Full transcript: Immortal Technique on London Real
9:05 This is London Real I am Brian Rose my co-pilot today is Mr Sully Brakes who is a spoken word artist who’s racked up almost six million views on YouTube with your spoken word videos such as why I hate school but love education, the American dream, your latest one is I will not let an exam result. Decide my fate. Decide my fate. Yeah. Okay, cool. If you want to see more about Sully, he was a guest on our show about three months ago. It’s called Change Through Verse. Definitely check him out there. He’s been on the Washington Huffington Post. He’s spoken at over a hundred universities. Yeah. That’s a lot. Cool. And our guest today is immortal technique. He is an American rapper and an urban activist. I think you’re best known for your aggressive style early on as a battle rapper, and then for independently releasing and distributing your very first album, Revolutionary Volume One. You’re also known for your activity with Prison Reform, Hemphillah Reform, the Greenlight Project, building orphanages in Afghanistan. Welcome to London Real. Thank you very much for having me. It’s a real pleasure.
10:10 You know, this is the second time you’ve been here, I think, in like a year I know we missed you on the first time we were touring and I saw you tweeted out that you might get a crib in London and I was just wondering Why does the UK love you so much? And why do you love the UK? Well, first of all, what’s interesting about being here is that anyone who’s ever lived in America knows that Every thing that we eat there is chock full of high fructose corn syrup Yeah, and it makes things just taste disgusting. I’m not saying that British food doesn’t suck because But I’m just saying that when you have the influx of so many other places that have been colonized by Britain, you have Caribbean food, which is delicious here.
10:49 You have West Indian cuisine, you have, you know, Indian food, you have Middle Eastern cuisine just, and the ingredients just taste more fresh. I mean, even the junk food tastes better than, I mean, it’s to that degree. I’m not saying that I don’t like to say I love it. It’s just, you know, organic food is very expensive. that, you know, living in London isn’t more expensive, you know. I constantly, when my friends is here, I keep telling them, just whatever you’re spending, just type, multiply times 1.55 and then you see how much money you’re really spending on that. But at the same time, I can say that, to me, I think what the fans and what the supporters, I should say, really appreciate is the honest talk for me, you know, the reality that I’m not going to change, I’m not going to allow a corporation to dictate what I say, that no matter where I am, I always speak my mind that, you know, I’m definitely opposed to a lot of the interventionism that the US pulls Britain into. And I think that there’s a lot of resentment that’s built up over the years where people are asking themselves, okay, well, why are we sending our boys out there to die in some other country out here? Because we’re not experiencing that to the same degree and then we can sensationalize you know a small amount of attacks which if we’re keeping score are way less people than we’ve killed overseas so at some point I think people want to ask themselves critical
12:15 Questions about what their government’s involved in. I facilitate an open discussion like that through my music and through the meet and greets that I do through the public works whether it’s talking to you know endangered or you know, at-risk youth, people that are in danger of losing their homes, people that are in danger of, you know, spending the rest of life in prison. I think that that, you know, speaks volumes. And I’ve always connected with the people here. I’ve come in here since 2004. It’s been almost nine years since I’ve just been coming back and forth from here. And every single time I think I’ve ever been here, it’s always been a crazy sold-out show. I mean, if they’re really the The best markets for me in the world would probably be New York, because they love me so much.
12:59 Los Angeles, Home Away From Home, Sydney, insane, and probably London. I’d like to add a couple more to that lunatic record, but not to say that other cities like maybe Chicago or Miami aren’t just bananas or Melbourne or something like that. Yeah, they are, but the other ones, I can easily do like 2,500 people in each one of city without a problem and for an independent artist that has never made a label backing them with doing tour support or spending you know thousands of dollars for promotional venues and you know it’s a blessing.
13:37 Do you have a label? I know you started off without a label. Yeah I originally had no label and it was just me you know kind of hand-to-hand CD and doing yourself stuff in the street and you know with a box just run up on it with a box I got a box like yo you gonna buy a CD man you know I I said it in the I said it in the DVD the revolution of a mortal technique director my my friend carries through it I told him I like you know back in the day I used to just battle people and if I won they had to buy my record That’s how it was and now you know Usually even if I get I really lost per se but even when it was debatable the person would be like wow I respect you like I’ll buy a record and was $10. God, you know, so I Earned my respect in that fashion But I think, you know, I met a friend of the family who had a label that was, you know, I wouldn’t say, it wasn’t defunct, it was just, it was something that wasn’t really being utilized as much as one release basically on it.
14:36 So when I came along I said, yo, you know, maybe this person, a friend of the family educated me to how the music industry worked and it was an incredible experience for me and the people of Viper Records, especially my old friend John, were real, real important in terms of educating me about how to navigate that sharp pond that is the recording industry. So being that I found Viper Records to be a place where I could do whatever I wanted, I came on, earned the spot as vice president through all my work, then eventually became president. So now, you know, I run a show, so to speak, to some degree, and when we talk about specific actions and specific things that I wanna do with the label, they’re gonna get done, you know?
15:32 If I want it to happen, it’s gonna happen. If I don’t want it to happen, you’re not gonna see it on viper records, so. I mean, in terms of the issues, there’s like kind of an ongoing debate hip-hop at the moment about the utility of record labels. Do you think, I mean considering the success of artists that are emerging, do you think a record label is actually necessary for an artist at the moment right now with the invention of social media and all that kind of stuff? Do you think so? Well I mean that’s a good question. People continuously come up to me and they say you know what are they good for, they’re all dinosaurs now. I just want to remind the public what a record deal is. Essentially my brother is alone with horrible interest rates.
16:11 You know, let’s say y’all get a loan from the bank, you know, you pay back the loan You buy a house with them with the money at the end of the day. That’s your house people can’t tell you nothing about that house They can’t tell you what to do. They shouldn’t be able to tell you what to do who you can marry who you can invite over You know, what kind of food you could serve what what your religion is. You want to hang whatever flag you want to? That’s your house motherfucker. You can’t tell me nothing but in In this label scenario, like I said, they get a certain amount of money to give you for a budget, and that’s where the idea where people say, oh, I got a million dollar deal.
16:46 Yeah, well, $350,000 of that goes to press up CDs at 3.5 a pop, so you got 100,000 CDs. They already bled half your budget on that. Where’s the rest of your money? It’s not like you ballin’ out of control. I think that is the sort of misnomer The success story or the idea that I automatically anybody that goes to the majors is guaranteed that sort of that sort of elevated amount of recognition and I think what People don’t realize is that even when they pay that money back the intellectual property doesn’t belong to them They don’t they’re not the owner of the masters They don’t own the publishing all of that gets pushed to the side now in terms of a 360 deal And how that works now was something that the record label wanted to do in order to Kind of change the image of how they do business and say oh, you know, we’re in it with you, buddy You know I mean but that half is coming out all the expenses is still coming out of the half that you have So it don’t matter if it was that or before it. It’s like when you do It’s like when you’re doing Cooking the books for something. I mean they’re almost Imbezzling more money than ever and I look at it, and I’m just like this is no This doesn’t address the issues that the artists have about ownership of their rights and ownership of their music and ownership of their artistry Anymore than their classical record deal did so it’s not like it’s much of an improvement for me now
18:15 They just want a piece of your shows and your merchandise, which you know did you help me print that shirt? No, then what the fuck are you asking me for a cut for it? But, you know, it’s just extortion to me. So I’ve always seen the traditional label, like when I first was a young man, and I was like, oh man, I wanna get signed, I wanna get signed. But then when I saw what it actually means to be signed, you know, it’s a whole different story.
18:37 Does anyone doing it right? I mean, you look at someone like Jay-Z who, you know, started off selling, selling tapes in the back of his car, and now he’s got a major label. Do guys like that, you know, treat their artist fair, or is there any labels out there that you’re like? I mean, I’m not signed to Jay, I don’t know what his procedure is, but I say this much, it’s interesting to me to see that those individuals are the exception to the rule. They’re not the rule, you know what I mean?
19:04 Even if there is an artist who gets treated somewhat fairly, it really saddens me that the exploitation of a lot of these artists are now done not by the quintessential evil, you know, culturally disconnected white executive that went to like a business school. No, now you’re just a disconnected black executive that is prostituting and pimping your own people into slavery. So it’s like, are you any better? Like, is that what we have to do? Is that where hip hop is right now?
19:33 To the point where we learned so much about it that people haven’t had the same intense drive to go forward and say, we should make this entire business model an independent music business model so that we can actually have the ability to continue to own our artistry and then to reinvest those funds into things that make sense for us and for all people. I’ve seen hip-hop do some wonderful things in the world. I was down in Columbia and they were using it to get kids off drugs and I don’t mean like heroin or cocaine.
20:08 They were using it to get people off sniffing markers and sniffing glue because they was dying of hunger. You know what I mean? So they were like, yo, come in. We got a hip-hop program, a free lunch. You know what I mean?
20:19 Come in, and before you knew it, they weren’t sniffing glue anymore, they were learning to play the drums, they were learning to program old MPC or something, but they were understanding the rhythm of it, they were making their own beats. I mean, come on man, music is a part of life, that’s something that ennobles people, I mean it can also be used to pacify and placate people as well, but I think that overall, Without that experience, I think you lose something as a human being. You put your stuff up online for free, right?
20:52 Last time? Yeah, a lot of the stuff that I have for free. I mean, I always tell people, look, I can’t stop you from stealing it, you know? That’s just ridiculous. I remember people, the Metallica nigga went nuts.
21:04 Oh my God, you’re gonna do it? And everyone was like, yo, dude, shut up, man. You sound like a tired old man complaining about, like, you’re boxing the wind, you know? I do, you know, you’re whipping the ocean. What are you gonna achieve by doing that?
21:17 People are still gonna steal the music, but at the same time, they have to have an incentive to really connect with the artist, instead of just having one or two songs that are marketed to radio, and then you have to go and buy the whole album to realize those are the only two songs that you like and everything else is filler. So I mean, that’s what the experience of the quote unquote golden age was on the backside of it. But, I mean, I don’t know, when I look at stuff like that, and I say to myself, where are we now, as opposed to then, it brings up, you know, some pretty interesting comparisons.
21:53 The business of the Golden Age of hip-hop wasn’t really that great. You know, people were getting raped for deals left and right. I had the good fortune to be friends with a lot of people like Lord Jamal from Brand New Being, Ali Shahid Muhammad, Q-Tip, KRS1, Chuck D, when I first came in the game and I was first doing it independently and I had a very political angle. You know, these people were actually really helpful in my career, Iced Tea then eventually and people that would come out and they would say, yo, you know, let me break it down.
22:24 This is what I was getting paid for an album back then. You know, I had a number one hit and you know, I’m on my mother’s couch, like that’s crazy. I can’t even understand that, why? And then you realize that, you know, these people who are out there talking about getting money to rap, you know, I just, I don’t care if you want to rhyme about what you’re gonna rhyme about, but just don’t lie to the kids. Don’t tell them that’s how you’re a millionaire.
22:48 Why don’t you tell them the truth? Why don’t you tell them that you got a hundred to $200,000 as an upfront money from the label, none of which you ever saw on the back end. So what you did was you invested in a laundromat, you own a waffle house or some shit, you know, you invested in a real business. Those are the people that have actually made money. You know, you see an individual, Got like 50 cent with the but where the fuck would he be with the bar without the vitamin for the deal?
23:11 You know a hundred and fifty million dollars poor So I mean that definitely put him on a map in terms of his business acumen and let people know Okay, you know This is something that we have to take seriously if we’re gonna be hip-hop then we can’t just be irresponsible Niggas they get high and then rock a mic and then go home and leave the paperwork to somebody else No, we have to say, okay We have to put on two hats to perform a hat and we got to have the business capital and say alright cool well who’s gonna own the rights to this you know who’s gonna own the rights to that how are we gonna you know make sure that everybody who participated in making the album gets paid in some way shape or form and how are we gonna reinvest some of this money so that the next dollar that comes out of our hand doesn’t go to somebody outside of our community they don’t give a fuck about us shouldn’t they go to somebody within the community that we can help to rebuild our own hood instead of expecting somebody else to make it better because every time somebody gentrifies a community whether it’s in London or it’s in New York they They don’t really do it for the benefit of the people.
24:06 They’re doing it for some greedy corporation that wants to take over, kick people out, pay them a few thousand pounds for their flat, and then redevelop it and sell it for 1.4 or 5 million. There you go. Yeah, you mentioned iced tea, and I want to ask you about him. I’ve been a big fan of iced tea since Colors came out, and the thing about iced tea fans is you don’t meet many of them, because he never got radio play, as most people don’t know, because he never put out clean versions of his songs.
24:33 So if you knew Ice, you knew him from maybe Colors or OG and all this stuff, but I was always one of the few people that would bring him up and people would be like, oh, I know Cube, I know WA, but I don’t know Ice-T. And I once listened to Original Gangster for like two weeks straight. I was at MIT, it was my second year in 91, and for Christmas, we had a break, a six-week break period, and I decided I was going to paint a pentagram on the door of my fraternity room door, and there was like two guys that decided not to go home for Christmas. So I was in like this 50-room frat house. Nobody was around. It was spooky. I was playing OG. OG. Over and over again. And I knew about you on Rogen and I knew from that, when you appeared on Art of Rap, I literally, I think, dropped something. It was in my hand because I was like, oh shit. And you were rapping the New Jack City lyrics, I think, with Ice. And I was just wondering how that happened. Did you know Ice for a long time? And a lot of people didn’t make the cut because I know he shot many many hours of that film but a lot of people didn’t make the cut. Shout out to Paul Too Good and Alice’s wife. They were actually supposed to come to the show last night but they were the producers of the movie as well as Ice. But basically what had happened is I’ve met Ice-T a few times at like the Zulu Nation gatherings when Bambata brings everybody together and you know he just heard me spit with a bunch of other
25:55 People and I actually did an interview for my documentary for the revolution of immortal technique with him and when we basically had a chance to break bread and talk for him and he was like yo I might be doing a documentary in the future would you consider being a part of that and I was like yo you don’t have to ask me twice you know ice is the coolest brother in the world man you know he I called him one day and I was like hey brother you know I’m putting together the legal aspect of this entire project. I got to get people to sign off on stuff. And he’s like, oh, yeah, cool, where you at?
26:29 I’m on 2-5 right now. So he pull up out of nowhere, and his damn Lamborghini with his cocoa, loves his car. What’s up? Jump out, sees me, where the format, oh, yeah, whatever. You don’t even read it.
26:43 He’s that type of dude, so trusting with his peoples. Because I think he knows I would never try to fuck mobile or try to sell the footage to like a Pepsi commercial or some stupid shit like that. You know, real recognized real. So I always liked ICE. He always had real encouraging words for us young brothers to really digest about the music industry and about, you know, how much it set up like a pimp prostitute relationship, which is something that he definitely, you know, since he always rapped about pimping and shit like that so he definitely you know put that concept and almost built it up as a microcosm of that so. He always praises other artists and stuff even in his early work he would always be shopping at all these other people and I don’t think he ever saw it as a competition I think he was like let’s all raise that ourselves together. He was getting paid so he didn’t give a fuck about nobody that paid and I know ice man.
27:37 Did you read his book his recent autobiography? Okay it’s pretty amazing because he he was hustling on the side he was making most of his money not from his music I think in the beginning and he was just saying that and then people were like you know and he was always saying look those cars and those guns and those houses are mine and he’s like I don’t rent those and he’s a fascinating guy but that scene on the street where you’re rapping the New Jack City Lyric and I think you drop some some some minds from your front lines after that. It’s actually my friend Die Big. It appeared on an album he put out through Viper Records called The Liar and the Thief for my friend Diabolic.
28:13 He got a new album coming out called Fighting Words on Viper Records, viperrecords.com. So it’s, and from what I’ve heard, you know, it’s really amazing work that he’s put it together. So big shout out to them. But yeah, he, I did the verse for that. And basically, you know, what was interesting about it was that we had a very organic feel.
28:33 Like you hear, I used to just walk around the street, totally cool with people, you know, somebody gets out of line he’ll check them and you know that that’s another thing that I learned from some of the elders kind of navigating the social scenario that you thrust into when you’re out there to show you know yes you can’t be an asshole to your fans I always tell people you can’t have this old-school you know Louie the 16th attitude like oh yeah whatever like get out of my face it no because then the people to turn on you you know in a heartbeat and you know if you want to act like a gangster then there are a lot A lot of people that have come from the states that have come out here and think it’s sweet in London and they get their ass robbed or shot at or something like that, you know, because they thought, alright man, we’re a bunch of London niggas, alright, but they’re just crazy just like you.
29:19 They’re hungry just like you. Just because their money is worth more don’t mean that they aren’t poor or they aren’t living in a project or a tenement or something and they see you shining and you basically flirting your wealth in their face and they feel insulted by that. So I’ve always been the type of person to be humble enough to build with anybody. So I kind of circumvented that because I’ve become sort of protected and loved by the community everywhere I go because I stand up for them when other people would turn their back on them.
29:49 I stand up for people that have been the victims of police brutality, for people that are the victims of gang violence, when they should really be realizing that it doesn’t matter what postcode they’re from that they don’t really own that block either and that all of their money is being pulled out of their hands and no matter what they think it is or no matter how they they choose to develop their lives what they need to understand is that if you out here hustling or you out here doing some crazy shit in London remember that there’s a difference between a criminal and a gangster petty criminal steals from you let’s say y’all niggas get together somewhere out there in Edgware, Brixton, wherever y’all niggas is at, y’all robbed the shit out of somebody.
30:34 Yeah, you got a gag, you took something from somebody. That don’t make you a gangster, you a criminal, petty criminal. The difference is that a criminal takes from you. A real gangster makes you take his money, you know? A gangster will come to you and say, hey, you know, what’s up, man?
30:53 How you doing? I heard you got a business, you know? Yeah, y’all good guys doing like 1.1, 1.2 million pounds a year. It’s pretty cool stuff. You’re gonna sell me your business for 500,000 pounds right now.
31:08 Oh, by the way, your daughter’s on the phone. That’s a gangster, my nigga. That’s how people do. And they are global gangsters will say, though, you know, you got a great country in Africa, but you’re gonna sell me the rights to your diamond mining, or you’re not gonna be the president in two years, and your entire family’s gonna end up looking like Gaddafi. That’s what it’s gonna look like.
31:29 We’re not gonna have no gold standard in Africa. You’re gonna keep buying pounds and dollars until I fucking tell you you can’t. Oh, you got a great country here in the Middle East. You know, you’re gonna sell us our oil rights. Oh, you don’t want to?
31:40 Cool, we’re gonna throw you out and install a shop. That’s some gangster shit. That’s the most gangster niggas in the world. That’s why I tell the brothers in the street, you not, you confused. You got your role confused, my dude.
31:52 You a criminal, you’re not a gangster. Like, that’s something that resonates with people, I think, and that’s always been something that I can honestly say that I’ve been able to get across in the music that I make and that I’ve been able to tell because it’s a globally understood phenomenon. But like I said, yeah, people be coming out here thinking it’s something and then, you know, they get caught out there very, very quickly, you know, and I remind people, you can’t just take your shoes off and throw them wherever you want in someone else’s house.
32:20 You gotta be respectful of other people’s stuff. So, being that I always walk with that, you know, and my father always told me there’s a difference between demanding respect and commanding respect. So, I try to command it by putting my best foot forward and showing respect to other people. Yeah, I think that’s a common misconception when a lot of artists come from overseas because the perception of what you see of the UK is what you see on the TV screen as opposed to what really goes on in a lot of urban, per se, environments.
32:50 So, I’ve heard a few incidents where a couple of rappers have come from overseas and got into altercations. Primarily because they’ve adopted that mind state of what you’re saying, rather than commanding the respect, they’ve demanded it based on the status they’ve held somewhere else. And I can totally, I testify to what you’re talking about that I think a lot of people need to take that into consideration when they’re migrating through different countries, and especially for artists of your caliber to acknowledge that.
33:16 I mean, that’s highly respectful, you know? I mean, brother, if I go to Nigeria, I’m gonna wanna talk to the OG in Nigeria. I don’t, I’m not gonna go to act like it’s my country. Hey, I’m here like, this is my shit. I’m the man in Harlem, so I must be the man here.
33:30 Like, no, dude, let me talk to whoever’s been holding this down, bleeding for this turf or whatever the fuck it is. Let me talk to them. Let me see, let me hear their struggle. Let me hear their story. If I ever ended up in Mogadishu, I mean, what you gonna do, kidnap me?
33:47 What the fuck would I do with it? Instead of doing that, you do a better job taking me on a tour so I could tell the people that I know how this whole thing started, with people dumping chemicals and nasty shit into the water out there, and the people going out there in ships and saying, no, we’re going to take this boat over and we’re not going to let you dump radioactive waste and medical equipment waste here off the shore of Somalia. See, that’s the difference.
34:11 That’s why I would get love in a place like that. Now, I’m not saying it’s guaranteed. always hungry and when a wolf is hungry, they don’t give a fuck who you are. So it don’t matter what country. You could be in Germany and you run into some niggas that starving in the street, they don’t take everything you got.
34:30 It don’t matter. Romania, Albania. Don’t fuck with them. Don’t go. Don’t fuck around down there.
34:35 Is the gangster you mentioned, is that the U.S. government or the U.K. government, or is it not that simple? In some ways, yes. In some ways, you know, there’s a responsibility that the people actually have for sponsoring that government, and it’s also interesting because it leads me back to, you know, you mentioned earlier in the program, talking about Joe Rogan.
35:04 It’s interesting because when I see a lot of comedians, you know, they say that comedy comes from pain and from inner struggle, and when I see that, you know, I’ll see people like George Carlin that will come out and God rest his soul, he was out there telling people the truth about the lack of choice that they really have. He goes, you know, in this so-called free Western society, you have the illusion of choice. Your real choice is Pepsi and Coke, you know, that’s your choice.
35:30 Your choice is Frosted Flakes or Corn Flakes, that’s it, you know. But in other words, what he’s saying is the major choices, like for example, if this This was representative democracy, and then people as a whole collectively, the way vote for a prime minister would have to say, all right, we’re all gonna get together and vote if we’re gonna send British troops into Iraq or Afghanistan or anywhere else in the world. And I guarantee you, they don’t wanna do that.
36:00 You know why? Because they would get a collective response from the people that says, no, this is ridiculous. We’re not gonna waste any money. We’re not gonna pay mercenary, we’re not gonna pay mercenary contracting firms. We’re not going to pay your arms dealer friends, you know, I don’t give a fuck who the people are in parliament that want this.
36:17 We’re not going to pay your arms dealer friends. We’re not going to pay those people that are outsourcing every aspect of this economy. When you then you turn around and you claim that you don’t have money for school programs, you don’t have money for anything, then what kind of advancement are you going to have for the people in the future? You know, instead, what did you do with that? You gave it to your friends that were given you then kickbacks to run for office.
36:38 I mean, if anybody else was doing that who wasn’t involved in government, they’d be in prison. They’d be in jail for racketeering or some shit like that. But I think that in this particular case, yes, the government does act like a gangster in many occasions. They’ll tell people, so I don’t like you. You’re not good for my business.
36:58 I’m not making enough money off the situation that you’ve set up in your government, so I want that to change. And then it becomes, what can I do to make that change? Do I have to present you as something else? Because it’s like, oh, well, you’re an evil dictator. Well, wow, dude, when you point your finger, you’ve got three fingers pointing at you, you employ plenty of evil dictators.
37:20 Matter of fact, you’ve kept evil dictators in power for hundreds and hundreds. I mean, let’s not go crazy, but for hundreds of years, there’s always been evil dictators. And empires are willing to do business with them. Why? create quote-unquote stability in the region by brutally repressing any sort of revolt that would lead to better working conditions that would involve paying people slightly more which would be a negligible amount to somebody who’s already a billionaire but they’re playing a video game for adults like goddamn casino with imaginary money that doesn’t really exist what do you need what’s all the billion dollars in the world for if we’re losing as a human race I think They’re keeping score some of these rich guys. They just want to know they have a billion more than the next guy the next guy I’ve seen guys do it in hedge funds from friends of mine in New York and I’m like, dude What’s the difference between 20 million and 120 million and 240 million? Yeah. Are you happy? Yeah, your kids?
38:16 Okay, you’re doing something community It makes you wonder. I mean, what the hell what are you overcompensating for being hung like a mouse? I mean, what is that what’s going on there? Did you need a giant mouth fucking yacht or a car? It’s just pathetic You’re not happy in life.
38:30 You know, somebody told me that. Actually, when I first got the viper records, it was one of the first thing people told me. They said, listen, if you’re not happy, you’re not successful. Because success is intertwined with happiness. If you’re sitting here on top of the world and none of the people you started with are here with you, they’ve all been kicked out your life, or they all think you’re a snake, or you did a lot of people greasy.
38:53 Dude, you’re not happy. You’re surrounded by a bunch of yes men that just tell you whatever you want to hear. That’s not happiness. You just live in an ignorant bliss and eventually that world comes crashing down on you Depression sinks in you realize that People aren’t there because of the person you love, you know, we were laughing early You know those no disrespect to any old rock and roll stars But you know who you’re laughing because somebody was saying that Mick Jagger had on Impregnated like a 20 year old Brazilian model and they were like, you know, what if he was like the manager at Nando’s?
39:25 Do you think she would have fucked in, like, look at her? Come on, dude. Let’s be honest with myself. People gravitate to money and fame and wealth, because the world is full of sycophants. And I think government trains people to be like that, rather than to think freely, which is maybe why they don’t want a fun education.
39:44 They don’t want free-thinking people. They don’t want people that are willing to say, oh, wait, this is wrong, and then fuck up their $100 million deal. Well, maybe your $100 million deal shouldn’t have taken place in the first place. Maybe your $100 million deal is bad for humanity. Maybe the fact that you get tax breaks for having genetically modified shit in the food that now is signed into law and protected by Obama with the so-called Monsanto act, maybe that’s just bad for humanity.
40:09 Maybe we shouldn’t be doing that. If you guys go to the supermarket, you have a right to know what the hell is in the food you have. You’re a consumer. That’s part of the quote unquote free market enterprise. You have the ability to dictate the market with your choices. Now, if you’re being kept ignorant by a government in collusion with these corporations, that’s a violation of the tenants of democracy.
40:31 You know, imagine, brother, you go to the store and there’s two types of cereal. One of them says this is, you know, with no genetically modified. The other one says this has been, some ingredients in the food have been known to cause cancer and laboratory animals. Which one you gonna buy for your little girl? I mean, that’s a no-brainer, my dude, but they don’t see it that way. They see it as, Oh, well, you’re gonna, you know, you’re slandering the food company and the product.
40:58 Hey, man, it’s not slander if it’s true. You know, why, if you’re so proud of your brand, how come you’re not willing to label it? So proud of your product, Mark, I mean, you don’t need it. How come your kids ain’t eating that shit? That’s the funniest shit.
41:12 When all them people that own all those genetically modified companies, you find out that their kids is on some organic vegan diet. Fucking slops. I mean, I’m American, but I’ve been over here for 10 years, and when we get Americans coming through the studio, I always want to ask, what’s the mood and what’s the tone like in America right now? I mean, you talk about a bunch of things that are very frustrating to you, and then we just get this Snowden thing that dropped on us.
41:35 And what’s your mood in America, too? I mean, do you get to a point where- No, people are just cynical. They’re cynical about everything. There’s just, look, whatever liberal fan base Mr. Obama started out with, he’s lost a lot of them.
41:50 He’s in danger of losing a lot of the Hispanic vote, and trust me, when they leave the Democratic Party, they will leave in droves because they have a lot of social conservatives in the Latino community. The only thing is this, is that I think the Republicans have been just saying some of the ugliest and most hate-filled speech about Latino people in general and about Latin American immigrants, and they’re going to come back immediately when they hear something this and say, no, it’s the Democrats that are the real, you know, it’s so funny for me to hear them talk like a pack of fat hypocrites when they say, oh, we need to curb all the quote unquote illegals in the country. And I’m just like, yo, dude, did you have orange juice for breakfast?
42:37 Because if you did, that makes you a hypocrite. Who do you think picked that? You know, some lily white dude in a suit? No, that get that, you know, American economy lies on these illegal jobs. Well, look, undocumented workers, as I choose to call them, are specifically targeted by both sides because they’re the easiest target.
42:58 And that’s sad to me. They’re not going after these billion dollar corporations that are hardly paying taxes and then using these people as damn near slave labor because that would be politically unwise then those people wouldn’t donate to their campaign funds. So they’re just going after the weakest link. And most of these people are better law abiding citizens, they’re better Christians, they’re people that are very family oriented. They don’t shove their elders in a fucking nursing home and forget about them when they’re old.
43:28 They say, hey, no, no, I will eat that. She’s gonna live with us now, you know? We’re gonna take care of her. Oh, what, grandma has diapers? Well, guess what?
43:35 Who the fuck changed your diapers when you was a kid? You can’t change your diapers? Go fuck yourself, dude. You ungrateful son of a bitch. And remember, once a man, twice a baby.
43:46 What does that mean once a man twice a baby you won’t come in you came into this world helpless and powerless You’re gonna be a man someday and then someday you won’t grow so old that you’re gonna be helpless You don’t mean mad even if you die at 50 of cancer you live in like a baby for those last You know a few months where you got cancer Somebody got to feed you somebody got to dress you somebody got to take care of you You know you depend on other people. That’s what You weren’t born in America, do you consider yourself an immigrant or do you consider yourself an American? I definitely am an immigrant and an American, you know. I think America was founded by immigrants.
44:21 I want the white people to come through Ellis Island. Them niggas just came, popped off on the shit and said, hey man, I don’t want to be here no more. A bunch of religious fanatics that think oral sex is a sin. You know what I mean? Fuck this place. I’m out of here. Puritan, people getting burned at the stake.
44:35 They came over here and then of course, you know, people went insane. They had that Puritan craze out here too. They didn’t want the Puritans here, they were like, right. But that’s the whole point. I think that the insane part of it is that there’s this idea of who’s a real American, a nativist, where the so-called undocumented workers that people call illegal human beings, they’re actually people who have lived there for thousands of years.
45:03 They were American before there was in America. They lived in that entire area. California used to be part of Mexico. But that’s not the point, it’s not even part of Mexico, there used to be so many individual Native American tribes genocided by this government that still some of them exist and these people never had an allegiance to the Mexican state. The Mexican government had no authority over them.
45:27 They were a completely autonomous state to themselves. So how can you see territory that doesn’t belong to you? In the same way, we had this during the Revolutionary War between Britain and America. Britain, why the fuck are you giving Ohio to America? That shit was never yours in the first place.
45:47 You didn’t own it. They would just belong to your allies, to your Native American allies when you came in. Even with the Israel situation, you signed a Balfour Declaration in 1914. What the fuck right do you have to give Palestine to anybody else? That’s not yours.
46:01 You just happened to be there because you killed a lot of people and you took it from someone else. So you’re not saying it’s not that might makes right, it’s just that might makes right now. So that’s kind of the sentiment. I think people are very cynical of anything that has to do with government. I think it’s almost like when the Snowden thing happened to address that question head on, the people kind of expected it.
46:23 And you found individuals that you thought would be the most liberal individuals in the world. Oh my God, this is an affront to democracy. You have people like Al Franken, who came on as some darling of the left, who’s now justifying it. Franken, you’re a fraud, dude, and Obama’s up there saying the government’s not listening to your phone. Yes, they are.
46:45 They’re listening to your phone calls. It’s an interesting truth. The average American citizen probably breaks two laws every day, but they only choose to enforce it on the people that are critics of the government. They find critics of the government as suspicious when aren’t the people who are taking the the most advantaging government, robbing or blind, those people that pledge to love America more than everybody else, those are the real pimps and hustlers that you should be investigating those people.
47:09 But you’re not, you’re doing stop and frisk on young black and Latino males. You can stop and frisk any Wall Street bankers. You’re not going into their emails and hacking all their shit to find out where they dumped all the money from American taxpayers who are now left homeless in the street because of that housing crisis, a crisis that extended itself to here in England as well. And I think that people genuinely see that as disingenuous. There are more hate groups that have arisen.
47:35 You have people like that with the EDL or the BNP here, where you have a small fringe group of people that get a lot of media attention because they talk loud and they say stupid things. But then look at the reality of it is, if you want the quote unquote foreigners out, then why don’t you get the fuck out of their country? why don’t you stop, if you don’t want the influx of quote unquote foreigners, then how come you want to control their countries and control their resources?
48:05 If you don’t want them physically here, give them back their diamonds, give them back their oil, give them back all the food and natural resources that you take from them. Oh, and another thing, you’re not scared of our women. You love bringing them here, huh? You love taking advantage of that, but you just don’t want the men here. That’s the problem, too.
48:26 Is the government surveilling you, do you think? If they are, you know, watching me jerk off. What are you people doing? There’s sick fuck out there if you’re watching. That’s what you’re doing.
48:34 You’re watching me jerk off. You’re watching me take a shit. Is that what this is about? Probably, but it’s just, it’s so pathetic. I mean, I’m not, I’ve definitely been harassed, though, brother, you know.
48:46 I’ve had my father audited by the IRS, and I’m just like, yo, man, seriously, My father, what the hell did he do? They thought I was hiding money. They ever accused me of being a drug dealer. All kinds of ridiculous things, trying to throw charges at me, having the feds harass me, Homeland Security showing up at my house. Come on, man, I don’t get fazed by that.
49:06 I don’t buckle. Why? Because I know I’m not riding dirty. You gonna have to plant something on me. And then the whole world’s gonna know that you planted it on me.
49:14 There was a case where the government brought up charges on the kid called Cameron D’Ambrosio. and they said, you know, you’re making terroristic threats because he made a song saying he didn’t believe the London bombings, sorry, the Boston bombings was real and he didn’t trust the president. He said, fuck Obama or something like that. And I was like, really, you gonna bring him on trial? I said, yo, why don’t you put me on trial?
49:37 Let’s have a conversation on record and let me question the people who are in government who are choosing me of something because I would love to have that conversation but I don’t really think you’re really built for that. I think you like going after caged dears And there’s no honor in that for me. You don’t want a real brawl, you know, just like this country. This country don’t want a real fight. The UK don’t want a real fucking fight.
49:58 Yeah, you’re gonna go, you know, stick your nose into Syria, stick your nose into Iraq and Afghanistan. You don’t want a real fight. In other words, you don’t want to tussle with Russia. You don’t want to tussle with China. And now some conservative idiots watching this be like, oh, well, they were just new because that’s the point, dude.
50:15 You don’t have the opportunity to just beat somebody up with a weapon when they’re unarmed. You know, another worthy foe vanquished in Panama, the U.S. says. You know, when you haven’t won a war since World War II, you didn’t win Vietnam, didn’t win in Korea, you had to call a draw because the Chinese brought them boys down. So, a lot of people died, unfortunately.
50:35 Then we didn’t win in Iraq, we’re not winning in Afghanistan, so where are we winning? What are we doing? You know, and I think that goes directly to the question we asked before, that it’s not, empires and governments don’t fall apart when they start losing war. They fall apart when the people no longer believe in them. What do you tell kids today?
50:55 Do you tell them to vote, not to vote? You’re obviously a student of history. Do you tell them to read? I mean, like, it’s frustrating. Well, I mean, I tell kids, especially like I used to do a prison program.
51:07 I told, like, inner-city youth, I would tell them, listen, as long as it’s a famous Malcolm X quote, as long as you could be convinced you never did anything, you could never do anything. A lot of these young black and Latino people, They think that their history starts at the bottom of a boat in 1622, and it doesn’t, because we’re not talking about black history when we talk about Mesopotamia, Sumeria, Egypt. That’s not black history. That’s human history.
51:33 That’s the difference, and I think that just so we don’t make it completely centered around something like that, I think it’s also important to notice the style of government that exists. I try to impart this knowledge to young people as well and say, hey, listen, Europeans have a white indigenous background as well in terms of Celts and Picts and stuff like that. And you can see examples of that throughout the Middle Ages where feudal governments have come and taken people over and forcibly converted them to Catholicism.
52:06 But before the feudal system, people had tribal leaders. They respected the land. They said, we’re not going to take advantage of this. We can’t just hunt an animal into extinction. That’s not the way the earth works.
52:16 The earth doesn’t belong to us, we belong to the earth. And I think that the European monarchies destroyed that. You had white people that were living the way Native Americans did, and they had a profound respect. I’m not saying all of them, but there were definitely a lot of tribes that did do that out here. And their sense and their ability to connect with nature was what had kept them alive for hundreds and hundreds of years, if not thousands of years.
52:44 So when we get away from that and when kids are only fed and spoon fed lies about where they come from and who they really are, then you can’t really expect them to walk into a classroom and give a shit about anything. They think I’m just some children’s slaves, I’m a real nigga, that’s all I really, I’m a nigga. It’s just like, yo dude, but you have a reality that goes beyond that, you understand that. I think that that’s been one of the most powerful things you’ve been able to do.
53:14 To showcase, for example. I mean, we’ve been telling, you know, there’s been such things as an African pope, you know, an African emperor of Rome. And people would be like, wait, you kidding me? Oh, okay, see, you need to understand something. The early Greeks and Romans didn’t have the cancer of racism to the same degree that some of their ancestors had today.
53:37 They respect the talent. The same way, you know, the US government, They respect that. Can Obama put a happy face on what Bush was doing before? Can he deport more people? Yes, he’ll deport more people than Bush did.
53:50 Can he go to war even more? Yes, and on top of that, they’ll give that motherfucker a Nobel Prize for sending mercenaries in. You know, he can do that. We respect talent. Can the black dude do it?
54:01 All right, bring him in then. Cool, do it. Run the empire for us. That’s essentially what they’re doing now. So I guess we’ve come full circle to the point where it’s, okay, who cares what the color is.
54:14 It’s normal for making this money. Did you have hope in a way, when I voted for Obama? Did you have real hope in a way, or were you just like, let’s see how this plays out? I, you know, I’ve always been a hope for the best, prepared for the worst, and I definitely hoped for the best, and I prepared for the worst. I wasn’t caught off guard.
54:30 I think that, you know, I can always say that, you know, I don’t really expect too much, So I’m hardly ever disappointed. So it’s not like I was in general. I mean, in general, so it’s not like I can trust people to be who that character is. That’s as much as I can trust anybody. If I don’t know you, I can’t trust you.
54:52 But if I know you, I know what your character is. When he came on board as a corporate lawyer and then was saying, oh, I’m a corporate lawyer and I’ve been an activist and blah, blah, blah. I think his presidency to me speaks volumes about the privatization of education, because if he had gone to a community college somewhere in New York or Boston, then I don’t know if he’d be president of the United States. He went to Harvard specifically, and you remember when he was running, they said he had no accolades.
55:21 You’ve been senator for two years before that you were state senator. You didn’t do nothing, you have no achievements. And they said, oh, he was the editor of the Harvard Law Review. He ran on that, but it was one of the damn points of his campaign. I’m the fucking Harvard Law Review.
55:34 Yeah, that’s a lot different than saying, oh yeah, you know, I run a school, no disrespect, I run a school paper at a city college or at a community college out of nowhere. That’s one difference. Now, if you’re sending your children to private school and you’re putting them there, not just for the education, for the smaller class size, but also for the connects, because you’re gonna be going to school, if you send them to school with kids that are parents of millionaires, billionaires, they’re starting a business, looking for ideas so they have fresh faces in there that say oh man maybe you don’t come for money but you’re smart we need you to be a part of this we need you to help run you know to be the engine that’s so that turns the machine and for that you can get a slice and you can live a little bit of a bit of life that’s what people are trying to do the only problem is that if you live like that and you say okay I don’t my kid doesn’t go to public at the public school fuck that I don’t care care about those kids what does it need to matter to me okay well fine when one of them kids that couldn’t find a job and has no future after going to jail and can’t get hired from nowhere, decides to carjack your original son and blow his fucking brains out, don’t think that you didn’t have a hand to do with that.
56:41 Oh, that’s ignorant technique, really? Well, it’s like blackjack, you know? Put a card up, put another card up, put another card up, put another, now the dealer gotta go four cards, right? You took away some of them choices that he potentially could have had by draining that budget, by ripping it to pieces. I’m not saying that his life would have been perfect if you had done that.
57:01 I’m not saying that that individual, whether white, black, brown, red, anything, Asian, I’m not saying that his life would have been perfect, but if the state or if the school system in any way, shape, or form was even a smidgen more responsible, this child would have had an infinite amount more of choices and ideas that I see. And I only say that because when I look at people, I try to see the best in them, even if they show me the worst. I see somebody writing graffiti on the wall, people call them a vandal.
57:30 I think, wow, that guy could be a fucking artist. Look at, this is art. Maybe you’re doing it on the wall, but if you had canvas, I know you could be the fucking man with this. All right, you got people that are out there selling drugs. You’re a fucking entrepreneur, dude.
57:45 You’re managing a business. You could be an accountant. You know what I mean? You got account money. But if you were working for Pfizer and you were selling fucking Viagra to niggas, they would’ve given you employee of the month.
57:57 But you out here selling pills and oxycontin you start from somewhere. You’re going to jail. I think that those are things that really strike me because when I look at those lost opportunities I see a lot of wasted talent out there and all we’re doing is feeding a prison industrial complex rather than actually addressing the struggles and strikes of the people. You mentioned prison earlier and you spent some time in jail when you were a youth, right? Yes.
58:22 Did you find any net positives from that or was it just negative or would you rather that didn’t happen? I mean, look, dude, it’s all a learning experience. I think that I came out of that situation a better man. It was definitely tough in terms of not so much. See, because people have all these illusions about prison.
58:41 I mean, oh my God, everyone’s trying to fuck you all day and people fighting in the middle of a thing with like, you know, makeshift spears. No, come on, dude. Seriously. From about 20 to 21, I spent a year, a bullet there. So, you know, pretty much when I went there, I came out of that experience as a man in every respect and also with a real understanding of what drug addiction does to people because there was so many people in there that were just drug addicts.
59:18 They weren’t, their crime was having a fucking disease, my brother, a goddamn disease. They were stealing because they were hooked on crack, or cocaine, or they were hooked on heroin. People who were committed violent crimes because they were under the influence of something, they probably wouldn’t have done it after that. Now are some people genuinely wicked characters that I met in there? Yeah, I understood the difference.
59:40 I thought I was bad, but when I came out of experience, I realized I wasn’t evil, you know what I mean? There was something that helped me to define myself and say, listen, I don’t need to live my life and try to beat it, you know, bottom out of me, you know. These people are wicked. You rape the deaf girl, and you bash their head in with a brick. You’re an evil individual, you know.
1:00:02 When people say, oh, prison shouldn’t exist, I always say, listen, let’s be a realist. There’s some people I don’t ever want to live next door to, because I’m going to end up killing you if you look at my kid’s room. I don’t care. You know, I will shoot you wherever I see you if you touch my child. That’s it.
1:00:19 And I think that, you know, when I examine prison also, one of the things that I brought out of it was, you know, I rap about some aspects of it, but I don’t use it in my music in any way, shape, or form to brag, because it’s not like I’m sitting here, me going to prison didn’t give me the right to brag about it. It gives me the responsibility to tell young people of every background, that that’s not a rite of passage. That doesn’t make you a tough guy. You know what I mean?
1:00:48 Slavery that’s really all it is you know and to extend that when you go to the ghetto and you go to those communities you tell people straight up alright let’s have it on this conversation you don’t live in the hood cuz you tough nigga you live in the hood cuz your parents are poor that’s the only reason you live here if they had money they wouldn’t keep your ass here they would have you in a nice house somewhere in the fucking countryside that’s where you’d be gangsters they send their kids to private school they don’t want to say hey, you know what I’m really gonna do to help, you know, little Ty or little Fernando get right or little Joe Scott get right. You know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna have him living in a crack house because that will make him tough.
1:01:28 That’ll make him understand the world. No, I want to send him to Eden. I want to send him to Oxford. That’s where you want your fucking kid to go, right? So he can run a legitimate business so he doesn’t end up having the life that you had.
1:01:41 That’s the difference. That’s what people don’t get about the game. You know, they hustling backwards. Wow, that’s some serious knowledge. Do you feel like as an artist, then it’s your responsibility, because a lot of artists do propagate the image of what you’re talking about, that going to prison is cool, or being from a particular environment is cool.
1:01:59 I mean, growing up myself, you kind of use these things as merits, you know what I mean? That’s what you use to give yourself credential, because if someone went to prison, then no one wants to mess with them anymore, you know what I mean? Or if you live in the hood, it gives you a certain status. when you’re in school and the rich kids are saying to you, oh, you can’t do this, but they’re afraid of you because you’re from a particular background. So as a artist, is that your overriding objective?
1:02:23 I mean, look, it depends. It depends on what kind of rich kid you are, what kind of man your father has decided to raise you to be. You know, if you’re a rich kid whose dad doesn’t give a fuck about you and he’s never around, then if you got a problem at school, of course, some bully’s gonna be beat in this shit out of you. But if your father’s a gangster, and, you know, he owns Blackwater or some shit, then you know me, you gonna lend you some of his men, come to school the next day and beat the fuck out of them niggas that was bothering you.
1:02:47 I mean, I’m just saying that it really matters how much you put into it in terms of parenting when you’re talking about dealing with children a lot too. Because you’ll see, especially with young people that wanna rap about certain things. We had this discussion yesterday at this panel over, at this panel over, we watched this movie One Mile Away about the gangs in Birmingham. It was one day, one mile away. It was a great, great, great documentary, but it was interesting because we were discussing how in those particular scenarios, when you really see children going through stuff like that, you could teach anything to them with love, but the only thing you can teach them with hate is how to hate other people, you know?
1:03:38 And if they don’t have some kind of idea that their life can be bigger than that, that their story is strong, that their history is, that their roots are deeper, that they come from somewhere, that they have a chance to be something, that when you really do put in work and build a business, that there can be visible residuals from that. You know, don’t you wanna own your home one day, brother? Don’t you wanna see your kids have, you know, a better life than you did growing up.
1:04:07 Isn’t that the point of all this? Or are we here just to glorify ourselves? The other thing is this. I tell them young people, brother, just like you asked, I don’t care what they rhyme about. I don’t care what they talk about in them prison program.
1:04:18 I tell her that all day. Look, dude, you wanna rap about selling crack? That’s fine. I tell the young brother, just make it interesting for me. Don’t tell me the same story to Jay-Z or one of these other niggas said, because I’ve heard that story already.
1:04:31 Tell me a different story. Tell me what it’s like to sell crack to a pregnant woman. I wanna hear that story. I wanna hear you go home and tell me what that’s like. I want to hear you tell me what it’s like to buy $60,000 worth of heroin on consignment and lose the shipment and have them motherfuckers after you because you’re gonna die and they’re gonna kill your family too.
1:04:54 Tell me what it’s like to sell the drugs that you grew up watching your parents use because nine times out of 10 the people I knew the soul drugs their parents and drug addicts. That’s how they learned to cut cocaine or shape onion and fucking, you know Wrong or something like that. They knew it because they had seen people grow up abusing that tell me that story You know, that’s the one I want here Let’s be honest with people because that’s really what we’re trying to do in terms of what I’m trying to do in terms of the Artistry, I’m just trying to get the honesty out of people, you know, yes, we’re all flawed human beings Yeah, we all sing, we all do stupid things, but we don’t have to do it in a such a destructive way that we leave a trail of broken lives everywhere we go.
1:05:38 Because then, you know, we’re just causing our own extinction. So when it comes to that as your responsibility as an artist, to bring that honesty out, is there ever a conflict for you between the entertainment aspect and the aspect of being, because essentially, most kids wanna listen to music for the entertainment value, you know what I mean? Do you feel it’s difficult to maintain that while at the same time projecting honesty with them? I think the difference is that the music that I have relies on a lot of concepts, you know So that is like a storytelling premise That’s the ability to go away to circumvent that argument that you’re talking about and say well I can get straight to the child’s mind because now for example, I did a song dance with the devil about rape and murder So a lot of people that never heard of me and probably they were like, oh well This this rap is about something. We’re not talking about just random shit. Oh, wait a minute. These niggas killed, you know So he’s wrong. I got insane but at the same time it’s like that is so real and it became an urban legend because it just kept happening and I reminded people it’s not that it kept Happening like it would be a bunch of cats in Newark where it happened with Somebody’s cousin or something would happen in LA or it would it even happened out here in London where somebody was raped and it turned out to be the guy’s stepmother, sister,
1:06:56 Or something like that, and they call it the dance or the devil murder, and then someone contacted me like, yo, do you see that your story, like, someone was silly enough, they called me, oh, you’re a prophet. I’m like, no, I’m not a prophet. This isn’t happening because I made a song about it. This has always been happening, and I made a song about something that continues to happen, the rape of your own people, the self-destruction that you live in in a society where you begin to consume yourself, And I think by doing that, it’s not so much a conflict, but I take that conflict and I use it to my advantage to say, okay, you know what, if a giant block is swinging at me, then I’m not gonna stand in front of the block, but I’m gonna get by the side of the block and kind of nudge it in the direction that I need it to go in.
1:07:43 So God forbid, if you coming up behind me, you’re gonna hit by that motherfucking block, I’m just saying that I think that that’s, They’re not always in conflict with one another, but I think that what you said is true. If you’re talking about a commercial corporate entity, then those things become a conflict. Because then you’re sponsored by all these people that have no interest in seeing our community do anything. They just wanna sell sugar and water to us.
1:08:12 They wanna sell cereal with a toy in it to us, or we’re gonna have hip-hop hamburgers, or something, that’s what they think. They just see it as another thing to prostitute. Well, what’s the current state of hip hop and what do you like and what do you not like? Well, the current state of hip hop is obviously that we’re dealing with a generation that grew up in cities that are a lot less violent. So there’s a lot less of the violent talk that used to exist before.
1:08:37 That doesn’t make it softer. It makes it more concept driven. So that’s a perfect venue for me to exist because a lot of the stuff that I have is conceptual. So it’s not so much that I’m minded and I can’t tell people how to dress. People always ask me, how do you feel about people wearing skinny jeans or something?
1:08:52 And I said, listen, when you grow up, you wear clothes that fit. That’s just how it is, you know? When you’re a kid, some of you just don’t wear shit that you don’t want to wear shit that fits. You don’t want to fit in. So some people wearing baggy-ass clothes, I don’t want to fit in.
1:09:05 Now niggas is wearing some old skin-tight shit that cuts off your circulation. You just don’t want to fit in. I understand. I see the rebelliousness, you know, you go from being completely dependent on a parent or grandparent to being completely independent. That’s gonna breed conflict no matter what within you, within the system.
1:09:23 But I think it’s good to see so many people or younger people that are going independent now. That’s one thing I like about hip hop. I see a lot of independent cats that I say, no, I wanna own my masters, I wanna own my publishing. I don’t wanna get 13 cents a record. I want five to seven dollars a record.
1:09:39 That’s how I wanna own the world. And if you can’t do that for me, then get the fuck outta here because I can do it myself. Very empowering that way. What’s next for you? I mean, what’s the next goal for more like a year or two years? Is it to get bigger or is it not?
1:09:55 No, I finally have to release this album I’ve been holding on to for like five years. It’s called The Middle Passage. And I’ve been working on it here and there. I get one or two songs done. I had to go revamp a couple of them and change the samples into interpolation just because I didn’t want to get caught up with paying some really labels, some shit.
1:10:14 So it’s been a process. Shout out to the engineer South Pole, my brother for a long time, doing it real big. And me and him have to get together to work on a bunch of other stuff that has come through the label, like other releases. My brother Kia is coming out with a record called The Plan. My homie Hassan Salaam, Life in Black and White is coming out.
1:10:40 This other side that we have called Constant Flow or CF, representing Jersey, he’s coming out. The Circle, which our friends and mom from a while ago, they gonna bring some heat. So I have a bunch of releases coming out on the label that’ll hopefully garner some more attention for the actual company and bring us back into the fold. Not that we ever left, but bring back to the fold the dynamic of New York on the ground. But in terms of me, I’m out here promoting the DVD, which features Iced Tea and KRS-1, Chuck D, Woody House, and just a lot of people that have been like cool and friendly enough to share their advice with me about the journey that I decided to take.
1:11:24 Cornell, Dr. Cornell West, just a ton of people that have been, you know, very helpful in terms of my struggle. And, you know, we traveled to a lot of places and traveled to Columbia where we went to that institution. I was telling you earlier. We went to Afghanistan, built an orphanage with the human rights organization.
1:11:47 Is that the main project? Yeah, but it was done with a human rights organization called Omid International, for those of you who are interested in donating out there. It’s O-M-E-I-D.org. And I definitely want to promote that as much as I can. But also, I really do have to finish up that record.
1:12:08 After this tour is over. I have, tomorrow, I’ll be in Cardiff, and then Oslo, then Copenhagen, and then Arhus. And then after that, literally, I’m going back to NY. I’m doing a like, Rock the Bells party or something like that that they have. So I’m gonna show up there with like 400 people.
1:12:26 And then after that, I’ll do, I’ll get back in the studio and try to finish up the middle passage and get this shit done. Then I’m gonna hit them real fuckin’ hard, okay. What, with touring on that, or just with releasing that? Releasing that, and I’ll definitely come back and do another tour. I mean, because I’ve been here twice in the past year, I’ll probably save England for last, England and Ireland for last, but I’m gonna enjoy the shit of myself when I do come back here.
1:12:55 And I mean, I always come back to London every few months to close some kind of business deal or catch up with friends or work on stuff, so I love it out here. I don’t know if I’m ready for a career, but maybe I’ll rent a flat or something like that for some. When it’s sunny, it’s the bomb, but it’s not, it’s trying sometimes, you know? I’m a New Yorker, yo, you know what I mean? We’re used to the rain, I don’t care, yo.
1:13:17 But it’s more, it’s human weather, so I don’t suffer in this heat and I won’t suffer in the cold, you know? I’ll be good no matter what. Human weather. And were you two in the States as well? Yeah, yeah, I’ll probably go on a tour in September.
1:13:32 Okay, and hit East Coast, West Coast, or hit everything in between? east coast west coast and pretty much everything in between but that still in the works okay I gotta see those numbers that’s what they gotta show me I got to ask you a very London Real question before we wrap up and and it’s why I asked almost every guest and I was wondering if you could pick up the phone and make a phone call to the 20 year old immortal technique and if you could give him some advice what would you tell him and it can’t be just keep You know what you’re doing? No, no, I put all your money in Apple stock.
1:14:07 No, not just that. I mean, I don’t know, dude, that’s crazy. Cause I mean, I would do a whole lot of stuff if I could go in the past. I would tell them about 9-11, tell them to stop it somehow. You know what I mean?
1:14:25 Tell them the repercussions that would happen because of it. I wouldn’t even know where to begin. I’d saved my cousin’s life. I do a whole lot of shit.
1:14:35 Wow. Yeah, how long is that conversation that I get to have? Yeah, as a man, if you just had to give him a few words of wisdom, is there anything that’s raised a mind? Not that you would’ve listened at 20, you know, but… Yeah, I definitely couldn’t have said it was me because then me wouldn’t have believed it.
1:14:52 I’m like, fuck outta here, you ain’t me, nigga. I’d have to say something to him that’s so personal about us, so he would’ve got it. And it’d be like, yo, do you remember that time that you robbed the niggas and you was running away and you threw your bag and then you’d be like, Oh, you do know me, homie, because I was alone when that shit happened, and nah. But in all truth, all jokes aside,
1:15:16 I would tell him that uh, I would tell him that uh, that no matter what he’s going through, that this too shall pass. No matter what kind of shit you’re going through, no matter what the fuck life throws at you, you know, just, just keep pushing through. It don’t, it don’t, it’s, wherever you end up, you’re still gonna be able to make an impact. It don’t matter if you end up being a famous rapper on a label or if you end up running for Congress or you end up being a soldier or you end up doing whatever it is.
1:15:50 But at the same time, I was incarcerated when I was 20. So I didn’t even know what kind of life I would have when I got out.
1:16:00 I would definitely tell him certain things. I would tell him the path that I took. I would tell him definitely to get a job, go work. but it’s not fair because I really would tell her about that Apple shit. I would totally tell him all the stops.
1:16:12 And on the same note, what advice do you give to the 20 year old out here that’s listening to us that maybe wants to grow up one day and be like you? What do you tell him? Get ready to not sleep. You gotta listen, success is not measured by what you have, it’s measured by what you have to sacrifice in order to get to where you are. That’s what I would tell him.
1:16:35 You want something, be willing to cut your hand off for it. You got to bleed for that. That’s really your dream. You can’t expect us to pray and have it fall out the sky. And everybody’s career is littered with the corpses of other people’s career.
1:16:49 That’s the path to some people’s ascension to glory. If there’s certain lines of work where you almost can’t get ahead without chopping somebody down, that’s the unfortunate circumstance of a lot of types of employment. But I would tell people, if that’s not how you wanna live and you wanna be able to sleep at night, find something to do that makes you happy, you know? There’s so few people in this world, my father told me, that do things for a living that make them happy, you know?
1:17:19 I would just tell the young people out there, it don’t matter if you’re gonna be involved in hip hop or you’re gonna be a rapper, realize, I started out as a graffiti writer, I wasn’t even an MC, fuck that, other niggas was rhyming, I was up there painting the wall, I ended up doing this. they might come into the game as a rapper and then end up being a famous producer or an incredible engineer or a videographer or a documentary filmmaker. They might do independent media such as yourself where they have their own, you know what I mean?
1:17:48 You hear, you living, you living well, this shit look nice, you know? It’s like, come on, man, you don’t have to be, you know, you don’t have to be Jay-Z or Justin Timberlake in your mind to be successful. You know, success is being able to take care of your parents rather than them taking care of you. That’s successful. There you go.
1:18:10 You want to be able to pay your kids bills. You want to be able to pay food for your family. You want to be able to sustain yourself and have something to pass down to people. That makes you successful. That’s an overblown, pathetic idea of wealth.
1:18:23 That just feeds your ego. That don’t feed your kids Indeed speaking of parents did your father’s day was yesterday is that is that do you get to call your dad? Is he still around your father? Yes, but my father we had a good chat. It’s very serious, man Is he what does he think of you hope of what your whole ethos and what you represent? I mean is he a fan of it?
1:18:43 What music? No, he’s my father’s more of a jazz head. I grew up listening a lot of jazz Coltrane chick career stuff like that Miles Davis, whatever maybe and He likes music and he definitely, I mean obviously he don’t agree with necessarily the language that I use, some of the extreme examples, but he’s pleasing me that I’m doing something that I love for a living because that’s what he said. He said, you know, 99% of the people out there do something that they hate but they have to do.
1:19:15 You know, you think somebody would want to be a cop in New York and get spit on and get harassed and always have people trying to get at you to the point where you become I’m cynical and abusive to the public yourself. Do you think people like that? No, but they know that, damn, I’m gonna sign up with the city and I’m gonna have the best medical and dental program that you motherfuckers have ever seen. I get to have carte blanche when I drive around. Ain’t nobody gonna arrest me.
1:19:40 If you arrest my child for anything, I’m the first to know, damn near before anybody else. You know, it’s like people make a certain sacrifice for the jobs that they have. You think people like cleaning up the trash here in London? No, but they do it because, God damn it, those kids gotta eat. And at the same time, you know, don’t lose that dream.
1:19:58 Even if you a trash man, even if you something else. Who gives a fuck, dude? You like to paint, you making money? Buy yourself a fucking canvas, do something with it. Don’t lose that artistic side of yourself.
1:20:12 Don’t give that up just cause you’ve decided to confer in life. Always keep that because it can be used to ennoble your children, to ennoble your perspective. It can give you a wider array of ideas to choose from when you decide what you’re going to dedicate the education of your children to. I was probably going to mention your father. My dad’s 70 and I can FaceTime and call him in California and talk to him and I just sometimes just think how fucking lucky am I, you know, and someday I won’t be able to do that but now I can talk to him and just have this massive personal interaction with him and get his advice and get his thoughts and yeah, I just don’t really cherish that much more than I used to, as I get older.
1:20:54 Immortal, thank you so much for coming by. It’s been a real pleasure having you here. If the people want to get in contact with me, they can do that. Facebook slash Tech Immortal, they can get at me on Twitter, Twitter slash Immortal Tech, or they can come see me at viperrecords.com. I appreciate all the love and support, the Middle Passage coming out soon.
1:21:17 Shout out to the Rebel Arms, London, we here. Alright, beautiful. Thank you so much, Sully. Thanks for being here, for listening to us on iTunes.
