You talk a little bit about bringing Hip-Hop to where it came from, back in the day: lining up outside and really getting to know artists either through word of mouth or seeing them open up. I want to talk about this last experiment you guys put out, 80z Babiez To The 2Gz. It was an interesting mix of older Hip-Hop beats that were slightly altered, your stuff, and this kind of message of being trapped in between these two eras in Hip-Hop. I’m curious, after you’ve completed this project, how do you see yourself in the whole timeline of Hip-Hop, and how do you guys want to be remembered? Do you want to be placed within this time or are you trying to go for more– go ahead and answer the questions. I guess I don’t want to put words in your mouth.
N: [laughs] You got close. I mean, I feel that our whole point with that project was to show that there’s no beginning and there’s no end to creation. As humans, we put years on things-oh, it’s 1991 or it’s 1992-but the sun is still bright and the night is still dark. It’s just another day, so every year of Hip-Hop has had a golden era but it’s been proclaimed a different year by those who experienced it. We’re in the middle of different ideologies. We have the old school cats who are saying it should be like this, and we’ve got the new school cats that are saying it should be like this. And here we come again with this “we are one” stuff. Like yo, you guys were both young and rebellious at one time. We all broke rules at one time. We all were trying to get on at one time. We all were trying to be heard at one time, and during your time, you made certain standards exist, which may have become rules, and that was kind of like you live or you die by them. The new school cats are doing nothing different than what the old school cats were doing. The old school cats were taking James Brown, or taking Prince or whoever, and totally messing up the record. [laughs] It was like an old rock loop pissing off rock artists.
Nowadays, these young cats, they may not necessarily be listening to what the older cats were listening to. They listen to all kinds of stuff like current, alternative artists, because it’s at their fingertips on the internet. So, what we’re trying to say is: “Look, someone right now thinks Drake is the best rapper in the world.” They think he’s our LL Cool J. And what we’re saying is, “What’s wrong with that, if this is your era?” I know people are mad at Drake’s “Wu-Tang Forever.” Like, heated. Literally mad that he has a song titled “Wu-Tang Forever” where he happened to be singing on it, like “Oh, it’s such a disgrace to Wu-Tang.” Well, all he is doing is paying homage to Wu-Tang and it may not be the way you would have done it, but at least he is. You recognized where it came from before him.
What we wanted to do with 80z Babiez To The 2Gz was recognize what came before us and we wanted to put a current spin on it. We wanted to lead new art like no one else has done so that the next generation will look back on this and be like, “Wow, that was totally different than anything I’ve heard at the time.” We don’t want to segregate the generation. It’s weird, there is a lot of that in Hip-Hop; there’s a lot of that in Black Culture, and we’re trying to defy all goals and all standards. Again, why is it that you can’t listen to Tupac and Biggie? Why is it that you can’t listen to Drake and Wu-Tang? Why is it that you can’t listen to Lil B and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five? Whatever, you know, it shouldn’t be like that. It shouldn’t be segregated.
S: Why can’t KRS-One do the same shows that Drake does? One of our crew members was at A3C. And he was saying then, “Greg Nice went in and I felt he was talking directly to me.” He was like, “If you look at all of the Rock n’ Roll artists, they performed until they were damned near dead.” But there is this age limit on Hip-Hop we set for ourselves because Hip-Hop has always been about starting with the youth-starting with the rebellious youth, getting them off the streets. People will alter their looks. They’ll get extra six-packs and all of that, and live their life in a gym just to stay young. The actors in Hollywood a little bit too. But in Hollywood, they have older characters that older people play. In Hip-Hop, there aren’t too many older characters that people can play other than become the CEO or A&R. It’s like sports: You retire, so go sit on Sportscenter. It’s weird that a Greg Nice or a KRS-One or Rakim or Big Daddy Kane or whoever-it’s just weird that they aren’t all respected on a level that these new artists who are going platinum are. They are not respected on some Hall of Fame sh*t. It’s like, KRS-One laid the foundation!
N: I’ma wrap it up with this, I’ma make it real quick: It’s also interesting that-and this goes back to the whole segregation of Hip-Hop, segregation of culture in general-right now, it’s interesting because collaborations are really huge in Hip-Hop. They have been for a while-popular artists working with other popular artists. But the thing that trips me out, and what The Black Opera tries to stay away from, is making music as a business move. It has to be organic. Like I was saying earlier, I’ve met these people and I’ve travelled. We’ve built on other things besides music. So, whoever we happen to affiliate with or do a song with, is because we have a genuine relationship with these people. Nowadays, people do a song together and the next week they’re dissing each other like they weren’t cool. Or, all these people are cool now and you’ll see old Twitter posts from rappers like 2009. They were all dissing each other, but now they’re all cool. It doesn’t seem genuine. I promote collaboration, totally, but not if it’s not genuine.
S: It’s in the art.
N: If you don’t see a lot of rappers on The Black Opera’s songs, that’s why. Not because we’re like, “We’re better than everyone else.” No, we curated this.
S: All I want to say is that everyone has all the same features right now and that’s heartbreaking for me as a music fan… Missy did it, Luda did it, but it’s weird now because it seems like it’s an intentional intent that we’re going to have these five people on every hot rapper’s album. It seems that they’re trying so hard to find a way to have these cats have almost everything. It’s just interesting. What I love about the 80z Babiez To The 2Gz is that it reminded me and a lot of people about how different these artists were. We had a Smif-n-Wessun. We had a Fugees. You know Goodie Mob was different from Outkast and they were in the same crew. Everybody paid attention to what they were bringing to the table and took time to make sure it was weird and different.
And I feel like now, we have less weirdness. All the weirdness seems relegated to the blogs, the independent, and the underground. And now it’s like, we aren’t embracing it as much.
Both: Exactly.
Bryan Hahn (@notupstate)