So, just for reference, I'm from PG County, Maryland, from Fort Washington. So, that's not the trenches at all, but you hit that 210 highway, you take one turn, you aren’t from the trenches. Especially in the DMV, the quarter-million dollar cribs are 10 minutes from the trenches, and you probably know somebody over there or got a family friend or a cousin or something. It's never too far. To wrap that back around, as far as the term coke rap as a catch-all, what we're really describing is the music and the musings of Black people who grew up poor and fucked over by the world constantly. That's what it's about; cocaine is the entry point.
Yeah, for sure. It’s funny, man. How old are you?
28.
So, I'm actually doing a [film project]—I'm executive producing it with Kenya Barris—and it's about a man by the name of Curtis Malone, who spearheaded AAU [Amateur Athletic Union] in the DMV. Got a lot of guys in the league, and at the same time, he was hand-in-hand with the cartels, and he ended up going to jail and so on. It's funny that you say that this is how people were fucked over, because we were having a creative call the other day, and we [were discussing] the intricacies of what was going on during that time or whatever. And everybody was just breezing over and sort of just talking and trying to make light, and trying to find these very heartfelt ways of describing the time. I broke through the conversation and I said, ‘Hey, listen, man, it was the fucking eighties. It was the eighties, early nineties, and it was crack. It was the fucking gold rush.’ And when you look at the Rockefellers, Rothschilds, Kennedys, and all of those big, huge families, what did they start their fortune off of?
Slavery, probably.
Then after that, they went into fucking liquor and other things at the time—illicit and illegal business—and they went on to become the fucking powerhouses of the country. I said, ‘For real, that shit was young Black kids fucking getting rich, and getting rich quick. And I look at it no differently than those families.’ We were the only ones who were fucking singled out, you know what I'm saying? Like, Nah, we gotta stop this, we're gonna single-handedly destroy a generation, and target them, from prison to drugs being placed in the neighborhoods, and so on and so forth.
I'm glad that you take that away, because I'm really just giving you the mentality of that kid from then to now, because the hustle was our fucking gold rush, bro. For us. That shit was merely mischief during that time, during my era when I went outside. We were really gambling with our lives, you know what I'm saying? It was purely, purely mischief… And getting money. They waged a war on us… And they had been waging a war on us since the eighties.
‘The crack era was such a Black era. How many still standing reflecting in that mirror? Lucky me.’
Lucky me. Right, right, right. Listen, I heard you and I was like, Wait a minute... My verses be so edited by Kanye, because it was more bars after that! He be like, ‘No, man, you goin’ too far, aghhhhhhh!!!’ MP—So, look, I wasn't as engrossed in the culture when Clipse was making their run. The most that I remember’s that everybody would do “Grindin’” on the fuckin’ lunch table. Everyone. *Drums table with his fists* That's how you freestyle at lunch. I remember that shit, I remember “Mr. Me Too” and all that, but I listen to that as a grown man, and it's like... You talkin’ ‘bout how ‘them crackers wasn't playing fair at Jive,’ right? So, that guy saying that, to you being head of G.O.O.D. Music, what have you taken from your experiences to lead you to be a good business person, to have good dealings and to evolve as the game evolves so quickly?
Well, for G.O.O.D., and my involvement, it was all about relationships and trust. I always kept a good, neutral relationship with everyone at G.O.O.D., meaning artistically, and I feel like Kanye took notice of that, and of me being tapped in with new shit. We got the “Don’t Like” remix, which, people don’t know, we were actually tryna sign all of them from Chicago, from Chief Keef to Lil Durk to everybody. That was my play: myself, and Free Maiden, who’s like GM over at G.O.O.D., works on Ye’s management team. I was working on Cruel Summer, and we came to New York. We were just kickin’ it—Don C was there as well, I believe—and Ye was like, ‘Yo, man, what’s hot? What’s new?’ And I was like ‘Shit, don’t ask me what I’m listening to… ‘Cause I’m gonna pull up some shit.’ He was like, ‘Nah, just pull it up,’ and I pulled up “3Hunna” from Chief Keef. I pulled it up, and this joint is going, “Don't Like.” I was like, ‘This shit about to go, this gonna snap.’ It might have been moving. It was early, though. Me and Free was like, ‘Yo, you know what? We should sign all of them.’ And I was like, ‘No, dog, you've got to sign every last one of them, too. They got this producer, Young Chop, he just needs to do all their beats. It ain't even no heavy lifting. You just let them do they thing. It's going to look dope because you from Chicago, they from Chicago. It's the youth.’
By the time we’re trying to make the deal happen, they started catching deals. Durk might have caught a deal. Keef caught a deal. I actually took Durk on tour with me. I was like, ‘Durk's the star,’ because he had this record called “L's Anthem” that I was a huge fan of. But with that being said, I think Ye was like, Man, bro, you tapped into shit that I don't catch until a little later. We were just into new energy and shit like that.
It's crazy you gave me that whole section of history, as I'm sitting in Chicago in my living room right now.
Yeah, man. What would've happened if we had that whole collective? What the fuck would've happened, man? And they were just killing and ripping up the underground, eventually turning iconic, as you're looking at Durk having his moment and shit. And that's not even a given moment. That's 10 years. It's really dope to watch him, specifically, because that is something I saw.
Yeah. Now he’s sold out the United Center. He's gone. And Keef’s like a cult figure where he's still been able to get insane hits without having to play the major label game, too.
Yep. 1,000%. It's great. And you're looking at them on two different spectrums.
Let me ask you this: hip-Hop comes from poor Black folks, from niggas who ain't had shit making shit from what they had; didn't have instruments, plugged in turntables, borrowed people's records, flipped that shit, got on the mic, start the party. So, in theory, if a world without poverty is attainable, what does a world without trap music look like? Because if you take away the conditions that facilitate that, where niggas don't have to fight each other, struggle, make choices that they probably shouldn't make, what does that condition look like when there's no trap music? There'd be no need for it, right?