On Twitter, you say you’re the common denominator between Common and Chief Keef. Normally you don’t hear them in the same sentence. What made you put yourself between those two?
The crazy thing is that both of them come from the Southside of Chicago. You might not know it because Common doesn’t really talk about it but Common was involved in the gang culture too. They have a lot more in common than you would really know. It’s just the music at that time was in a more positive place. We were in a more positive place in Hip-Hop in general.
Common is older than me. Chief Keef is younger than me. I’m in the middle. I listen to both of them. I understand what affects both of them. It’s like one is my big brother and one is my little brother. The commonality between that is somebody that talks about both sides-that is street conscious but that is globally conscious. I bridge that gap. It’s street consciousness. I don’t want to make music where people where I’m from can’t really relate to and those from the gutters of the world that can’t relate to. The music is for them more than anybody else. It’s to explain their pain. The common denominator between Common and Chief Keef means finding that middle ground between both generations. It means that people who listen to Common can rock with me and people who listen to Chief Keef can rock with me.
Common wasn’t from the suburbs at all. And I know that because my older cousins grew up fighting against Common, in the street sense. I’ve heard of Rashid before there was a Common. I know the lifestyle he was living but I know that he was intelligent. I know that he went to college and had a strong family base. Chicago is just another dynamic. It’s hard to grow up in the inner city like Common, Chief Keef, or myself, and not be touched by the gang culture. We’ve all been touched by it.
So then what about the Asian kid from the suburbs of NYC like me?
My intent is that for people like you or the white girl that stumbled upon my music on the internet in Connecticut, I want to be able to paint that picture vividly. I want to be an artist in the pure sense of the word where I can draw you into my world with the emotions. People can feel where you come from. If you were to close Youtube off and had to listen to the music, would people really understand where you come from? My music aims to be that visual. I grew up in Chicago, but I felt like I knew everything about Compton, about South Central, about Brooklyn and Flatbush. One of my favorite songs growing up was “The Bush” by Special Ed. He was painting a picture of Flatbush. I felt like I was there. I want you to listen to my song, “Liquor Store,” and if there isn’t a liquor store like that in your community, I still want you to be able to paint that picture and see what it’s like. Movies like Menace II Society and Boyz n the Hood translated across all cultures because people had a glimpse into that world-a world they don’t have to drive through to go see. I want the kids from that community to hear the threads of positivity and see the balance of it, and learn something along the way. I learned something along the way listening to Nas and others. it made me look up certain words and look at things in a different perspective. I learned about prison industrial complex. I learned a lot of that from Hip-Hop. It should be an experience that can be shared from the ghetto to the suburbs. That’s Mikkey Halsted in a nutshell.
