"The art of rap is the first ice-t film, and I really felt I had to do this movie, because rap music saved my life." "When I first heard rap, it just blew my mind." "I ended up coming to new york and met with the masters, and they told me one thing." "Rap music requires skill." "This film isn't about the money, the cars, the jewelry, the girls." "This film is about the craft, what it takes to write a rap, what goes on inside the head of the masters." "We go from south bronx all the way to the west coast." "This shows you how powerful rap music is, how it's changed the world." "This isn't a game." "This is the art of rap." "Okay, the first time I ever tried to rhyme was kurtis blow, okay, had a record, these are the breaks, and on the back, instead of calling it the instrumental, they called it the do-it-yourself version." "Okay?" "And so you were supposed to..." "That's so dope." "That's so dope." "You were supposed to try to make your own fucking rhyme." "So me and my man, yo, we go to the record store." "We buy the record." "We go to his house." "You know, we play the original shit." "Then we flip it over to the do-it-yourself version." "Yo, we played that shit." "Yo, we just starting at the shit." "Yo, we could not figure out how the fuck..." "Where to begin." "Like, you know what I mean?" "Like, "how do you do this?"" "Like, and we..." "Ended up that day not doing nothing, like, you know what I mean?" "Yo, it was crazy." "But I think what taught me how to rhyme was being such a fan, okay?" "That's like the best rap story I ever fucking heard." "Yo, being..." "Just..." "Getting ready, standing there, put it on, and go, "the fuck?"" "You know what I mean?" "You got your mouth..." "You know what I mean?" ""I don't know what the fuck to say." "How do they do that?"" "Like, you know what I mean?" ""How is he doing that?"" "So then, pow, and I think my first rhyme..." "'Cause at that time, I think my name was, like, kid magic or some shit like that, okay?" "And it was..." "I was like, uh..." "I think I remember a little." "I'm like," "♪ I'm the kid magic with the magical touch ♪" "♪ Young ladies, you know I'm just too much ♪" "♪ With my magical wand, I could cast a spell ♪" "♪ Cut circles round flash... ♪" "'Cause I was still on some dj shit." "Right." "♪ And make him go to hell ♪" "♪ I'm the one mc with the wizardry ♪" "♪ Just rocking the house for all the ladies ♪" "You know what I mean?" "That's when niggas rhymed like that, you know what I mean?" "♪ Niggas broke out in a goddamn rage ♪" "♪ I even think I seen a sawed-off gauge ♪" "♪ But, homie, I was sent from hell, not heaven ♪" "♪ I broke out with a chrome-plated .357 ♪" "♪ And the name of the game is simply survival ♪" "♪ At end of the night, 10 was dead on arrival ♪" "♪ And me and partners, we was gone like the winds ♪" "♪ Police blamed it on the crips or the brims ♪" "♪ But some niggas knew in the corner in the dark ♪" "♪ Them crazy niggas reside in triangle park ♪" "♪ They go by the name of brunette zel and trey ♪" "♪ And they belong to the association called the epa ♪" "And that's when we called ourselves the eliminators pimping association." "I be trying that all the time." "Now, now, this is... this..." "I was doing this, just how I entertained you, pre-rap." "I had never heard rap." "So I'm in the army, and rap came out, and I'm like, "I could do that."" "But then I tried to do that type of..." "That rhyme over beats." "It's not made for beats." "Right." "And I just started to try to write shit within the beat, and then I came home from the army, and I wanted to be a dj, but I found out I would get more love on the mic." "I was getting more attention." "So I said, "fuck it." "I'll write some rhymes."" "And instead of carrying them speakers around," "I would go from party to party and just rap." "We created something from nothing with hip-hop." "That's what the whole spirit of hip-hop is, see, 'cause..." "'Cause it was at a time when they were taking instruments and shit out the schools and all of that type of shit." "See... see, black people used to be pretty musical back in the days." "Like a motherfucker..." "It wasn't unusual for a motherfucker to know how to play the piano or guitar or some sort of horn or some shit like that." "And at some point, all of that shit was removed from us, you know what I mean?" "Through economics and through..." "You know what I mean?" "Uh, cutting things out of schools and all of that." "So they tried to take the music from us, you know what I mean?" "When we had created an original american music, which was jazz, okay?" "Mm-Hmm." "So what did we do?" "We had no fucking instruments, no horn, no drum, we're living in the fucking city, and all the..." "We ain't got room for that shit anyway up in the projects." "Where would a fucking..." "You're... you're huddled in that." "So what did we do?" "We took the fucking record player, the only thing that's playing music in our fucking crib, and turned it into an instrument, which it wasn't supposed to be." "♪ Hold it now ♪" "♪ Ho ♪" "♪ Come on, come on ♪" "♪ Huh ♪" "♪ All right, go ♪" "♪ Before rap was a game ♪" "♪ Or hip-hop was a nation ♪" "♪ Before lauryn hill began her miseducation ♪" "♪ Before milk was chillin' or p.E. Brought the noise ♪" "♪ Before heavy d  the boyz ♪" "♪ Before the roof caught on fire ♪" "♪ Before fresh was the word ♪" "♪ Before whodini and friends ♪" "♪ And roxanne's revenge ♪" "♪ Before the freaks came out at night ♪" "♪ Before say ho ♪" "♪ Before the crash crew ♪" "♪ Was rocking on the radio ♪" "♪ Before whitney, mariah and j-lo and janet ♪" "♪ Before bam  the soulsonic force rocked the planet ♪" "♪ Before these are the breaks ♪" "♪ Before hard times ♪" "♪ Before the sugarhill gang ♪" "♪ And before super rhymes ♪" "♪ Before reaganomics ♪" "♪ Before rappers got shot in their stomachs ♪" "♪ Before you found hip-hop in comics ♪" "♪ Before gs, before weed was trees ♪" "♪ Before going raw dog gave you a deadly disease ♪" "♪ Before haters, before thugs and perpetrators ♪" "♪ Before the alphas and before the betas ♪" "♪ Before beepers and cellphones ♪" "♪ And retro gods and fed-ex ♪" "♪ Food stamps and metro cards ♪" "♪ Before cops was 5-o, or gats was answers ♪" "♪ Before all the b-boys turned into break dancers ♪" "♪ Before legs was crazy or outturned to swayze ♪" "♪ When my man said, "it's hot, humid, and hazy" ♪" "♪ Before all the bull, and by no means get it twisted ♪" "♪ See my name is hip-hop, and I have always existed ♪" "♪ See, I'm a bronx nigga ♪" "♪ And I don't beg your pardon ♪" "♪ Never saw the 13 when hip-hop was startin' ♪" "♪ I helped lay the cement, and when the concrete hardened ♪" "♪ I watched hip-hop grow out the car creepers ♪" "♪ I deal it in around the world ♪" "♪ Son, as well the 'hood ♪" "♪ Helped put the bx on the map ♪" "♪ Repped as well as I could ♪" "♪ I ain't visiting no bitch ♪" "♪ I got keys, I'm a resident ♪" "♪ I ain't no client ♪" "♪ I'm the motherfucking president ♪" "♪ 43rd precinct, south view of the 'hood ♪" "♪ They say our corner's got it cozy ♪" "♪ 'Cause we gettin' it good ♪" "♪ You see, we live by the water ♪" "♪ Where niggas be fishing ♪" "♪ Same area they bury ya ♪" "♪ And niggas be missing ♪" "♪ A few blocks from the bruckner ♪" "♪ Not far from the deegan ♪" "♪ And not far away from the cross bronx expressway ♪" "♪ I ain't hard to find ♪" "♪ I'm right by the zoo ♪" "♪ By the gorilla cage ♪" "♪ Holla at a nigga, ooh-ooh ♪" "♪ Ain't where you from, it's where you at... ♪" "Hip-hop is not made up from scratch." "The music and the foundation of the music of hip-hop comes from records that we found in our parents' crates, you know what I mean?" "Old funk and soul grooves." "We've given new life to artists like james brown and isaac hayes and sly and the family stone and george clinton and parliament and funkadelic, and so many other groups, because we rapping over they beats, okay?" "So hip-hop didn't invent anything, but hip-hop reinvented everything." "Lyrics is what rap is all about, though being lyrical and being able to flow and have the type of rhymes and raps that paint pictures for people." "♪ I be that stage nigga ♪" "♪ I don't know how to age, nigga ♪" "♪ I'm the first cat that put the pen to the page, nigga ♪" "♪ I'm the key to the cage, nigga ♪" "♪ That brown and beige nigga ♪" "♪ I'm the off-the-chain ♪" "♪ Meat rat meter engage nigga ♪" "♪ I'm that top nigga ♪" "♪ Walk through your 'hood with a bop, nigga ♪" "♪ No drop, nigga ♪" "♪ But I, hey, gotta run from the cop, nigga ♪" "♪ Hip-hop nigga ♪" "♪ I used to run with your pop, nigga ♪" "♪ Yo, I thought I told you that I won't stop, nigga ♪" "♪ The mic nigga ♪" "♪ Mcing's like riding a bike, nigga ♪" "♪ I'm the beige timbaland ♪" "♪ And the white air night nigga ♪" "♪ I'm the rhyme nigga ♪" "♪ The let's-go-back-into-time nigga ♪" "♪ The prime nigga ♪" "♪ That always keepin' my dime, nigga ♪" "♪ I'm the sixth nigga ♪" "♪ I'd rather flip flows than bricks, nigga ♪" "♪ I shoulda been long gone ♪" "♪ But I'm still in the mix, nigga ♪" "♪ I'm the live nigga ♪" "♪ Always-last-to-arrive nigga ♪" "♪ I'm the cross bronx, west side, fdr drive nigga ♪" "♪ I'm that 'hood nigga ♪" "♪ I smoke that good wood, nigga ♪" "♪ You-could-never-fuck-with- but-wish-that-you-could nigga ♪" "♪ I'm that damn nigga ♪" "♪ That fuck-you-and-your-man nigga ♪" "♪ That get-your-punk-ass- in-the-back-of-the-van nigga ♪" "♪ I'm that sweet nigga ♪" "♪ That never-off-beat nigga ♪" "♪ That circle-and-a-slash- on-cold-mics-heat nigga ♪" "♪ I'm that cool nigga ♪" "♪ Ran my whole high school, nigga ♪" "♪ And you don't want to ever challenge me to a duel, nigga ♪" "♪ I'm that proud nigga ♪" "♪ That stand-out-in-a-crowd nigga ♪" "♪ That go where most of y'all niggas ain't allowed, nigga ♪" "♪ I'm that smart nigga ♪" "♪ Always first to start, nigga ♪" "♪ I think with my head ♪" "♪ But I feel with my heart, nigga ♪" "Hip-hop is a masterpiece, but nobody painted it all." "What stroke did bambaataa, the soulsonic force put on that map?" "What... what did you bring to that painting?" "We brought by naming this culture, which came from the clichés of our great brother, who was also a gang member and a brother of mine's of the black spades, kool keith cowboy." "Mm-Hmm." "My brother lovebug starski, who was... also was part of the black spades." "Um, using clichés that they was using, and... and they... rhymes before were so, quote, "hip-hop."" "'Cause, see, many people when they say, "hip-hop,"" "they don't know exactly what is hip-hop." "Right." "They automatically think when you say, "hip-hop,"" "you're just talking about rap." "Right." "But when you talk about hip-hop, we're talking about the whole movement, the b-boys, the b-girls, the djs, the mc, the... or writers..." "And that fifth element that holds it all together, which is the knowledge." "So putting all this together and naming this culture when it came to the media, and I could have called it the boi-yoi-yoing, the go-off, or any other type of name." "I decided to take from the cliché." "I said, no, we call this hip-hop." "Is there any other rapper out there, is there anybody, legend or anything, that..." "Definitely got to give it to the grandmaster melle mel," ""it's like a jungle sometimes." "It's make me wonder, keep from going under."" "♪ broken glass everywhere ♪" "♪ People pissing on the stage, you know they just don't care ♪" "♪ I can't take the smell, can't take the noise ♪" "♪ Got no money to move out, I guess I got no choice ♪" "♪ Rats in the front room, roaches in the back ♪" "♪ Junkies in the alley with the baseball bat ♪" "It's so funny, man." "Right." "Niggas got on all kind of diamonds and furs." "Hey, they looking for a new member to join the furious." "Somebody search busy bee, man." "What the fuck is..." "What the fuck is going..." "Look at his hair." "Hair longer than yours." "Who you talking to, bitch, the feds?" "Nigga..." "A nigga bitch turn..." "A nigga bitch turning in somebody else." "When you writing your best raps, what's your technique?" "Do you need to be mad, and you like to hear the music first?" "I mean, there's lots of techniques." "What's the best..." "When you go in there in some of your best shit." "My, uh, technique, if I was gonna describe it, is called make it plain." "My shit is like, you heard me say it, and that's what it is that I said." "You don't gotta break it down." "I mean, you ain't got..." "You ain't gotta break down what I'm trying to say on beat street." "It... you know, or what I tried to say in the message or what I tried to say when I wrote white lines." "It's all there, so you just make it plain." "♪ I'm the reason why your man could cuss ♪" "♪ And your man could bust, no mistake ♪" "♪ That's why you got the game from us ♪" "♪ Tell ja rule stop popping the clutch ♪" "♪ True fast and the furious ♪" "♪ Grandmaster flash and us ♪" "♪ Architects of hip-hop domain ♪" "♪ And I'm not your man ♪" "♪ Spit so much poison that I got ptomaine ♪" "♪ So much game, my game came with propane ♪" "♪ Mentioning my name is like sniffing the gang of the cocaine ♪" "♪ The dopest cat to walk on twos, I never lose ♪" "♪ Flows of your amigos, egos battered and bruised ♪" "♪ You a lowlife, get off of my penis ♪" "♪ Swingin' on balls like you trying to call out serena and venus ♪" "So now with that thought in mind, my name is melle mel." "I started the game." "The pleasure's all yours." "Fuck you very much." "If you want to be big in the 'hood, you gotta do something special." "The mc possesses the great gift of communication." "He has the ability to capture everybody's attention with incredible displays of verbal acrobatics and the power to command a crowd." "♪ I'm coming ♪" "♪ I'm coming, I'm coming ♪" "What's the difference between a rapper and an mc?" "Well, a rapper is, you know, someone that rhymes." "I mean, you can consider dr." "Seuss a rapper, you know." "Um..." "Right." "You know, you know, that's someone that rhymes, you know." "You rhyme "cat" with "hat," you know, then you can be considered a rapper." "Mc is someone that either has that party-rocking skill or that lyrical skill." "Right." "Doug e." "Fresh, busy bee, these are mcs, because these are people that know how to get on the mic." "Like, 'cause you have an mc that can get up there and use a whole bunch of big words like "ostentatious, indubitably, quagmire" in a rhyme, and the crowd's sitting there, looking around," ""what the..." What was that word?" "Quagmire." "You like..." ""What the fuck is he talking about?" You know." "And then busy bee'll get up on there and just be like, you know, "I'm in your city."" "What's your favorite jeans?" You know." ""Is it levi?" You know, and just tear it down." "Right." "If you were gonna personally train a rapper to be great, you met a new cat, what would be the first lesson you'd give 'em?" "The first thing I would try to teach them, the very first thing would be originality." "You know what I'm saying?" "I think that is so important, because it's like, it's... whenever you're following a trend, trends come and go." "True." "So when that trend is gone, you're gone." "You're basing your career on a bangin' beat..." "Mm-Hmm." "And a catchy hook." "So you know what you just did?" "What'd you do?" "You just made your producer a star." "♪ Rakim'll say ♪" "♪ The rakim'll say ♪" "♪ Follow the leader, rakim'll say ♪" "♪ Follow the leader, rakim'll say ♪" "♪ Follow the leader, rakim'll say ♪" "♪ Just when things seem the same ♪" "♪ And the whole scene is lame ♪" "♪ I come and reign with the unexplained ♪" "♪ For the brains till things change ♪" "♪ They strain the sling slang ♪" "♪ I'm trained to bring game ♪" "♪ History that I arranged ♪" "♪ Been regained by king james ♪" "♪ Go to practice with tactics ♪" "♪ When a track hits, theatrics ♪" "♪ Women that look like actresses ♪" "♪ Status of cleopatras ♪" "♪ Stacks of mathematics ♪" "♪ To feed your asiatics ♪" "♪ As I find out what the facts is for geographics ♪" "The way you influenced me was..." "I guess you said it." "You took the box out." "Like I... one of my favorite lyrics is when you say, "I'll take you on a walk through hell, freeze your dome and watch your eyeballs swell."" "That's all like..." ""Guide you out of triple-stage darkness."" "It's like who's..." "Who's writing this shit?" "Like, what is... what is he talking about?" "It's not like, "I'm on the street." "I see a car." "I see..."" "This is like, "I'm taking you into a whole 'nother world of thought."" "Exactly." "That I said I gotta try to do, too." "To try to explain that," "I came up listening..." "You know, my mother played a lot of jazz music." "A lot of it didn't have no words on it, but you could see what was going on, and it put you in a mood, put you right where it wanted to." "So my thing was if they can do that with an instrumental..." "Mm-Hmm." "I should be able to take somebody somewhere with..." "With words, man." "So I just always tried to, you know, take people somewhere and make 'em see, you know, what I was doing, man, and a lot of that come from brothers like slick rick, too, you know what I mean?" "When... when slick told a story, you know, you was right there." "Yeah, if... if he was talking about running through, uh, the park, you know, you smelled the grass." "Like, you know, um, yesterday was..." "Was my wife's birthday, man." "You know, I'm in the crib," "I got the serato rocking and playing joints, and I'm playing old joints." "A lot of them songs that was made, when you hear 'em, man, you know, if..." "If you was five years old, it'd take you back to when you was five years old, man." "You could smell the chicken cooking in the kitchen, know what I mean?" "You could smell mom's perfume, you know what I mean?" "Hey, you could smell pop's car, like yo." "Those songs are so classic, man, and... and it does something to our psyche, you know what I mean?" "When I started writing, I tried to..." "I tried to reach that knowing, you know what I mean?" "Like if I do what I'm supposed to do on this record, maybe one day, you know, somebody'll feel the same way, you know, I feel about..." "Like when I hear, um, sexual healing or... or when you hear, uh, let's stay together, al green." "I read before that you said that you would break the... the music down into like... in musical segments." "Exactly." "Could you elaborate on that?" "I try to start off with 16 dots on a paper." "What?" "I start off with 16 dots on a paper." "Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam." "If it's a 16-bar rhyme, at least I know, you know, what I'm dealing with." "My thing was, if four bars was this long..." "My thing was, I got, you know..." "I see like a graph in between them four bars, and within that, I could place so many words and so many syllables and so many words, and at times, you know, if the beat was perfect, I can take it to the point" "where there's... there's no other words you could put in that four bars." "Even though you explained it, niggas can't do it." "♪ No time to sip mos with hostess ♪" "♪ Never mind what the total gross is ♪" "♪ I rip shows, stay focused ♪" "♪ And split cheese with soldiers ♪" "♪ While you hit trees and coast ♪" "♪ I spit flows that be ferocious ♪" "♪ And with these explosives ♪" "♪ I split seas for moses ♪" "♪ Shine permanently ♪" "♪ Only my mind's concerning me ♪" "♪ Fire burns in me eternally ♪" "♪ Time's eternity ♪" "♪ Followers that turn on me ♪" "♪ Be in a mental infirmary ♪" "♪ Determinedly advance technology ♪" "♪ Better than germany ♪" "You know what I mean?" "♪ What's up?" "You say you want to be down?" "♪" "♪ Ease back, a motherfucker get beat down ♪" "♪ Out my face, fool, I'm the illest ♪" "♪ Bulletproof, I die harder than bruce willis ♪" "♪ Got my crew in effect, I bought 'em new jags." "♪ So much cash, gotta keep it in hefty bags." "♪ All I think about is keys and gs ♪" "♪ Imagine that, me working ♪" "♪ At mickey-ds ♪" "Aw, shit." "♪ that's a joke ♪" "♪ 'Cause I'm never gonna be broke ♪" "♪ When I die, it'll be bullets and gun smoke ♪" "♪ You don't like my lifestyle, fuck you ♪" "I love this one." "So you saying..." "When you want to write the best lyrics, you physically make yourself hungry." "That's just the way I do." "Or work out physically." "That's another one, too." "Right." "Right." "Box, you know." "I come back with my blood up, like I'm ready to get into a fight, and my mind is racing." "Only instead of thinking about physically fighting," "I focus on fighting mentally, because hip-hop, you know, you have to fight with your mind." "Battles don't just come with, "I'm gonna see you in the street."" "Right." "It's..." "I'm gonna take you apart first." "Check it." "♪ They said that the success of my music was theoretic ♪" "♪ But my revenge is sweet enough to murder diabetics ♪" "♪ Eugenics, proctor  gamble credit racial science ♪" "♪ Couldn't produce a more aggressive intellectual giant ♪" "♪ Nephilim, bury 'em, with the bullets left in 'em ♪" "♪ My heart is blacker than the children of thomas jefferson ♪" "♪ Blacker than back in the days of the tar and feathering ♪" "♪ A cancerous endocrine ♪" "♪ The eagle that's american ♪" "♪ The hatchet and the sticks, the fascist emblem ♪" "♪ You could call it conspiracy theory ♪" "♪ I don't give a motherfuck ♪" "♪ You could get your mother fucked ♪" "♪ "National security's" a code word for coverup ♪" "♪ Hold that down, I look at character ♪" "♪ Never let the color get to ya ♪" "♪ I got white revolutionaries ♪" "♪ Like muslims in chechnya ♪" "♪ Percussion thumping like the russian mafia over ya ♪" "♪ But even they know what it's like ♪" "♪ When you fighting for svoboda ♪" "♪ So whether slavic or islamic ♪" "♪ Vodka, gin tonic ♪" "♪ Drunken fantasies are cool, son ♪" "♪ But here's the grim logic ♪" "♪ You rappers want to play industry ♪" "♪ And start to be rich ♪" "♪ Until they fuck you for millions ♪" "♪ Like paul mccartney's bitch ♪" "♪ My lions live inside a box like jumanji ♪" "♪ Sick niggas that'll stab you up like indira gandhi ♪" "♪ So never desecrate the space on which I meditate ♪" "♪ My thoughts rip through tank armored metal plate ♪" "♪ And start to resonate to the spot ♪" "♪ Where moses caused the sea to separate ♪" "♪ The place that the prophet mohammed started to levitate ♪" "♪ The exact moment that jesus rose dead awake ♪" "♪ And siddhartha became the buddha that regenerates ♪" "♪ Half a bar over," "♪ but I bring it home colder than dead soldiers ♪" "♪ Soul controller, holder of knowledge ♪" "♪ Nigga, fuck dianetics ♪" "♪ I'm like the whole library in kemet ♪" "♪ With annunaki genetics ♪" "♪ Electric boogie ♪" "The beatbox is more like I'm moving with your rhyme, like I'm moving with your rhyme rather than I'm just doing the beatbox like a drum machine." "I'm in sync with you..." "Right." "Spiritually." "Accompanying." "Right." "It's like this." "It's to the point that you cannot separate one from the other if you do it right." "Similar to a way a good dj can accompany us." "Right." "What makes me the originator is I took it, created it and made it into a style, made it into an element in hip-hop that supported the mc." "You were the first one." "You invented it?" "I'm the inventor." "I am the originator." "The buck stops here." "Here." "Can you, off the head, break out, uh, one of your favorite rhymes from any rapper, from any generation, from any time that you walked with that's just stuck in your head?" "I mean, for me, man, the three best mcs of all time is melle mel, kool mo dee, and grandmaster caz." "Right." "Hands down..." "You got any rhymes?" "As far as foundation." "I know all they rhymes, so don't ask me that." "Say one." "Just say one." "Say one." "Kool moe dee said," ""I rhyme a hundred miles an hour" ""with lightning speed and power," ""sweetest of the sweet, make an mc sour." ""Timber as a tower, because I devour any mc," ""and I can prove it now or a little bit later."" "I mean, come on." "I could keep going with this." "That's right." "That's all I need." "Yo, yo, and caz said," ""I could play away to the break of day," ""put you on hold just like an oj." ""Steal the feel and make sure it's real, and if you go and get your brother, I won't peel."" "You know what I mean?" "And he..." ""I crash and mash and get cold cash, smoke hash in a flash, and I won't stash."" "But see the funny thing is each one of their styles are very different, like moe dee was technically extreme," "I mean, like..." "Like sharp." "And then slickness and flavor was caz." "Melle mel was spiritual." "Yeah." "Homeboy said, "a picture can express a thousand words"" ""to describe all the beauty of life you give," ""and if the world was yours to do over," ""I know you'll paint a better place to live," ""where the colors would swirl for the boys and girls" ""to join in peace and harmony," ""where murals stand on wall so grand as far as the eyes are able to see."" "That's crazy." "That's crazy." "Hip-hop." "Rap has introduced poetry to a whole new generation." "We've crossed color lines and changed lives." "It just seems wrong to me that we still don't get the respect like jazz, blues or other musical art forms." "Why do you think rap music or the music you..." "You were a architect of doesn't get the full respect of jazz and blues?" "I think it's because we're not banded together like jazz and blues artists." "You know, you'll see reunions with jazz and blues artists." "I mean, it's starting to happen now." "You know, we starting to realize it now, but, you know, you see blues artists, they have love for each other." "I don't hear about bb king battling..." "Battling somebody in the blues world." "I don't hear about in... in jazz..." "I don't hear about, you know, chick corea talking about, "yo, that nigga sucks, you know."" "Right, right, right." ""Yo, suck my dick."" "You don't hear that in jazz." "Right." "So, you know, it's a respected thing." "So, you know, basically when we start respecting ourselves and showing homage and, you know, getting up there and win an award, say, "hey, I'd like to just thank"," ""you know, grandmaster flash." ""I'd like to thank, you know, kool herc, for even starting this so I could be here getting this."" "Once that happens and we start showing compassion for the people before us, that's when we're gonna have respect like that." "That's what I..." "That's what I feel." "Sure." "♪ May laughter from backstabbers ♪" "♪ Turn to tears faster ♪" "♪ For you, I wish no snake shall slither past you ♪" "♪ You have to keep your vision clear ♪" "♪ Only a coward lives in fear ♪" "♪ My surrounding got only real powerful niggas here ♪" "♪ Real friends, we have a code of ethics ♪" "♪ No question, no feminine tendencies ♪" "♪ We not expecting no gossip ♪" "♪ No phony logic, no counting your homie pocket ♪" "♪ Spare no expense for legal defense ♪" "♪ If your homie locked up ♪" "♪ Who cares who was the last who looked out?" "♪" "♪ Selfishness, that's a character flaw ♪" "♪ No holding out ♪" "♪ Yo, what happened to the honor?" "♪" "♪ You dealing with sensitive prima-donna drama ♪" "♪ Teflon love to my dudes who's solid ♪" "Why you think rap isn't respected?" "Threatening." "We're not supposed to be thinking like this." "We're not supposed to be talking like this." "What are we doing proud of how we talking with this broken english?" "How the fuck are we making poetry out of this broken english?" ""Why are you guys bringing" ""street conversation to the mainstream world?" ""Stay in your place." "Stay out of there." ""I don't like looking at you." ""Fix your pants." "Fix your hat." ""Y'all are supposed to stay in the gutter." "Get out of here." ""What are you doing invading my home?" ""Why are my kids liking your music?" ""What's going on?" ""I don't like you." "I don't like you."" "That's all they're saying." "Mm-Hmm." "And we know it." "So that's... that's why I'm proud to wear my shit a little sa..." "I mean, I'm a grown man now." "I don't have no business wearing saggy jeans." "No business at all, you know what I'm saying?" "But I might let it sag a little bit just to annoy a few stiff motherfuckers..." "Just because I'm..." "That's what got me here." "Mm-Hmm." "And I'm always gonna stay true to that." "♪ Big I rest in peace, rest in peace ♪" "♪ Do you want to mess with this?" "♪" "♪ 'Cause I'm one of the best yet ♪" "We've got it." "♪ You could feel the realness ♪" "♪ In this business of rap... ♪" "So why you think they don't respect it like jazz and blues?" "Because it... it's just like a language." "You have to know how to listen to it." "If you don't listen to it the right way, all it sounds like is just a whole bunch of noise with a lot of loud-ass beats bang, bang, banging, and... "What's all that..." I've seen people go," ""what's all that" "Messing up the records?"" "It's like, "no, you're not messing up the record."" ""There's needles designed for this," you know, that..." "Which is why the turntables still to this day exist." "So they don't know how to listen to it." "Yeah." "And if you don't know how to listen to it, it doesn't make sense." "I mean, again, my... my parents..." "My mother's 80." "She don't know how to listen to no hip-hop, you know what I'm saying?" "You have to know the language." "You have to know, "fresh, dope, fly."" "So it's like, "wait a minute." "Uh, oh, I get it."" "Exactly." ""I get it."" "When I do 6 'n the mornin' and I say..." ""Fresh..." "Fresh adidas."" "If I had have said, "fresh sneakers,"" "it wasn't as dope as saying... you say..." ""Fresh adidas."" "It made you go, "yo, I gotta get me a new pair."" "For real." "Like you really had to get a new pair, 'cause he got 'em, and it was already fly, and... and you said" ""fresh adidas sneak across my bathroom floor,"" "and then you escaped from the police, 'cause they busting in your shit at 6:00 in the morning, which is the time they bust in on you." "That... and you..." "That, you gotta know when the cops roll." "You gotta know when the feds is on you." "Like you gotta know all of that shit." "So they... so they basically don't understand what we talking about." "Yeah." "They don't understand the streets." "♪ Now, let me hit you with this line drive ♪" "♪ This rhyme's fly ♪" "♪ This is how it went down in the 9-5 ♪" "♪ That's right, because I said it did ♪" "♪ Don't sweat it, kid ♪" "♪ Don't think I'm nice ♪" "♪ I am, give me credit, kid ♪" "♪ I wreck niggas, collect figures ♪" "♪ Shit, I'm like aretha franklin ♪" "♪ All I want is some respect, nigga ♪" "♪ I drop facts when I rock raps over hot tracks ♪" "♪ That's why niggas be on my dick like a jockstrap ♪" "♪ Bring the best, I'll get with 'em ♪" "♪ Even deaf people be saying ♪" "♪ "I heard that kid got some shit with 'em ♪" "It's like if you in the boxing ring," "I'm throwing combinations at you." "Mm-Hmm." "I'm not just straight coming in there, trying to throw haymakers at you the whole fight." "I'm setting you up for a wild right or a uppercut, but you're being set up." "I never wrote to no beats ever." "You know, we..." "We had this, you know, and all my rhymes are written from that." "The way I write rhymes is kind of crazy, too, because I write the story first, not even as a rhyme." "I just write the story about what I wanted it..." "Uh, you know, I guess it's from school, you know." "And I write the introduction." "I write the body." "I write the conclusion." "I always write the conclusion first." "I always know where my story's gonna end, you know, before I even start writing it." "I'm never gonna say like, you know, I just..." "I go in the studio and I just drop it how it is." "I write it, 'cause I'll tell you, a lot of mcs..." "Mm-Hmm." "They say they don't write they rhymes down, and it sound like it." "No, it's true." "Yeah, that's for real." "It sound like it." "You need to start writing your shit down and really putting some concepts and building something else." "Everything... everybody just can't come off the head and freestyle and make that shit hot." "What I do is when I write," "I'll write it, like even if I'm writing in the studio to a track, I'll write it." "Then I'll spit a rough." "I'll spit it, and then I take that track..." "Yeah." "And I'll roll with it." "Live with it." "You know, usually, unless that night I was tremendous," "I'll redo it, because the first time," "I might have been reading it, so now I'll go in, and I can perform it, because by rolling with it, now I've memorized it," "I've locked it in, so you're gonna get different vocal inflections, 'cause now I know it." "So I'm like, okay, now..." "And I might say it word for word, or I might change some stuff in it, you know, but I go back in, and the second time, I don't need no paper." "I'm just going in, busting it." "Yo, go work at wendy's." "Go somewhere else." "Don't rap." "You're whack." "♪ Come on in ♪" "♪ Come on in ♪" "♪ You bitch-ass niggas ♪" "♪ As high as wu tang get ♪" "♪ Allah allow us pop this shit ♪" "♪ Just like black shoe fit ♪" "♪ If you can't wear it ♪" "♪ Well, don't fuck with it, it ♪" "Check the continents and all of that, and ask them if they know about this." "Rae, right here." "Chill." "Yeah, yeah, yeah." "These are serious questions." "Can we... can we close the doors for the sound?" "Anybody want to come in, come on in." "Good?" "We ain't done shit." "Fuck you, the source." "Suck my source." "When a rapper refers to somebody else as whack, what constitutes whackness?" "You know, I mean, it's definitely a word that niggas take serious when it comes to mcing, because, you know, we look for art." "We look for a nigga to say something slick, say something with some meaning, say something with, you know what I mean, a lot of dignity behind that rhyme." "And if you ain't coming with something that we feel reaches that perimeter where we want it to be, it's like you put a band-aid on it on some... say, "Nah", come back later," you know what I'm saying?" "Shit's whack." "Definitely, no doubt." "Let's keep it moving." "A true rapper knows that his personality and status is on the line every time his pen hits that page." "He's gonna be judged for knowledge, flavor, style, presentation, as well as his gift for wordplay." "Grandmaster casanova fly is widely regarded as the best that ever did this shit." "Hold up." "Where's my bombaclaat assistant?" "Puerto rico, come on." "I ain't gonna burn my fingers on now." "Ah, that's nasty." "That's nasty." "Roll up now, see." "You done..." "You done set me back." "Normally I don't go into a particular zone for particular projects." "It depends on where I'm at in my head." "I'm most comfortable when I'm relaxed, because when I write, I don't want to hear nothing," "I don't want to see nothing, I don't want nobody talking to me," "I don't want the phone ringing," "I don't want nothing else going on." "Everything, the rest of the world gotta wait." "That's it." "I can't do this." "Nah." "♪ Party people's in the place to be ♪" "♪ Just for you, it's the ultramagnetic mcs ♪" "♪ Say what, peter piper?" "♪" "♪ The hell with childish rhymes ♪" "♪ 'Cause this jam is just moving... ♪" "You hear rappers saying words about you that crosses the line, so my thing is to humiliate a rapper so bad that he don't want to really write against me." ""I just saw a rapper, he ran..." ""He ran from me 'cause I'm the police." ""He had... he had a black hood that was fleece." ""Got so scared, he shit a fece." ""Just one little poodle piece." ""Pink ugg boots on his ass look like a drag queen wearing a mask."" "So I was like..." "It was like... you know," "I wrote just unorthodox on purpose just to, you know..." "Just to make the ear think a little bit." "Your respect is built..." "It's built in combat, you know." "I mean, I..." "I haven't been battling people in years, but people still remember when me and ll went at." "Yeah, yeah." "I mean..." "And... and just because I did it, that's part of the reason they respect you." "I write battle rhymes." "I'm like the russian government." "I have a record ready prepared for everybody." "♪ Push it ♪" "♪ Push, push, push it, push it ♪" "♪ Push it ♪" "♪ Push, push, push it, push it ♪" "There was a time before you ever started rapping." "Right." "♪ push it, push it... ♪" "What made you say out of everything else in the world, as a girl, a young girl, saying, "I'm gonna do that."" "When I did get behind the mic..." "Mm-Hmm." "And hearing myself and experiencing the art of being on the microphone and figuring out what your voice is." "That was the hard part for me." "That's what people don't understand." "It's not like..." "They think you're just talking over a record, but we had to develop who we were as artists, our voice, you know, our... our inflictions, our flow, how we were gonna sound," "how we were gonna be different from all the other women, and that took a minute for us to develop." "When I first got with my wife, she said something to me in the car one day that almost made me stop the car." "You know, she would listen..." "She likes dance music and stuff, but she told me, "well, I don't listen to the words."" "And I was like..." "To a lyricist, you're like, you don't listen to the..." "My husband says that all the time." "I want to strangle him." "I'm like, "are you serious?"" ""Are you kidd..." "As hard as I work on these words, you're telling me you don't listen to the words?"" ""You know how we agonize over words, and you're not..." "You're not listening."" "Like, you're missing, uh, half of the song if you don't listen to the words." "But I sit up and listen to lyrics." "I hear every word you're saying, because that's what we do." "Yeah, absolutely." "Yeah." "Give me a rhyme that stuck in your head, somebody..." "I don't care who it was." "Just something that..." "We all got 'em stuck in our head from another rapper." "Oh, man." "Um... ♪ Well, hip, hop, hippy, hippy to the hip ♪" "♪ Hip hop, and you don't stop rocking ♪" "♪ To the bang bang boogie, say up jump the boogie ♪" "♪ To the rhythm of the boogity beat ♪" "♪ Now what you hear is not a test ♪" "♪ I'm rapping to the beat ♪" "♪ Check it out now ♪" "♪ Unh ♪" "♪ No doubt now ♪" "♪ Unh ♪" "♪ Yo, check it out now ♪" "♪ Unh ♪" "♪ No doubt, yo ♪" "♪ Special girl, real good girl ♪" "Yo, player!" "Okay." "Okay." "Okay, okay." "You know, this is what it is when you on the block." "It could be..." "It could be worse." "Niggas could be shooting at us, so..." "Right, right, right, right." "We'll take that." ""Yo, ice-t!" You turn around, pow." "So we'll accept that." "We'll accept the love." "Love is good." "Love is good." "All right, homie, homie, homie, you see the camera right there?" "I see that." "Keep it moving, pimpin'." "All right, love is love." "♪ Yo ♪" "♪ I be the all I seeing' ♪" "♪ Mcing human being ♪" "♪ Soon to be in your museum ♪" "♪ When I'm in your coliseum ♪" "♪ I'm mcing ♪" "♪ Punishing whack niggas for disagreeing ♪" "♪ "Did you see him?" ♪" "♪ No, 'cause he moves like the wind in flight ♪" "♪ Counterattack like a jedi knight ♪" "♪ If you ever did think about combating ♪" "♪ General patton ♪" "♪ Of this mc shit you did ♪" "♪ Chill out ♪" "♪ He just a private in the lower class ♪" "♪ I be the upper echelon ♪" "♪ Don juan when the mic's on ♪" "My voice is... is so much a part of my style, that once you get past and beyond that and you hear what's going on, my... my thing is about substance and presentation, so I kind of fall into the beat." "I'm like a... my shit is..." "I'm a chameleon when I rhyme." "Mm-Hmm." "Which is a part of like why I..." "I kind of stay, 'cause I fall into the rhythm, and I become a slave in the rhythm, and then it's like..." "So you was wu tang, you'd be chameleon style?" "Right, right, right." "No doubt." "Can you recite a rhyme that's stuck in your head from another mc that you roll with that's part of your brain now?" "Yeah." "Ah, man, it's so many." "♪ I take seven mcs ♪" "♪ Put 'em in a line ♪" "♪ And add seven more brothers ♪" "♪ Who think they can rhyme ♪" "♪ Well, it'll take seven more ♪" "♪ Before I go for mine ♪" "♪ That's 21 mcs ate up at the same time ♪" "♪ Easy does it, do it easy, that's what I'm doin' ♪" "♪ No fessin', no messin' around, no chewing' ♪" "♪ No robbin', no buying', biting' ♪" "♪ Why bother?" "♪" "♪ It's time to stop trying to fight and ♪" "♪ To follow ♪" "♪ My unusual style ♪" "♪ Will confuse you a while ♪" "♪ If I was water, I'd flow with the nile ♪" "♪ So many rhymes, you won't have time to go for yours ♪" "♪ Just because of the pause, I had to pause ♪" "♪ Right after tonight is when I prepare ♪" "♪ To take another sucka duck mc out here ♪" "♪ 'Cause my strategy has to be tragedy ♪" "♪ Catastrophe ♪" "♪ And after this, you'll call me ♪" "♪ Your majesty ♪ ♪ my melody ♪" "Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey." "Hey, yo." "Can't you see we shooting something?" "You dumb-ass, stand around the other way." "Stupid." "God damn." "Let's stand in front of the camera." "No, no, no, no, no, no." "Yo, hold up, player, player, player, player, you see what we doing?" "We working." "This is work, work, work." "Let us work, and then we do it." "Help me out with these niggas." "Okay." "♪ I'm sure to bust your shit like bolo ♪" "♪ Black nation needs a team, fuck solo ♪" "♪ I could see it in your eyes, the redness ♪" "♪ When your ass starts to cry, it's webness ♪" "♪ You could witness the shit ♪" "♪ That I kick from the linguistics ♪" "♪ But please be specific ♪" "♪ Dealing with the tribe, but you never can ♪" "♪ Yo, ice-t, I'm glad I got my man ♪" "♪ Get it, get it, get, get it, get it ♪" "♪ Get down ♪ ♪ come on ♪" "♪ Get down ♪ ♪ get it, get it... ♪" "I'm what you call like... they call a method writer." "There has to be a method for the madness." "I have to always be conscious of the fact that my words are always gonna be watched no matter what." "Because if I make a statement," "I gotta make sure that I'm 100% behind it." "♪ Come on ♪ ♪ get down ♪" "♪ Ohh ♪" "♪ 1989 ♪" "♪ The number, another summer ♪" "♪ Get down ♪ ♪ sound of the funky drummer ♪" "♪ Music hitting' your heart ♪" "♪ 'Cause I know you got soul... ♪" "When you show me some lyrics in there, what's your mind state when you write your best stuff?" "I mean, are you tired, are you angry, or... or are you in light?" "When do you go in, and you say, "okay, I can do it?"" "'Cause me myself, like I cannot write for a week, and then one night, I can damn near write an album." "Right." "It just happens." "The inspiration could come from anywhere." "It's always been able to come from anywhere as far as music is concerned." "Mm-Hmm." "I wrote fear of a black planet listening to a whole lot of sly and the family stone." "All I would say is that you're surprised that sometimes your simplest shit..." "Right." "Is the thing that sticks the most." "I mean..." "I mean, okay, "elvis was a hero to most."" "That never meant shit to me."" "I mean, that's really basic, simple and plain." "♪ Elvis was a hero to most ♪" "♪ But he never meant sh... to me ♪" "♪ You see straight-out racist ♪" "♪ That sucka was simple and plain ♪" "♪ Mother him and john wayne... ♪" "The key in a rapper back then is that you had to have a strong voice, 'cause you had to cut through bullshit systems." "Right." "That was the key to melle mel." "Motherfuckers be getting on the mic..." "Melle mel, "1, 2, 1, 2."" "You like "damn, man." You like, they using different mics and shit?" "Nah." "No." "It was, like, okay." "So even in '87, we're getting down at latin quarter." "They got their system going out, and, you know, we amped up or whatever." "We playing our song, and you hear one voice out of everybody in whole motherfucking packed latin quarter." ""Get them suckers off the stage." ""Get them niggas off the stage." "They whack." "They whack."" "I'm like..." "They keep turning the sound up, and you still hear one motherfucking voice." "Oh, my god, and it's mel." "So... and it's mel." "It's like his voice is like this big, which meant that fuck a system." "Move them shits out of the way." "I'll rap you a cappella, no system." "That was the epitome of a mighty rapper," ""and if you were..." "If you had a 3'4" voice, you wasn't fucking with that." "The motherfucker got wilt chamberlain voice." "So how did you all reconcile it at the end?" "We reconciled it by getting good." "I hate changing up the texture of my fucking shit." "Yo, that's nasty, yo." "My writing process has always been geared towards going steps beyond what the next person is going to say, think or write about." "I had the motherfucker right here." "It's gone." ""That's part of the art of rap." ""20 minutes flat, write a rap in real time," ""and I was fucking with that, so y'all can fall back..."" "Done!" "I'm gonna torch this, man, because, you know, I'm definitely against, you know, marijuana, so whenever I get the opportunity, I burn it." "Oh, shit." "That's tight." "♪ I said I've been down with this since the start of rap ♪" "♪ I guess you could say I played a big part of rap ♪" "♪ Not only been the brain, but the heart of rap ♪" "♪ And it beats just like a drum, and that's the art of rap ♪" "♪ I've been known to flip flows like bricks and pancakes ♪" "♪ And, yeah, I seen my share of tricks and handshakes ♪" "♪ By tricks and bandmates with a different agenda ♪" "♪ Female and male snakes and some great pretenders ♪" "♪ But trust me on this, for as long as I'm breathing ♪" "♪ I'm gonna check a wet rapper ♪" "♪ And call out a heathen ♪" "♪ I'm gonna lead by example ♪" "♪ With this hot shit I'm spitting ♪" "♪ And y'all just saw me write it ♪" "♪ So you damn right it's written ♪" "♪ That's part of the art of rap ♪" "♪ In 20 minutes flat ♪" "♪ Write a rhyme in real time ♪" "♪ And I was fucking with that ♪" "♪ So you can fall back from that old cat ♪" "♪ Don't get it twisted ♪" "♪ The mc train just left the station ♪" "♪ And I was driving, you missed it ♪" "It's in some rappers' dna." "Like myself, we gotta tell the stories of our lives and daily struggles in this world." "This is a world outside the law, full of dangerous characters surviving off the game and unfortunately sometimes the exploitation of others." "Everybody always talk about when the money's coming in, when we ballin', when we looking good." "We chose to speak on what happened when the drug dealer goes home, what happened when the hustler's in the living room counting the money at the end of the night, even though, you know, he might have had to do this" "or do that in order to make that money." "There's conflicts about that type of thing, you know." "None of us really just choose this lifestyle." "Some of us just kind of fall into it." "I call that the b side of the game." "Absolutely." "The b side." "It's like everybody want to hear the good stuff, but there's an entirely other b side that only real hustlers know about, you know?" "And I always would look at people's music, and if I didn't hear that side, I knew it was fake." "Absolutely." "I got to talk about the pitfalls of the game." "The song starts with a hustler at the nickel and dime level that works himself up to the big baller, ends up getting busted, and all the money he stacked up in the game was the money that it took to try to get him out the trouble." "He ended up not getting out of trouble anyway, so all the money that he made was for nothing." "He goes to jail, he comes home, and because he never game hisself an opportunity to experience anything else outside of drug dealing, he never gave hisself an opportunity to try something else." "When he comes home, he's got no education, he's got no skills, so he's forced to go right back on that corner selling the drugs again." "It's this ugly cycle that we see all the time, that no writer really speaks about, because they're in the cycle." "And so now you stuck, and now you looking around at the second-rate players around you." "Your team's missing." "It's a fucked-up situation." "Sometimes I hear death knocking at my front door." "I'm living every day like a hustle, another drug to juggle, another day, another struggle, yo." "I know it's fucked up what a lack of cake'll do." "A few people want to move in and stay with you." "You wish you could help more." "You unable to." "'Cause the rent's a little late, plus the cable's due." "You and girlfriend are beefing in a serious way." "You used to be faithful." "You in the curious stage." "Finally got your mind made and going your separate ways." "Wait, Nah, homeboy, her period's late." "Now think." "Time's running out." "Do it quickly, 'cause she start crying, mood's getting sticky." "If I don't want it, she'll want nothing to do with me." "Just get the abortion, and I'll give you the 250." "But if you say that to her, then you wrong, you ain't think about that." "You was getting your groove on." "I can't take care of myself, never mind a newborn." "I guess that pussy got too good for too long." "It seem like my money goes by too easy, why I hate that my job only pays biweekly." "My hoopty done shit it." "You spending more money trying to fix it then what you did when trying to get it." "The fridge is empty, but I survive the hunger." "Who the fuck keeps calling from this private number?" "There's crime on my mind, and my nails are dirty, but the floors are real cold in the jails at jersey." "Depression starts talking, and his voice is raspy, 'cause he ain't shut the fuck up in 31/2 weeks." "Look, the beard is full, hair is nappy, these jeans ain't mine, so they way too baggy." "Priorities is fucked, and it's starting to gas me." "It's like my whole just flipped right past me." "You starting to trap me." "His name's dwayne, so why the fuck my son keep calling him daddy?" "Same shit that I feared after all these years." "I gotta breathe." "I can't believe my ears." "Wiping out my eyes, I'm damn near in tears, but you can't be mad, 'cause you know you ain't been there, Nah." "You grab his moms up, throw her against the door, but in the back of your mind, you know it ain't her fault." "Nah." "I ain't mad at all." "I'm just bothered." "I get honest for real." "I ain't been the best father." "Like toys r us, chuck e." "Cheese, you know a little nigga grow up with these needs." "New year's or christmas, even a birthday." "At least bring the nigga to his school on the first day." "I can't believe it." "It's the same way that I was treated, so maybe it's history repeated." "I know it sounds sick, the idea of having another kid, 'cause this one, you'll really feel like it's his." "It's the truth, and I hate that fact." "Wait, I shouldn't have said that." "I'll take that back." "I apologize." "Let's rewind this whole story, like, Nah, c-4, just erase that track." "Check it." "I don't care if only the track trusts me." "Fuck what niggas say." "Only god could judge me." "Fuck what niggas heard or think or even thought, tried to fix my shortcomings." "I just came up short." "Joey." "♪ Redman, I'm back like fuck, you pay me ♪" "♪ A street fighter like baraka, you may lee ♪" "♪ Who does it better than the bricks?" "Call it ♪" "♪ You couldn't mark the spot if you shopped at target ♪" "♪ Believe me, boy, I'm just getting this started ♪" "♪ And y'all stupid like tripping over a cordless ♪" "♪ I've been the dope nigga since swimming and balling ♪" "♪ Your hot chicks on your block ♪" "♪ I'm digging in all them ♪" "♪ Damn it feel good to see people up on it ♪" "♪ To see who's the raw and what nigga stepped on it ♪" "♪ I'm in your harlem night ♪" "♪ Black tenant six, the cops calhoun ♪" "♪ And I'm hauling ass quick ♪" "♪ When I'm gone, I redline the needle ♪" "♪ Cause trying to find me is like trying to find nemo, bitch ♪" "Name an mc that has earned redman's respect." "Not, you know..." "Somebody you say did they thizzle." "Oh, that did..." "That did they thizzle, but, all right, besides krs-one and slick rick." "Them are my mentors, you know." "Um, I-I'll pick somebody, like, new now." "Far as eminem, he gained my respect as an mc." "He been gaining my respect as an mc, but he definitely gains my respect as an mc, straight up." "Big up to em and the whole d12 camp and everything over there." "I think em knew when he came out, being a white kid coming into a predominately black culture, that he had to fight uphill." "He had to fight." "And I think that made him that much more better." "He's an mc." "Yeah." "No." "He's an mc." "He did it." "Niggas can say what they want about em." "They don't want to fuck with him." "No, not at all." "Not at all." "Not at all." "He gained that respect, because he knew he had a job to do, like," ""okay, I could..." He could have easily said," ""well, I'm going over to stick..." ""Just stick to my white fans." "Fuck that." "I got enough white fans over here to sell 30 mil."" "But he like, yo, Nah, Nah." "I mean, you know, he was in my 'hood before he blew up." "Right." "He was in newark." "He was with the outsiders, so he been in the 'hood before he got on, so I think it always been in him to be like," ""yo, I know I'm white, but this is music, and music don't have no color, and that's where it's at, man."" "♪ uhh, uhh ♪" "♪ To the bang to the boogie ♪" "♪ Say up jump the boogie ♪" "♪ To the rhythm of the boogity beat ♪" "♪ To the rhythm of the boogity beat ♪" "♪ There it go, like simple and plain ♪" "♪ Prominent basic ♪" "♪ Zulu arrangement, rocking amazement ♪" "♪ Flocko, radio from heaven to pavement ♪" "♪ Phony is the face, but nothing to play with ♪" "♪ Spent time hating it, but that ain't changing it ♪" "♪ Malcolm x to marley marl ♪" "♪ The word of god and work's involved ♪" "♪ Portraits of the brain and other unexplained phenomenon ♪" "♪ Shot down babylon, smash all automatons ♪" "♪ Feel the beat, got 'em feeling geeked like it's comic-con ♪" "♪ Far from the hardy-har ♪" "♪ More like a tomahawk rocket launch ♪" "♪ Ali right cross ♪" "♪ Knock they choppers off ♪" "♪ Boomiya, baba bey ♪" "♪ Fresh, not from concentrate ♪" "♪ Looking very sharp today ♪" "♪ Thank you, darling, danke schoen ♪" "♪ Craft working more than german engineering ♪" "♪ And build a frequency ♪" "♪ That don't hear the interference ♪" "♪ Flashes of the spirit, seekers in the clearing ♪" "♪ Say the tongue is the mirror ♪" "♪ Of the heart, so mirror, mirror ♪" "♪ Look, in that window ♪" "♪ It's the freedom fighter's grandson ♪" "♪ Fixed up, looking sharp ♪" "♪ Automatic handgun ♪" "♪ Look, parade, caravan ♪" "♪ Diplomat, degenerate, messiah, pariah ♪" "♪ The leader of the syndicate ♪" "♪ Peace treaty written in loophole penmanship ♪" "♪ Same rows, two sides, palaces and tenements ♪" "♪ Dispossessed native tongue ♪" "♪ Noble open lonely heart ♪" "♪ Peel apart, come together ♪" "♪ Come together, peel apart, come together ♪" "One of the things that I feel about hip-hop and I quote all the time is from q-tip when he goes, "rap is not pop." "If you call it that, then stop."" "Uh, it didn't start out as a popular culture movement." "It didn't even have pop culture ambitions." "Uh, it's a folk art." "It's folk music." "It's tribal experience." "Hip-hop started in new york, so always it's gonna... it's like, you know, you know, in the mississippi delta and the blues, it's just like, you know, that or new orleans and jazz," "just that... that physical environment just informs the way that people apply the sound and whatever." "But as it started to migrate, you know, the sound started to... to change according to the..." "The places that it was, you know, traveling to." "Geography shapes how these, um, mediums sound, because the people and the places are different." "♪ Look ♪" "♪ If you had one shot ♪" "♪ Or one opportunity ♪" "♪ To seize everything you ever wanted ♪" "♪ In one moment ♪" "♪ Would you capture it ♪" "♪ Or just let it slip?" "♪" "♪ Yo, his palms are sweaty ♪" "♪ Knees weak, arms are heavy ♪" "♪ There's vomit on his sweater already ♪" "♪ Mom's spaghetti, he's nervous ♪" "♪ But on the surface, he looks calm and ready ♪" "♪ To drop bombs ♪" "♪ But he keeps on forgetting ♪" "♪ What he wrote down ♪" "♪ The whole crowd goes so loud ♪" "♪ He opens his mouth, but the words won't come out ♪" "♪ He's choking, how?" "♪" "♪ Everybody's joking now ♪" "♪ The clocks run out, time's up ♪" "♪ How the fuck he got an oscar?" "♪" "♪ Passed out in his red mazda ♪" "♪ With his fucking head in his pasta ♪" "♪ In the parking lot of kmart plaza ♪" "♪ Across from the red lobster ♪" "♪ Looking like the loch ness monster ♪" "♪ Dressed like a cross-dressed mobster ♪" "♪ Talk is cheap, it costs less to gossip ♪" "♪ I'll probably be a lot less hostile ♪" "♪ If you snots kept your snozzes out the air hose ♪" "♪ Or get fucked in all seven holes ♪" "♪ Ass, mouth, pussy, yeah, both ears ♪" "♪ And, ha, yes, nostrils ♪" "♪ At the ozzfest with nas ♪" "♪ Bumping das efx in a wrecked-up datsun ♪" "♪ And dropped two extra-strength wats ♪" "♪ And vicodin out my pocket ♪" "♪ They cost less, I'm a hot mess ♪" "♪ 'Cause I tripped and got my head stuck ♪" "♪ In a wasp nest in the process, awesome ♪" "♪ Drunk as fuck, one sock ♪" "♪ Pulling my boxers up with boxing gloves ♪" "♪ But I keep dropping my fucking binoculars ♪" "♪ Got two fucking hydroxycuts ♪" "♪ And four oxys stuck in my esophagus ♪" "♪ These three lesbian little stocky sluts ♪" "♪ Thought I swallowed two hockey pucks ♪" "♪ Started screaming, "serves you right, you cocky fuck ♪" "♪ "That's what you get for mocking us ♪" "♪ Ain't as cool as you thought you was" ♪" "♪ Bitch, all I did when I walked up was have my dick in a sock ♪" "♪ Said it's a sock puppet, so no strings attached ♪" "♪ You can all suck a chick-ah, get it?" "Ah, fuck it ♪" "♪ Shit's about to get hairy ♪" "♪ As motherfucking chewbacca's nuts, cocksuckers ♪" "When I came out, I think maybe I gave..." "People a voice, like, I don't know, maybe from the other side." "Like I represented the other side of the tracks." "Mm-Hmm." "Like, here's this world, you know, that you may not know about, and the people who lived in that world and knew what I was talking about," "I think I gave them a voice." "I used to rap, and I used to play around with it, and then I went to this club, and I wasn't a rapper at the time, but I..." "I kind of knew how to rhyme." "And I went to a club and, um... called the carolina west, and they had a rap contest, and kurtis blow was the judge." "And, uh, I went up and said little rhymes I had in my head, you know, and I won." "And the fact that a real rapper said I won," "I went home that night like, well, maybe I could do this." "The first time I grabbed a mic, like the..." "Like in front of actual people that mattered." "You know what I'm saying?" "Mm-Hmm." "Mm-Hmm." "Like at a... at a club, I got booed." "I remember that." "It was very traumatic for me, and I had actually..." "I think I at that point..." "Like the 8 mile thing was kinda..." "Right, right, right, yeah." "That's what I, like, take it from or whatever." "So I just remember that being so fucking traumatic, and I think I went home, like, "man, I..." "I quit."" "Right." "And then, you know, maybe a couple days later, week later, hour later, whatever it was." "I don't know." "I just..." "I got the urge to like, "Nah, man, I gotta..." "I gotta get up." "Gotta do it again."" "That's right." "Thank god." "You really gotta live it." "My mind, 24/7, aside from family stuff, obviously..." "Is... is, uh, constantly thinking of ways to bend words, or, you know, I may..." "Like if I don't got paper," "I'll write it on my hand and whatever, and sometimes when I fill up the hand, then I'll transfer it to paper." "Do they tumble out of your head complicated?" "'Cause you write complicated rhymes." "Oh, I wake up in the morning, and they just tum..." "They just fall out." "Yeah." "I'm kidding." "Do they come complicated, or do you complicate them?" "Um, sometimes..." "What I love about rap is that it feels like it's puzzles to me." "Hmm." "Like words are like puzzles and trying to figure out a puzzle and trying to figure out what word can go here, and how many words can I make..." "Like if I can take a rhyme..." "Like, I'm real into the craft, like, just of the, you know, mcing, and I feel like..." "Like I always think, like, how can I take a... how can I figure this puzzle out?" "Like, how can I take, uh, words and put 'em at the end of the sentence, but in between maybe make some words rhyme in between, that... that rhyme and, like, sandwich 'em?" "Mm-Hmm." "You know what I'm saying?" "Like, so sandwich those words and try to make 'em rhyme inside of the phrase and then come back outside and try to, you know, try to rhyme with the word that I ended on the snare." "You know, like, I just, like..." "I'm just..." "I'm kind of real into the..." "The technical part of... of it." "I studied everybody, man." "I studied you." "I studied, uh, fucking krs." "I studied treach, naughty by nature, I..." "Well, treach is..." "Treach is difficult to rap like, 'cause treach is like... his shit is really complicated, you know." "I just heard a new record with treach." "♪ I can click clack pat tat... ♪" "Wait, what does he say?" "♪ I can click clack snap rap pat tat a tat tat ♪" "♪ Take that ass to the point you have to ask for your ass back ♪" "♪ The fucking joker smoker, taunted by no one ♪" "♪ If I was born in chung li's temple ♪" "♪ I would've turned out a shogun ♪" "That song..." "Yoke the joker, when that shit came out," "I swear to god, I was..." "I was in my peak at rap, and what I mean is, like..." "Right." "When I realized this is what I want to do with my life." "Right, right, right." "And proof came over." "Right." "He brought the fucking tape." "Right." "And my world ended." "Like, I was like, "oh, my god, what the fuck is this?"" "Like I... it literally..." "I didn't write a rap for the whole summer." "Right, right." "Didn't write a rap for the whole summer." "Fucking around with treach." "Yo, that dude was..." "I mean, he..." "He's still incredible." "Final thoughts on the art of rap, which you are one of the grandmasters at now." "Mm, final thoughts." "Shit, I don't know." "I mean," "I certainly feel like if it wasn't for rap, like, obviously I wouldn't be here, but it gave me..." "It gave me a voice." "It gave me an outlet." "It gave me a..." "It gave me strength." "Fuck, man, you know, what I just came back from, you know, overdose and the whole shit, you know." "Like it... without rap, I wouldn't have been able to... to get through it." "I mean, obviously without my daughters," "I wouldn't have been able to get through a fucking thing, but when you hit that wall, like, how quick can you bounce back, you know?" "Um, and if it wasn't for rap," "I wouldn't have been able to bounce back, you know." "This is the one thing that..." "This is the one thing that I feel like I have that, you know, I can do well." "So if I didn't have this, I don't know what..." "I really can't do a fucking thing else, you know." "Except for play basketball." "I'm kind of fucking nasty, but, uh, like rap is just, you know, it's..." "It's everything to me." "Like, this is..." "This is... this is my world." "This is... you know what I'm saying?" "Like, this is what I do, like..." "Hey, if somebody said, "royce 5'9","" "what... what do they..." "What do they expect?" "Well, I'm gonna be rapping my ass off." "A nigga that raps his ass off." "Yeah." "I'm gonna be..." "I'm gonna be rapping my ass off." "I'm not..." "I'm not..." "I'm not about to be probably talking to the girls a lot, you know what I'm saying?" "I'm really, like, a competitive mc with my peers." "♪ I'm a heavyweight ♪" "♪ I'm catastrophic when I said it ♪" "♪ Like fahrenheit 9/11 ♪" "♪ Meditate till the levies break ♪" "♪ I tar and feather featherweights ♪" "♪ Until my fetti straight ♪" "♪ The mac-11'll clap your melon ♪" "♪ And give your ass spaghetti face ♪" "♪ Uhh, you ever looked inside some dying eyes?" "♪" "♪ You'll see surprise ♪" "♪ And realize there's no denying god ♪" "♪ When was the last time that you heard ♪" "♪ That the iron tried?" "♪" "♪ Ryan vibes like cyanide ♪" "♪ I am proud to say that I've evolved ♪" "♪ There's only one "I" in "defying odds" ♪" "♪ Small-time arrogance perishes ♪" "♪ Every time the giant pride ♪" "♪ Who y'all respect is probably cross-dressing ♪" "♪ Your favorite mc could probably find hisself ♪" "♪ Vibing to my lost sessions ♪" "♪ I'm legendary ♪" "Oh, now turn..." "There you go." "♪ ...dj's task was just to play records ♪" "♪ What more could you ask?" "♪" "♪ But then came remixes, scratching and cuts ♪" "♪ Which was too much for many ♪" "♪ Drove some djs nuts ♪" "♪ But the dj ♪" "♪ Named glove ♪" "♪ Has reined supreme on the ♪ as the... wait." "♪ As the turntable wizard of the hip-hop scene ♪" "♪ So listen to him, check it out ♪" "♪ But remember this ♪" "♪ When the glove's on the wheels of steel ♪" "♪ He's reckless ♪" "Who would have ever thought the one of the greatest rappers of all time would be a white cat?" "♪ Y'all know me, still the same old g ♪" "♪ But I'm being low-key, hated on ♪" "♪ By most of these niggas with no cheese ♪" "♪ No deals and no gs, no wheels and no keys ♪" "♪ No boats, no snowmobiles, and no skis ♪" "♪ Mad at me 'cause I can finally afford ♪" "♪ To provide my family with groceries ♪" "♪ Got a crib with a studio ♪" "♪ And it's all full of tracks ♪" "♪ To add to the wall full of plaques ♪" "♪ Hanging up in the office in back ♪" "♪ Of my house like trophies ♪" "♪ But y'all think I'm gonna let my dough freeze ♪" "♪ Ho, please ♪" "♪ You better bow down on both knees ♪" "♪ Who do you think taught you to smoke trees?" "♪" "♪ Who you think brought you the oldies?" "♪" "♪ Eazy-es, ice cubes and d.O.C.S ♪" "♪ The snoop d-o-double-gs ♪" "♪ And the group that said motherfuck the police ♪" "♪ I spit from the genitals, bitch ♪" "♪ Leave a masculine stench ♪" "♪ Got niggas panicking petrol ♪" "♪ I make a mannequin flinch ♪" "♪ Grew a botanical wench ♪" "♪ The root of all evil ♪" "♪ Green thumb for greenbacks ♪" "♪ Ran to the tech, but we can't all eat, though ♪" "♪ 'Cause y'all fecal, we brawl lethal ♪" "♪ Homicide victims off of fairfax and pico ♪" "♪ Sugar, nobody's ever equal ♪" "♪ 'Cause the more we make ♪" "♪ The more we're taking from other people ♪" "♪ Pimping puerto rico ♪" "♪ Pandering lax to jfk ♪" "♪ At baggage claim with three hoes, like santa say ♪" "♪ My third eye be the equivalent of the algebraic pi ♪" "♪ So if give you a piece of my mind ♪" "♪ Just multiply it times infiny ♪" "♪ Spiritually elevate so I ♪" "♪ Commit a drive-by while I sky-dive ♪" "♪ Sip a mai tai and perform shit only conceived in sci-fi ♪" "♪ So why try and test?" "♪" "♪ It's boom, bye-bye, mr." "Ice grill guy ♪" "♪ You must be looking somewhere else ♪" "♪ Like biggie smalls' lazy eye, ha ♪" "Now, I think when niggas listen to some of your shit, they are insulted by your intelligence, and they don't like you." "Right." "They're like, "ah, no, fuck, what..."" "You know, you let a nigga listen to that." "I'll put it on in front of some thug niggas, like, they're, uh..." "They'll listen to about two minutes, and, "fuck this nigga, man."" "It's just too much information." "I love it." "Like, "fucking, I mean, what is he at?" All right." "Well, I force you think." "Yeah." "You know what I'm saying?" "And they don't like that." "But I..." "I can't be mad at the result, and I figured the people..." "And ironically my fan base has always kind of been two extremes." "You know who got enough time to fucking learn?" "Right." "People in college and niggas in prison." "Right." "And those are my fans." "Wow, that's a jewel." "Those are my fans." "Can you explain your technique when you writing your best lyrics?" "Like what..." "Where's you head at?" "I don't know how I did it." "For my junior high, I stole the school desk." "I don't know how I stole it, but it was at the crib, and everybody..." "Badass niggas'll, xhibit'll tell you I had a school desk." "So I had the school desk, and I would go to school, you know what I'm saying, when I was writing my rhymes." "That was... that was your writing chair." "That was my writing chair, and I'd sit at the little..." "You know, the wooden ones like, you know..." "Right, right." "And I'd go to school, 'cause I took it seriously." "This is my homework." "I gotta put my work in." "So, um, I started like that, and that was my comfort zone." "And then of course you get into the business, and whatever, you may move or whatever, so then I started having to write on the spot, you know what I'm saying?" "Right, right." "So then we're in the studio, and dre gives a nigga a notebook and says, "what you got?"" "Right." "Well, I don't..." "Can't go home and go get the school desk." "So now I'm just a..." "You know, I can write anyway." "Were you doing xzibit, too?" "I can't find xzibit." "Hold on." "He right up the street." "Him and b-real, they got a studio together." "I'm gonna send you his number, 'cause he not answering the phone." "Okay." "But I'll..." "I'll send you his house number and his..." "That's good luck." "Hold on." "What's your technique when you really going in?" "When I go in, I usually..." "I still write on pen and paper." "Call me old-fashioned, but fuck it, you know what I'm saying?" "Like, for me, it's something to be said about the way I memorize things, because I have to write it down and repeat it..." "Mm-Hmm." "And then when I repeat it, then it's here, and I never lose it." "Sometimes I can go in the studio, hear a beat, get inspired, write it in 15 minutes, spit it, done." "And then sometimes I hear a beat, and I write a piece to it, and then I'll come back around a month later and fill the rest down because of this piece," "I've been milling over it, and I got a concept now." "When I say something and just start writing fast, and then..." "And then I just copy..." "And then you try to say something to me, like..." "Wait, wait, wait." "Wait." "I got it!" "Aah!" "Okay, now, what's up?" "Right." "That's what I'm talking about, you just feel it." "You feel it, like..." "Yeah." "It's that line that you know..." "If you know what it feel like to rip a crowd..." "Right." "Or hold a mic and get in front of people, and then they respond to that, call and response, the energy, movement, you can feel it, you could move it around in your head," "then that's the line that needs to be written." "If you feel it, if you study it, if you know that..." "What's coming right after that, or you can think five lines down and work your way back up." "Yeah." "You know what I'm saying?" "If you... if you on it like that, then, I mean, come on." "All right, motherfuckers, bring out your ballistics." "You know you can't fuck with me, because if you could've, you would've did it by now." "Fuck off." "X to the motherfucking z." "West coast representing, bitch." "♪ I want to get high ♪" "♪ So high ♪" "♪ I want to get high ♪" "♪ So high... ♪" "Let me tell you, I'm..." "I was..." "I was hanging around muggs." "Muggs was living with aladdin at the time." "Right." "And I heard, uh..." "I think it's, uh," "♪ sawed-off shotgun, hand on the... ♪" "Right." "I heard the track, the ♪ dunh, Tch, doo doo ♪" "And I'm asking muggs, "what's that?"" "And he said, "this is cypress hill."" "And I'm like, "what is cypress hill?"" "But I didn't..." "I never heard none of the vocals over it, and I'm, like, listening to it." "I said, "well, that shit's funky, whatever it's gonna be."" "And then when I heard it, I was like," ""oh, my god, this shit sounded crazy."" "But I think when you came out, the whole..." "The vocal delivery was so unique." "Now, here's a question I'm gonna come right out and ask." "Right." "Did b-real always sound like the b-real we know?" "No." "No." "No." "It took... it took a couple years to get that, 'cause when we started," "I was rapping in this voice that I talk in, and muggs didn't like it, and sen dog was like, "I don't know." "The raps were dope." Mm-Hmm." "But they came at me like this." "They said," ""hey, man, if you don't do something about that voice, man, we just gonna have you write rhymes for sen dog."" "I'm like, "oh, shit."" "So, you know, I somehow figured out how to pitch my voice a little bit, you know, going a little bit higher." "When I was listening to early cypress hill," "I'm like, "these motherfuckers sound high." ""Like, they sound like the gangbangers that you would not want to run into, 'cause they would be dusted..."" "Right." ""And they would shoot you" ""on some bullshit like you're the wrong person, they just felt like shooting somebody."" "Right." "Right, right." "And... and for a time, man, we were crazy like that, you know, and, uh, that's where a lot of the... the music when we were creating it, it reflected that lifestyle and stuff like that." "But, you know, we also were very competitive, you know, especially muggs with the production game, because a... a lot of his... his influences were the bomb squad and stuff like that, you know, and we were all big public enemy fans," "and we all said to ourselves, well, if we're..." "If we're gonna get in this game, if we're gonna represent, we gotta be as good as those guys, you know." "And... and they were like one of my big influences, and... and, uh, when I was developing the voice, there was..." "There was two things that stood out to me in hip-hop that I loved in..." "In all the groups that were going on." "There was the beastie boys, 'cause they had a different, you know, vocal pitch than everybody else." "The other big influence was public enemy and flava flav, how his voice always cut through, and I said, well, nobody's, you know..." "Aside from the beastie boys, nobody's really cutting through like that, so we... we became, as... as far as our vocal tones, public enemy in reverse." "♪ Stop scheming and trying to look hard ♪" "♪ I get my bodyguard ♪" "♪ You get that booty scarred ♪" "♪ I'm a veteran, which means ♪" "♪ That I've been in the game too long ♪" "♪ Since the days of paper thin ♪" "♪ Way back when I've been putting it down ♪" "♪ Ask your homie who's the baddest bitch on this side of town ♪" "♪ I float like a butterfly, sting like a bee ♪" "♪ Spectacular over m.I.C., I go for broke ♪" "♪ Never giving it less than the best ♪" "♪ Face off, 'cause your shit is twisted ♪" "♪ Screw up your mouth, 'cause this chick is gifted ♪" "♪ I stay whipping' in something you never seen ♪" "♪ Ain't into flossing, but I could put it on some ♪" "♪ Call 'em at the crib ♪" "♪ Tell 'em you just lost 1, 2 and 3 ♪" "♪ I'm about to run a boston ♪" "♪ On, son, how come I'm on one?" "♪" "♪ I'm born free, you born dumb ♪" "♪ I pack a fortune ♪" "♪ My time is too much for what it's costing ♪" "♪ Hear any chick on the mic, you know I taught them ♪" "♪ What you just might get ♪" "♪ Is a chick that spit that wiz priceless ♪" "♪ I made a decision to play my position ♪" "♪ And this is the place in my life ♪" "♪ Where I start delivering, you know why?" "♪" "♪ This game ain't got nothing on me ♪" "♪ None after, none before me ♪" "♪ I put the work in, I want the glory ♪" "♪ Here's my chance to tell my story ♪" "Now, the first rhymes that you actually did out on a stage or you tried to perform, by then you were writing your own stuff?" "By the time I performed on a stage for people," "I was performing I cram to understand u." "Mm." "But prior to that, george lucien, full force's father, used to come to my house every saturday..." "Mm-Hmm." "And I would practice, because my voice was like this, and that wasn't a rapper's voice." "Like there was... who was I gonna get to listen to me?" "You mean it was low and..." "It was... it was teeny, tiny, no weight to it." "Mm-Hmm, right." "And I would practice, and he would say, "get strong, and come from here,"" "and... and for months," "I would sing salt-n-pepa's songs or rap them in my living room until my vocal was strong enough that, you know, so we owe this to who?" "'Cause you're known to have one of the strongest female mc voices." "That's..." "George lucien." "He... he developed this voice?" "Absolutely." "The joy and the beauty of being a... a hip-hop artist, you can truly express who you are and truly be who you are." "When you're a rapper, you... you get to say what you think, what you feel." "People hear your perspective." "People hear your spirit and your soul if you're using that, and they hear your imagination to be able to write a rhyme and say," ""look, this is what my life has been about." "This is some of my purpose." "This is my perspective."" "People... people will know what you think." "They know where you stand." "They know... they know where you fly." "Mm-Hmm." "♪ To the hiddip ♪" "♪ The hop, you don't stop, don't stop ♪" "♪ Das efx with the real hip-hop ♪" "♪ Hip-hop, to the hiddip ♪" "♪ The hop, you don't quit, don't quit... ♪" "♪ I bust gat heat ♪" "♪ Right here at fat beats ♪" "♪ My man ice-t, that is that heat ♪" "♪ We here in I.A. Chilling ♪" "♪ Krs always willing ♪" "♪ Rhymes keep spilling ♪" "♪ I'm off the top ♪" "♪ Like what, the sun ♪" "♪ My name is krs-one ♪" "♪ These stars, you don't see none ♪" "♪ When I come out, you see all the day ♪" "♪ These other whack rappers, we blow 'em away ♪" "♪ Why?" "'Cause they don't understand my cycle ♪" "♪ I go from tape, cd, back to vinyl ♪" "♪ Shh, you cats ain't ready ♪" "♪ I'll take it back to rock steady ♪" "♪ And give you a classic medley ♪" "♪ Me?" "I'm not bet or mtv ♪" "♪ I'm h-I-p-h-o-p ♪" "Whoo!" "Freestyle." "There was a time when you had never rapped, you was a graffiti artist." "What made you say, "I think I'm gonna do that."" "My first battle was in a park in melrose projects." "What made... what made you want to battle?" "What made you even want..." "A dude was talking about my clothes." "Um, there was..." "It was an mc cypher, and I was not there..." "I was watching the cypher." "And dude was like, "and like this dude with his tore-up jeans."" "I was like, "Ohh!"" "Crowd's screaming." "I'm like, "Ohh," my jeans was whack, everything is whack, I'm whack, everything was whack, and dude was pointing it out." "Nigga just picked you out the crowd." "He just picked..." "I'm there watching with everybody else." "He like, "yo, and him, like him,"" "and that's when I said, "yo, no, hold up," "I have to say something."" "And, uh..." "And I actually did." "I jumped out right there, and I did like a little freestyle based on what I heard right there." "I did a quick piece off the top, defended myself, and it was dope." "And then you said..." "And I said... and everybody patting you on the back like, "yeah, you gave it to him."" "And then I was like, "whoa, this is not bad." ""Yo, you know what?" "I'm gonna do this."" "So we really owe the birth of krs-one to some nigga who just out of nowhere..." "Out of nowhere." "Picked you out the crowd and dissed you?" "Yeah, started dissing, out the crowd." "Some mcs get their notoriety through battling, meaning that..." "Back in the days, we used to call it the dozens." "Slaves were sold one by one unless there was a defect, their leg was hurt, an arm was severed, mental issues, maybe sick." "Those people were sold, um, in a dozen." "So slaves would start going back and forth with each other, saying, uh, well," ""your head's bigger than your neck," ""and that makes you a lollipop." ""Ahh." "Your mother is so this," "I could do that."" ""Ahh." And everybody would laugh at you." "Then it eventually became the dozens." "So the idea of battling, coming out of this tradition called the dozens, where you verbally attack your opponent and your opponent verbally attacks you until somebody breaks down and either wants to fight, cries, whatever it is," "or... or a judge deems the battle won by either opponent." "This trickles over into rapping." "It was zulu nation that first brought up the idea of we don't have to shoot at each other or beat on each other or... or this." "We can actually use this tradition of the dozens to actually have verbal warfare through art." "♪ Defeating chino's an oxymoron ♪" "♪ Like happy marriage ♪" "♪ I allow for there to be churches all around ♪" "♪ My neighbors are tired of people ♪" "♪ Worshipping outside of my house ♪" "♪ These entertainers names and lines ♪" "♪ I started those ♪" "♪ Big chino created from god's particles ♪" "♪ What flows from my abdominals, abominable ♪" "♪ Nonvulnerable, part animal ♪" "♪ Dark paranormal like ghosts ♪" "♪ Man, I hate these rappers ♪" "♪ "Why don't you off 'em?" I hear it often ♪" "♪ When I'm gone, son ♪" "♪ They won't be worth a splinter in my coffin ♪" "♪ But once I auction off my crown of thorns ♪" "♪ There's no more ♪" "♪ Me fall is what they invented the word "never" for ♪" "♪ Every rapper should change their name to nas ♪" "♪ 'Cause when they ask, "can you outspit chino?" ♪" "♪ All you'll hear is a lot of "Nah" s ♪" "If you say the right combination of words that makes a crowd go, "ooh," or, "I agree." "That's right." "He does look like that,"" "you know, then you win the day." "♪ I'm wise, you could learn it from me ♪" "♪ Impregnate you with so many bullets ♪" "♪ You could take maternity leave ♪" "♪ I'm gonna say this ♪" "♪ And I say this with a jaded cadence ♪" "♪ I'm dedicated to hatred ♪" "♪ Escaping off satan's playlist ♪" "♪ I'm dangerous when I communicate ♪" "♪ What I'm thinking, brain-dead ♪" "♪ I'll spit in morse code ♪" "♪ Write down what I'm blinking ♪" "♪ Rhyme contortionist ♪" "♪ Shot my way out of hell's orphanage ♪" "♪ Using a slingshot and live scorpions ♪" "Some guys that use vocabulary as a weapon almost just to brag or show." "So kind of what I do in that sense is like, um, ♪ braggadocious, rhythmic vernacular ♪" "♪ Designed to back you up ♪" "♪ I back it up with the spectacular ♪" "♪ Yet just a fraction of my perpendicular ♪" "♪ With no particular linear structure ♪" "♪ I'm giving you ruptures ♪" "♪ As I erupt into your cerebellum ♪" "♪ I tried to tell 'em, I open a vortex ♪" "♪ Your cerebral cortex sends a reaction ♪" "♪ That has 'em like a spasm ♪" "♪ Upon further review, you see it was lyrical orgasm ♪" "♪ How did it happen?" "You can't even describe the vibe ♪" "♪ What was the essence of god's presence felt inside?" "♪" "♪ Bestowed upon you from the moment I dropped it on you ♪" "♪ I strike like a diva tonight and can't nobody warn you ♪" "♪ I'm on you, I got that truly godlike ♪" "♪ Metaphysical, neolithical ♪" "♪ Ask what you see in me, lyrical deity ♪" "♪ Hip-hop's pantheon, one step beyond ♪" "♪ So I stand beyond whatever shaitan's fans be on ♪" "♪ I lights 'em up like neon, locks 'em down like deion ♪" "♪ Reclaimed my title three times like ali when he beat leon ♪" "♪ And that's what I be on for the peon ♪" "I remember the first rap battle I ever lost, and I had this, ♪ hey, chris, you want to see me?" "♪" "♪ You running like a squirrel up a tree ♪" "So I'm like, you know, I'm like a little kid and stuff, and I had this whole thing planned, 'cause I was supposed to be the rapper, and this one dude was feeling like he could beat me in school," "and, um, he had this..." "His rap, uh, Nah." "This whole thing, he said, "man, you know what?"" "You gotta go first." "You gotta go first."" "So I spit this whole long rap, and he's like..." "He's like, "okay, cool." And he said, "yo..."" "Uh, his response to my rap was," "♪ yo, what's up?" "My name is chris ♪" "♪ Let me tell me one thing, you smell like piss ♪" "Right?" "And everybody's like, "ahh!"" "Everybody started running off, so I lost my first rap battle." "Part of the reason why my raps are so simple now." "Way more simplicity, just get to the point, you know." "♪ Penitentiary chances, the devil dances ♪" "♪ And eventually answers to the call of autumn ♪" "♪ All them fallin' for the love of ballin' ♪" "♪ Get caught with 30 rocks ♪" "♪ The cop look like alec baldwin ♪" "♪ End-of-century anthems ♪" "♪ Based off inner-city tantrums ♪" "♪ Based off the way we was branded ♪" "♪ Face it, jerome get more time than brandon ♪" "♪ And at the airport, they check all through my bag ♪" "♪ And tell me that it's random ♪" "♪ But we stay winning ♪" "♪ This week has been a bad massage ♪" "♪ I need a happy ending and a new beginning ♪" "♪ And a new fitted ♪" "♪ And some job opportunities that's lucrative ♪" "♪ This the real world ♪" "♪ Homie, school's finished ♪" "♪ They done stole your dreams ♪" "♪ You don't know who did it ♪" "♪ I treat the cash the way government treat aids ♪" "♪ I won't be satisfied till all my niggas get it ♪" "♪ Is hip-hop just a euphemism for a new religion?" "♪" "♪ The soul music of the slaves ♪" "♪ That the youth is missing?" "♪" "♪ But this is more than just my road to redemption ♪" "♪ Malcolm west had the whole nation standing at attention ♪" "♪ As long as I'm in polo smiling ♪" "♪ They think they got me ♪" "♪ But they'll try to crack me ♪" "♪ If they ever see a black me ♪" "♪ I thought I chose a field where they couldn't sack me ♪" "♪ If a nigga ain't shooting a jump shot ♪" "♪ Running a track meet ♪" "♪ But this pimp is at the top of mount olympus ♪" "♪ Ready to the world's games, this is my olympics ♪" "♪ We make 'em say, "ho," 'cause the game's so pimpish ♪" "♪ Choke a south park writer with a fish stick ♪" "♪ I insist that y'all get up off of this dick ♪" "♪ And these drugs, niggas can't resist it ♪" "♪ Remind me when they try, to have all enlisted ♪" "♪ If I ever wasn't the greatest nigga ♪" "♪ I must have missed it ♪" "♪ I need mo' drinks and less lights ♪" "♪ And that american apparel girl in just tights ♪" "♪ She told the director, "I'm trying to get into school" ♪" "♪ He told her, "take them glasses off and get in the pool" ♪" "♪ It's been a while since I watched the news ♪" "♪ 'Cause like a crip said ♪" "♪ I got way too many blues ♪" "♪ For any more bad news ♪" "♪ I was looking at my résumé ♪" "♪ Feeling real fresh today ♪" "♪ They rewrite history ♪" "♪ I don't believe in yesterday ♪" "♪ And what's a black beatle anyway?" "♪" "♪ A fucking roach, I guess that's why ♪" "♪ They got me sittin' in fucking coach ♪" "♪ My guy said I need a different approach ♪" "♪ 'Cause people is looking at me like I'm sniffing coke ♪" "♪ It ain't funny anymore, try different jokes ♪" "♪ Tell 'em and hug and kiss my ass, x and o ♪" "♪ And kiss the ring while they at it ♪" "♪ Do my thing while I got it ♪" "♪ Play strings for the dramatic ♪" "♪ Ain't none of that whack shit ♪" "♪ Act like I ain't had a belt in two classes ♪" "♪ I ain't got it, I'm Comin' after whoever who has it ♪" "♪ I'm coming after whoever who has it ♪" "♪ You blowing up, that's good, fantastic ♪" "♪ That y'all, it's like that y'all ♪" "♪ I don't really give a fuck about it at all ♪" "♪ 'Cause the same people that try to blackball me ♪" "♪ Forgot about two things, my black balls ♪" "♪ Hit it ♪" "♪ Yeah, whoo... ♪" "Victory on the street is one thing." "Blowing the minds of 10,000 people in a concert is another." "Run-dmc took the live show to a whole 'nother level." "You guys took it to a level that made everybody go, "y'all think this is just rap."" "This is the biggest shit in the world."" "And when you came out," "♪ yo, yo, yo dmc is my name ♪" "And... and it's like..." "Well, can I have your attention, please?" "Just fold my arms." "Yeah, you know." "All run out." "Run." "♪ Run, run, run, run ♪" "Oh, shit." "Like..." "I was like what the fuck is going on?" "You know what?" "We turned it into a concert." "I'd never seen it." "We turned the block party into a concert, 'cause we would bust in there, ♪ here we go ♪" "♪ Dmc and... ♪" "Just, "whose house?"" "Like, it was crazy for 'em." "They couldn't fuck with that, baby." "Run-dmc was at the top of the food chain." "No other group in rap was on your level." "Right." "You're standing at the top of the pyramid." "Right." "What's that like?" "Run might have knew." "Okay." "He had ego." "My shit was..." "My shit was this." "You turn to the left, there's fucking chuck coming at you." "You turn to the right, there's raki..." "You turn over there, there's the piece..." "You turn over there, there's ll." "You turn over there, there's kool g rap." "You turn over there, there's fucking e." "P.M..." "It was crazy, so my whole thing continuously wasn't about just staying on top." "It was always being..." "Staying on top of my game." "Let me tell you something." "We are run-dmc, the baddest fucking group in the world ever in hip-hop." "♪ It's the return of monotonous hotness ♪" "♪ I rock this, you watch this ♪" "♪ Regardless, we got this ♪" "♪ From hollis, and y'all gets no chances ♪" "♪ No wins and no ends, I need no dances ♪" "♪ No rims or no benz ♪" "♪ From the corners of hollis ave ♪" "♪ I came up, blew the game up ♪" "♪ Trying to tell me my reign's up ♪" "♪ Bring my name up ♪ rev run, y'all." "There was a moment when you guys were number one group..." "Rap group in the world undisputed, top of the mountain, stood up, looked down." "Right." "What's that like?" "It's good for a second." "It's when, if you're not focused to keep making music, and you don't cruise..." "It's when you're sitting in the tub, for me, eating french toast, got weed coming, got a ho coming, got kwasi bringing me a rolls royce." "You remember kwasi?" "Mm-Hmm." "All this was coming, and rolling stone magazine is coming." "So this is all in the presidential suite." "I just seen ice-t as I was driving up." "Mm-Hmm." "I just hit I.A." "Can't wait to get to I.A." "They got best Endo." "They got the best girls." "They got the best presidential suite." "They got the rolls-royce, rolling stone magazine." "I'm run." "I'm number one." "And then the realization comes that, you know, I'm sitting in the tub." "The syrup's falling in the tub." "There's ashes falling in the tub." "The ho's knocking at the door." "Rolling stone's behind the ho and the man to cut your hair, and you're like, "I'm fucking out of control."" "What's cracking with it, y'all?" "This is dub sizzle, aka skip skip the barracuda." "All you niggas can drown in my nuts." "Fuck y'all." "Can't none of you niggas fuck with me." "Nigga I started a lot of this shit on this side of town, nigga, and I don't give a fuck what nobody say out there, nigga." "You come over here, you gotta see me." "Skip skip, west sier for lier, nier." "I'm out on the block nigga, for real." "Fuck y'all." "One time, I was watching one of your shows." "And you was fucking it up." "You was getting down." "You was out there, and you was... you was freestyling." "You're freestyling." "And, uh, I think somebody..." "Some kind of way or something, I don't know what was going on." "Whatever, the turntable must have skipped a song." "Skipped a song or went off beat." "Skipped and went off beat, and, you know..." "And of course you stop and everything." "But you played it the fuck off, though." "Yeah." "You played it off." "You looked in the crowd." "You know, you was like, you know, you know," "♪ I to the c to the e ♪" "♪ Niggas can't fuck with me ♪ you know." "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa." "And then it went off and shit, and, you know, you looked, and then you played it real quick." "You went to the crowd and said, "huh?"" "Hey, on the real." "You think I'm lying, nigga." "You fucked me up." "Nigga looked in the crowd and was like, "huh?"" "You know, you looked at a bitch and was like, "huh?"" "Ohh." "What'd you say?" "You went to the mic, yo, yo, yo, let's start this song..." "Let's just start..." "I got a..." "I got a billion of them." "I got..." "let me tell you something." "Am I lying though?" "No." "That's some of my shit." "Yeah, okay." "That's some of my best shit." "I got other tricks." "Like if I fucked up or something and I be in the middle of the song, what I do is I act like the mic cut off." "So now that I fucked up, I'll go like this, and then I'll start lip syncing like..." "And I'll..." ""Yo, yo, yo, the mic cut off."" "And I'll make it look like there was a technical problem, and we got to start the song over." "There you go." "That's one of my tricks." "Here's another trick." "Usually there's a..." "A fan in the front row that fucking knows every single word." "Word, mm-Hmm." "So I early find him, and he becomes my human teleprompter." "So if I fall off, I put the mic in his mouth..." "Mic to his face." "And he'll say the lyric and jump me back on top and shit like that." "Tricks." "Now, that's the difference between an mc and a rapper." "That's secret shit." "That's the difference." "Secret." "♪ I sold too much coke in the eighties ♪" "♪ It's my fucking fault, I made you crack babies ♪" "♪ Now you whine and cold woke me up ♪" "♪ Like a wild wolf won't murder his sick pup ♪" "♪ Niggas on the net talking crazy and reckless ♪" "♪ Busters don't know you get laid down for much less ♪" "♪ This ain't no game, cuz, niggas now we come ♪" "♪ .50 cal dum-dum rubber-grip bear guns ♪" "♪ I see you run like diarrhea ♪" "♪ Hide behind your fucking bodyguards ♪" "♪ Like little ballerinas ♪" "♪ It ain't no thing when them damn things flame ♪" "♪ Fully automatics makes the clubs' ears ring ♪" "♪ The oldest nigga, true, that means I done it the most ♪" "♪ Question is now which pussy want it the most?" "♪" "♪ Y'all ain't shit to me, never got your g on ♪" "♪ Softening the pillows at the bed, bath  beyond ♪" "♪ Your mistake thinking that I'm dead and gone ♪" "♪ Ask your mama, I'm bloody in the octagon ♪" "♪ I'm iller than chucky in child's play ♪" "♪ I bench 300 on a bad day ♪" "♪ I'm wild like uganda machetes ♪" "♪ You motherfucking with a psychopath, you niggas ain't ready ♪" "♪ Cracked my nigga t.I., but they didn't catch me ♪" "♪ My silenced p90 sounds like sewing machines ♪" "♪ Bugatti veyron, plasma screen ♪" "♪ Malibu beach house, lake house, I'm caked out ♪" "♪ I come in all blue, I don't know red ♪" "♪ And I don't throw dough, I make it rain lead ♪" "♪ Coked out, I'm boiling bricks in the kitchen ♪" "♪ It don't matter if you got it nigga, tricking is tricking ♪" "♪ Algebraic, I multiply my metaphors ♪" "♪ I'm so spa from deep tissues and pedicures ♪" "♪ Overlord of niggas in ski masks ♪" "♪ Westside rider for life, you ain't gotta ask ♪" "♪ L.A., home of the triple beam ♪" "♪ My niggas run all up in your crib like a swat team ♪" "♪ I'll make your suv lean ♪" "♪ Full metal jackets have it rockin' like a raft in rapids ♪" "♪ The last nigga in life that you want to meet ♪" "♪ Keep talking shit on the net ♪" "♪ I'll see you in the street ♪" "♪ Who is the man with the master plan?" "♪" "♪ A nigga with a motherfucking gun ♪" "♪ 44 reasons come to mind ♪" "♪ Why your motherfucking brother is hard to find ♪" "♪ He been walking on the streets and fucking with mine ♪" "♪ Stupid punk can't fuck with a mastermind ♪" "♪ See I never take a step on a compton block ♪" "♪ Or I.A. Without the a.K. Ready to pop ♪" "♪ 'Cause them punk motherfuckers in black and white ♪" "♪ Ain't the only motherfuckers I gots to fight ♪" "♪ I think it's better to be telling the facts ♪" "♪ Than cuffed up and jacked and fucked up ♪" "♪ What you niggas Lookin' at?" "You going ♪" "Everybody knows dr." "Dre don't drop a record a week." "It's like..." "It's... it's a process." "What's your process before we get to hear a track?" "You know, it's, um... it's not the same thing every time." "It really depends on who I'm working with." "I try to get inside of the head of the artist I'm working with, and the record has to be them." "I don't go approach an artist and say, "okay", this is... this is the way I think your record should be."" "I just try to... to make what they're bringing better and just add whatever they're bringing..." "Add my thing to whatever they're bringing." "So I just try to get in..." "Get in touch with the artist, try to get in touch with their personality and what they're trying to do and try to just take that to... you know, to levels unheard of, you know." "That's real talk." "So that's... that's just my thing." "I just..." "It's no set foundation or no set way of doing it." "I'm thinking like..." "'Cause, okay, everybody knows your gangster shit and what you did with snoop, but when we heard eminem for the first time, you know, hi." "My name is, we like..." "But it was him." "Right." "It was perfect." "It wasn't 50 cent." "You captured eminem." "Right." "You know, and I think that's the reason for longevity, you know what I'm saying?" "You just... you vibe with the artist, and you just elaborate on what they have to give, and you just, like, make what, you know..." "I just add my thing to what they have, and that's all it is to it." "Eminem, I'm gonna add my thing to eminem." "Snoop, I can't go in the studio with snoop with..." "In an eminem state of mind, if that makes any sense, you know." "Absolutely." "I just have to just..." "Just be them almost." "You know what I'm saying?" "That's what makes the projects come out so good." "You got a young kid, he want to be a producer like you." "He want to..." "He want to live the dr." "Dre life." "He... he admires you that... you see something in him." "What would be the first lesson you teach him about this game of hip-hop?" "First of all, you have to make sure that this thing is for you and it's who you are and you're built for this, you know." "And then you have to give it the passion that's necessary, you know." "Like I said, I don't do it for the money." "The money is gonna come." "I do it because of the love that I have for it, you know what I'm saying?" "If I was a plumber or something like that," "I still would make hip-hop records." "That's how much love I have for it, you know." "I feel like right now, I've been in the game close to 27 years, and I've actually thought about this just recently." "Out of the entire 27..." "My 27-year career, there's only been 2 weeks that I've been out of the studio." "There's..." "I've never been out of the studio longer than two weeks in my entire career." "That's how much love I have for this thing that I do." "So that's the thing, just the passion that you have for it, and really, really put your all into it, and make sure that your word is the last word." "That way, you don't, you know..." "You don't play the blame game or anything like that." "If it comes out hot, it's on you." "If it doesn't come out hot, it's on you, you know what I'm saying?" "That's all it is to it." "I think, uh, people I've talked to that have been..." "That had the privilege of working with you have said the same thing in another way." "They like, when you go in the studio with dre, it's not a game." "He's not your friend." "He's in there, he's working, and you gonna do it till dre thinks it's right." "And they all appreciate that." "Yeah." "That's a big difference between a beat maker and a producer." "Yeah, yeah." "I..." "You know what?" "There's definitely a big difference between a beat maker and a producer, 'cause you..." "Once you finish the beats, you have to produce the record." "You know what I'm saying?" "And I think there's a big difference between the rapper and the songwriter, you know what I'm saying?" "Rappers, you know, anybody can go spit a 16, you know." "The minute you ask the mc to..." "To give me the hook first, most of them get lost." "Mm-Hmm." "You know what I'm saying?" "I look for songwriters, you know." "So that's all it is." "I know, you know, I'm a little bit tough in the studio, but everybody's happy once they come out of the booth." "Mm-Hmm." "Well, you as close as we can get to pac." "What was the experience like?" "It was incredible, you know." "I remember being in the studio with pac, and, um, he actually went in the mic booth to write, you know, and I'm like, okay, that's different." "So I'm in the control room, and, um, he writes the lyrics." ""All right, I'm ready," you know." "He spits california love." "One or two takes, it was like, all right, put the next thing up." "And he would just sit in the booth, you know, like, put the next thing up, write, put the next thing up." "You know, I think that's the reason why he has so many songs and so much material, you know." "It was just..." "It was incredible." "He's like a machine." "Serious machine." "Serious talent." "When I speak of you, of course I'm incorporating nwa, 'cause you were a movement." "What... what stroke did you guys put on the painting that wasn't there?" "I think, um, just the element of... of the street, you know what I'm saying?" "That's what we were going for." "I think you were a big part of that, because our first record was basically just a..." "Um, almost a remix of what you did with 6 n' the morning, you know what I mean?" "We did boyz n the hood because of..." "Because of the love for that record so much, but we just wanted to basically put where we came from on the map." "Back then, it was just a lot of new york going on, and we wanted to represent compton, and we wanted to put compton out there in a way where it was just like, it was hard," "and... and we wanted to hit everybody across the head with a sledgehammer." "Like, "listen to what the fuck we're doing out here,"" "you know? "We got something to say, too."" "♪ Yeah, unh ♪" "♪ Yeah, unh ♪" "♪ Yeah, unh ♪" "♪ Straight out of compton ♪" "♪ Crazy motherfucker named ice cube ♪" "♪ From the gang called niggaz with attitudes ♪" "♪ When I'm called off, I got a sawed off ♪" "♪ Squeeze the trigger, and bodies are hauled off ♪" "♪ You too, boy, if you fuck with me ♪" "♪ The police are gonna have to come and get me ♪" "♪ Off your ass, that's how I'm going out ♪" "♪ For the punk motherfuckers that's showing out ♪" "♪ Niggas start to mumble, they want to rumble ♪" "♪ Mix 'em and cook 'em in a pot like gumbo ♪" "♪ Going off on the motherfucker like that ♪" "♪ With a gat that's pointed at your ass ♪" "♪ That's the way it goes in the city of compton ♪" "♪ Gang bang mentality ♪" "♪ Movie after movie ♪" "♪ Can't get it out of me ♪" "♪ Who want to battle me?" "♪" "♪ Mouth is an uzi ♪" "♪ I'll thumbtack your ass to the concrete ♪" "♪ Treat you like a floozy ♪" "♪ The pyroclastic flow that I lay ♪" "♪ Will turn this fucking booth to pompeii ♪" "♪ Now what will I do in broad day?" "♪" "♪ I'll turn broadway into a hallway ♪" "♪ Motherfuckers want to know the herbs and spices ♪" "♪ They come to me and want to know what my advice is ♪" "♪ I'm spiritual, nigga, like jesus christ is ♪" "♪ And lyrical, bitch, I'm 'bout the nicest ♪" "♪ Content, longevity ♪" "♪ Plus I spit shit that sit on your brain, nigga, heavily ♪" "♪ I can do this shit till I'm 70 ♪" "♪ On the vegas strip, yeah, there I'll be ♪" "Rap has many styles, party, gangster, political, battle." "Give your style a name." "And I think gangsta is too simple, 'cause I think you much more complex." "I would call it street knowledge." "Okay." "You know, I mean, that's the ultimate title." "And what it means to me is letting the streets know what the politicians is trying to do to 'em and then letting the politicians know what the streets think of them if they listening." "Mm-Hmm." "So it's street knowledge, if you ask me." "I agree." "I agree." "I always felt that my style was..." "I was always attempting to drop game." "It was not about..." "It was all game." "There was morals." "They were parables." "It was things that you'd listen to, and you would learn." "I wanted somebody to take my album when they done, be more intelligent about the game than they were, versus me saying, "you know, hey, I'm tough," like I..." "You don't want to get rich and die trying." "You know what I mean?" "♪ 1, 2, 3 into the 4 ♪" "♪ Snoop doggy dog and dr." "Dre is at the door ♪" "♪ Ready to make an entrance, so back on up ♪" "♪ 'Cause you know we're about to rip shit up ♪" "♪ Give me the microphone first ♪" "♪ So I can bust like a bubble ♪" "♪ Compton and long beach together ♪" "♪ Now you know you in trouble ♪" "We need to take my bag with my phone in it out of here, kid." "I think it's in that gray bag." "'Cause it's gonna keep going off." "These bitches won't stop calling." "I tell 'em I'm only in town for a night." ""There's only one of me."" "I'm saying." "I wish I was an octopus." "This is one of my favorites of all time." "♪ 6:00 in the morning, police at my door ♪" "♪ Fresh adidas squeak across my bathroom floor ♪" "♪ Out the back window, I make my escape ♪" "♪ Didn't even get a chance to grab my ice-t tape ♪" "♪ Mad with no music, but happy 'cause free ♪" "♪ But the streets to a player is the place to be ♪" "♪ I got a knot in my pocket weigh at least a grand ♪" "♪ Gold on my neck, my pistol's close at hand ♪" "♪ I'm a self-made monster from the city streets ♪" "♪ Remotely controlled by hard hip-hop beats ♪" "♪ But just living in the city is a serious task ♪" "♪ Nigga didn't know what hit him ♪" "♪ Didn't have time to ask ♪ thank you." "♪ Benz with my money ♪ ♪ the rest went on clothes ♪" "♪ Went to the strip, started pimping' the hos ♪" "♪ My hair grew long on my seven-year stay ♪" "♪ When I got it done, on my shoulders it lay ♪" "Oh, that was so cold." "That was so cold." "Rap to you, more music or a sport?" "It's a sport to me, because it's like you driving me to want to outdo you." "You understand what I'm saying?" "It's like when you hear a certain lyric, it's like you just saw a 360 dunk." "Yeah." "And I'm like, "oh, I can't have that."" "I need to try this..." "This 720 on a nigga real quick, ice." "Work with me." "Work with me, ice, this 720 gonna work." "I'm gonna spin around two times." "It's gonna work." "When snoop dogg getting ready to write a song, how do you like it to be?" "I mean, you need to get..." "You gotta get blunted?" "You gotta..." "I gotta smoke a lot of weed." "Okay." "I gotta have some old-school music playing, whether it's old-school r  b, hip-hop, anything that's seventies, eighties, sixties, you know what I'm saying?" "Something that's inspiring to me." "Then I gotta have a couple of, you know, females around to give me some inspiration, 'cause I like looking at 'em while I'm writing my woo-wop." "And then at the same time, I like..." "I just like the whole mode to just be natural." "What's your style?" "My style, I would say, is tae kwon do." "Bruce lee created that." "Which that means... is that I'll fuck a nigga up if a nigga try to play me wrong, but for the most part, I'm a good guy making great music to party to." "Here's what I'm gonna do." "I'm gonna give you something off the top of the dome, so that way, I know I won't fuck up." "I like that." "Now, check this." "♪ Artistic as it gets is big snoop dogg ♪" "♪ The one and only, so throw a pawn in the lawn ♪" "♪ And let me show you how it's supposed to be ♪" "♪ Blow up like a bomb, napalm ♪" "♪ Let me show you what it's supposed to be ♪" "♪ Now get close to me, these are groceries ♪" "♪ File them in the cabinet, stab it, let it go ♪" "♪ This is my art form, I'm so original ♪" "♪ Like ice-t, but I don't drip, drop on the floor ♪" "♪ Get a ho, get the door ♪" "♪ Let 'em know from the door ♪" "♪ Here we go, let it ride ♪" "♪ Snoopy d-o-double-g, eastside lbc ♪" "♪ Show you how it's supposed to be ♪" "♪ Look up at the sky ♪" "♪ Do you see the moon and sun?" "♪" "♪ It's snoop d-o-doub ♪" "♪ Yes, I am the only one ♪" "♪ When it come to freestyle, boy, I'm so cold ♪" "♪ Make a nigga flip to it to a whole 'nother episode ♪" "♪ Watch a ho, hit the stroll ♪" "♪ Get the money, bring it back ♪" "♪ Ice-t got his wife sitting in the cadillac ♪" "♪ Cold, cold, there you go ♪" "♪ Steal the money, steal the show ♪" "♪ Snoop d-o-double-g, I told you I'm original ♪" "Now you could use that one." "Dope." "Final thoughts." "Melle mel said an art form can only be as great as its masters." "So speak to the people coming up under you that are striving to be snoop dogg." "Final thought." "Final thought." "With this thing that we call hip-hop, this art, this thing that we love and treasure, you must treat it with love and compassion and always cherish it, because one day soon, it will be yours." "And once it becomes yours, make it yours." "Put your name on it." "Put your brand on it." "Put your game on it." "Stamp it like it's supposed to be stamped." "That way, when you are gone, your music will live on." "Look at the greats before us, those who have passed, and their music is outlasting." "It's because of the art form." "It's because of the passion that they put in they projects." "It's because of what they spoke, the way their pen cried, the way their heart followed." "You could be the same thing." "It's one snoop dogg, just like there's one you." "Find yourself." "Find your art." "Find your heart." "So the answer is obvious." "Rap means something different to every mc..." "Whether it's writing something simple just to rock the crowd or writing something deep meant to move the world." "The one thing I do know is hip-hop requires skill, the skill of a great dj, the ability of a great break dancer, the style of a great graffiti writer or the flavor and technique of a talented mc." "To me, rap was always one of two things." "I was either out to drop some knowledge and give the streets some game, or it was straight-up combat." "I always look at the microphone as my weapon." "My ammunition is my intelligence, and my caliber, that's my cadence and flow." "This is not a game." "This is the art of rap." "♪ I was a fiend before I became a teen ♪" "♪ I melted microphones instead of cones of ice cream ♪" "♪ Music orientated, so when hip-hop was originated ♪" "♪ Fitted like pieces of puzzle, complicated ♪" "♪ 'Cause I grabbed the mic and tried to say, "yes, y'all" ♪" "♪ They tried to take it and say that I'm too small ♪" "♪ Cool, cool, cool ♪ ♪ 'cause I don't get upset ♪" "♪ I kick a hole in the speaker, pull the plug, then I jet ♪" "♪ Back to the lab without a mic to grab ♪" "♪ So then I add all the rhymes I had ♪" "♪ One after the other one, then I make another one ♪" "♪ To dis the opposite then ask if the brother's done ♪" "♪ I get a craving like a fiend for nicotine ♪" "♪ But I don't need a cigarette, know what I mean?" "♪" "♪ I'm raging, ripping up the stage ♪" "♪ And don't it sound amazing?" "♪" "♪ 'Cause every rhyme is made and thought of ♪" "♪ 'Cause it's sort of an addiction ♪" "♪ Magnetized by the mixing ♪" "♪ Vocals, vocabulary, your verses you're stuck in ♪" "♪ The mic is a drain, though, volcano's erupting ♪" "♪ Rhymes overflowing, gradually growing ♪" "♪ Everything is written in a code so it can coincide ♪" "♪ Cide, cide ♪ ♪ my thoughts to guide ♪" "♪ 48 tracks to slide ♪" "♪ The invincible microphone fiend rakim ♪" "♪ Spread the word 'cause I'm in ♪" "♪ E-f-f-e-c-t ♪" "♪ A smooth operator operating correctly ♪" "♪ But back to the problem, I gotta have it ♪" "♪ You can't solve it, silly rabbit ♪" "♪ The prescription is a hypertone that's thorough when ♪" "♪ I fiend for a microphone like heroin ♪" "♪ Soon as the bass kicks, I need a fix ♪" "♪ Give me a stage and a mic and a mix ♪" "♪ And I'll put you in the mood ♪" "♪ Or is it a state of unawareness?" "♪" "♪ Beware, it's the re-animator ♪" "♪ A menace to a microphone ♪" "♪ A lethal weapon, an assassinator ♪" "♪ If the people ain't stepping ♪" "♪ You'll see a part of me that you never seen ♪" "♪ When I'm fiending for a microphone ♪" "♪ I'm the microphone fiend ♪" "♪ After 12:00, I'm worse than a gremlin ♪" "♪ Feed me hip-hop, and I start trembling ♪" "♪ The thrill of suspense is intense, you're horrified ♪" "♪ But this ain't the cinemas or tales from the darkside ♪" "♪ By any means necessary, this is what has to be done ♪" "♪ Make way, 'cause here I come ♪" "♪ My dj cuts material ♪" "♪ Material, material ♪" "♪ Grand imperial ♪" "♪ It's a must that I bust any mic you're handing me ♪" "♪ It's inherited, it runs in the family ♪" "♪ I wrote the rhyme that broke the bull's back ♪" "♪ If that don't slow 'em up, I carry a full pack ♪"