Brand Nubian
Wednesday, September 18, 2004, the Ottobar, Baltimore, Maryland. The sound of vegetables crunching and footsteps creaking on a wood surfaced floor is the only noise. Not one person speaks in a space full of hungry souls. After a three-hour drive from New York and a two-hour wait inside of a mini-van-everyone, including J-Butters and I, want to go home. It’s already 11:30 pm and Brand Nubian’s stage time has been pushed back to 12:30 am. The group is ready to perform and hit 95 North.
While the silence of anticipation and hunger fill the room-a delivery of Baltimore’s finest corner shop cuisine shows up in brown paper bags. Grand Puba splits his fish and fries with me and I give him an enthusiastic thank you after I realized what had happened…I was sitting in a room breaking bread with parts of my childhood admiration. Grand Puba actually gave me his food and I was seated next to Lord Jamal and Sadat X. The trio begins to laugh at my foolish facial expression and attitude. The room gets lively once everyone starts to fill their belly. Within 10 minutes, the legendary interview begins.
Brand Nubian Albums:
Fire In The Hole (2004) Foundation (1998) Everything is Everything (1994) In God We Trust (1993) One For All (1990)
Halftimeonline (Jbutters): Looking at the fickle rap fans out here now it’s almost like you have to win people over again. Do you even want to work to win fans back or do you just want to stay within the fan base that already appreciates you?
Grand Puba: That’s the beauty of the game. When it comes to the point where you can’t get any new fans that’s when it’s time to quit. It’s good to have your fan base and all that but you want your music to be accepted by all not just those who already know who you are. That’s the whole thing about music, especially if you are making music that’s meaningful.
Halftimeonline (Jbutters): Do you feel like the same type of messages that you used to introduce yourselves will be enough to bring in new fans or do you feel you have to change up the approach?
Grand Puba: You just gotta change the lingo and talk to the people and be amongst the people.
Sadat X: Stay with the times.
Lord Jamar: You gotta be yourself and can’t act like just because they are talking about some particular thing and everybody is on some gangsta shit that now all of a sudden you want to be a gangsta that’s phony. People are gonna see right through that but the way people rhymed when we first came out has advanced to the way people rhyme now so you have to keep up with that type of shit. At the same time be yourself. The beats have to advance too but at the same time have their own identity.
Halftimeonline (Jbutters): In what ways do you feel it’s been necessary for you to change?
Sadat X: We haven’t changed
Lord Jamar: We’re not trying to fit in. The more you do something as an artist the better you get at it. So that natural growth is what makes your style change but it’s not a conscious I have to change my shit because this is what’s going on. That’s not what’s going down.
Grand Puba: It’s simple. The more you understand what’s going on in your surroundings and in society its gonna change but it’s the same issue and the same problems.
Lord Jamar: Life is the change because everything is always changing. You grow from a boy to a man to a father to a grandfather.
Grand Puba: As long as you got your ear to the street and you still dealing with the same situations the only thing that changes is the lingo. And I’m not gonna say that’s not important because when you’re dealing with younger seeds you have to identify with them and you have to speak their language. That’s the main difference but shit is still the same.
Halftimeonline (Jbutters): Your message has always been about upliftment and knowledge of self in order to make a change. Do you feel you achieved the goal of helping people look at life a little bit differently and make some changes in society with your music?
Lord Jamar: Definitely!
Sadat X: Yea people run up on you all the time like when your album came out I was going through this or I was in school or locked up and that got me through it. We definitely achieved the goal.
Lord Jamar: I met someone who said we helped them learn how to read and how they weren’t even into reading books until they started listening to our shit.
Halftimeonline (Marcus): Word, in the beginning ya’ll impacted motherfuckers and they didn’t even know it. In middle school I thought gold was the shit to wear until ya’ll put me on the black conscious tip. I didn’t know anything about Islam until ya’ll first video.
Brother Ali: I became a Muslim after ya’ll record came out. I wouldn’t say solely because of that but it had a lot to do with that shit.
Grand Puba: That’s the duty of a civilized person to teach civilization.
Halftimeonline (Marcus): In you’re first song there are lessons in that shit like when you say ‘The maker the owner the cream of the planet earth father of civilization, god of the universe.’
Brother Ali: That’s a word for word lesson cut.
Halftimeonline (Marcus): That’s actually a lesson and that whole tricknology and the devil that shit click later on in life when someone says it to you.
Halftimeonline (Jbutters): Looking at that lesson and that song it seemed only natural to put something like that in there but did you consciously come into it saying you wanted to send a certain message?
Grand Puba: That’s how I felt at the time that record was made.
Lord Jamar: Which made it thoughtful because you just not gonna throw some shit like “Wake Up” together. It was a thoughtful record but that’s what was in his mind.
Grand Puba: I grew up like that.
Halftimeonline (Marcus): Define the term ‘Brand Nubian’ and how you came up with it.
Grand Puba: When we first got together it was a brand new group. Me and Jamar was at the mall coming from class going over towards my way and we went over the bridge by the train station and I looked at Jamar and was like we got to think of a name man.
Lord Jamar: We said a few different things and Nubian came in and we had different variations of Nubian. Some was corny and some was aiight and then it narrowed down to Brand Nubian and a couple others and I dunno but we was just Brand Nu.
Sadat X: Once we said it that was it.
Halftimeonline (Marcus): So how did you get on OZ and brought you into acting?
Lord Jamar: I put myself there really. I wanted to do it and said shit out loud and shit started happening. I was basically able to get up on there. The man directly responsible was Dean Withers who played O’Reiley on OZ.
Halftimeonline (Marcus): Are ya’ll hooking up with any other artists for any upcoming projects?
Sadat X: Yea, there are a few things. I did a joint with my people Purple City, with my man Agallah and some stuff with Sean Black, and Diamond and AG.
Halftimeonline (Marcus): What don’t ya’ll like about hiphop right now?
Grand Puba: I’m gonna tell you like this the game, positive and negative, is still all part of the game and makes it exist. When I hear shit I don’t particularly care for it just clicks in my mind that that’s part of the game.
Lord Jamar: You need to have something bad to know what’s good.
Halftimeonline (Jbutters): Here’s what I wanted to throw out. Cats like Kanye West and Mase coming back are what people are looking at and calling a conscious vibe. I’m looking at cats like ya’ll and Poor Righteous Teachers as conscious but people today are throwing the same label on these new dudes. Do you think that’s a positive thing or do you feel it’s just cheesy and corny like it’s done to make a couple more dollars?
Grand Puba: Nah, I say it like this you can’t be in the mind of everybody who’s making records. Maybe their resources to knowledge are limited. As long as you are speaking from your heart and your experience. They are striving to do something positive. It’s not like they saying they gonna blast you and kill your mother, they went away from that and to do that alone means that you’re not accepting that that’s what you have to do to make it in the game. I give them credit because they chose their own path to go down. If it’s not as conscious and as positive as Brand Nubian then they striving but its a lot more conscious than a lot of other shit I’m hearing on the radio.
Lord Jamar: There are different degrees of consciousness and what they are dealing with is kinda a Christian, mainstream positivity, which they aren’t talking about killing people and crack and that’s positive in itself. Just because there is so much negative that by them just not saying those things it seems like they are being conscious. It’s not like they are getting political or thought provoking.
Grand Puba: They conscious of the fact that they aren’t gonna spit that bullshit.
Lord Jamar: Then there are different degrees of consciousness and you can go up to a harder level and that’s where we come in and Dead Prez and shit like that. Also the person that you are has something to do with it too. If you were just a soft regular dude in your everyday life and now all of a sudden you make records people are gonna look up to you but you still that same soft dude. It’s only gonna go but so far. They might like your music but your leadership qualities is limited. Certain people were leaders on the street before they were making records and they’ll be leaders afterwards. We are those types of motherfuckers from back in the day when we was leading shit. So when you get up there it’s a little different and that’s what I’m not seeing like someone like Chuck D and Rakim, leadership type dudes. Now with the positive music or what they call positive or conscious music I’m not seeing those leadership personalities.
Halftimeonline (Jbutters): Word I feel like that too. I guess you can get caught up in the labels, not your own labels but other people calling it whatever and you’re like I know this ain’t what it really is. They ain’t really doing nothing for me so I don’t really see it as that uplifting. People saying “Jesus Walks” is on the radio and that’s cool and all but that ain’t the greatest thing someone ever did. To me he’s just talking about making a song about Jesus but he ain’t really talking about nothing specific which is fine but when you come off like yo I can’t believe he did that its like come on man that ain’t even that original.
Lord Jamar: That track is banging though
Grand Puba: Yea, it’s really the music.
Sadat X: The game is young man. To these young kids this is what they first hearing. They didn’t hear Tupac or certain stuff this is what they hear now. I coach basketball and the kids are sixteen and seventeen years old and when we first came out they was babies. They was like four and five years old so from them I get a lot of ‘Yo my pops knows you’ or ‘My uncle know you.’ I try to introduce some stuff but you gotta bear with it. For them hearing Kanye with ‘Jesus Walks’ that’s the first time they are hearing stuff like that so that’s their first impression of it. They never heard Tupac or Chuck D.
Grand Puba: They missed that.
