KRS-One: You Must Learn

The outspoken South Bronx MC pulls out all the stops in this extra thorough interview.

Interview RSS The Exclusive MP3.com
Interview Podcast

Audio KRS-One
Hip-Hop Lives

Editors Note: This interview was recorded as a conference call, which is why there's another guy talking at the start, and other people calling in. I had a ton of questions, but KRS likes to talk -- a lot – so I didn't get to ask many. His comments are really really long, but he's got some very interesting things to say about the music industry, so-called rap scholars, the "real" origin of hip-hop, Kool Herc's sister, plant life, and the periodic table of elements.

MP3: Hey, what's up you guys, this is Brolin from MP3. KRS: No doubt. Let me put a period on this. Oh, wait a minute, hold it. Before I go further, the question is…Can you rephrase the question for our new guest? Random Guy: I said, a lot of people think that the spotlight has been taken off of New York City because of all the internal beefing. Everybody claiming to be the best, and stuff like that and all the drama. That's why a lot of people are turning elsewhere to hear hip-hop, that's why like the South is popping right now and stuff like that. Do you find that to be like, true? And then I went on to say that, I reluctantly say yes, there's a lot of internal beef and politics. Cats claiming they the best when they're really not and all of that. Yes. That did take the spotlight off of New York. But here's what I think happened based on why I left New York. You can't eat in New York. Simple and plain. You can't eat in New York. There used to be a time when you could eat in New York as an emcee. There were clubs to go to. There were production deals happening, there were record companies, there were record stores. The record business collapsed, the record companies collapsed, because remember, that was New York City's real political power. It wasn't our art, it was the money. It was the fact that all the major record labels were in New York and when Death Row launched itself out in California—really it wasn't even Death Row, it was Delicious Vinyl.

When Delicious Vinyl came out with Tone Loc and Young MC, that's when everybody said "wait a minute, we don't have to stay in New York no more?" And most of the executives ran over to the West Coast, because they were making a gang of money over on the West Coast, and they neglected artists like everyone I mentioned. KRS—the whole golden age emcees. A prime example of that is Jive Records. Right around 1996, '97, Jive Records stopped putting out KRS. Well, it was really '98, my last album with them was I Got Next. But they just stopped putting my music out. They stopped putting A Tribe Called Quest out. Stopped putting Kool Moe Dee out. Stopped putting Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince's records out. Stopped putting Skinny Boys out. Stopped associating with Whodini. You know, all of that, and switched their label roster to Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, and N*SYNC. So people like KRS went and got jobs. We couldn't eat. We couldn't survive no more.

I went to the West Coast and I got an A&R gig at Reprise Records at Warner Bros. I became head of Urban Music off of Reprise Records at Warner Bros here in California. 300 Warner Boulevard. Out here in Burbank. And it was a great year and a half. I had two children, it really lifted me up, I was making money. It was all good. But I couldn't live as an emcee, it was a real tough period for a lot of emcees, right around '97, you know, to like now, to be honest with you. But you ask a lot—you ask people like Das EFX, ask Wu Tang, ask Junior M.A.F.I.A. Ask Gang Starr, ask Nice & Smooth and Salt & Pepa and you know, these groups were shattered by this time with the way radio was. The way we just got shut out, all of a sudden the labels are not pressing our music and the radio stations are being bought up by Def Jam, Interscope and Universal.

And labels like Tommy Boy and Loud and you know, these guys that used to be hip-hop, Loud, Wild Pitch and all these little labels, they all went out of business. You know, Virgin Records—I mean, it was a big label, but that too, what are they doing now? You know, everything now became either Universal or Interscope of some sort, or Def Jam. And now Def Jam is Universal. So, it's now just Universal. This to me is what crushed a lot of emcees.

And I went and survived on the lecture circuit and as an executive at Warner Bros., that's how I survived. I didn't survive off of hip-hop or doing rap music because there was no money there during say 1996 to say, to 2006. Or, really—no I can't say that. When VH1's Hip-Hop Honors started coming on television, I guess it was 2004. That first Hip-Hop Honors, right around that time is when artists like myself and Doug E and everybody that I mentioned, started to feel some light again. I never stopped touring. Doug E never stopped touring. Kane never stopped touring. But we would tour for three thousand dollars a night, five thousand dollars a night, you know, sometimes, like artists—like I don't know what—I know Kane and them be hustling on their level. I don't know what they made on their level. But I know as far as KRS is concerned, I set my price at $10 a head so that I could do business with the clubs. And so I said, "Look, all KRS wants is $10. So, if you have 100 people, give me a grand. You got 200 people, give me two grand. You got 300 people, give me three grand. If I'm going to play for a thousand people, give me ten grand. If I'm going to play for two thousand people like the House of Blues or the Apollo Theater, or something like this, I want twenty grand." And this seemed to work for everybody.

And I'm just saying this also as part of the interview, there may be some emcees should know that. But at the end of the day if KRS just wants ten—ten dollars a head, then the promoter gets to mark that up to a twenty dollar ticket, or a twenty five dollar ticket. If that promoter has a bar, the bar is moving, cause a lot of KRS fans drink. And so you got your bar moving and you're making money at the door cause you're basically splitting it with KRS-One.

So, you know what I'm saying, so I did business all through those times. I never stopped working, never stopped getting money. I'm not crying broke at all, not at all. But there was a standard of living that we all lived, million dollar videos, and you know, just crazy. I mean, the shows—we did the arenas. We're doing arenas and we're doing, you know, stuff like that, and all of that came to an abrupt stop. And we were all blacklisted because we were considered old. And KRS was blacklisted for several reasons, all kinds of reasons. But on top of that, but we stayed amongst the people.

And what happened was, the people held us up. I came to LA cause these Mexicans fed my family. And I got to put it just like that! These Mexicans hold me down. KRS-One rules Mexico. No doubt! I came to California, these Mexicans out here are playin'. They're spending, they're drinking, they're eating. They're coming out, they're buying the album, buying the shirts, buying the posters. I go on the radio any time I want. Publicity's popping. Why wouldn't I live in California?

I go down to New York, Hot 97 don't even want to—matter of fact, Hot 97 banned me from the station. The ban is lifted now because Funkmaster Flex is trying to make amends, and you know, he put an olive branch down and I did accept it because I don't have reason to argue. But, let's just keep it real. You banned me from the station and you was working there, Flex, so let's keep it real.

But I was banned from Hot 97, you know, and I started the station. I know a lot of people, you know, artists always talking about what they started, like, "Yo, I was there from the beginning." No, KRS was the voice of the station. Like, every day my voice would come on and say, "From the tippity, tippity top of the hip-hop culture, WQHT FM." I would say that every day in 1994, it would come on. And in about three years later, this station bans me and refuses to play my music.

And so, this is what a lot of us went through. Me, Kane, all of us. But the people still paid to see us because our live shows were ridiculous. And the cats that they saw on television every day, their live show was garbage. And so now in 2007, the people you see on TV winning Grammies and all of this type of stuff, they can't pack a club. They don't do business. Their tours are sponsored. All their tours are in the red. All their tours lose money. All their tours lose money. Their tours are sponsored. They got Coke, they got Sprite, they got a car, they got a clothing line—they got somebody sponsoring, or should I say underwriting their tours. So they go in the big venues because the sponsor, Scion or some cigarette company or an alcohol, a Hennessey, or an energy drink, somebody is coming in and buying the venue, buying the sound system so that they can put up their advertising and grab that audience. And that's what most of these guys are playing.

That's why we call them 'rappers' and not emcees. emcees draw a crowd on they name! Just put my name on a flyer, I don't need a record, I don't need a video, I don't need none of that. Put my name on a flyer and cats is bound to show up. That's what Doug E Fresh is doing right now. Doug E Fresh ain't had a record out in ten years easy. Not even ten years. Easy fifteen years, Doug E Fresh ain't had a record out. But you put Doug E Fresh name on any flyer anywhere in the world and the place is rammed.

Slick Rick can put a record out. You put his name on the flyer anywhere, it's rammed. Immortal Technique has yet to put out an album. You put Immortal Technique's name on a flyer, it's rammed. And this is what I mean, what I would hope the Hip-Hop Lives album brings light to. You know, let's get back to the truth now. We blinged it up, we did—well, let me tell you what the truth is. The truth is, is that there are more two-hundred seater clubs in the country, really in the world, but in the United States, there's more two-hundred seater clubs in the hoods of the United States than there are arenas and theaters. You cats talking about we in the hood, we in the hood, no you not if all you doin' is the arenas. You got to come down and make two thousand dollars and rock a two-hundred seater club for ten dollars a head, and then you can call yourself an emcee and then hip-hop also benefits. Why? Because a major artist that you get to see on TV, you get to see that artist now for a cheap price. Manager/PR: I'm sorry to interupt, I got to wrap this one up. No doubt. So, last question. Random Guy: Can we just ask like, a few more, if you could try to keep them like, a little shorter? No doubt. Cut me off man! Random Guy: All right. So what would you say is one of the biggest things that bothered you about modern day hip-hop? The fact that old school artists are not paying enough attention nor giving enough homage to the cats that are coming up today. Random Guy: All right, cool. What is the biggest misconception about you? Maybe something that we don't know about you, like maybe shocking to found out. Oh, man, that I'm really a humble person. (laughs) Random Guy: All right. How do you stay motivated like, after all these years? I'm still hungry. I stay away from becoming rich. I don't want to be rich. I want to be wealthy. I just want to pay my bills and live. I don't need to be rich to do that. I just need to have enough. So, I keep myself at a certain level of hunger. It's called discipline. You keep yourself at a certain level of hunger. I stay with emcees on the street, on the corner, I try to stay within the ciphers. I try to keep myself involved. Another level of it's spiritual. Spirituality keeps my energy going. No doubt, I am hip-hop. Hip-hop is not a material thing. hip-hop is a collective consciousness. It's an attitude, it's a behavior, it's a way to be, a style of life. I am hip-hop. And so I am a non-tangible idea. So I can transfer myself into your mind or anyone else's mind, simply through my rhymes. So I don't see myself as a physical being I see myself as a spiritual being. And as a spiritual being I have everlasting life. My spiritual principles hav a lot to do with how I keep myself hungry and on top, you know, on top of my game. Yeah.

Random Guy: So, right now it seems that hip-hop only cares about, like beats and hooks, aren't you worried that, you know, true messages like yours might fall on deaf ears? No. Because it is going to fall on deaf ears, on Def Jam ears! Ha Ha! So, pun intended. It is going to fall on deaf ears and I invite that because my album, or should I say our album, when I say, include Marley. But speaking from KRS's point of view here, this album is not about, you know, like it has to sell a million copies to be successful or you know, people get the message in the album. This is not about that. This is about all the people that are already—this album is preaching to the choir. No doubt. I don't give a f*** if you don't want to listen to KRS-One. This album has nothing to do with that. This album is not trying to make a younger audience understand who I am. I hope they do—I damn sure hope they do! No doubt about that. But this ain't that. This is elder-ship. This is maturity. This is focus. This is—what that is.

So, this is principles, this is hip-hop, hip-hop lives. And so, if this doesn't excite you, you know, the listener, or if it's not something you want to go grab, then fine. You know, it's no hard feelings on that, none at all. You will come around to it eventually. It's the same thing I said in 1987 when people asked me about the Fat Boys and Whodini. And they said, "Are you worried that Criminal Minded—people just won't understand it? That this idea of a teacher with a gun in his hand, that people will not—do you find that contradictory? Do you find that, you know, with the state of rap today?" And my answer is [that] I am a teacher. I am here to blaze the trail I'm not here to follow the trail. I'm here to smash emcees that can't get they act together. I'm not here to compromise. I'm not here to point fingers even, at other emcees and say, "You're wack and you're fresh." I'm here to shine my light. And say, "If y'all can do better than this, do it."

But I don't hear nobody doing better than this. I don't hear nobody doing better than KRS-One in the live club scene right now. I don't hear that right now. Other than, of course, Big Daddy Cane, Doug E Fresh, Slick Rick. Other than that crew. But in terms of cats coming up today or, to answer the question explicitly, am I worried about people you know, it's falling on deaf ears. Knowledge always falls on deaf ears. The truth always falls on deaf ears, always. It is inevitable.

But I'm hoping that, that one attorney that gets this album right now, she or he is at law school, they get this album and they're in law school, and they go, "You know what? I'm appalled at these rap murders. I'm going to make it my business [to solve them]. I was inspired by this song, 'Kill A Rapper.'" That's my point. For me, I would rather sell a hundred thousand records to the right people, than a million records to the wrong people. So, yeah, let this album fall on a million deaf ears. And let ten thousand of the right people get this album. I pray for that. I pray that ten thousand of the right people, the future President of the United States, a future mayor, the head of the board of education, the head of the police, the head of the medical association, insurance companies.

I hope that this album, that they get this album and they're inspired and takes this—like, I'll tell you this, in this point right here, I was hoping for that, with By All Means Necessary, and with the Stop the Violence movement. And we won. Our mission is a success. Barak O'Bama is now running for president. He is a direct, DIRECT, direct—he is directly influenced by Public Enemy. Direct! He has the album. He knows KRS-One and probably was DIRECTLY influenced by the Stop the Violence movement. Him. We are now moving into a time where it's not, "Oh, I don't know. I don't know about that history. That didn't influence me. I'm a young man from off the farm in the South, I'm not a big city slinger." No, Barak Obama was like "no, I was a crack head. My wife got me off crack." You know he was in the hood. No doubt. Now look, he's running for President right now. Oh, okay. Manager/PR: I've got to wrap this thing up guys. I got to go onto the next one. Brolin? Yeah. Manager/PR: Okay, sorry about that. Hey, no worries. How you doing KRS? Damn. I am doing good man. You want to just jump right in? Yeah, totally. I just wanted to talk about the album man. How did you hook up with Marley again? Had you guys been in touch, or did you reach out to him, or him to you, or what? Well, the legend goes like this. [KOCH Records executive] Alan Grunblatt calls me up and says, "I want to do a Boogie Down Productions Lost Tapes album. And I say, "I don't really want to do that because it's--the 20th anniversary of Boogie Down Productions is coming up, '87 to 2007, I want to do a tribute album." He said, "Well what do you have in mind?" I said, "Well, let me go get Premier he has a studio already, let me go in with Premier and do this Boogie Down Production album with Premier. I think hip-hop would love that." And so Alan was like, "Word, that's a great idea, let's have a meeting on it." So when I got back from Europe I took a meeting there with Koch and D, who I'm going to call the A&R, D suggested in the meeting, "Yeah, Premier's dope. But if you're really talking about a Boogie Down Productions album, let's get Marley Marl on that album." Because that's really where Boogie Down Productions starts and so on. When those words came out of his mouth, everybody stood up and was like, "word! That's really what it's all about. So we got Marley on the phone at the very minute—that very minute, we found his number, we got him, I said, "Marley, please, we're in a meeting right now, will you do this project?" He said, "Yes." He didn't know how much money it was worth, he didn't know what the timeframe was, he didn't have the tracks, nothing. It was just me and him on the phone. I said, "Yo, will you do this project? You have to commit to it. And you just have to take whatever deal that Koch Records gives you, because I'm just asking you to do this and you can't say no." So he said, "I'm going to do it. I'm in." And so, and then he jumped in. And so we then got—I left New York, went to LA, where I live, and me and Marley got on the phone and had a three and a half hour conversation that was real mushy. "I love you." Reminiscing about the old days. "You're the greatest." "No, you're the greatest." "No, you're the greatest." Three and a half hours of that. And at the end of that we then said okay, now what kind of album are we going to create. And so we went around and thought about, how you know, what is going on in hip-hop right now. And Marley pointed to the fact that there are not many producers anymore, they're just beat makers. Indeed. That people are just slinging beats, but they're not really engaging the artist. Not everybody. I mean, there are still a lot of good producers out there that are engaging the artist. But for the most part, for those who buy rap albums that are trying to get their career started, we wanted to make an explicit point about the difference between production and beat making. And so Marley threw that into the pot. I wanted to talk about more serious and adult topics. I felt that the subject matter of rap music has gone down, obviously. No doubt. And I wanted to entertain more adult—what I would call more mature topics. [The song] "Kill A Rapper". Unsolved rap murders. Breaking down the entomology of the word 'hip' and 'hop' – adding that kind of scholarly teacher thing to it. Plus, I also wanted to thank Marley Marl openly. I threw that in it. I said, you know, Marley, straight up—I mean, he heard it already but I said to him, "I want to explicitly on the album thank you, thank Shan, thank Mr. Magic, for the start of my career, basically, a credit that they never, you know, they themselves never explicitly took, but I explicitly say and I guess they explicitly agree—but I want to be sure that I say, on vinyl, on record—aah, look at me—on vinyl! I hear you though. I want to say, in a recording, "Thank you Marley Marl. If it wasn't for you I wouldn't be here. You are the greatest producer of all time." That's it! We wanted to get that out. Finally, we talked about what this album means to hip-hop. Like, what it actually means to hip-hop. We was already thinking about the idea of resurrecting hip-hop. Before Nas came with Hip-Hop is Dead, we knew this already, that it would seem like an answer to Nas' album Hip-Hop is Dead. Right. But you were already planning that beforehand? Well, no. Not this title, Hip-Hop Lives. But something that has to do with the living of hip-hop. Something. Me and Marley was throwing this thing around, the living of hip-hop, the lifestyle of hip-hop, some kind of scholarly thing. We had a title called "All School" instead of "True School" "Old School" or "New School" we had "All School". You know, we were throwing titles around like that. So, so these were the subject matters that we wanted to get into on this album. And then of course, just some lyrics. I didn't want to preach too much. I wanted to drop style songs like music where I kind of get off into a Spanish thing. You know, there's a—I don't know if you have this, but there's a new song I put on there called "I Was There" and I kind of talk about rap historians. A lot of the books that are coming out documenting the history of hip-hop, are really pretty pitiful. Yeah, I wanted to actually ask you about that, because you've authored several books yourself… Okay. MP3: I wanted to ask -- you've been lecturing in schools for years now, and the hip-hop in academics is really blowing up right now, a lot of books coming out. Being that you're "the teacha" and whatnot, do you feel like you sort of started that, you know, academics taking rap music seriously, as a cultural thing? You know, humbly, I would say no. Because you cannot take credit for anything as a teacher. I mean, if that was the case, teachers would be the president. It would be like, "We're the cause for every god-damned thing on the earth." But no. Humbly, as a teacher, I would say, this is the natural order of things. I would point to the fact that hip-hop is a culture. This proves further that this is beyond music. This is a real community of people that are trying to survive and figure themselves out in the world. Now that I would take credit for, to say that hip-hop is a culture, hip-hop is a community, rap is something we do, hip-hop is something we live. I am hip-hop. Yeah, of course, KRS will take credit for that. These are my slogans and statements. But people going to arrive at it anyway, in my opinion. You're going to arrive at it anyway. You don't need KRS to say that hip-hop is a culture. In fact, just to be accurate, Afrika Bambaataa was preaching hip-hop as a culture long before me. I was just more explicit with mine.

You know, but if you hung around Zulu Nation, you know, any time from '74 to '84, or '94 for that matter, you hear hip-hop being discussed as a community, as a culture, as this kind of thing. So, but going to your question explicitly, scholar—what I would call hip-hop scholarship—the hip-hop scholarship movement, yeah, KRS is part of the shining light. Let me throw Chuck D in there too. Let me throw Ice-T in there, as well. These are the early writers. Let me throw Nelson George up in there too. Let me throw Greg Tate in there. Sacha Jenkins as well. Let me also throw Jeff Chang in there as well. I don't like his writing. I say that explicitly, but I give him respect as one of the early cats writing about hip-hop in that sense, and I've had many conversations with Jeff Chang. I consider him a fellow scholar. But nonetheless, his perspective on hip-hop to me is wrong.

There's a book out, Can't Stop Won't Stop, that I will use as an example. A book being taught on college campuses right now as a matter of fact, as the bible for hip-hop. Anything you want to know about hip-hop, go straight to Can't Stop Won't Stop and that seems to be where a lot of kids are getting their academic information. Scholarly information.

I have issue with that. Not only do I have cultural issues with that, meaning, who gave you the authority to even write such a book? That's number one. Just because Kool Herc wrote the forward of the book does not mean you have the authority to define and interpret our culture to the world. I was never interviewed for the book. Pee Wee Dance was never interviewed for the book. Grandmaster Caz was not interviewed for the book. And I mention these people in particular because these are hip-hop's historians from day one. And I'm not, you know, gassing anybody—I'm not trying to bring no titles, you know, none of that.

Pee Wee Dance is a b-boy, but he was there from day one. Every true scholar gets their history from either Grandmaster Caz who was there from day one, or Busy Bee, who was there, and hold themselves out as scholars and as historians. They themselves call themselves hip-hop historians. A.D, from the Cold Crush is a hip-hop historian. These people are historians.

Now, the fact that they are never brought, never seriously approached as scholars, to me is a bit like discrimination, you know, borderline racist. But it falls in the line of discrimination like, you don't—like your prejudice is that they have nothing to offer to academic scholarship, maybe because the way they talk or the way they dress, or the lifestyle. Or maybe their perspective just doesn't fit into the methodology of the academy. So you brush them off and push them to the side, even though they are the true scholars of the culture. So that's my first point, and I find that disgusting.

The second point. There is a teacher. There is someone who has held himself out to be the teacher, who has been educating, who has been on the college campuses. No doubt! Who has written books on hip-hop. Who has led campaigns and movements and so on. But you explicitly—you explicitly leave him out of your writing. Explicitly. You know, let me just walk over to my library real quick, hold on. I just want to get Can't Stop Won't Stop real quick. In the book, Jeff Chang talks about the Stop the Violence movement, in the book. And this is just—and I'm not in any way—you know, if you re-write this or print this in any way, please print that I'm in no way discrediting Jeff Chang or his writing. Like I said, I consider him a fellow scholar as well and this is why I critique his book. Other books are not even worthy of even being discussed.

But Can't Stop Won't Stop is a bit of scholarly work, and deserves to be discussed. And secondly—okay, I have it right here, here it is. And secondly, I'm mentioned in this book. Okay? I'm mentioned in the book itself. So, in going off into hip-hop scholarship I will not spend much time on this. Let me read this to you. This is page 273, and the—wait a minute, hold on—and the—hold on, I want to get you the chapter that this is in, because each paragraph has a sub—has a heading. Okay, this is Chapter 13, where it says:

"Follow for now the question of post-civil rights black leadership." "Follow for now the question of post-civil rights black leadership."

Now, there are several paragraphs. I'm focusing on the paragraph that focuses on me. It says:

"Black artists, as the new black leadership."

Now, he starts off with, you know, "Greg Tate and Chuck D, were continuing in the tradition of Adam Clayton Powell, Jackie Robertson and Malcolm X. Taking the black liberation struggle in scathingly personal terms. But there was a new scene of scale—I'm sorry—"But there was a new sense of scale to the debate. The discourse was migrating from the realm of the political to the cultural. From the intimacy of street corners and race papers to the fishbowl of the global media."

Now we jump over to the Stop the Violence movement. He said, "The Stop the Violence movement was an example of what rappers could do well."

What a disrespect that first line is. Who the hell are you to say what rapper can do well? But it goes on. Going further down it says—man, I don't even know where to start. It says, it says here:

"They can see the project that would include a benefit record, video, book and rally around the theme 'Stop the Violence' – the title of KRS-One's ode to his fallen partner Scott La Rock."

Wrong! The record Stop the Violence was not a tribute to Scott La Rock at all, in fact, me and Scott wrote the record together. "Stop the Violence" only appeared after Criminal Minded, it wound up on the album afterwards because Scott was killed. And he couldn't take credit for it in that writing sense. "Stop the Violence talks" about club violence. It talks about how the hip-hop community got to stop club violence. It had nothing to do with Scott La Rock because it was written when Scott was alive. That's inaccurate history. This is my point for bringing it up.

It goes further. It says, "But Stop the Violence was always less a movement than a media event." What a diss! This is printed. This is page 274. But the Stop the Violence, he says, "But Stop the Violence was always less a movement than a media event. The project was never intended to be a political campaign against the black on black crime. That was for the civil rights organization like the Urban League. Stop the Violence meant to counterspin the mainstream media, reassure the entertainment business, show that rap artists could be responsible and that hip-hop was a self-policing and stable industry. Nothing more should have been expected." Quote!

Now take a look at this. Take a look at it. I'm just talking about scholarship. It says, "Black artists as the new black leadership." Then you go and discredit the black leadership. You say that at the end, "nothing more should have been expected". Like you actually say the Stop the Violence movement was really a media event and nothing more should have been expected from it other than to reassure the entertainment industry that rappers could be responsible and you can get some money here. What a diss! What a diss!

But, forget the diss. That's personal to KRS, that's personal. Here's professional—it's inaccurate history! That's the point. It's inaccurate history and fake scholarship. Not to dwell on this but let me go just a little further while I'm standing in front of my library. I have every hip-hop book ever written. That's my claim. And so, I'm standing here in front of this library here, and I have at least a hundred and fifty hip-hop books right here. I've read all of them. And I'm going through everybody's shit, really. There's some books that are really good, like really, really, really, really good.

Last Night a DJ Saved My Life, by Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton. I'm holding this book right now. This book is excellent, absolutely and like, no bullshit, they don't care, they just printing the facts, that you could go and dig up from anywhere. Tell you another good one. Hip-Hop and Philosophy: Rhyme 2 Reason, by Derrick Darby and Tommie Shelbie. Excellent, excellent hip-hop book. There's another one called The Hip-Hop Reader. I got to find it, it's not in front of me right now, I'm going by memory. I'll find it. It's called The Hip-Hop Reader. Has Michael Eric Dyson's reports on hip-hop. Dr. Cornell West has a piece on hip-hop.

These cats are real scholars and they're approaching the culture the way real scholars should. How should real scholars approach the culture? First of all, we can't jump on the dick of Kool Herc. We can of course respect the folklore and the legend of our culture. No doubt Kool Herc is the father of hip-hop, the first b-boy, the first graf writer, the first DJ, the first one to do all of our elements all at the same time, we give that credit to Kool Herc and that credit comes from Grandmaster Caz and from Pee Wee Dance, the true scholars of the culture. They validate Kool Herc and we then go from there to Afrika Bambaataa.

Now, that's the legend. Herc, Bam, Crazy Legs, Flash. That's the legend. But as scholars we got to ask hard questions. And the hard question is, but wait a minute! Let's look at this as for real. Let's put on the critical thinking hat. Where did hip-hop begin and how? Everybody's writing, there's a history of this and history of that. But we didn't even really discuss the origins of hip-hop. The origins. What is it that caused hip-hop to exist?

Graffiti writing starts at Philadelphia, not in New York. Poppin lockin stops--no, no, wait a minute, popping and locking starts in Oakland California. Actually, Kool Herc is Jamaican. Afrika Bambaataa is Jamaican. Doug E Fresh is Jamaican. Grandmaster Flash, West Indian. KRS-One, West Indian. Slick Rick, West Indian. What is it about hip-hop and these West Indian people? What is it? Did hip-hop really start in the Bronx? I know I got a record out called "South Bronx," I know I said South Bronx, this is where hip-hop began. I shouted out Marley and Shan said no, it didn't start in Queensbridge, it started in the South Bronx.

But Grandmaster Caz will be like, "Wait, no, it started in the West Bronx." But then I would say, "But wait a minute Caz, you got a rhyme. There's a rhyme that you say you wrote, "Rapper's Delight." And there's a rhyme that says, 'I'm hemp the demp, the ladies pimp, the women fight for my delight.'" Now, Big Bank Hank said that rhyme in "Rapper's Delight" and you claim that's your rhyme. "I'm the grandmaster with the 3 emcees". Big Bank Hank gives himself away right there because he wasn't the Grandmaster with the 3 emcees, because the Grandmaster with the 3 emcees was Grandmaster Caz, with the other 3 emcees, A.D. uh, the Cold Crush 4. Tony Tone, A.D. and K.G. And the DJ Charlie Chase. That was the crew he was rhyming about. 'I'm the Grandmaster with the 3 emcees.' Big Bank Hank only had 2 emcees with him and he wasn't a Grandmaster, he was called Big Bank Hank.

Now you look at that rhyme, and I'm just going to deal with this scholarly. You look at the rhyme, "I'm hemp the demp, the ladies pimp, the women fight for my delight." Comes out of Big Bank Hank's mouth. Grandmaster Caz said, "But wait, that was my rhyme." Okay, so, "Okay, Caz, where did you get the rhyme from, did you write that?" We don't know. We have yet to ask Caz that question. But what I do know is, in a movie called Five on the Black Hand Side, there's a scene where a guy walks in, in 1971 this movie was made, a guy walks into a barber shop and he goes, "I'm hemp the demp, the ladies pimp, the women fight for my delight". That's in a movie nine years before "Rapper's Delight" and at least 5 years before Caz is saying it himself.

So, who's the author of this really? Is it Caz? Is it Big Bank Hank? But wait, there's more! You go further back with this. You look at this movie, it's recorded in '71. The folklore says hip-hop starts in '73 with Kool Herc in Cedar Park. But the scholarship says that we were spitting rhymes in '71. There's a movie documenting it already, with the same rhyme Caz is saying. But let's go even further. There's a guy named H. Rap Brown who's serving time right now, Black Panther, revolutionary of the 60s, civil rights cat, he's death row right now. And back in the days, he put a book out called Die Nigger Die, by H. Rap Brown. Notice the name 'Rap'. Now, H. Rap Brown puts a book out, the copyright of the book is 1969, this is the copyright of the book, 1969.

In the book, he's rhyming--he's talking about how he was a rapper, he was rapping. He talks about his childhood years in 1969. So in 1969, he takes you back to like 1954. And he says, "In 1954 we used to do a thing called the dozens. And we used to do a thing called signify. And the dozens was battling and signifying was posturing about yourself, 'I'm the greatest cat ever'." They was doing that in Baton Rouge Louisiana in 1954.

So, this folklore that hip-hop starts in the Bronx is bulls***, really, when you become a scholar. So now you look at H. Rap Brown, now here's the clincher. Why do I bring H. Rap Brown in it? Because in 1954 he wrote his rhymes out. In the book, Die Nigger Die, he wrote his 1954 rhymes in the book. And guess how they start!!! "I'm hemp the demp, the ladies pimp, the women fight for my delight." This is documented evidence in physical nature.

So when you got books like Can't Stop Won't Stop, and the others, that are only going with the folklore, the bullshit, the jocking, the Afrika Bambaataa -- I'm jocking him. Kool Herc, he's the father of hip-hop. Okay, Caz said it so it must be true. Or, KRS got a record called the "South Bronx," and so it must be true! That's some fan s***. And that's what I see a lot of these scholars are on. My fans are more family. The rest of these cats like these pop artists, they've got fans, they got real fans. They got cats that buy they record and don't give a f*** about them.

KRS don't enjoy that, I don't--that's not my world, I don't have that. I can't even go to the supermarket without somebody going, "Yo, what's up? What's going on? What happening?" This that and the other. So I bring this up to say, we got to stop jocking these icons. Stop jocking these pioneers and as scholars ask them serious questions about their creativity, about where they come from. You know, out of all these books, they're supposed to have Kool Herc, as a, you know, a witness, an interview, a forward. None of them, none of these books, none of them mentions the influence of his sister Cindy. None of them. They may reference her, they may, you know, do this and that, but they don't talk about Cindy the way Cindy really is. What she really used to do with Herc. And when Herc was going through his drug thing, how Cindy was there. When Herc was in jail, how Cindy was there. How she kept the Kool Herc name going along.

These cats is only jocking these artists and these icons, they're not asking their mothers questions about them. They're not asking their brothers and their wives questions about them. They're just going to the artist and going, you know, "I saw you in a video, so I'm going to start my scholarship with you in a video." You know, scholarship has nothing to do with rap music, it has nothing to do with it. Hip-hop? You have to talk to police--so, like we got to go get Mean Gene. Cats like Mean Gene, who ain't a rapper or nothing. But Mean Gene was a--no actually, wait a minute, Mean Gene was a B Boy. Actually I'm thinking about like the L Brothers and these cats were emcees, there's a guy--I'm thinking of his name--damn--ah, I can't remember his name. But he was a police officer who used to do early parties with L Brothers and Cold Crush and early Flash and Melle Melle and Cowboy. He was a cop! A police--a guy affiliated with the cops! And then he was paying these guys to do shows.

I look at all these books, I don't hear the L Brothers in these books. I don't see none of this stuff. These guys got hip-hop on the cover of their books, they're still spelling hip-hop in lower case 'h' s. I mean, everybody else can do that, just spell hip-hop. Hip-hop is a proper noun. Hip-hop is a specific thing. Hip-hop is a community. In the Oxford English Dictionary and the American Collegiate Dictionary, we're there as a culture, a subculture in Oxford English and the culture in American English. This is documented and we call ourselves scholars? No, man, we don't even have scholarship yet.

Really, hopefully this interview as well as the books to come will then lead us to true scholarship. But right now as long as books like Can't Stop Won't Stop are out, and people like KRS who are really doing the scholarship--I mean, I really wish I had time to get into this really with you because hip-hop is fascinating. It is nothing like what, even like rap and breakin' and all of that, hip-hop is way beyond that. Like, if you get into even the entomology of the word hip and hop, bringing it back to the album--I did a little bit of it on the title track where I talk about 'hip' means to know and 'hop' means movement. Okay, we get into that. But I would like to, I mean, we'll get back to this I guess at some point. But, I'll put a period here, that hip-hop you know, just the word hip and hop, you know, has a lot to do with plant life.

And I'm going to stop right here. It has to do with plant life. Hip is the name of rose petals, the see part of rose petals, roses, their seed pod, the pod that holds the seeds of roses that makes the flower explode is called 'hip'. And 'hop' is barley and other plants, vines that make beer and stuff like that. One is a flower, hip, and the other, hop, is a vine. And then you look at hip-hop on the periodic table, it's hydrogen iodine phosphorous, hydrogen oxygen phosphorous. Well, hydrogen, oxygen--I'm sorry, hydrogen iodine phosphorous makes phosphoric acid. It makes fertilizer. Hip makes things grow in--on the periodic table, hydrogen, iodine and phosphorous. All right. Hey, KRS man, it's great talking to you and good luck with the album. Thanks for taking the time for the interview, I appreciate it. (laughs) No doubt.