Ultimately I am happy that everybody is embracing hip hop and the sounds from the streets.
in the mornin' po-lice at my door Fresh adidas squeak across the bathroom floor Out the back window.. I make a escape Don't even get a chance to grab my old school tape
You have the core hip-hop, which would just be beats and breaks, more something like what you hear with DJ Premier. Then you get into the more highly produced hip-hop, which is something like what DJ Khaled does. But at some point, it starts to get kind of pop.
Hip-hop is a competition culture. It's based around, "My DJ is better than you. My graffiti artist is better than you."
Rapping is a vocal delivery, so you can do it without being part of hip-hop and not knowing what hip-hop is about.
It's like a paradox. For one side, being popularized rap got better and the other side of it got worse. It's very pop and it's very different now. When you make it as pop and as soft as it is, it lacks its integrity. It lacks its accountability. It lacks a lot of other things that came from that dangerous time in hip hop.
I'm at a point where I don't have to wait for the income from the record to survive, so I'm in a comfortable zone, but I'll make rap records as long as I feel I have something to rap about.
I always knew that I had to direct. That was something I'd wanted to do. Finally, I was just looking at the situation and I said, "I wanna document hip-hop, as an art form, seeing how a lot of people don't take it seriously."
The trick with hip-hop-hip-hop is a sport. The only music that's really, really close to a sport. It starts off, "My DJ's better than yours. I can out-rap you, I can out-dance you, my graffiti piece is better than you." It's very competitive.
Everyone who raps isn't hip-hop. To be hip-hop, you've got to know the culture. You got to know the history.
