Speaking of meeting a lot of wild people what’s the craziest thing that has happened to you in your career?

Kool G: I can’t really single nothing out. A lot of shit happened, but nothing totally off the wall. It wouldn’t be nothing out of the normal. I mean I guess I wasn’t blessed enough to maybe have a fan like Jay-Z or DMX might have had where they could really say some crazy shit. I never reached that peak. I ran into niggas on the road, I met niggas on trains going places [like]“Yo I’ll die for you” this that and the third, I had my incidents with girls, but it’s nothing out of the normal.

Hold up, dudes coming up to you saying, “I’ll die for you?” Yo that’s not normal.

Kool G: If that happened to me I’m thinking that happened to Jigga like a hundred times.

Nah, you need to explain that man.

Kool G: This was after my first album. I made “Road to the Riches” and we was on the train going to do the next performance and I met this Italian kid. This is when G Rap first realized he had Italian fans. He met me on the train like G Rap yo I fucking love you, here’s my numbers believe me I will fucking die for you. I will murder niggas for you.

Wow, what did you say to that?

Kool G: I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I was blown away by the shit. That never happened to me in my whole life. This shit was fucking shocking to me. I’m listening to duke in amazement. This dude was dead serious you could see it in his face, his expressions, everything. He was really trying to convince me that he would really do this.

Was this a grown man?

Kool G: Yea, he was older than me. I’m like 18 at the time this guy had to be about 25. This was a grown ass man. He let me know he was Italian and everything.

That’s crazy. Going back to your first album I heard some people from the gay community tried to sue you over your lyrics on “Truly Yours.”

Kool G: Nah, they didn’t try to sue me, but what they did was boycott me and ban me off the radio. The first single on the first album was “Road to the Riches.” The second single was “Truly Yours” and I said something about gays on there. I wasn’t really talking about gays, I was talking about a fictitious character, but the gay community got mad at me. They boycotted the radio station that was playing my shit out in Cali and Warner Brothers had to pull records off the shelves. The shit really hurt me bad because I believe that first album would have went gold. Off the first single alone I was already at 250K and the second single would have took it all the way there. I would have had a gold album under my belt. The next situation I got would have been better, there would have been more money involved, and they would have did more because they would know this is a gold selling artist. Since I got messed up from the beginning it was just a chain reaction.

Is that something you kept in the back of your head when you were writing lyrics, that some people may take things you say out of context and possible cause problems for you through boycotts etc.?

Kool G: When I was writing I wasn’t even thinking like that. All I knew was street shit. I didn’t think there would be gay activists boycotting my shit. I wasn’t thinking political like that. But when you get older you get wiser and you know there are certain things you can’t do and survive in the game that you’re in and bashing the gays is one of them. That’s like a white person right now saying nigga. It’s over for them. Look at the shit that’s going on right now because of [what Rush Limbaugh said about] Donovan Mcnabb.

What is your take on that situation?

Kool G: I was just catching pieces of it on the news and I don’t know what Rush said in detail really, but I just know whatever the fuck he said was offensive because I mean everyone is bashing this motherfucker.

With the Rush Limbaugh thing and Al Sharpton and the NAACP boycotting Nelly’s Pimp Juice energy drink do you think the black community misdirects it’s attention to these types of things when there are much bigger issues to be considered?

Kool G: I definitely think that. Since they was trying to boycott gangster rap I felt that way. When they was doing that shit back then I thought they could be doing better things besides trying to boycott Ice-T, Tupac and G Rap albums. [That] made Warner Brothers not want to drop the next G Rap album. Cold Chillin had to do it independently. I thought they could have been doing something more productive than picking on motherfucking rappers. I don’t care what kinda rap you write, if you taking the time to sit down with a pen and paper you’re doing something constructive. There’s a lot of niggas out there that ain’t gonna take the time to sit down with no pen and paper and write shit. They gonna rob another motherfucker that got what they want. That was real crazy to me for black people to be attacking black people, the black youth at that.

It pisses me off because when they do boycott the stuff they don’t even know what they’re talking about or the people’s names they supposed to be boycotting. If you gonna be mad at least know who you’re supposed to be mad at.

Kool G: If that’s the case go to blockbuster video. There are a million people with guns on the covers and all that shit. It’s a million white actors doing that shit, why aren’t you boycotting that.

Yea like with the whole pimp juice thing, if you have such a huge problem with pimping go stop pimps. Who cares about a damn energy drink? I’m like be happy he even got a drink out.

Kool G: Exactly, it’s not like it’s the rappers that started it. Rappers are like a mirror to their environment, they only reflecting what’s going on around them. How you gonna kill a reflection by breaking the fucking mirror. You got Roc-A-Fella and Sean John companies, look at all the progress we made from this rap shit that people criticized so much. This shit created jobs. And everything we doing now is still on a small scale. I want to see a black organization put satellites up in space and run networks and channels. I’m starting this program called the Million People’s Empire Club and this is exactly the cause for the thing that I am starting. It’s a ten-month program and I am trying to get a million people to put $111 every month for ten months into this corporation and it will be something owned by the people. At the end of ten months with a million people donating $111 that’s over a billion dollars and that’s what it cost to put satellites into space. And even if it ain’t for the satellites, with a billion dollars you can put up ten major hotels or supermarket chains. There’s no limit to the shit you could do and this would be the first casino or whatever we do owned by the people and not by some major corporation. It’s gonna take a lot of work to get a million people, so it may take more than ten months to get it started reaching out to people and making them aware. But it’s a good idea because you spend that money doing nothing. You go to the movies and eat at a restaurant with your chick the same night and you practically blew 100 dollars. So this is telling people take one of those days out of the month where you don’t do that and put it to something that will generate income for you every month. We just registered the website yesterday, so it is still in the very early stages right now.

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Posted by Halftime on Wednesday, November 12th, 2003 and is filed under HIP HOP ICON SERIES.