Lemme Ask You This
From the minds of Talib Kweli and Tef Poe comes Lemme Ask You This, a podcast that lives at the intersection of art and activism.
Lemme Ask You This
Episode 27 - Christian Nationalist Hip Hop
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Episode 27 - Christian Nationalist Hip Hop
Shot and Edited By Chino Chase. Additional Filming By Aaron Ross Media Co.
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How you feeling, Teff? Man, I feel good, bro. We back for another episode. Let me ask you this. The show is picking up traction. Um, life is good. It's been a crazy summer. Welcome back to Ohio. Yeah, man. Ohio is basically the second home now. You know what I'm saying? I thought it was gonna be Brooklyn.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean, we have done the first few episodes within Brooklyn, but I've been in Ohio for the summer for the uh summer camp thing. Shout out to Dave Chappelle and the whole crew. Um, I'm very comfortable here, man. Like, like I feel very, very comfortable. And I never thought that comfort would be something that I would try to attain. But the older you get, the more you want to protect your peace and protect your comfort.
SPEAKER_01You said something deep with that, because uh I do see you move around Yellow Springs and Ohio in general very freely for you to be who you are. You know what I'm saying? Like you just did the gig in Cincinnati with High Tech High Core Stadium. You want to talk about that a little bit?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, shout out to High Tech, shout out to High Tech's family, shout out to Billy, shout out to Mama Tech, shout out to Wifey, shout out to the whole family. High tech recently moved to California. So I don't know when this will air, but look out for me and high tech at Blue Note. Either you can come to the show because we just booked that, um, or you're gonna see the footage afterwards. Uh, but high tech represents the natty, man. I represent the natty so much in my lyrics that people thought I was from Cincinnati.
SPEAKER_01I know mad people thought you were a Cincinnati rapper.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. I know mad people thought you were. Yeah, it was good to link up with high tech. And I had done the jazz fest before. It's called the Music Fest now because he's gentrified. But uh doing it with my bro uh was very important. Last time I did it was with Dougie Fresh. It was Dougie Fresh's 50th birthday party. And um before I did this show, I watched footage of Dougie Fresh and D Nice at the Essence Fest to just get myself in the mod state of that type of showmanship. You know, that's the world's greatest entertainer.
SPEAKER_01So, how you felt about uh the show in general and just being back in the Midwest doing stuff?
SPEAKER_03Uh it felt good. It was a family affair, it was family vibe. It was like a pre-party for the Jazz Fest. Um, so it was a lot of like, it was a family affair. We brought out Planet Asia. Uh shout out to Planet Asia. Me and Planet Asia got a record we're working on. And we brought out a local artist named uh Taca. He had a record called Down the Way. Really in Cincinnati's real big record, so it's a dance. I can't, I'm not gonna embarrass myself and try to do a dance. But it was good hometown love, man.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. That's dope, man. So you heading to Canada?
SPEAKER_03I'm going to Canada today, uh, working with Jazzy Jeff. Shout out to DJ Jazzy Jeff. Shout out to Scratch Bastard. I'm doing this uh Bastard's Barbecue. If you are DJ, you know how ill Scratch Bastard is. Nico Ayers is coming. Um you're gonna chill here in Ohio.
SPEAKER_01I'm gonna wait for y'all boys to get back.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I'm gonna come back, man. Um, we just got some news recently that we lost one of the homies, one of our bros, Black Ice. You familiar with Black Ice?
SPEAKER_01I'm super familiar.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, man. Um, Black Ice is a poet. Uh, we don't know the cause of death at this point, but rest in peace to Black Ice. Condolences to his family. How did you hear about Black Ice?
SPEAKER_01Uh, Deaf Poetry Jam, I believe. Yeah. He was a legend on that platform.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, Black Ice was, he's from Philadelphia. Um, Russell Simmons, I do believe that even though Saul Williams and Jessica Care Moore and these people were innovators in that space, right? And those were the first poets you've seen on Deaf Poetry Jam, I don't think you would have had a Deaf Poetry Jam without Black Ice.
SPEAKER_01He was one of my favorites.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, Russell Simmons saw Black Ice, and at that time he had a DMX on a Deaf Jam. And he was like, yo, that's like a poetry DMX. That's how I used to describe him. So from my vantage point, and the spoken word poets who were on back then, they might correct me. But from the perspective of, because I'm in the spoken word community, but I'm more hip-hop. Um, from my perspective, you don't get that poetry jam without black ice. And when I posted about him online, the stories, man, that people posted in my comments about how he touched their lives directly, man, was so inspirational.
SPEAKER_01Rest in peace to the brother, man. Yeah, rest in peace. As an MC lyricist uh in the current era, we are losing a lot of folks. Kind of randomly. And um, I've been doing a lot of thinking about that because the institution of MCN is one where words matter. Yeah, and the words become the lived legacy of these people after they pass on. And in my own art, I've been thinking a lot more about that because I want people to be able to go interface with those words in a particular way at some point.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, we're gonna talk about how the words matter. And that's gonna be like a theme of this episode. Because you know what I'm saying, we are both MCs, you know what I'm saying? As Jill Scott said about uh black ice, she said, that's my real friend with a real pen. You my real friend with a real pen.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um, so first I want to talk about how Jay-Z has been putting the bars on the upper echelon level, like the OGs is back outside, like like public enemy is back outside. Like, and Jay-Z just sold out Yankee Stadium.
SPEAKER_01I've been waiting for you to bring up Hove. Okay. Not even on the politics side of the ball, just on the MC level. Because I for me, there's a very interesting something going on with Talib and Hove as MC.
SPEAKER_03What you mean?
SPEAKER_01Like, I think, you know, like where I'm from, I think Midwest dudes, we like see other Midwest cats that spit. Like, if I was in the room with Royce the 5.9, like I would have an ultimate head nod towards them because it's Royce the 5.9, you know, like that's a titan for Detroit rap and Midwest rap. Like, you know, we I I look at bro and I see a lot of things I can relate to in myself and him and similar, right? And I think like with you and Ho being both from Brooklyn and you being kind of like the underground logo, him being the mainstream logo, you know.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I feel like there's something symbiotic there. Yeah. I feel like there's a yin and yang thing there, and he acknowledged it when he said my name and those bars back in the day. I think that Jay-Z is unique in terms of he's an exception to the rule. He is someone who is a hustler and a capitalist, so much to the point where he's so good at it that he came from destitute of being a street level dude to being a billionaire. And so his story is inspirational to a lot of people. But the capitalist part of it is when you juxtapose that against who he is as an artist, it seems hypocritical and it seems to not make sense. But that's why he's the exception to the rule. He is the rare example of someone who is pure capitalism, but also pure art at the same time. That's a hard balance to strike. We've seen Nas struggle with that. Like Nas couldn't be both in his career. He had to be all artists later in his career. And I'm not gonna put capitalists on Nas because I don't really, you know, Hove, I think, moves obviously like a capitalist. Nas, I think I don't know the way he sees economics politically. I I know he has a hustler spirit. I know he's trying to take care of his family. I know I respect the fuck out of that. Uh but I think that Nas focused on the money later in his career. Now, when people talk about Nas leveling up with his investments and all that, he was focused on when he signed the deal with Search. You know, that wasn't a good deal by many, many metrics. But Nas will never disrespect Search. Because Nas is the way Nas from in public at least, the way he talks about it was like, yo, that's that's the deal that put me on. Hove came in the game like fuck them deals. Like we Rockefeller, we the owners. They they approached it differently. I'm a business man. That's a whole different way to approach it. And so I think that he puts equal amount of passion into making money as he does into the art. That's why he couldn't sit down for so many years without saying something. That's why he's like, I gotta go on offense. To him, it's about art. I don't think his ego is to the point where he cares about what all these people are saying as a man, as a father, right? I I think that the the Jay-Z with the um lot really cares about the art. The Jay-Z without the um lot is like, hey, man, that's just one part of me. You know what I'm saying? But that's why he had to put that um lot back in. And um I think as a po when it comes to me, and not just me, but common and uh Dead Prez, he studies us. He was studying. And that's why he said what he said, because he understood that when it comes to the vanguard or the art, at least for that time period when we had those records out, whether it be the light or hip hop or get by, that's the real shit. I think signing a Kanye, who Kanye was at that time, they were getting the best of both worlds.
SPEAKER_01That's profound. Um, how much of Rockefeller as a finalized product that you think was a necessity? Or was it an idea that it just associated with his personality more so? Like, for example, some people's like, I'll never work for nobody. Right? Not that there's anything working for folks because people have to have jobs. Right. But somebody in the midst is gonna be like the dude that's like, nah, I don't want no record deals. I want to own the company. Right, right, right. Um, was that a you think that was a necessity?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's not just Rockefeller, but it's that era. It was it was Bad Boy, it was Rough Riders, it was Swisher House, uh Swisha House a little later, but Bad Boy is with Death Row, it was Suave House, it was, you know, it it what Jay Print and then was doing, all those things. Tony Draper. Tony Draper, even to the point of like Jermaine Dupree and Lafayette, all those things are very important. Hove is just one part of that. Um, but that, I mean, they showed us the way. Uh, there's a gift and a curse to that because people stopped wanting to be artists and more want to be CEOs in that era, like like that whole I'm a businessman thing. Like, there's a gift and a curse to that. But at the same time, how can I be mad as coming from where I come from to see black people using art to level up and feed our community, to feed our families? Like, yeah, there's, you know, you're gonna get some negativity with it. You're gonna get some whack raps, you're gonna get some uh, you know, fights in the in the music business. You're gonna get things that come with the hood when you have people who come from the hood. But I mean, it's a net positive. I would never down another black man for making money at all. Like, this whole like anti-capital, like, like I've been rolling with like leftist, progressive, revolutionary, anti-capitalist people for a long time. These terms y'all using on the internet now, eat the rich, you know what I'm saying, and hit the guillotine, y'all saying that on Instagram. Y'all not in the streets saying that. Y'all don't mean that. So it's weird to me to see the rhetoric, to see people judge by this metric that y'all wasn't living this whole time. It's like watching football. Oh, y'all care about FIFA all of a sudden, get the fuck out of here. Y'all didn't care about that until a month ago, until the marketing made y'all care about it, which I'm fine with. Like, okay, we all gonna pretend we cared about football the whole time. It's cool, but don't come at me like you been on this. Y'all ain't been on this. That's how we got to this point.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, somebody called me and said uh that they felt like I I wasn't doing a very thorough deep dive or analysis when I put out there that personally at this point in time, I do feel like Hove is the hardest dude in the game. You know what I'm saying? And my rankings of why I would say that it's like creating an EA sports player. You know, you can't you need a little bit of this, a little bit of that, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. It's not all one thing that that reaches.
SPEAKER_03Well, they a lot of people who have those conversations, particularly online, are people who do not participate in hip-hop. They don't make no hip-hop, they don't write no rhymes, they don't write no beats, they don't, they definitely don't buy no albums. They don't participate in this culture, they don't go to shows that to just see the show, they go to shows to be seen, not to see the show. They go to shows so they can post on the Grammy. Look, I was here at the show. They don't really care about. But let me ask you this because of all the criteria you pointed out. That's the disconnect in the conversation, in my opinion, that people are having around what Lupe recently said about Kendrick Lamar. I'm paraphrasing Lupe here. And Lupe, who's a fantastic MC, but who's well qualified to speak on the art of MC and said that he knows a hundred MCs who he feels like are better rappers than Kendrick Lamar. Now, while I will state this, and I love Lupe, and I love Kendrick Lamar, um I disagree with that statement. I don't know a hundred MCs who were better than Kendrick Lamar, but I understand where he was coming from. And I think that I disagree with Lupe because I'm operating from a different paradigm than he's operating from. If I'm to accept his paradigm, which I think, and I don't want to speak for the brother, but I feel like his paradigm is in terms of what I rate an MC by, we're not talking about the accolades, we're not talking about the award shows or the pull of surprise or what this man means to the culture. I'm talking strictly about how subjectively how I see bars and what I think is important in terms of writing bars, and it comes with multis and all this little technical shit that Mickey Facts and Lupe and all and all these type of dudes be having these conversations around. Kendrick ain't on that. Kendrick's metric and his paradigm and the way he approaches music is differently. So I think the lens in which Lupe is judging Kendrick by, while I understand it intellectually, I think that the comment went viral because people don't have the hip-hop lens to understand what Lupe was trying to say.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, first of all, Kendrick is making human music. Yeah. My favorite rappers, people like Pac, Nipsey, Dot, Nas, Scarface, stuff like that. Right now, for me, to keep me afloat in hip-hop, I need Nas, Scarface, and Dot. You know what I'm saying? Kendrick is my guy. I'm the Kendrick guy. Now, I think the Jay-Z conversation and the Kendrick conversation are connected to me in a way.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01In a sense, the the task that Kendrick has in the MC world is getting on the barbershop wall. And there are certain people who are gonna be on that wall no matter what happens. And the the ghost that he has to be, number one, is the ghost of a dead man. He's battling a dead man at all times, too, Popsha Core. You know what I'm saying? Then Hove is the living presence of everything that can happen if you ride that horse into like super legend land. You know what I'm saying? And I do think for guys like a dot, guys like maybe even obviously Drake, uh the presence of Jay-Z is some type of a conundrum. Because um, do you engage that space the same way he does it? Do you disengage? Uh, where do you land in terms of, okay, I battled Drake. I'm a West Coast dude. I sent it all the way up. Some people are now prepared to, okay, give me a little bit or more than a little bit of a comparison to Tupac. They're willing to Kobe and Michael Jordan, me and Pac.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_01You know what I'm saying? Now what do you do about the Jay-Z issue if you if you Kendrick Lamar? You know what I'm saying? Like you already battled the dead man. But now what do you do with this situation? You know, how do you build PG Lane to be uh something that people go, man, Rockefeller was never this. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Um, I do think that's that's that's what's required if if Hove is still rapping. We can't act like that ain't a thing then. You know, because the the word best means what it means.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01In my opinion.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. I feel you. I feel you. Now, the reason why I said we gotta talk about words mattering is because you made a record recently that I want to thank you for making. You made a record called Evangelical Freestyle. And the record is, if I do say so myself, I'm biased. You know what I'm saying? It's it's phenomenal. But it's directly addressing some online conversation that I've been having. And I wanted to unpack that. I wanted to first of all thank you for uh always protecting my name, and you protect my name as if it was your own. And I'm cut from that cloth. You know, understand what I'm saying? So it's like, uh I appreciate that. Um, but um tell me why you felt the need to make this record.
SPEAKER_01Multiple reasons, man. Um, where I'm from, my mama said you can't come back home if you don't help your brother fight. Period. If he ever fight in the streets, we'll discuss him being wrong when we get home. My mama said that all the time. We'll tell you when we get internal, you can tell me what he did wrong internally, what you didn't agree with internally. Publicly, if they swing on your brother, you better swing, you better swing with him. I feel the same way. You feel what I'm saying? Yeah. So for me, and I and I'm gonna be honest with you, this record is possibly going to sh reshape certain relationships for me. Because I said certain things, or I asked certain questions, right? I don't really fully feel like it's even a disrespectful record towards certain individuals mentioned in the record. But for certain people, yeah, that's some disrespect there because you're disrespecting us.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you didn't mention no names, but people who hear the record are gonna know who we were talking about, um, who you were talking about. Um, there's a rapper named Dayton, who I never heard of until recently. Well, apparently he tried to troll me on Twitter years ago, and that's why he's mad now, but he recently popped back out this year. And your record's like a response to him. Um, first of all, before I want to talk about that guy, Christian rap, what I've learned from the way that this guy's been attacking me is that Christian hip-hop has a MAGA problem. Yeah, a super MAGA problem. And we need to address it.
SPEAKER_01And I've been talking about it for months, but yeah, and it's been falling on deaf ears. Like, if I don't care that your message is morally intact with the Bible if you are endorsing physical harm to people in real life. Yeah. At this point, we're talking about final fantasy stuff versus stuff people really going through. And I can't co-sign that. And also, in the world where we have a white evangelical problem, we have a uh the white evangelicals have a race issue. It is irresponsible, it is foul, it's really fucked up to act like this shit ain't going on just so you can show up at these churches and get a check, bro. Yeah, it's a grift. You you feel me? And then when you see yourself siding with people like, and I'm saying, I'll say some names, 4G out O'Blow, right? Fuck that guy. Like, like, like the people who got songs talking about they white niggas and shit. Yeah, Bryson Gray. Come on, man.
SPEAKER_03And here's the thing with the people big doofy ass MAGA hat on. Here's the thing with the biggest. But he's Christian, so that's your brother. Fuck out of here.
SPEAKER_01Here's the thing with me. I'm not scared of none of y'all. Like, um, I don't got nothing to lose, bro. You know what I'm saying? Like, this my rookie season with Javodi, bro. I'm not finna just let niggas walk in here and just shoot up the club like, like, for what? Right. For what? Yeah. For what? You disrespect us, you get disrespect back. Now, if you you come talk to us like men, we talk to you like men. But I'm not gonna ride with this man and sit back and just let y'all just like poke at what what dude built. That's just that that's that's lame on my behalf. You know what I'm saying? Like, it just don't go like that.
SPEAKER_03So he made a 10 uh 10-minute diss record about me. Uh, and I'm gonna get into why he was upset, but I wanna first shout out my baby mom, Starcell, before we get into that. Because I love her response to this record. In his 10-minute diss record, he uh he mentions my baby mom. He tells a bunch of lies. Like nothing, nothing he says in the record is accurate or true. And I want to unpack that because are you really cooking if you're lying in the record? No. Um, but he sampled my baby mom in an interview she did. And um, this is something that she has taken back. It's something that, you know, we've grown past this and everything. But um, what he was dealing with was gossip and slander. And she asked him to not use her. She made a video saying, I don't condone what you're doing. Yeah, leave me out of this. And his response was, Well, it was your words and this and that. So now you were a colonizer because now you're stealing content from black creators and saying, No, I have the right to use this because I have the right to use a black woman as a weapon.
SPEAKER_01Those conversations that he had with your BM was damn near probably some of the only conversations he's ever really had constructively had with a black woman. That man don't talk to black women for real. That's right. So he don't care about black women. That's right. That he don't know no real black women. You know, you're weaponizing black women to the sake of your own personal narrative, and then so that's worse. So let's say some of the things they're saying about you were true. That's worse than that. Yeah, especially if you're a Christian.
SPEAKER_03You're supposed to be supposed to be held to a higher standard, right? Come on. Christianity is supposed to be these Christians, these type Christians, not all Christians, but these type of Christians run around judging people. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Even in the temple. Yeah, Proverbs says a perverse person stirs up conflict, and a gossip separates close friends. How are you a Christian, but you gossiping and slandering and battle rap?
SPEAKER_01Thieves in the temple. Yeah, man. And I barely really even understand the whole Christian battle rap thing. Like I'm walking a real thin line with that. Break that down. There's some real amazing Christian battle rappers out there. You know, shout out A Ward, he's really dope. Um, but I am walking the line with that personally, because like uh I I don't know that I'm in a weird space where I'm seeing people bring their religious values into hip-hop. And I don't know how I feel about that.
SPEAKER_03Well, I mean, hip-hop, I think, I think that you should be able to bring whatever your value system is into hip hop as long as it's not anti-black.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03As long as your value system is not anti-marginalized.
SPEAKER_01But the problem with bringing Christianity the way they do it into hip-hop is the fact that you're starting, you're not starting with the root of the religion starting in Africa. You're not, you're not even.
SPEAKER_03Oh, see, now you're asking too much, brother. You're asking for these, for these so-called Christians to know something about these texts, which they base their whole life on.
SPEAKER_01Even in the genre of rap, gospel hip-hop is not a brand new thing. You know what I mean? Like I grew up listening into quote unquote gospel hip-hop because I couldn't listen to regular music in my house. So I would, and this is my true testimony, I would put the Reflection Eternal CD in the gospel hip-hop CD case. So when my moms came in there to check it out, she'll flip it over and the cover would have all these uh positive rap messages on the back. And then I just pop it in and be like, yeah, this is what I'm listening to. Yeah, they cursing a little bit, but they basically talking about the same dude stuff these dudes talking about. You know what I mean? It's positive music. So I know a lot about the genre, you know what I'm saying? And I'm in tune with a lot of the cats that uh that started the genre. Shout out the homie, the OG, Lil Rascal, Houston, Texas, is owned. The brother that went gold with gospel rap back in the day, made several records. They started a uh record label called Grape Tree Records. They sold over a million records. He had a brother down there with him called New Wine. Yep. Uh, it's another cat from uh Denver, uh, another group from Denver, gospel gangsters, G-O-Gs. These is actual groups that started the genre of gospel hip-hop. And initially, that was black music. Black music, which came out of the black church, and cats going, like, yeah, we Christians, we say, but we want to do something different with it. We don't want to get up here and sway side to side and make choir-driven music. And my problem even now is those guys was doing the music for the sake of reaching people, for talking to people's souls, for bettering the community. They weren't going around uh, you know, turning gospel hip-hop into call out music. You feel what I'm saying? Yeah. Like, if you're gonna call Cash out, you might as well just be Tupac. Like, don't, you know what I'm saying? Just like don't duck the smoke on what comes behind the call out. Don't call me out and then be like, hold on, brother.
SPEAKER_03Right, right, right. Wanna call me out but then repent. I'm sorry, y'all. I owe y'all, I just want to repent to the people. I'm not gonna repent to the person who I targeted for abuse, but I'm gonna repent to my followers for, you know what I'm saying? So I wanna start with because we don't spend enough time talking about how conflicts start. We in the era, in the internet era where people expect a response to everything without breaking down the context of how it starts. Not everything deserves a response. This idea that I gotta jump into the studio and respond to this dude, I'm not saying I won't. I don't think that's a good one. But the idea that I that I have to. I don't think you have to. The idea that I owe this person a response when when I'm me. We moved the goalpost on this one too.
SPEAKER_01Because I'm like, what the fuck are we even talking about? Who the fuck is even this dude? The music, he said itself. The song The Hair Fan? Not he said that, but he also said that he didn't even record the song properly. Like, if you gotta drop a song where you're talking about somebody with credibility, and then your next statement after you drop the song is, yeah, yeah, I could have recorded it better.
SPEAKER_03Are you talking about busy Cordova or Dayton said that?
SPEAKER_01I didn't see Dayton say that. Yeah, I feel like he said the sound quality on it could have been better or some shit.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I saw this other dude who was who was who was uh who was taken up for Dayton. Uh he made a song called Taleb is a faggot, or some shit he made a song called. And then he then, when people, his, his, his fan base was like, bro, you're supposed to be a Christian. What is this? And then he was like, oh, I just he was making excuses about the side, whatever, man. Like, I'm gonna break down how it starts because that's important, right? So, first of all, leave black people the fuck alone. Let's start with that. Let's start with that as a baseline. We have to normalize, not allowing people to come into black spaces, even black online spaces, and kicking their feet up and start handing out instructions or telling us how to behave, or I don't think you should be talking about this, or I don't like what you have. Man, fuck all that. Say all that on your page where nobody's following and nobody's watching. Why are you on my page? And they be playing decent on their page. They be on their page like I'm a good Christian, or they be on a page with sunsets, and and here's me eating uh ice cream with my girlfriend, and you know what I'm saying, happy fourth of July. But on my page, they'd be like, Talib is a Marxist. Man, get the fuck out of here. How are you not saying that on your page? You come into black spaces, creep over here, so you can be a secret racist, and then you'd be like, who, me? Talib Kwali's attacking me. How am I attacking any of these people? I do not know how who any of y'all are. I don't go into any of y'all spaces. I don't want to be around y'all. I don't be on your pages. You know what I do when I see someone who is a stranger who says something that I don't like? I keep fucking scrolling. I'd be like, okay, maybe I need to block that person, or maybe I need to, what's going on with my algorithm that's but I'm not gonna go on a page and be, hey, you shouldn't think like this. Hey, I don't, what the fuck is that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. That's real colonizer energy. I think you could be a Christian rapper and a clout demon at the same time. Yeah, man. Like like Jesus wasn't even about the clout. Like he came into the temple and flipped over the tables. You know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_03Right, and he slipped over the tables of charlatans who was running the church, kings, uh government officials, not conscious rappers. How is conscious dating? How are conscious rappers oppressing you? This whole metaphor of I'm attacking the system by attacking Talib Kwali is crazy, bro.
SPEAKER_01He he never got to be.
SPEAKER_03Because I'm a black man that says no. Because I'm a black man that don't obey him. This is a white Hispanic person, and we just had Cypher Sounds on. I spend so much time supporting my Latino brothers and sisters, saying that y'all can say the N-word. People get mad about this in my community. I have black people mad at me because I don't be hard enough on Latinos. And then I got a white Hispanic who do say the N-word coming at me talking about he's gonna make a 10-minute diss song about me when this Donald Trump is in office.
SPEAKER_01Crazy a boy say the N-word. He got the same eye color as Elvis. He be tweezing his eyebrows too. And this word niggas like him ain't really from like slavery-driven places. Like, if you come from where I'm from, man, you can't, somebody that looks like him can't say, nigga. Like, right, we actual niggas from the Mississippi lineage of the transatlantic slavery, my boy. Like, we ain't get that shit from Rizza and Raekwan. Like, you got that shit from hip hop, nigga.
SPEAKER_03Cosplaying. And that's why he said, I got people, I got my black friends in Brooklyn who if I just say the word, you gonna, he said, uh, besides your five friends that you always be with, which means you know my fucking pedigree. You know what I'm saying? Besides your five friends that you always be with, Brooklyn, you fooled. This is what this Christian rapper said to me in the comments. You fooled. White boy said this to me in the comments, white Hispanic, you fooled in Brooklyn, and if I just say the word, I'm just stopping peace. So my life is in your hands, black man, and I got my black friends who are going to attack you and physically assault you. Can't no nigga. But I'm a Christian rapper.
SPEAKER_01Get the fuck out of here. Bro, can't no nigga who get his hair cut at Great Clips threat, bro. Like you, you, you can't even go to a black barber, fam. You probably got introduced to a couple.
SPEAKER_03This nigga go to the Great Clips and be this super cuts. Your hair grows straight.
SPEAKER_01You got all the super cuts.
SPEAKER_03And be like, give me the give me the white boy from calling me bad special. That's why I'm gonna do it.
SPEAKER_01You can look ethnic. Nigga, get the fucking.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's it's a costume. It's a costume. And and and and the homework I did on him, apparently he used to be down with EO Dub. So luke, my EO Dub people. Um, EO Dub is official. You know what I'm saying? But man, I did the homework and the research on this dude. His name is Mud in Newark, where he's from. Um, so I I got off topic. I was gonna break it down. So I'm on Twitter 10 years ago, and I'm arguing back and forth with a MAGA bigot, which is what I'm known to do. And I I don't remember this, but I'm I'm going by what Dayton said.
SPEAKER_02Right?
SPEAKER_03So I'm using his version of the story because I don't remember it. So I'm arguing with someone who says they don't want to bake a cake for gay people. Now let's table the fact that a lot of people might agree with that mentality. There are a lot of people who are anti-gay, there are a lot of people who are bigoted, even there are people who don't feel like they're anti-gay but are pro-business, that feel like a business owner has the right to discern who they want to, whatever. Tabling all of that. So the fuck what, Dayton? Why is that even on your mind? Why is that on your mind about what I'm on my page talking to some MAGA person?
SPEAKER_01It's gayer to even have that on your mind, bro. That's the gay part that you got the gay shit on your mind. So he jumps into mentions.
SPEAKER_03What am I missing? Right, he jumps into mentions, and based on his version of story, he comes and says, hey, you need to respect this person's alternate point of view from yours. And I told him, fuck off, which sounds like me. I can't confirm that's what I did, but that sounds like what the fuck I did. Now, I reserve the right to tell you to fuck off if you come into my space. If you on your page, Dayton, talk about whatever you want to talk about with whatever mega Nazi Facebook friends that you have about how much you don't like gay people, how much we need the word of Christ. I'm not gonna ever come on your page and be like, you shouldn't do that. Why would I do that? So why are you on my page telling me?
SPEAKER_01I do got another question. This is where I do have questions, bro. And I don't think it's right that people can call out uh black artists based upon issues of morality because they use their religious preferences to situate other people's views of the world. And so then on the flip side of that, this man right here is attacking somebody that ain't really did shit to him. Right. Right? And then you get to use the coverage of the genre, the cover of relationships.
SPEAKER_03And what he said was, I'm anti-Christian. And that's and when he talked about it on Panther Chop, which fuck Panther Chop by the way, who's like an Asian dude who comes to the black spaces, this guy got many videos dissing me. He's he's got if you ever diss me on the internet, he's gonna do an interview with you. So all you trolls hit up Panda Chop, he's gonna interview you. But um, he goes with Panda Chop and says I'm anti-Christian. He don't say why I was anti-Christian. He just expects people to take his word. Talib Kwali was anti-Christian, so I was gonna go to his show and step to him. Well, that's what he said.
SPEAKER_01Here's another thing.
SPEAKER_03You gonna come to my place of business and step to me because you don't like something I said on Twitter?
SPEAKER_01First of all, there's not one style of Christian that exists. So I might not like Lutherans, nigga. I might what are you talking about? Right, right. So, like, y'all niggas don't got agency on the word. Like, this is my problem with this whole new white evangelical bulb shit. You know what I'm saying? Like, y'all false flagging.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01You false flagging. It's like six gangs mixed in one. Then when it's time to expose it, especially in the Christian rap bracket, everybody wanna all of a sudden go, oh, I ain't a Christian rapper.
SPEAKER_03Right. I ain't no Christian rapper. Right. That's like in the battle rap when, like, I'm not a rapper. Right.
SPEAKER_01What are you talking about? Right. You know what I'm saying? So the hypocrisy of it all for me is just getting to be too much because I ain't seen nobody talk about the Nolan Wells situation in so-called Christian rap. I ain't seen nobody stand up for uh the young dude, Kendrick, who got wrapped up in the mat in Atlanta, and they and we still don't really know what happened to him. I ain't seen no Christian rapper put his neck on the line for Mike Brown and them. I ain't seen no Christian rapper speak out about Trayvon. I ain't seen no Christian rapper talk about the fact that the Supreme Court is being hijacked by people who are actually fake Christians. So at this point, y'all are a part of the heist, bro. That's right.
SPEAKER_03Now, I'ma say this, as my brother D1 would say. I'ma say this with love, brother. You know, with love, brother. I love you, brother. But D1, it's my guy. I have a lot of respect for him. I love D1 too, man. I got a lot of respect for him, and D1 puts it down for the people. And D1, um, D one is like a sip of water in the desert. You don't get positivity, you don't get upliftment in the podcast space and in the hip-hop space where he's coming from a lot. So when he pops out, people are so thirsty for positivity that they really show D1 a lot of love and he has earned that. However, the same way that he pushes back on Rick Ross and Young Miami with love, I'm gonna push back on my brother D1 with love. Because D1 popped out, and D one, I didn't even see D1 as a Christian rapper until years into his career. As far as I was concerned, D1 was just a dude who was nice, who was active, his minded, conscious of C. It took me a minute to be like, oh, okay, he also identifies as Christian, which is fine. I don't have no problem with Christianity. I don't have no problem with nobody's faith or nothing. As a matter of fact, that type of faith makes a lot of people better people.
SPEAKER_01I got questions, though. D1, my partner, man. I know D1 for years, years on years. You know what I'm saying? Uh his career is very yoked to my region, you know, from my homeboy Biko up in Milwaukee to my uh partner uh DJ Snow down in St. Louis, you know what I'm saying? Like I've been knowing D1 before the world knew D One. And my question is, man, like and I've said this to D1 in personally. So you got tracks with Lil Boosie. Boosie way worse than Jim Jones. I seen D1 on stage with Juvenile the other day. Juvenile's current song is Big Booty Bitch, Big Booty Bitch, Shake for me, bitch, shake for me, bitch. You know what I'm saying? Make all the money, make all the shout out to Juvenile. And that's a smacker, right? Yeah. But at the same time, my question is, so are you only addressing niggas that ain't from your region? Because niggas from Louisiana then put hits on children. You feel me? Like the whole, we got the we got a whole ensemble of shit from from the rap game in Louisiana with different individuals. And it ain't my job to say their names, but the public know. And so is it you will collaborate and get down with them people, but then when it's time to address other individuals, it's like, yo, let's talk about this, talk about that.
SPEAKER_03So I'll say this, for me, because people, you know, I'm not one to, I understand that That's a real question. You said on this show that it's impossible to be perfect if you're poor. Yes. Right? You can't be perfect in poverty. So I don't judge people who are pimps, hustlers, gangsters and stuff to come from the hood. And I don't I that's not what I'm hearing in your statement. But I think that D1, multiple things can be true at the same time. I don't have a problem with D1 being conscious and checking Rick Ross and checking Carisha, even if I don't agree with his assessments, which a couple of his assessments I don't agree with. I don't have a problem with him checking with those people and also doing songs with Boosie and Juvenile. I I don't, because that to me, like you said, it's a regional thing, right? My issue, and I don't, the things you're talking about just now, I have to do more research on him. I don't really know exactly who you're talking about, but this is what I do know. When the white Hispanic dude, who claims to be a Christian, and your only connection with this man is that he's Christian, pops out and is saying clearly racist things. Like he said that he's got that the the blackest star is Lucifer. He said, I'ma whip Talib Kwali in this song. He is saying anti-black racist things, and the only reason he's coming at me at all, because I'm a black man who won't obey his commands online, right? So you got somebody who's engaging in very racist behavior, and you can talk about Jim Jones and you can talk about Young Miami, but you can't talk, when you talk about this white dude, this white Hispanic dude is, oh, with love, that's my brother with love, and you don't got no criticism for his actions. This dude got a dude named Big Lou who went on this dude Panda Chop show and said, he's gonna beat me up. He said he's gonna put hands on me when he sees me. They said when when I be DJing, I'll be ducking the hide under the tables and chairs when people come to see me. They talk about my ex-girlfriends, people in this business who were famous women. They talk about them, talking about this one hates him. They ain't never met this guy.
SPEAKER_01So let me ask you this. What did what would you want? What would you feel is a suitable response from somebody like D1?
SPEAKER_03Well, okay, so me and D1 had this conversation. He called me because I didn't, I didn't put himself, I didn't put him in this, he put himself in this. Oh, he put himself in it? He put himself in this. I didn't know that part. He called me, he said, that's my brother. Okay, well, now he called you and said that? Yeah. Okay, well, now I'm looking at you like you suspect unless you approach me right. Your brother is out here threatening me and attacking me, and this is someone you know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I wouldn't have done that. Right? Because I've had, this I'm gonna keep it keep it a buck. I've got people in my life that you didn't got into it with on the internet and stuff like that, and other MCs that I might know that you might get into it with. I've never called you and said, yo, that's my family. He didn't say family. I mean, brother is family.
SPEAKER_03Okay, okay, let me let me let me let me be clear with my words, because we did say words matter. And we're gonna get back to that in a second. His brother in Christ, he the way he was approaching, like he got love for him. And he's very consistent with his Christian values. The way he talked to me on the phone is very consistent, even though I might not agree with his take on it, is very consistent from a Christian perspective, right? But my issue, because his whole thing is as a Christian, I'm not trying to add to the conflict. His tone on the phone with me in private is different than it is in public. I can't fault him for that. Sometimes private conversations have to remain private. He said his ministry as a Christian is to try to create peace, which is why his response was a lot less passive, a lot more passive online than it was in private. What I said to him is there is no forgiveness without atonement. There is no justice without peace. And you being someone who works with us on justice issues, you can't be out here talking about you want peace with me and Dayton when that's your squad. That Dayton Dayton is a member of the Christian hip-hop code, whatever they call it, whatever it is, that's on y'all niggas. Y'all, that's y'all. Y'all gotta solve that. I shouldn't have to deal with that. All these pro-black Christian people, rappers, the D1, whoever, and I'm speaking on D1 as others, I'm not gonna name, because they might not want to be involved in it, but D1 involved himself.
SPEAKER_01So how far does it go with this? A real question I have currently with the current crop of Christian rappers. Like, how far does it go with the notion that all right, we Christians who make and rap, we brothers in Christ, blah, blah, blah. And I really have other questions surrounding all the other things surrounding the genre. The MAGA shit, the deport innocent people shit. The we could this we could we could say something about Carisha, but we ain't gonna say nothing about Renee Good. That's right. We gonna we could we could we could talk to Rick Ross, but we're not saying nothing about Alex Preddy getting his brains blown out on the whole internet. You feel me? And yeah, you getting into what would Jesus do for real?
SPEAKER_03Like that's what he would really do. That's what he was about. Jesus would not be out here making disc records about conscious rappers.
SPEAKER_01If anything's crazy, he went, he went, what the thieves were up there for a reason with him. He told them boys, yo, y'all gonna get in paradise with me.
SPEAKER_03Right. Right. So let's address the fact that Dayton got in his feelings, and after he made the diss record, the next day he goes online to call me a drunken bum and to say that I'm retarded. Right? Which he then did a video asking for forgiveness for. He said, Talib got me in my flesh and I allowed him to bring me to a place to, you know.
SPEAKER_01And that's it, that's what, and you know, honestly, that's kind of why I made the record, bro. It's because the repentance thing? It's because, like, if we gonna stand on business about being brothers in Christ, well, I'm gonna stand on business about being brothers in in reality. You feel me? So bar. So it's like, if that's y'all, if that's the response, then cool. I gotta clock in then. Because y'all letting my nigga get jumped then. Period. Like it, he, it, it's a, it ain't a it ain't a one-on-one. It ain't a fair fight. It ain't a man-to-man is.
SPEAKER_03Oh no, it ain't a fair fight, but I'm gonna tell you why it's not a fair fight, because it's not fair for them niggas. And I'ma I'ma just I'ma address my brother Mickey Fax, and this is this is um, I wanna salute Mickey Fax because he taught me a lesson, you know. Mickey Fax is a friend of mine. He's someone I respect. We had him on the podcast. We talked about his whole A-verb thing. Um, but he's very consistent in terms of his love for the culture and how he rates bars. And he rated Dayton's song. And he liked it. He was like, son, is cooking. Ooh, he was like, okay, I like these bars. And he kept saying, Talib, you gotta respond. Talib, you gotta pop out. And my ego, we all have to go through the ego death. And that's what Dayton is not dealing with. He's not dealing with how his ego, hey, he's his ego got him worshiping an idol. He thinks he needs to defend Dayton. He thinks he needs to show the world how tough and street, how scary Dayton is when he should be talking about price. And so that's what his inner conflict is. He hasn't killed his own demon, right? So for me, yeah, it's my ego that felt away when I saw Mickey Fax. I'm like, you're supposed to be my friend. How are you in here talking about he's cooking? But let me just approach it from a fair lens and take my bias out of it. Mickey Fax's brand is I'ma rate bars. So why would I expect him to, you know, hold me down just because he knows me. I shouldn't expect that. That's not fair. But what I will push back on is you can't say someone is cooking if they bars is full of lies. If every bar is a lie, if every bar bar is gossip, it's land. And I told Mickey this on the phone. I said, if I said Mickey Fax is a pedophile that fucks goats on the side, right? And I made a fire ass song, and technically it was like Eminem level skill level of how Mickey Fax is a pedophile that fucks goats on the side, uh, would you say that's a fire song? Would you say he's cooking? Because when you that's what you did for Dayton. And what Mickey Fax said was interesting. He said, mm-hmm. That's such a ridiculous lie. It's such a ridiculous thought that I would be a pedophile that fucks goats. That that's no, and I said, Mickey, let me let me stop you right there. What Dayton said in this record is that I'm a racist, that I sexually assault people and Rape people. That's just as ridiculous as you being a pedophile to fucks coach. And if you can see how ridiculous that is, you can protect your own name, but you can't protect my name. Well, then I have to question your judgment here. Context matters. Hip hop is from marginalized people. I don't, I'm not Lord Jamal. I don't think white people are guests in this culture. If you participate in this culture, you are in this culture. But the white people who participate in this culture who are not black, they understand the rudiments of it. This is why Eminem wears shirts with old school rappers on them. This is why Rock R.A. the Rugged Man does records about old school rappers and it. This is why copyright identifies as pro-black and Mac Lamore and Mac Miller were pro-black MCs. Because they understood the context. There was no situation where context doesn't matter, and that's a lesson for life, not just for hip-hop. So when Mickey Facts gets on there or anybody who reviews the song and says, I didn't know how this started. I don't care how this started. I don't care about the context. I'm just listening to the bars. Well, with all due respect, that's suspect to me.
SPEAKER_01My thing is, what gives him the credibility for the context not to matter? I think that context should not matter only if you got the status for the context to not matter.
SPEAKER_03And I said that to Mickey too. I said, Mickey, you acting like dating is Mickey Fax or Lupe Fiasco or Royce the 5-9 or Black Thor someone who should matter. He's not. You can't put him on my level. Maybe if Lupe Fiasco did that, I'd have to pop out. I gotta pop out for some fucking failed battle rapper who gotta sell Jesus cookies because he can't make it a secular rap.
SPEAKER_01I don't gotta do that. Since what we're not gonna do in this situation over here is take a situation that ain't really even about battle rap and make it about battle rap. Exactly.
SPEAKER_03That's a good point because what these racists do is they like to change the venue. That's where the whole debate me culture comes from. They come to you online, they jump into your space, they say something egregious, you respond, and they be like, yo, come debate me. I don't have to change venues, my nigga. The venue is here, and that's what Dayton is mad about because I keep going at him online. Yeah, you came at me online, I'm going at you online. Y'all don't be outside like that.
SPEAKER_01Bro, the thing is, and this is why a lot of like rapper guys don't like battle rappers. You know what I'm saying? Because at the end of the day, you're not finna sit here, call my mama a bitch, uh, disrespect my kids, uh, talk about my whole life essence as a man, and then run and hide behind a fucking bush talking about, yo, it's battle rap. No, nigga, I didn't even show up to battle.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_01I was minding my own fucking business, nigga.
SPEAKER_03You are validly dissing me. Right, these unwilling contests. It's like, it's like with the diabolic shit, right? Like diabolic jumped at this dude, Panda Chop. He also interviews Diabolic. Diabolic is a straight-up Nazi. Diabolic said Heather Hire died of a heart attack. Diabolic is a Trump supporter, that's a fucking Nazi. Don't get it fucked up. Diabolic was trolling me. He was down with immortal technique and poison pen in them, and these are supposed to be my guys. He ended up trolling immortal technique later, but poison pen and the mortal technique came over my house. And when I showed them the receipts, I've never met Diabolic ever. I have no relationship with him. I showed them the receipt to him attacking me, trolling me, and they was like, yo, you in Rebel Arms, we solve things, we get in the boxing ring. What? We get in the boxing ring? Like, what the fuck are y'all niggas talking about? Y'all should check the white boy and your crew. I don't gotta have a contest of fisticuffs with some stranger because he don't like the fact that I don't listen to him on Twitter. And the fact that y'all think that that's okay to be saying to me means that y'all part of the problem, my nigga. Like this whole thing, we have to elevate everybody to the level of everybody else, just because they have an opinion or got a feeling or got something to say, we gotta stop that, bro. And we gotta start protecting people's names. And not just protecting my name, I protect Tess name, I protect Common's name, I protect Yassin's name, I protect Black Thought name.
SPEAKER_01People like same way with Tech and Pin, them guys that took me on the road. Bro, I protect their names. I protect their names.
SPEAKER_03If anybody had anything bad to say about a mortal technique, no matter how much I feel like he didn't protect my name, fuck you. I'm protecting that man's name all the time. Because I'm, and people gonna say pause, but I'm romantic with this shit. Like I really believe the myths. Yeah, I really thought it's one fro-on off. We all in this together.
SPEAKER_01Well, my thing is it it breaks down, it's funny that they want to introduce the inquisition of morals into this shit. And sometimes you gotta get back to, and I'm trying to stop talking certain ways because I know your mom be like, Y'all be wilding on the show. Yeah. My mom be like that too. She's turning around. Shout out mom does. She's like, yo, you gotta do that. She raised us to be this way. But the thing is, if we introduce a morals into this whole situation, right? Morally, y'all doing a lot of shit I don't agree with. Like, just because you put the word Christ in front of me, don't make that shit.
SPEAKER_03And I don't be on your page talking about don't do that. Stop doing that. Why would I do that? That would be goofy of me to do.
SPEAKER_01Why are we elevating goofy shit to the level of real shit? That's where I'm not existing in a space where just because you can self-label yourself something, it makes you that. You know what I mean? Like, I didn't get to jump out and just call myself a particular style of Ipsy because I wanted to. I had to go through the actual task of becoming that. And for me, sometimes in the Christian rap bracket, they don't go through the right touch points. You don't, you don't, and you like you ain't talked to Antonio.
SPEAKER_03They don't got the skills for it.
SPEAKER_01I can name actual gospel rap legends. You niggas just woke up and jumped in the genre. I can name Antonius, I can talk about Prime Minister, I could talk about them boys up there in Rockford, Illinois. And I guarantee when they see this clip, they're gonna share it because they really exist. These is niggas who sold hundreds of thousands of records before you Johnny Conn lately people came along, hijacked it, and turned it into a predominantly Republican-based art form. Let's talk about it. Man, I want to shout your Tef, because man. Shout out LG Wise, another gospel rap legend. Uh, Great Tree Records, Google it. It was a real thing. They was comparable to No Limit and cash money before these fucking clowns came along and started remixing shit. Yeah. So just to Sorry, I know y'all don't curse.
SPEAKER_03Hey, man, that's another thing. I don't, don't you judging me by your paradigm or your set of rules? I am not a Christian. So I don't have to follow them rules. You do. That's your choice that you made, so you know.
SPEAKER_01But this is the thing, too, man. If you're coming into the secular space doing secular things, does it even matter what you're trying to sell me? I didn't, I didn't bump into you at church. I came, I came to see Juvenile do drop that back that ass up. And here you are. And then, and ladies and gentlemen, D1. No. And that ain't no offense to my bro. Yeah, man. But I have always had an issue with uh, because I do come from a container where gospel rap contains itself in a very particular thing so that they can't be accused of doing second things.
SPEAKER_03I mean, look, I I I relate to D1 doing that type of shit. I am the conscious rapper that on purpose showed up at the strip clubs. I show up at the ratchetest, most ratchety ratchet clubs.
SPEAKER_01I think that's different though, because you're not literally at the same time raging a active social conquest against the strip clubs. No, I'm not. So, like, you can't rage an active social conquest against the strip clubs and be on stage with the person who is the strip club national anthem.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, man. Because that means it's only applicable to the people that you feel is applicable. Right, right. If it's one of your heroes, then they get a little bit of a pass because they might give you a nudge to come up there and say something positive. It can't work like that, in my opinion.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Well, we're gonna talk about this more. I'm sure that this is not the end of this, but before we get out of here for this episode, and thank you for your time, I wanna talk a little bit about what's been happening with 38 Special since he came on our show. He done turned it up a little bit. He done turned the heat up a little bit since he came on our show. And I feel like our show, I have so much respect for Jadakiss and what he has put down and what he means in the culture. And I feel like our show gave a chance for 38 Special to really humanize himself, our episode.
SPEAKER_01I loved it. It was a great episode.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, but he done turned the heat back up since then. And so I wanted to get your take on sort of the bars that he has, the back and forth, just where it's going since then.
SPEAKER_01Man, I think hip hop, first of all, is in a space where everybody just kind of like speaking their truth at the moment. I think a lot of this is the residue of what I call the great American rap war, the Kendrick and Drake situation. And uh I think we were all wondering how the algorithm, the algorithm would change after that battle. And it took a while to start seeing the dust settle and where the pieces would land. And I think now uh the bunkers have been struck by the missiles for a lot of people. And I think in East Coast rap in particular, a lot of those super legend guys get handled like the same way we kind of handle somebody like a Larry Hoover. Like where you don't say their name if you don't need to say it. You don't, yeah, you don't do particular things around this person's aura essence at all. Like, even the way that some people are even speaking about Hov, which I think is a welcome conversation because we should be able to decrystallize people. That's right. Um but in the there's previous generations where you wouldn't dare do that. That's okay. You know what I'm saying? That's right. And so, like, I'm being long-winded with this, but I'm getting to a point. One of my friends went to a battle a long time ago, he said, with Eminem. Of all people. And he said, I don't know if he went with him directly or he went with the people that went with Eminem. And he said, when he got there, when they left, some of this capacity and was like, damn, nobody called me out. Like, things have really changed. Like, it's a room full of hungry MCs, and nobody even threw a bar at me. And here's the thing, bro. You have made it to a status in the game where we've seen people throw bars at you, and even if they could make it a provocative battle, it ain't gonna go in their favor. Right. Career's pretty much over for doing that dumbass shit.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, anybody who's ever made a disc record about me, you don't never hear about them ever again.
SPEAKER_01I'm just putting it out there. Certain people, you just, if you if you speak on them in certain type of ways, it you go away forever. Yeah, so it's a rap. So, like, now where we at with the special situation, 38th situation, is this upstate New York has always felt a way about being in the shadows of the boroughs. You know what I'm saying? I've been moving around a lot for years. I've been up there in the Schenectades and the Albanys and all that. They always have had some energy about the fact that they feel like, yeah, we New York too. What's up? You know what I'm saying? And I think, for one, I got massive amounts of respect for Kiss, Jim Jones, Fat Joe, all these people, you know what I'm saying? Especially Jada Kiss. That's one of my favorite fucking rappers. Now, with that being said, I think sometimes in the New York world of hip hop, there are glaciers in the water that niggas have just been allowed to ignore as if it wasn't gonna be an issue. Last time we kind of saw something like this, 50 Cent. He was telling niggas, y'all been shitting on me for years. When I get in there, bro, I'm not finna be nobody fucking friend. Right. You know what I'm saying? So you've got a new nigga who's like, yo, I'm down with the realignment of this shit, bro. Even if it make it harder for me to move around a little bit, even if niggas start to get kind of agitated about certain things. Because he is agitating some people. I'm down with the realignment.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So it's interesting that you brought up 50 Cent because that kind of correlates with how I see it. I was watching the YG game battle and it hit me. And I was actually watching uh Justin Hunt, uh, who used to be at hip hop DX, he has a new thing, Company Man, to be online. Yeah, I've been watching Justin. I watch him a lot. I like his takes, I agree almost 100%, which is rare with Justin's takes. But he talked about how game, uh he was talking with Stat Quo and Glasses Malone about how game, the game is named after Triple H, like evil character. The game is a heel. And he's always approached the gate, the whole hip-hop shit as a heel. Like, I'm not here to be nobody's friend, I'm here to be the villain. Yeah, I'm here to do what you think is not gonna work. Stat quo said, I be telling the game, don't diss Eminem, don't diss 50 Cent, don't a game be doing it, and then he goes platinum the next time it works. So, how do you tell a man not to do something that always worked? And I wanted to ask you if you think, because I don't quite get how Special's moving, I think that you just broke it down, but do you think that maybe he's playing the role of the heel?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think he's being an intentional heel. I think, but also he's the heel that's the hero to a certain meaning. Or anti-hero. Me and my friends talk about this all the time. A lot of my friends disagree with me on this strongly. It's very few actual industry guys that I, as a professional MC, got real respect for. You feel what I'm saying? Like, I'm not a fan. There's a difference in the fanatic and a person who wanna work at the same corporation. I want to work at the same job, I want to sit at the same desk. I'm not really your homeboy. Right. You feel me? So there's a lot of upstate people who feel like I could have been that. I should have been that. Didn't happen for me. I wasn't down the street from Def Jam. I wasn't, I didn't know this person, I wasn't at that party, I didn't have the social connections. I couldn't, you know, they just feel slighted by the fact that they could have been the person or should have been the person, or maybe different things didn't happen, right? Yeah. And I think that sometimes when you get situated, you forget how it feels to be the person tapping on the window. And when people get in these buildings now and they look at certain people, they go, ah, I gave you my tape back in 2012, and and I know you threw that joint in the trash can. Or ah, sent you a link to my joint. And when I next time I heard your big single, I heard my hook rework. Oh, ah, instead of putting me up hollering at me, I hollered at you for a feature, paid you XX amount of dollars. When it was time to put the record out, you hit me with the fact that your label wouldn't clear it. You know what I'm saying? Like it's been happening to people for years, bro. So I feel like even though I don't fully agree with everything Special doing, somebody like him was bound to come along, bro. It was bound to happen.
SPEAKER_03Very timely perspective, interesting perspective. You don't tell no lies. And this is why I fuck with you, Tefpo. Um, this has been another episode of Let Me Ask You This. I have a flight to catch. We could talk about this all day. I had a lot more to say about this.
SPEAKER_01We ain't done. This is where hip hop is at, man. There's a lot more stuff I want to cover too, but we'll be back. Let me ask you this. Peace.