Brand Nubian
Halftimeonline (Jbutters): That be throwing me because I don’t feel like I’m some old dude.
Sadat X: Yea, yea!
Grand Puba: I don’t feel that way either
Halftimeonline (Jbutters): Its like wow.
Sadat X: I be feeling like that too, it makes you think sometimes.
Lord Jamar: That just goes to show that we don’t teach people their history.
Everyone: Yep!
Lord Jamar: We don’t let people know what’s going on. I actually taught a hiphop class once a week at my son’s school and I gave them motherfuckers history. I was teaching them how to DJ and MC. They was like eleven or twelve years old but you ask them now about who brought this to America and they know about Kool Herc, Cold Crush, Run DMC and all that shit. That’s what you gotta do.
Grand Puba: The game is setup and designed like that. You know they gotta take away our history because knowing your history makes you a stronger people and they have to take that away.
Lord Jamar: They are trying to make our whole culture disposable like you just take it use it up and throw it away. Whereas the rock n roll culture these motherfuckers go fifty or sixty years till they have one foot in the grave and they can still do concerts. Big shit for a million dollars.
Halftimeonline (Jbutters): I was reading this cool topic on Okayplayer about being grown and still being hiphop and there are a lot of cats who get to a certain age and be like is it still cool for me to even like hiphop. I’m like you damn well can be a grown man and love hiphop you know what I’m saying how is that supposed to change.
Grand Puba: They try to make you feel bad like you need to stop this. I’m like this is me, I don’t wear suits.
Lord Jamar: That’s why hiphop’s gotta grow with the people that are growing up with it. It’s not like you get to a certain age and automatically stop liking it but you’re gonna start going somewhere else when there is nothing that’s coming out for you as a grown person. So we gonna have to start making music for the grown folks and stop always catering to the young people. Maybe the older people would buy records if we catered it to them.
Sadat X: Hiphop is still too new to have defining rules.
Lord Jamar: Right, it’s the rules you make. Hiphop always boosts up the underdog and that’s why it keeps people optimistic. Eminem shouldn’t have blown up. He’s a dope rapper and I think he’s creative but what I’m saying is especially in his mind he is a white boy in a black genre. He was being oppressed in a certain way. First hiphop came and the average black man was being oppressed and this was his vehicle for him to do his thing in New York. Then the New Yorker rappers were oppressing the west coast rappers and then they blew up. Those motherfuckers oppressed the down south niggas and they fucking blew up. Then the bitches were being oppressed and they blew up for a while. It’s whoever gets oppressed for a little while who ends up later on blowing the fuck up. The white boy was oppressed and now the white boys blow up. Positive shit has been OPPRESSED! And now its time for this shit to blow the fuck back up, ‘Fire in the Hole’ bitch! That’s what the fuck I’m talking about. I’m telling you that’s what hiphop is it’s the voice of the underdog and we’re gonna shit on one of these overseas cats and one of them motherfuckers is gonna do something and blow the fuck up because they’ve been oppressed for a long time and they are trying to get in. Whoever is oppressed in hiphop they eventually come to the top.
Halftimeonline (Jbutters): I like what you were saying about making hiphop for grown people. We did an interview with Jazzy Jeff and he was like think about what you’ll be listening to when you’re sixty or seventy years old and its not gonna be no classical shit I’m gonna be listening to hiphop that I grew up on.
Lord Jamar: Right, but you might not listen to the shit that came out right then. It might be so techno or so out of touch with little twelve year olds talking about their book bags. You fifty or sixty years old and you still like hiphop you don’t want to hear a song about your book bag. You thinking about your colostomy bag or some shit.
Halftimeonline (Jbutters): Haha, yea I would love for somebody to concentrate on issues older cats go through but it seems like even people who come back start competing with the younger heads instead of doing their own thing. Maybe that’s where people go wrong.
Sadat X: At this point you might not see us on TRL. I don’t expect to be on TRL
Lord Jamar: You have to accept that. I don’t expect to get 50 Cent fans, I expect to get Brand Nubian fans and that’s all I can expect. And when I try to infiltrate into these others people shit your gonna confuse your identity.
Halftimeonline (Marcus): So how do ya’ll feel about your kids listening to that kinda stuff. Do you condone your kids listening to G-Unit and 50 Cent and all that?
Sadat X: I mean you gotta teach them what’s out there you can’t hide it. It’s out there and if they are gonna listen to it at least explain to them what it is and the meaning behind it. If you hide it its gonna be worse. At least explain it to them.
Lord Jamar: And it’s all about how you react to it. Sometimes with my son I’ll slow his roll a little bit. I might see him liking something and be like so ‘You like that like THAT?’ Nah’mean. You really feeling that like THAT?
Halftimeonline: Hahaha!
Lord Jamar: I’m like its aiight and point out the weaknesses but not being a hater. Just being like if you really listen to what he is saying it’s not all that, he’s not saying anything. And he might be like that is true or yea I see what you’re saying. It’s not the greatest shit in the world and there’s better shit out there. Some real shit.
Halftimeonline (Marcus): That’s good ya’ll are involved in your kids life like that for the simple fact that my role models came off of television. I know a lot of young dudes with no father in the household look at G-Unit and want to get the sneakers and talk about shooting motherfuckers.
Lord Jamar: Yea and they want to get shot nine times so they can be hard.
Brother Ali: I want a motherfucker to throw a hand grenade at me. Kanye got in an accident and 50 got shot let me go and step on a land mine.
Everybody:
Lord Jamar: I stepped on a bomb son and lived!
Halftimeonline (Jbutters): That’s what killed me about that dude Shyne. How you get a record deal in jail?
Lord Jamar: I thought you not supposed to be able to get money and all that shit. They gave him three million dollars and a joint venture.
Brother Ali: Shyne can rap though.
Halftimeonline (Jbutters): You can’t find no other dude except this guy in jail rapping over the phone? There are other people you can give a label deal too yo.
Brother Ali: Out of all that gangsta shit, I believe Shyne. Motherfuckers that I know that have killed people he remind me of them.
Lord Jamar: Sometimes you can look into somebody’s eyes and just see a certain thing.
Halftimeonline (Jbutters): As fans it should be about the music but people be getting all caught up in all that other stuff who you killed and if you in jail and shit.
Grand Puba: You can’t help it because that’s part of the trap. That’s part of what’s causing the confusion among righteous people. That’s its only purpose. We can’t walk down the street, everyone got a mean mug that’s called evil. That ain’t because dudes want to talk like that, that’s being programmed from there so you can act like that. If it was all about being conscious right now and it was sent down everyone would be righteous. We seen that in the early 90s. That’s how society is programming us. If you check the PDs (Program Directors), the ones programming the records and the videos you’ll see that shit is done for a reason. That’s how we are supposed to be represented as savages or whatever.
Lord Jamar: We all sell crack.
Grand Puba: And are killers and gangstas. It’s the worst picture you can possibly see. When I first did a record with Masters of Ceremonies, it was called “Cracked Out.”
Lord Jamar: That was a positive record.
Grand Puba: It was a big record in New York and all that. DJs said they couldn’t play the record because I said the word ‘crack.’ They was like we cannot play this on the radio because you said crack and we are not playing any crack records. I’m like this is a positive record. This is to help people stop smoking.
Sadat X: At the height of the crack wars!
Grand Puba: It was a New York banger but they wouldn’t play it cuz I said ‘crack,’ now you can learn how to make crack on the radio. That’s how it’s designed. Now who’s okaying that? Who’s saying its ok in the daytime to play all this shit for little kids to hear. Who’s doing it, why is it being done and why is nothing being said about it? It’s because they like if we can make money off of these fools killing themselves and acting like that then we gonna make that money. But if you talk about anything that offends them its not going down. You can say nigga all day on the radio, TV. Call the devil a devil we been through that.
Lord Jamar: There was one time where Funkmaster Flex played that G-Unit freestyle on Hot 97 over and over and over so many times it’s ingrained in your head. Think about the part where Tony Yayo says ‘we sell weed, crack and dope mixed with opium.’ I’m like yo! But they play it so much it’s just in your brain.
Grand Puba: Now who’s okaying that?
Brother Ali: They have a hiphop unit now. They just follow rappers around trying to catch them with weed and weapons.
Grand Puba: This shit is self-destructive. That’s the new shit. Every decade is something that fucks us up. Now they just got it to a science when we can just fuck up ourselves and they don’t have to do nothing. This is when you getting money but there is still a hate there. I thought that’s what you were striving for but its still not happiness because without knowledge of self and knowing your history you’re not gonna find that happiness until you understand who you are. Then you can enjoy the fruits of life.
