Man, I think that… You mentioned the term ‘coke rap,’ right? I’ve always felt that coke rap was a cheap take on the genre. If you’re a surface-level listener, then it’s coke rap, and to me, I look at it as cheap. If you’re a real listener and you call it coke rap, I’m like, You know what? You’re just trying to find the quickest way to describe it, whatever the case may be. But, at the end of the day, I feel like the title and the drug references are the seamless thread to get you [through] relationships, perspectives of the street nigga, the fucking codes, the ethics. It gets you through all of those actual nuances, from point A to point Z. But really, you’re actually traveling through the mind and mentality of women in the streets, guys in the streets, how a person really looks at how that mindstate works. I spend a lot of time in Virginia—where I’m from—and in the area in which I grew up. And I really still have friends that are still affected, whether they’re incarcerated right now, or in the streets right now. Man, it’s never too far… It’d be nothing to stick my toe back in that pool, you know what I’m saying? It’s so right there. So, I feel like I have the consistent, continuous cliffsnotes of life at my arm’s reach. I feel like people hear it. And then on top of that, just being outside. The funny thing about it is… This album was created during the pandemic, and it’s so good, and that’s the one thing that I’m shocked about. The fact that it was created in the pandemic, and where I couldn’t always pull from me being outside and being in the mix… Because there was no outside. I have surprised myself in how great this thing is. That is the biggest takeaway for me personally, the writer: like, Oh, this shit is incredible, and how? How did my brain really, really, really work this without having the Friday night at fucking such and sucha club in the biggest city, or whatever the live city is? Or not running to my guy Rugs’s black party this year in Atlanta and shit like that, you know what I’m saying? I wasn’t even in those mixes this year—for the past couple years, actually—and the masterpiece is still that: a fucking masterpiece.
So, just for reference, I’m from PG County, Maryland, from Fort Washington. So, that’s not the trenches at all, but you hit that 210 highway, you take one turn, you aren’t from the trenches. Especially in the DMV, the quarter-million dollar cribs are 10 minutes from the trenches, and you probably know somebody over there or got a family friend or a cousin or something. It’s never too far. To wrap that back around, as far as the term coke rap as a catch-all, what we’re really describing is the music and the musings of Black people who grew up poor and fucked over by the world constantly. That’s what it’s about; cocaine is the entry point.
Yeah, for sure. It’s funny, man. How old are you?
28.
So, I’m actually doing a [film project]—I’m executive producing it with Kenya Barris—and it’s about a man by the name of Curtis Malone, who spearheaded AAU [Amateur Athletic Union] in the DMV. Got a lot of guys in the league, and at the same time, he was hand-in-hand with the cartels, and he ended up going to jail and so on. It’s funny that you say that this is how people were fucked over, because we were having a creative call the other day, and we [were discussing] the intricacies of what was going on during that time or whatever. And everybody was just breezing over and sort of just talking and trying to make light, and trying to find these very heartfelt ways of describing the time. I broke through the conversation and I said, ‘Hey, listen, man, it was the fucking eighties. It was the eighties, early nineties, and it was crack. It was the fucking gold rush.’ And when you look at the Rockefellers, Rothschilds, Kennedys, and all of those big, huge families, what did they start their fortune off of?
Slavery, probably.
Then after that, they went into fucking liquor and other things at the time—illicit and illegal business—and they went on to become the fucking powerhouses of the country. I said, ‘For real, that shit was young Black kids fucking getting rich, and getting rich quick. And I look at it no differently than those families.’ We were the only ones who were fucking singled out, you know what I’m saying? Like, Nah, we gotta stop this, we’re gonna single-handedly destroy a generation, and target them, from prison to drugs being placed in the neighborhoods, and so on and so forth. I’m glad that you take that away, because I’m really just giving you the mentality of that kid from then to now, because the hustle was our fucking gold rush, bro. For us. That shit was merely mischief during that time, during my era when I went outside. We were really gambling with our lives, you know what I’m saying? It was purely, purely mischief… And getting money. They waged a war on us… And they had been waging a war on us since the eighties.
‘The crack era was such a Black era. How many still standing reflecting in that mirror? Lucky me.’
Lucky me. Right, right, right. Listen, I heard you and I was like, Wait a minute… My verses be so edited by Kanye, because it was more bars after that! He be like, ‘No, man, you goin’ too far, aghhhhhhh!!!’
So, look, I wasn’t as engrossed in the culture when Clipse was making their run. The most that I remember’s that everybody would do “Grindin’” on the fuckin’ lunch table. Everyone. *Drums table with his fists* That’s how you freestyle at lunch. I remember that shit, I remember “Mr. Me Too” and all that, but I listen to that as a grown man, and it’s like… You talkin’ ‘bout how ‘them crackers wasn’t playing fair at Jive,’ right? So, that guy saying that, to you being head of G.O.O.D. Music, what have you taken from your experiences to lead you to be a good business person, to have good dealings and to evolve as the game evolves so quickly?
Well, for G.O.O.D., and my involvement, it was all about relationships and trust. I always kept a good, neutral relationship with everyone at G.O.O.D., meaning artistically, and I feel like Kanye took notice of that, and of me being tapped in with new shit. We got the “Don’t Like” remix, which, people don’t know, we were actually tryna sign all of them from Chicago, from Chief Keef to Lil Durk to everybody. That was my play: myself, and Free Maiden, who’s like GM over at G.O.O.D., works on Ye’s management team. I was working on Cruel Summer, and we came to New York. We were just kickin’ it—Don C was there as well, I believe—and Ye was like, ‘Yo, man, what’s hot? What’s new?’ And I was like ‘Shit, don’t ask me what I’m listening to… ‘Cause I’m gonna pull up some shit.’ He was like, ‘Nah, just pull it up,’ and I pulled up “3Hunna” from Chief Keef. I pulled it up, and this joint is going, “Don’t Like.” I was like, ‘This shit about to go, this gonna snap.’ It might have been moving. It was early, though. Me and Free was like, ‘Yo, you know what? We should sign all of them.’ And I was like, ‘No, dog, you’ve got to sign every last one of them, too. They got this producer, Young Chop, he just needs to do all their beats. It ain’t even no heavy lifting. You just let them do they thing. It’s going to look dope because you from Chicago, they from Chicago. It’s the youth.’ By the time we’re trying to make the deal happen, they started catching deals. Durk might have caught a deal. Keef caught a deal. I actually took Durk on tour with me. I was like, ‘Durk’s the star,’ because he had this record called “L’s Anthem” that I was a huge fan of. But with that being said, I think Ye was like, Man, bro, you tapped into shit that I don’t catch until a little later. We were just into new energy and shit like that.
It’s crazy you gave me that whole section of history, as I’m sitting in Chicago in my living room right now.
Yeah, man. What would’ve happened if we had that whole collective? What the fuck would’ve happened, man? And they were just killing and ripping up the underground, eventually turning iconic, as you’re looking at Durk having his moment and shit. And that’s not even a given moment. That’s 10 years. It’s really dope to watch him, specifically, because that is something I saw.
Yeah. Now he’s sold out the United Center. He’s gone. And Keef’s like a cult figure where he’s still been able to get insane hits without having to play the major label game, too.
Yep. 1,000%. It’s great. And you’re looking at them on two different spectrums.
Let me ask you this: hip-Hop comes from poor Black folks, from niggas who ain’t had shit making shit from what they had; didn’t have instruments, plugged in turntables, borrowed people’s records, flipped that shit, got on the mic, start the party. So, in theory, if a world without poverty is attainable, what does a world without trap music look like? Because if you take away the conditions that facilitate that, where niggas don’t have to fight each other, struggle, make choices that they probably shouldn’t make, what does that condition look like when there’s no trap music? There’d be no need for it, right?
Man, I feel like, just the way the world is set up, man, there always has to be a pyramid or hierarchy from top man to the bottom man. And if you’re ever on the bottom, there’s always going to be some level of hustle that’s going to present itself for you to come up out of that. And when you’re on the top, you’re always going to try to keep that lower level down below you. So, there’s always going to be some level of oppression, always, which means people are always going to struggle to get out of it, by any means necessary.
Do you feel like a world without that is impossible?
Yeah. I feel like that’s impossible. There’s too much greed in this world for it ever to be like… Yo, the world you’re talking about is something that’s built off just fair and fair distribution, and you have to put all your trust in the greater good of humankind and America. And that is something that is just—they don’t even sound great together. It doesn’t even sound real together.
