of The Tape, a new documentary detailing the creation and history of mixtapes in Hip-Hop culture.
The mixtape is a vital component of Hip-Hop culture, and as Hip-Hop has recently celebrated its 50th year of existence, the history of how mixtapes originated is getting its time in the spotlight thanks to a new documentary. Tale of The Tape is a new film that shows the rise of mixtapes and their impact, with Royce Da 5″9′ narrating the journey.
The film features appearances by DJ Drama, DJ Clue, the late Combat Jack, Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole along with DJ Envy, who serves as a producer. Tale of The Tape is directed by Malik K. Buie, the CEO of the film’s production company Red Summer TV. The veteran Hip-Hop journalist Kim Osorio is also a producer of the film and Red Summer’s chief content officer. The hour-long film gives viewers a look into these artists’ views on mixtapes and how greatly it affected their careers and perspectives.
Hip0Hop Wired had the chance to speak exclusively with Buie and Osorio about their passion for making the film and the journey it took to finish it and have it be part of the culture’s growing archives.
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HHW: So, to get started, I wanted to ask right off, how did the process begin to put this definitive documentary together?
Malik K. Buie: This began many years ago, over 10 years ago, to be honest. I was producing for Rap City and other platforms. Like any Hip-Hop head, mixtapes were an integral part of my youth. As I did a lot of interviews and traveled and documented things I always found that mixtapes were kind of like the common tissue to DJs, artists, everybody who was able to reach any sort of success. Or to be able to reach any sort of crowd. They all had a story of, “This mixtape inspired me, this mixtape influenced me, etc.”
And it’s funny because I remember thinking, “Well, I really want to do something based on mixtapes.” We posted about it the other day, a designer that I used to work with said to me, I remember, we sketched out the logo on a napkin, at work, for ‘Tale of The Tape.’” Again, well over 10 years ago. So that was a big part of why I wanted to do the film, I wanted to honor the DJ, I wanted to tell the story of—we see all these really large mainstream artists, whether it’s Drake, whether it’s Kendrick, whether it’s Nicki, whether it’s Cole, they all achieved their success based off their mixtape. But nobody really knew the story of how these mixtapes started with Brucie B and those guys. And of course, Hip-Hip aficionado Kim Osorio. She knows a lot about the subject, and it just made sense for us to partner up and do what we do.
Kim Osorio: I’m glad that he gave you some context as to when it started because I can’t remember. It’s been such a labor of love and a work in progress. We used to have a column when I worked at The Source called Hip Hop One-on-One. And that was a column where we felt like it was our responsibility to educate as well as you know, entertain. And so I think with this here, what we wanted to do was to make sure—it was a responsibility of ours, right?
Especially with where mixtapes are now, for us to be able to say, “Wait, we love the culture, we love mixtape culture, we want to report on it.” But more importantly, we want to make sure that people understand the history. And we want to document that because these days, you see how quickly everyone is just changing the narrative. So for us there, we were teaming up just as fans really. Mixtapes, because I collected them. I used to think I was a DJ. You know, I’m not gonna talk about my turntables and the mixtapes that I used to make. (Laughs) That was a shameless plug.
To this day, right, one of my favorite things to do is to be a DJ, like build playlists. And if you really know me, a lot of people don’t notice about me. I think I’m a DJ, I had [Technics]1200’s. Everything. If you really know me, you know that I love to sequence music, and I love to build playlists. And I send playlists to people that are close to me. It’s like a love language of mine. Everything with me comes from Hip-Hop, everything. That’s how I was taught how to consume music, through a mixtape. I wanted to pick the songs that I wanted to pick. Even to the point when blend tapes were big, right? We want to take these vocals and put it over this instrumental, we want to hear it the way we want to hear it, in the order that we want to hear it in. That sort of curation of music is something that has always fascinated me. So doing this was a no-brainer because a lot of people, a lot of kids coming up to date even listening to Hip-Hop, they just don’t have the same experience. It’s a whole different game. We have to document ours.
HHW: What were the challenges in making the documentary? I noted how the process was, but what were the challenges that stuck out the most with documenting and telling the story?
Kim Osorio: Trying to be a perfectionist? (Laughs)
Malik: (Laughs) So, one, we’re both perfectionists. Look, this is a Red Summer TV, Buffalo Eight production, we’re pretty much self-funded for a lot of this. And, you know, that’s probably the main challenge. I want to have three cameras, I want to have jibs swinging in when we do these interviews, etc, etc. and the resources said different. We would’ve loved to speak to a few more folk. But sometimes that’s kind of what it is. The plan is, of course, to make this a series moving forward. Me and Kim joke a lot, because there were some things like I will write, she’s like, “Oh, I don’t like that, just throw it in the trash.” And she’d do her version of it. So I have to acquiesce because that’s what it is. But if there’s a certain look, a certain way. I’m gonna be like, “Nah, Kim, this is what I want.“ And so yeah, when starting this out years ago, I honestly thought it would take a year maybe, and we’d be done with it any day. And as the story kept changing for the mixtape DJ, it’s fine. We went right along with it as you can see, with what D’-Nice did with Club Quarantine. It’s a part of mixtape culture and history.
Kim: I think that when I talk about being perfectionists, I feel like anything that we approach, we’re always trying to do our best. But really, the challenge for us becomes just letting it go. Because the execution of producing this, that’s the hard part. We can ideate over it all day. We can talk about the things that we left out in the story, like the interviews that we couldn’t get, that was something even Malik and I went back and forth on for a while. I feel like, for years. We wanted to open up the doc and say, “Okay, let’s get more interviews in” and at a certain point, you just have to say, “No, we’ve got to get it done and get it out.”
So, the creating and putting it together when you know that the story is just so much more than just an hour. Right? You can’t squeeze everything into an hour. So for us, I think it was being able to stop and just say no, like, it’s time to let it go. And we can, you know, do more. Do a part two, and keep going.
HHW: And so, that takes me to my final question. And that is, how do you both feel about being able to have this documentary available as Hip-Hop celebrates 50 years?
Kim: I think we have a duty, now that we’ve reached Hip-Hop 50 to continue to do more of this type of content in these pockets of all of these different facets of Hip-Hop. I jokingly say all the time it’s “Hip-Hop 51” because I don’t want to lose the celebratory feeling that we had last year with everything we did for Hip-Hop 50. We can’t stop telling these stories just because we haven’t reached a milestone number. And I think we saw that with Hip-Hop 50 because we saw how great it was just to be able to celebrate the culture in that way, and to celebrate the history because you don’t get a lot of that. You know, when you said last question, I said, “if he asked about Kendrick and Drake, I’m gonna hang up this phone.” (Laughs) But seriously, when you asked the question about Hip-Hop 50, I felt like that was something that we talked about with Tale of The Tape. We’ve talked about how, “Is this something that we’ve considered as part of Hip-Hop 50 content? And that’s when I say it’s Hip-Hop 51.
Malik: I’m ecstatic that this project is available to the masses. As Kim said, we have a duty to tell our stories and dictate the correct narrative. I had an OG-slash-mentor tell me years ago about filmmaking. He’s like, “Look, you want to leave a legacy with what you’ve created.” And this is part of it to us. 100 years from now, I would love for a student of Hip-Hop to be able to watch this in whatever format, right? To see my name, see Kim’s name and the people that were a part of it. So they can be able to say, “Okay, this is what I’ve learned.” That’s super, super important. I feel extremely blessed to be able to have this out in the universe, extremely fortunate to be able to have partnered up with Kim to tell his story. And it’s here forever, period. I’m good with that.
Tale of The Tape is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video, and Verizon and Spectrum networks.
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Source: Paramount+ / Paramount+
HipHopWired sat down and talked with the director and star of the Paramount Plus documentary As We Speak: Rap Music On Trial.
One of the more pressing situations affecting Hip-Hop culture and the communities who love it is the persistent weaponization of rap lyrics in criminal cases throughout the United States and abroad. The most vivid example is the current RICO trial being brought against Young Thug by Fulton County prosecutors in Georgia. Sadly, the general public is still unaware of the scale of these actions by the criminal justice system and its effects – to date, 700 trials have used rap lyrics as evidence since 1990.
Source: Paramount+ / Paramount+
A new documentary, As We Speak: Rap Music on Trial is shining an intense light on how much law enforcement has used rap lyrics to gain convictions in criminal cases. The documentary, which will air on Paramount Plus, is directed and produced by J.M. Harper ((jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy, Don’t Go Tellin’ Your Momma). As We Speak is filmed through the perspective of Kemba, a talented MC from the Bronx who is our narrator as he talks with various artists such as Killer Mike, Mac Phipps, Glasses Malone, and attorneys like MSNBC’s Ari Melber across the U.S. and in the United Kingdom about their perspectives in unique ways – even kicking off the film by acquiring a two-way pager to keep his communication private. HipHopWired got the chance to speak exclusively with Harper and Kemba about the film and its message.
HipHopWired: J.M., what was the artistic spark for doing this project? Was it always your intent to get the point of view from somebody who rhymes like Kemba as the main narrator for the project?
J.M. Harper: Really, what we’ve seen with the Young Thug trial especially is, that most of the time this issue is talked about in the national news, and the artist in question is always silent. You don’t hear that they’re told to be silent, they’re made to be silent. And so that was the most obvious entry point for me, was that you could tell the story from the artist’s perspective, and there was just probably something new and interesting to learn there. And something true to learn that that wasn’t being told to us through the D.A. or the prosecutors, or even the news media that was covering it. I knew that Kemba could tell that story with nuance and perspective and do it the way that I had seen some of the great black minds of our time – the great minds of our time, period – but certainly the great black minds of our time who could take something, an issue that seemed one way at first blush, and really articulate it in a way that reached everybody, no matter where you come from. That’s why I thought of Kimba. And I think that’s what he does in the film.
HHW: So Kemba, with doing this film and connecting with some of the other artists that have been under duress, unfortunately, like Mac Phipps – how was it for you to gain more insight into their experiences in talking with them for the film?
Kemba: It was a lot of emotions. Mac Phipps, I have so much respect for, just because he wasn’t upset. He wasn’t bitter. I would definitely be. He just had such an excitement for the rest of his life. You know, in hearing the story…it made me upset. I see why people don’t have faith in the justice system. How somebody could lose 30 years of their life, even when somebody confesses to the crime they get convicted for. How somebody could have their lives twisted against them, a line from this song, a line from that song. It was really unbelievable to hear. And we heard the experiences of a few different people like that, that their art forms are being taken away from them or being used against them. Yeah, it was eye-opening.
HHW: We get a chance in the film to connect with different artists from cities across the globe. What were the most memorable experiences in filming those segments for you both?
Harper: For me, it was Chicago. Just being able to talk to some of the first drill rappers, period. The way that they, 10 or 15 years on, talked about their experience with the labels. Getting 100 grand from a label to talk about what was happening around you. I didn’t know that Chi-raq, Drillinois was a term – I didn’t know about the Driilinois terminology, that it came from the first drill producer. And that term was used on CNN every night around that time. The origin stories of the music, and the complexities there that just hadn’t been spoken about and hadn’t been amplified. I’m sure they were being spoken about, but not until we were able to capture it within this whole context of black history. Could it be sort of put into a context that applies to what’s happening right now in courtrooms? That was one of the most compelling moments of it, every city presented something new. But for me, Chicago was special for that reason.
Kemba: Yeah, I agree about Chicago. I will say Atlanta, just speaking to Killer Mike. And he has a wealth of knowledge. But also, just learning about this. So the history, just to look how far back all this goes, like art being sort of not seen or not considered. Not respected as art. Back from rock and roll to Blues to jazz, back to Negro spirituals, and how this is just the sort of newest iteration of that. That was super surprising to me.
HHW: This is going to be my last question, kind of a little bit on the fun side. Whose idea was it to kick everything off with getting the two-way pager?
Harper: (laughs) So when I was cutting the Kanye jeen-yuhs documentary, which is mostly set in the late 90s, early 2000s, Kanye would always be like writing in the two-way. Two-way this, two-way that. Then I saw that it was all over the place in the music videos around that time and the Hip-Hop community had really embraced a two-way for its short life in between the invention of the pager and the cell phone texting. That became a really interesting starting-off point and then bringing it into the pawn shop was great. Those guys speaking in patois, I didn’t even ask them to talk like that. They asked, “can we say something?” I was like, “yeah” and they just started going off. It was just really organic. This little piece of Hip-Hop history was a perfect vessel for Kemba to be writing and communicating with, thinking that he was off the grid. So, that’s where it came from.
As We Speak: Rap Music On Trial airs on Paramount Plus on February 27.
Source: iOne / iOne
The Hip-Hop 50th Block Festival went down in The Bronx, on Sedgwick Avenue where it all started, on Saturday, August 12, and we were on the scene. Iconic MC’s like Mr. Cheeks, Grandmaster Caz, KRS-One, Peter Gunz, Pete Rock & CL Smooth and more, and even NBA point guard Kyrie Irving, checked in to salute the culture.
50 years strong.
Watch the recap above.
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Years before rappers began embracing the comparisons to artists like Pablo Picasso and Jean Michel Basquiat, West Coast MC Ras Kass was showcasing his lyrical art for the world to see, all while embracing the Van Gogh legacy.
Emerging on the scene in 1996, MC Ras Kass built a reputation for thoughtful tongue-in-cheek wordplay and heavy societal content with his iconic 1996 song, “Nature of the Threat.” Hailed for its expansive and piercing analysis of white supremacy, the song and the album, Soul on Ice, reimagined the perception of West Coast lyricism in the middle of its East Coast, West Coast tension.
Celebrated by his fans and peers as a wizard of words, his skill became his calling card as he continued to prioritize lyricism years before the culture shifted towards it. In the middle of his ascent, however, he ended up ensnared in a publicized dispute with his record label, Capitol, and the industry at large for respect, autonomy and proper compensation. Stalled and unable to forge the momentum he needed due to label disputes, he continued to fight for his brand, releasing projects with other comparable MC’s like Canibus, Killah Priest and Kurupt, as well as his own projects over the course of the next decade and a half.
Twenty-seven years after his debut release, Soul on Ice, Ras is just as skilled as he was then and equally as cynical. Hopeful, reflective and unapologetic, this interview is one of his rawest reflections on Hip-Hop 50 years after its inception.
HipHopWired: Ras, how are you feeling today?
Ras Kass: I’m alive so I’m blessed man.
Ras, you are regarded as one of the most prolific MCs ever, you know, people use the word legend a lot. I’m hoping that I could get some perspective and get some stuff from you that I don’t typically hear in interviews. So I’m gonna start with the beginning. You coined a phrase that said, Carson raised you, but Watts made you.
So yeah, I guess that would be right. I lived in Carson my entire life. But I didn’t socialize. I didn’t even go to school in Carson until [the] middle of the seventh grade. So my, you know, kind of my formative years were in Watts. That’s where my friends were. I went to hang with them when I got out of school. That’s where I played at. Summertime, that’s where I stayed at. So I always claimed both, and there’s been certain rappers that try to give me shit over it. I’m a Watts baby. People have to make things mutually exclusive, because people categorize things. And it has to be this or that. And some things are a little more nuanced.
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So how did both cities influence you and in what ways?
Lots. By culture, like my culture, how I was raised within Watts is very important. My mother came from a family that moved in the late ’50s to Los Angeles from Louisiana, their culture was Creole. Thereby, I was raised around a lot of Catholics, while most blacks are Baptist and all this other stuff. I was raised and went to Catholic school where the majority of the students were diverse. In Carson, we lived in a neighborhood where there was space. And what happens when you got that kind of space, people don’t socialize, they have enough space to be amongst themselves. So you don’t f*ck with everybody, you stay in your own space. And so I had my bedroom; I did what I did in my bedroom, in my garage, in my backyard. Sometimes I went out to the front and then socialized with those kids. But in general, I have my own world.
“I hope as a collective, as a people on the eve of the 50th we probably should be looking into having some type of a union.”
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HipHopWired got the chance to talk to the legendary Daddy-O of Stetsasonic about the new Stop Self-Destruction Movement that he and Chuck D have launched to help the community deal with the rising issues of drug use and gun violence.
An unfortunate fact as Hip-Hop celebrates its 50th anniversary, is that the ills of violence and substance abuse still claw at the community. The deaths of rappers such as Young Dolph and Takeoff have lent emphasis to the situation. In the past, Hip-Hop banded together with the Stop the Violence Movement which resulted in the classic 1990 song, “Self-Destruction.” One of the prominent artists on that track was Daddy-O of Stetsasonic.
Over 20 years later, Daddy-O and Chuck D of Public Enemy have teamed up again to create the Stop-Self Destruction Movement with the aim of addressing the younger generation as they struggle to combat issues such as gun violence, police brutality, suicide and substance abuse. We had a chance to talk to Daddy-O at length about the movement, its aims and its future projects.
HipHopWired: As a pioneering artist and figure in Hip-Hop culture and a historian of the culture, you have been witness to so many seismic changes in Hip-Hop. And I think it’s definitely not an understatement to say that you’ve been a pioneering figure. So with that said, how vital is it to you now for the Stop Self Destruction movement to be getting underway as Hip-Hop celebrates its 50th anniversary?
Daddy-O: I think it’s extremely vital. I think primarily because we’ve known music to be a mechanism for change. So that happened prior to our existence and that’s no disrespect to us as Hip-Hoppers, right? But we’ve known music to have catalytic changes in life. We could talk about Songs in the Key of Life. We could talk about Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On. We could even talk about Millie Jackson’s records, in terms of music actually being elemental and change. We look at what these mayors and all these cities are going through. And so there’s a lot of people talking, but not a lot is being done. But we know that music can move levers, right? We know that music can move mountains. So for us, Stop Self- Destruction is an aid to attack the ills that we see.
In the very beginning, when we did the first record, it was just violence. We never thought that we would be saying Hip-Hop and suicide in the same sentence ever. It was always about life. We never thought we would be talking about that. So all of these things we call or label self-destructive or self-destruction, we want to be the soundtrack for the people that are doing the real work. If it’s Warnock, good. If it’s Mayor Adams, good, but if it ain’t you I’m calling you out. Because I know Do It All is in the community doing stuff. I know that’s a fact. I know Ras Baraka is in the community doing stuff. All we want to do is put a supercharger on that and do it the way that we did it with the original record with today’s popular artists. Because that’s who these kids listen to. They will not be listening to no KRS-One, no Daddy-O, straight out. Now, if you combine us with some folks, then that’s a different story. If I could put Chuck D and Rick Ross on the record together, then it’s a different story.
That ties into my second question. With the development of the Stop Self-Destruction movement, how has the feedback been with you reaching out to artists that are contemporary?
So, we just started and it’s been great. We do have a record done already with Tobe Nwigwe, who’s a contemporary artist and it’s great. West Side Boogie is on that record. And he’s already made a record called “Self-Destruction.” So the response has been good, but we’re just starting to reach out to folks and figuring out, like, who to combine on what record, because part of the effort is getting some of the classic artists with some of the new artists. I do want to get the art together. I want to establish the mentorship more than art. So do I care if the old cats rap? No. But do I care if the old cats are talking to the Kodak Blacks and the Tee Grizzleys? Yes.
As far as the planning with the movement, similar to what we saw with the original Self-Destruction movement, will there be things like panel discussions?
I think one of the things I’m most excited about are these roundtables I’m going to do in these neighborhoods called “Gangsters and Grandmas.” I’m gonna put five or six people from the neighborhood around the table and have a conversation. Part of this movement is very therapeutic for what’s going on in our communities. Our communities are disconnected from conversation. I’m not blaming the internet, but I am saying that part of that is that. Lessons affect people to say what they want to say about what they were and who these kids were and all of that. But the gangbanger used to talk to the grandmother, and that community was intertwined. Everybody knew what everybody was doing. Now, she might have been on her knees nine hours a day praying for him. But they did talk at this particular point.
So part of this movement is very therapeutic in terms of putting people together so much more interested in those types of discussions but not adverse to and not exclusive to that. There will be some panels and those types of discussions with artists as well. But the truth of the matter is, I need artists to rhyme. I got enough professors. I got enough people that are doing the real work, people that are keeping these soup kitchens open, people that are doing financial literacy. These neighborhoods, they’re the ones that we need to hear from.
We do that with teens, with pregnancy. We do that with suicide. I’m gonna have contemporary rappers talk about pain because one of the things about contemporary rappers is that they’re all young. And a lot of people don’t understand that they’re not demons, and they’re being demonized. I mean, they might be doing some demonic sh*t. But they’re not demons. Part of my effort here is to not demonize the Kodak Blacks of the world and show you that that same heart that you got, he got. But he may not have access to you to have that conversation with you. So what else is he gonna do? What else are the little girls from Memphis gonna do? You can’t sit there and blame them. But one of the things you’re gonna hear Daddy say over and over is: if Young Thug is not my son, whose son is he? Not Kenny Rogers’ son, Bob Marley’s son. Not Bon Jovi’s son. But we’re absentee parents.
What I’m trying to say, because that’s what happened in Hip-Hop, is our absence. There’s nothing wrong with Hip-Hop except us. The fathers of this thing are us. And so that’s why it’s me. Because I could speak as the ’80s dude that made classics, that spits fire today and bring it up to date.
And that brings me to my last question – you mentioned naming and practicing within these different issues within the Hip-Hop community and our community as a whole. So being someone who’s essentially done that within the culture as a whole, what would be the one thing that you would encourage anybody in the older generation, newer generation to do from this point forward, as Hip-Hop goes into the next 50 years?
Interestingly enough, my advice is not any different than it was in the ’80s. My advice in the ’80s to everybody was to learn how to do everything. It doesn’t mean you’re going to become an engineer, doesn’t mean you’re going to become a producer. But if you know how to do everything, then nobody can pull the wool over your eyes. So that in itself creates ownership. Because a lot of what we see now, is because of the lack of ownership, right? The lack of ownership is what creates a lot of that kind of vacuum kind of thing that I’m talking about.
And that’s my little area. I don’t really care about the other stuff. I care about Hip-Hop. I care about the fact that we started off as a non-violent mechanism. The gangs in the Bronx made a truce. They started break dancing against each other. They started graffiti writing against each other, they start DJing against other, and rapping wasn’t even around in the beginning. But the point of the matter is that out of not wanting to do violence, the Black space then became something else. The Zulu Kings actually were a gang and became guys that were rapping and carrying equipment for Bambataa and Jazzy J. Fast forward and we’re actually 180 degrees reversed. Ninety percent of the rappers on the radio are talking gang talk. And I’m not talking about just affiliates I’m talking about in it.
The way we’ve been looked at is the same way when KRS came to the Stop The Violence Movement the first time. His whole aim was, “How are we being looked at?” Like we’re the ones causing it to happen. Here’s the ugly part about my movement: We actually now are the ones causing it to happen. So I’m in the middle of a different conundrum than him. You know, he had the benefit of having a Stetsasonic, a Public Enemy. I got to talk to cats that are really in the streets. I’m explaining to them how it’s just not cool. A lot of it comes from them being able to express their pain. Because that has been something that they just haven’t been able to do. Kodak talks about it, but they don’t. Most people don’t get Kodak so you don’t hear it. So my whole issue is to get them to be able to bleed the pain. Trippie Redd does it. But they’re not hearing it. Especially the adults. I want these adults to know what’s going on with these kids. Because my peers are wrong.
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